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Educação e Pesquisa

versão impressa ISSN 1517-9702versão On-line ISSN 1678-4634

Educ. Pesqui. vol.48  São Paulo  2022  Epub 06-Maio-2022

https://doi.org/10.1590/s1678-4634202248241630por 

ARTICLES

“Sea of bullying”: a whirlwind of violence against lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transvestites, and transsexuals at school*

Mateus Aparecido de Faria1 
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6622-9949

Maria Carmen Aires Gomes2 
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7402-4353

Celina Maria Modena3 
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5035-3427

1- Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brasil. Contact: mateusfaria18@gmail.com

2- Universidade de Brasília, Centro de Estudos Avançados Multidisciplinares (CEAM), DF, Brasil. Contato: mariacarmengomes1971@gmail.com

3- Instituto René Rachou, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (Fiocruz Minas), Belo Horizonte, MG, Brasil. Contact: celina.modena@fiocruz.br


Abstract

This study aimed to understand the experiences and senses of bullying experienced by lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transvestites, transsexuals, and other identities. This qualitative research was conducted with nine participants older than eighteen years and who identified as members of the interest group through interviews conducted from a semi-structured script. The corpus analysis was guided by the social theory of discourse and aided by Kitconc 4.0 software. The reports show the contrast between the temporality of the term bullying, foreign word of the 21st century in the Brazilian context, and the constant presence of violence in the school environment in the trajectories of the participants. The advancement of communicative technologies also constitutes this sea of bullying by widening the reach of violent scenes and globalizing shame, cursing, and punching. The way to deal with this permeates the direct confrontation, encouraging the school community to debate and protect children and adolescents marked by cis-heteronormative hegemony. Thus, it is in the resistance of existence that bodies in assembly hope and claim the rights inherent in life, advancing beyond survival and regulated citizenship. Adolescents and children crossed by bullying are potencies of themselves, and it is up to us, now adults, the ethical commitment to enable other ways of being in this world.

Key words: Bullying; Violence; School; LGBT

Resumo

Este trabalho teve como objetivo compreender as vivências e os sentidos do bullying experienciados por lésbicas, gays, bissexuais, travestis, transexuais e outras identidades. Trata-se de uma pesquisa qualitativa realizada com nove participantes, maiores de dezoito anos e que se identificam como integrantes do grupo de interesse, por meio de entrevistas conduzidas a partir de um roteiro semiestruturado. A análise do corpus foi guiada pela teoria social do discurso e auxiliada pelo software Kitconc 4.0. Os relatos mostram a contraposição entre a temporalidade do termo bullying, estrangeirismo do século XXI no contexto brasileiro, e a constante presença das violências em espaço escolar nas trajetórias das e dos participantes. O avanço das tecnologias comunicativas também constitui esse mar de bullying ao propiciar a ampliação do alcance de cenas violentas e ao globalizar o vexame, o xingamento e o soco. A forma de lidar com isso perpassa o enfrentamento direto, incitando a comunidade escolar a debater e a proteger crianças e adolescentes marcados pela hegemonia cis-heteronormativa. Desse modo, é na resistência do existir que corpos em assembleia esperançam e reivindicam os direitos inerentes à vida, avançando para além da sobrevivência e da cidadania regulada. Adolescentes e crianças atravessadas pelo bullying são potências de si mesmas e cabe a nós, agora adultos, o compromisso ético de possibilitar outras formas de estar neste mundo.

Palavras-Chave: Bullying; Violência; Escola; LGBT

Introduction

Bullying has been the subject of discussions in schools and scientific circles since the last decades of the last century, gaining greater notoriety in Brazil since the 2000s. Its definition is quite diverse, even distorting the school context. For this article, we will use the concept of Medeiros (2012, p. 108):

[...] bullying in Brazil should be understood as a set of hostile and aggressive attitudes, which occur directly or indirectly, intentional and repetitive and without evident motivation, adopted by one or more students against other(s) in the school environment, without distinction of gender or age, which presents the difference in power between those involved, causing pain, anguish, and suffering for the victim and the feeling of satisfaction for the aggressor.

