For both the United States and Brazil, the 1960s was a time of massive change.

In the US,

the Civil Rights Movement emerged in the 1960s, where oppressed people united to demand

change in the way they were treated. During this time, women’s rights, African American rights,

Latino rights, Native American rights, and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) rights

all advocated for in one form or another. As a result of the advocacy of Americans to better the

conditions of these oppressed people, various social and legal changes were made. For example,

in this period the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, banning segregation and discrimination

based on race and sex within public facilities.1 Of specific interest for this project will be the

women’s rights movement and the LGBT movement, as both of these called into question issues

of gender and sexuality.

For women in the United States, the 1960s would largely be characterized by the

emergence of Second-Wave Feminism, which, among other things, aimed to give women an

equal opportunity to work and expand reproductive rights. Feminists in this movement aimed to

eradicate the barriers which had kept women from having opportunities equal to that of men,

pinning them against institutions such as the church which asserted that the role of women was to

cater to men. A large proponent of the endeavor to expand career opportunities to women was

the President's Commission on the Status of Women, which was founded in 1961 by President

John F. Kennedy. The commision played a major role in passing the Equal Pay Act of 1963,

which proclaimed that women cannot be paid less than men for doing the same job. Specifically,

it was the commission's report in 1963 which highlighted the drastic disparity in pay between

1
Alonzo Hamby, ​Outline of US History​ (US Department of State, 2011), 277-281, 307,
https://photos.state.gov/libraries/amgov/30145/publications-english/history_outline.pdf.
men and women that inspired Congress to pass the Equal Pay Act.2 However, even though the

women’s rights movement symbolized progress for women in many ways, in its early years it

was by no means a beacon of equal rights for lesbian women.

At the beginning of Second-Wave Feminism, many key players in the women’s rights

movement felt the need to isolate lesbians from the cause. This discrimination was especially

evident in the internal politics of the National Organization for Women (NOW)--a group

founded in 1966 to advance women’s rights--under the leadership of its first president Betty

Friedan. Friedan was notably against lesbianism in NOW, as it is commonly believed that she

referred to lesbian membership in the organization as a “lavender menace.” Furthermore, Kay

Clarenbach, a board member of NOW during the Friedan years, expressed strong opposition to

using NOW to advance the cause of same-sex couples. Specifically, she wrote in 1970 that if

NOW were to advance the ability of homosexual couples to privately engage in sexual activity, it

would lead to the ruin of NOW and jeopardize the progress women had made.3 As a result of this

intraorganizational stigmatization of lesbians, many of the organization’s lesbian leaders would

be purged from NOW, such as Ti-Grace Atkinson and Rita Mae Brown. In fact, NOW officials

would go as far as to ban these women from taking part in the organization’s functions.4 To the

relief of lesbian women, this schism within NOW would largely dissipate once Friedan stepped

down as president of NOW in 1970. Under the leadership of her successor, Aileen Hernandez,

NOW would pass a resolution in 1971 declaring that lesbians’ rights existed under the umbrella

2
Sara Evans, “The Women’s Movement in the United States in the 1960s,” in ​Challenging Times: The
Women’s Movement in Canada and the United States​, eds. Constance Backhouse and David H. Flaherty,
(Montreal; Kingston: Mcgill-Queen’s University Press, 1992), 65-67, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt81bsh.10.
3
Stephanie Gilmore and Elizabeth Kaminski, "A Part and Apart: Lesbian and Straight Feminist
Activists Negotiate Identity in a Second-Wave Organization," ​Journal of the History of Sexuality​ 16, no. 1 (2007):
105, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30114203​.
4
Ibid., 103.
of women’s rights.5 However, the point remains that in its founding years, NOW was hostile to

lesbian members.

Outside of NOW, the LGBT community gained a large amount of visibility from the

Stonewall Uprising of 1969. With many of its members having seen the changes which other

groups achieved through their grassroots activism throughout the 60s, the LGBT community was

inspired to take bold measures to advocate for their rights. Thus, the Stonewall Uprising

occurred. In this rebellion, gay and transgender people rioted in response to police arresting

patrons of the Stonewall Inn, a private bar which catered to homosexuals. This raw and powerful

reaction to the injustices the LGBT community faced would be a catalyst for the emergence of

the gay rights movement.6 Unfortunately, while visibility and compassion for oppressed people

across the US was rapidly increasing, the maltreatment and oppression of people in Brazil began

to occur at a much higher rate in the 1960s following a coup which ushered in a military

dictatorship.

In the early 1960s, Brazil was under the leadership of democratically elected leaders.

