Taking inspiration from the approach of heterosexuality as a political regime, as proposed by lesbian feminism and queer theories, this study starts from the premise that mononormativity (Porto, 2018)permeates the legal apparatus of the state and, simultaneously, transcends it, imbuing social relations and cultural practices in ways not always evident.
Building on this intuition, I begin this reflection with an analysis of the gaps in the legal sphere of monogamy in Brazil. Next, I present an analysis of the interactions between the state and monogamy in the context of educational and public health policies. From this discussion, I address the tendency toward the monogamization (Rothmüller, 2021) of relationships during the Covid-19 pandemic and the representation of relational dissidences as threats to the moral order of society.
Finally, I propose an analysis of the criminalization of youth culture in the suburbs of Salvador, Bahia, as an example of the consolidation of monogamy as an implicit component of public order policy.
Methodology
This interconnected set of questions presented in the abstract form the core of the TRIALOGUES[1]project, a three-year study conducted by the Center for Social Studies (CES) at the University of Coimbra (Portugal) in collaboration with the Federal University of Bahia (Brazil).
The project included an (ongoing) two years long fieldwork phase in Salvador de Bahia, enabling the collection and analysis of a wide range of materials, including court decisions, health authority recommendations, municipal decrees, and press materials. During this phase, I conducted biographical interviews with ten people who self-identified as “non-monogamous” and eight expert interviews with activists, jurists, and academics specializing in non-monogamous relationships.
Biographical interviews ranged from one to three hours in duration, following the Interpretative Method of Biographical Narratives (Wengraf, 2003). It is crucial to note that the term “non-monogamies” is used in this project as an umbrella term encompassing polyamorous relationships, open relationships, swinger communities, relational anarchists, multi-parental reproductive and parenting projects, as well as simultaneous relationships in queer, kink, and BDSM contexts, among other dissidences to mononormativity. Emphasizing this inclusive definition of the term, the call for participants was disseminated both on social media and in nighttime entertainment venues frequented by youth in the suburbs of Salvador.
The interviewees were aged between 20 and 45, with over half having higher education. Four identified as Black, one as Indigenous, and four as White. Regarding gender, three identified as non-binary, including one non-binary transvestite [travesti] and the other were cisgender. Finally, five identified as bisexual, three as gay, one as lesbian, and another as pansexual.
Legal Recognition of Non-Monogamies in Brazil
Before exploring the relationship between monogamy and the Covid-19 health crisis, it is crucial to understand that monogamy is deeply rooted in Brazil due to the influence of European canonical law during the colonial period. This monogamous system persisted over centuries, undergoing several legal changes, such as the Filipin Ordinances, the introduction of civil marriage in 1916, and finally, the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2010 by the Federal Supreme Court (STF).
However, in recent decades, some challenges to monogamous norms have emerged:
- Redefined Concubinage: In the 1960s, with support from feminist struggles, the concept of “concubinage” underwent a significant transformation. It shifted from being an unprotected and stigmatized figure to acquiring legal rights in specific situations, primarily related to inheritance and alimony.
- Recognition of Multiparenthood: In 2016, the Supreme Federal Court (STF) recognized certain forms of multiparenthood. This recognition stemmed from extending filiation rights to what’s known as “socio-affective parenthood” (Calderón, 2018), allowing a child to have more than two parental figures. Initially intended for “rearranged” monogamous families, this recognition paved the way for the acknowledgment of a still limited but growing number of polyparental filiations. These involve polyamorous contexts and have garnered media attention in recent years.
- Formalizing Polyamorous Relationships: Since 2012, there have been efforts to formalize polyamorous relationships through public deeds in notary offices across various Brazilian cities (Pilão, 2021).
Despite the strength of the emerging regulations regarding non-monogamous forms of kinship, which garnered international attention for Brazil, these recognition attempts encountered several conservative setbacks. The Supreme Federal Court (STF) reversed the trend of recognizing stable unions parallel to marriage with a 2020 decision that appealed to monogamy as a fundamental principle of the legal system. Furthermore, the National Council of Justice (CNJ) blocked the drafting of non-monogamous deeds in notary offices in 2018 and imposed stricter criteria for the recognition of multiparenthood.
In conclusion, it’s crucial to recognize that state recognition is not an overarching goal for all non-monogamous individuals, and it may not even be a priority for the majority. However, there are specific situations where this recognition becomes imperative, particularly concerning filiation rights and non-monogamous reproductive projects. This need for recognition has driven the establishment of non-monogamous birth certificates and, on occasion, non-monogamous de facto unions through specific judicial decisions. Despite the hurdles, these developments maintain Brazil at the forefront of recognizing and legitimizing non-monogamous forms of kinship on the international stage.
Monogamy and Education
As previously indicated, the ‘norm of monogamy’ extends beyond the confines of the legal domain, exerting a substantial influence in various spheres, including public health, where its importance is underscored through educational campaigns.
