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Pleasure and Danger: Situating Debates and Linkages Between Gender and Sexuality* * Both the organization of this debate and the research which produced the data quoted throughout this article were supported by the CNPq at different moments. The “Gender and sexuality in Brazilian research and scientific production: intersections, connections and conventions” project, Process #402556/2010-0, had support from CNPq and was folded into the “Studies regarding gender and sexuality in Brazil: processes of change and (co)production of knowledge” project, Process #309474/2014-0, which is still ongoing, also funded by CNPq. I would like to thank the researchers and professors who contributed to this research by granting interviews. I would also like to thank the researchers and scholarship students who worked on the project: Caroline Gorski Araujo, Marcelo Perilo, Marcelo Daniliauskas, Ana Cláudia Pilon, Ana Paula Araujo, Sarah Rossetti Machado and Rubens Mascarenhas Neto. I am grateful for the dialogues and exchanges that I have had with my colleagues, Sérgio Carrara, Júlio Simões and Maria Filomena Gregori during the preparation for the debate and the publication of this article, and to Isadora Lins França, Iara Beleli and Carolina Branco de Castro Ferreira, who read and commented on earlier versions of this text.

Abstract

The present article contextualizes and presents some reflections submitted to “Pleasure and Danger: 30 Years of Debate”, a round table organized during the “Rethinking Gender and Feminisms” International Seminar, which took place in September 2014 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Nucleus for Gender Studies Pagu at Unicamp. It attempts to describe, in broad sweeps, the main lines of gender and sexuality studies in Brazil, focusing on how links between gender and sexuality intertwine in socio-anthropological research, indicating specific traits that characterize the studies carried out by the Nucleus along these lines and, finally, connecting these to reflections made by other authors invited for the event. This contextualization is undertaken through research into the recent development of the field of studies on women, sexuality, gender and/or feminisms in Brazil. It draws its quantitative data from a survey about research groups in the country, situated according to their bibliographic production and interviews with professors and researchers from different generations who have played significant roles in the construction and development of this field of studies.

Gender; Sexuality; Intersectionalities; Scientific Production - Brazil

Resumo

Este artigo contextualiza e apresenta as reflexões tecidas na mesa “Prazer e perigo: 30 anos de debate”, realizada por ocasião do “Seminário Internacional Repensando Gênero e Feminismos”, que celebrou, em setembro de 2014, os 20 anos do Núcleo de Estudos de Gênero Pagu da Unicamp. Para tanto, procura situar em grandes linhas, os estudos em gênero e sexualidade no Brasil, focaliza a narrativa no modo como se entrelaçam articulações entre gênero e sexualidade na pesquisa sócio-antropológica e indica características específicas que marcam os estudos nessa vertente realizados pelo Núcleo, articulando-os às reflexões tecidas pelos autores convidados na ocasião. A contextualização é feita mediante apoio em pesquisa sobre o desenvolvimento do campo de estudos sobre mulheres, gênero, feminismos e/ou sexualidade no Brasil recente. Toma por base dados quantitativos de levantamento sobre grupos de pesquisa no país, situados a partir de pesquisa bibliográfica e entrevistas com professores e pesquisadores, de diferentes gerações, com destacado envolvimento na construção e no adensamento desse campo de estudos.

Gênero; Sexualidade; Interseccionalidades; Produção Científica - Brasil

The tension between sexual danger and sexual pleasure is a powerful one in women’s lives. Sexuality is simultaneously a domain of restriction, repression, and danger as well as a domain of exploration, pleasure, and agency. To focus only on pleasure and gratification ignores the patriarchal structure in which women act, yet to speak only of sexual violence and oppression ignores women’s experience with sexual agency and choice and unwittingly increases the sexual terror and despair in which women live (Vance, 1992Vance, Carole. Pleasure and danger: toward a politcs of sexuality. In: Vance, Carole. (ed.). Pleasure and Danger: exploring female sexuality. London, Pandora Press, 1992[1984], pp.1-27. [1984]:1).

With these words, Carole Vance opened her influential article in the collection Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, first published in 1984 as the result of a 1982 seminar at Barnard College in New York. This event – and particularly the contributions by Carole Vance and Gayle Rubin, which became well known in Brazil – represents an extremely influential mark in the studies that link gender and sexuality in our country. This is particularly true regarding the work that we do at the Nucleus1 1 Even though we understand that “nucleus” in English is not commonly used to refer to an institutional apparatus as it is in Portuguese, we chose to maintain the word since research nuclei and research centers are distinguishable in Brazil, and Pagu started off as a center, and became a Nucleus later on. for Gender Studies Pagu.

In order to contribute to an understanding of the impacts, linkages and consequences of the debates which have taken place regarding studies that connect gender and sexuality in Brazil, we organized Pleasure and Danger: 30 years of debate table at the Rethinking Gender and Feminisms, a seminar, which celebrated the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Nucleus for Gender Studies Pagu. The debates were conducted on this occasion also aimed at reflecting upon the relationship between scientific production and policy that underlies the constitution of this strand of thought and study in Brazil.

The present article introduces these debates and seeks to describe, in broad strokes, studies of gender and sexuality in Brazil. I focus on how linkages between gender and sexuality in Brazilian socio-anthropological research were constructed and I indicate the characteristics that mark the approach undertaken by the Nucleus for Gender Studies Pagu, bringing together the reflections of the authors that were invited to the debate. This contextualization is based on research2 2 This is the “Gender and sexuality in Brazilian research and scientific production: intersections, connections and conventions” project, developed between 2010 and 2012 at Pagu/Unicamp, funded by CNPq. The general objective of the study was to trace a profile and contribute to the recuperation of the recent history of research into women, gender, feminism and/or sexuality in Brazil. It worked with basically seven sources: 1) research groups dealing with these themes listed on the DGP of CNPq; 2) Lattes curriculum platform; 3) electronic annals of the largest related scientific event in the country, Making Gender Seminar; 4) articles published in five Brazilian periodicals that are exclusively dedicated to these themes; 5) reference documents for public policies for women’s, LGBT and human rights in the national sphere; 6) interviews with researchers who played an important role in the constitution and development of these studies, and 7) interviews with actors involved in the promotion of scientific production. that I have been undertaking over the last several years regarding the recent development of the field of women’s, gender, feminism and sexualities studies in Brazil. I draw my quantitative data from a survey of research groups in the country, situated according to their bibliographic production and interviews with professors and researchers from different generations who have played significant roles in the construction and development of this field of studies.

This is thus an overview of localized knowledge, in Haraway’s terms (1995). I am a former graduate student of Unicamp, formed by the hands of Pagu researchers. Since 2010, I have myself been a researcher at Pagu Nucleus. This project is a reflection I developed to celebrate Pagu’s 20th birthday and to open up debate. My training was also supported and influenced by a number of strategies that were constituted in the field I study here. Over the past 20 years that I have devoted to studying the interweaving of gender and sexuality, I have built networks that simultaneously enable this study and inserted limitations into the scope of my research. The narrative I present here was produced within a context, with specific framing; it is part of a much broader research project that gives rise to many other reflections and possibilities for analysis. It is thus just one narrative among many other possibilities.

Contextualizing: Studies about women, gender, feminism and/or sexuality

Over the last few decades, there has been a growing wave of concern with questions related to gender and sexuality, both in Brazil and internationally. This has not been limited to the field of social movements: it has also infiltrated public policy circles and academia. According to data from a project that I recently coordinated (Facchini; Daniliauskas; Pilon, 2013Facchini, Regina; Daniliauskas, Marcelo; Pilon, Ana Cláudia. Políticas sexuais e produção de conhecimento no Brasil: situando estudos sobre sexualidade e suas conexões. Revista de Ciências Sociais, vol. 44, nº1, Fortaleza, 2013, pp.161-193.), there were 905 research groups studying women, gender and/or sexuality in Brazil in 2011, according to CNPq’s Directory of Research Groups (DRG)3 3 Data from the DRG/CNPq was collected between November 2010 and December 2011, including all updates. It thus shows groups that were actively registered during the period surveyed. The search terms used were gender, women, feminism, masculinity, sexuality, homosexuality, homosexuality, transvestism, transsexualism, transvestite, queer, gender, sexual orientation and sex education. The presence of these terms was searched for in the groups’ names, their research lines and the keywords used. We discarded the groups in which gender referenced biological taxonomy or literary genre (gender and genre are homonyms in Portuguese). .

One must be careful when looking at this data, particularly because a large portion of these groups probably don’t see themselves as actively belonging to the field of gender and/or sexuality studies. They do not share the same academic circles nor theoretical and political references. They have different degrees of engagement with sex and gender, considering that over a third of them (34.2%) only deal exclusively with either the one theme or the other. However, by looking at the dates on which these groups were formed (and in accordance with the relevant literature: Grossi, 2010Grossi, Miriam Pillar. Gênero, Sexualidade e Reprodução: A constituição dos estudos sobre gênero, sexualidade e reprodução no Brasil. In: Martins, C. B.; Duarte, L. F. D. Horizontes das ciências sociais no Brasil: antropologia. São Paulo, Anpocs, 2010, pp.293-340.; Scavone, 2011Scavone, Lucila. Ciência e Militância: os estudos de gênero no Brasil. In: XXV Encontro Anual da ANPOCS, 2011, Caxambu. 35º Encontro Anual da ANPOCS/Textos Completos, 2011 [http://portal.anpocs.org/portal/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_view&gid=992&Itemid=353, acesso em: 12 dez 2015].
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), we can see that there has been accentuated growth among these groups since the turn of the century. Although some groups have been active since as early as 1978, 24% were founded between 1992 and 2001, while 72.5% of the currently existing groups arose between 2002 and 2011.

