LGBTQIA+ Candidates Remain Invisible in Electoral Justice
On August 16th, I received the Nexo newsletter with an article entitled “Record of Diversity.” I then accessed the Folha de São Paulo report on the same topic, that noted the unprecedented increase in women and Black candidates in this year's national elections. I was immediately frustrated by the blatant silence about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transvestite, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual and other non-heterosexual and non-cisgender (LGBTQIA+) candidates in these stories.
From there, I went directly to the database of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) to verify whether the lack of coverage about these candidacies was a result of the reports themselves or a failure of the official government body. I discovered, however, that the responsibility for the gap in information had not been poor journalism, although the author had not written anything about the issue, even though the title of the article was “Record of Diversity.”
The TSE information that allows one to analyze the presence of vulnerable groups among candidates for public office includes the following categories: gender, color/race, age group, people with disabilities and social name. Therefore, it is possible to know how many women, Blacks, Indigenous people, young people, elderly people, and people with disabilities are candidates. The information on “social names,” which would come the closest in referring to LGBTQIA+ people and could indicate the number of trans people who are running for office in 2022, is incomplete because not every trans person uses their new social name as a result of the Supreme Court decision of 2018, which allows people to change their given name in public registries without the need for surgery or a court order. Thus, there is actually no information regarding the sexual orientation and gender identity of this year’s candidates.
The absence of such data produces undesirable effects, among them is the invisibility of this profile of candidates. Such inconspicuousness poses obstacles to researchers and social movement activists, who have made efforts to record the segment's presence in articles and reports. National networks and organizations that are part of the movement, such as the Brazilian Association of Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, Transvestites, Transexuals and Intersex People (ABGLT), the National Alliance of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transvestites, Transgendered, Transexual and Intersex People (Aliança Nacional LGBTI+); the National Association of Trans (ANTRA); and Vote LGBT, among others, have sought to map these candidacies through the preparation of virtual forms and the dissemination of reports, which are the result of the surveys that they conducted.
However, due to the limits of communication and survey methods, the numbers are often different from one network to another. Gustavo Gomes da Costa Santos from the Federal University of Pernambuco and Pedro Barbabela from the Federal University of Minas Gerais have developed important analyses about LGBTQIA+ candidates in Brazil, with articles in research journals on the subject. In these publications, they reflect on these difficulties in obtaining the real number of “colorful” candidacies in the country.
The challenges perceived by activists and academics could be easily resolved if candidates' sexual orientation and gender identity were declared by political parties when they present their candidates to the TSE. In addition, this would make this population more visible in party organizations, which are also full of barriers and contradictions regarding the LGBTQIA+ population.
Among the undesirable effects of this statistical indiscernibility is the social and political invisibility that the LGBTQIA+ movement has struggled to address for many decades in artistic, cultural, and media narrative disputes. For more than two decades, the movement has also been active through organizing massive Pride Parades in the capitals and other towns and cities throughout the country. Numerical invisibility, however, hinders inclusionary policies, whether they seek to involve excluded groups in decision-making spaces or in initiatives against political violence that target LGBTQIA+ candidates and elected officials.
The interview given by TSE President Luiz Edson Fachin to the transgender teacher and activist Jaqueline Gomes de Jesus, which was published in the Revista Brasileira de Estudos da Homocultura (REBEH) for a thematic dossier on LGBTQIA+ political participation that I coordinated with other researchers in the social sciences, notes that in 2019 the TSE established a working group, the Systematization of Electoral Norms. One of the themes was the participation of minorities in the electoral process. There was an LGBTQIA+ working subgroup with the participation of the ABGLT and the National LGBTI+ Alliance, which recommended developing appropriate terminology, discussing theoretical and political bases for the electoral court's regulations, and training polling station officials and employees of the TSE.
As a result of the interaction between the civil society and the State, Resolution 23659/21 was approved, which deals with electoral registration, providing for the use of social names and alternative gender identities, as well as the unenforceability of discharging trans women from the military. It also includes the possibility of filling in the names of two mothers or two fathers in official forms, which has been a way to strengthen the possibility of recognizing homo-parental families. However, regarding the fight against political violence toward LGBTQIA+ people, the president of the TSE only mentioned the effort to combat fake news that the Electoral Court has been carrying out.
These are important measures that reveal greater openness of the electoral judicial system to the participation of the LGBTQIA+ population, but it is still insufficient for the promotion of the political rights in the elections for this segment of Brazilian society. We need to advance the institutionalization of electoral policies so that they truly include these subjects in political disputes, with a focus on encouraging LGBTQIA+ people to run for political office; participate in government management; ensure the material conditions of these candidacies through the public funding of electoral campaigns, currently controlled by political parties; effectively protect LGBTQIA+ people from political violence; and commit to the visibility of sexual and gender diversity in political institutions. This is why it is important to know the official number of LGBTQIA+ candidates in guaranteeing electoral justice and expanding Brazilian democracy.
Cleyton Feitosa is a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of Brasilia, with a Master’s degree in human rights from the Federal University of Pernambuco. He is the author LGBT Public Policies and Democratic Construction in Brazil and a member of the Resocie Research Group – Rethinking the Relations between Society and State at the Institute of Political Science at the Federal University of Brasilia.
This article was prepared for the Election Observatory 2022 project, an initiative of the Institute for Democracy and Democratization of Communication. Based at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, with the participation of research groups from several Brazilian universities. For more information, see: www.observatoriodaseleicoes.com.br.
The Portuguese version was published on Mídia Ninja and is available here
