The thesis investigates intersectional dynamics within Brazilian LGBTQ+ movements and their influence on movements’ strategic choices and subsequent results. The main argument is that LGBTQ+ groups have been pushed to formalise their structures to access material, cultural, and political resources to mobilise within a pre-determined institutionalised form of activism. Namely, the developments of the struggle against the HIV/AIDS epidemic set LGBTQ+ activism in Brazil on a trajectory that made formalisation of groups (often as NGOs), partnerships with the state, and judicialisation of rights not only the preferrable arrangements for activists, but rather a requirement for groups and their actions to be considered legitimate by other movements, funders, and the state.

This has affected movements’ forms of organising and strategies, thus impacting the goals they pursue and their limitations once achieved. Importantly, it produces differential consequences for intersectional subsets of the movement when seeking recognition and participation in the landscape of LGBTQ+ movements, and it creates prohibitive costs for marginalised sub-group. Thus, a framing of ‘dilemmas’ is used to highlight that subsets of the community have interacted differently with the strategic choices in this context, making formalisation a natural development for mainstream movements, but a challenging, albeit unavoidable, barrier to those at the margins. The argument is supported by primary data obtained from 51 qualitative interviews with Brazilian LGBTQ+ activists, extensive archival research, and participant observation at Pride events in the capital of São Paulo and a nearby smaller city, Salto.

The research offers two main contributions. First, it adds to the study of social movements by arguing that intersectional features of activists and internal dynamics of movements have a greater role in determining strategic choices with central consequences for movements’ outcomes than has been previously recognised in the literature. For this, LGBTQ+ movements are a particularly important case, as they provide an opportunity to analyse social movements that are intrinsically intersectional, highlighting the role of internal differences in facilitating, constraining, and shaping collective action. Second, it argues that LGBTQ+ movements and politics are essential elements in discourses and practices around citizenship, democracy, and neoliberalism in Brazil and should be analysed as such in the fields of social and political sciences, not only in gender and sexuality studies.