There is a considerable concentration of these groups in public universities (85%) and their regional distribution closely follows the distribution of graduate programs across the country4 4 Data taken from GeoCapes for 2011. According to this, the groups located in the DRG/CNPq were found in a proportion of 1 to every three graduate programs in the country, on average. This proportion was lower in the regions with more graduate programs, especially in the south and southwest of Brazil. , with the highest concentration in the Southeast (38.7%), followed by the Northeast (27.3%), South (18.3%), Central West (9.4%) and North (6.3%). Groups are present in all areas of knowledge, with the majority being in the Humanities (54.7%) and Health Sciences (23.3%). These are also the areas with the oldest groups. Applied Social Sciences (13.7%) and the area of Languages, Linguistics and Arts (7.5%) have groups from the 1990s. Other areas have groups founded in the 2000s.

Most of the groups (71.6%) work with women and/or gender without mentioning sexuality in their descriptions or lines of research. About a quarter of the groups mention sexuality and these are divided between those who do not mention gender (5.5%) and those that explicitly include gender and sexuality (22.9%). A reading of these groups’ class listings, self-descriptions and keywords shows that just over one third (36.6%) describe themselves in such a way that they can be perceived as working with gender as an analytical category, and/or working with sexuality by taking an approach that prioritizes socially and historically constructed meanings and the social and political relations in which these operate. However, when we specifically look for groups that indicate concurrent work on gender and sexuality, this percentage climbs to almost 2/3rds. Considering that this analysis is drawn just from the groups’ descriptions of research lines and such, it should be taken with a grain of salt, especially because research with women often includes issues of sexuality without emphasizing this in its CNPq/DRG group descriptions. The variation is nevertheless noteworthy, especially considering that there are clear disciplinary concentrations for each typology5 5 Among the groups which display some indication of work with gender and sexuality we find the following disciplinary distribution: 23% are in education, 13% in anthropology, psychology 12%, 12% in public health, 6.5 % in nursing and 7% in history. In terms of general distribution, these same areas of knowledge present the following percentages: 14.4% in education, 7.3% in anthropology, 7.7% in Psychology, 8.6% in public health, 6.7% in Nursing and 9.8% in history. While about 1/2 of the groups in which gender clearly appears as a category of analysis are located in the human sciences, about 80% of the groups that refer exclusively to women are in the area of health sciences. .

If the data from the DRG catalogue shows the growth and internal diversification of these institutionalized research initiatives, the interviews that we undertook with significant researchers in the field allow us to see it with even greater depth and clarity. There is no space in the present article to recapitulate the formative strategies and types of aid that led to the institutionalization and reinforcement of this field of study6 6 For a more detailed analysis of the institutionalization and strengthening of this field, see Facchini, Daniliauskas and Pilon (2013). since the pioneering efforts of the 1970s. Some central characteristics have emerged from the interviews, however, deserve to be emphasized. In the first place, there has been a great amount of dialogue between studies of sexuality, women, gender and feminism. Secondly, the researchers who study these topics have become enmeshed with feminist and LGBT movements, through a set of complicities and tensions.

In order to properly understand these numbers, we must also take into account the impact of HIV/AIDS, the expansion of graduate schools in Brazil, the activities of international philanthropic foundations (especially the Ford Foundation), and the increased participation of civil society (including universities) in the formulation, implementation, and evaluation of public policies following the re-democratization of Brazil, especially at the turn of the century and during the first decade of the 2000s.

As Sérgio Carrara and Júlio Simões have indicated (2007), sexuality studies have not passed through this institutionalization process separately from gender studies in Brazil. Sexuality, gender and sexuality, sexual/gender diversity and queer studies have all grown significantly in Brazil over the past few decades. Since the 1970’s, sexuality studies have become more independent from the questions of national identity and nation-building which originally marked the theme’s birth in the country (Citeli, 2005Citeli, Maria Teresa. A pesquisa sobre sexualidade e direitos sexuais no Brasil (1990-2002): revisão crítica. Rio de Janeiro, CEPESC, 2005.). It was precisely during this period that the feminist and homosexual movements began to participate in the Brazilian public scenario in a more incisive fashion, even during the military dictatorship (Corrêa, 2001Corrêa, Mariza. Do feminismo aos estudos de gênero no Brasil: um exemplo pessoal. Cadernos Pagu (16), Campinas, Núcleo de Estudos do Gênero-Pagu/Unicamp, 2001, pp.13-29.; Scavone, 2011Scavone, Lucila. Ciência e Militância: os estudos de gênero no Brasil. In: XXV Encontro Anual da ANPOCS, 2011, Caxambu. 35º Encontro Anual da ANPOCS/Textos Completos, 2011 [http://portal.anpocs.org/portal/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_view&gid=992&Itemid=353, acesso em: 12 dez 2015].
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; Grossi, 2010Grossi, Miriam Pillar. Gênero, Sexualidade e Reprodução: A constituição dos estudos sobre gênero, sexualidade e reprodução no Brasil. In: Martins, C. B.; Duarte, L. F. D. Horizontes das ciências sociais no Brasil: antropologia. São Paulo, Anpocs, 2010, pp.293-340.).

The researchers we interviewed, however, said that there were no gender or sexuality studies during this pioneering period, much less a field. Above all, this explosion was due to an intellectual context created by the first expansion of graduate studies in Brazil in an environment of great political and cultural effervescence. Researchers such as Heleieth Safiotti and Eva Blay, motivated by personal indignation and working with feminist and Marxist bibliographies, produced pioneering analysis of the so-called “status of women”, even as early as the 1960s7 7 Regarding the context in which these pioneering contributions from the University of São Paulo emerged in the 1960s, see the testimony of Heleieth Safiotti and Eva Blay in Grossi, Milella and Porto (2006). Although the first steps towards establishing graduate studies in Brazil were taken in the 1930s, with the term appearing for the first time in the 1940s, the main boost to the country’s graduate programs took place in the 1960s following agreements with the Ford Foundation (Santos, 2003). . In the field of anthropology, Peter Fry8 8 In an interview given to the Gender and Sexuality in Brazilian Scientific Research Project in 2012. spoke in his interview of the end of the 1970’s as marked by a very distinct “atmosphere”: though the dictatorship was still in power, “Brazil was also being inundated by an ethos of sexual freedom”, with “people’s lifestyles demanding a reflection on these issues”. This sort of reflection was understood to be excluded from the Marxist paradigms that dominated social thought during the period. One of the approaches popular at the timeclaimed that “the rules imposed upon sexual conduct are generally engendered”, with regards to both relationships between persons of the same sex and of different sexes.9 9 This type of reflection, which recovered the contributions of authors such as Ruth Landes, was a characteristic of Fry’s classic contribution to the study of Brazilian (homo)sexuality (Fry, 1982).

Aside from their production of science that linked what we now understand to be gender and sexuality, criticism to the creation of “ghettos” pushed researchers such as Peter Fry, Mariza Corrêa, Verena Stolcke and Nestor Perlongher10 10 The consolidation of this group of researchers took place through the creation of the Department of Social Sciences at the Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences at Unicamp and the constitution of an Anthropology as an area of study at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Antonio Augusto Arantes (Arantes; Torres, 2008) speaks of the mission to search out, in England, doctors and professors who could move to Campinas and work towards the creation of an area of ​​knowledge in a university which was then quite new. This is how Verena Stolcke and Peter Fry arrived in Campinas in the mid-1970s. Other active researchers such as Mara Rabbit Lake (Psychology, UFSC), Claudia Fonseca (Anthropology, UFRGS), Bila Sorj (Sociology, UFMG at the time and currently UFRJ), Guacira Lopes Louro (Education, UFRGS), and Lia Zanotta Machado (anthropology, UNB), among others, were professors employed in the public universities during the 1970s. In the current article, given that we are presenting a debate which took place during the celebration of Pagu’s 20 anniversary, we focus our narrative to contribute to the presentation of the constitution of gender and sexuality studies at Unicamp. (among others) to emphasize the interrelations of these discussions in the different areas they studies. In the words of Mariza Correa11 11 In an interview given to the Gender and Sexuality in Brazilian Scientific Research Project in 2012. , “we had to learn to think what we felt.” At that time, there was no theoretical elaboration of this kind of attitude, but the sensitivity it fostered favored the subsequent appropriation of texts and theories that arrived in the country in the 2000s, stimulating debates that interrelate gender, sexuality, race and other social markers of difference.

If the studies developed during this period have a defining characteristic, it is the explicit nature of the hybrid relationship between academic research and politics. This research was carried out by subjects motivated by insubordination and the fascination or pleasure of thinking about alternatives for intervention in the world, yet who were at the same time researchers and activists. Activists who were, in their own way, avowedly Marxist or essentialist, or who were driven by sharp criticisms of the “ghettos” being created, or who despised ready explanations that did not allow researchers to hear what their “natives” were actually saying.

