Uma Eva diferente: experiências e trajetórias evangélicas de mulheres trans

Abstract

Starting from an anthropological approach, we sought to understand the evangelical experiences and trajectories of trans women in evangelical religious communities in their conventional and inclusive versions. Between 2016 and 2019, in the Grande Vitória - ES and São Paulo axis, fifteen trans women were formally interviewed with semi-structured initial script and audio recording, and four other trans women contributed to the research. They all identified or had already identified themselves as evangelical. With some of the interlocutors, the contact happened only once; with others, it was more intense, with participation in their daily lives - the meetings were no longer just an interview character but moved to a dimension of conversation and even confidentiality. However, the central focus of this work has the biographical accounts and life testimonies of especially five trans women - Crislaine, Mary, Mel, Jacque and Alexya - as a privileged locus, highlighting their moments of joining the evangelical churches. The emphasis on their life stories is an attempt to reflect on this through Perlongher's (1987) notion of model trajectories. From an interactionist perspective and considering the heterogeneity that characterizes the Brazilian evangelical field, the intention was, above all, to seek an understanding of the elaboration of trajectories as a dialogic process imbricated with ethnography. To this end, the complexity of each biographical narrative present in this work was highlighted. The focus is on individual strategies of negotiation and elaboration of evangelical religious adherence linked to a gender identity understood as dissident. The intention was to grasp, even if in part, ways of being and living such a specific gender-religious experience. From the evidenced biographical accounts, it is noted that the experiences and evangelical trajectories of trans women, when inserted in evangelical contexts - whether conventional or inclusive - put in question the homogeneity that Christian discourse tries to produce in the religious practices of those who follow it. They are women who confront this religious scene with the difference. They destabilize what seems fixed and airtight and, in doing so, they reveal gaps between institutional saying and doing and the multiple ways of inhabiting norms and dwelling among them.