Although affecting children and adolescents indistinctly from the social markers they carry, this phenomenon is motivated by some characteristics understood in the unequal power relationship, between peers or even between different actors in the school community, as susceptible to violence.

More than 20 percent of adolescent students in Brazil have already suffered verbal bullying, with a growing trend throughout the country. It is the type of violence that most victimizes subjects in this age group (SILVA et al., 2019). In another study (ZEQUINÃO et al., 2016), with people aged 8 to 16 years, more than 40 percent of boys and 29 percent of girls reported having suffered some aggression at school, being carried out, most of the time, by older colleagues and through vexatious nicknames in the classroom. This phenomenon is seen weekly or daily by 28 percent of primary school and 18 percent of high school principals. However, the rates are much higher if examined in public schools (35 and 23 percent, respectively). This result puts Brazil in a superior position in relation to the world and Latin American means (INEP, 2019). In the world, according to the United Nations (UN, 2016), half of the children and adolescents have already suffered some bullying due to their physical appearance, sexual orientation, gender, ethnicity, or country of origin, and in Brazil, this percentage reaches the mark of 43 percent. Another research (KOYANAGI et al., 2019) indicated that adolescents between 12 and 15 years old who were bullied have up to three times more risk of ideations and attempts at self-extermination. Being in this situation generated crises of anxiety, insomnia, and a desire to change schools or absenteeism. In a recent literature review (SILVA; OSIECKI, 2019), factors such as exposure to licit and illicit drugs and their use, family problems, and regional issues can increase the risk of bullying and suicide, besides reaching students with different social markers, such as income, economic class, and religion.

Such research of different epistemological affiliations has sought to understand bullying in the effort to understand it to be recognized as a contemporary school issue (LOURO, 1997; ZEQUINÃO et al., 2016). In this sense, the dissident community of people of the cis-heteronormative matrix4, as lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transvestites, transsexuals, and other identities, which here we will abbreviate by the acronym LGBT+, has been recurrently the target of these acts of violence.

This article starts from Butler’s (2003) considerations to understand such sexualities as performativities, which we do and undo, which we discursively construct by acts, gestures, and practices. This performative performance of sexualities implies a set of intelligible acts and scenified behaviors, appropriate agents for the iteration of specific acts, and procedures performed by agents (FARIA, 2018; MINGO; MORENO, 2017). Thus, the lesbian person performs the female gender, and their sexual orientation – while a set of practices constituted in the relationship with another – is predominantly focused on female bodies. Along the same lines, the gay person performs the male and wants the male. Bisexual people, in turn, act in a way that relates to male, female, and any other bodies that pass through this gendered continuum.

Transsexual, transgender, transvestite, or trans people are denominations that represent performativities that dare to break with the instituted, with the cis-heteronormative since they do not recognize the gender designations given at birth. For example, someone who recognizes himself as a trans man affirms that he has been assigned the female gender. However, his subjectivation processes constitute a male body. The trans woman, on the other hand, does not recognize the male gender assigned to her at birth and iterates discursive practices in the female sphere. Transvestites are people who do not want to define themselves in one of the two gendered poles, moving between them. Also, we can move on to other identities5 such as asexuals, queer, and intersexes (BRIGEIRO, 2013) that function as a starting point, not an arrival point, for community experiences.

Although many do not want to identify with a single gender, such separation between terms has relevance in the didactic and legal sense. The first serves to share information about this population, their demands, and desires, sometimes using the restriction of practices of trans people by giving a name so that the general population can anchor their understanding. The second – legal sense – guarantees rights in a legal system based on fixed identities: paternity leave for men and maternity for women, marriage between a man and a woman, etc. Trans people enter this social relationship by recognizing that their bodies are equally legitimate to plead any guarantees already consolidated for other gendered bodies, either for change of social name and gender in the civil registry or body adequacy due to the performativity of gender built.