However, studies about women lacking a feminist perspective have existed and continue to exist. Then, as it is now, it was certain that, divisions and subdivisions existed, although these might not neatly fit in to the concept of scientific fields. Differentiations and affinities have always existed in these studies, even though there were not as many positions as there are today (or perhaps these were not as explicit then as they are today),. See, for example, see the resistance to “ghettos” in the texts of Peter Fry and Mariza Corrêa and compare this to Luiz Mott’s efforts to remove homosexuality from the National Institute of Social Security’s listing of disease and to seek out the history of homosexuals during the Inquisition period in colonial Brazil. As Sérgio Carrara has pointed out elsewhere in this issue, one can see here the same clash between essentialist and constructionist perspectives that is common today, with activists discussing whether or not people could be classified as homosexuals. What seems to differentiate the period we live in from that in which the pioneering studies emerged is the current multiplication of classifications that researchers apply to themselves and their objects of study, tending to attribute these to theoretical affiliations and lineages. Echoed in blogs and in the pages of research groups or the personal profiles of researchers and students on social networks, and enclosing a set of people that is at least as large as the 5,000 attendees of the last Making Gender International Seminar, these labels might certainly appear to be seem something more typical of our times than they actually are.

It is precisely in the mid-1980s that the notion of gender arrived in Brazil. It is also during this period that categories such as reproductive health, reproductive rights, sexual health, sexuality and, more recently, sexual rights and sexual politics were gradually added to the vocabulary of Brazilian researchers. Some of these categories, such as sexual and reproductive health, reproductive rights, or sexuality and reproductive health, can be traced back to an international agenda built in UN conferences, walking hand-in-hand with international philanthropy.

Since the 1970s, international agencies such as the Ford and MacArthur Foundations have played an important role in funding research and pushing for funding programs for researchers into these themes. The resources provided by these agencies have been crucial for the four main formative strategies in the field of gender and sexuality studies: competitions for research scholarships with the Carlos Chagas Foundation12 12 Since 1974, a research collective regarding women has been part of the Carlos Chagas Foundation. This was set up through the Department of Educational Research with support from the Ford Foundation as an important nucleus unifying researchers and feminists. The first competition of this collective, which offered grants for researching the situation of women in Brazil, was conducted nationwide in 1978. It supported 108 projects and was subsequently replaced by PRODIR (the Training Program in Research on Reproductive Rights in Latin America and the Caribbean), which focused on reproductive health (and which, over time, became known as sexual and reproductive rights) and was supported by the MacArthur Foundation (Corrêa, 2001; Azerêdo; Stolcke, 1991). ; the Program for Research Methodologies in Gender, Sexuality and Reproductive Health13 13 The Program for Research Methodologies in Gender, Sexuality and Reproductive Health, founded in 1996, had some 12 regionalized workshops which trained 200 researchers from all over Brazil and distributed some 100 research scholarships under the auspices of the Social Medicine Institute (UERJ), the Collective Health Institute (UFBA), the Population Studies Nucleus (Unicamp), the National School of Public Health (Fiocruz) and the Health Institute (SES-SP), with the support of the Ford Foundation (Aquino et al, 2002). ; the competitions for the Support Program for Sexuality and Sexual Health Projects (Prosare)14 14 Beginning in the 2000s, the MacArthur Foundation supported competitions at the Support Program for Sexuality and Sexual Health Projects (Prosare) under the leadership of the Commission for Citizenship and Reproduction (CCR) of the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP) (Grossi, 2010). ; and the Latin American Center for Sexuality and Human Rights at IMS/UERJ.15 15 The Latin American Center for Sexuality and Human Rights (CLAM), an extension Project of the Social Medicine Institute of the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), which also received support from the Ford Foundation, was founded in 2002 with the goal of producing, organizing and distributing knowledge about sexuality from a human rights perspective through the promotion of dialogues between universities, social movements and public policy makers in Latin America. Since then, the Center has produced seminars, books, and a digital magazine, as well as undertaking research, producing training courses and maintaining an internet portal. CLAM has become one of the main fomenters of sexuality studies in Brazil.

The second generation of researchers that we interviewed became responsible for the coordination of most of the training strategies mentioned above, as well as for Redor (the North and Northeast Feminist Studies and Research Network on Women and Gender Relations) and Redefem (the Brazilian Network of Feminist Studies and Research). The Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Ministry of Health and, more recently, the Secretariat for Policies for Women16 16 The Secretariat for Women’s Policies was created in 2003 during the first term of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. It became established as a ministry and had three main lines of action, configured as secretariats: (a) Policies for Women’s Labor and Economic Autonomy; (b) Confronting Violence Towards Women; e (c) Programs and Actions in the areas of Health, Education, Culture, Political Participation, Gender Equality and Diversity. In October 2015, during a serious political and economic crisis in Brazil, it was folded into the Ministry of Women, Racial Equality and Human rights. and CNPq were widely cited as funding institutions in the reports of the researchers who were institutionalized as professors in public universities between 1980 and 1990. Among those researchers working along the interface with the field of public health, the World Health Organization (WHO) also appears.

This group of researchers includes subjects who began their university studies between the harshest period of the dictatorship and the democratic restoration. Some of these informants reported involvement with leftist political parties or groups. Among these people, a portion became politically active in the left through the Catholic Church or its schools. This is also the first generation using the term “NGO” in the interviews. The densest part of the network of relationships that we can draw regarding our respondents in the 1980s and early ‘90s includes researchers from Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Campinas, Porto Alegre, Florianopolis and Brasilia, with some of these actors connected to Salvador and Natal.17 17 It is important to note that this is an approximate network forming part of the relationships of a restricted set of actors. Additionally, there are cases where the pioneering work of researchers took place in relative isolation or in which it was interrupted at a given location, such as that reported in an interview with Miriam Grossi about the work of Zahidé Machado Neto, who was active in Bahia in the 1970s and whose work was interrupted by his death in 1983, a few months before the creation of the Interdisciplinary Center for Studies on Women - NEIM (UFBA). Another example is Ceará, which had 25 registered groups in the DRG in 2011 acting on issues that concern us here, all of which were formed after 1996 (only two of these were formed in the second half of the 1990s; the other 23 being founded in the 2000s and 2010s). Among these groups, 10 are situated in the Federal University of Ceará (UFC), all founded between 2004-2010 and half (5) situated in the Humanities Center. However, this Center has also housed the Graduate Program in Sociology since 1978, which has maintained a regular curriculum of studies on women, gender and/or sexuality since the emergence of master's and doctoral courses, with an average of 1/10th of its dissertations and 1/7 of its theses relating to the issues touched upon by our research during the period stretching from 1978 to 2002 -- this according to dissertations and theses catalog data organized by Shulamith Vieira (2002). International connections involve mainly the United States, with cities such as Chicago, Berkeley and Boston in evidence. France and England also appear in these interviews.

The interviews with researchers from this second generation provide proposals more effectively tied to formulations regarding the constitution of a field or fields of studies regarding gender and/or sexuality in Brazil. Among these respondents, there is no doubt about the impact of HIV/AIDS and the Ford Foundation’s modernization project – “educate women and the country will advance” – on the establishment of this (these) field(s) of study. In several interviews, such as those with Sérgio Carrara, Maria Luiza Heilborn and Ondina Fachel Leal18 18 Interviews given to the Gender and Sexuality in Brazilian Scientific Research Project in 2012. , the idea of parallel institutionalization processes appears, involving: 1) a more properly political field regarding social movements, their relationship with the state, the advancement of the visibility and legitimacy of women's and LGBT rights, and the increased demand for public policy development; 2) an academic field in which there is has been an expansion of public universities and graduate programs, leading to the formation of a generation researchers studying the issues that concern us and the beginning of funding from organs such as CAPES and CNPq.

In his interview, Sérgio Carrara19 19 Interviews given to the Gender and Sexuality in Brazilian Scientific Research Project in 2012. emphasizes that the increasing social legitimacy of these themes opened up space for more researchers. On another level, the study of sexuality by authors who were academically recognized beyond the limits of the field (such as Michel Foucault, 1977Foucault, Michel. História da Sexualidade I: a vontade de saber. Rio de Janeiro, Graal, 1977.) also contributed to the understanding that gender and sexuality studies might illuminate broader processes of social life. This worked to shift these themes from the margins to the center of the social sciences: “legitimacy, visibility and institutionalization created a feedback process” (Sérgio Carrara, interview, 2011). Reflections along these same lines were provided by several other 2nd generation interviewees. A point to be taken from Carrara’s interview, which is made more explicit in an article by the researcher (Carrara, 2015Carrara, Sérgio. Moralidades, racionalidades e políticas sexuais no Brasil contemporâneo. Mana, vol. 21, nº2, Rio de Janeiro, ago. 2015, pp.323-345.), is his reflection regarding the “disemboweling” of the health field and the extraction of sexuality from its domain, a process that favored the theme’s legitimacy in Social Sciences and which was accompanied by its immersion in the field of law.

