From shame to pride, and everything in between | Kris Barz Mendonça | TEDxCSU

Homophobia works in different ways around the world, but its modus operandi very often is rooted in misogyny and toxic masculinity. The consequences for queer people are very commonly shame and self-hatred. We need to heal ourselves. Art and therapy can be important tools to deal with PTSD based on homophobic bullying.

Kris Barz Mendonça is a Brazilian Colorado-based queer artist. His body of work includes and merges illustration, comics, storytelling, drag and dance. Through art, he questions, challenges and reinterprets traditional gender roles, hetero-normativity and toxic masculinity, creating his own path to healing trauma caused by compulsory gay shaming and homophobic bullying.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

Hi everyone!

(Applause) (Cheers)

Hi. Ready for some drag story time?

(Audience) Yes!
Kris Barz Mendonça: All right.

Hello.

My name is Kris Barz Mendonça,

or at least the person
who is underneath all of this.

I'm a comics writer and artist.

Today, I would like to talk to you
about a few themes,

and with the help of my comics,

I would love you to join me
in this little journey of mine

growing up in Brazil.

I was born in 1985.

I'm a kid from the early 90s.

My family moved
around the country quite a lot

because of my father's work
in the military.

But at that time, we lived in a small city
in the countryside of Southern Brazil.

I never behaved

like my parents and other kids
expected a regular boy to behave.

I was sensitive, not at all aggressive,
and for that, I was considered effeminate.

For being how I was,
I was first called "viado,"

which is the bad word people use
for gay people in Brazil,

the f-word here,

and also a sissy, "mulherzinha,"

even before I knew what those meant.

So, with that, I learned that
if I didn't behave like the other boys,

I was not part of them.

Every once in a while,
my father went skydiving with his friends.

He used to say that heights
were his biggest fear,

and by doing that, he was facing them.

So I learned that boys
had to do dangerous things.

I don't think that was
his biggest fear, though.

I think his biggest fear
was that I would actually become "viado."

But he never said that.

So I learned that boys
not only couldn't be afraid,

but most importantly,

they couldn't let others know
about their fears.

He was very strict with me
because of that.

I spent my childhood afraid
of not behaving how he expected me to,

and also afraid of becoming a "gay,"
whatever that was.

At that time, I just knew it was bad.

I also feared other boys.

They were all up in my grill

for every little thing I did or said
that was not manly.

So I learned that if I didn't behave
in a masculine way,

I was automatically considered feminine.

I lived in a constant state of vigilance,
coming mostly from boys and men.

Eventually, I became my own vigilante.

I grew up in this tiny little box
that was so tight, so not my shape,

that it made my childhood miserable.

I was a miserable kid and teenager
because I couldn't be myself.

I couldn't even discover
what myself actually was,

that myself was not only gay,
which I finally accepted at the age of 19,

but also queer.

I did enjoy soccer and cars at first,
but I also wanted to play house and dolls.

Like any other child, I was curious,
and I wanted to explore everything.

Initially, there were
no boundaries in my mind.

I was told about them gradually.

I stayed away from cars, guns and soccer

because playing with boys
involved physical and verbal aggressions.

Being isolated was safer,

so I isolated myself,
started drawing and writing.

So I've told you my name is Kris,

but my whole first name is Krisagon -

not common in Brazil at all, by the way.

I grew up in a country that speaks
a Latin-based language, Portuguese.

We have gendered nouns and adjectives.

In order to make words
masculine or feminine,

we add to the end of the word
an "o" for masculine

or an "a" for feminine.

Because I was considered
effeminate by other kids,

one thing they did
with my name to bully me

was to add an "a" to the end of it.

So "Krisagon" would become "Krisagona."

So I learned that in order
to offend another boy,

all I had to do was call him
anything that resembled a girl,

and whenever it happened to me,
I should be as offended as possible

because nothing could be worse

than being compared to
or to be called a girl.

Boys' stuff had to be rude,
aggressive, uncaring.

That was not me,

so I stayed playing with the girls
or with "girly things."

And the girls were very welcoming to me,

but whenever they wanted
to push me away for some reason,

they just said, "This is a girls' thing."

So I learned that I wasn't
part of the girls either.

