The number of trans people who aspire to be elected in the elections next October broke a record in Brazil with 76 candidates, 44% more than those registered in 2018, according to data released this Wednesday by the National Association of Transvestites and Transsexuals (Antra). .

On October 2, Brazilians will elect the president, members of Congress, governors and parliamentarians of the Legislative Assemblies of each of the 27 states of the country, positions where the trans presence has been strengthened in recent years.

In 2022, when the 30 years of the Trans Movement are commemorated, for the first time in an election there will be candidates who identify as non-binary.

This year, the largest participation will once again be from transvestites and trans women, with 67 applicants, followed by 5 trans men and 4 non-binary candidates.

Of that total, 36 will dispute seats in the Chamber of Deputies – where a trans person has never been elected – and 40 more will seek to be part of regional legislative assemblies.

Most of the trans candidates (85%) belong to left-wing parties, 9.2% are candidates for right-wing formations and 5.3% identify with the center.

Regarding the ethnic/racial profile, the association identified two applications from people who declare themselves indigenous, 25 who consider themselves white and 49 Afro-descendants, a scenario similar to the general electoral panorama of the country, where the majority of the candidates declared themselves black – or pardos-, for the first time.

For Keila Simpson, president of Antra, the fact that the trans presence in politics is strengthening is a reflection of the “struggle” and “resistance” of this population for an increasingly participatory democracy in Brazil.

“This is the only way that politics will respond and represent the wishes of this population, which was so forgotten for a long time,” she assured.

The association, which for three decades has been defending the rights of transvestites and transsexuals, since 2014 has carried out a survey of the candidacies of this population for elections in the country.

Despite the fact that it is the organization that leads this type of uprising, the data disclosed is not “exact” due to the difficulties that it sometimes represents to find the information due to the “invisibility” of gender, since not even the Superior Electoral Tribunal, responsible for the elections, takes into account genders other than male or female in its classification.

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