As a result of these investment and training strategies developed in the 1990s, which were also linked to strong social demands, the first decade of the 2000s was marked by an unprecedented multiplication of gender and/or sexuality study groups in Brazil. These expanded in a consolidated manner throughout the various regions of the country, and through several areas of knowledge. We can see this growth in the increase in the number of papers presented in disciplinary and interdisciplinary conferences, such as the Making Gender International Seminar20 20 The first Making Gender conference was organized in 1994 by the Gender Studies Nucleus (NEG), created 1984 at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC). The first conference had some 100 participants. In eight successive conferences, Making Gender has expanded to the point which, in 2010, in featured more than 4,300 presented papers. In 2000, it became an international seminar (Scavone, 2011). , and in the emergence in 2002 of an association of researchers focused on homosexuality studies: the Brazilian Association of Homoculture Studies (EHBA), which also organizes nationwide events21 21 In its 14 years of existence, ABEH organized eight conferences, with the last occurring in 2016. Beginning with the sixth conference in 2012 (in Salvador, Bahia) the category “homoculture” was taken out of the conference’s name and it became known as the International Congress for the Study of Sexual Diversity and Gender. This change was related to the recent changes pointed to by Simões and Carrara (2014) in terms of criticisms of the use of the word “homosexuality” as an all-encompassing category for sexual diversity, with new and more diverse forms of sexuality that do not easily fit into the hetero-homo binary coming to the fore (Facchini; França; Braz, 2014), along with gender diversity. . It is also in the first decade of the 21st century that the number of working groups at national scientific association conferences expands, as well as the number of new scientific journals. Aside from Revista Estudos Feministas and Cadernos Pagu (both founded in the first half of the 1990s22 22 “Two academic publications were created in this area at this time, which maintain a regular printing schedule and which are well-considered by several different quality indicators: A Revista Estudos Feministas, which receives substantial support from the Ford Foundation, was founded in 1992 and is published by a national network whose leadership began at UFRJ, passed to UERJ and ended up based at UFSC, from 1999 on; Cadernos Pagu, which is published by the second generation of gender researchers at Unicamp, institutionally gathered in the Pagu Interdisciplinary Center for Gender Studies [currently the Nucleus for Gender Studies Pagu] from the early 1990s on” (Grossi, 2010:296). ), other publications emerged. These include Gênero, a journal founded by the Center for Transdisciplinary Gender Studies (NUTEG) at the Program for Graduate Studies in Social Policy of the Federal Fluminense University (UFF) in 2000; Bagoas, founded by the Human Sciences, Letters and Arts Center of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN) in 2007; and Sexualidad, salud y sociedad, founded by CLAM/IMS/UERJ in 2009. The contents of these and other publications are currently available on the internet, which facilitates and expands access to the field’s growing production.

Some aspects emerge as characteristic of the generation of researchers that come into the institutions in the first decade of the 2000s:

1) They have a larger circulation throughout the country, since many of the people trained in “centers” traditionally involved with these issues at national and international level enter into institutions outside of these areas, while people who had their initial training or were already working outside of these “centers” continued their training in them.

2) Their theses and/or dissertations involved issues relevant to the field to a much greater degree than the members of previous generations, when it was more common for issues related to gender (and particularly sexuality) to emerge in academic trajectories only after experience with researching other topics.

3) They recognize the importance of establishing dialogue with social movements and government agencies and managers, while also understanding the tensions that can arise with this approach.

4) They have expanded their research into the field of family/relationship rights and, above all, are not necessarily linked to issues involving the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

5) They have expanded the number of events dedicated to debates on gender, feminism and/or sexuality at the local and regional level. This is the case (among many similar examples) of Intertwining Sexualities meeting, organized by the Enlace Research Group at the State University of Bahia (Uneb) every two years since 2009, which now coexists with more traditional regional events, such as the Bahian Researchers Symposium on Women’s and Gender Affairs, which had its 18th edition organized in 2015 by the Interdisciplinary Center for Studies on Women (Neim) of the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA).

6) They have expanded the reach of these regional events, which now include students and teachers from various regions of Brazil. They have also created new national/international interdisciplinary events such as the Unmaking Gender conference.23 23 The Unmaking Gender International Seminar is an interdisciplinar event connected to queer studies. Its first edition took place in Natal in 2013 at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, organized by the Tirésias Nucleus. The second edition occurred in Salvador, in 2015, at the Federal University of Bahia, organized by Cus – Culture and Sexuality.

7) They have increased the number publications that are available, among which we find such diverse journals as Revista Feminismos, produced by Neim/UFBA from 2013 on and Periódicus, founded by Research Group Cus – Culture and Sexuality / UFBA in 2014.24 24 This proliferation of journals is also related to a change in Brazilian scientific publishing and science and technology policies, which shows an increasing appreciation of the journal format. The case of Neim/UFBA is an excellent example of these changes. Between 1997 and 2015, Neim edited the Coleção Bahianas, which included 17 volumes with an excellent distribution. The purpose of the collection, according to the presentation of the first volume, was to "publish theoretical and monographic studies for a critical analysis of the female condition" within an interdisciplinary perspective. The volumes of the collection are all available at: http://www.neim.ufba.br/wp/publicacoes/

As Sérgio Carrara stated in his interview, “The story of the [various intellectual] fields is the story of the objects [of their research]. Until the 1960s, sexuality was understood as something that emanated from a male or female nature, so to speak about sexuality then was to talk about gender. [...] Later on, a split occurred between sexual practices and gender.” Currently, we apparently live a period in which (at least in the academic realm) sexuality has been “spun off” from gender and health. As Carrara and most of the researchers we interviewed have pointed out, however, this does not imply that there is no dialogue between studies in these fields, or that such dialogues are not desired. The creation of these dialogues has been a constant feature of the sexuality/gender studies field in Brazil, at least regarding the production of the social sciences. As Miriam Grossi25 25 In an interview given to the Gender and Sexuality in Brazilian Scientific Research Project in 2012. remarks, “we have 40 years of history in which gender and sexuality have been integrated, because studies of sexuality are always informed by gender and have always produced reflections regarding differences, inequalities and violence”.

Studies of gender and sexuality at Pagu

In a recently published interview, Adriana Piscitelli (Piscitelli, Paiva; Aquino, 2015Piscitelli, Adriana.; Paiva, Antonio Cristian Saraiva; Aquino, Jania Perla Diógenes de. Entre Jóias de Família, trânsitos internacionais e a Praia de Iracema: uma instigante trajetória de pesquisa. Revista de Ciências Sociais, vol. 46, nº1, Fortaleza, 2015, pp.261-286.) recalls a time in the late 1980s, when some professors from Unicamp’s Institute of Philosophy and the Human Sciences and Elisabeth Wolf (who was then a professor at USP, but was also temporarily in the Department of History of Unicamp as a visiting professor) created a study group. This group, which was formally founded in 1991 as a Studies Center, took up concerns that had been manifest since the previous decade’s “Women’s Week” at Unicamp26 26 The “Women’s Weeks” were the first feminist encounters in the city of Campinas, organized by the Campinas Feminist Collective during 1978 and 1979. Many of the researchers, then graduate students, participated in these events, which took part in the discussions that gave rise to what is today the Pagu Gender Studies Nucleus. The Campinas Feminist Collective had an active participation in women’s meetings and seminars during this period. Documentation regarding the collective can be found in the Edgard Leuenroth Archive [http://segall.ifch.unicamp.br/site_ael/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=112&Itemid=90 – accessed on 12/20/2015]. . It would eventually give rise to Pagu, which became institutionalized as a research nucleus in 1993. That same year, Pagu launched the first issue of Cadernos Pagu and created the area of Family and Gender Relations27 27 In 2004, this area was reformed and became known as the Gender Studies area. in the Graduate Program in Social Sciences at Unicamp. In her interview, Piscitelli drew attention to the theoretical context from which the nucleus emerged, offering ways to think about how studies that link gender and sexuality have become part of Pagu:

The creation of Pagu is associated with a “theoretical moment” in feminist studies, when several authors begin to work with the gender category along post-structuralist lines. This made it possible for Néstor to link up with us. He researched homosexual prostitution, and although the “classic” feminist framework was important to him, it was not enough for his purposes because he was asking questions that, at the time, could not be named but which were related to new conceptions of gender.

The themes of Pagu were very diverse; they still are today. However, it seems that what was most noticeable in these was the issue of sexuality. (...) Perhaps the question of sexuality has become more visible because for five years, many of us Pagu members were linked together in a thematic project in which work with sexuality was very much emphasized. (...) The theme resulted in a lot of production, around which we organized several seminars. The issue of sexuality thus became the most prominent in our nucleus (Piscitelli; Paiva; Aquino, 2015Piscitelli, Adriana.; Paiva, Antonio Cristian Saraiva; Aquino, Jania Perla Diógenes de. Entre Jóias de Família, trânsitos internacionais e a Praia de Iracema: uma instigante trajetória de pesquisa. Revista de Ciências Sociais, vol. 46, nº1, Fortaleza, 2015, pp.261-286.:267-8).

