House and Street: Narratives of

Identity in a Liminal Space among

Prostitutes in Brazil
CAKLA DE MEIS

ABSTRACT This article is an ethnography using Da Matta's

theoreticalframework of "house" and "street" among prostitutes
in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. These prostitutes generally regard pros-
titution as immoral and deny their association with an activity
that they inwardly despise. Alternatively, among the prostitutes
who adopt a positive self-identity as the whore or the sex work-
er, this picture changes. By accepting and assuming these roles,
they leave the space of ambiguity, ofliminality, of street, and find
a social place. They also demonstrate a higher self-esteem and
more solidarity toward their colleagues. The sex worker per-
ceives herself as a citizen and prostitution as a job; AIDS preven-
tion is a current topic among them. The whore, although not
considering prostitution as a legitimate job, also leaves liminal-
ity by accepting marginality as her home (house) and choice.

T
he goal of this article is to understand how prostitutes in Brazil
struggle to achieve a self-narrative, using Da Matta's (1991) theo-
retical framework of house and street. In the process of building
a self-narrative, these women use several strategies that allow
them to negotiate a positive image and to detach themselves
from a stigmatized identity. More profoundly, by engaging in this process,
women leave their amorphic form and the silence of nonbeing to find a self-
narrative and a social place. To understand this negotiating process, it is im-
portant to understand the Brazilian society to which these women belong.
Brazil is a huge and complex country. Although people speak the same
language, there are several cultures that coexist in the country, with a mix
of Caucasian (European—mainly Portuguese), Indian, and black people.
Brazilian society has deep roots in a traditional culture based on the structure

£0?as3O(1/2):3-24. Copyright © 2002, American Anthropological Association.

 • ETHOS

of patriarchy and the importance of family (Freire 1993). It is also a society

open to modernization. Consequently, Brazil is a country with a complex
juxtaposition of ideas of tradition and modernity, individualism and ho-
lism, equality and hierarchy, citizenship and personal relationships, all of
which correspond to two different universes of values that cohabit side by
side.
These complex dichotomies have prompted Da Matta to create the
metaphors of "house" and "street" as two essential sociological categories
for understanding Brazilian society (Da Matta 1991). Using this dichot-
omy, the author searches beyond delimited attitudinal patterns, looking
for an understanding of specific "worldviews" and "ethics" in each of these
spaces that are "dimensions of meanings that constitute at the same time
reality itself and permit people to normalize and moralize their behavior"
(1991:53). Da Matta believes that the universe of the house is hierarchi-
cally organized and is built on relationships with kindred and friends that
are characterized by warmth and affection. The universe of the street, in
contrast, is a place of distrust, anonymity, incomprehension, and "salve-se
quern puder," or "every man for himself," the law of the jungle. Accord-
ingly, the symbolic space of the house is orderly and peaceful, while the
street is a dangerous place characterized by its lack of rules. Thus, any-
thing that might remove the basis for relationships in this society, with its
deep traditional roots, is considered threatening. Anonymity, in this social
universe, equals chaos in social relationships.
This opposition between "house" and "street" is dynamic because
one cannot speak of "house" without mentioning its gemale space, the "street." There-
fore it is also necessary to understand that the opposition "house/street" has complex
aspects. First, this kind of opposition is not static, substantive, or absolute. On the
contrary, it is dynamic and relativistic because in Brazilian society, "street" and
"house" can reproduce themselves within the opposite venue. For instance, because
there are spaces in the street that can be closed or appropriated by a group, social
categories or people, becoming "house." (Da Matta 1991:601
So the "house/street" opposition is fluid, because from the moment
that the street is no longer anonymous—for example, when at work, where
many new personal relationships are created—the space that was initially
"street" becomes "house." The proximity permits what was initially an
anonymous place to become a personal and hierarchical place for workers.
This dichotomy tends to disappear in cultures where the predomi-
nance of individualist values blurs these dual distinctions in the face of
concepts of equality among people and in their relationships. Individual-
ism includes the idea of citizenship in which all humans have the same
rights and duties (quantitative or juridical individualism) (Simmel 1971).
However, for Barbosa (1988) and Da Matta (1990), in Brazilian society, the
rules that are supposed to govern everyone's lives are not applied equally:
"()n one side we find rigid and universal laws, impersonal laws designed to
 Narratives of Identity • 5

