In this research I examine the complexity of male sexuality and masculinity among male sex workers in New Orleans. Despite danger to their health and social standing, men engage in risky sexual behavior with other men for both business and pleasure. These behaviors may stem from the thrill of risk itself, or from other causes such as unexplored sexual inhibitions on the part of the male sex workers or their clients. Focusing on male sex workers, this ethnographic study explores why male sex workers engage in work that is high risk and potentially very dangerous. It examines the world of male sex work as one of the few places where men who adopt homosexual identity and those who refuse it are in intimate contact with one another. It offers us the opportunity to address questions about male sexual identity and homosexual desire, while attempting to understand the commodified spatial practices of a sexual culture in New Orleans.

Submitted by Silvana Teresinha Dornelles Studzinski (sstudzinski) on 2016-02-19T11:52:12Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Natália Ledur Alles_.pdf: 1618961 bytes, checksum: 9bbed6191e7f0836d04c6a3f0077dfb4 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-02-19T11:52:12Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Natália Ledur Alles_.pdf: 1618961 bytes, checksum: 9bbed6191e7f0836d04c6a3f0077dfb4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-12-21 / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / A pesquisa busca compreender como a prostituição e as mulheres prostitutas são visibilizadas em espaços comunicacionais digitais brasileiros, relacionando essas percepções às narrativas elaboradas por prostitutas sobre si mesmas e sobre suas experiências. Partindo da proposta do projeto de lei 4.211/2012, que propõe a regulamentação da prostituição como profissão, pretendemos identificar os enquadramentos comunicacionais existentes nas notícias e discussões que enfocam a questão na internet, bem como observar os espaços destinados às experiências e opiniões das pessoas que vivenciam o fenômeno. Pensando que interagir com integrantes deste grupo estigmatizado pode suscitar compreensões para além das representações hegemônicas e dos estereótipos que definem o que é a prostituição, a pesquisa procura privilegiar as vozes das prostitutas e relacioná-las aos conteúdos comunicacionais selecionados. Teoricamente, buscamos articular estudos sobre prostituição, gênero e sexualidade aos conceitos de narrativa e enquadramentos comunicacionais. Para a pesquisa empírica, estabeleceu-se um percurso metodológico dividido em diferentes fases. Em um primeiro momento, efetuou-se uma investigação de inspiração etnográfica junto ao Núcleo de Estudos da Prostituição, entidade que congrega trabalhadoras do sexo em Porto Alegre, onde foi possível acompanhar o cotidiano de militantes e conhecer trajetórias e histórias de mulheres prostitutas. Durante esse período, foram realizadas entrevistas com oito profissionais do sexo que frequentam o NEP. Em outra etapa, objetivando identificar os enquadramentos comunicacionais presentes nos debates sobre o tema circulantes na internet, analisamos 65 textos de distintos autores publicados em portais de notícias, sites feministas, portais religiosos, blogs de temática variada, sites de ONGs e partidos políticos e sites governamentais. A partir das entrevistas e da convivência com as prostitutas, destaca-se a percepção da necessidade de refletir sobre o fenômeno sem partir de explicações fixas sobre seu significado na vida dessas pessoas. A análise nos permitiu traçar aproximações e distanciamentos entre as narrativas das prostitutas e os entendimentos sobre a prostituição divulgados nos espaços comunicacionais, assim como visualizar a existência de uma disputa sobre os sentidos da prostituição em nossa sociedade. / This work aims to understand Brazilian digital media visualization of prostitution and female sex workers, relating these perceptions to women’s narratives about themselves and their experiences. Focusing on 4.211/2012 Law Project, which proposes sex work regulation as a profession, we intend to identify internet media frames about this discussion as well as the existence of some space for sex workers experiences and opinions expressions. Considering that interaction with these stigmatized group members may give rise to sex work understanding beyond hegemonic representations and stereotypes, sex workers’ voices are privileged in this work, attempting to relate them to the valuated communicational content. Theoretically, sex work, gender and sexuality studies are articulated to narrative and media framing concepts. Empirical research methodology was divided in three phases. First, we did an ethnographically inspired survey on Porto Alegre’s Núcleo de Estudos da Prostituição (Sex Work Studies Centre), a NGO supporting and congregating prostitutes, where collection of several sex workers stories and trajectories was possible. This first-part work also consisted of interviewing in a deeper way eight sex workers. Aiming to identify internet media frames about prostitution’s regulation, second-part work consisted of 65 media texts analysis, written by different authors and publicized on news’, feminists’, religious’, blogs’, NGO’, political parties’ and governmental websites. Interviews and social interaction with sex workers lead us to highlight the urgency of thinking this phenomenon without tracing steady explanations about its meaning in these people lives. Analysis allowed us to draw similarities and divergences between sex workers’ narratives and communicational understandings about prostitution, as well as visualizing our society dispute regarding sex work meanings.

