Vivências e aprendizagens de jovens LGBT+ sobre si na escola e na internet

Abstract

This work had as an objective to comprehend how a group of LGBT+ students from a school situated in Fortaleza (a state in the northeast part of Brazil) went through questions of gender and sexuality – individually and collectively – in the formal school and on the internet. The research started from a theoretical perspective which considers the cyborg individuals formation (HARAWAY,2009;LEMOS,1999;SIQUEIRA;MEDEIROS,2011) parting from the hybridism between their experiences in presence and virtuality. In cyberculture, the cyborg suject finds in his cyber self-instructor trajectories (ALAVA,2002) the informative and interactive resources that allow the access, and the creation and sharing of knowledge and experiences about genres and sexualities. Thus, he can reflect critically on himself, on his context, empower himself (HOROCHOVSKI; MEIRELLES,2007) and exercise their agency (ORTNER,2007). This was a qualitative study, considering elements of the ethnographic research, and covered the classroom context of the public school, the virtual group created by the participants in a message application and their experiences on the internet. The data were constructed with the participants and collected between June 2017 and March 2018 by means of participant and virtual participant observation of the study participants and also through face-to-face interviews. The analysis was based on two thematic axes related to the participants experiences: the self- (de)constructions on hybrid networks, which generated the description and analysis of the hybrid experiences and processes by which the participants were recognized themselves as LGBT+ individuals and became more self-conscious; and the (de)constructions of "we" in hybrid networks, which generated the description and analysis of experiences in which these participants articulated themselves around a group, the LGBT+ Collective in the school and in the internet, and how they took actions to generate experiences for themselves and for others. The results revealed that the participants became more aware of themselves, empowered and realized that they were able to suggest significant changes and to act in their contexts, particularly in the public school. We believe that it was possible because of the interactions in virtual and physical networks, through which they were able to weave knowledge, experiences, affectivity, solidarity, and to be in contact with various cultures. In addition, they allowed us to understand how virtual spaces are, nowadays, spaces of experiences, creations, exchanges and cyber auto-forming learning for LGBT+ students and how they allow them to build other diverse trajectories in their experiences also in formal education