Feeling home in a “straight” city: everyday experiences
of hetero- and homonormativity by young gay and
bisexual men in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
Kay Mars (10418733)
MA Human Geography – Urban Geography Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences University of Amsterdam
August 2019
Supervisor: dr. F. M. (Fenne) Pinkster
Second Assessor: dr. W. P. C. (Wouter) van Gent Word count: 26.361
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O Mapa – by Mário Quintana
Olho o mapa da cidade Como quem examinasse A anatomia de um corpo... (É nem que fosse o meu corpo!) Sinto uma dor infinita
Das ruas de Porto Alegre Onde jamais passarei... Há tanta esquina esquisita, Tanta nuança de paredes, Há tanta moça bonita Nas ruas que não andei (E há uma rua encantada Que nem em sonhos sonhei...) Quando eu for, um dia desses, Poeira ou folha levada
No vento da madrugada, Serei um pouco do nada Invisível, delicioso Que faz com que o teu ar Pareça mais um olhar, Suave mistério amoroso, Cidade de meu andar (Deste já tão longo andar!) E talvez de meu repouso...
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Preface
In front of you lies the final work of an eight-month long trajectory. What started in mid-January 2019 as a few silly notes that eventually led to a research proposal, which flowed into two months of ethnographic fieldwork, and what eventually resulted in this thesis mid-August 2019. I believe, however, that the beginning of this trajectory does not lie somewhere in January 2019, nor does it end lie in August 2019. This trajectory goes way back in time, and – who knows – also into the future.
Exactly five years ago, 12 August 2014, I was waiting in front of Casa de Cultura Mario Quintana, a cultural centre in the historical city centre of Porto Alegre. It was my last day before I would go back to the Netherlands again, and I had scheduled a ‘date’ with a guy who I had met the day before through a dating app. My date had suggested to meet at ‘Casa de Cultura’ as it is commonly abbreviated, and I patiently waited until he arrived. I was a bit nervous, as it was the first time in my life that I had arranged something with another guy. When he arrived, we went inside to check out some of the exhibitions that were around at that time. After some time, we went outside to walk a bit through the rest of the city centre, before finally heading back to my apartment so I could pack my bags and leave for the airport.
Reflecting back on that specific day five years ago, I realize how I have increasingly become interested in how ‘we’ – the queers, the faggots, os viado, as poc – move through the city to encounter like-minded people, to make new friends, and to find potential lovers. Since that day in August 2014, I am fascinated by the ‘codes’ that we know that tell us which places to go and which places to avoid. That little voice inside our heads that tells us where we can show affection, and where we have to stop holding each other’s hands. It therefore feels as a great privilege to me to have been given the opportunity to try to capture these experiences and try to make sense of them in a theoretical way.
As Porto Alegre’s famous poet Mario Quintana once wrote “there lies so much particularity in each street corner, and so much nuance in every wall” when he tried to capture the beauties of this city in his poem ‘O Mapa’. I hope this thesis captures as well a hint of the particularities and the nuances of the everyday urban lives of the gay and bisexual men involved in this study. Without these men, this work – which in the end is just a bunch of pages filled with ink, yet filled with so much joy and happiness, but also stress and anxiety – would not be here as it lies in front of you. My greatest gratitude goes out to these men, to those who trusted me their life stories, their most terrible traumas, but also their greatest moments of bliss. Moments of recovery, of revival, and – above all – of homecoming. This thesis also would not be here without the guidance of my inspiring supervisor Fenne Pinkster. Her trust and confidence, but foremost her incommensurable patience, have given me the strength and motivation to move along this learning process from beginning to end. Last but not least, I would like to express my gratitude to my friends and my fellow queers that have read the multiple draft versions of this thesis. Without their time and effort, their numerous comments and sharp questions, I would not have been able to write up everything that I have written now.
Kay,
Amsterdam, 12 August 2019
“Who are better prepared than the oppressed to understand the terrible significance of an oppressive society?
Who suffer the effects of oppression more than the oppressed? Who can better understand the necessity of liberation?” – Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (London: 2017), p. 19.
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Contents
Preface ... III
1. Introduction ... 3
2. Theorizing queer places and queer spatialities ... 5
2.1. Queer bodies and socio-spatial navigation: coded spaces, hegemonic heterosexuality, and heteronormative space ... 5
2.2. Critical reflections on queer places in the city: queer places as homeplace(s)? ... 6
2.3. Queer(ing) geographies: post-colonial critiques and queer perspectives from the Global South ... 9 3. Research design ... 11 3.1. Research methodology ... 11 3.1.1. In-depth interviewing ... 12 3.1.2. Participant observation ... 13 3.1.3. Mapping ... 13 3.2. Sampling proces ... 14
3.3. A few notes on research ethics, positionality, and reflexivity ... 15
4. Queer navigations in the heteronormative city ... 18
4.1. The spatialities of being and becoming “openly queer” (assumir-se) ... 18
4.2. Mapping the city ... 20
4.2.1. Cidade Baixa: A bohemian space ... 21
4.1.2. Moinhos de Vento: a conservative and homonormative space ... 24
4.1.3. Centro: A divided space ... 26
4.2. “I would walk fast, but not as fast”: queer navigations through urban space(s) ... 29
4.3. Discussion ... 34
5. Zooming in on queer places: constructing homeplace(s) ... 35
5.1. The ‘queer’ in queer places ... 35
5.1.1. Underground queer places ... 41
5.2. Sites of learning, acceptance and affirmation: queer places as homeplace(s) ... 42
5.3. Failing homeplace(s): homophobia and gentrification in and around queer places ... 47
5.3.1. Queer places, racism and homonormativity ... 48
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6. Conclusion ... 53
6.1. Research limitations and some notes for future research ... 54
7. Bibliography... 55
Appendix 1 – Pedro’s Map ... 59
Appendix 2 – Marcos’ Map ... 60
Appendix 3 – Gabriel’s Map ... 61
Appendix 4 – Tarcísio’s Map ... 62
Appendix 5 – Anderson’s Map ... 63
Appendix 6 – Miguel’s Map ... 64
Appendix 7 – Gasper’s Map ... 65
Appendix 8 – Rebeca’s Map ... 66
Appendix 9 – Carlos’ Map ... 67
Appendix 10 – Alexandre’s Map ... 68
Appendix 11 – Eduardo’s Map ... 69
Appendix 12 – Maurício’s Map ... 70
Appendix 13 – Kauê’s Map ... 71
Appendix 14 – Caique’s Map ... 72
Appendix 15 – Douglas’ Map ... 73
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1. Introduction
It’s Thursday 9 May 2019, the day before my flight from Porto Alegre back to São Paulo and one of the last days of my fieldwork. My last volleyball training with a group of lesbian women and gay men – which had become my weekly activity every Thursday night – had been cancelled, as there was not enough people to form two complete teams. Nevertheless, we decided to meet-up at one of the team members’ house to have some beers before I would go back to the Netherlands. In a hurry, I walked to the nearest supermarket to buy some pre-cooled beers. I felt like I was in a hurry, because I also had planned to meet with Maurício – one of the informants in this research – and therefore could not stay long with my friends from the volleyball training.