Previous research has shown that bullying against LGBT+ people in the school environment is strictly linked to the construction of controlled masculinity that hinders not only the development of the victim but also the relationships established in the school community (BARBERO, 2017), as well as the importance of acting to prevent these acts of violence and preserve the consolidation of sexual identity (GOYER; BLAIS; HÉBERT, 2015; RUSSEL, 2011).

Considering the political-educational context currently constituted in Brazil and the consequent need to strengthen discourses and practices that corroborate the respect for diversity, the challenge here is to understand the experiences and meanings of bullying experienced by the LGBT+ community.

Methodological path

This qualitative research was exploratory, as it favors the familiarity and the explanation of the research problem, and descriptive-interpretative, by imputing criticality to the description of the phenomena (SILVEIRA; CÓRDOVA, 2009).

Based on a semi-structured script, interviews were conducted with people who identified themselves as LGBT+. The choice of participants was made using the snowball technique, which uses a chain of references initiated with key informants to and from whom indications of people with the desired characteristics are requested (VINUTO, 2014). Our informants were social movements for the defense of human rights, student movements, non-governmental organizations, and coordinators of university extension projects operating in the metropolitan region of Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais. After receiving the indications, we contacted each person, presenting the research, its objectives, how the interview would be conducted, choosing the place according to the person’s needs, and clarifying doubts. After the person shows interest, we schedule a moment to talk and, in person, we repeat the objectives and the way of conducting the research, the guarantee of anonymity, and present the Free and Informed Consent Form to be signed. The definition of the number of participants was made as we got as close to the researched object as possible without, therefore, intending to saturate it (MINAYO, 2017), so that nine interviews (Table 1) were considered sufficient to enable a deep analysis – consistent with the richness of the reports –, also considering the work schedule.

Table 1 Profile of people interviewed according to age, gender, sexual orientation, race/skin color/ethnicity, education, and place of residence 

  Age (years) Gender Sexual Orientation Race/Skin color/ Ethnicity Schooling
P1 29 Cis man Gay Black Full post-graduation
P2 28 Cis man Gay Black Incomplete higher education
P3 21 Non-binary Lesbian White Incomplete higher education
P4 21 Cis woman Lesbian Black Incomplete higher education
P5 21 Trans man Bisexual White Incomplete higher education
P6 22 Cis man Gay Black Incomplete higher education
P7 28 Cis man Gay Black Incomplete higher education
P8 22 Cis woman Lesbian Black Incomplete higher education
P9 23 Cis woman Lesbian White Incomplete higher education

Source: Prepared by the authors.

The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed from the perspective of critical discourse analysis (CDA), from a British perspective, developed and proposed by Norman Fairclough (2001), inserted in a set of ideas coined as social theory of discourse (STD), whose initial thesis is that there are dialectical relations between social life and discourses, that is, discourses build and constitute social relations and not only reflect them (FAIRCLOUGH, 2001), that is, discourses are constituted and constituent of social life. Based on the critical-realist stance, STD seeks to provide scientific support for research on the functioning of discourses in establishing, maintaining, and/or overcoming socially constructed problems (RAMALHO; RESENDE, 2011). The STD is based on the three-dimensional conception of discourse, as shown in Figure 1, with the proposal of contextualization of discourses, always situated temporally, circumstantially, and spatially.

Source: Fairclough (2001, p. 101).

Figure 1 Three-dimensional conception of discourse 

The methodological procedure by STD has three dimensions, according to Fairclough (2001): analysis of the text (description), discursive practice (interpretation), and social practice (critical explanation). In order to use the STD methodologically, it is not necessary to use all possible categories since each corpus will have its own elements from the choice of the focus of the research process. The categories vocabulary, grammar, intertextuality and interdiscursivity, hegemony, and ideology were selected for this research. The vocabulary deals primarily with individual words but goes beyond their dictionary meanings. Words imply processes of the signification of the world that occur temporally and for social groups in different ways. We will work here with definitions and meanings of words, especially how these meanings enter broader disputes for the dynamically hegemonic position and the use of metaphors since they demonstrate the political and ideological implications of discourses (FAIRCLOUGH, 2001). The grammar category makes it possible to deepen the understanding of the sentences, sets of ideational, interpersonal, and textual meanings that people choose according to the desire for ontological formation, construction of social relations, and affirmation/denial of knowledge systems and beliefs. In prayer, actors, processes, goals, identities, and representations that cross and are crossed by discursive and social orders are established (FAIRCLOUGH, 2001).

