Duda Salabert: Nikolas is a small theme – 03/12/2023 – Politics

Federal deputy Duda Salabert (PDT-MG) took office on February 1st, alongside Erika Hilton (PSOL-SP), marking in history the first election of transgender women to the Chamber of Deputies.

At the age of 41, the literature professor and former Belo Horizonte councilor condemns the transphobic speech of Nikolas Ferreira (PL-MG), the most voted federal deputy in the country, but claims that the bench colleague is a small topic and that it is I need to leave for the great political debate.

On Women’s Day, Nikolas went to the Chamber’s tribune with a blonde wig and made a transphobic speech against transgender women.

“I was not elected for that. I am the most voted federal deputy in the history of Minas Gerais, we want to discuss big politics.”

Salabert says that being drawn into the “necropolitics” she sees in Nikolas only reproduces the logic that elected Jair Bolsonaro (PL).

What did Mrs. Do you think it led 1.5 million people from Minas Gerais to vote for a deputy whose first major manifestation in Brasília was to go up to the podium and make a transphobic speech and which has been considered a crime since 2019 by decision of the Federal Supreme Court? Brazil was extremely polarized in the last election. Bolsonaro had already chosen Nikolas to be his federal deputy, so a lot of that is due to the double vote.

He [Nikolas] he also has a very large potential for communication, he masters the tools of social networks very well, and it should also be discussed that the algorithm [das redes sociais] encourages hate speech.

The algorithm favors discourse that violates and rejects historically marginalized groups. That is why it is necessary to have a deeper debate in Brazil and in the world about how these technologies can affect democracy in a certain way.

But Minas Gerais also made me the most voted federal deputy in history, and I say that my election is primarily due to a project of structuring debates on national issues and state issues.

How was working with Nikolas at the Belo Horizonte City Council? Early on, when I became the most well-rounded person in the history of Belo Horizonte [37.613 votos] and he took second place [29.388 votos], I called for him. Because I realized that journalism in that context, when we had not created any controversy, was creating a narrative to reproduce between me and him an odious dichotomy that was built between Jair Bolsonaro and Jean Wyllys [ex-deputado do PSOL, hoje no PT, que vivia sob escolta policial devido a ameaças e que deixou o Brasil em 2019].

And we saw the result of this narrative, right? We had Marielle Franco executed [a então vereadora do PSOL foi assassinada em março de 2018].

At the time, I called Nikolas and said: “Look, let ideas fight, not people”. He told us to move on to a debate on projects for Belo Horizonte, but he never respected that request. It is a mark of how these ultra-right groups organize themselves, taking advantage of agendas specifically from transvestites and transgender people to promote themselves and achieve more engagement.

He never participated in the debate with me about the city project, education, employability, income generation, urban mobility, basic sanitation. He was present only in these moral debates, which is to discuss neutral language, bathroom.

What did Mrs. would you say to transgender women who have been affected by this discourse? We, transvestites and transsexuals, are not concerned with Nikolas, we are concerned with guaranteeing the minimum dignity for our existence. Until 200 years ago black men and women were not recognized as human by the Brazilian State. And today we, transvestites and transsexuals, are not recognized as human, because we are fighting for basic issues that we have not conquered yet.

For example, 90% of transvestites and transsexuals in the country are in prostitution, because we are excluded from the labor market. In Belo Horizonte, there is a study by the Federal University of Minas Gerais that shows that 90% of transvestites and transsexuals have not completed high school. Which shows that there is no such thing as school evasion for trans people, what exists is school expulsion.

We are talking about a population in which 6% of transvestites and transsexuals in Belo Horizonte were expelled from their homes under 13 years of age.

I think it’s important to say that we transvestites and transsexuals debate about the economy. So it would be important, for example, for newspapers like Sheet of São Paulo and others come to us to discuss, for example, our perspective on tax reform, what we think of the Kandir Law [que trata de isenção de impostos para exportação]about a plan that we defend for economic diversification for mining municipalities, the vision that we have about the climate crisis.

