Portuguese → English transcript

And here… I am going to

do a social experiment. I want to know this,

you are seeing, I am a white woman. I have had the privileges of a

white person throughout the course of my life.

So here, I ask you, I, being a white person,

having lived everything I lived as a white person, now at thirty- two I decide

to put on makeup, to disguise myself as a Black person,

putting on makeup and letting only the outside show.

And here I ask: what now?

Did I become Black?

Did I feel the contempt of society

for a Black person who should never have existed? I ask you, you who are

watching me, by painting myself Black, do I feel on my skin the pain

that a Black person has felt from racism, from not being able to get work, a job?

I even have an aunt who before the 1990s went after a job and she is Black.

And she said that at the job interview she did great,

but then the people who were doing the interview said the following:"

You are great, I would really like to hire you, but you are Black,

and here we do not hire Black people." And then I ask you:

am I… am I Black now? Am I feeling

the pain of a mother whose son suffers everything he suffers in the street for

being Black? That is not it, that is not the fight.

Here I actually want to show it is no use for me to put on makeup,

I do not know the pains that you went through.

It is no use for me to pretend something, I do not know the pains that the

Black women there at that event held by the federal government felt when

they slept in the stable. But now am I not Black?

I am painted Black on the outside. Damn, I see myself as Black.

So why can I not then preside over the commission on racism, as an anti- racist?

Why can I not defend this? Why can I not take care of this issue? And then I see it,

I come and say to you:

do you know why I cannot take care of this issue? Because I am not Black!

I do not know the pains of the essence that these people went through,

the tears that fell.

I do not know what they went through. I imagine it,

I imagine with a lot of anger what they went through, the pain they lived,

but I do not know what they went through in my essence, because I am not Black.

And here now, taking off this makeup, I say to you

as a woman: I am a woman. It is no use

dressing up as a woman, and I am not here offending transsexual people,

quite the opposite, I am saying: I am a woman. I want to be seen as a woman.

The woman of the year cannot be transsexual, because that is taking away,

for example,

the woman who invented the vaccine for a person to walk again after an accident,

she is a woman, but someone took her place to make the woman of the year a

transsexual. So what do I want to say here? Transsexuals do have to be respected.

We are seeing the biggest increase in history of murders of

transsexual people, who do have to be respected. I do not want any trans

person to go through any situation of prejudice.

I do not want any trans person to be murdered for being trans,

or discriminated against for being trans.

But I also do not want any trans person to take my place. Where is it? Is it not my

place to speak? I am a woman. How are we supposed to take care of endometriosis,

childbirth, breastfeeding, menopause, if the person has no place to speak from?

If I am white and even if I paint myself black I cannot take care of

people who suffer racism,

because I do not know in essence what they have been through,

that is exactly what a trans person cannot do with me. Why are they trying to

take away women’s space? Why, in competitions, are we including trans athletes?

We know very well that the male biological body has testosterone, has more strength.

Wow, way more strength than a female body, at least that is in

most cases. So I am here to protest in a totally didactic way.

There is no point in putting on makeup as a woman, you will not know what a woman

goes through. And that is good, it means that you who are Trans people have

their own agenda to deal with.

Create a commission to take care of the trans women in the country. We saw just

this week a commission about…