A presente tese explora as formas, naturezas e transformações da “relação prostituição”, em específico, daquilo que temos chamado como “políticas da prostituição feminina de rua”, tendo como foco a região central da cidade de Porto Alegre - RS, no percurso das últimas três décadas. A perspectiva narrativa e analítica desta pesquisa é construída a partir do encontro etnográfico com quatro mulheres militantes do movimento organizado de prostitutas em Porto Alegre, nascidas entre 1955 e 1965, que ainda hoje, como nos últimos 25 ou 30 anos, encontram na prostituição seus principais ganhos financeiros e simbólicos. Metodologicamente, trata-se de uma “etnografia da experiência interpessoal” realizada entre agosto de 2006 e janeiro de 2009, principalmente na cidade de Porto Alegre. Como resultados, destacam-se importantes transformações na organização e nas políticas da prostituição de rua, que implicam diferenças importantes entre gerações e ciclos de vida; a persistência da violência estatal e social; a “privatização” da prostituição; e a configuração de “zonas de tolerância simbólica”. Sugere-se a existência de uma bio-política da decência, do trabalho, da família e da cidadania, que, no caso brasileiro, se materializa numa política de eterna “estimulação/punição” (tolerância) sobre a prostituição/trabalho. Por outro lado, é evidente a complexidade, hibridez e importância das movimentações políticas, organizadas ou não, que reivindicam os direitos das prostitutas e simetrizam as relações. / This thesis explores forms, natures and transformations of “prostitution” as a relationship, more specifically of what has been called the “politics of female street prostitution” in Porto Alegre, in the last three decades. The analytical and narrative perspectives have been built through the ethnographic encounter with four women militant of the prostitute movement in Porto Alegre, born between 1955 and 1965 who, in the last 25-30 years, have found in prostitution their main economic and symbolic gains. Based on the methodological approach of ethnography of interpersonal experience this research has been carried out between 2006 and 2009. The results show the important transformations in the organization and the politics of street prostitution, that imply (a) important differences in generations and life cycles; (b) the persistence of state and social violence; (c) the privatization of prostitution; and (d) the constitution of symbolic tolerance zones. We suggest there is a biopolitics of decency, of work, of family, and of citizen rights that, in the Brazilian case, materializes itself into politics of permanent stimulation/punishment (tolerance) over prostitution/work. On the other hand, it becomes clear the complexity, the hybridism and the importance of organized or non-organized political movements, that claim rights and produce more symmetric relationships.

Artwork / Streetlives is a community-based, arts-informed, research project which addresses harm reduction amongst street youth in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Nine street-involved participant researchers (supported by a team of researchers and community organizations) used art making and storytelling as ways of understanding the risks specific to street-involved youth in Thunder Bay. Due to the heterogeneous nature of the participant researcher group and a majority of Aboriginal research participants, a novel approach was used to create principles of research collaboration, in pursuit of the principles of ownership, control, access and possession for ethical research with Aboriginal peoples. The participant researchers found that their most common experience was their vulnerability to governmental social services and law enforcement personnel and policies. They further agreed that the risk of losing their children to child protection services is a source of increased vulnerability and a barrier to accessing treatment. They all agreed that the process of art making was fruitful and were surprised by the clarity and evocative nature of their artwork, finding that meeting weekly to do art is gratifying and therapeutic. They were interested to discover that the art they created, just by telling their stories, contained strong prevention messages they would have been influenced by as younger people. As such the participants want to continue making art, and showing their work, particularly to young people, social service providers, and law enforcement officers, who they think are in the best position to learn from it. This project is building capacity in the community (by teaching artmaking, group work, organizing, critical thinking, and presentation skills), is contributing to scholarship, and significantly and positively impacting the lives of the participant researchers. This work is represented in traditional academic prose and as collaborative fiction.

