The Parity Games? Gender and Sexuality in the Brazilian Audience for Paris 2024

Abstract (English)

The Paris 2024 Olympic Games were marked by a discourse that they would be the first "Parity Games," aiming to achieve absolute equality between the number of men and women. Although this goal was not fully reached, with men still slightly in the majority, it sparked intense debate that was further amplified by the political dimensions that gender discourses have gained in various countries, as well as by their overlap with the issue of transgender athletes' presence in these competitions and the many repercussions this presence had during the Games. In this work, I will analyze how this discussion resonated across different Brazilian sports media, including the audience that followed these events and interacted through various social media platforms. Particularly, it is important to highlight that, in the Brazilian case, the discourses about these "Parity Games" coincided with the fact that, for the first time in history, not only did the Brazilian delegation have more women than men, but most medal expectations were placed on women rather than men, as was later confirmed by Brazil's final performance. This situation, also highlighted by the Brazilian women's football team's performance—contrasting with the men's team's failure to qualify—generated intense debate on social media and led to various manifestations of hate speech, which have been a concern in Brazilian society over the past decade. Finally, I also intend to discuss how these gender issues, highlighted by the Olympic Games, resonate when we turn our attention to the Paralympic Games, emphasizing the need to include disability issues in intersectional analyses.