There is intertextuality and interdiscursivity in the sphere of discursive practices. Intertextuality is the property of texts to be filled with fragments of other texts, which are explicitly delimited by quotation marks or merged within the text, in order to cause echoes, contradictions, and other discursive effects (FAIRCLOUGH, 2001). When clearly identified, we say that there is manifested intertextuality because the discourse is heterogeneous, full of speeches from other actors, such as this article and its citations. On the other hand, interdiscursivity is the constitutive intertextuality, not explicit, which is presented in the discourse only by vestiges, metaphors, presence/absence of social voices or even by presuppositions. At this point in the ADC, it is important to understand which orders of discourses are present, that is, which sets of terms and meanings determine, hegemonically and temporarily, social practices (LOPES, 2018). Thus, “one can consider an order of discourse as the discursive facet of the contradictory and unstable balance that constitutes a hegemony” (FAIRCLOUGH, 2001, p. 123).

We come to hegemony as an analytical category that makes it possible to identify the leadership and/or domination of social scopes such as the economic, political, cultural, and ideological (FAIRCLOUGH, 2001). Hegemony is established from alliances, with the prevalence of certain groups in asymmetric power relations, imputing the naturalization of values, symbols, norms, and other specificities of the hegemonic group to maintain its position (LOPES, 2018). Ideology crosses the entire analytical model, materializing through discursive practices and questioning subjects who build and are constructed by discourse. Fairclough understands ideology (2001, p. 117) as:

[...] meanings/constructions of reality (the physical world, social relations, social identities) that are constructed in various dimensions of the forms/meanings of discursive practices and that contribute to the production, reproduction, or transformation of relations of domination.

As with hegemony, ideology works very well when embedded in discursive practices, naturalizing itself and achieving common sense status. Thus, ideology is present both in social structures and processes and events, dialectically mobile, to maintain or transform the instituted (FAIRCLOUGH, 2001).

To assist in the textual analysis, the Brazilian software Kitconc version 4.0 was used. The use of the software enabled the rapid visualization of the corpus concerning the vocabulary, the relationships established between the syntagmas of the sentences, and the recurrence of groups.

Seeking to assume participatory research strategies (CAMPOS, 2011), after interpreting the narratives, we returned to the people interviewed to share what we understood at that time and, from the meeting, and new reflections, build new interpretations – now not about them, but with them. When conducting this way, we try to reject interpretative violence because “no one is labor for someone else’s thinking. Everyone thinks. Everyone wins” (CAMPOS, 2011, p. 1284).

This research was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the René Rachou Institute of Oswaldo Cruz Foundation under number CAAE 63857317.6.0000.5091 and approval opinion No. 1,925,485.

The sea of bullying

Bullying is an English-derived term and does not have a translation into Portuguese due to conceptual impasses. We will keep its use here since it is not the objective to conduct such discussion, but worrying about possible trivializations of the term that, instead of expanding the scope, has emptied its meanings and consequences in the school environment (MEDEIROS, 2012).

One of the research participants highlights the temporality of the term bullying, which before did not have a specific denomination, although the phenomenon is constant in the school routine: “there was a lot of violence that today is considered as bullying, nicknames, a certain differentiation of people in treatment, because I am gay and even black, as a reference to television characters who were black” (P1).

