Effeminacy remains a highly policed and racialised site of gender regulation, particularly for racialised queer men navigating migration. Drawing on interviews with six Brazilian queer men living in Canada, this qualitative study examines how effeminacy stigma is experienced, reproduced and resisted within diasporic queer spaces. Guided by frameworks of queer diaspora, postcolonial masculinity and intersectional approaches to health and belonging, the analysis illustrates how migration reconfigures colonial scripts of masculinity through whiteness, homonormativity and peer policing in Canadian 2SLGBTQIA + contexts. Participants described masculinity as a form of social currency that structured safety, desirability and belonging, often requiring self-monitoring. At the same time, themes revealed moments of resistance enacted through language, affect and embodiment, where effeminacy was reclaimed as a site of dignity, relational connection and self-definition. By centring Brazilian queer men-a population understudied in North American queer migration research-the study contributes to critical scholarship on queer diaspora, effeminacy stigma and health and well-being. The findings call for critical attention to intra-community hierarchies that undermine belonging and shape health-relevant experiences among racialised queer migrants.
Sanzi et al. (Wed,) studied this question.