Global South Perspectives on Stonewall after 50 Years, Part II—Brazilian Stonewalls: Radical Politics and Lesbian Activism

Abstract

The riots against a New York City police raid at the Stonewall Inn bar in June, 1969, are often identified as having sparked the movement for LGBT rights, and the commemoration of the riots one year later in June, 1970, inaugurated a series of annual LGBT Pride events that continues to this day worldwide. In this two-part Forum, we reflect on the contradictory effects of Stonewall’s international legacy. In this second part of the Forum, Ferreira and Belmont investigate the ways in which ‘Stonewall’ has been appropriated specifically in Brazil, both during the civil-military dictatorship and in the current fraught political moment. Belmont locates current mismatches between LGBT and queer struggles in Brazil by juxtaposing more mainstream visions of LGBT politics with the margins they create, especially the marginalization of travestis. Belmont exposes the way that dominant LGBT discourse and practices reinforce the continuous violence over dissident bodies and proposes that we look at travestis’ experiences and arguments as necessary contributions to a more radical (queer) politics. In the final contribution, Ferreira recapitulates the political demands of NYC’s Stonewall events and contrast them to the revolutionary claims of what was called a ‘Brazilian Stonewall.’ Considering the protagonism of lesbian movements in such events in Brazil, her contribution analyzes, from a queer perspective, the embrace of a multiplicity of identifications in contemporary lesbian activism. She argues that this move creates potentialities for responding to structural violences, while also speaking to questions such as the judicialization and commercialization of LGBTTI causes and homonormativity.