Artwork / Streetlives is a community-based, arts-informed, research project which addresses harm reduction amongst street youth in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Nine street-involved participant researchers (supported by a team of researchers and community organizations) used art making and storytelling as ways of understanding the risks specific to street-involved youth in Thunder Bay. Due to the heterogeneous nature of the participant researcher group and a majority of Aboriginal research participants, a novel approach was used to create principles of research collaboration, in pursuit of the principles of ownership, control, access and possession for ethical research with Aboriginal peoples. The participant researchers found that their most common experience was their vulnerability to governmental social services and law enforcement personnel and policies. They further agreed that the risk of losing their children to child protection services is a source of increased vulnerability and a barrier to accessing treatment. They all agreed that the process of art making was fruitful and were surprised by the clarity and evocative nature of their artwork, finding that meeting weekly to do art is gratifying and therapeutic. They were interested to discover that the art they created, just by telling their stories, contained strong prevention messages they would have been influenced by as younger people. As such the participants want to continue making art, and showing their work, particularly to young people, social service providers, and law enforcement officers, who they think are in the best position to learn from it. This project is building capacity in the community (by teaching artmaking, group work, organizing, critical thinking, and presentation skills), is contributing to scholarship, and significantly and positively impacting the lives of the participant researchers. This work is represented in traditional academic prose and as collaborative fiction.

Anti-trafficking discourses in Canada feature prominently in policy discussions of prostitution and sex work as well as national security and border integrity, including discussions of migration, migrant smuggling, refuge, and asylum. Yet, representations of trafficked persons have gone largely unquestioned in the country and anti-trafficking policies have garnered broad acceptance without detailed consideration of how such representations affect the rights and experiences of trafficked persons. In this context, anti-trafficking discourses are relied upon to justify a variety of conflicting political agendas. By placing existing discourses of human trafficking under scrutiny, including representations of trafficked persons from the perspective of frontline workers, government officials, law enforcement, and trafficked persons themselves in Western Canada, this study examines the politicized construction of trafficking discourses and thereby identifies how some anti-trafficking measures claiming to liberate “victims of trafficking” contribute to the insecurities faced by trafficked persons. Further, by examining recent immigration policy amendments alongside anti-trafficking discourses, this study considers the role of anti-trafficking discourses in shaping contemporary boundaries of inclusion and exclusion. In particular, the study highlights the insecurity trafficked persons experience as a result of measures emphasizing criminalization and deportation as well as the effect of criminalization for temporary migrant workers, particularly migrant workers experiencing exploitation in a context of socio-economic constraint.

Rent: Same-Sex Prostitution in Modern Britain, 1885-1957 chronicles the concept of “rent boys” and the men who purchased their services. This dissertation demonstrates how queer identity in Britain, until contemporary times, was largely regulated by class, in which middle-and-upper-class queer men often perceived of working-class bodies as fetishized consumer goods. The “rent boy” was an upper-class queer fantasy, and working-class men sometimes used this fantasy for their own agenda while others intentionally dismantled the “rent boy” trope, refusing to submit to upper-class expectations. This work also explains how the “rent boy” fantasy was eventually relegated to the periphery of queer life during the mid-century movement for decriminalization. The movement was controlled by queer elites who ostracized economic-based and public forms of sex and emphasized the bourgeois sexual mores of their heterosexual counterparts. Sex between adult men in private was decriminalized, but working-class men selling sex suffered harsher laws and more strictly enforced penalties under this new, ostensibly “progressive” legislation.

In this thesis my aim is to bring attention to the problem of sexual exclusion as experienced by members of the disability community and argue that this is an issue of justice. I do this by first discussing the value of sex. I maintain that sex is an integral part of a flourishing human life. Once this is established, I examine theories of justice and demonstrate how the systematic sexual exclusion of persons with disabilities can be understood as an injustice that must be addressed. Finally, I give an overview of some of the proposed solutions to the problem of sexual exclusion and conclude that the transformation of social attitudes is necessary for sexual justice. / Graduate / 0422 / trw.deboer@gmail.com

