Brasília is an urban closet! Mildly fabulous gays, like Boy George, for instance, or Michael Alig—in his Club Kid times—would hate to live in such a gray and geometric city, clearly planned by old straight men for middle-aged straight people.Kissing in public is social suicide. Outside of wooded parklands—Brasília's urban park is the biggest in the world—and away from the corridors of the University of Brasília (UnB), heteronormative values rule. In the evening, either for the envy or delight of attentive passersby, the gyms turn into showcases of Barbies (Brazilian gay slang for hunky homos) with an Adonis Complex. Casual sex apps like Grindr are a sigh of hope for the "straight-acting and exclusively top" to have a sweet escape from their deluded homes. Fair enough.
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On the other hand, Brasília is not limited to the wings of the Central Plateau, where being gay is wonderful. Around lakes and monuments, the scorching sun also illuminates families whose reality bypasses the sanitized archetypes. If, in downtown BSB (another name for Brasília), both homophobia and queerness are well disguised, in the outskirts the game changes: There have been several complaints of violence against gay men and lesbians in the Federal District, not to mention the long forsaken trans people, who get ostracized with no apology by, essentially, every "good citizen" on a daily basis.—Weudson Ribeiro
