A Brazilian Professor During the Pandemic - 05/06/22
On March 12, 2020, I woke up feeling bad, but I could not help but give a lecture on representation at the Federal Institute of Rio de Janeiro (IFRJ) campus. After that, I participated in an online conversation, "Being a Woman In These Times" with the São Paulo Women's Care Reference Center.
However, I feared that I had contracted the new coronavirus, given the news from the World Health Organization (WHO) statement the day before that COVID-19 had become a pandemic. So, I went to a hospital and was diagnosed with laryngitis.
The next day I went to Grupo Arco Iris (Rainbow Group), a historic NGO defending the rights of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transvestites, transsexuals, intersex, and other sexual and gender minorities (LGBTI+), to participate as a teacher in the citizenship course on social participation and public policies.
I was aware that this was not the first epidemic faced by the LGBTI+ population, which survived virtually without government support. In most cases, the movement actually grew with its opposition to HIV/AIDS in the 1980s.
In fact, during my isolation due to the pandemic, I had never interacted with so many people and with such intensity, not even during my election campaign for state representative in 2018, when Bolsonaro was elected president.
Mainly through my Instagram channel —@instadajaqueline—I debated topics, usually in the context of the pandemic. The issue for which most people sought me out had to do with mental health. I also spoke to different audiences, including in English to Americans, as well as Mozambican academics to draw their attention to the terrible situation we are facing.
President Bolsonaro initially dealt with the pandemic by denying it and even encouraging exposure to the virus, while at the same time refusing specific support to indigenous populations and Afro-Brazilian communities (quilombolas). This use of biopower has become a death policy, or necropolitics as Achille Mbembe defines it, for the scapegoats of neoconservatism: LGBTI+ people, marginalized women, Afro descendants, and indigenous peoples.
In this regard, there has been a psychological war, especially against women, blacks, indigenous peoples, and LGBTI+ since the inauguration of President Bolsonaro. I have witnessed many deaths, including suicides, some of which took place before the pandemic, but have increased in numbers during the last two years. The first person who sought my guidance was the manager of a homeless shelter in Rio de Janeiro in which one of the sheltered Black lesbians was raped. The manager did not know how to contact the women's care centers, and the pandemic situation, which made a response even more complicated, forced her to become more informed about what to do in these trying times.
This pandemic has also caused info-demia. People are suffering from excessive information and misinformation. Fake News makes people sick. As a result, I am sought out daily, from people eager to talk to someone.
The need for an adequate response to the pandemic has been apparent. And while non-face-to-face interactions have protected people from viral transmission, there have been many negative consequences of these non-personal interactions, in which we have been forced to work and communicate with each other remotely. I have observed this in my capacity as a member of the Human Rights Commission of the Federal Council of Psychology, in participating in courses on clinical management of COVID-19 offered by the Ministry of Health, in dozens on online programs about responses to the pandemic, and in teaching courses on history and gender relations in my regular classes at the Institute and in a Master’s program at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ).
In addition to collateral health problems due to excessive motor repetition that many people have recently experienced, the home office and the constant use of the computer have had other negative side effects. It seems to be a new black hole has been invented by capitalism that sucks us in and leads to endless hours of work. Moreover, many people working at home do not receive any compensation from their employer for the upkeep of their computer and other equipment, or for the electricity, internet and water consumed at home. Two other colleagues and I captured the challenges to the LGBTI+ population in times of the covid-19 pandemic in an article that showed how most of our work and leisure have been virtualized except for household tasks and the relationship with our partners.
In addition to dealing with the pandemic, we must resist the on-going atrocities in Brazil and most particularly in the city of Rio de Janeiro, where children and pregnant women are among the Black people targeted by the police in the favelas or caught in the crossfire. In this regard, it is impossible to trust or rely on the federal, state, and municipal governments. The execution of Black people, LGBTI+ people, to say nothing about the assassination of Rio de Janeiro councilwoman Marielle Franco, all go unpunished. The government has declared teachers, enemies of its neo-conservative cis-heteronormative project. Since progressive educators are against forms of oppression, we will continue to be considered dangerous because we promote an appreciation of diversity. We are living in a situation captured by singer/songwriter Cazuza in which "my enemies are [literally] in power."
Within this overall context, the upcoming elections are of utmost importance. Under the direction of Supreme Court Justice Luiz Edson Fachin, who until recently was the president of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), I worked with a group of academics to review electoral norms in order to promote access of historically discriminated groups to the electoral process. One of the results of that committee was an interview with Fachin about the political participation of the LGBTI+ population and judiciary.
Beyond the 2022 elections, education is the medium and long-term solution. We will have to re-educate, even politically, at least two generations who have been intellectually kidnapped by political-religious fundamentalism, and in the case of Rio de Janeiro, by the private, armed rightwing militias. Public resources need to be invested in inclusive education, safe and careful gun use, non-religious homeschooling when appropriate, and concerted campaigns against rape culture, feminicide, homophobia, and transphobia. We have many challenges ahead.
Jaqueline Gomes de Jesus
Professor of Psychology at the Federal Institute of Rio de Janeiro (IFRJ) and the Department of Human Rights, Health and Cultural Diversity of the Sérgio Arouca National School of Public Health of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (DIHS/ENSP/FIOCRUZ) and tenured professor of the Graduate Program in Teaching History of the Federal Rural Fluminense University (PROFHISTÓRIA/UFRRJ) and the Graduate Program in Bioethics, Applied Ethics and Collective Health (PPGBIOS/FIOCRUZ). President of the Brazilian Association of Trans-Homoculture Studies (ABETH). Author of hundreds of publications, including the books Homophobia: Identify and Prevent and Transfeminism: Theories and Practices, the first books in Portuguese on the subject.