We can see the modalization of the P1 report by using the terms a lot and today. The first intensifies the existential process (there was) about the existing element – bullying – which is synonymous with differentiating people in treatment. This shows the frequency with which the participant was detached from the class, either because of his blackness, sexual orientation, or both. The crossing of social markers crosses his body as fluids of power that aim at his symbolic extermination since a black gay man is considered a sacrificial life, unworthy of mourning (BUTLER, 2018; FARIA, 2018). The character cited by P1 is Cirilo, from the soap opera Carousel, which aired in Brazil for the first time in the early 1990s and was re-released several times by the television network Sistema Brasileiro de Televisão (SBT). In it, Cirilo was one of the few black characters, besides being in love with a rich and white girl, Maria Joaquina, who snubs him almost the whole story. In contrast, the character diminishes himself to the other children. The massive diffusion of and by television, increased by its ability to enhance its effects through image aesthetics, becomes a powerful cultural and social artifact, influencing the daily life surrounding it. When referring to P1 as a fictional character, aggressors adhere to the discursive practices sold by the communication media, which happens in a pleasurable way since such adherence is made by leisure, by the fun of television (GONÇALVES; ANDRADE, 2011).

The second modalizer (today) locates, in time, the name of what it used to live. In the world scientific literature, the term bullying appeared around the 1980s and 1990s, being used by Brazilian researchers more strongly in the 21st century. The form of exemplification used by P1 to report the violence he suffered does not exhaust the list of acts against non-white and non-heterosexual people: the violence of physical and psychological orders are the main ones in the school environment, such as punches, coercion, kicks, persecution, etc. (GÓIS; SOLIVA, 2011).

The temporal comparison of bullying was also made by another participant, as follows:

The difference in bullying from what I suffered about 15 years ago, what changes is that today you have the internet, today you have a smartphone, but bullying against the gay person is always the same, it is the joke, it is the physical aggression, the non-acceptance, it is the humiliation. Bullying is the same, the difference is that today you have something more perverse that is the smartphone, which can record this. (P2).

Here the existential process (have) is used to define the existing contemporary: communication technologies. The smartphone, adjectivated as perverse by P2, can be understood as an instrument of subtle violence, which causes agony, fear, and isolation. Such violence already existed against LGBT+ people; however, the smartphone, as a technology that, socially created, interferes with interpersonal relationships, also affects the power relations generated and reproduced by violence since it records, documents, and serves as proof and exhibition of enunciative scenes (SCHREIBER; ANTUNES, 2015). P2 uses the discursive strategy of exemplification, as well as P1, to define bullying: mockery, physical aggression, non-acceptance, humiliation. The notion of violence more associated with physical and psychological aspects is reinforced in comparison with other spheres, such as those of a patrimonial and sexual order (FARIA, 2018).

The temporality of the approach to bullying among the research participants may have been due to the selection bias since P1 and P2 are young university adults who report school experiences from a previous moment in basic education. This comparison aims to re-signify the experiences of that time through the current perspective and may bring to light some reports considered even tragicomic since the discursive practices denote ideologies that marginalize diversities when comparing them with social archetypes. P7 narrates one of these episodes: “once people [at school] calling me ‘Oh faggot!’, these things, […] and the teacher said ‘Be careful! Do not keep calling him [a faggot] because he can later become like a maniac’” (P7).

The vocative used to call P7 is the diminutive noun of faggot – a very common insult in Brazil, a variation of deviated and, at the same time, synonymous with the deer animal (also associated with the character of the films Bambi, which is actually another variation of deer). This linguistic variation used to make fun of gay men is an attempt to bring people closer to animals, dehumanizing them, to facilitate the legitimation of violent practices (SILVA, 2014). Nevertheless, the iteration of this discursive practice limits the gay man’s body by assigning him certain performances and restricting others: when listening to faggot, all actors in the enunciative scene construct the ways that the victim is or is supposed to be. This body-limit, limited discursively and even geographically, as demonstrated by Faria (2018), is humiliated and despised by the discourses that challenge it and, however, open space for the displacement of the insult: by giving a name to that abject body, a possible existence occurs, inaugurating a subject in the discourse that can use his own language to react. Faggot is thus grafted in other contexts, also serving as a “flag” of identity affirmation, as a counter-hegemonic reference in relation to violence (BUTLER, 1997; SILVA, 2014).

