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| Jean Wyllys | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Jean Wyllys in 2015. | |
| Member of the Chamber of Deputies from Rio de Janeiro | |
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office 1 February 2011 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1974-03-10) 10 March 1974 (age 50) Alagoinhas, Bahia, Brazil |
| Political party | PSOL |
| Website | |
Jean Wyllys (born Jean Wyllys de Matos Santos on 10 March 1974 in Alagoinhas, Bahia, Brazil) is a Brazilian lecturer, journalist and politician who rose to fame after winning the fifth season of Big Brother Brasil. He is also notable for being Brazil's second openly homossexual member in the Chamber of Deputies, being compared to Harvey Milk, an openly gay rights activist and U.S. politician.
Life
Wyllys was born in Alagoinhas, in the north-eastern state of Bahia, one of seven children. His mother was a washerwoman and his father a car painter who suffered from alcoholism. Wyllys attended a boarding school which gave him the opportunity to get a better education than the average child in his village. Wyllys later moved to Salvador and completed his degree in journalism at the Federal University of Bahia. He first rose to fame after becoming the finalist in the Brazilian reality television show, Big Brother Brasil. He was the first openly gay participant in the show, which caused a lot of controversy amongst fans and participants alike. Wyllys described his victory as being of "great political relevance I said I was a homosexual and I still won the reality show in a country that is homophobic."
Political career
In 2010 Wyllys was elected a federal MP, representing the Socialism and Freedom party, with an average of 13,000 votes. His election was only possible, considering the number of votes he had in 2010 elections, through the so called "voto de legenda" (party vote), a constitutional mechanism that allows candidates who doesn't have an expressive number of votes to be elected from the votes of another highly voted candidate of the same party. In Wyllys' case, the votes of another congressman of Socialism and Liberty Party, Chico Alencar, who was one of the most voted in Rio de Janeiro, helped in his election. Once occupying a chair in Brazilian Congress, Wyllys brought his activism on the LGBT movement to the scene. Once forgotten by Brazilian media since his winning in the Big Brother Brasil fifth season in 2005, five years before his election, he was finally back to the spotlight from the moment he started working on his political platform, that was primarily the fight for LGBT rights. By doing this, he ended up confronting prominent Brazilian right-wing figures, like pastor Silas Malafaia, a famous televangelist and national president of Assembly of God Churches, and Jair Bolsonaro, a congress member who became Wyllys' number one enemy in the congress. The proposition of three polemic law projects by Wyllys made him a notorious figure for the liberal and leftist society members, as well as a threatening figure for some conservative and the religious members. In those law projects are included the prostitution houses legalization, the marijuana production and use regulation, the inclusion of Arabic and Islam studies in Brazilian school curricula and the State financing for sex reassignment surgeries and hormonal treatment for transgender teenagers and adults.
Wyllys' political acting of defending minority rights and his very existence as an openly gay congress member and human rights activist have transformed him in a public enemy of conservative political forces in Brazil. In a country with a wide rate of homophobic crimes as Brazil, he began to receive death threats that became more recurrent since his political enemies started a slanderous campaign against him by posting and sharing in social media like Facebook images with quotes that he have supposedly said about being an openly pedophile defender, for example. Among other quotes attributed to him, the one that he had affirmed that the Bible was "a joke" Christians and Bible followers were "clowns" was highly spread. In spite of those quotes had never been existed, people in social networks still share them, strengthening the ongoing hate campaign against Wyllys. To clean up his image damaged by that orchestrated campaign, he created a section on his official website where he refutes all the quotes attributed to him. Although his political image in the public sphere had been degraded by the slanderous campaign, he ran for congress once again in 2014 and kept his chair in the parliament with more than 100,000 votes, being the seventh most voted representative of Rio de Janeiro.
Today Wyllys works on the front line of Michel Temer's government opposition. It was announced in 2015 that Brazilian independent filmmakers were planning to produce a documentary about Wyllys' political career and acting. The documentary was released in 2016 with the title "Entre os Homens de Bem" (Among the Virtuous Men) and it focuses on the political arena in Brazil built on topics such as gay marriage and other LGBT rights, having Wyllys and some conservative politicians as the main characters. In the same year, Wyllys was included in a list called "Top 50 global personalities with an outstanding commitment to diversity".
Controversies
In 2013, Wyllys was accused of being the author of religious intolerance phrases and in defense of pedophilia which were disseminated on the Internet. In his defense, he stated he did not write the sentences and was a target of a defamatory campaign.