These debates from a moral point of view are reproducing a logic of reducing us, of caricaturing us and of putting us exclusively to debate topics like Nikolas, which is a small topic.

I was not elected for this. I am the most voted federal deputy in the history of Minas Gerais, we want to discuss big politics.

Have you looked at the projects I presented in Minas Gerais and were approved? I had a meeting with four ministers this week, before Women’s Day, to discuss important guidelines for Brazil’s growth.

That’s what the big debate is, what we want to do. No more discussing necropolitics, which is exclusively at the service of reproducing a logic that elected Bolsonaro president.

During her tenure in Belo Horizonte, Mrs. Did you feel alienated from these other debates? In Belo Horizonte, we initially had difficulty with sectors of the media to show that we are beyond the identity issue. And then we conquered space, based on a quality legislative process and an action that reverberated even in international spheres, in defense of the mountains and water security of Minas Gerais.

So we now have to show at the national level that we are not merely an identity mandate. We are a climate mandate, I am running for the presidency of the Environment commission.

The identity agenda, the history and the debate about the transvestite and transgender community I already carry in my own body and in my political construction. It is a fundamental debate that we are going to promote.

What are your first impressions here of the Chamber? We have built a lot with the Executive, for emergency issues, such as the environment. We already had some meetings with Minister Marina Silva, and this week we met with the Minister of Human Rights [Silvio Almeida] also. I’m getting pretty good reception overall.

Did you suffer any kind of prejudice? For us, who are more marginalized, stigmatized groups, we usually say that transphobia and prejudice even exist in heaven. If I go from here to the bakery to buy bread I will suffer countless symbolic violence, in looks, in jokes. Unfortunately this is part of the country’s training structure. But no prejudice that prevented a political construction or that deeply affected me.

Only this episode on the 8th of March, which is an attack not only against transvestites, not only against women, is an attack against Parliament and against politics.

We are experiencing the greatest socioeconomic and climate crisis in the history of Brazil. What is expected of Parliament is a debate about big politics. And on March 8, a debate on gender inequality, which results in violence against women. And not use the platform to mock, satire and ridicule transvestite and transgender women.

That’s why we called the Federal Supreme Court and the Ethics Council. Episodes like that end up encouraging violence against groups that have already been abused and reinforcing in the popular imagination the idea that politics is a space for mockery, debauchery, and debauchery.

The Bolsonaro family was the object of the Ethics Council several times and nothing happened. Do you expect this to change? We don’t fight with certainty or expecting victory, we fight because we have to fight. They may even win, but the certainty we have is that we will never kneel. I know what the Ethics Council was historically, but there is another reality in Brazil. Lula’s victory was also the defeat of a political project that society no longer tolerates, which is marked precisely by intolerance, by hatred.

There is another conjuncture that spills over, for example, in the position of Artur Lira [presidente da Câmara] by criticizing Nikolas’ position and showing his solidarity with those who were offended.

Congress has a conservative majority. Mrs. Do you have the prospect of being heard? Our mandate has three major platforms. Environment, education and human rights. And, in the field of human rights, we are very concerned about public safety, that’s why I’m going to be part of the Public Safety commission.

Mrs. Would you consider redoing that 2020 phone call? I have been a literature teacher for over 20 years. I know the role of words and language in building another society and other existences. I understand that every time the word fails, violence comes into play.

I learned from Leonel Brizola that we have to learn and shake everyone’s hand without getting our own hands dirty.

So, I talk to everyone, I show the thesis, the other side, the antithesis, and the plenary chooses the synthesis. This is how politics is built.

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X-ray | Duda Salabert, 41

She graduated in Letters and for about two decades gave literature classes to high school students in the capital of Minas Gerais. In 2020, she was the most voted candidate for Belo Horizonte City Council, becoming the city’s first transsexual councilwoman. In 2022, she ranked third in the ranking of federal deputies elected by Minas, with 208,332 votes. She and Erika Hilton (PSOL-SP) are the first trans women to occupy a seat in the Chamber.