Transpassando os limites da educação: os significados do acesso ao ensino superior para travestis e pessoas transgêneras

Abstract

This research understands the meaning of access to higher education for transvestites and transgender people who attend / attended the preparatory program for Enem Transpassando. As specific objectives, the study seeks to investigate the trajectory of transvestites and transgender people in the formal system of basic education; analyze the main challenges of transvestites and transgender people for access to higher education; identify affirmative actions for access to higher education aimed at transvestites and transgender people and observe the principle that guides the Transpassando program. The research subjects are six members of the aforementioned program, which is linked to the State University of Ceará (UECE). Of the six people, four are part of the T population and the other two identify as cisgender. The study, of a qualitative nature, discusses the categories of sex, gender, higher education and access, and for that, bibliographical and documentary research and semi-structured interviews were carried out with the participants of Transpassando. As a methodological approach for data analysis, Oral History is used, since the interviewees' speeches are crucial to portray the experiences of transvestites and transgender people. Thus, the results point to the search for a conquest of higher education not only as a form of social ascension, but as a strategy to change the transphobic and elitist culture of this level of education, since the presence of T people in institutions would raise the question, debate and transformation. Access is also identified as the principle that guides Transpassando's actions, breaking with the idea that access only means entering Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). Moreover, from the subjects' speeches, it is observed that universities represent an extension of the school life of population T, because when entering higher education, they experience situations of violence similar to or worse than those they had during their trajectories in high school. Finally, the affirmative actions identified for these subjects' access to higher education were scarce. Among the actions were the respect for the social name in the classrooms and in the documents of the HEIs and the reservation of vacancies, notably in the postgraduate courses of some states for the admission of transvestites and transgender people.