The end of the Vargas dictatorship and the process of democratization coincided with economic changes including greater foreign investment, an increased cultural influence of the United States, and an expanding post-WWII economy. Together, these changes created dramatic shifts in Brazilian society and ultimately produced new urban spaces that futher attracted homosexuals from throughout the country. In these new spaces, new homosexual cultural expressions developed and distinct subcultures began to develop within the larger homosexual subculture.

Shifting gender norms in Brazilian society influenced the emergence of a new homosexual persona, the entendido, who was less inclined to imitate the masculine/feminine gender binary and instead presented a more discreet public image. While the bicha/bofe paradigm persisted among the lower classes, the entendido tended to come from the “modern” postwar middle class.

Click on the picture below to read Gato Preto’s article calling for an end to the dominance of the bicha/bofe paradigm.

In 1958, sociologist José Fábio Barbosa da Silva wrote a thesis on homosexuality in São Paulo. Unlike the medico-legal researchers of the 1930s, Silva approached his study by conceptualizing homosexuals as a minority group with a distinct subculture. Since Silva’s methodology avoided male prostitutes and flamboyant, effeminate homosexuals, his work provides us a rare glimpse into the lives of the middle-class entendidos of the time. Click on the following preview for the text in its entirety.

“Aspectos sociológicos do homossexualismo em São Paulo”