Where will you be in 15 years?
This one I can still answer.
But what about 30 from now? I am now 40.
I never stopped to think. Until I received a leaflet, in the middle of the LGBTQIA+ Pride Parade in São Paulo, from an NGO called Eternamente Sou – focused on helping and assisting elderly people in the LGBTQIA+ community.
And whoever delivered it to me asked exactly this question: where do you want to be in a few years?
In the midst of the riot of the parade, with music, beautiful people, and only joy, the answer was clear to me: at parties, where else?
I thought, but didn’t speak. That’s good.
I am always surrounded by so many lively, young, healthy people…
Where are our older brothers?
Because we age, but are we invisible even to our community when this happens?
We are engaged, militant and willing to raise the flag whenever our rights are threatened.
But do we look at all of us? Once again this is not a criticism – but a doubt.
What are the real questions that each letter of the community carries when it reaches old age?
Many of these people who are now 60, 70 years old leave their families in the countryside or elsewhere and go to live within their networks of friends, let’s say, of those people who accept them for who they are. Many of them, when they reach old age, their peers are also old or old. And these people begin to lose their peers, their contemporaries and begin to need support networks that strengthen them. There dwells loneliness
Luís Baron, president of the NGO Eternamente Sou
And this loneliness only increases, since, it is worth remembering, many of those who are older today had to cut ties with family members at a young age because of prejudice.
And that’s precisely why it’s so important, especially for us in the LGBTQIA+ community, to have a solid network so that we can strengthen ourselves. This is where the work of Eternally Am .
“It is a non-governmental organization that started its work in 2017 through a collective of professionals mobilized by the need to implement services and projects aimed at psychosocial care for LGBTQIA+ elderly people. Considering the prejudice, intolerance and invisibility suffered by this public”, he adds Luis Baron president of Eternamente Sou and who is currently 62 years old.
It is so broad to imagine what can be done so that we can have a less painful old age.
First of all, we need access to a health system thought for us, because no one has any doubt that trans people, for example, who already suffer so much to be assisted, will need even more care in the elderly.
That’s the basics.
But mentally, are we prepared to grow old?
We who, for the most part, take so long to mature.
I remember the first time I loved someone, my first boyfriend, I was in my 30s. And when it was over I looked like I was 15 it hurt so bad.
It didn’t hurt because I loved him madly, but because the heartbreak, which usually happens at 15, how would it happen to me if I really looked at myself at 27?
Then it seems that your whole life is thrown forward. Adolescence at 30, adulthood at 50 and old age who knows when.
As my friend Hamilton says: Peter Pan Syndrome .
And who already in the third age decides to come out?
I always had Aninha inside me, right? It’s because as I couldn’t dress like a woman, so since I was a child I would take my sister’s panties and look at myself in the mirror. Sometimes I would hide it under my pillow, and my mother would say, ‘What are your sister’s panties doing under your pillow?’ I don’t know, but I’ve been living like this’
Ana Carolina Apocalypse, LGBTQIA+ Influencer
Who tells this story of courage is Ana Carolina Apocalypse , who is now 64 years old. She became famous on social media after posting the before and after of the gender transition – which began at age 59. She is now an influencer, is sought after by several brands and was the first elderly transgender woman to parade at SPFW.
It was very good that I made the transition in the third age, because if I had done it before, maybe I wouldn’t have known how to deal with it. As I had a good life experience, I had already been married, I have a daughter… So it’s different from teenagers, who have high expectations of being in their 20s and feeling like a trans man, a trans woman, right?
Ana Carolina Apocalypse
The expectations are certainly not the same, but I think the fear of the new and the apprehension of how the change will be seen by others must be almost the same.
Seen by family or possible boyfriends.
The actor who also immersed himself in the universe of the LGBTQIA+ seniors was the actor Alexandre Santucci , drag queen for over 11 years. He gives life to the drag Vera Ronzella . A lady who, like every lady, does not reveal her age. The monologue built by the actor tells the experiences and stories of a drag who passed 70 years.
Unfortunately, the LGBT public G is the one that segregates the most, is the one that discriminates the most. And I think it’s important for us to bring this awareness work that… The 40 50 60+ is still an active audience, it’s still a strong audience, both for relationships, for sex, and for work I like Vera to be able to raise awareness of this community that 40 (years old) for me is the new twenties. Like, I’m seeing people fulfill themselves, I’m fulfilling myself professionally at 35
Alexandre Santucci, actor and performer of drag queen Vera Ronzella
I had the pleasure of having this conversation in the theater dressing room, minutes before Vera debuted on stage. And much of what I heard from actor Alexandre I also share. Mainly from machismo, which exists within the LGBTQIA+ community.
“We are men, and our society is very sexist. We only reproduce what the straight man does. We love what we hate most, right? We like men, but they are our examples, our parents, our grandparents, or the public figures we see in the media. But we are still men, and men, of all society, are the ones who segregate the most. Let’s add the cisgender white man. He is the one that segregates the most”, adds Alexandre.
If we have the strength to repeat what we’ve seen our whole lives, we also have the strength to break patterns.
Regardless of age, for us in the community, society already segregates us. And people at the height of our youth fight for inclusion every day.
But does it have an expiration date? He’s over 30, he’s out. Too old to be one of us.
But who are “we”?
We have two certainties: that we will grow old and that we will die. So let’s age in the best way, let’s age younger. As a drag friend of mine says, he calls Lulu Kallas, he’s already over 40, his drag is classy and he says ‘I’m not old, I’ve been young for longer’, and I think that’s amazing. I think this sentence is wonderful and I like to absorb it for Vera
Alexandre Santucci, actor and performer of drag queen Vera Ronzella
Sorry Alexandre or Vera, I apologize to Lulu, but I will also use that phrase.
And I liked it so much that it goes to the title of this article.
And that we remain, in spirit, young for a long time, and that our body, not so much younger, be respected as it should be.
- Production: Letícia Brito and Carol Raciunas
Source: CNN Brasil