After one hour of chatting, drinking some beers, and taking some last pictures, I left the house and went to a bar in Cidade Baixa, where I had agreed with Maurício to meet each other later. Maurício was already waiting at a table, when I finally arrived. We ordered um Polar com dois copos and discussed if we wanted to go to a party – it was a Thursday night, after all – or if we just wanted to stay in the bar and have a few more beers. I told Maurício that another friend had told me about a party somewhere in Cidade Baixa where many queer people would go, but that was not exclusively for the white and middle-class queer people that one would encounter in many of the other queer parties in Cidade Baixa. We looked up the location of the party and found out it was right around the corner of the bar where we were sitting.
Although we could not stay long in the party – I could not miss my flight to São Paulo the next morning – we agreed to pay the beers at the bar and to check-out this particular party that had caught our attention. As we arrived at the place of the party, there was a long line of people, patiently waiting until they were allowed to go inside. With our last beers in plastic cups from the bar that we just had left, we joined a group of other party-goers at the end of the line. Slowly we moved forward in the direction of two security guards who were letting people go inside at the front of the door. As we were approaching them, one of the security guards came to us and took Maurício apart from the other people that were still waiting in the line to go inside. Following the orders of the security guard, I patiently waited in the line and after showing my ID, I was allowed go to in. From a distance I could see how the security guard was still extensively searching Maurício’s clothes, and seeing Maurício rolling his eyes, I assumed that he was familiar with a situation like this.
When we finally met each other again on the other side of the gate that separated the club from the street, he told me that situations like this “always happened”, where security guards would pick out black people and search them for drugs or other stuff that was not allowed to be brought inside. Not very surprised about his explanation, I looked back at the line of people that were still waiting to go inside, and I noticed that indeed Maurício had been the only black person that was waiting in the line. I was surprised however, that specifically at a queer party that was known for attracting relatively many black queer people, there was still such blatant racial profiling at the entrance.
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The above story illustrates how differently a queer place can be experienced by two different queer people. Whereas I was easily let inside the club be just showing my ID, Maurício was taken apart and extensively searched if he did not carry any drugs. This situation in front of a club in Cidade Baixa exemplifies how although queer places are supposed to be a ‘safe space’ for anyone falling outside the heterosexual and cis-gender norms, they can still be very violent places for queer people that do not fit the image of the homonormative – white and middle-class – queer person.
The research that forms the foundation of this thesis aims to further understand how queer places are differently experienced by different groups of queer people. This research zooms in on the urban lives of queer people in Porto Alegre, the capital of Brazil’s southern-most state of Rio Grande do Sul. Hence, it offers two major contributions to urban geographies on queer spaces and queer spatialities. First, it shifts a focus from studying these phenomena in Western metropolitan cities, towards a focus on studying them as they occur in cities in the Global South. Second, this research addresses queer places and queer spatialities as they are constructed, negotiated and contested in an urban environment which seems to be increasingly – or, at least more openly and blatantly – violent towards queer people and their sexualities. Hence, it makes a valuable contribution to the geographical study of queer sexualities, in contrast to geographies that assume cities as tolerant or liberating spaces for queer sexualities.
In the next chapter of this thesis, I embed my research into a broader academic debate on queer places and queer spatialities. Using Critical Queer Theory, I provide a framework that delineates the theoretical and conceptual considerations in comprehending how young gay and bisexual men experience queer places in a heteronormative urban context. In the third chapter of this thesis, I discuss the research design behind this project. I dissect the various methodological and methodical considerations that underly the data and data analysis of this research. In the last section of this chapter, I provide a few notes on the research ethics that were considered for this project. In the fourth and fifth chapter of this thesis I present the data that I conducted during two months of ethnographic fieldwork in Porto Alegre. At the end of each chapter, I link the presented data back to the relevant theoretical debates to which they relate. The last chapter of this thesis resembles the final conclusion and the limitations of this research. Furthermore, I provide possible orientations for future research on queer places and queer spatialities in the city.
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2. Theorizing queer places and queer spatialities
For several decades, urban geographers have been fascinated by the socio-spatial expression of sexuality by sexual minorities (i.e. queer people), covering a wide array of research themes, such as the formation of so-called “gaybourhoods” (e.g. Ghaziani 2014); gay bars (e.g. Brown & Knopp 2016); urban governance and sexual citizenship (e.g. Bell & Binnie 2004); and, queer gentrification (e.g. Doan & Higgins 2011; Patrick 2014; Rushbrook 2002). Instead of focusing on – or even fetishizing – the existence of such queer places in the city, geographers need to shift their attention towards understanding the urban mobilities and everyday lived experiences of queer people in urban environments in which they are sometimes “in-place”, but most of the times “out-of-place” (Bell & Valentine 1995).
Using Critical Queer Theory, I demonstrate how scholars have theorized the sexualisation of urban space and the existence and lay-out of specific queer places in the city. Dissecting the concept of socio-spatial navigation, I show how scholars have theorized the ways how queer people and other marginalized groups of people navigate in and through urban space in their attempts to find “a smooth space through dangerous water” (see Vigh 2010). In order to provide a framework to understand the socio-spatial meanings of queer places in the city, I use the concept of “homeplace(s) to provide a theoretical framework to understand queer places as (failing) places for care, nurturance and restoration (see hooks 2015). Throughout this thesis, I make use of Postcolonial Theory, in order to comprehend the particular socio-spatial configurations of queer sexuality and sexual identities in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
2.1. Queer bodies and socio-spatial navigation: coded spaces, hegemonic
heterosexuality, and heteronormative space
Following the cultural and postmodern turn in human geography, geographers became increasingly concerned with identity and body politics in and around queer spaces; the (queer) body was conceptualized as a site of struggle and contestation (Bell & Valentine 1995). Not only became the body
to be seen as gendered, sexualized, racialized, aged, and so forth, but moreover as continuously (re-)produced through inscription and performativity (see Butler 1990). Bodies shape and are shaped by
“scripts” on how they ought to look like, identify, and act in society.
The spatiality of queer spaces is embodied in queer subjectivity, the interactive relationships between queer bodies, queer identities, and queer spaces and places. Not only do queer bodies and identities actively or passively produce queer spaces (and thus become spatially manifested), but the queerness of these bodies and identities is also (re-)produced by these same queer spaces. Sexual identity influences the use and reading of space, whereas simultaneously the social and cultural underpinnings of space affect the performance and practice of sexual identity (Bell et al. 1994). Hence, there exists an interactive and dialectic relationship between space/place and the body.