If the relationship between gender and sexuality has become, over the years, a visible characteristic of the Nucleus’ work, present in several of the tables that took place at the Rethinking Gender and Feminisms seminar, we must remember that such linkages were already present in work of some of Pagu’s founders which was carried out between 1970 and 1980. In her dissertation (defended in 1975 under the guidance of Verena Stolcke), Mariza Corrêa mobilized the notion of “gender roles” in order to think about how so-called “crimes of passion” were formed as they passed from violent acts to criminal cases (Corrêa, 1983Corrêa, Mariza. Morte em família: representações jurídicas de papéis sexuais. Rio de Janeiro, Edições Graal, 1983.). Néstor Perlongher (who also participated in the process that led to the foundation of the Nucleus) produced a master’s thesis on male prostitution, which he defended in 1986 under the supervision of Mariza Corrêa. In it, he coined the influential concept of “libidinal stressors” to indicate the dense and strained relations between desire and social hierarchies (Perlongher, 1987Perlongher, Néstor. O negócio do michê: a prostituição viril. São Paulo, Brasiliense, 1987). Adriana Piscitelli, who was a graduate student at the time and who became the first researcher hired by the Nucleus after its institutionalization, points to the emergence of the field of sexuality in her master’s dissertation on matrimonial strategies and love among the middle- and upper class families Minas Gerais. This work, defended in 1990, was also mentored by Mariza Corrêa.

Piscitelli has been one of those responsible for linking national and international feminist literature to the insights of the generation of colleagues who preceded her at Unicamp regarding the connections between categories of differentiation (Moutinho, 2014Moutinho, Laura. Diferenças e desigualdades negociadas: raça, sexualidade e gênero em produções acadêmicas recentes. Cadernos Pagu (42), Campinas, Núcleo de Estudos de Gênero - Pagu/Unicamp, 2014, pp.201-248.). Such linkages have gained greater visibility in her most recent work on prostitution and international sexual and affective markets. However, reading the work of other Pagu researchers allows to see that the relationship between categories of differentiation has been a constant characteristic of the Center’s production, whether the themes involved are gender and class, gender and age/generation or gender and race. The very notion of “social markers of difference” appears for the first time in Brazil in Mariza Corrêa’s 1996Corrêa, Mariza. Sobre a Invenção da Mulata. Cadernos Pagu (6-7), Campinas, Núcleo de Estudos do Gênero-Pagu/Unicamp, 1996, pp.35-50. article, in which she connects gender, race and (although less directly and explicitly) sexuality in an analysis of the social construction of the figure of the mulata in Brazil.

If the approach that we today call intersectional with a constructionist perspective (Piscitelli, 2008Piscitelli, Adriana. Interseccionalidades, categorias de articulação e experiências de migrantes brasileiras. Sociedade e Cultura (11), Goiânia, nº2, 2008, pp.263-274.; Prins, 2006Prins, Baukje. Narrative accounts of origins: a blind spot in the intersectional approach? European Journal of Women’s Studies, vol. 13, nº3, 2006, pp.277-290.) was already apparent in the work of the first researchers involved with Pagu, who have been linking gender, sexuality and other categories of differentiation together since the 1970s, it is true also that these linkages have taken place in a unique fashion. This has to do with a critical analysis of victimhood and simplifying reductions of the sort that oppose victims and victimizers. This view is present throughout the Nucleus’ scientific production that mobilizes gender and sexuality (or eroticism) in order to address issues that are dear to the feminist agenda, such as violence (Corrêa, 1983Corrêa, Mariza. Morte em família: representações jurídicas de papéis sexuais. Rio de Janeiro, Edições Graal, 1983.; Gregori, 1993aGregori, Maria Filomena. Cenas e queixas: um estudo sobre mulheres, relações violentas e a prática feminista. São Paulo; Paz e Terra; ANPOCS, 1993a.; Gregori, 1993bGregori, Maria Filomena. As desventuras do vitimismo. Revista Estudos Feministas, nº1, Rio de Janeiro, 1993b, pp.143-149.; Gregori, 2008Gregori, Maria Filomena. Limites da sexualidade: violência, gênero e erotismo. Revista de Antropologia, vol. 51, nº2, São Paulo, 2008, pp.575-606.; Gregori, 2015Gregori, Maria Filomena. Prazeres perigosos: o contrato e a erotização de corpos em cenários sadomasoquistas. Etnográfica 19(2), Lisboa, 2015, pp.247-267.; Debert, Gregori, 2008Debert, Guita Grin; Gregori, Maria Filomena. Violência e gênero: novas propostas, velhos dilemas. Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais, São Paulo, vol. 23, nº66, 2008, pp.165-185.), prostitution, or exchanges involving affection, sex and money (Piscitelli, 1996Piscitelli, Adriana. Sexo Tropical. Comentários sobre gênero, raça e outras categorias de diferenciação social em alguns textos da mídia brasileira. Revista Estudos Feministas, vol. 6/7, Florianópolis, UFSC, 1996, pp.9-35.; 2004Piscitelli, Adriana. On “gringos” and “natives”: gender and sexuality in the context of international sex tourism in Fortaleza, Brazil. Vibrant - Virtual Brazilian Anthropology (4), vol. 1, Brasília, 2004, pp.87-114.; 2008Piscitelli, Adriana. Interseccionalidades, categorias de articulação e experiências de migrantes brasileiras. Sociedade e Cultura (11), Goiânia, nº2, 2008, pp.263-274.; 2009Piscitelli, Adriana. As fronteiras da transgressão: a demanda por brasileiras na indústria do sexo na Espanha. Sexualidad, Salud y Sociedad, vol. 1, Rio de Janeiro, 2009, pp.177-201.; 2011Piscitelli, Adriana. Actuar la brasileñidad? Tránsitos a partir del mercado del sexo. Etnográfica 15 (1), Lisboa, 2011, pp.5-29.; 2013Piscitelli, Adriana. Atravessando fronteiras: teorias pós-coloniais e leituras antropológicas sobre feminismos, gênero e mercados do sexo no Brasil. Contemporânea (3)- Revista de Sociologia da UFSCar, São Carlos-SP, 2013, pp.377-405.).

I think it is exactly in this point that we find ourselves face-to-face, again, with the volume edited by Vance (1992Vance, Carole. Pleasure and danger: toward a politcs of sexuality. In: Vance, Carole. (ed.). Pleasure and Danger: exploring female sexuality. London, Pandora Press, 1992[1984], pp.1-27. [1984]) and the feminist struggles with and around sexuality. This is not to suggest, however, that Pagu has allied itself with only one side of these disputes: rather, the Nucleus has entered into a productive, creative and critical dialogue with the international literature and issues that mobilize political action and theoretical reflections regarding feminisms. Pagu’s articulated approach to gender and sexuality has always sought to be in tune with concerns present in the feminist field, while also offering up contributions to feminist practice, either through the dissemination of research, participation in debates, or the publication of articles, translations, dossiers and reviews in the pages of Cadernos Pagu.

This linking gender and sexuality to which we refer is also the result of the work of many other people and institutions in Brazil, many of which were remembered during the speeches at the seminar. To begin with, we must mention the work done since the 1970s in the Department of Anthropology at Unicamp, by Verena Stolcke, Mariza Corrêa and Néstor Perlongher and also Peter Fry and Luiz Mott, as well as their students and colleagues and the students of their students. It is also worth recalling the critical dialogues regarding sexology that have been developed by other researchers and research centers in the country. This includes those researchers who, towards the end of the 1980s, formed the Institute of Social Medicine at UERJ and those who created the Brazilian Interdisciplinary AIDS Association. Important changes also took place in the debates within the Brazilian Association of Population Studies (ABEP) and the meetings organized by the Brazilian Anthropological Association (ABA) and the National Association of Graduate Studies and Research in the Social Sciences (ANPOCS). In the early 1990s, a period that saw Pagu Gender Studies Center’s institutionalization as an interdisciplinary research nucleus at Unicamp, many other nuclei and research centers also emerged in Brazil and the possibilities of exchange multiplied, making it difficult to directly reference, in the present article, every one of the relevant actors and dialogues.

Although always present, scientific production connecting gender and sexuality became more commonplace at Pagu with the Gender and Corporeality28 28 According to the project summary, available on the Pagu website, we have the following objectives and guiding principles: "In this project we intend to examine, in the light of the issues introduced by studies of gender, how the characteristics understood as feminine and masculine cut across conventions and norms of the body and how they permeate knowledge and practices. Our interest is to examine techniques and body modifications, paying particular attention to the planes in which these agreements materialize in concrete social relations, considering the following topics: sexual orientations and practices; age and life course; medical interventions in the body and social marks of distinction in the field of culture and science. Our intent is to investigate what is shared in our societies when it comes to thinking about bodies and their specific configurations, their corporealities, in order to discuss the increasingly widespread view of the body as moldable and plastic, able to "circumvent" or postpone the restrictions imposed on it in that it has materiality -- finite and fragile, on the one hand; adaptable and fusible with any culturally established convention on the other. We intend to reflect on how the conventions of corporeality inform specific social and cultural practices, gaining significance in the “production” of bodies and the implications of this for social identities. These general questions will be addressed in three main lines of research: 1) bodily practices, sexuality and eroticism; 2) bodily plasticity, sex and gender; 3) body, name and marks of distinction” [http://www.pagu.unicamp.br/pt-br/genero-corporalidades – accessed on 12/12/2015]. The axis most directly linked to sexuality, gender and eroticism contains Adriana Piscitelli’s research into sexual markets; Júlio Simões work on aging and homosexuality; and Maria Filomena Gregori’s studies on contemporary eroticisms. project coordinated by Mariza Corrêa and funded by FAPESP between 2003 and 2009. This enabled us to link up our reflections on corporeality, prostitution (and other exchanges involving affection, desire and money), contemporary eroticisms and the relationship between aging and sexuality. It was also important in establishing national and international partnerships. Among these we must highlight the partnership established with the Latin American Center on Sexuality and Human Rights (Clam/IMS/UERJ), which has lead (among other things) to the organization and publication of the results of the Sexualidades e saberes: convenções e fronteiras seminar in 2003 and 2004 (Piscitelli, Gregori; Carrara, 2004Piscitelli, Adriana.; Gregori, Maria Filomena; Carrara, Sérgio (org.). Sexualidades e saberes: convenções e fronteiras. Rio de Janeiro, Garamond, 2004.).

