Laertes: “I don’t think there is essentially a man and a woman”

Eight years ago, Laerte Coutinho has taken longer to get ready. She arrives at the interview upset about not having her nails done, says she doesn’t go out without painting her eyebrows and invests a lot of time in choosing her dress. All of this means that, since she began the process of becoming a woman, the cartoonist, now 65 years old, has been late in her commitments. On the way, there’s still always someone asking for a selfie with her. These requests are expected to increase from the 19th, when Laerte premieres in 190 countries on Netflix.

Directed by Lygia Barbosa da Silva and Eliane Brum, the Brazilian documentary reveals her house, in São Paulo, which is under construction, the intimacy (Laerte appears taking a bath), the coexistence with her cats, Celina and Muriel. It accompanies an important moment in the family: the daughter’s wedding. Laila follows happily, arm in arm with her father, down the aisle. The production also investigates the comic artist by delving into the cartoons she signs and the Coutinhos’ trunk of home movies. In the recordings made in childhood, the boy Laerte seems to be the heir of his mother, Lila, 90 years old: in appearance (they are identical!) and in his enviable good humor.

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If there is a sin, it refers to the lack of an answer to the question that causes so much curiosity: why did Laerte become a woman? The absence is due to the character’s lack of interest in the question. Men and women are not equal, in biological terms, and their psychic or “soul” differences, according to her, border on invention. It is not something natural, it is a social construction. The genesis of her “transgenderness” (a term she adopts to describe her own experience) matters less than the world we must collectively make from now on. She talked to CLAUDIA:

CLAUDIA: It took the film’s crew a year to convince you to show your house. Why the reluctance?

Laertes: I have the impression that my house is never ready. It is an eternal improvisation. She represents me. I am also an eternal improvisator (laughs).

CLAUDIA: How was the experience of making the film?

Laertes: A little embarrassing. But there’s another part of me that feels worthy of attention and wants to talk, even though my speech isn’t very clear, not always very coherent. I change my mind and I have ideas that fight with each other.

CLAUDIA: What motivates the part of you that wants to express itself?

Laerte: When I was a teenager, I didn’t know homosexuals, transvestites and transgenders who could inspire any kind of empowerment in children and young people. There was an almost total absence of positive role models. At 17, I was terrified of perceiving a homosexual component in myself. I thought: “What kind of life awaits me?” A queer was highly stigmatized and ridiculed. So, I hid my homosexuality, I didn’t admit it even to myself. Today there are good models. I’m one of them.

CLAUDIA: In the film, you hypothesize that you had to become a woman in order to be able to relate to men.

Laerte: This is the hypothesis of some friends and it seems reasonable to me. But I don’t do a deep investigation. I know how I currently live and that’s what matters. I don’t feel the need to do an autopsy on the corpse (laughs). At one point in my life, towards the end of my third marriage to women, I realized that my homosexual desire was undeniable.

CLAUDIA: Was it harder for your two children or for your parents to accept your transformation?

Laertes: It wasn’t difficult for anyone. Not easy. People were accepting. With each acceptance, new challenges and doors open. I experience this in my process and I imagine it is also like this for my parents, children, siblings and friends. There are conflicts that never get resolved. They just change.

CLAUDIA: Why are you Grandpa and not Grandma?

Laerte: My grandson has two grandmothers. Rafael, my son, thought it was important that he had a grandfather. For me it’s all right.

CLAUDIA: Your mother’s first reaction, when she heard that you liked to dress as a woman, was to offer her some of her skirts. Did you get to use them?

Yea! But I shortened everything. I wore a black dress a lot. My mother has a wonderful intelligence and humor. She is a biologist, she preserves her vision of masculine and feminine supported by nature, but she has dealt well with the fact that she had a son for almost 60 years and now has a daughter, or something like that (laughs).

CLAUDIA: Did the death of your son Diogo (in 2004, victim of a car accident) influence the gender change process?

Laerte: Diogo died and everything was suspended. I had already been living the discovery, but his departure made everything freeze. I felt firsthand how fragile life is and that helped me not to negotiate anymore. It would be ridiculous to spend my entire existence pretending to be something I’m not.

CLAUDIA: You usually say: “I feel like a woman”. What does that mean, exactly?

Laertes: That I feel like a woman, why! Does that mean I’m a woman? Not. But the position, the role, the place of a woman in society can perfectly be occupied by me.

CLAUDIA: When did you start to feel like a woman?

Laerte: I asked my mother the same question, and she replied: “When did I give birth”. And giving birth has a different meaning for each one. This I will never experience. I saw myself as a woman when I shaved my whole body. The feeling of lightness, of taking off a furry garment, was indescribable. I was the same, however, modified in my self-view.

CLAUDIA: Were the affective relationships easier after coming out?

Laertes: No. I never woke up together again. Sex is not that important. And as I said: there are conflicts that cannot be resolved. There is also this thing of always wanting to appear well-groomed. We don’t wake up tidy, right (laughs)?

CLAUDIA: Are we moving towards a less prejudiced society?

Laerte: We are heading towards an opening, but it is difficult to see the scoreboard. We score goals and take them. When I was a teenager, I didn’t see episodes like the lynching of the transvestite Dandara, which happened recently in Fortaleza. Opening moves generate violent countermovements. The election of Trump in the United States is linked to the election of Obama. Trump has spent eight years defending the idea that Obama is not American. He did it because the other is black, and he is racist.

CLAUDIA: Your speech has a strong political bias. Are all transgender women feminists?

Laertes: I am. The struggle of transgenders is different from that of women, but it is very clear. It’s like that with blacks too. These movements represent different people, but they have their own identities. Further apart is the heterosexual white male. He has no problems and he thinks that one of the nice perks of being a man is that. Someone says: “We need to debate”. He retorts: “Debate what? I’m here doing my job, I don’t create problems. The women, the queers, the blacks are the ones who invent difficulties”. For me, not having an identity and thinking you don’t face difficulties is a big problem.

CLAUDIA: What defines a woman?

Laertes: To a doctor I say: “I am a man”. Because I have a penis, prostate and gonads, which men have. If the question is asked morally and ethically, the conversation is different: each religion, philosophy or culture has its vision. But if the issue comes from the State, it has no place. Why does my ID need to indicate my gender? Reality is not just one thing, it depends on a point of view. I don’t think there is essentially a man and a woman.

CLAUDIA: How so?

Laerte: A gender hierarchy was created based on power relations. In the use of the bathrooms, for example. An “authority” always appears to say: “You cannot enter this space”. What’s behind this? Conservatism meaning that separation exists for the safety of women. Will it be? Burqa, distinctive toilets and pink subway car are the same thing. He wants to show that all men are brutes and women need protection. Shouldn’t we, then, be educating animal men instead of confining women?

CLAUDIA: The documentary follows your dilemma of implanting silicone in your breasts. Did you resolve the issue?

Laertes: Not yet. I joke that I will only look at a breast when I find a version worthy of a 60-year-old lady. The problem with putting on a 20-year-old breast is that you start wanting a 20-year-old waist, a 20-year-old neck, a tummy… The process is endless. I accept my body very well, I am grateful to it, I don’t feel the need to undergo surgery. It’s a good body, it never let me down.