Recently, urban geographers engaging with queer sexuality in cities have taken up heterosexuality and heteronormativity as two discursive concepts shaping and structuring the everyday (sexual) lives of
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human beings in the city. They demonstrate how heterosexuality is territorialized, normalized and functions as a mechanism to promote and justify various urban inequalities in (Western) cities (see Browne 2007; Hubbard 2000; Morrison 2012). Urban spaces are commonly understood as ‘naturally’ or ‘authentically’ heterosexual (Bell et al. 1994; Ornat 2008; Valentine 2006).
Through heteronormativity, sexualities are structured, narrated, and represented in a hierarchical order, in which heterosexuality and cis-gender are (re-)produced as norms in dominant discourses of sexuality and gender. Central in these processes are the hidden and unidentified microlevel processes and the ‘common sense’ presumptions that regard non-heterosexualities as deviant sexualities (Browne 2007). These geographers demonstrate that there exist unequal power geometries that underly the construction and reproduction of urban spaces: along axes of domination/marginality, queer spaces – because they are queer spaces – are identified as deviant from heterosexual norms in society. These places become weird and freaky, and above all dangerous to the heterosexual norm.
In order to make sense of how queer people move in and through urban space, I use the concept of tactical socio-spatial navigation (see Anderson 2015; de Certeau 1988; Vigh 2010). The concept of social navigation, here, can be used as an analytical lens to illuminate practices of human beings in unstable and unequal social environments; it captures the efforts that queer people put into dealing with living –or, surviving – in a heteronormative and homonormative society.
The concept of socio-spatial navigation has a few key features that need to be addressed, in order to understand its relationship with queer places and queer spatialities in Porto Alegre, Brazil. First, socio-spatial navigation is about human behaviour that is socio-socio-spatially situated, and not only politically articulated; navigation can be meaningful without being ideologically motivated or articulated (Vigh 2010). Above all, navigation is a social and spatial act that manifests itself in everyday practices, routes and routines, in the case of this research undertaken by young gay and bisexual men. Second, social navigation covers three interlinked acts: assessing possibilities in a certain social context, planning trajectories through it, and realizing these trajectories through social and spatial practices (Vigh 2010). Hence, it entails a dual temporality: a survival in the here and now, but also a planning and directing to an imagined future.
How queer people find their ways and short-cuts in a dangerous and violent heteronormative society encompasses their social navigation through the deployment of specific (queer) tactics (de Certeau 1988; Vigh 2010). Eventually, socio-spatial navigation entails a dancing through social space, in which territorialities are performed and negotiated (Anderson 2015). It signifies “discovering, imagining and actualizing a smooth space through dangerous waters […], simultaneously navigating the next obstacle or wave and negotiating the many to follow one’s way along an envisioned course” (Vigh 2010, p. 156).
2.2. Critical reflections on queer places in the city: queer places as homeplace(s)?
Queer places are the spatial manifestations of queer encounters, and can refer to any place that is used by queer people. Queer places exist at a variety of scales, from more individual or “private” spaces to
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bigger spaces that are shared with many other queer (and sometimes non-queer) people (Hindle 1994). Geographic research on queer places developed within a wider field of research on gender, sex, and sexuality in – and to a lesser extent, outside – the city. Much geographical research within this paradigm departs from the assumption that space and place are geographical concepts that are inherently sexed and gendered (Holloway & Hubbard 2014). In short, this does not only mean that sexuality is constructed, produced and reflected upon through space and place, but that space and place are also created and performed around different sexualities (see Bell et al. 1994). This ‘sexualization’ and gendering of space and place – and the simultaneously spatialization of gender and sexuality – helps to critically analyze and interpret socio-spatial contexts in which certain sexualities and genders seem to be ‘in-place’ or ‘out-of-place’ (see Cresswell 1996; Duncan 2005).
When it comes to queer sexuality and the formation of queer places in cities there seems to be a bifurcation in the kind of geographies that are written. On the one hand, there are geographies that focus on rather ‘open’ or ‘public’ spaces such as streets (Rezende et al. 2018; Reynolds 2009) or even entire neighbourhoods (Binnie & Skeggs 2004; Sibalis 2004). On the other hand, there are geographies that focus on more ‘closed’ or ‘private’ spaces such as gay bars (Achilles 1998; Brown & Knopp 2016; Cáceres & Cortiñas 1996; Johnson & Samdahl 2005), gay bathouses (Bérubé 2003; Haubrich et al. 2004; Styles 1979), or queer sport clubs (Carter & Baliko 2017; Elling et al. 2003). What these spaces have in common is that they become substantial through queer subjectivities. These spaces are “filled up by people, practices, objects, and representations” (Gieryn 2000, p. 465); they are interpreted, felt, lived, narrated and imagined by human beings (Soja 1996); they become meaningful locations (Cresswell 2004). These urban spaces become queer places.
Through hegemonic heterosexuality, these queer places are often marginalized and stigmatized. Although queer places reflect the dominant power dynamics of heteronormativity, these spaces cannot be understood only in terms of subordinance and inferiority. Valentine (1993) argues that the abilities to appropriate and dominate places and to inform the use of space by other groups of people are not only the products of heteronormativity, but they are simultaneously contested by and through the existence of queer places in the city. Therefore, queer places do not only exist through a heteronormative reality, but they also have the capacity to subvert this heteronormativity (Silva 2009b). Whereas queer people in the wider, heteronormative society are often framed as sexually deviant, in the queer places they create and control, their queer sexuality seems to become ‘natural’ – although often under sharp gendered, racialized and classed conditions (see Nast 2002). For certain groups of queer people, these queer places then provide “alternative frameworks of identity, social allegiance and support” (Valentine & Skelton 2003, p. 853).
The subversive nature of queer places and the agency of queer people to affirm their sexuality within queer places, however, have to be understood as always existing through specific hegemonic structures through which queer people are forced the operate within limited spaces (Butler 2004). Often, queer people simply “make do with what they have” in order to live the life they want (Bailey 2014, p.
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503). Nevertheless, through expressing an alleged form of control by queer communities, queer places are often regarded as “safe spaces” in a violently heteronormative city (Myslik 2005), and might even come to resemble “queertopias” (see Tilsen & Nylund 2010).
In the early 1990s, the American author bell hooks developed the concept of “homeplace”, the transformation of domestic households into spaces of care and nurturance by black women in the United States (hooks 2015). Homeplace(s) – the plural form referring to the physical and material manifestations of “homeplace” – symbolized sources of safety and homecoming, of affirmation and restoring (black) dignity (Bailey 2014; Goins 2011; Gouthro 2005; Livermon 2014). To a certain extent, queer places can be conceptualized as homeplace(s) as well, where queer people define and restore their human dignity – including their queer sexualities – on their own terms. Conceptualizing queer places as (potential) homeplaces might then help to understand the spatialized subject positions of queer people, i.e. the processes of identity-formation by and through space/place (see Knox & Pinch 2010).
