Universidade Federal de Goiás

Faculty Member, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais

PhD

Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences

Thesis Title: À Meia-Luz: Uma etnografia imprópria em clubes de sexo masculinos/In Hal-Light: An improper ethnography in male sex clubs

About

I am a professor of Anthropology at the Faculty of Social Sciences (FCS) and a researcher at the Center for Studies and Research in Gender and Sexuality (Ser-Tão), Federal University of Goiás (UFG), Brazil. I have an undergratuate degree in Social Sciences, a Master degree in Social Anthropology and a PhD in Social Sciences from State University of Campinas (UNICAMP)/Brazil (supervisor: Maria Filomena Gregori). Collaborative period at Universidad Complutense de Madrid/Spain from August 2008 through February 2009 (co-supervisor: Fernando Villaamil Pérez). Have worked on Urban Anthropology, focusing on the subjects: Gender, Sexuality, Homosexualities, Masculinities, Body, Identities, Difference Markers, Subjectivity, Embodiment and Eroticism.
Have worked also at CEBRAP/Brazil and Population Council/Brazil, as qualitative researcher in 2007.

My Doctoral Thesis consists of an ethnography stems from venues for sexual encounters between men, notably sex clubs in the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil. The overall objective is to bring empirical evidence to the current socio-anthropological debates about the "non-heterosexual" sexualities and eroticisms, in contexts of market segmentation. In addition, there is the aim to liaise with contemporary debates about the relationship between "homosexuality" and "masculinities”. The choice of sex clubs for men as a research was crucial as it links 1) the process of creating further fragmentation in  men’s sexual pleasure market in Brazil to 2) the appropriation of a contextual process which refers to valuation, incorporation and performativity of masculinity stereotypes in affective-sexual relationships between men. The mid-1960’s to mid-1980’s American and European sex clubs and leather bars are viewed here as a kind of convention that migrated through the market to other contexts, from the 1990’s onwards. One approach to understanding this process in Brazil is looking at the hard-core sex clubs (clubes de sexo duro) from Madrid, Spain. I present the history of sex clubs in São Paulo from interviews with owners and idealizers, discussing the context that generated the clubs and combining market segmentation with designers’ own paths and erotic choices. I inquire about these establishments’ hues which relate to those who use them and about how goers interpret their experiences at the clubs. Finally, I discuss the control of bodily practices taken as potentially uncontrolled at clubs. This raises the question: which are the bodies that matter at these venues? The analysis suggests that these experiences in half-light are guided not only by social markers of difference, but also by the idea of control.

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