Curitiba brand creates phrase in support and respect for the LGBT community.
The protest brand, PEITA, presents its new phrase: “Seja Queer Você Quiser”, a derivation of “Seja Quem Você Quiser”, one of the brand's best-selling t-shirts. This is a tribute and respect to the entire LGBT community, which every 19 hours registers a death due to LGBTphobia, whether murder or suicide. People need to live in a world without fear.
“I once read that labels are imperfect, sometimes simplistic, but politically necessary and I completely agree with that. We shouldn't need to go into these boxes when it comes to how and who we love, but we don't have much choice. Although visibility makes us more vulnerable to attacks, we do not get protection, space and public policies if we do not establish an identity”, emphasizes the president of PEITA, Karina Gallon.
The new phrase is a partnership with James Bar, a Curitiba nightclub that is committed to fighting prejudice and sexism within the establishment, providing a safe environment for people to love each other and be free. Awareness signs have already been installed around the bar (with the PEITA typography) and employees will receive training to also be agents of social transformation, in addition to working with the protest brand phrases and others created especially for the house staff, such as: “ Respect the Mines, the Manas and the Monas” and “Mexeu Com Uma. Messed with All”.
The choice of partnership was due to Karina's emotional involvement with the bar, which turned 20 in 2018. “I love James. It's been my home since 2004. When I understood myself as a lesbian, that's where I was, where I went every week to flirt. I even met my first girlfriend there,” he says.
PEITA is directly involved with the LGBTI movement. Karina and two other sisters on the team are part of Coletivo Cássia, the LB and feminist branch of Grupo Dignididade, the first NGO in Paraná and the second oldest in Brazil, which has been working for 26 years in the defense and promotion of LGBTI rights. In June of this year, they launched the phrase “Eu Está Com Ela”, where the profit from the direct sale of breasts in bazaars headed by the collective, goes towards its maintenance.
About 70% of the phrases sold by the protest brand are partnerships, that is, part of the production or profit is donated to encourage causes and social institutions that work with people in vulnerable situations or fight for human rights, as is the case of Mônica Benício, widow of Marielle Franco.
