Women at Brazil Carnival push back vs harassment
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Ana Lobo, who is six months pregnant, was at a pre-Carnival street party last weekend when a man started yelling and calling her names.
“Whore!” she remembered him saying, apparently because she was wearing a revealing top.
“Some men have this feeling that they can do whatever to your body,” said Lobo, a 29-year-old artist who later that night attended one of the many feminist-themed parties. “It’s time for women to take advantage of this moment” to push back,” she said.
Many women in Latin America’s largest nation are doing exactly that during this year’s Carnival celebrations, with block parties of all-female musicians, shirts, necklaces and crowns with messages like “my breasts, my rules” and several campaigns to report and crackdown on harassment.
The #metoo movement against harassment that is roiling the US has yet to catch on in Brazil, which has one of the world’s highest homicide rates for women, according to the Brazilian nonprofit Mapa da Violencia.
But while women’s groups say that Brazil has a long way to go to address inequality and ingrained machismo, they see glimmers of a potentially bigger movement in the public dialogue about harassment during Carnival and what authorities and several organizations are doing to crack down on it.
The massive party officially begins today and goes through Wednesday, but in some cities, such as Rio de Janeiro, it’s a multi-week event. The hundreds of block parties often include heavy drinking and round-the-clock samba dancing and they come during the Southern Hemisphere’s sweaty summer month of February, when the heat drives many to wear few clothes.
Debora Thome, who in 2015 co-organized a block party called “Mulheres Rodadas,” or “Women Who Get Around,” says Carnival is a good time to focus on fighting harassment because it forces the question of respect amid scantily dressed partygoers.
“A woman can be naked in the street and nobody should be allowed to touch her,” said Thome, a former reporter currently working on a doctorate on female participation in Brazilian politics.