Brazil has 12% of adults who declare themselves as asexual, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (ALGBT), shows an unprecedented survey by the Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp) and the University of São Paulo (USP), published in the scientific journal Nature Scientific Reports. This percentage corresponds to 19 million Brazilians, according to population data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).
The research mapped sexual and gender diversity in the country from a representative sample of the Brazilian population, similar to what is done in electoral polls. Six thousand people over 18 years of age were interviewed in 129 cities in the five regions of Brazil. The questionnaires were applied by Instituto Datafolha between November and December 2018.
According to psychiatrist Giancarlo Spizzirri, from the USP School of Medicine and the main author of the article, this is the first time that a survey like this has been carried out in a Latin American country. Another differential of the study is the questions in the questionnaire. Instead of self-declaration, which could lead to a misunderstanding of the concepts by the participants, it was decided to ask objective questions and then categorize the answers.
“If I went up to a person and asked, ‘Are you gay? Between the [opções] below: homosexual, straight or bi’. Perhaps it could cause a lot of embarrassment depending on the way the question is asked. Or even the person doesn’t know what to answer. Another way to ask this is, ‘Are you physically, romantically and sexually attracted to people of the same gender as you? Or only by people of the same gender?’” explained Spizzirri.
A survey released by the IBGE in May 2019 on sexual orientation showed that 1.2% of Brazilians, or 1.8 million, declare themselves to be homosexual, that is, is attracted to people of the same sex or gender; and 0.7%, or 1.1 million, declare themselves bisexual, are attracted to more than one gender or binary sex.
However, data on aspects of gender identity were not researched, which involves categories such as trans and non-binary people. There was also no information about other sexual behaviors, such as asexuality.
“They used a criterion of how the person self-identifies. We did not use the question of self-identification, we categorized the groups according to the answers we got”, points out the researcher.
The researchers reinforce that the work helps to take the ALGBT population out of invisibility and, as it is a study in the field of health, it contributes to the devising of public policies aimed at these groups.
“I thought that we would find more people with sexual and gender diversity in the capitals, and that was not the case. The distribution was egalitarian, both in the capitals and in the countryside and in practically all regions of Brazil. In other words, policies have to cover all regions and not only in cities, but also in the countryside”, he exemplified.
asexuals
Survey data shows that among the 12% categorized as ALGBT, 5.76% are asexual, 2.12% are bisexual, 1.37% are gay, 0.93% are lesbian, 0.68% are trans, and 1.18% are non-binary people. The survey was based on sexual and gender diversity.
The author of the study reveals that the percentage of asexuals was surprising and that more analysis should be done to understand this number. Among those who said they did not feel sexual attraction, the vast majority are women (93.5%).
“One of the possibilities, for example, is that this large number of women are people who end up being the head of the family and who constitute their own lives regardless of having a partner and who abdicated this manifestation, so we need to understand better this”, ponders the researcher. He highlights, however, that, despite having other options for answers, the participants chose to answer “I do not feel sexual attraction”.
Still on this topic, the survey identified that, among asexuals, 1.1%, both among men and women, indicated that they had never felt sexual attraction. It was not, therefore, a momentary situation.
Violence
The survey also mapped information on episodes of violence, whether psychological, verbal, physical or sexual. The most impressive numbers, however, concern sexual violence. Based on the violence suffered by straight cisgender men, straight cisgender women reported suffering four times more episodes of sexual violence. For lesbian women the situation is worse, they reported suffering six times more episodes of sexual violence.
The picture gets even worse with bisexual women, who reported 12 times more episodes of sexual violence. Trans people, in turn, are 25 times more sexually assaulted compared to cisgender men.
