Trans teacher banned from school and victim of pornographic assembly: “I am resistance”

Pioneer as a trans teacher in San Paolo, Geanne Greggio faces prejudices since childhood and struggle for the value of education

Jaboticabal, inside San Paolo, was a small town, marked by agricultural work, but it was also the place where Geanne Greggio found the first seeds of resistance and courage. Last of four brothers, was born in 1976, in a family who worked in the fields. His mother, already 38 years old at the time of birth, played a decisive role in her path.

“I say that Geanne managed to exist only because she had a family behind it, which makes a huge difference in the life of a trans person. Also for a gay person, but even more for a trans person. My mother was very protective, the family of the family.”

Since the pregnancy, Geanne’s mother turned to the fetus as if she were a child, a gesture of care that deeply marked her development. “He said: ‘I want a girl to take care of me when I will be bigger’. And I was born a man,” he said Earth. Growing up, Geanne made his mother’s teachings his own, learning to cook, sew, crochet to crochet and becoming, from an early age, a girl who learned to perform household chores.

As he helped prepare lunch, little Geanne said with conviction: “Mom, I’m a girl”. The mother tried to correct her, saying she was a boy. But Geanne maintained her position. As a young man I already knew who I was.

“Then she said: ‘Then that’s okay. What you want’.” The link between the two was so strong that the mother not only accepted, but allowed that her personal objects became tools of experimentation and identification. “He let me wear his clothes, makeup, heels, everything.” There, Geanne could be who wanted, with one request: education.

The encouragement to the study was a lighthouse in his life. “You have to study, because people will respect you for your study,” said the mother. And Geanne embraced this philosophy with intensity. He studied in public schools, helped colleagues and dreamed of the university. At the age of 18 he entered the faculty of letters and six months later he already taught in nearby cities to pay for his studies. “I woke up at half past four in the morning, I taught until five in the afternoon, I took a ride, I immediately went back to college and I studied until eleven in the evening. It took three years. Shortly after I graduated and started teaching Jaboticabal.”

During his youth, Geanne began to perceive himself as a woman and the transition became inevitable. Between 2000 and 2002 the research on hormones and surgery began, with little information available at the time.

“I didn’t have that support network. I was looking for what I wanted on the internet, I was looking for cosmetic treatments and plastic surgery. That was my support network, because I had no one to talk to.”

He also remembers that he was able to take more decisive steps only when he reached financial independence: “I could already do it alone, with a single job. I already knew how to do some things; with two, I could do much more. Because Geanne could only appear when I had established my financial situation, when I saw that I was not at risk. I said:” I am in a position in which no one can do anything to me. I have money to be able to do things. ‘”

Professor GE

Geanne’s consolidation as a trans teacher was a daily battle. It took ten years of gradual construction of its identity, negotiations with the principals and comparison with prejudices: “My quarrels were not with students and parents, my struggles were with colleagues and school principals. I remember two principals that they said: ‘I don’t want you to follow the lessons in my school.’ So I said: ‘Well, I will follow the lessons where I want, wherever my score will leave me.

The teacher also underwent personal attacks: an ex -boyfriend spread on the internet modified photos trying to ruin her career. On his birthday, he created a false prostitution page and loaded a profile on behalf of Geanne. The man also printed the montages and spread them for the school.

“I was in the countryside with my mother, and the school called me … I said I was the victim of the story. The director replied that I was making the program and started a whole persecution, a real witch hunt. In the end I found a lawyer, we showed that the photos were montages and everything was stored. I could have sued, but I was already so tired that I said: ‘The continuous life, I am still here, my students are from my part.”

As much as he thought in that moment to abandon teaching, the painful experience did not prevent her from pursuing her mission as an educator. Today, when he sees former students who have graduated and are building a career, he feels the weight of the inheritance: “He is rewarding when someone tells me: ‘Wow, I studied this thing thanks to you, because you encouraged me’. I have many former students; I spent 25 years a Embu teaching so many people, taking on all the load, and my students are all graduates now”.

health coordinator

Parallel to teaching, Geanne found himself in the field of public health. First person trans to coordinate a program against sexually transmitted diseases and viral hepatitis, to Embu Das Artes (SP), is dedicated to the creation of support networks for trans people: “That’s why today I beat that the girls do not suffer the same things that I spent. I could have crazy, like some people when they suffer surgery, because I had no psychological assistance.

His personal experience guides his professional work: “I started with the desire to work in the office, but I could not because I was a pedagogue. So I studied biology along the way to be able to perform some functions that I could not do before”. In total, the educator obtained a degree in letters, pedagogy and biology. There have been two post-graduate diplomas and currently studies biomedicine and civil engineering. “I said I wanted more in my life. I will finish biomedicine next year.” Yet studies don’t stop. His biggest dream is to become a doctor.

“Save education”

During her life, Geanne built an example of resilience and inspiration. For young trans and people with other identities, leave a clear message:

“The education saves. Education saves. Knowledge, nobody can take it away. So we can do anything. We can be what we want to be, from the moment we recognize ourselves how that we are and chasing it. Study. Geanne exists only for this.”

Looking back, he sees himself even more clearly: “I am a struggle and resistance. I look at my life and I say: I exist, I resist. I would do everything again. I don’t regret anything I have done. A clean story. I did everything I did by fighting, without removing the ground to anyone. I went to the other side”.

Source: Terra

Rose

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