April 19, 2022

17:04

Ívina Garcia – From Cenarium Magazine

MANAUS – After a six-month journey, the student and researcher Álex Souza de Sá, 20 years old, became the first non-binary person from Amazonas to be registered in a public notary’s office. The longing for recognition already existed inside Álex. For years, the will to have her gender respected and registered led the young woman to resort to Justice.

In Amazonas, the researcher found little support from the laws and almost no judicial support for the change in registration, it was then after a publication of the Public Defender of Rio de Janeiro, in which the agency was performing an action, providing judicial sentence for the notaries to rectify the name and gender, that the young woman saw a chance to have her official recognition.

Non-binary people are those who do not identify exclusively with the masculine and feminine genders and go by neutral pronouns, or the gender they feel comfortable with.

As a student and Pibic/Ufam researcher, Álex tells that the process began even before the trip, when she saved months of scholarship to travel from Manaus to Rio de Janeiro. Receiving only R$ 400.00, she managed to travel in August 2021 to the Rio de Janeiro capital.

“And it all worked out, I arrived in RJ, took part in the action, and got the sentence. At that moment I was, partially, a non-binary Brazilian citizen, I just needed to effect the rectification in Amazonas,” she recalls.

Obstacle

When arriving in Manaus, Álex was faced with another obstacle: the registry office where she was registered didn’t have the non-binary gender in its system.

“I had to hear them say that “this gender doesn’t exist”, they told me they would consult a judge, and that’s what I got back. I had to keep sending messages asking about the change in the registration systems, because they are set up in the male-female binary.

After another month of insistence, Álex turned to the Public Defender’s Office of the State of Amazonas, requesting the fulfillment of the sentence by the registry office, which continued without updating the system.

“And only then I finally got my name and gender rectified, officially Álex exists, the first legally rectified non-binary Amazonian in the state, and possibly the first in the North Region as well.”

Recognition and acceptance

Since she was a little girl, Álex recognized herself as outside heteronormativity. She says that, despite not understanding and identifying its nuances, as a child, society molded Álex to act like a boy, but her nature was different. In a first discovery, still in adolescence, she believed she was a gay boy, and although she assumed herself as one, the feeling of not belonging still existed. 

“One fact that really marked me was in elementary school. On a specific day I was playing ‘trissilomé’ with a classmate, and the mother of a student came to me and said that I couldn’t be playing that because it was a girl’s game, I was outraged and that day I told her: ‘I don’t want to be a girl or a boy, I just want to play in peace'”.

However, it was only in high school that the issues of gender identity returned with force and caused more confusion in Álex’s mind. She did not recognize herself as a man and did not even see herself as a woman.

“On a certain day, I went to research about this feeling of not belonging, and I came upon Bryanna Nasck, an influencer who was talking about non-binariness. And when I listened to what she was saying in her content, I felt contemplated, completely, with the term. I realized that I am not forced to be something that society always tries to impose on us. Non-binarity brought me the peace I wanted, it gave me the freedom so that I can build my identity with my own hands.”

Álex’s journey is one more of thousands of non-binary people seeking the rectification of their identity. Because she is the first in the state, she opens space for others to secure their rights with less difficulty. She believes that her struggle is nothing more than a political and critical act.

“I emphasize that this journey of mine should not be romanticized, I want it to be a reason for criticism and a reason for struggle. Amazonas has a lot to advance in terms of support for trans people, and much more when it comes to non-binary people. The start has been set! We will make the institutions adapt to our realities, silenced during colonization, with the extermination of the indigenous people who carried with them other genders besides male and female”, she concludes.