In order to conceptualize queer places as queer homeplace(s), certain epistemological and theoretical considerations need to be addressed. First, bell hooks’ concept of ‘homeplace’ developed around racial/ethnic violence and black affirmation in the United States. In applying such a concept as ‘homeplace’ in the case of my research, one cannot simply substitute race/ethnicity with gender or sexuality, as they have both different socio-spatial manifestations and consequences. However, one can (and should) indeed look for specific similarities and particular differences between race/ethnicity and gender and sexuality.
Second, bell hooks’ concept of ‘homeplace’ is inherently gendered, as she uses the term to describe the attempts and efforts of black women and mothers to create a safe space for black affirmation in the domestic sphere. In the U.S. context she describes, it was sexism and racism that assigned to black females the responsibility of creating and sustaining a home environment. In the context of queer spaces, it is still unclear what motivated who or obligated whom to do what. This needs to be considered in the collection and analysis of the data during and after the fieldwork.
Third, bell hook’s concept of ‘homeplace’ centralizes ‘the domestic’ and ‘the home’, and the activities that are undertaken in these places. However, many queer places are often located outside ‘the home’ as it is traditionally understood. By applying the concept of ‘homeplace’ outside the domestic sphere, one could see how a ‘home’ is created ‘outside-of-the-home’. This also raises more philosophical questions about what and where ‘home’ actually is.
Finally, one needs to be cautious in romanticizing queer places as homeplace(s) by default. Often, these assumed safe spaces become hunting grounds, targeted by “gay bashing”-groups (Myslik 2005). Furthermore, these places are also sites drenched in internal as well as external sexual politics, privileging the homonormative queer and excluding those that cannot live up to the racist, sexist, classist, ableist, and ageist standards of homonormative queer places (Bell & Binnie 2004; Nast 2002).
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2.3. Queer(ing) geographies: post-colonial critiques and queer perspectives from
the Global South
Historically, many geographers studying urban sexualities – in particular, the study of gay space – focused on homonormative queer identities found in ‘global gay cities’ such as San Francisco, New York, or Amsterdam. As a result, queer sexualities across the globe have been assessed along and interpreted in terms of theoretical models that were developed around queer identities and spatial configurations of urban sexualities found in these metropolitan centres in the Global North (Brown 2008). Social categories like ‘queer’, however, are continuously reinvented and politicized through particular constructions of sexuality, where concepts, identities, and categories from the hegemonic Global North (e.g. ‘gay’, ‘lesbian’) blend with “narratives from the homeland”, such as ‘bicha’, ‘viado’, or ‘travesti’ (see Viteri 2008). This implies one main question that needs to be addressed: how can we define being and doing ‘queer’ in an urban Brazilian context?
Historically, through centuries of colonization and imperialism a set of norms and moral values concerning bodies, genders, and sexualities has been institutionalized in Brazilian society, producing a univocal standard of what it means to be a man or a woman in Brazil and erasing the rich gender and sexuality diversities among indigenous people and enslaved Africans (Bento Peixoto 2018). National identities in Latin American societies in general came to be constructed around heteronormative discourses, excluding queerness from the national norms (Domínguez Ruvalcaba 2016). As a result, lesbian women, gay men and other people who did not identify as cis-gender or heterosexual were silenced, made invisible, and considered abnormal in Brazilian society. At the same time, however, queerness has also become a signature of modernity in many contemporary Latin American societies, where being queer is interpreted as being modern. These developments have created a divergence between a middle-class, cosmopolitan queer culture on the other hand and allegedly oppressive and even homophobic queer sexualities on the other, “revealing economic and political intersections with sex, race, and class” (Domínguez Ruvalcaba 2016, p. 168).
To define being and doing ‘queer’ in an urban Brazilian context thus entails thinking beyond the Eurocentric binary opposition between homosexuality and heterosexuality as it has historically developed in Western societies (Brickell 2006; Hubbard 2008). Additionally, it is also crucial to not jam onto other simplistic binary oppositions, such as global/local, modern/traditional, or urban/rural (Oswin 2005a; Oswin 2005b). In order to develop a geography that remains sensitive for all the diversity and complexity of urban sexualities and their socio-spatial configurations, Doderer (2011) proposes a “queering” of urban geographies. Such a process would entail a general questioning and deconstructing of the sex/gender-category, not only one a theoretical level, but also on a practical level (p. 433). A queer(ing) geography needs to move beyond taken-for-granted notions of sex, gender, and other categories.
Using the term “queer” can be problematic for analysing and interpreting non-normative sexualities in a Global South-context. The term needs to be treated with caution, as it is something that has been
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developed in the Global North and through scientific hegemony has travelled across the globe, without necessarily having the same reverberations in each place (Ochoa 2004, p. 254). Gomes Pereira (2012) also formulates an additional critique, stating that using the term “queer” might be a good option to avoid the reification of sexual identities, but that simultaneously using the term “queer” also risks erasing particular local identities and socio-spatial stratifications of urban sexuality.
Theorizing a Critical Queer Theory that is at the same time queer and sensitive for coloniality, Ochoa (2004) proposes an anti-normative politics for researching urban sexualities based on Queer Theory and adapting local strategies and categories. Both Doderer (2011) as well as Ochoa (2004) not only argue for an integration of “local” narratives, concepts and theories into pre-existing (Northern) theory, but also and moreover for taking these local narratives and concepts as a departure point for developing Global South-theories. In this sense. “queer(ing) geographies” can be defended as an ‘instrument of decolonization’, implying a criticism of hegemonic colonial logics that redeem (white) heterosexuality as natural and legitimate (Domínguez Ruvalcaba 2016).
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3. Research design
Spaces and places are sexualized, and sexualities are spatially expressed in urban contexts around the globe (Holloway & Hubbard 2014). Often, queer people take a marginalized position in these spaces and places. Their sexualities are considered as deviating from the heterosexual and cis-gender norms in society. This research aims at understanding how queer people – with a focus on young gay and bisexual men – experience and use queer places in a heteronormative urban context. In particular, this research focuses on the ways how queer places are experienced as homeplace(s) or not.
Zooming in on queer places and spatialities in Porto Alegre, this research contributes in two ways to the study of queer sexualities in the city. First, it shifts a focus from studying queer sexuality in Western, metropolitan cities, towards a focus on studying queer sexualities as they occur in cities in the Global South. Second, this research addresses queer places and queer spatialities as they are constructed, negotiated, and contested in an urban environment which seems to be increasingly – or, at least more openly and blatantly – violent towards queer people and their sexualities
The above mentioned research aim leads to the following research question for this project:
“How do young gay and bisexual men experience queer places in a heteronormative urban context?”
This research question implies a set of interrelated sub-questions that I will address in my research: o How do young gay and bisexual men view their own sexuality and sexual identity? o How is queer sexuality “mapped onto” the city by young gay and bisexual men? o How do young gay and bisexual men experience “homonormativity” and “homeplace”
in queer places in the city?
