As it does every year, the Secretariat for Participation and Partnership, through the Coordination of Sexual Diversity Affairs (Cads), of the City of São Paulo, prepares a special program to remember Lesbian Pride Day, celebrated on August 19th.
One of the highlights of the program are interviews with important activists in the segment. Each week one of them will be published on the website of Cads and in the Newsletter that it distributes to all municipal employees. The interviews will tell a little about each woman's story, their struggles and how they see the evolution of the movement and society on the issue of respect and freedom for lesbians.
“We have also prepared a booklet that will be made available to interested parties and distributed in bars, restaurants and nightclubs where girls frequent”, says Eduardo Cardoso, from Cads, exclusively to Dykerama.com. According to him, the fourth edition of the event will have the theme “Legislation and Culture”.
The complete schedule for the IV Lesbian Visibility Week will be released soon. Stay tuned here at Dykerama.
A little history
The Lesbian organization emerged in Brazil at the beginning of 1979, within the Brazilian Homosexual Movement (MHB). However, the limited space for lesbian groups, which have appeared since then, hampered the action of this segment and, consequently, its productivity.
The first lesbian demonstration only took place in 1983, on August 19th. A group of women, from the first lesbian collective in Brazil (GALF), held a protest in front of the lesbian bar Ferro's Bar, against the establishment's owners banning the distribution of the bulletin aimed at lesbians. The act had the support of gay activists, feminists and parliamentarians of the time.
The following decade was very important for the movement. In 1993, lesbian groups and independent lesbian activists organized the VII Brazilian Meeting of Lesbians and Homosexuals. It was the first time that the word “lesbians” appeared in the title of the meeting. This insertion represented greater visibility for the issue of homosexual women. Three years later, in August 1996, the idea of Lesbian Visibility Day began to emerge, which contributed to increasing the space in society, especially in the media, for discussion on the issue of homosexual rights.
August 19th officially became Lesbian Pride Day in 2003, when a debate was organized at the events commemorating the LGBT Pride Parade, where the day was launched. The selection of the date refers to the first demonstration of the segment and aims to establish a historical reference of struggle and pride for lesbians.
HUH: A large part of the Brazilian lesbian movement celebrates Lesbian Visibility Day on August 29th, a date that refers to the 1st National Lesbian Seminar, held in the city of Rio de Janeiro from August 29th to September 1st, 1996.