Accompanying the movement in the field of gender and sexuality studies in Brazil (and also in Pagu) from the early 2000s on to today, we see that the discussions launched in the 1970s have multiplied into a wide range of theoretical developments and empirical sectioning. In a recent interview (Piscitelli, Paiva; Aquino, 2015Piscitelli, Adriana.; Paiva, Antonio Cristian Saraiva; Aquino, Jania Perla Diógenes de. Entre Jóias de Família, trânsitos internacionais e a Praia de Iracema: uma instigante trajetória de pesquisa. Revista de Ciências Sociais, vol. 46, nº1, Fortaleza, 2015, pp.261-286.), Adriana Piscitelli points to a set of empirical concerns that have emerged in the interests of researchers, postdoctoral and graduate students affiliated with Pagu, which have developed around sexuality from the perspective sexual diversity and in connection with concerns about race, gender, generation, social class and sexuality. These involve transnational migrations and borders, new feminisms (both in Brazil and abroad) involving dynamic policy and internet mobilization, the dynamics of care on a transnational scale, and, finally, issues related to emotions/feelings and the connection of emotions to sexual economies.

The close relationship between research and training at Pagu (which occurs through the incorporation of scientific initiation and postdoctoral projects, but also through the participation of Pagu researchers in graduate programs and especially in the Graduate Program in the Social Sciences and the Graduate Program in Social Anthropology at Unicamp) has amplified these developments. Today, with the growth of the public university system in Brazil, we have researchers and professors spread throughout the country who have been directly trained by Pagu or through its relationship with Unicamp’s graduate studies programs.

Intersections between gender, sexuality and eroticism and between Science and politics: presenting the debate

The purpose of the table that gave rise to the articles contained in this collection was to briefly summarize the development of this field of study in Brazil (but also in terms of its principal international influences). It links gender and sexuality in a way that is attentive to pleasures, but also to dangers and hierarchies, pointing to trends and debates and highlighting the relationships that are established between science and politics.

In his contribution to the debate, Anthropology and the process of “citizenshipfication” of homosexuality in Brazil (A antropologia e o processo de cidadanização da homossexualidade no Brasil), Sérgio Carrara (2016)Carrara, Sérgio. A antropologia e o processo de cidadanização da homossexualidade no Brasil. Cadernos Pagu (47), Campinas, Núcleo de Estudos de Gênero-Pagu/Unicamp, 2016. looks at anthropology’s engagement with the process of the creation of homosexual citizenship in Brazil as “important material for a more general reflection regarding the ‘trade’ that is conducted along the borders between politics and science”. Carrara reflects upon the “different forms of conflict and cooperation” that occur in “this space of intense ‘traffic’ of people, ideas, languages, concerns and – principally – mutual creation of legitimacy”. This reflection takes as its basis two moments in which this “traffic” can be clearly seen, pointing out the difficulties in distinguishing between “activists”, “managers” and “academics” except through “post-factual analysis”. This first moment described by Carrara takes place towards the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the ‘80s. when anthropologists found themselves observing and participating in the primordial organizing moments of Brazil’s homosexual movement. The second takes place in 2000 and is drawn from Carrara’s own research experiences, from the point of view of a man who has never defined himself as an activist or participated in the LGBT movement on a base level, but who has always sought to work in dialogue with the activists and government/state actors who are active around LGBT issues. Carrara’s analysis regarding the fluid boundaries between activism and academic reflection and how anthropological knowledge is built in practice has much to say about one of the characteristics emerging from the series of interviews I conducted as part of my research into the field of gender and sexuality studies in Brazil. The article also says a lot about the process that led to the development of a rather unique look at the relationship between categories of social differentiation – a perspective that is quite present today in Pagu and which Mariza Correa refers to as originating in a need to “learn to think what we felt.”

In Brazil is a sexual paradise – for whom? (O Brasil é um paraíso sexual – para quem?), Júlio Simões (2016)Simões, Júlio. O Brasil é um paraíso sexual - para quem? Cadernos Pagu (47), Campinas, Núcleo de Estudos de Gênero - Pagu/Unicamp, 2016. directly engages with the perspective opened up by Vance’s book (1992), taking as his guiding thread the reflections of Donna Goldenstein, a U.S. American anthropologist who conducted research in Brazil regarding how gender inequalities are expressed with regards to sexualities and how studies of sexuality in the country have dealt with this. In constructing a thought-provoking discussion that articulates contrasting images of Brazilianess related to sexuality, Simões mobilizes classical and contemporary literature from the field of gender studies in Brazil since the 1970s. Without giving in to the temptation of situating these images as “opposed”, he employs the concept of “partial truths” to qualify discourse regarding sexuality in Brazil. Aside from reflecting on representations of Brazil and how gender and sexuality studies (in their focus on heterosexual or homosexual relations as empirical objects) deal with the constitutive tension between pleasure and danger, Simões’ article looks at the relationships between science and policy and how certain lines of study into gender and sexuality have established a creative and productive relationship in Brazil with the international literature, making specific contributions that foreshadowed international developments and which offer very innovative formulations of international debates. Additionally, Simões’ article reflects upon how studies of sexuality have dealt with conservative political contexts during the Brazilian dictatorship, today and in the U.S. in the 1980s.

Maria Filomena Gregori’s (2016)Gregori, Maria Filomena. Prazeres Perigosos: práticas eróticas e limites da sexualidade. Cadernos Pagu (47) Campinas, Núcleo de Estudos do Gênero-Pagu/Unicamp , 2016. article Dangerous Pleasures: erotic practices and limits of sexuality (Prazeres Perigosos: práticas eróticas e limites da sexualidade), reflects upon contemporary eroticisms, particularly in terms of

what they allow us to decipher with regards to the linkages between sexual practices, gender norms and the limits of sexuality (in other words, the border zone between norm and transgression, consent and abuse, pleasure and pain).

In line with the characteristics that we have described above as being typical of the perspective that marks the scientific production of the Pagu Nucleus (especially with regards to the linkages between categories of differentiation and the criticism of victimhood), Gregori’s article establishes a productive dialogue with feminist struggles regarding violence and the relationship between gender and sexuality. It is a vigorous presentation, created in dialogue with a number of Brazilian theoretical studies that explore the so-called limits of sexuality, the formulation of sexual politics and the dispositif of sexuality in contemporary societies, particularly Brazil. In these dialogues, Gregori signals a shift from the characterizations of experiences and eroticism in Vance’s landmark book towards a “new semantics and practices of eroticization the bodies and risks involved from the perspective of the border that puts into tension and disputes the terms of consent and vulnerability” (Gregori, 2016Gregori, Maria Filomena. Prazeres Perigosos: práticas eróticas e limites da sexualidade. Cadernos Pagu (47) Campinas, Núcleo de Estudos do Gênero-Pagu/Unicamp , 2016.).

The set of articles you are currently holding certainly isn’t a definitive account of the debates engaged in during the seminar, much less during the past 20 years of Pagu’s existence. We present it as a stimulus for dialogue and reflection. We believe that the articles presented here show the strength and vigor of the Brazilian intellectual and scientific production that links sexuality and gender, as well as the critical perspective which has been a characteristic of the reflections of the Nucleus Gender Studies Pagu upon this field, and of the productive and creative dialogue the members of the Nucleus have established with international debates and literature, ensuring Pagu’s longevity.