Returning to the excerpt from P7, the teacher’s professional practice (the use of professional is adequate since she was in a school environment mediating the learning relationships between students) evidences the crossings of her violent discourse, even though she intended to protect or interrupt the violence committed against P7. Comparison to a maniac pervades orders of medical-criminal discourse: usually associated with people who have committed crimes of sexual violence repeatedly, the maniac said by the teacher would be the result of insulted gay children and adolescents who, when they reach adulthood, could “take” what they suffered out on violence. The exclamation at the beginning of her speech (Be careful!) is, in fact, a warning to those who assaulted on the scene and not to P7, challenged and humiliated, reinforcing those who need care and protection and those who need prison or asylum – institutions constituted to house “maniacs”.

Such reports show what P2 summarizes as: “school is another sea of bullying.”

One can note the use of the word another, indicating that it is not only in this space that LGBT+ people suffer for claiming an existence worth living. Fernandes (2013) discusses the breadth of the search for the elimination of dissident bodies that reach the terreiro, the favela, the countryside, health services, even looking like an ocean of violence, naturalized in everyday life. Another participant also narrates her experiences:

[...] I already suffered at school, a lot at school because people noticed that I looked at girls and everything and started to poke me indirectly, sometimes even directly, it made me feel bad, feel inferior, you know, put me down and sometimes because they really wanted to diminish me [...]. In my classroom, I remember that there was a boy, he was gay too, he was open to the classroom, but everyone treated him well, the girls were friends with him, but with me, the people got totally weird, even he got kind of weird, you know?! But resorting to like that, there was really no one. (P9).

P9 report indicates the complex plot of violence against LGBT+ people composed of material (poking), mental (noticing, feeling, putting down), existential (being), and relational (there was) processes; all linked and crossed by signifiers and modalizers that enhance the senses of the violent scene. The poking, directly as a physical act of aggression or indirectly as symbolic violence, appears as a provocateur of a feeling (feeling inferior), sometimes intentional, that marked the participant’s passage through the school environment.

It is interesting to note the relative intentionality of aggression, which is not a necessary element for violence to the World Health Organization (KRUG et al., 2002). By saying that “sometimes because they really wanted to diminish me”, P9, who was attacked, demonstrates that, on other occasions, violence motivated by her sexual orientation (or even by “suspicion”) was practiced with other intentions, other objectives than to “put her down”. The lack of solidarity and the illusion of independence can help understand these unintentional acts of violence – to paraphrase the character Chaves, from a television series of the same name – accidentally on purpose. This catchphrase is so simple and so interesting that it will be useful to understand how such violent scenes happen.

The express and at the same time sublimated desire for the “accidentally on purpose” seems to be present in discourses that seek the “healing” of LGBT+ people, strongly crossed by religious discursive practices, based on interpretations of books, especially the Bible in Brazil. This discourse is undertaken by science, school, and other social institutions because, after all, language is use and exchange. However, this can happen in an uncritical, thoughtless, mechanical way, not interrupting hostile reproductions of the discourses. Clear examples are sexual reversal therapies that seek to change an individual’s sexual orientation to establish a normality and, thus, supposedly reduce the subject’s suffering in the face of prejudices or even to fulfill the designs of some superior entity recorded in old books (JONES; YARHOUSE, 2011). The non-intentionality of violence by the bodies that (re)produce this discourse is perceived since they aim to protect themselves from “suffering” or a life free from “sins”, however, in doing so, they already act violently since they impose something external to the subject, “accidentally on purpose”, as there are hegemonic social practices that subsidize them, ideologically oriented towards the naturalization of something anachronistic, in this case, compulsory cis-heterosexuality (BUTLER, 2018; FARIA, 2018). Thus, P9 reports that they really want her inferiority, as a woman and as a lesbian, while other times they also do it accidentally, but on purpose.

