The boy at the Candomblé ceremony and his headscarf: reflections on (un)desirable homosexualities

Abstract

At a Candomblé party in a so-called traditional terreiro — more than fifty years old —, a young male visitor wearing a blue headscarf, upon realizing that he was the only man wearing that type of clothing, removes it and spends the rest of the party without the scarf. From this episode, I propose a reflection on the semantic struggle in the discursive aspect of gender identities, in which more or less masculine/feminine ways of dressing are disputed. Although gender performances in Candomblé are not seen from an exclusive perspective of Christian morality, they are influenced by it, and in any case, the circulating ideas about gender exert their influence in candomblé temples, where they are hidden by tradition. Masculinity — structured by and structuring power relations — becomes invisible to those privileged by its constructs, who also acquire a certain status of unquestionability by subsuming themselves into tradition with regard to religious roles, operating a distinction between “traditional candomblés” and “fagot candomblés”. Even though male homosexuality is structural and structuring of the Afro-Brazilian religious field and the flexibility of this field in the face of homosexuality is recognized, not all temples are receptive to the different expressions of homosexuality and, under the aegis of tradition, exclusionary practices are not questioned.