The Politics of Sexuality in Latin America: A Reader on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights

“Every Jack to His Trade?” Power Arrangements, Policies of Identity, and Market Segmentation within the Homosexual Movement

“Every Jack to His Trade?” Power Arrangements, Policies of Identity, and Market Segmentation within the Homosexual Movement Isadora Lins França Translated by Nicole Panico T  several possible ways to understand the identity-segregated consumption market whose target public includes homosexuals in São Paulo.₁ Transvestites within the  movement, through a protest action directed at gaining access to a sauna that had exclusively catered to the gay male segment of this population, destabilized the foundation on which the homosexual movement in Brazil is based. These events raise questions related to the understanding of the contemporary homosexual movement. [. . .] The Brazilian homosexual movement began in  with the creation of the group Somos in São Paulo (MacRae ).The group followed a political strategy of strengthening the homosexual identity and positive valuation of the bicha and lesbian categories ,² associated by deeply antiauthoritarian politics that were critical of the state and the hierarchy of roles among same-sex couples (MacRae ; Fry ).As early as the s, there was a rearticulation of the movement, which sought cooperation with the state in the fight against , and slackened its criticism of authoritarianism, still attributing positive value to the category of homosexual (Facchini ). A different context emerged in the s: the panic connected to  abated, making it possible for homosexual activism to become more strongly based on different 421 discourses and strategies. Categories that focused on the subjects of the movement as political increased. [. . .] Besides the expansion of this circuit—now also known as ³—the s brought about a configuration that was different from the former homosexual ghetto: in a way, spaces of consumption and sociability began to incorporate the political discourse of pride and visibility, making it clear that this discourse was directed to a community of a certain sexual orientation, and incorporating symbols popularized by activists, such as the rainbow flag. [. . .] Actors that in fact would constitute the segmented market also began to be seen [. . .] as articulators of political action, stimulating the “self-esteem of homosexuals” and the formation of a “positive identity” —through initiatives like film festivals, publications, and even spaces of leisure and sociability—as well as circulating information within the community through Web sites and specialized magazines. Tensions within the movement still remained, but much more ambiguously than before. Another innovation the decade brought was the segmentation of consumption spaces for each subgroup of that community. [. . .] Within the spectrum of the  circuit, there are dozens of saunas designed for sexual interchange among men, one of which is the scene of the case discussed below. The vindication of transvestites carried out by the Transgenders’Office of the São Paulo Association of the  Pride Parade—which demanded access to one of these saunas—originated the social drama analyzed in the third part of this report. This was an occasion when tensions among categories included in the  movement and the segmented consumption market became explicit. Collective Identities Associated for Political Action: Structures in the Movement The building of collective identities associated for political action reveals the central problem of the processes by which certain social actors emerge as political subjects. [. . .] The appearance of new actors demanding to be considered as political subjects of the movement—as attested by the recent organization of transvestites, transsexuals , and bisexuals—evidences the fragility of theoretical perspectives that defy collective identities conceived as stable, internally homogeneous elements. These processes should be understood as part of a wider context of the movement in general , and of the segmented market. Their understanding demands an approach to power arrangements that shows the dynamics within which positions of “superiority” and“inferiority”alternate, and the possibility that the same social actors participate in relationships where they appear simultaneously“dominant” or“subordinate.” [. . .] Joshua Gamson () has outlined some of the debates now present in the homosexual movement in the United States—and it would not be difficult to extract 422 / Isadora Lins França some points of correlation between processes in North America and Brazil. [. . .] The author approaches the idea of queerness:⁴ an umbrella term that attempts to destabilize the identities of gay and lesbian and even those of man and woman, blurring group boundaries in frank opposition to what Gamson calls an ethnic-essentialist policy (Gamson , ). [. . .] Gamson is dedicated to the very controversy caused by the active presence of bisexual and transgender people in the North American movement, reaching the conclusion that both the policy of asserting essentialist...