This iteration of violent discourses even challenges those bodies that, in other scenes, are targets. P9 reports that “even he got kind of weird”, when talking about the boy openly gay in the classroom, who was treated well, despite his condition. Here we highlight the assumption of violence on LGBT+ identities: being different from the hegemonically constituted necessarily implies suffering violence. However, he was also a perpetrator of violent scenes involving P9 since she did not expect it to be so, evidenced using the modalizer even – perhaps by the expectation of LGBT+ solidarity. Therefore, no one has a monopoly on oppression. Everyone is at the mercy of this naturalization of violence as its agents (BUTLER, 2015).

As seen so far, the school is not the redemptive institution of society, although it is often placed in this position. It is useful to hegemonic interests, especially those with economic capital to finance their projects and are negligent about existing themes in its space. P6 brings to the interview the public school and the summary of his experiences: “I have already suffered violence from sexual abuse, physical abuse, psychological abuse mainly in school, right, […] I left public school precisely because of this, because I could no longer bear how much I suffered at school” (P6).

The enumeration of P6 corroborates other studies on bullying and its variety of forms (SANTOS et al., 2013; SCHREIBER; ANTUNES, 2015; ZEQUINÃO et al.,2016). This phenomenon is not monolithic since it violates rights related to sexuality, the body, biopsychosocial well-being, and education, and the school is its locus – perceptible by the intensity modulation used by P6 and the consequences caused since the strategy to face these acts of violence was the change of school. Faria (2018) also lists other ways of dealing with violence against dissident bodies of cis-heteronormativity, such as the network of friends, religion, and social movements.

Another point highlighted by P6 is that bullying is in the order of suffering: the recurrence of the mental process of suffering in his narrative points to the dimension of these acts of violence in the subjective constitution of children and adolescents in school time. Santos et al. (2013) emphasize the losses to which they are subjected, such as learning and concentration difficulties, reduced memory capacity, and reports of a feeling of indignation at institutional negligence in relation to aggressors. P2 reports another moment permeated by suffering during one of his lectures:

I remember when I was talking about the last school I’ve been and everything I said the boy was like this “but what if we had a school where the student does the bullying with us and the teacher laughs?” He was asking for help, it was clear that he was talking about him, and then he turned to me and said, “Oh, that boy I told you about was actually me.” He was asking for help, so much that I talked to the coordinator who was on my side: “Are you listening to these stories? Think about these boys, coordinator, maybe it doesn’t happen here, but if it does you won’t find out, you won’t know.” (P2).

In this excerpt, P2 appears on the scene no longer as a body-limit, one that is limited by the aggressions, constraints, and deontologies of the violent other (FARIA, 2018), but rather seeking to intervene, as a speaker, in a school about violence. The re-reading of the school space by someone who previously suffered violence and now, returns to that same space can be of great importance for school planning and established relationships. Survivors of bullying who managed to constitute themselves in other ways, despite the insults and neglect, demonstrate the possibility of living a good life, despite the bad life, that is, how to live better as an individual despite the broader structures and operations of power and domination that permeate our bodies (BRETAS, 2018; BUTLER, 2018). Upon returning, P2 allows other ways of living and life to be possible, led by him, even if not completely. How to do this is inscribed in his experiences after bullying, something not achieved by this research, but which certainly involves other people who sought to interfere in the vicious process of violence, just as he does at this time in schools. P8 highlights this ethical need to interfere:

[...] now we will talk about it in schools, yes, we will educate children to grow up and understand that diversity exists and it must continue, so for lack of all this we have this consequence, because... the social taboos have always existed, they will not cease to exist until we effectively have a government that militates in favor of diversity. (P8).