One such campaign is the ‘Strong Families’ educational program, which is a Brazilian adaptation of the ‘Strengthening Families Programme’ (SFP 10-14 UK). Launched during the tenures of both Dilma Rousseff and further supported under Jair Bolsonaro’s administration, this program originated in the 1980s under the guidance of Karol L. Kumpfer (2018). Its primary objective is to guide children and adolescents in mitigating risks such as drug use, unwanted pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections, and anti-social behavior. Notably, the program places significant emphasis on the family structure, particularly promoting families rooted in marriage and sexual fidelity. Noteworthy evidence of the program’s effectiveness lies in the reduction of participants reporting having had multiple sexual partners within the last twelve months post-program participation. This illustrates that the program serves not only as an educational tool but also reinforces monogamy and abstinence as facets of public health policy.
In a similar vein, the #TudoTemSeuTempo campaign was introduced in early 2020 by the Ministry of Family and Human Rights. Minister Damares Alves, an advocate for this campaign, emphasized abstinence as the most effective method for preventing pregnancy, even making an anachronistic reference to the HIV threat while suggesting that postponing the onset of sexual activity could save lives (Carmo, 2019).
Naturally, these campaigns encountered substantial opposition from healthcare professionals in Brazil. They contended that the campaigns’ omission of contraceptive methods could exacerbate the aforementioned risks. Additionally, critiques highlighted gender bias within the campaign, as it seemed to disproportionately burden women with the responsibility of postponing sexual activity to prevent unwanted pregnancies. This serves as an illustrative example of how mononormativity, when adopted as a public health policy, transforms into a surveillance tool for monitoring women’s sexuality, particularly among adolescents. Concurrently, it is essential to recognize that ‘anti-gender campaigns’ perpetuate cultural anxieties about promiscuity and the initiation of sexual activity, effectively continuing the moral backlash that originated decades ago during the conservative reaction to the HIV crisis.
In this context, has ‘monogamy’ predominantly served as a conservative health strategy, or has it wielded a more pervasive influence, blurring the boundaries between ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ discourses during the pandemic? Specifically, within the context of Brazil’s Covid-19 response marked by denialism, who are the key political actors responsible for translating conservative sexual morality into public health policies during the pandemic?
The Impact of the Pandemic on Non-Monogamous Relationships
While exploring these questions, it is important to remember that the Covid-19 pandemic, with its social distancing guidelines, including specific calls for “safer sex” by a number of health authorities, implicitly promoted seeking refuge in the nuclear family or in a very limited number of relationships.
Among such recommendations, the “safer sex” guidelines from the New York Department of Health are noteworthy, as they were translated and disseminated in Brazil by some of the most active public health institutions in the fight against the central government’s denialist discourse, such as the Fiocruz Foundation. Presented as a compendium of imperatives – “Have sex only with people you know well” – these guidelines explicitly included some aimed at discouraging non-monogamous relationships, such as the recommendation that “if two is company, then three (or more) is definitely a crowd” (2021).
The influence of these guidelines may depend on various factors, but I would say that they set the tone for the “common sense”, everyday norms influencing sexual behaviors and kinship relationships. In this sense, they were part of the context in which Catarina, a 28-year-old Indigenous woman, saw the end of her open relationship with another woman. They began meeting less frequently and, in her words “the mere idea of being physically intimate with someone else became unimaginable”. Ariel, a 35-year-old, white, non-binary transvestite, restricted their contacts during lockdown periods to their biological family and two established relationships. Eduardo, a cis black man, 26-year-old, returned to his rural hometown with his boyfriend after losing their jobs. This displacement interrupted his exploration of non-monogamous relationships. Similarly, Diego, a 33-year-old, white gay man, mentioned that the pandemic halted his process of discovering new affective and sexual possibilities outside of monogamy. Joaquim, a 29-year-old white gay man, also restricted his attempts to open up his relationship until his boyfriend proposed opening up after long-waited vaccination.
These examples suggest that in Brazil, as in other places, non-monogamous relationships were forced to seek refuge in the nuclear family, similar to the process of monogamization observed elsewhere. Additionally, the need for economic support during the pandemic led many to rely on partners or their biological families.
It is important to notice, though, that despite the recommendations, at least some non-monogamous relationships managed to contest the hegemonic norms governing the sexual field during the pandemic. I would like to mention, at this point, the case of abovementioned Eduardo who, while isolated with his boyfriend in a city in the interior of the state of Bahia, met Miguel, a young man from Salvador, through an online app. This marked the beginning of virtual communication between the three of them, which lasted for several weeks, until Miguel made a proposal that Eduardo paraphrases as follows: ‘Well, I got a negative result on the Covid test. I’m isolated. You both are too. Come spend a weekend here in Salvador. Come by car, we’ll stay in such-and-such a place, together, for a weekend.’ Shortly after, the three of them ‘broke the WHO rule,’ which here significantly blends with the mandate to close the relationship:
We left the interior. We came here [Salvador de Bahia]. We spent a weekend with that guy. And then we went back to the interior. Then we started doing that frequently, like every 15 days, and we would meet up with him, right? That’s when things started to normalize. Bus stations began to reopen. Rules were gradually relaxed. And you could go out wearing masks, like that, in one way or another. And then we came here. And we started to bond more with him too. And he… he began to get involved a lot with both of us.
