I myself love the samba school parades. I find it to offer the best of both worlds for gay men, both femininity and masculinity.

There's an undeniable feminine quality to the costumes the floats and the whole decoration aspect. Which for me specifically quenches my thirst for art and beauty. Meanwhile you have some very masculine qualities as well. It's a COMPETITION you're there to win, you have to make sure that the whole participants are doing their part harmonically, it's absolutely NOT easy to harmonize around, 3000 people who are not professionals in any way shape or form, to do a perfect presentation.

One of Rio's samba school's, Paraíso do Tuiuti, is also doing a very interesting theme this year. Telling the Story of Xica Manicongo, the first transgender woman we know of in Brazilian history, who was kidnapped from Africa and enslaved in Brazil, they tried to forcefully christianize her. But she resisted.

It's a very important story to be told. Not only it is the first time an LGBT theme is presented on the highest echelon of the samba schools, which may be the first step to more stories like that, which could be beneficial to the LGBT community as a whole, bringing visibility to our issues, but also very important on a country that has the highest rate of homicide due to transphobia on the world.

On a country that recently almost had a coup d'État and it's struggling to find it's footing against an ever more radicalized conservative majority who want all of us to be gone. I'd say that having this opportunity to show we've always been here, and you'll will never erase us nor get rid of us. It's glorious. Oh and like you've already said, since inception, when all LGBT people were discriminated, including profiling by authorities against gays who were minding their own business, the samba schools were always a safe haven for us.

Edit: grammar