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  • Gregori, Maria Filomena. Cenas e queixas: um estudo sobre mulheres, relações violentas e a prática feminista. São Paulo; Paz e Terra; ANPOCS, 1993a.
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  • Gregori, Maria Filomena. Limites da sexualidade: violência, gênero e erotismo. Revista de Antropologia, vol. 51, nº2, São Paulo, 2008, pp.575-606.
  • Gregori, Maria Filomena. Prazeres perigosos: o contrato e a erotização de corpos em cenários sadomasoquistas. Etnográfica 19(2), Lisboa, 2015, pp.247-267.
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  • Debert, Guita Grin; Gregori, Maria Filomena. Violência e gênero: novas propostas, velhos dilemas. Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais, São Paulo, vol. 23, nº66, 2008, pp.165-185.
  • Grossi, Miriam Pillar. Gênero, Sexualidade e Reprodução: A constituição dos estudos sobre gênero, sexualidade e reprodução no Brasil. In: Martins, C. B.; Duarte, L. F. D. Horizontes das ciências sociais no Brasil: antropologia. São Paulo, Anpocs, 2010, pp.293-340.
  • Grossi, Miriam Pillar; Minella, Luzinete Simões; Porto, Rozeli (orgs). Depoimentos: trinta anos de pesquisas feministas brasileiras sobre violência. Florianópolis, Ed. Mulheres, 2006.
  • Haraway, Donna. Saberes localizados: a questão da ciência para o feminismo e o privilégio da perspectiva parcial. Cadernos Pagu (5), Campinas, Núcleo de Estudos de Gênero - Pagu/Unicamp, 1995, pp.7-41.
  • Moutinho, Laura. Diferenças e desigualdades negociadas: raça, sexualidade e gênero em produções acadêmicas recentes. Cadernos Pagu (42), Campinas, Núcleo de Estudos de Gênero - Pagu/Unicamp, 2014, pp.201-248.
  • Perlongher, Néstor. O negócio do michê: a prostituição viril. São Paulo, Brasiliense, 1987
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  • 1
    Even though we understand that “nucleus” in English is not commonly used to refer to an institutional apparatus as it is in Portuguese, we chose to maintain the word since research nuclei and research centers are distinguishable in Brazil, and Pagu started off as a center, and became a Nucleus later on.
  • 2
    This is the “Gender and sexuality in Brazilian research and scientific production: intersections, connections and conventions” project, developed between 2010 and 2012 at Pagu/Unicamp, funded by CNPq. The general objective of the study was to trace a profile and contribute to the recuperation of the recent history of research into women, gender, feminism and/or sexuality in Brazil. It worked with basically seven sources: 1) research groups dealing with these themes listed on the DGP of CNPq; 2) Lattes curriculum platform; 3) electronic annals of the largest related scientific event in the country, Making Gender Seminar; 4) articles published in five Brazilian periodicals that are exclusively dedicated to these themes; 5) reference documents for public policies for women’s, LGBT and human rights in the national sphere; 6) interviews with researchers who played an important role in the constitution and development of these studies, and 7) interviews with actors involved in the promotion of scientific production.
  • 3
    Data from the DRG/CNPq was collected between November 2010 and December 2011, including all updates. It thus shows groups that were actively registered during the period surveyed. The search terms used were gender, women, feminism, masculinity, sexuality, homosexuality, homosexuality, transvestism, transsexualism, transvestite, queer, gender, sexual orientation and sex education. The presence of these terms was searched for in the groups’ names, their research lines and the keywords used. We discarded the groups in which gender referenced biological taxonomy or literary genre (gender and genre are homonyms in Portuguese).
  • 4
    Data taken from GeoCapes for 2011. According to this, the groups located in the DRG/CNPq were found in a proportion of 1 to every three graduate programs in the country, on average. This proportion was lower in the regions with more graduate programs, especially in the south and southwest of Brazil.
  • 5
    Among the groups which display some indication of work with gender and sexuality we find the following disciplinary distribution: 23% are in education, 13% in anthropology, psychology 12%, 12% in public health, 6.5 % in nursing and 7% in history. In terms of general distribution, these same areas of knowledge present the following percentages: 14.4% in education, 7.3% in anthropology, 7.7% in Psychology, 8.6% in public health, 6.7% in Nursing and 9.8% in history. While about 1/2 of the groups in which gender clearly appears as a category of analysis are located in the human sciences, about 80% of the groups that refer exclusively to women are in the area of health sciences.
  • 6
    For a more detailed analysis of the institutionalization and strengthening of this field, see Facchini, Daniliauskas and Pilon (2013)Facchini, Regina; Daniliauskas, Marcelo; Pilon, Ana Cláudia. Políticas sexuais e produção de conhecimento no Brasil: situando estudos sobre sexualidade e suas conexões. Revista de Ciências Sociais, vol. 44, nº1, Fortaleza, 2013, pp.161-193..
  • 7
    Regarding the context in which these pioneering contributions from the University of São Paulo emerged in the 1960s, see the testimony of Heleieth Safiotti and Eva Blay in Grossi, Milella and Porto (2006). Although the first steps towards establishing graduate studies in Brazil were taken in the 1930s, with the term appearing for the first time in the 1940s, the main boost to the country’s graduate programs took place in the 1960s following agreements with the Ford Foundation (Santos, 2003Santos, Cássio Miranda dos. Tradições e contradições da pós-graduação no Brasil. Educação e Sociedade, vol. 24, nº83, Campinas, 2003, pp.627-641.).
  • 8
    In an interview given to the Gender and Sexuality in Brazilian Scientific Research Project in 2012.
  • 9
    This type of reflection, which recovered the contributions of authors such as Ruth Landes, was a characteristic of Fry’s classic contribution to the study of Brazilian (homo)sexuality (Fry, 1982Fry, Peter. Da hierarquia à igualdade: a construção histórica da homossexualidade no Brasil. In: Fry, Peter. Para inglês ver: identidade e política na cultura brasileira. Rio de Janeiro, Zahar, 1982, pp.87-115.).
  • 10
    The consolidation of this group of researchers took place through the creation of the Department of Social Sciences at the Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences at Unicamp and the constitution of an Anthropology as an area of study at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Antonio Augusto Arantes (Arantes; Torres, 2008Arantes, Antônio Augusto; Torres, Lilian de Lucca. Entrevista: Antônio Augusto Arantes. Ponto Urbe [Online], 3, 2008 [http://pontourbe.revues.org/1804].
    http://pontourbe.revues.org/1804...
    ) speaks of the mission to search out, in England, doctors and professors who could move to Campinas and work towards the creation of an area of ​​knowledge in a university which was then quite new. This is how Verena Stolcke and Peter Fry arrived in Campinas in the mid-1970s. Other active researchers such as Mara Rabbit Lake (Psychology, UFSC), Claudia Fonseca (Anthropology, UFRGS), Bila Sorj (Sociology, UFMG at the time and currently UFRJ), Guacira Lopes Louro (Education, UFRGS), and Lia Zanotta Machado (anthropology, UNB), among others, were professors employed in the public universities during the 1970s. In the current article, given that we are presenting a debate which took place during the celebration of Pagu’s 20 anniversary, we focus our narrative to contribute to the presentation of the constitution of gender and sexuality studies at Unicamp.
  • 11
    In an interview given to the Gender and Sexuality in Brazilian Scientific Research Project in 2012.
  • 12
    Since 1974, a research collective regarding women has been part of the Carlos Chagas Foundation. This was set up through the Department of Educational Research with support from the Ford Foundation as an important nucleus unifying researchers and feminists. The first competition of this collective, which offered grants for researching the situation of women in Brazil, was conducted nationwide in 1978. It supported 108 projects and was subsequently replaced by PRODIR (the Training Program in Research on Reproductive Rights in Latin America and the Caribbean), which focused on reproductive health (and which, over time, became known as sexual and reproductive rights) and was supported by the MacArthur Foundation (Corrêa, 2001Corrêa, Mariza. Do feminismo aos estudos de gênero no Brasil: um exemplo pessoal. Cadernos Pagu (16), Campinas, Núcleo de Estudos do Gênero-Pagu/Unicamp, 2001, pp.13-29.; Azerêdo; Stolcke, 1991Piscitelli, Adriana.; Gregori, Maria Filomena; Carrara, Sérgio (org.). Sexualidades e saberes: convenções e fronteiras. Rio de Janeiro, Garamond, 2004.).
  • 13
    The Program for Research Methodologies in Gender, Sexuality and Reproductive Health, founded in 1996, had some 12 regionalized workshops which trained 200 researchers from all over Brazil and distributed some 100 research scholarships under the auspices of the Social Medicine Institute (UERJ), the Collective Health Institute (UFBA), the Population Studies Nucleus (Unicamp), the National School of Public Health (Fiocruz) and the Health Institute (SES-SP), with the support of the Ford Foundation (Aquino et al, 2002Aquino, Estela Maria Leão de et al. Gênero, sexualidade e saúde reprodutiva – uma proposta de formação interdisciplinar em pesquisa. In: Barbosa, R. M. et al. Interfaces – Gênero, sexualidade e saúde reprodutiva. Campinas, Ed. Unicamp, 2002, pp.9-21.).
  • 14
    Beginning in the 2000s, the MacArthur Foundation supported competitions at the Support Program for Sexuality and Sexual Health Projects (Prosare) under the leadership of the Commission for Citizenship and Reproduction (CCR) of the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP) (Grossi, 2010Grossi, Miriam Pillar. Gênero, Sexualidade e Reprodução: A constituição dos estudos sobre gênero, sexualidade e reprodução no Brasil. In: Martins, C. B.; Duarte, L. F. D. Horizontes das ciências sociais no Brasil: antropologia. São Paulo, Anpocs, 2010, pp.293-340.).
  • 15
    The Latin American Center for Sexuality and Human Rights (CLAM), an extension Project of the Social Medicine Institute of the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), which also received support from the Ford Foundation, was founded in 2002 with the goal of producing, organizing and distributing knowledge about sexuality from a human rights perspective through the promotion of dialogues between universities, social movements and public policy makers in Latin America. Since then, the Center has produced seminars, books, and a digital magazine, as well as undertaking research, producing training courses and maintaining an internet portal. CLAM has become one of the main fomenters of sexuality studies in Brazil.