According to Eduardo, this marked the beginning of a series of simultaneous relationships in which roles such as ‘lover,’ ‘connection,’ and ‘boyfriend’ gradually became intertwined with one another.
As this example illustrates, the use of risk reduction strategies can be crucial in enabling sexual and emotional life during pandemic periods. Indeed, if there’s one thing we learned from the HIV/AIDS pandemic, it’s that the discourse of health authorities rarely can replace prevention and mutual care strategies developed by sexual countercultures, as they can easily become conveyors of morally charged discourses. In this regard, labeling non-monogamous relationships as risky relationships should be approached with the utmost critical attention, especially when it assumes the authority of biomedical knowledge.
Mononormativity and the Criminalization of ‘Paredão’ Parties
Beyond the effects described in the private sphere, mononormativity also plays a role in the organization of access, transit, and use of public space, although not always obvious. An example of this is the criminalization of so-called “paredão” parties, which take place on the streets of the suburbs of major Brazilian cities. During the Covid-19 pandemic, these parties were severely repressed and framed as “crimes against public health” by Governor Rui Costa of the Workers’ Party (PT). As a representative example, it can be remembered that in the state of Bahia, in particular, the military police carried out more than thirteen hundred interventions to prevent these parties in just three months at the beginning of 2021 (Wendell & Vilar, 2021).
This prohibition received criticism, including within the PT itself, with the perception that the policies were discriminatory and racist. The repression of ‘paredão’ parties was also widely covered in local media, fueling a moral panic rhetoric around the youth who participate in these events. Articles often highlighted the lack of masks, alcohol and drug consumption, as well as the presence of sexual activities, both real and simulated, in the usual dances at such parties. As a result, the participants were stigmatized as abject subjects. The figures of the ‘putão’, young men who engage in promiscuous behavior, and the ‘puta’, young women who assert their sexual autonomy through provocative dances (Pinho, 2019), became specific targets of stigmatization. However, in empirical terms, no direct link was ever established between these parties and an increase in Covid-19 infections.
In my view, the repression of “paredão” parties can be read as part of a broader process of “de-Africanization” of public space, where society attempts to erase traces of African and Black influence while exploiting the workforce of these populations in precarious and often high-risk jobs. In this sense, it is appropriate to draw a historical parallel between the persecution of Black culture in the public space of the city of Salvador in the late 19th century, in the name of “progress, civilization, and hygiene” (Troi, 2021, 46), and that which occurs in the name of similar values during the Covid-19 pandemic.
In this process, police repression and the moral panic narratives surrounding peripheral culture divert attention from the structural causes of the overrepresentation of Black populations in Covid-19 mortality rates, such as the lack of basic infrastructure and poor housing conditions in urban peripheries. In conclusion, police pressure and media coverage surrounding peripheral youth are rooted in a moral stratification of risk perception. This allows values such as abstinence, sobriety, and monogamy to play a significant role in public order policies.
Conclusions
The analysis of public policies in close relation with biographical narratives contributes to understand some of the ways in which pandemic episodes, such as HIV/AIDS and Covid-19 related ones, represent opportunities for the intensification of moral surveillance of behaviors and the medicalization of public space. Well beyond its effects over the “private” or “intimate” realms, this often results in the persecution of cultural expressions of marginalized communities. This trend is not unique in the history of pandemics, and critical analyses, such as those proposed by queer communities and theories at the beginning of the HIV crisis, have been dedicated to unraveling the effects of these moral responses. However, sometimes it is more difficult to detect the underlying moral assumptions when the discourses come from opposition to conservative forces.
In the case of Brazil, the need to combat the denialism of the Bolsonaro government has led to a moral stratification of risk perception, with specific effects on the sexual field, in consonance with a certain hygienist excess in the discourse of the left. This was evident in my view when intellectual movements on the left called not to support mobilizations of the Brazilian Black movement in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, out of fear of increasing Covid-19 cases.
As demonstrated in the case of non-monogamous relationships, biosafety policies during Covid-19, as during the HIV crisis, are based on assigning different degrees of risk and legitimacy to different bodies, sexual practices, and kinship relationships. The polarization of the public sphere in Brazil is a paradigmatic example of this double moral scrutiny to which relational dissidence has been subjected, at the intersection between the defense of traditional values and the moralization of containment measures.
In summary, pandemics do not only affect public health but also serve as an excuse for the consolidation of deeply rooted moral and cultural norms in society’s public order.
[1] “Emerging Biopolitics of Gender, Kinship, and Reproduction: Trialogues from the South [TRIALOGUES]”, funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 894643.
