Brazil's Sex Wars

Brazil's Sex Wars PDF Author: Joseph Jay Sosa
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 1477330119
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
"This book presents an ethnography of LGBT activism in São Paulo, Brazil's largest city, during a decade (2008-2018) when Brazilian politics experienced a strong right-wing turn and increased partisanship. LGBT movements responded to increased right-wing opposition to sexual and gender autonomy in a variety of ways and Sosa analyzes this transforming political culture by examining debates over LGBT rights that extended across Brazilian political and public life--street protests, court cases, legislative campaigns, news coverage of violent crime, and television melodrama. That these debates play out in public allows the author to apply the lens of aesthetics, "examining what attracts us or repels us from political rights." The book begins with a discussion of how sexuality has moved from the private sphere to the political one as it came to be seen (by some) as a fundamental human right. The rest of the book unfolds chronologically. Chapter one traces the history of LGBT activism in Brazil, especially the push for anti-discrimination laws, and the debates about how to define homophobia. Chapter two introduces São Paulo's LGBT movement, and how over the decade preceding the period of study here, activists rethought what rights-based politics looked like via the kinds of actions they were able to perform. On a theoretical level, this chapter is exploring "activist subjectivity through the aesthetic category of judgment--or how individuals enter shared alignment through statements of perception." Chapter three revolves around the city's Pride parade, the largest in the world, and how that hyper visibility works in relation to everyday, less-spectacular forms of visibility. Brazil has a robust tradition of street protests, and chapter four looks at the intertwined aesthetics of queer politics and public protest via an ethnography with university students. The last chapter builds on these discussions as São Paulo, a center of LGBT activism and public visibility, also emerges as the center of a white, middle class rejection of the left-leaning governments that support sexual autonomy. The author suggests that the "debates" central to sexual politics actually engender, rather than reflect, two "pre-established sides to a public issue." A conclusion suggests that rights-based political paradigms are increasingly problematic for both the left and the right, as seen in the sex wars described in this book"--

Brazil's Sex Wars

Brazil's Sex Wars PDF Author: Joseph Jay Sosa
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 1477330119
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Get Book Here

Book Description
"This book presents an ethnography of LGBT activism in São Paulo, Brazil's largest city, during a decade (2008-2018) when Brazilian politics experienced a strong right-wing turn and increased partisanship. LGBT movements responded to increased right-wing opposition to sexual and gender autonomy in a variety of ways and Sosa analyzes this transforming political culture by examining debates over LGBT rights that extended across Brazilian political and public life--street protests, court cases, legislative campaigns, news coverage of violent crime, and television melodrama. That these debates play out in public allows the author to apply the lens of aesthetics, "examining what attracts us or repels us from political rights." The book begins with a discussion of how sexuality has moved from the private sphere to the political one as it came to be seen (by some) as a fundamental human right. The rest of the book unfolds chronologically. Chapter one traces the history of LGBT activism in Brazil, especially the push for anti-discrimination laws, and the debates about how to define homophobia. Chapter two introduces São Paulo's LGBT movement, and how over the decade preceding the period of study here, activists rethought what rights-based politics looked like via the kinds of actions they were able to perform. On a theoretical level, this chapter is exploring "activist subjectivity through the aesthetic category of judgment--or how individuals enter shared alignment through statements of perception." Chapter three revolves around the city's Pride parade, the largest in the world, and how that hyper visibility works in relation to everyday, less-spectacular forms of visibility. Brazil has a robust tradition of street protests, and chapter four looks at the intertwined aesthetics of queer politics and public protest via an ethnography with university students. The last chapter builds on these discussions as São Paulo, a center of LGBT activism and public visibility, also emerges as the center of a white, middle class rejection of the left-leaning governments that support sexual autonomy. The author suggests that the "debates" central to sexual politics actually engender, rather than reflect, two "pre-established sides to a public issue." A conclusion suggests that rights-based political paradigms are increasingly problematic for both the left and the right, as seen in the sex wars described in this book"--