The mapping of queer sexuality onto the city by young gay and bisexual men as formulated in the second sub-question, implies two smaller questions that are addressed in the empirical chapters of this thesis: 1.) how do these men read and identify different urban spaces in the city (e.g. streets, parks, neighbourhoods)?; and, 2.) how do they experience and navigate (heteronormative) space in the city?.
3.1. Research methodology
The research methods I deploy in this research project rely on qualitative geography, focusing on the social, cultural, and spatial meanings of queer places in the city that cannot be captured along quantitative standards (DeLyser et al. 2010). Following a qualitative approach, this research aims to explore and comprehend queer places as they are found “out-there” in society. Inspired by naturalistic inquiry, I intend to study people and places in their everyday state of being and doing (Beuving & De
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Vries 2015, p. 15). In addition, my research contributes to existing theories on queer places inductively, using empirical data as point of departure (Gobo 2008).
In order to understand the lived experiences of my informants, how they perceive and act upon the world around them, and how they construct meaning out of their intersubjective positions in an urban context, using ‘grounded’ data can be very beneficial (Suddaby 2006). Eventually, the qualitative methodological approach underlying this research project aims at “recognizing and validating the complexities of everyday life, the nuances of meaning-making in an ever-changing world, and the multitude of influences that shape human lived experiences” (DeLyser et al. 2010, p. 6).
Qualitative geography – and, qualitative inquiry in general – often requires applying different, interrelated research methods (Flick 2014). For my research, have used three main research methods: in-depth interviewing, participant observation, and mapping. For this research project, these research methods ought not to be understood as isolated. Instead, they are used all together in an integrative manner, aiming for a constant triangulation that is essential in conducting good qualitative research (see Beuving & De Vries; Flick 2014). Along the course of this research, I have kept a diary in which I have document memos. In this diary, I did not only reflect on the applied research methods and the collected data, but I also wrote personal memos in which I reflected on my personal feelings, emotions, and thinking of queer places in the city.
3.1.1. In-depth interviewing
One of the main research methods I have applied in this research project is in-depth interviewing. Within this research, in-depth interview has basically served two purposes: 1.) giving my informants opportunities to voice their own opinions in their own terms; and, 2.) enabling me to ask my informants for clarification or elaboration on specific topics that I have come across during my fieldwork. The majority of the in-depth interviews were conducted as semi-structured interviews. These interviews were guided by a topic list, which was co-constructed with some of my informants before and along the course of my fieldwork.
Making use of a semi-structured topic list for the interviews, not only helped me to look for non-direction (see Merton and Kendall 1946), but it also helped me in fostering a less formal atmosphere. Since the interviews were conducted around sensitive and personal topics, such an informal and conversational scene is crucial – although far from sufficient. Along the course of my fieldwork, place has played an important role in conducting the interviews. All in-depth interviews were basically done at three locations: a coffee bar in Cidade Baixa, my informant’s homes, or my own apartment in Cidade Baixa – always depending on where my informant and I felt most comfortable in doing the interview.
Besides conducting more formal, traditional in-depth interviews where my informants and I were sitting around a table, discussing the various topics of our interview guides, I also had many small-talk conversations with my informants. Small talk conversations happened in many different places, often occurring spontaneously. These conversations did not only give me the opportunity to establish and
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maintain relationships with my informants, but they also offered me rich data that I would not be able to collect through other, more formal research methods (Driessen & Jansen 2013).
All in-depth interviews were recorded with a smartphone with permission of my informants, and transcribed and coded along the course of and after the fieldwork. I used open and thematic coding to identify the most important categories and themes, and applied axial coding to find patterns and possible relationships in those categories and themes found through open and thematic coding. The data that I have collected through in-depth interviewing, needs to be seen in perspective, as interviews are likely to bring forward “normative, value-oriented statements about what is believed ought to happen, rather than a valid description of “what goes on”” (Jenkins 1992, p. 28). Be relying on other research methods, and through triangulation, I tried to solve this problem.
3.1.2. Participant observation
In addition to in-depth interviewing, I also make use of participant observation as a research method for my research. Many studies – in particular, ethnographies – have demonstrated that there can exist big differences between what people say, what they say they do, and what people actually are doing (Gobo 2008). Within my research project, participant observation served as a research method that enabled me to observe all these three aspects of human behaviour. Therefore, it is an almost crucial addition to in-depth interviewing as I have described it in the previous section.
Participant observation requires a certain focus, for they otherwise only generate superficial, impressionistic observational data (Beuving and De Vries 2015). Along the course of my fieldwork, my participant observation evolved from rather open and unfocused in the beginning to further narrowed down observations on specific topics or themes. Sometimes, these foci where informed by what informants pointed out to me (e.g. the yellow ‘zero-tolerance’-signs as described in chapter 5 of this thesis). As my observations changed in the degree of focus, my field notes also changed from rather descriptive scratch notes into extensive field notes that were filled with interpretations of my descriptions.
I conducted participant observation mostly at places that my informants had recommended me to go to. Sometimes I visited these places alone, but most of the times I went together with one or more informants, to discuss my observations in situ with my informants. Participant observation did not only happen at the queer places that were suggested by informants. Also by walking down the streets of different neighbourhoods, I tried to observe how queer sexuality was visible or invisible in the urban space around me.
3.1.3. Mapping
During my fieldwork, I made several maps with my informants (see appendices 1-16). In my research, mapping enabled me to comprehend the subjective imaginaries of queer people on, for example, queer places. Instead of producing authoritative maps that captured the urban ‘reality’, mapping had the
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purpose of creating inter-subjective maps that could tell me how my informants perceive and imagine the urban world around them. These maps are explicitly inter-subjective, as they are produced not only through the mental processes in the heads of my informants, but moreover through the interaction between them and me as a researcher.
Mapping had two practical benefits in my research. First, it enabled my informants to somehow express the mental maps they were having within their heads. Second, mapping gave me and my informants the opportunity to discuss what had been drawn (Jaffe & De Koning 2015; Reinders 2015). Hence, it is difficult to interpret the maps without the transcripts of the conversations that I had with my informants along the map-making processes.
The maps in my research are narrative mental maps. They are representations of the way people perceive and interpret the world around them, the meanings they attach to these perceptions and interpretations, and the stories that people tell about them (Reinders 2015). More specifically, the maps provide me with data on how my informants identify and locate particular queer spaces and places.
The maps are based on a self-composed map I made through GoogleMaps, for which I zoomed in on the central neighbourhoods of Porto Alegre – assuming that this was the region that was mostly frequented by queer people. The maps were detailed enough to visualize the majority of street names and the names of various bars, restaurants, shops and other places in the city. These details helped my informants to orientate themselves in the map, but it is likely that they have biased the map-making of my informants as well, encouraging them to draw and discuss places that were already visual in the map while making them ignore places that were not visualized.