I had a cousin the same age as me.

He lived an hour away,
and every once in a while,

his family came to visit
to spend the weekend.

Like me, he was also called "viado"
and "mulherzinha," a sissy,

by other kids.

Like mine, his family was conservative,
but he had some liberties that I didn't.

He could role-play as our favorite
children's TV show host, Xuxa.

He had her official bike and microphone,
both pink, with tassels.

When I was with him, I was granted
some of those liberties too.

He could play with dolls.

I envied him so much
because he must have had so much fun,

and I could never dream to be that close
to such girly things on my own.

The dolls were not his, of course.

They belonged to his female cousins.

He had some liberties,
but still, not one doll of his own.

So I learned that boys
couldn't like pink, like dolls,

or role-play like a parent.

Only girls could do that.

All of these rules were there somehow.

It was like there was
this guidebook for being a boy.

A lot of those rules were spoken -

many times forced upon.

Another whole lot of them
were unspoken,

but you could feel
that they were still there.

I had less and less and less identity,

the more and more rules
were being added to that book,

such as ...

The no-crying rule was of course
one of the first ones:

boys don't cry.

Boys could not sit or stand
crossing their legs,

rest their hands on their waist;

wrists had to be always stiff,
never too loose;

because those were girly things.

I could not have my hair long.

I also learned that I should avoid
anything with the number 24 in my life

because that was a gay number in Brazil.

Yes, a gay number.

(Laughter)

It still is.

In Brazilian senate,
offices go from number 23 to 25.

Soccer players avoid having that number
on the back of their shirts.

And I also learned that
even though girls could wear pants,

boys could never, ever,
wear skirts or earrings.

As a teenager, I learned that in every
new school that I was transferred to,

I had to kiss a girl as soon as possible,
before people started calling me gay.

I also learned that
if I didn't speak aggressively,

I was not feared by the other boys,

and if I spoke softly, which meant girly,

I was not respected.

You probably also had your own book.

Was it any similar to mine?

Do you still keep it?

I remember a summer weekend
my cousin and family came to visit.

My father and other men were planning
on skydiving that Sunday afternoon.

The families had picnics

while watching those brave,
macho men up in the sky.

That afternoon,

I saw the perfect opportunity
to play with dolls.

The mothers prepared the sandwiches.

My sister was probably realizing by then
that, as a girl, that was her job too.

Because we were men,

my cousin, his father
and his older brother and myself

had to do the chores
that were expected from us:

none.

(Laughter)

So, because of that, we just went playing.

And with that, I learned that,
because I was a boy,

I didn't have to do
any cooking or any cleaning.

My father was thousands
of feet up in the sky,

being macho,

facing his fear in order to be praised
by his family for his courage.

Today I know that all he needed was love.

Being admired was his way of getting it

because he didn't know
how to express his feelings.

My cousin and I went straight
to the cornfields.

We were on a mission,

and for that, we would have to use
our creativity and imagination.

There, the corncobs, still a little green,

became dolls with beautiful purple hair

and amazing green and yellow outfits.

From afar, we were just
playing with corncobs.

They could just as well be
airplanes, guns, swords.

We were above any suspicion,
even under my father's eyes,

who ironically could see
everything from above.

That was a happy afternoon.

Oppression can keep us
from discovering who we are.

Gender stereotypes and sexism
condition our minds,

how we treat others,

the biases we have for or against someone.

It dictates the way we have sex,
regardless of our sexualities.

It influences our choices
during elections.

It shapes our identities,
whether you want it or not.

And I'm not talking about
being gay or being straight.

I'm talking about not being free.

In the end of the afternoon,
my father was back.

His time to play was over,
and so was mine.

Nothing could incriminate us

of having played with dolls
and being sissies.

They were just corncobs
left behind on the ground.

My cousin and I grew apart over the years.

I live in Colorado now;
he lives in Estonia.

Now in our 30s, we are both out and proud.

Thanks to the internet, I called him
two years ago in order to reconnect.

I visited him in Estonia,
and we shared our memories and struggles,

finally being ourselves together
as queer cousins, unapologetically.

And we had a lot of fun at the karaoke,

breaking one of those endless rules
in that damn book.