Securing Sex

Securing Sex PDF Author: Benjamin A. Cowan
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469627515
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
In this history of right-wing politics in Brazil during the Cold War, Benjamin Cowan puts the spotlight on the Cold Warriors themselves. Drawing on little-tapped archival records, he shows that by midcentury, conservatives--individuals and organizations, civilian as well as military--were firmly situated in a transnational network of right-wing cultural activists. They subsequently joined the powerful hardline constituency supporting Brazil's brutal military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985. There, they lent their weight to a dictatorship that, Cowan argues, operationalized a moral panic that conflated communist subversion with manifestations of modernity, coalescing around the crucial nodes of gender and sexuality, particularly in relation to youth, women, and the mass media. The confluence of an empowered right and a security establishment suffused with rightist moralism created strongholds of anticommunism that spanned government agencies, spurred repression, and generated attempts to control and even change quotidian behavior. Tracking how limits to Cold War authoritarianism finally emerged, Cowan concludes that the record of autocracy and repression in Brazil is part of a larger story of reaction against perceived threats to traditional views of family, gender, moral standards, and sexuality--a story that continues in today's culture wars.

In Defense of Honor

In Defense of Honor PDF Author: Sueann Caulfield
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Examines debates over sexual honor to explore the ways in which private morality was infused with the cultural politics of nation-building and modernization, and was used to legitimate power differentials based on race, gender, and class.

Violence and Desire in Brazilian Lesbian Relationships

Violence and Desire in Brazilian Lesbian Relationships PDF Author: Andrea Stevenson Allen
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137489847
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
In Violence and Desire in Brazilian Lesbian Relationships, Allen examines the lives of Brazilian women in same-sex relationships. This examination contributes to interdisciplinary discussions of female same-sex sexuality, violence, race, and citizenship. Using fifteen months of ethnographic fieldwork, primarily with Afro-Brazilian women in the city of Salvador da Bahia, Allen argues that Brazilian lesbian women reject Brazilian cultural norms that encourage male domination and female submission through their engagement in romantic relationships with each other. At the same time Allen claims lesbian women also reproduce Brazilian cultural ideals that associate passion, intensity, and power with physical dominance through their engagement in infidelity and intimate partner violence. The book demonstrates that lesbian women are nonetheless marginalized as Brazilian citizens through widespread social and political invisibility despite these apparent displays of masculinized power.

Why We Lost the Sex Wars

Why We Lost the Sex Wars PDF Author: Lorna N. Bracewell
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781517906733
Category : Feminism
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
"Reexamining feminist sexual politics since the 1970s-the rivalries and the remarkable alliances"--

Queering the Public Sphere in Mexico and Brazil

Queering the Public Sphere in Mexico and Brazil PDF Author: Rafael de la Dehesa
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822392747
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Queering the Public Sphere in Mexico and Brazil is a groundbreaking comparative analysis of the historical development and contemporary dynamics of LGBT activism in Latin America’s two largest democracies. Rafael de la Dehesa focuses on the ways that LGBT activists have engaged with the state, particularly in alliance with political parties and through government health agencies in the wake of the AIDS crisis. He examines this engagement against the backdrop of the broader political transitions to democracy, the neoliberal transformation of state–civil society relations, and the gradual consolidation of sexual rights at the international level. His comparison highlights similarities between sexual rights movements in Mexico and Brazil, including a convergence on legislative priorities such as antidiscrimination laws and the legal recognition of same-sex couples. At the same time, de la Dehesa points to notable differences in the tactics deployed by activists and the coalitions brought to bear on the state. De la Dehesa studied the archives of activists, social-movement organizations, political parties, religious institutions, legislatures, and state agencies, and he interviewed hundreds of individuals, not only LGBT activists, but also feminists, AIDS and human-rights activists, party militants, journalists, academics, and state officials. He marshals his prodigious research to reveal the interplay between evolving representative institutions and LGBT activists’ entry into the political public sphere in Latin America, offering a critical analysis of the possibilities opened by emerging democratic arrangements, as well as their limitations. At the same time, exploring activists’ engagement with the international arena, he offers new insights into the diffusion and expression of transnational norms inscribing sexual rights within a broader project of liberal modernity. Queering the Public Sphere in Mexico and Brazil is a landmark examination of LGBT political mobilization.

