Janaína Dutra: Google Doodle celebrates Brazilian social activist’s 61st birthday

Google Doodle celebrates the 61st birthday of Brazilian social activist Janaína Dutra, a leader travesty of the LGBT movement in Brazil and recognized as the first transvestite to carry a professional portfolio of the Order of Lawyers of Brazil, on November 30, 2021.

Who was Janaína Dutra?

Janaína Dutra, registered at birth as Jaime César Dutra Sampaio, was born in Canindé, in the interior of Ceará, on November 30, 1960.

As a child, Janaína Dutra started to suffer from the recognition process, she jumped at the chance to wear her sisters’ dresses and makeup. Yet, everything was reduced at age 14 when she began to suffer the first challenges identified with social life and her family found out with regards to it and supported her.

At 17 years old, Janaína went to live with her sister in Fortaleza, the capital of Ceará. There, she began working for Caixa Econômica Federal and started to be treated with female hormones. Because of the extraordinary prejudice experienced, Janaína decided to study law at the University of Fortaleza.

In 1986, Janaína Dutra graduated and became the first transvestite to carry a professional from the Brazilian Bar Association, even though her Christian name is as yet on the document.

Known for carrying with Janaína Dutra’s a copy of the anti-homophobia law passed by her hometown, Janaína has spent her whole life taking an interest in conferences, seminars, and roundtables to protect equality.

All through the 1980s, Janaína Dutra started to devote her time to the reasons for LGBT people and those with HIV. She was an active member in the development of the Grupo de Apoio Asa Branca (GRAB), whose creation is the establishing milestone of the movement for free gender identity in Ceará.

Janaína Dutra was co-founder (1989), legal advisor, and vice president ( in the terms of office 1995, 1997, 1999 and 2001) of the entity. In the Asa Branca Support Group, she took an interest in a few projects, including ‘Somos’, which worked on the prevention of STDs/AIDS. She likewise established, along with transvestite activist Thina Rodrigues, the Associação das Transvestis do Ceará (Atrac).

Janaína Dutra was likewise president of the National Articulation of Transvestites (Antra) and a member of the National Council Against Discrimination, and in this, she helped in the creation of Municipal Law 8.211/98, a law that curbs and punishes LGBTFobia in commercial and industrial establishments, service providers and comparative organizations that discriminate people by virtue of their sexual orientation in Fortaleza.

Alongside the Federal Government, Janaína Dutra assisted with building the “Brazil without Homophobia” program and completed pioneering work with the Ministry of Health in setting up the first AIDS prevention campaign specifically focused on transvestites.

Janaína Dutra died of lung cancer at 43 years old, on February 8, 2004.

In 2010, the film Janaína Dutra – An Iron Lady, by international producer and screenwriter Wagner de Almeida, was released, celebrating the activist’s remarkable and intrepid life.

In 2011, was established in Fortaleza, the LGBT Reference Center Janaina Dutra, the municipal body which expects to secure LGBT people in circumstances of violence, rape, and omissions rights dependent on their sexual orientation or identity genre.

On 30 November 2021, to pay tribute to the 61st anniversary of the activist Janaína Dutra, Google featured a Doodle in her honor.