The transformation of stigma in pride

LGBT social efficiency networks at the Federal University of Recôncavo da Bahia

Abstract

This text aims to reflect on the process of transforming stigma into pride and the creation of networks of sociability and security for LGBT people, based on the formative trajectories of six students of the Federal University of Recôncavo da Bahia. The approach to the subject was qualitative, and the ethnomethodology perspective was adopted, through the accomplishment of an ethnopesquisa implied. The students' understanding of the university reveals a place that at the same time presents itself as a space of diversities, conducive to living and expressing dissident sexualities and genres, is also a space marked by practices of silence and invisibilization, especially in formal learning spaces. As resistance and tactics of permanence, these students have built and constituted safe spaces, through self-organization and assemblages that allow their identities to be seen and experienced in public places.