Besides the fact that mapping is a very tangible and “fun” research method to use for qualitative fieldwork, it also has a disadvantage that it is dependent on the ability of my informants to draw (Reinders 2015). Especially abstract things as emotions or memories are hard to draw in the maps. Therefore it is necessary that the interpretative focus should not be on the end-product, but on the making process of the maps and the social interaction that occurred between my informants and me. This underlines again the importance of the transcripts for comprehending the drawn maps.
3.2. Sampling proces
The term ‘queer’ is often used as an umbrella-term to cover the identities and expressions of people who do not identify as heterosexual or cis-gender. For this research, however, I have decided to focus only on queer people that identify as gay or bisexual men. This decision was based on epistemological and ethical considerations, arguing that I – as a researcher who identifies as a gay man – was more able to capture and represent the lived realities of other gay or bisexual man, than to capture and represent the lived realities of other queer people.
Along the course of my research, my research sample was further specified in two ways. First, I decided to limit the research sample only to gay and bisexual men who had been living in Porto Alegre already for several years, assuming that the men I would include in this research would already have a
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substantial knowledge of the city. Second, I decided to limit the research sample only to relatively young gay and bisexual men who were roughly between 20 and 35 years old. I had chosen specifically for this “generation bias” not only because I felt more comfortable in representing stories from other queer people that were part of ‘my own generation’, but moreover to bring together a group of queer people who were more or less having one common experience, which was the rise of internet and the use of 21st-century technologies – an experience that was considered to be very significant by several informants along the course of this research.
During my fieldwork, I relied mainly on personal networks to find informants that could help me with my research. Furthermore, I also used ‘dating-apps’ like Tinder and Grindr, in order to extent my research sample beyond my own personal networks. Selecting people for my research occurred rather purposively, focusing on selecting people and specific cases that could provide me with data that was crucial for finding answers to my research questions. An overview of the final research sample can be found in table 1.
Number Name Selected through Number Name Selected through
1 Pedro Personal Network 9 Carlos Grindr
2 Marcos Grindr 10 Alexandre Grindr
3 Gabriel Snowball Sampling 11 Eduardo Personal Network
4 Tarcício Personal Network 12 Maurício Grindr
5 Anderson Tinder 13 Kauê Tinder
6 Miguel Snowball Sampling 14 Caique Snowball Sampling
7 Gasper Personal Network 15 Douglas Personal Network
8 Rebeca Personal Network 16 Péricles Grindr
Table 1: The final research sample, including the method of selection
3.3. A few notes on research ethics, positionality, and reflexivity
Confidentiality and anonymity are two main ethical concerns within this research. Many of my informants have a vulnerable position in Brazilian society when it comes to their own sexuality, which makes the importance of confidentiality and anonymity even more important. In order to guarantee anonymity, I work with pseudonyms. As using only pseudonyms was not enough to guarantee anonymity, I had to leave out certain details and specificities in the descriptions and stories of my informants. The empirical chapters of this thesis have been sent to all informants to be checked on anonymity.
Besides asking my informants about anonymity in the texts of this thesis, I have also ask them to read and comment content-wise on several parts of this thesis. Working with their feedbacks, not only helped me to check my own interpretations of the research data, but it also facilitated a working
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atmosphere that was more oriented towards notions of intersubjectivity and the co-production of knowledge (see Chesters 2012; Down & Hughes 2009; Fabian 2014; White & Strohm 2014). However, this aim for intersubjectivity should not be understood as an attempt to “give a voice to the voiceless”. Instead, it should be read as an ongoing conversation among queer people themselves; a social interaction in which one happens to be from the Netherlands, and most others from Brazil.
This aim for intersubjectiviy also indirectly underlines that all knowledge in this thesis is partial, forthcoming from my own interpretations that are filtered through my own biases and lived experiences. The knowledge in this thesis is therefore situated (see Haraway 1988), informed by my own positionality. My own queerness contributed in innumerable ways to my research, mostly as it made it much easier to establish ‘rapport’ with my informants (Sherif 2001). Many conversations with informants evolved from discussions about things we had in common as queer people in the world. Not very rarely, conversations became very personal, both for me as well as my informants, when we shared our own experiences about what it meant to be queer in this world.
However, saying that my experiences as a gay man were exactly and always the same as those experiences of my informants would be a serious denial of the many differences concerning our different positionalities, our different identities, and thus also our different lived experiences. The constantly shifting, ambiguous boundaries between me and my informants, form a crucial element in the process of conducting this research (Sherif 2001). Multiple times during my fieldwork, it became very personal and also confrontational to see how I – with my white skin, my blue-coloured eyes, and blonde hair, being the ultimate gay padrãozinho – was kind of embraced in certain queer places, whereas some of my informants were received with fear, suspicion, or disapproval at the same time.
Although I had lived in Porto Alegre before for two short periods, I have lived most of my life in the Netherlands, which obviously has shaped the ways in how I perceive the world around me as a gay man. My ‘Dutch-ness’ – or ‘non-Brazilian-ness’ – affected my research in two ways in particular. On the one hand, it was sometimes hard to follow small talk conversations, as Brazilian Portuguese is not my mother tongue. I experienced this ‘disability’ mostly as I participated in group conversations in busy and noisy places such as a bar or club, where informants used a lot of slang and informal talk. On the other hand, my ‘Dutch-ness’ made it relatively less easy to talk about rather sensitive issues (e.g. homonormativity or blatant racism in queer places), as some informants perceived me as an ‘innocent outsider’ that was not directly related to/complicit in these issues.
A final ethical consideration implicit in my research concerns the following question: “who is can use (or abuse) the produced knowledge?”. Especially in an urban context in which queer people are more and more policed and politicized, the knowledges embedded in the thesis might end up “in wrong hands”. Such wrong hands could be people who might have an interest in the shutdown of queer spaces, and with this thesis might have a more detailed overview of where to find them. In the worst case scenario, queer-phobic people might use this thesis in order to drop their queer-phobic aggression on queer people in the queer spaces included in this research. In order to prevent this, the thesis will be only
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shared with my informants and the University of Amsterdam. If the thesis (or parts of it) will be more publicly available, it needs to be further anonymized in order to not give away detailed information to people that might be harmful towards the people involved in this research.
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4. Queer navigations in the heteronormative city
To understand how young gay and bisexual men experience queer places in a heteronormative context, it is important to know how these men view their own sexuality and sexual identity, and to understand to what extent these men are able to be ‘open’ about their sexuality and sexual identity. These two questions raise more general questions about what “being open” (ser assumido) in Porto Alegre means, and how it is informed by queer spatiality. Furthermore, it is crucial to understand how queer sexuality is “mapped upon” the city by these men and how they subsequently experience and navigate heteronormative urban space in the city.
