Anthropology, Sociology and Political Science, History, Gender Studies
21
Scopus Publications
Scopus Publications
What’s in it for Maria? Brazilian migrant sex workers’ (de)mobilization of the “trafficking victim” identity Mara Clemente, Thaddeus Gregory Blanchette Vibrant Virtual Brazilian Anthropology, 2024 The article explores the (de)mobilization of the “trafficking victim” identity among Brazilian sex workers and the benefits that the counter-trafficking apparatus offers to Brazilian migrant women exploited in the sex market. In doing so, it considers their experience as much in their country of origin, Brazil, as in Portugal. Drawing on findings from ethnographic research, the article highlights the occasional and unstable mobilization of the “victim” label as a form of defense against the counter-trafficking apparatus, rather than as an instrument of recognition of rights that can substantially benefit Brazilian migrant women in the sex market.
A Place at the Table: Sex Workers and Allies in the Redefinition of Brazil’s Anti-Trafficking Law Thaddeus Gregory Blanchetteç Social Sciences, 2022 The present article is a brief account of the representational politics surrounding the insertion of the Brazilian prostitutes’ movement into anti-trafficking policy-making, following the 2013 death of Gabriela Leite, one of the founders and principal leaders of the movement. Leite’s death left an organizational hole in the attempts by one of Brazil’s oldest sex worker NGOs, Davida, to secure a place for sex workers at the policy-making table in the rewriting of the country´s anti-trafficking laws. Here, we relate how sex workers, academics, journalists, and activists came together to attempt to patch that hole, successfully fighting for sex worker representation in the governmental organs overseeing the struggle against human trafficking in Rio and, more broadly, Brazil. The re-organization of this project following the death of Gabriela highlights how multifaceted alliances between differently positioned actors can leverage the visibility and power of sex workers in culture and politics, creating opportunities to implement policies that favor prostitute rights.
Whore's passport: Racialism, national identity, and the trafficking of Brazilian women Thaddeus Blanchette, Ana Paula da Silva White Supremacy Racism and the Coloniality of Anti Trafficking, 2022 Moral panic surrounding trafficking in persons has tightened border controls worldwide. Under the rubric of repressing a hidden crime, surveillance technologies have been reinforced. A major component of these technologies has been the propagation of profiles of “typical” trafficking victims, where gender, race, class, and national stereotypes designate which migrants need to be stopped. Within this scenario, Brazilian women have become an over-determined target for anti-trafficking surveillance. However, Brazil’s own history of class-potentialized white supremacy and its entwinement with the sexy mulata stereotype has created a dilemma in which “white” Brazilian women are often “misread” during trajectories of migration.
Tricks of the light: Refractive masculinity in heterosexual and homosexual brothels in Rio De Janeiro Gregory Mitchell, Thaddeus Blanchette South Atlantic Quarterly, 2021 While there is a growing literature focusing on clients in sexual economies, much of this relies on heteronormative and/or unproven assumptions about masculinity and men’s motivations for purchasing sex. This collaborative ethnographic research takes a comparative approach by studying performances of masculinity in heterosexual and homosexual commercial sex venues in Rio de Janeiro. The authors argue that masculine performances not only are about homosocial male bonding between clients but also are aspirational performances in which actors must work within and across particular class- and race-based structures to jockey for position within the local hierarchy of hegemonic masculinity. They conclude that the connection between masculinity in heterosexual and homosexual venues is fractal, refractive, and coconstituitive. That is, even though the performances of masculinity look different in outward appearance, they actually operate within a shared ideology of gender and are coconstructed through actors’ own pretensions toward class distinction.
‘I will not be dona maria’: Rethinking exploitation and objectification in the context of work and sex work Thaddeus Blanchette, Ana Paula Da Silva, Gustavo Camargo Social Sciences, 2021 In many feminist and sociological accounts of sex work, the concept of exploitation resides on the subjacent notion of objectification, codified in the omnipresent belief that the sex worker sells their body. Sexual objectification supposedly indicates the peculiar and particular effect that sex work is supposed to have on the bodies of human beings involved in this form of toil, being one of the keystones for the belief that sex work is inherently exploitative. In the present article, we intend to investigate the canonical concept of objectification and its (ab)uses in the light of a comparative ethnographic study of sex work and other jobs in the service economy in the cities of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and New Orleans (USA). Our argument is that the concept of sexual objectification has its roots in pre-capitalist morality, encoded in Kantian philosophy, that is hardly applicable to real life in the 21st century. A more general and intersectional understanding of objectification and agency in the broader field of engendered labor relations is necessary for us to understand why people choose to engage in sex work, why laws which see sex work as synonymous with exploitation and slavery must be rethought, and how they might be rethought.