  • 16
    The Secretariat for Women’s Policies was created in 2003 during the first term of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. It became established as a ministry and had three main lines of action, configured as secretariats: (a) Policies for Women’s Labor and Economic Autonomy; (b) Confronting Violence Towards Women; e (c) Programs and Actions in the areas of Health, Education, Culture, Political Participation, Gender Equality and Diversity. In October 2015, during a serious political and economic crisis in Brazil, it was folded into the Ministry of Women, Racial Equality and Human rights.
  • 17
    It is important to note that this is an approximate network forming part of the relationships of a restricted set of actors. Additionally, there are cases where the pioneering work of researchers took place in relative isolation or in which it was interrupted at a given location, such as that reported in an interview with Miriam Grossi about the work of Zahidé Machado Neto, who was active in Bahia in the 1970s and whose work was interrupted by his death in 1983, a few months before the creation of the Interdisciplinary Center for Studies on Women - NEIM (UFBA). Another example is Ceará, which had 25 registered groups in the DRG in 2011 acting on issues that concern us here, all of which were formed after 1996 (only two of these were formed in the second half of the 1990s; the other 23 being founded in the 2000s and 2010s). Among these groups, 10 are situated in the Federal University of Ceará (UFC), all founded between 2004-2010 and half (5) situated in the Humanities Center. However, this Center has also housed the Graduate Program in Sociology since 1978, which has maintained a regular curriculum of studies on women, gender and/or sexuality since the emergence of master's and doctoral courses, with an average of 1/10th of its dissertations and 1/7 of its theses relating to the issues touched upon by our research during the period stretching from 1978 to 2002 -- this according to dissertations and theses catalog data organized by Shulamith Vieira (2002)Vieira, Sulamita (org.). Catálogo de dissertações e teses: 1978-2002. Fortaleza, Expressão Gráfica, 2002..
  • 18
    Interviews given to the Gender and Sexuality in Brazilian Scientific Research Project in 2012.
  • 19
    Interviews given to the Gender and Sexuality in Brazilian Scientific Research Project in 2012.
  • 20
    The first Making Gender conference was organized in 1994 by the Gender Studies Nucleus (NEG), created 1984 at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC). The first conference had some 100 participants. In eight successive conferences, Making Gender has expanded to the point which, in 2010, in featured more than 4,300 presented papers. In 2000, it became an international seminar (Scavone, 2011)Scavone, Lucila. Ciência e Militância: os estudos de gênero no Brasil. In: XXV Encontro Anual da ANPOCS, 2011, Caxambu. 35º Encontro Anual da ANPOCS/Textos Completos, 2011 [http://portal.anpocs.org/portal/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_view&gid=992&Itemid=353, acesso em: 12 dez 2015].
    http://portal.anpocs.org/portal/index.ph...
    .
  • 21
    In its 14 years of existence, ABEH organized eight conferences, with the last occurring in 2016. Beginning with the sixth conference in 2012 (in Salvador, Bahia) the category “homoculture” was taken out of the conference’s name and it became known as the International Congress for the Study of Sexual Diversity and Gender. This change was related to the recent changes pointed to by Simões and Carrara (2014)Simões, Júlio.; Carrara, Sérgio. O campo de estudos socioantropológicos sobre diversidade sexual e de gênero no Brasil: ensaio sobre sujeitos, temas e abordagens. Cadernos Pagu (42), Campinas, Núcleo de Estudos de Gênero - Pagu/Unicamp, jun. 2014, pp.75-98. in terms of criticisms of the use of the word “homosexuality” as an all-encompassing category for sexual diversity, with new and more diverse forms of sexuality that do not easily fit into the hetero-homo binary coming to the fore (Facchini; França; Braz, 2014Facchini, Regina; França, Isadora Lins; Braz, Camilo. Estudos sobre sexualidade, sociabilidade e mercado: olhares antropológicos contemporâneos. Cadernos Pagu (42), Campinas, Núcleo de Estudos do Gênero-Pagu/Unicamp, 2014, pp.99-140.), along with gender diversity.
  • 22
    “Two academic publications were created in this area at this time, which maintain a regular printing schedule and which are well-considered by several different quality indicators: A Revista Estudos Feministas, which receives substantial support from the Ford Foundation, was founded in 1992 and is published by a national network whose leadership began at UFRJ, passed to UERJ and ended up based at UFSC, from 1999 on; Cadernos Pagu, which is published by the second generation of gender researchers at Unicamp, institutionally gathered in the Pagu Interdisciplinary Center for Gender Studies [currently the Nucleus for Gender Studies Pagu] from the early 1990s on” (Grossi, 2010Grossi, Miriam Pillar. Gênero, Sexualidade e Reprodução: A constituição dos estudos sobre gênero, sexualidade e reprodução no Brasil. In: Martins, C. B.; Duarte, L. F. D. Horizontes das ciências sociais no Brasil: antropologia. São Paulo, Anpocs, 2010, pp.293-340.:296).
  • 23
    The Unmaking Gender International Seminar is an interdisciplinar event connected to queer studies. Its first edition took place in Natal in 2013 at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, organized by the Tirésias Nucleus. The second edition occurred in Salvador, in 2015, at the Federal University of Bahia, organized by Cus – Culture and Sexuality.
  • 24
    This proliferation of journals is also related to a change in Brazilian scientific publishing and science and technology policies, which shows an increasing appreciation of the journal format. The case of Neim/UFBA is an excellent example of these changes. Between 1997 and 2015, Neim edited the Coleção Bahianas, which included 17 volumes with an excellent distribution. The purpose of the collection, according to the presentation of the first volume, was to "publish theoretical and monographic studies for a critical analysis of the female condition" within an interdisciplinary perspective. The volumes of the collection are all available at: http://www.neim.ufba.br/wp/publicacoes/
  • 25
    In an interview given to the Gender and Sexuality in Brazilian Scientific Research Project in 2012.
  • 26
    The “Women’s Weeks” were the first feminist encounters in the city of Campinas, organized by the Campinas Feminist Collective during 1978 and 1979. Many of the researchers, then graduate students, participated in these events, which took part in the discussions that gave rise to what is today the Pagu Gender Studies Nucleus. The Campinas Feminist Collective had an active participation in women’s meetings and seminars during this period. Documentation regarding the collective can be found in the Edgard Leuenroth Archive [http://segall.ifch.unicamp.br/site_ael/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=112&Itemid=90 – accessed on 12/20/2015].
  • 27
    In 2004, this area was reformed and became known as the Gender Studies area.
  • 28
    According to the project summary, available on the Pagu website, we have the following objectives and guiding principles: "In this project we intend to examine, in the light of the issues introduced by studies of gender, how the characteristics understood as feminine and masculine cut across conventions and norms of the body and how they permeate knowledge and practices. Our interest is to examine techniques and body modifications, paying particular attention to the planes in which these agreements materialize in concrete social relations, considering the following topics: sexual orientations and practices; age and life course; medical interventions in the body and social marks of distinction in the field of culture and science. Our intent is to investigate what is shared in our societies when it comes to thinking about bodies and their specific configurations, their corporealities, in order to discuss the increasingly widespread view of the body as moldable and plastic, able to "circumvent" or postpone the restrictions imposed on it in that it has materiality -- finite and fragile, on the one hand; adaptable and fusible with any culturally established convention on the other. We intend to reflect on how the conventions of corporeality inform specific social and cultural practices, gaining significance in the “production” of bodies and the implications of this for social identities. These general questions will be addressed in three main lines of research: 1) bodily practices, sexuality and eroticism; 2) bodily plasticity, sex and gender; 3) body, name and marks of distinction” [http://www.pagu.unicamp.br/pt-br/genero-corporalidades – accessed on 12/12/2015]. The axis most directly linked to sexuality, gender and eroticism contains Adriana Piscitelli’s research into sexual markets; Júlio Simões work on aging and homosexuality; and Maria Filomena Gregori’s studies on contemporary eroticisms.
  • *
    Both the organization of this debate and the research which produced the data quoted throughout this article were supported by the CNPq at different moments. The “Gender and sexuality in Brazilian research and scientific production: intersections, connections and conventions” project, Process #402556/2010-0, had support from CNPq and was folded into the “Studies regarding gender and sexuality in Brazil: processes of change and (co)production of knowledge” project, Process #309474/2014-0, which is still ongoing, also funded by CNPq. I would like to thank the researchers and professors who contributed to this research by granting interviews. I would also like to thank the researchers and scholarship students who worked on the project: Caroline Gorski Araujo, Marcelo Perilo, Marcelo Daniliauskas, Ana Cláudia Pilon, Ana Paula Araujo, Sarah Rossetti Machado and Rubens Mascarenhas Neto. I am grateful for the dialogues and exchanges that I have had with my colleagues, Sérgio Carrara, Júlio Simões and Maria Filomena Gregori during the preparation for the debate and the publication of this article, and to Isadora Lins França, Iara Beleli and Carolina Branco de Castro Ferreira, who read and commented on earlier versions of this text.

Publication Dates

  • Publication in this collection
    2016

History

  • Received
    02 May 2016
  • Accepted
    02 Aug 2016
Núcleo de Estudos de Gênero - Pagu Universidade Estadual de Campinas, PAGU Cidade Universitária "Zeferino Vaz", Rua Cora Coralina, 100, 13083-896, Campinas - São Paulo - Brasil, Tel.: (55 19) 3521 7873, (55 19) 3521 1704 - Campinas - SP - Brazil
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