As I have demonstrated in the theoretical chapter, urban space has been theorized as heteronormative space by various queer scholars (Bell at al. 1994; Ornat 2008; Valentine 2006). In this chapter, I show how my informants find their ways through urban space(s) in which their queerness is relatively more or relatively less accepted. The central aim of this chapter is to demonstrate the complexity and fluidity of urban space(s) as safe and unsafe space(s) for young gay and bisexual men.
4.1.
The spatialities of being and becoming “openly queer” (assumir-se)
For most of the men involved in this study it was very clear: a gay man is somebody who feels sexual and emotional affection towards other men, and a bisexual man is somebody who feels sexual and emotional affection towards men and also towards women. Such a clear description stays in stark contrast with the diversity of definitions and experiences these men have concerning their own sexuality and sexual identity, often shaped through their different ‘routes’ of learning about and accepting their sexualities and sexual identities. Being – or maybe better, becoming – openly gay entails much more than simply ‘coming-out-of-the-closet’. In conservative, heteronormative settings, it can take years for queer people to understand and come to terms with their own sexuality. For many of my informants, being queer was therefore much more than just a sexuality.
Knowing and accepting one’s queer sexuality is not the only aspect related to the sexualities and sexual identities of the young gay and bisexual men involved in this study, that seems to be informed by space/place. The ability of being open about one’s own sexuality and sexual identity is an element of being queer that seems to be strongly influenced by space/place as well. Deciding to be or become ‘openly queer’, to assumir-se como queer, was often a strategically planned venture, where risks and opportunities were often carefully balanced out. The ways young gay and bisexual men view their sexualities do not exist in a socio-spatial vacuum, but are informed by and inform the people and places around these men. How young gay and bisexual men view their sexualities, hence, can only be understand if we consider how their self-understanding and self-acceptance is intertwined with how these men ‘perform’ their sexualities in specific places and how their queerness is also understood in terms of other social markers such as gender, race, class, and place.
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During the first interview I had with Pedro, he explained to me why it was so important for him to identify as a gay man, precisely because he was already seen by other people as gay.
Pedro’s story illustrates how apparently certain personal characteristics already ‘reveal’ something about his sexuality, he dá pinta. This queer profiling is a theme that came back in many of the interviews and conversations I had with my informants during fieldwork. My informants related queer profiling to their everyday urban experiences in basically two ways: one group of informants explained how their ability to pass as straight/heterosexual made their sexuality/sexual identity less problematic in various heteronormative and homonormative spaces and places, whereas another group of informants explained how exactly their inability to pass as straight/heterosexual – because of apparently feminine characteristics – made their presence in both heteronormative as well as homonormative spaces and places more problematic.
Gender and gender (non-)conformity – the (in-)ability to confirm to one’s assigned gender, or in the case of my informants to look and behave as an ‘authentic’, ‘real’ and ‘heterosexual’ man – are not the only two factors that inform how my informants’ sexualities are perceived by other people in urban spaces and places. Race also seems to be an important element that sometimes – literally – colours the queer sexualities of the men involved in this study. Various informants who identified as black men explained how their racial identities also affected how their sexualities were perceived, both in heteronormative spaces as well as in homonormative spaces. Gasper, who identifies as a black gay man, explained how queer people – and in particular, feminine gay men - are often targets of homophobic attacks. His blackness, however, often would kind of protect him from these attacks, as it made him appear more masculine – and in particular, more ‘dangerous’. Carlos – who also identifies as a black gay man – explained that people with bad intentions would think twice before messing with aquele negão que vai quebrar a sua cara, that big black guy that would break your head.
In a society where blackness is automatically associated with (hyper-)masculinity, black men who are visibly queer cause a kind of cognitive dissonance: they simply cannot exist, as black men can only be heterosexual and (hyper-)masculine subjects. This cognitive dissonance can be linked back to what Gasper told me during one of the interviews we had. As he identifies himself as a black gay afeminado, a black ‘effeminate’/feminine gay man, he explained that he often received frowning faces – as people apparently did not expect a black man to be gay as well. In their views, a gay man could only be a feminine, white man (often also from more affluent neighbourhoods). A lower-class, black and feminine gay man cannot exist according to their heteronormative/white-centred logics. In a later conversation I
“I think that yes, for me it is very important to identify as a gay man. Because, first of all, I am being read as such. Apparently, I dou pinta. I look like or behave like a gay man, haha. […] People always, they always read me as a gay man, even without talking to me, without asking if I am gay. […] So, I think that because of this, it is important to have this identity. And also to make this identity as something from myself, and not as something that comes from outside.” (Pedro)
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had with Gasper through WhatsApp, he added that for many black gay man, being gay is one more problematic identity, in their already problematic lives.
White people having a free-pass for or are never judged for being (too) afeminado, can be a point for discussion. However, Gasper’s story very well illustrates how queer or gender-(non)conforming experiences are thoroughly shaped through notions of race. Not only shapes blackness (or non-whiteness) the experiences and identities of black queer people in a sense that their gender and sexuality appearances are often being read as (hyper-)masculine and heterosexual, but at the same time does whiteness allow white people to diverge from other norms such as masculinity or heterosexuality. Of course, this is not to say that white queer people always live an easy life without facing any problems, but their queerness and queer experiences are fundamentally different from those of black/non-white queer people.
4.2.
Mapping the city
During my two months of fieldwork, I made sixteen so-called “queer maps” of Porto Alegre with my informants (see appendices 1-16). These maps give detailed insights into how the young gay and bisexual men involved in this study identify and describe different parts of the city. During our interviews in which I incorporated the mappings, I encouraged my informants to move beyond formal and static definitions of ‘neighbourhood’, to draw their own boundaries, and to describe different parts of the city in their own words. As a result, the maps we made and the conversations we had, are filled with emotions and rich and detailed personal experiences.
Figure 1 resembles a map of the central region of Porto Alegre, illustrating the different neighbourhood (bairros) that feature in the various interviews as spaces with distinctive characteristics relevant to the everyday experiences of my informants. The maps that were drawn by the informants can be found in appendices 1-16, attached to this thesis.
“In my life, during my childhood, living together with other black people, with other people of my colour, it was always too much to be a black man and gay at the same time. It was already a ‘shortcoming’ – between two quotation marks – or a ‘problem’ that you were black. You being black and gay, it would even be worse. Now, if you are black, gay and also afeminado, it is even more worse. You see? So you have to be the most discrete as possible, the more masculine as possible. […] And you cannot be everything, that a white person can be. You know, this person is free, they can be afeminado, or very masculine. It doesn’t matter for them. It is as if a white person has this free-pass that enables them to be who or what they want to be, and nobody is going to judge them. And simply because they are white.” (Gasper)
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Figure 1: Different neighbourhoods in the central region of Porto Alegre
Along the course of my research, it became clear that many informants had clear visions about different parts of the city. During the mapping sessions and interviews, some informants drew very precise and detailed borders of certain neighbourhoods, whereas other informant spoke elaborately about the differences and commonalities between specific parts of the city in the conversations we had. Along the course of my research, five neighbourhoods appeared to be more prominent in the stories of my informants: Cidade Baixa, Bom Fim, Moinhos de Vento, Centro, and the region around Avenida Farrapos (see figure 1).