However, by this point, tensions between the extreme left and conservative military leaders had

been brewing, with many conservatives fearing the prospect of Brazil becoming a communist

country. As a result, the military would come together to oust president Joao Goulart, who had

openly expressed disdain for military leaders and supported the legalization of the communist

party in Brazil. In the absence of Goulart’s leadership, the military took control of Brazil,

marking a forceful shift to conservatism which the country did not choose. During this time, the

government intended to repair Brazil’s economy and stop communism from spreading, both

5
Gilmore and Kaminski, “A Part and Apart,” 106.
6
Nicholas Edsall, ​Toward Stonewall: Homosexuality and Society in the Modern Western World​ (Charlottesville;
London: University of Virginia Press, 2003), 335, ​http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.fiu.edu/stable/j.ctt6wrkgb.
domestically and abroad.7 The government’s pugnacious pursuit of these goals led them to

restrict Brazilians’ basic freedoms. It did this in a series of institutional acts, which were

powerful decrees made by Brazil’s executive branch during the military dictatorship. The First

Institutional Act, passed in 1964, gave the president the power to remove a citizen’s political

rights for up to a decade. Under the Second Institutional Act, passed in 1965, all political parties

were banned and two parties were propagated by the government, the National Renewal Alliance

(ARENA) and the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB).8 Finally, under the Fifth

Institutional Act, passed in 1968, Congress was disbanded, censorship was authorized, and the

constitution was suspended.9 In response to this dictatorship, opposition movements emerged

throughout Brazil, and the most extreme opposition the regime faced were Marxist guerrilla

fighters who aimed to overthrow the dictatorship. From 1968-1971, these men and women stole

weapons from army barracks, robbed banks, and kidnapped foreign ambassadors.10 However,

dramatic and brutal authoritarian tactics were employed to crush these rebels.11

As a result of the intense authoritarianism which plagued Brazil from 1960 to 1970, this

period was generally a rough time for Brazilian homosexuals. During the dictatorship, Brazil’s

leaders were keen on maximizing their control of the populace and minimizing dissent. This

aspiration largely led them to target young people in particular, as they knew that the young

people of this time would become the men and women who shaped Brazil’s future. Thus, for

7
E. Bradford Burns, ​A History of Brazil ​(New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 437-438, 450,
http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.fiu.edu/stable/10.7312/burn07954.
8
Ibid., 455-456.
9
Ibid., 460.
10
James N. Green, "’Who Is the Macho Who Wants to Kill Me?’ Male Homosexuality, Revolutionary Masculinity,
and the Brazilian Armed Struggle of the 1960s and 1970s," ​Hispanic American Historical Review​ 92, no. 3 (2012):
444-445,
http://ezproxy.fiu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=98887255&site=
ehost-live&scope=site.
11
Ibid., 465.
leaders of the military dictatorship, it was essential to idealize among Brazilian youths particular

conservative values, such as monogamy, heterosexuality, and chastity. The imperativeness of

this endeavor was underscored in the minds of Brazil’s leaders by the powerful viewpoint that

communists would attempt to seduce youths into living overtly sexual and depraved lives, in the

process making them perverse communists who would ruin Brazil. These anxieties about the

Brazilian youth were furthered by student protests, as seeing young students at the forefront of

opposition to the regime promoted fear among the dictatorship that communism lied in Brazil’s

future.12 However, there was a strong dissonance between how Brazil’s leadership depicted

Marxist rebels and who they actually were.

Despite the propaganda which depicted the leftists who opposed Brazil as sexually loose,

the Marxist guerrilla fighters who opposed Brazil’s regime were staunchly against

homosexuality. Specifically, within these leftist groups, a desire to follow the tradition of USSR

and Cuban communism inspired them to condemn homosexuality as those regimes did.

Additionally, many leftists viewed homosexuality as an indulgent behavior which was associated

with the moral corruption of the bourgeois, therefore they believed that a communist society

would lack homosexuality. They also felt that male homosexuality implied femininity, thus,

accepting male homosexuality would counter the masculine image of the revolutionaries.13 As a

result, if a rebel confessed to having a sexual attraction to the same sex, they would be exiled.14

Therefore, Brazilian militants who were homosexual were forced to hide their homosexuality.

One homosexual man who was a rebel at this time, Herbert Daniel, discussed how when faced

12
Benjamin Cowan, "Sex and the Security State: Gender, Sexuality, and "Subversion" at Brazil's Escola Superior De
Guerra, 1964-1985," ​Journal of the History of Sexuality ​16, no. 3 (2007): 464-465,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/30114193.
13
Green, "Who Is the Macho,” 450.
14
Ibid., 461.
with these circumstances, he simply chose to abstain from sex, as overthrowing the dictatorship

was more important to him than seeking sexual pleasure.15 Nonetheless, the point remains that

these rebel groups were not welcoming to homosexuals like Daniel, as these groups forced them

to conceal their sexuality. Thus, even within the Leftist rebellion, commonly held beliefs about

masculinity and heterosexuality dictated the experiences of Brazilian homosexuals.

However, despite the overwhelmingly patriarchal structure of Brazil from 1960 to 1970,

women still adamantly worked to make sure their voices among the regime’s opposition were

acknowledged. Not only did women participate in peaceful demonstrations against the regime,16

but they also made up about one-fifth of the armed leftist resistance to the regime.17 Therefore,

although the military dictatorship encouraged quiet subservience from the people, its leadership

facilitated the opposite. The cruel authoritarianism which characterized the dictatorship

galvanized many Brazilians in opposition of what it stood for, in the process inspiring many

women to take a more active roles in politics.

15
Green, "Who Is the Macho,”, 462.
16
Burns, ​ ​A History of Brazil​, 450.
17
Green, "Who Is the Macho,”​ 454.