In July 2013, in the Tas ao vivo talk-show, when asked about the remuneration of Brazilian parliamentarians, Wyllys declared that he did not find the remuneration excessive and compared his earnings with the salary of a private university professor: "When you deduct everything, the party contribution, income tax, I pretty much get what I used to earn as a teacher , which is about R$15.000. Considering how much I work, I do not think this is a high salary." The statement had an impact on the Internet creating a heated debate and controversy. In his defense, Wyllys stated that he "did not say that the members 'earn a low salary', nor that the salary of a deputy is equal to a professor but that after the mandatory deductions, what goes into my pocket every month is less than I would earn today, considering my qualification, if I worked in the private sector."
In October 2014, during the Brazilian general election, Wyllys classified, through a social network, the majority of PSDB voters as "classists, racists and violent". Shortly after the episode, Wyllys portrayed himself saying that he "actually meant that a good part and not most of those voters fall into this disqualifying labels".
In November of 2014, Wyllys was criticized by leaders of his own party and by Afro-Brazilians rights group for defending the TV show Sexo e as Negas [pt], shown by Rede Globo. Wyllys said that, unlike those who accused the show of being sexist and racist, the production actually "denounces racism" and stated that Miguel Falabella, the director of the show, is a guy who is far, far away of being racist". However, the TV show has been denounced to the Secretary of Policies for Women and is still subject to criticism by women and afro-descendants movements.
Notes
- Portuguese pronunciation: [ʒeˈɐ̃ ˈwiljs d͡ʒj ˈmatws ˈsɐ̃tws].
References
- ^ Jean Wyllys, Brazil's first openly gay MP, takes fight to the religious right, Guardian, retrieved 27 January 2012
- http://ultimosegundo.ig.com.br/eleicoes/exbbb-jean-wyllys-e-eleito-deputado-federal/n1237790770320.html
- http://g1.globo.com/especiais/eleicoes-2010/noticia/2010/10/confira-puxadores-de-voto-que-ajudaram-eleger-outros-candidatos.html
- http://www.camara.gov.br/proposicoesWeb/fichadetramitacao?idProposicao=565315
- http://www.camara.gov.br/sileg/integras/905839.pdf
- http://www.camara.gov.br/proposicoesWeb/prop_mostrarintegra?codteor=1012829
- http://www.camara.gov.br/proposicoesWeb/prop_mostrarintegra?codteor=1237297
- http://extra.globo.com/famosos/jean-wyllys-ganha-protecao-policial-ao-sofrer-ameaca-de-morte-8063027.html
- http://jeanwyllys.com.br/verdadeoumentira/
- http://blogs.odia.ig.com.br/lgbt/2014/10/05/jean-wyllys-e-reeleito-deputado-federal-com-mais-de-100-mil-votos/
- http://ceoworld.biz/2015/11/24/top-50-global-personalities-with-an-outstanding-commitment-to-diversity
- "Novas e velhas calúnias | Blog de Jean Wyllys – iG". March 18, 2013. Retrieved December 1, 2018.
- "PSOL 50 | Nova onda de calúnias contra o deputado Jean Wyllys é disseminada pela internet". December 19, 2013. Retrieved December 1, 2018.
- "Jean Wyllys abre o jogo sobre salário de deputado - Terra". July 10, 2013. Retrieved December 1, 2018.
- "Você quer saber quanto recebe um deputado? — CartaCapital". March 24, 2016. Retrieved December 1, 2018.
- "As falsas desculpas de Jean Wyllys: deputado apaga post ofensivo, mas xinga mais ainda eleitores de Aécio. Agora não há só racistas e classistas, há fascistas e homofóbicos também. "Linha auxiliar do PT" segue alinhada na baixaria | Felipe Moura Brasil - VEJA.com". November 1, 2014. Retrieved December 1, 2018.
- Pernambuco, Diario de (November 18, 2014). "Jean Wyllys diz que minissérie Sexo e as Negas denuncia o racismo no Brasil". Diario de Pernambuco (in Brazilian Portuguese). Retrieved December 1, 2018.
- Members of the Chamber of Deputies (Brazil) from Rio de Janeiro (state)
- LGBT politicians from Brazil
- LGBT journalists from Brazil
- Gay politicians
- Living people
- 1974 births
- Big Brother (TV series) winners
- People from Bahia
- LGBT rights activists from Brazil
- Brazilian Candomblés
- Socialism and Liberty Party politicians
- LGBT legislators