4.2.1. Cidade Baixa: A bohemian space
The first interview for this research, I held with Pedro in the living room of my apartment in Cidade Baixa. After having discussed his life growing up in a country-side city in São Paulo state before moving to Porto Alegre, I asked him to draw in the map specific places or areas that he associated with queer people. Almost immediately he took a pink marker and started to carefully line-out an area which he referred to as ‘Cidade Baixa’. He explained to me that this part of the city, and in particular around Rua República and Rua General Lima e Silva, was a place where one could see a lot of queer people. Pedro continued that he often saw many of them holding hands and walking down the streets, drinking a beer, maybe on their way to one of the many (queer) parties in Cidade Baixa. He explained to me that seeing all these visibly queer people in the streets made him feel more comfortable in this part of the city.
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When I sat together with some other informants, they also highlighted Cidade Baixa as a neighbourhood with a lot of bars and clubs. Caique – who lives in Alvorado, a city in the north-eastern part of Porto Alegre’s metropolitan area – explained how he recalled Cidade Baixa as being a very gay-friendly part of the city. He explained that if he had to mark a date with another guy, he usually tended to come to some place in Cidade Baixa. Maurício also explained to me that he always felt very comfortable in Cidade Baixa. In addition to seeing other visibly queer people in the streets as Pedro had already told me before, Maurício also felt more comfortable in Cidade Baixa than in other parts of Porto Alegre, because he saw relatively more black people living their lives undisturbedly in this neighbourhood.
After the first interviews, I started to ask myself the question why so many of my informants recalled Cidade Baixa as such a queer-friendly part of the city, and why indeed you could see so many queer bars and visibly queer couples walking hand in hand in this neighbourhood. When I was having my first interview with Gabriel at a coffee bar in Cidade Baixa, he explained to me how this part of the city had always been a relatively safe place for queer people. “Cidade Baixa, it has always been more of a ‘safe place’ for gays”, he explained, imitating the quotation marks around ‘safe place’ with his fingers. “Always, always, always. And I think that it is part of the history of this neighbourhood”. He told me how Cidade Baixa became a kind of student neighbourhood during the military dictatorship in the 1970s. According to Gabriel, these students brought along a more progressive and open atmosphere which made the neighbourhood not only slightly more welcoming towards queer people, but also to other minority groups such as immigrants and black people.
In interviews with other informants, I found similar historical understandings of why Cidade Baixa would be such a queer-friendly neighbourhood. When I was having an interview with Péricles, already at the end of my fieldwork period, and we were discussing the importance of queer places in the city, he also started to tell a story about the history of the neighbourhood. “Do you know about the history of Cidade Baixa? About the origin of what was Cidade Baixa? Do you know anything?”, he began his story with a mysterious undertone. “It was a region of black people. You knew this story?”, he continued. According to Péricles, Cidade Baixa must be a relatively welcoming place for black people, because black people had originally inhabited this part of Porto Alegre. About a week earlier, Douglas had already told me about the origins of Cidade Baixa as a quilombo, a place where enslaved African escaped to and built their own (black) communities, away from the plantations of their former (white) ‘owners’. Péricles continued his story, explaining how Cidade Baixa had undergone enormous transformations with the canalization of the Dilúvio river and the reclamation of parts of the Guaíba bay. With the formal abolishment of slavery at the end of the nineteenth century and the urban expansion projects that followed in the twentieth century, most of the black people that used to live in this area were eventually expulsed to other parts of the city, most of them ending up in Restinga, a relatively poor neighbourhood on the outskirts of Porto Alegre, about a two-hour bus ride away from Cidade Baixa. And although both Péricles as well as Douglas mentioned in their interviews that Cidade Baixa had changed over time and
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that the neighbourhood was far from the black neighbourhood that it used to be in the past, according to Péricles, the black history of Cidade Baixa still made the neighbourhood a more welcoming place for black people and subsequently other minority groups – at least, compared to other neighbourhoods such as Moinhos de Vento.
Although many of the gay and bisexual men involved in this research recalled Cidade Baixa as a neighbourhood in which they felt welcomed and safe, they also emphasized that this paradise-like image of this part of the city needed to be nuanced. During my first interview with Kauê, he described Cidade Baixa as a place in which he often felt vulnerable and where he felt that he had to hide his sexuality, where he had to return ‘back-into-the-closet’.
When I was having an interview with Carlos, he also mentioned how he often felt vulnerable walking alone near Parque da Redenção or around Cidade Baixa. Similar to Kauê, his fears and feelings of vulnerability mainly came from hearing about homophobic attacks in the news.
In particular, because a neighbourhood as Cidade Baixa is freely accessible for many groups of people, the possibility exists to encounter homophobic and racist groups of people around each corner of a street. Carlos’ story also illustrates that feelings of unsafety or insecurity for some young gay and bisexual men do not only include fears for homophobic attacks, but that they also consist of fears for racism and racist attacks. This underlines that only looking to sexuality is insufficient to comprehend the urban experiences of young gay and bisexual men, as long as other factors such as race are ignored and left aside.
When I was having my first interview with Gabriel, he told me that although Cidade Baixa was a relatively nice place to walk hand in hand with his husband for example, there still existed places where people would look give him and his husband disgusting and disapproving looks. In a same way many ‘gay places’ were developed in Cidade Baixa, forming safe places for many queer people, also distinctive conservative places popped up in the neighbourhood. In almost every interview and in many conversations I had with my informants, they mentioned a particular bar in Cidade Baixa, right at the intersection of two streets where two popular gay bars were located. Sometimes when I was passing by this bar with some of my informants, looking for an appropriate place to do an interview, I jokingly
“Cidade Baixa as a whole, it is a place that has a lot of LGBT-parties and all of this, but at the same time you are constantly seeing in the news about LGBT-people that were attacked, right. That suffered some kind of violence, some kind of discrimination. And that gives you fear to walk in the street. I have never suffered anything. But this subjective feeling stays, that at any time something can happen.” (Kauê)
“In Porto Alegre there are these Skinheads. You know what this is? […] And always when I go to one of these parks, I think a lot like this ‘Ah, would it be today I’m going to encounter a Skinhead?’, you see? And even my friends they say, if a Skinhead would find me, they would kill me two times. For being black and for being gay. […] They even started coming here to Cidade Baixa at night. There was a very famous case that happened here in Porto Alegre. It was in 2005, I think. That they took some Jewish guys and they beat them up. One of them almost died. So, in Redenção a lot of attacks from Skinheads have already happened.” (Carlos)
