LGBTQ people face a heightened risk of hate violence, and this is part of the reason martial arts studios are tailoring classes to their specific needs.
Ana JuliaRicardo Lima, 29, of Rio de Janeiro, never pictured himself joining any kind of martial arts class, as he worried he’d be entering a predominantly heterosexual environment overflowing with machismo. But after being told by a friend about Piranhas Team, a self-defense group founded by LGBTQ activists in Rio, Brazil’s second-largest city, he decided to try out its Krav Maga class.
“I could see right away that it was the perfect chance for me to learn how to defend myself and stop being scared of homophobic attacks all the time,” Lima told NBC News. “After being threatened many times in my life, since I was a teenager, in different places, I started to feel scared of going out and even walking toward men on the streets.
While self-defense classes have been offered by Piranhas Team since 2016, the organizers witnessed a substantial increase in demand after self-declared “Halisson Paes, 42, one of the founders of Piranhas Team, attributes a large part of the group’s growth to the anti-gay rhetoric of Bolsonaro, who“We used to have two classes with about 10 people in each, Paes said."After the elections, this number increased to five classes, also with about 10 people in each.
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