A presente tese explora as formas, naturezas e transformações da “relação prostituição”, em específico, daquilo que temos chamado como “políticas da prostituição feminina de rua”, tendo como foco a região central da cidade de Porto Alegre - RS, no percurso das últimas três décadas. A perspectiva narrativa e analítica desta pesquisa é construída a partir do encontro etnográfico com quatro mulheres militantes do movimento organizado de prostitutas em Porto Alegre, nascidas entre 1955 e 1965, que ainda hoje, como nos últimos 25 ou 30 anos, encontram na prostituição seus principais ganhos financeiros e simbólicos. Metodologicamente, trata-se de uma “etnografia da experiência interpessoal” realizada entre agosto de 2006 e janeiro de 2009, principalmente na cidade de Porto Alegre. Como resultados, destacam-se importantes transformações na organização e nas políticas da prostituição de rua, que implicam diferenças importantes entre gerações e ciclos de vida; a persistência da violência estatal e social; a “privatização” da prostituição; e a configuração de “zonas de tolerância simbólica”. Sugere-se a existência de uma bio-política da decência, do trabalho, da família e da cidadania, que, no caso brasileiro, se materializa numa política de eterna “estimulação/punição” (tolerância) sobre a prostituição/trabalho. Por outro lado, é evidente a complexidade, hibridez e importância das movimentações políticas, organizadas ou não, que reivindicam os direitos das prostitutas e simetrizam as relações. / This thesis explores forms, natures and transformations of “prostitution” as a relationship, more specifically of what has been called the “politics of female street prostitution” in Porto Alegre, in the last three decades. The analytical and narrative perspectives have been built through the ethnographic encounter with four women militant of the prostitute movement in Porto Alegre, born between 1955 and 1965 who, in the last 25-30 years, have found in prostitution their main economic and symbolic gains. Based on the methodological approach of ethnography of interpersonal experience this research has been carried out between 2006 and 2009. The results show the important transformations in the organization and the politics of street prostitution, that imply (a) important differences in generations and life cycles; (b) the persistence of state and social violence; (c) the privatization of prostitution; and (d) the constitution of symbolic tolerance zones. We suggest there is a biopolitics of decency, of work, of family, and of citizen rights that, in the Brazilian case, materializes itself into politics of permanent stimulation/punishment (tolerance) over prostitution/work. On the other hand, it becomes clear the complexity, the hybridism and the importance of organized or non-organized political movements, that claim rights and produce more symmetric relationships.

A presente tese explora as formas, naturezas e transformações da “relação prostituição”, em específico, daquilo que temos chamado como “políticas da prostituição feminina de rua”, tendo como foco a região central da cidade de Porto Alegre - RS, no percurso das últimas três décadas. A perspectiva narrativa e analítica desta pesquisa é construída a partir do encontro etnográfico com quatro mulheres militantes do movimento organizado de prostitutas em Porto Alegre, nascidas entre 1955 e 1965, que ainda hoje, como nos últimos 25 ou 30 anos, encontram na prostituição seus principais ganhos financeiros e simbólicos. Metodologicamente, trata-se de uma “etnografia da experiência interpessoal” realizada entre agosto de 2006 e janeiro de 2009, principalmente na cidade de Porto Alegre. Como resultados, destacam-se importantes transformações na organização e nas políticas da prostituição de rua, que implicam diferenças importantes entre gerações e ciclos de vida; a persistência da violência estatal e social; a “privatização” da prostituição; e a configuração de “zonas de tolerância simbólica”. Sugere-se a existência de uma bio-política da decência, do trabalho, da família e da cidadania, que, no caso brasileiro, se materializa numa política de eterna “estimulação/punição” (tolerância) sobre a prostituição/trabalho. Por outro lado, é evidente a complexidade, hibridez e importância das movimentações políticas, organizadas ou não, que reivindicam os direitos das prostitutas e simetrizam as relações. / This thesis explores forms, natures and transformations of “prostitution” as a relationship, more specifically of what has been called the “politics of female street prostitution” in Porto Alegre, in the last three decades. The analytical and narrative perspectives have been built through the ethnographic encounter with four women militant of the prostitute movement in Porto Alegre, born between 1955 and 1965 who, in the last 25-30 years, have found in prostitution their main economic and symbolic gains. Based on the methodological approach of ethnography of interpersonal experience this research has been carried out between 2006 and 2009. The results show the important transformations in the organization and the politics of street prostitution, that imply (a) important differences in generations and life cycles; (b) the persistence of state and social violence; (c) the privatization of prostitution; and (d) the constitution of symbolic tolerance zones. We suggest there is a biopolitics of decency, of work, of family, and of citizen rights that, in the Brazilian case, materializes itself into politics of permanent stimulation/punishment (tolerance) over prostitution/work. On the other hand, it becomes clear the complexity, the hybridism and the importance of organized or non-organized political movements, that claim rights and produce more symmetric relationships.