Sex work, essential work: A historical and (necro)political analysis of sex work in times of covid-19 in Brazil Betania Santos, Indianarae Siqueira, Cristiane Oliveira, Laura Murray, Thaddeus Blanchette, Carolina Bonomi, Ana Paula da Silva, Soraya Simões Social Sciences, 2021 Brazil has made international headlines for the government’s inept and irresponsible response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this context, sex worker activists have once again taken on an essential role in responding to the pandemic amidst State absences and abuses. Drawing on the theoretical framework of necropolitics, we trace the gendered, sexualized, and racialized dimensions of how prostitution and work have been (un)governed in Brazil and how this has framed sex worker activists’ responses to COVID-19. As a group of scholars and sex worker activists based in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, we specifically explore the idea of sex workers as “essential workers”, but also of sex work as, essentially, work, demonstrating complicities, differences, and congruencies in how sex workers see what they do and who their allies in the context of the 21st century’s greatest health crisis to date.
The prostitute, the city, and the virus Soraya Silveira Simões, Thaddeus Gregory Blanchette, Laura Murray, Ana Paula da Silva Social Sciences and Humanities Open, 2020 The present article has two goals. First, it seeks to establish, for non-specialized readers, the history of what we label “hygenization” in Brazilian urban and health policies and their intersections with the sale of sex and the prevention of pandemic disease. Secondly, we aim to show how concepts in contemporary Covid-19 vocabulary such as “social distancing” and “quarantine” have historical roots in morally driven (anti)prostitution policies, which illuminate the racialized dimensions of State intervention in times of public health crises. Finally, we aim to inform readers as to how the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic are being met within the context of this history, particularly by Brazil’s organized sex workers. By necessity and location, in this time of quarantine, our focus is on the city of Rio de Janeiro, which has historically provided an example for what has been called “the Brazilian model of urbanization”. We begin our article with a brief overview of this model and then proceed to a historical look at two prior pandemics, how they were dealt with and, in particular, their intersections with sex work. We finish by analyzing what the COVID-19 pandemic may mean for sex workers in Brazil in light of the country’s ambiguous public health traditions.
Control creep and the multiple exclusions faced by women in low-autonomy sex industry sectors Susan Dewey, Isabel Crowhurst, Tiantian Zheng, Thaddeus Blanchette Vibrant Virtual Brazilian Anthropology, 2020 This article unites the co-authors’ years of empirical research with women in policed, stigmatized, and low-autonomy sex industry sectors in Brazil, China, Italy, and the United States to identify six prevalent forms of exclusion: economic, intersectional, health, safety, public vilification, and policing. We analyze the distinct manifestations of these exclusionary forces in all four sites to introduce criminal creep as theoretical shorthand for the global seepage of ideological, structural, and interpersonal exclusionary forces into social life, professional practice, and socio-legal procedures that marginalize women in the sex industry as victim-criminals in need of rehabilitation. Uniting and building upon literature on feminist engagement with and critiques of citizenship, conceptual uses of “creep”, carcerality and crimmigration, and critical anti-trafficking studies, we argue that criminal creep facilitates a perfect storm of exclusion that promotes sex workers’ de facto and de jure exclusion from citizenship through a set of wide-ranging set of harms. Furthermore, we identify “control creep” as a factor limiting - even radically - the political organization of and social scientific production regarding the vulnerable populations anti-sex work and anti-trafficking laws are supposedly designed to aid.
Men in brothels: (Homo)sexuality in Rio de Janeiro’s commercial sexual venues Thaddeus Blanchette, Ana Paula da Silva Routledge International Handbook of Sex Industry Research, 2018 Although there are many different men in brothels and many different fantasies being portrayed, the performances commonly observe evoke female aggression and male passivity. Ironically, in brothels–different from supposedly normative (homo)sexual relationships–commerce with women is necessary, even though the main fantasy being sold is the centrality of male sexual indifference. With women being more aggressive in brothels and men more passive, the body language of the two genders is often reversed. One of the most common explanations we hear is that, unlike women, men have a “biological drive” to have sex with many partners. According to this view–traditional in Western sexual philosophy–brothels permit men to maintain social monogamy while exercising their biological imperative. In carioca brothels, instrumentality, denial of subjectivity, reduction to body, reduction to appearance, and silencing seem to apply. The main fantasy that men consume in a brothel is one of their centrality. The brothel is an inversion of normal courting behavior.
The designated victim: Representations of human trafficking in Brazil Thaddeus Gregory Blanchette, Ana Paula da Silva Revista Brasileira De Ciencias Sociais, 2018 O presente artigo analisa as imagens do tráfico de pessoas apresentadas pelas principais campanhas do Estado brasileiro e alguns de seus aliados mais importantes da sociedade civil, buscando entender como elas representam vítimas, algozes e a situação de tráfico em si, em suas tentativas de inculcar na sociedade brasileira uma cultura de “resistência à escravidão moderna” (termo émico constantemente empregado no campo antitráfico como sinônimo de tráfico), cujo componente mais importante tem sido a denúncia anônima de “pessoas suspeitas”. Criaremos uma tipografia ideal dessas imagens, dividindo-as em cinco iconografias e comparando-as com imagens semelhantes produzidas em contextos europeus e norte-americanos. Olharemos para as mudanças e permanências que aparecem nas campanhas brasileiras dos últimos anos, e analisaremos algumas das características específicas das campanhas brasileiras. Concluiremos nosso texto com uma breve discussão sobre os possíveis resultados colaterais de campanhas que se baseiam nesses tipos de iconografia.