The use of modalizers such as yes, must continue, always demonstrate the emergence of action against bullying due to precarious conditions of living in the school institution, permeated by prejudices against human diversity. The taboo, present in the excerpt, relates to the discursive and social practices of the unsaid (or not worthy of saying) that, according to P8, exist to the same extent in society, in which the hegemonic discourse forces other discursive orders, notably counter-hegemonic, to invisibility. The theme of gender, for example, has been considered the major taboo in school, along with other terms emptied of meaning, such as socialism, communism, and ideology. Therefore, the opportunity to provide a reflective education about social inequalities is lost to force a (non) debate focused on the “forces of evil, on the enemy to be fought at any cost” (REIS; EGGERT, 2017, p. 19). Although the interview took place in mid-2017, P8 already called to the scene a State committed to all lives, which is currently almost unfeasible with the rise of post-truth governments, which, at any cost, seek the (re)establishment of structures and operations that perpetuate privileges. P2 also brings the taboo of diversity:

There is no possibility of discussing transsexuality, so much so that the school principals that we went through have, had and have problems with parents about it, that their children arrive saying “Oh, we talk today about transsexuality, respect for trans”, parents who are mostly religious fundamentalist, whether evangelical, Catholic, or of any other denomination, this has problems, they take “What are you teaching my son?!” (P2).

In the research by Sales (2012), the school is understood as a space for correction and surveillance of a cis-heteronormative ethos, which restricts the definitions of male and female. From what P2 reports, the school community, which (re)produces this vigilant school, also iterates other discursive practices, notably religious, to combine forces symbolically for questioning the recognition of trans life as a school curriculum.

When asking “What are you teaching my son?!”, the other is questioned by the actions, in this case, the school, as if the inverse question were not possible: what are these fathers and mothers teaching their children when they act in this way? Intolerance, the unequal valuation of lives and bodies that may or may not be on the school enunciative scene, neglect of bullying, and the inability to allow oneself to be constituted by diversity are also part of the curriculum of violence, in which education is led by the family – the same that certain governments and collectivities claim as being the correct institution to teach sexuality to their children.

Final thoughts

From and together with LGBT+ people survivors of bullying, this research sought to understand the meanings and scenes of violence in school. The impact on the construction of the subject caused by the interpellation to the other in a violent way is perceived in a space chosen to teach that, in fact, acts and lets also act with other purposes that go beyond its walls.

Bullying is a foreignism that, even before unnamed, was already present in the experiences of children and adolescents who, now, participated in the research. Currently, we attribute to the term what used to be punches, kicks, creeps, stones, curses, abuses, harassment – instruments of the violent ethos that desperately tries to naturalize itself in the present, even if based on conceptions of the past. Therefore, bullying is not only topographically localized but temporally defined, as reported in this research.

The contribution of the people participating in the research summarizes, without exhausting, the sea of bullying in which the school is immersed and which, at the same time, produces. Due to limitations of the scientific work, we could not approach autobiographical transfeminine experiences. However, other participants reported the (also) exclusion of these bodies from the school space.

The hope lies in the resistance to the existence of bodies that, in assembly, on the street, or in isolation, claim rights to live beyond survival and regulated citizenship. Therefore, children and adolescents crossed by significant bullying are potencies of themselves who can seek other forms of life that we, now adults, have an ethical duty to offer.

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4 - Such a matrix arises from an idea of a rigid identity nucleus that is imposed on all bodies, anchored in the man-woman, male-female binaries, and the compulsory linearity body-sex-expression-gender (BUTLER, 2018).

5 - Here the concept of identity will be used to refer to discursive constructions that cross the social, cultural, and historical spheres, from the relations of power and knowledge, being, therefore, fluid, in movement and constituted by multiple categorizing and regulatory practices (BUTLER, 2003).

Received: July 30, 2020; Accepted: October 20, 2020

Mateus Aparecido de Faria holds a master’s degree in public health from René Rachou Institute/Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (IRR/Fiocruz), a bachelor’s degree in health services management from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), and a technical-administrative degree in education from UFMG.

Maria Carmen Aires Gomes is a master and Ph.D. in linguistic studies and discourse analysis from UFMG, graduated in languages (Portuguese/English) from the Federal University of Ouro Preto (UFOP), and associate professor III at the Federal University of Viçosa (UFV).

Celina Maria Modena holds a Ph.D. in science from the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ), a psychologist from UFMG, and a veterinarian from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), a visiting researcher of the IRR/Fiocruz Graduate Program in Collective Health.

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