We sang and danced to the Spice Girls.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

And ...

I was Baby Spice, by the way.

(Laughter)

Even though we progress as a society,

bullying, because of sexuality
and gay shaming, still exists

in the US, in Brazil

and many other countries
where it is not illegal to be gay anymore.

Bullying can be
one of the causes of trauma,

and it can intersect with many things.

Homophobia is one of them.

At the same time,

people who grew up
facing oppression like this one

are often told that in the end of the day,

those awful experiences
were actually good to build character.

I've heard that.

That feels like a little pat
on the shoulder that says,

"Hey, you went through this awful thing,
but you're well and you're alive."

Well,

a lot of queer people are not alive.

A lot of queer people are alive,
but are they well?

At what expense?

Their self-esteem?

Their mental health?

Am I and are you really well?

There should be no shame in saying "No."

How can you heal from trauma then?

I can't give you solutions, I'm sorry.

All I can do is share
my own experience and my story.

Healing, for me,
has been certainly not easy

and definitely not
a straight, smooth path.

And most of all,

healing from trauma based
on homophobic bullying is not final.

It is a process.

Some days, you feel like you've done it.

Some other days, you just feel
like you're just starting all over again.

It is frustrating, it's tiring,
but you've got to keep trying.

Art and therapy
have been helping me a lot.

Writing my stories and drawing them

makes me more powerful
than what happened to me as a kid.

Therapy, which I only started
at the age of 29,

helps me understand, decompartmentalize
and deal with what happened to me.

Those bad experiences
get smaller and weaker

every time I create
a new thing out of them,

and that includes drag.

Do you remember my name, Krisagon,
and that bad nickname I got?

So, as an adult,

I decided to take something
that had been painful and traumatic for me

for most of my life,

and turn it into something
beautiful and creative.

Me doing drag is that little boy in me
finally being able to play with dolls.

More than that, I get to be that doll.

I get to bend the rules,

or even throw that damn book
out of the window.

So the persona who is talking to you
right now is Krisa Gonna.

Nice to meet you.

(Applause)

I am not ashamed of that nickname anymore.

I own it, and I get to make my own rules,

in or out of drag.

I hope my bullies
from 1st grade to college

have found their freedom by now.

Because, you know, bullies,
they hate other people's freedom.

That's why they bully.

It actually depends on them -

you know, it's not my duty to teach them.

and they have to realize
that that behavior also hurts them,

but I hope they watch this.

Art and psychological therapy
should be accessible resources to everyone

because everyone needs them.

We all have work to do on ourselves.

I know I do.

After all, I was socialized as a boy.

My family was the traditional family.

It was also so fractured
by what we call toxic masculinity.

Maybe that's what
traditional family actually means.

I only had compulsory, heterosexual,
supermasculine examples to follow.

It goes beyond my father,
beyond his father.

A lot of men go through
different but still conditionings

of what it means to be a man.

No wonder today we have,

statistically speaking
and backed by research,

less men going to therapy

because they don't talk about
their feelings, and they don't seek help.

We have less men feeling they
are naturally equipped to be a good parent

because that is supposed to be
a woman's role.

Do you remember who got to play
house and dolls as a kid?

We have more men dealing with suicide -

do you remember who was taught to be tough
and not share emotions? -

inconsequently dealing more
with substance abuse

as a way to anesthetize their feelings
of fear, anger and sadness.

Now, I'm not a psychologist,
neither a sociologist nor a social worker.

I'm just a queer person
socialized as a boy,

out as gay and queer,

who trusts scientists and researchers

who study all these things
I told you about.

We should all trust them.

Remember, in our society,
shame comes for free.

But also remember
you don't have to feel shame

in order to know what it's like
to be proud of yourself.

Changing how you raise boys will not
make them heterosexual or homosexual.

Being allowed and incentivized
to play with multiple kinds of toys

will only make kids more creative,

better prepared for
the social challenges in life

and more accepting of people,
including themselves.

They will be free.

Thank you.

(Applause) (Cheers)

["Let ME speak, not my scars.

They are supporting roles;

no, better yet, sidekicks that didn't even
have to be here." - Emicida]