Sex Workers Unite

Sex Workers Unite PDF Author: Melinda Chateauvert
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807061239
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
A provocative history that reveals how sex workers have been at the vanguard of social justice movements for the past fifty years while building a movement of their own that challenges our ideas about labor, sexuality, feminism, and freedom Documenting five decades of sex-worker activism, Sex Workers Unite is a fresh history that places prostitutes, hustlers, escorts, call girls, strippers, and porn stars in the center of America’s major civil rights struggles. Although their presence has largely been ignored and obscured, in this provocative history Melinda Chateauvert recasts sex workers as savvy political organizers—not as helpless victims in need of rescue. Even before transgender sex worker Sylvia Rivera threw a brick and sparked the Stonewall Riot in 1969, these trailblazing activists and allies challenged criminal sex laws and “whorephobia,” and were active in struggles for gay liberation, women’s rights, reproductive justice, union organizing, and prison abolition. Although the multibillion-dollar international sex industry thrives, the United States remains one of the few industrialized nations that continues to criminalize prostitution, and these discriminatory laws put workers at risk. In response, sex workers have organized to improve their working conditions and to challenge police and structural violence. Through individual confrontations and collective campaigns, they have pushed the boundaries of conventional organizing, called for decriminalization, and have reframed sex workers’ rights as human rights. Telling stories of sex workers, from the frontlines of the 1970s sex wars to the modern-day streets of SlutWalk, Chateauvert illuminates an underrepresented movement, introducing skilled activists who have organized a global campaign for self-determination and sexual freedom that is as multifaceted as the sex industry and as diverse as human sexuality.

Queering Paradigms IV

Queering Paradigms IV PDF Author: Elizabeth Sara Lewis
Publisher: Peter Lang Limited, International Academic Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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Book Description
This book is composed of research presented at the fourth international Queering Paradigms Conference (QP4), held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It intends to contribute to building a queer postcolonial critique of the current politics of queer activism and of queer knowledge production and circulation.

Sustaining Activism

Sustaining Activism PDF Author: Jeffrey W. Rubin
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822399318
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
In 1986, a group of young Brazilian women started a movement to secure economic rights for rural women and transform women's roles in their homes and communities. Together with activists across the country, they built a new democracy in the wake of a military dictatorship. In Sustaining Activism, Jeffrey W. Rubin and Emma Sokoloff-Rubin tell the behind-the-scenes story of this remarkable movement. As a father-daughter team, they describe the challenges of ethnographic research and the way their collaboration gave them a unique window into a fiery struggle for equality. Starting in 2002, Rubin and Sokoloff-Rubin traveled together to southern Brazil, where they interviewed activists over the course of ten years. Their vivid descriptions of women’s lives reveal the hard work of sustaining a social movement in the years after initial victories, when the political way forward was no longer clear and the goal of remaking gender roles proved more difficult than activists had ever imagined. Highlighting the tensions within the movement about how best to effect change, Sustaining Activism ultimately shows that democracies need social movements in order to improve people’s lives and create a more just society.

Comfort Women

Comfort Women PDF Author: Yoshiaki Yoshimi
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231120333
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Available for the first time in English, this is the definitive account of the practice of sexual slavery the Japanese military perpetrated during World War II by the researcher principally responsible for exposing the Japanese government's responsibility for these atrocities. The large scale imprisonment and rape of thousands of women, who were euphemistically called "comfort women" by the Japanese military, first seized public attention in 1991 when three Korean women filed suit in a Toyko District Court stating that they had been forced into sexual servitude and demanding compensation. Since then the comfort stations and their significance have been the subject of ongoing debate and intense activism in Japan, much if it inspired by Yoshimi's investigations. How large a role did the military, and by extension the government, play in setting up and administering these camps? What type of compensation, if any, are the victimized women due? These issues figure prominently in the current Japanese focus on public memory and arguments about the teaching and writing of history and are central to efforts to transform Japanese ways of remembering the war. Yoshimi Yoshiaki provides a wealth of documentation and testimony to prove the existence of some 2,000 centers where as many as 200,000 Korean, Filipina, Taiwanese, Indonesian, Burmese, Dutch, Australian, and some Japanese women were restrained for months and forced to engage in sexual activity with Japanese military personnel. Many of the women were teenagers, some as young as fourteen. To date, the Japanese government has neither admitted responsibility for creating the comfort station system nor given compensation directly to former comfort women. This English edition updates the Japanese edition originally published in 1995 and includes introductions by both the author and the translator placing the story in context for American readers.