Luis Alberto Betonio was attacked on Avenida Paulista by a group of young people in November 2010. (Photo: Reproduction)
By Lucia Facco*
I recently participated in a panel, together with three wonderful women, at an event where literature and homophobia were discussed. At one point, when the audience was asking questions and making comments, a girl from the audience (cute, she must have been in her twenties) said that she understood that we, at the table, must have experienced situations of prejudice, but she thought that prejudice was decreasing, as she had never had any unpleasant experience in this sense.
The table's reaction was actually funny. We all started talking at the same time and reminded the unsuspecting girl of the case of the cruel murder of a 14-year-old boy in Rio de Janeiro, in a crime clearly motivated by homophobia.
After the event ended, I was thinking about the subject. In fact, I have never experienced any situation of explicit prejudice. I've never been beaten, I've never been insulted, in short, I haven't experienced any personal trauma. According to the girl's reasoning, then, I should think that homophobia is something similar to the Bogeyman, an invention to scare us.
The point is that we have eyes to see, ears to hear and a heart to suffer not only for the violence that we feel tearing our own flesh, but for all those who suffer situations of aggression. All situations.
Just because I'm white doesn't mean I won't believe in racism. Just because I'm from the middle class doesn't mean I'm going to say that social prejudice is an old wives' tale. Just because my friends think I'm a "cool" lesbian doesn't mean I think homophobia is ending. No. Unfortunately it is not.
I'm intrigued by some people's alienation. And this alienation is not a "privilege" of youth. I've heard a comment like that from an older woman.
This situation is very serious, because until there is true solidarity and the ability to feel the pain of others as our own, society will not change. Or rather, it will change for the worse.
People need to look beyond their own navels and observe the world around them, with people, things, prejudices, situations, differences.
Yes, because the difference is much more complex than we might think at first glance. There are many more differences than between heterosexuals and homosexuals. Within the homosexual category there are several other subcategories that differentiate us.
An upper middle class lesbian may never have suffered prejudice, living in a closed society where they think having a lesbian friend is cool. However, there are black, poor, community-dwelling lesbians who are raped by men who want to "teach them how to be real women."
Maybe that cute girl who, fortunately, never suffered prejudice, had never heard of homophobia before that event. Or if she heard it, she had a very unrealistic perception, as if she had heard about a problem told in a fiction book.
Maybe she doesn't know about the 14-year-old girls and boys who are tortured to death. Perhaps she has never heard of teenagers breaking light bulbs in strangers' faces because they are homosexual. Perhaps she also hasn't heard of military personnel who, while on duty, shoot gay boys out of hatred.
But the point is that all this is not invention. These are facts that occur in our reality, which is not virtual. It is a reality made up of flesh and blood. A reality that we cannot refuse to see.
We all have a moral duty to open our eyes and our hearts and see that each of us has a responsibility and obligation to try to change this situation of violence.
The other day I received a story via email. The story of the farm mouse. He saw the farmer open a package that had arrived in the mail. It was a mousetrap. He, desperate, went to ask the chicken for help. She laughed and said she wasn't afraid of mousetraps and that it was his problem. Then he looked for the pig, who told him the same thing. Finally he looked for the cow who didn't even respond to him. He turned his head, wagging his tail. It turns out that a snake fell into the mousetrap and bit the farmer's wife. She fell out of bed and the doctor prescribed chicken soup. The farmer killed the chicken. The woman's family came to visit her and the farmer, for lunch, killed the pig. Finally the woman was cured and they had a barbecue to celebrate. There went the cow.
Moral of the story: when the mousetrap arrives on the farm, it's everyone's problem.
This is also the case in our history. When the 14-year-old boy is beaten and killed, the pain is ours too. It needs to be ours. Even if we are nestled in the swimming pool of a Vieira Souto penthouse.
Otherwise, we will also be responsible for every punch, every curse, every lamp broken in a face, every trigger pulled.
* Lúcia Facco is from Rio de Janeiro, graduated in Literature (Portuguese-French), specialist and master in Brazilian Literature, PhD in Comparative Literature from UERJ, literary critic and writer. This text, which the A Capa website publishes in full, will be part of a collection that will be launched soon by Editora Brejeira Malagueta.
