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“What
woman am I?”: (homo)sexualities, differences and
bodiness in São Paulo, Brazil
Regina Facchini
State
University of Campinas – UNICAMP
São
Paulo, Brasil
As
a result of a doctorate research that used anthropological
methodology, in this paper I discuss the ways that the
interaction among LGBT movement, health policies, other
social movements and the fragmented market have influenced
the construction of a “lesbian body” within the
Brazilian context of the nineties. This construction
emerges from the necessity of a collective “lesbian”
identity empowerment.
The
analysis of this matter raises questions to the empirical
field and literature on gender, sexuality, body and
identities. These themes collaborate in the understanding
of the relations that take place in erotic practices (among
women), identities, life styles, social conventions and
body/bodiness.
The
analyzed material was collected from 2003 to 2007: 36
interviews and ethnographic observation in spaces where
women who like women get-together to socialize in the city
of São Paulo. In addition to holding the largest LGBT
Pride Day, it also concentrates the major LGBT activism
groups and the most intense night life addressed for
homosexuals in Brazil. We assured that the research could
encompass the highest possible diversity as far as
participants were concerned: social-economic levels, race/color,
generations and sexual-emotional trajectories.
My
ethnography analizes the conventions and processes of
established social differentiation, as well as the process
of subjectivation and materialization mediated by social
relations and conventions.
Keywords:
sexualities; gender; intersectionality; bodiness;
social identities
About
Regina Facchini
Bachelor
in Sociology and Politics (1995), Master in Social
Anthropology (2002) and PhD student in Social Sciences
(2007). Her topics of interests include gender studies and
sexuality, political anthropology of health with emphasis
on Human Rights; bodiness; social identities.
Vice-president of the Gay-Pride Association of São
Paulo.
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