Most of my audience is Brazilian and I have written in Portuguese for most of my days online. I really like to write in my native language, it’s much better for me and it’s easier for me to use a tone that isn’t so dry. When writing in English, I always end up being far too formal. That distances me from the audience. And, probably because I learned English in a school setting, I end up being stuffy when writing in English, like, saying the same thing over and over and sometimes producing long paragraphs. That makes my writing boring.
However, when I write in Portuguese, even when I write about age of consent reform, the positive response is much better, the traffic is faster and more consistent and I receive comments on occasion, though likes are more common than comments. Matter of fact, when I write about age of consent reform, in Portuguese, the responses are always neutral to positive. I don’t get comments, but likes are common. My notes about Rivas’ Positive Memories were liked by people who can be regarded as “normies”. That shows that positive feedback on this stuff can be given by regular people, at least here. That’s probably because the moral panic about adult/minor sex is weaker here: the age of consent is 14 and was almost lowered to 12 in 2011, and, provided that the adult is kind and the relationship is watched by the parents, a lot of people would tolerate this kind of relationship, perhaps more than they would tolerate a peer-aged homosexual relationship involving their child. Yes, depending on where you are in Brazil, adult/child sex (or rather, adult/adolescent sex) is better accepted than homosexuality, in a particular case, even though there are general suspicions.
I think that’s because, in the collective unconscious, there’s the belief that something needs to be harmful to be considered a crime. And, in a particular case, it may be the case, that is, parents, knowing the relationship of their child with a trusted adult, only intervene if damage is clear. All that I’m doing is making sure that statistical evidence and, specially, anecdotal evidence gets in the right hands.
So far, posting in English (in this blog) has brought me less results than writing in Portuguese. However, I noticed that the English version of the MAP Starting Guide, ever since it was posted to Ipce, attracts a lot of attention, but only to that text alone. That means that there are more people reading the stuff I have on Ipce than the stuff I have here, when it comes to English language. So, I was thinking of sending my translations to Ipce or other blogs with better exposure and in English language, such as Heretic TOC, Our Love Frontier and things alike, while leaving my blog only with stuff in Portuguese language.
This decision was also taken because, with the current political climate in Brazil, I feel like the age of consent reform must be put aside; there are more pertinent things to take care of. Our forests are burning, our seas are being polluted, people are hating each other over things that are imagined, rather than real, to the point of families being torn apart and lifelong friends no longer talking to each other. Everyone has become either a fascist or a communist, even though neither side knows what both words mean. With social media, people are also becoming more absorbed in their circle of supporters, causing them to no longer tolerate diverging opinions regarding government and institutions, specifically. Let me tell something funny: while none of the stuff about age of consent reform that I posted received any hate at all, the only time I criticized the president over his economic agenda got hate two days after I published the post containing the criticism. If you are in United States, you may probably find it hard to believe. This is a country where the left (whom they call “communists”) can be more hated than adult/minor sex. The left is subjected to blind hate nowadays, while age of consent reform is open for debate at the same time. Quirky, huh?
I sometimes wonder if that’s because the right-wing is having it’s time in Brazil and the right-wing in Brazil is a carbon copy of the worst things in the North-American right-wing. I would not be surprised if it was riddled full with resentful incels. That makes me also question if the first serious attack on the age of consent is going to come from the right-wing, rather than the left. I like to mention that “whether the left wants to legalize adult/minor sex or not, the fact is that the right can not wait”, because most of the adult/minor sex scandals involve people who position themselves at the right: religious authorities, Bolsonaro supporters, people like that. The right is already doing it. One guy who supported Bolsonaro (I forget if he was an army man or a policeman) was public against adult/minor sex and, yet, was arrested for child porn possession. Another, more recent: a music teacher, who is a Bolsonaro supporter, was arrested and convicted of statutory rape (yes, in a place where the age of consent already is 14, people are still willing to go after people who are younger than that).
But, if the right were to do an attack on the age of consent, wouldn’t the left react? I think that, since the left isn’t particularly concerned with sexualization of minors in Brazil, the reaction would be small. Even experts have a hard time talking to laymen in social media, because people with positive childhood sexual experiences, when given the opportunity, are outspoken about it. That causes experts to concede that those experiences can be positive, but are quick to add that they are “exceptional” and have to rely on emotion to make an absolute ban on such relationships acceptable. By the way, the most outspoken people in that regard, in Brazil, are women. Bruce Rind should come down here and study our ladies, cause I’m sure he would get a smaller rate of negative experiences, compared to the same rates in United States. Summed to that, we have the fact that feminists are a vocal minority here. Most women don’t identify as feminists and many despite it. That being said, a reaction against a possible right-wing attempt at lowering the age of consent would be weak, perhaps null. When the left proposed an age of consent reduction from 14 to 12, people were quick to retaliate. But nowadays, in the current climate, anything that comes from the right meets immediate support from fanatics (almost 30% of our population sides with the president no matter what) and would attain some support from more open-minded people. If the right were to do the same thing, today, it would work, perhaps even with some support from the left.
To sum up, I will stop publishing English texts in this blog and stick with my native language only. My English texts will be sent to other places, where they will likely get more exposure. I would prefer to use my blog to talk only to my people, from now on, about diverse topics, rather than sticking only with age of consent reform.
