Classy Whores: Intersections of Class, Gender, and Sex Work in the Ideologies of the Putafeminista Movement in Brazil

Abstract

Brazil’s sex workers’ movement has long challenged hegemonic narratives about the sale of sex. In recent years, anti-prostitution sentiment has grown in Brazil, threatening sex workers’ rights. Simultaneously, the death of activist Gabriela Leite has lead to a renewal of leadership and a reformulation of theoretical approaches in the movement. In this context, putafeminismo is becoming established as an intersectional approach to race, class, and gender rooted in local historical contexts. The present article, based on 12 years of ethnography in sex workers’ movements, presents putafeminista understandings of sex, gender, race/color, and work. Inspired by Leite’s recovery of whore/puta as a self-identifier for sex workers, and rooted in feminist anthropology and historiography, putafeministas seek to resituate the term as a broader/deeper category. Putafeministas recover puta as a term applied to women working outside the family, unprotected from sexual violence. Looking at Brazilian history, they situate the sale of sex as a practical inevitability for a racially-identified female working population, whose horizons of possibility were bounded by cheap labor, marriage and prostitution. Finally, putafeministas use puta as a bridge to working class experiences more generally, questioning pornophobic understandings of ‘sexual slavery’ in a historical context in which women were often actual chattel.

“I Will Not Be Dona Maria”: Rethinking Exploitation and Objectification in the Context of Work and Sex Work

“…At the heart of this difference between sex workers' (and most particularly putafeminista sex workers (Blanchette and Da Silva 2018)) and prohibitionist feminists' views of exploitation lies a concept of totalizing objectification, whereby a woman's accepting money for sex so completely transforms her that her body and, indeed, her very self becomes congruent with the sex act. She-and not the sex-becomes an object that is bought and sold, completely destitute of human agency.…”

“…It is in this context that one should remember the old racist and sexist Brazilian folk saying reported by anthropologist Gilberto Freyre, which neatly lays out the hierarchy of objectifications available to women in colonial Brazil: "White women for marrying, mulata women for fucking, black women for work" (Freyre 1933, p. 48). 5 As we have pointed out elsewhere (Blanchette and Da Silva 2018), for women in the lowest reaches of Brazil's economy, often the only liberty available-and the only means to possibly construct a better future, escaping this tripartite destiny-is to be able to shift oneself from one to another of these positions, more or less at will. We thus believe that "Sexual objectification" as it has been conceived of by feminists such as Mulvey can only be understood within the contexts of other engendered forms of intersectionalized objectification within the constraints of a greater theory of labor objectification, such as those explored by Alan Soble (2002Soble ( , 2003.…”

“…No grant money or other financial aid was used in the conduct of the research presented here. Blanchette and Da Silva are politically involved with the sex worker rights movement in Brazil and the growing putafeminista movement, described elsewhere (Blanchette and Da Silva 2018).…”

Não há “ciência normal” para nós: desafios de uma putafeminista

“…Abolindo a putaria e resgatando putas, esta seria a ingênua tarefa das feministas preocupadas com o bem-estar feminino. Trabalhos como os de Piscitelli (2016), Prada (2018), Olivar (2012), Blanchette & Silva (2018), Mayorga & Diniz (2018), Juliano (2005), elevam e aprofundam as discussões sobre o assunto e rejeitam perspectivas salvacionistas e abolicionistas.…”

Prostituição e espaço urbano: a perspectiva “putafeminista” nos escritos de três prostitutas ativistas brasileiras

“…tem sido nomeado no Brasil e na Argentina de putafeminismo (PISCITELLI, 2016;BLANCHETTE;SILVA, 2018).…”