uphold moral imperatives that appear with a modern and individualist

shape and, in practice, are made for all members of society. On the other
side, we have a much more complicated morality based on the totality of
relationships imposed by family relationships and social relational net-
works in which it is the personal relationship and its substantive links that
permit the creation of exceptions to the rule or create a dynamic in which
the rule is hardly applied. This is implied by the old and cherished Brazil-
ian expression, "for the enemies the law, for the friends everything!" (Da
Matta 1990:177). In the Brazilian universe, as the hierarchy and juridical
equality come together, there is a particular situation in which the laws do
not always work. Consequently, the universal laws that, by their own defi-
nitions, should be universal, become ambiguous. It is thus easy to under-
stand why the street universe in Brazil is characterized by "the stronger
law." The street, which is supposed to be a place of law and citizenship,
becomes a fearful place where people must always be attentive to not be-
come prey to someone else's bad intentions.

METHODOLOGY
My fieldwork with prostitutes began in 1989 when I was part of a medi-
cal research group working in a prostitution zone called Mangue in Rio de
Janeiro.1 I was completing an internship in medicine and, with another
intern and an immunologist, was serving as a "health agent" for AIDS pre-
vention in the area. At the same time, we used questionnaires to conduct
an epidemiological study of this prostitution area (De Meis et al. 1991). In
all, we conducted 49 individual (semistructured) interviews using a ques-
tionnaire consisting of 112 questions that addressed demographic infor-
mation and health and behavior issues. In this phase, we also carried out
20 group interviews, with four or five prostitutes in each group, to discuss
AIDS prevention and other health-related issues. However, because it was
an open discussion, many issues not directly related to health were also
addressed. It was a rich experience, and it was during this period that the
main article in this article took shape.
In 1993, I returned to the field to delve more thoroughly into the
questions that had arisen during my first contacts with the prostitutes. In
this second phase, we gathered life stories from 26 prostitutes in another
prostitution zone, Sao Joao Square, in Rio de Janeiro.21 was accompanied
by a research assistant who helped me to transcribe the interviews be-
cause the women declined to be taped.3 Some women were interviewed
more than once. This second stage of my fieldwork lasted one year.
In 1989,1 also began to participate in the "prostitutes' movement" in
Rio de Janeiro. Since then, I have had many informal talks with its leaders
and have participated in many of their events, including parties and
6 • ETHOS

marches. Some of these informal talks were extremely valuable and im-
portant to my understanding of the prostitutes. During 1994 and 1995,1
gathered four life stories of women who belonged to the prostitutes' move-
ment in Rio de Janeiro and did not object to the taping of their testimonies.
In 1995,1 also attended and taped the First Forum of the Sex Workers from
the Municipality of Duque de Gaxias, a vast working-class neighborhood
of Rio. In 1999,1 recorded seven life stories of leaders of nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) who were working on AIDS prevention among fe-
male and male prostitutes in this city. I also attended several meetings and
activities organized by these groups.4

A nUGNKHTfO SOf
In all of the interviews, the prostitutes affirmed that they did not want
their daughters to be prostitutes. The majority of the subjects interviewed
hid their activity from their families because they were ashamed. The idea
of prostitution being work was, as a consequence, very controversial
among them. The most frequent finding was that a woman would oscillate,
in the same interview, between these two positions. There was always a
great degree of ambivalence and ambiguity about this subject.
This ambivalence must be understood in the context of the cultural
background of these women, in which the social roles available to a women
are, on the one hand, those of "sanctified mother," "good woman," "family
girl," or, on the other hand, those of "depraved woman," "whore," or
"street woman." Consequently, when a Brazilian woman becomes a pros-
titute, she is, in her social imagination, breaking from the world of the
family and of the "good" woman to join the world of the "depraved"
woman.5 However, this rupture is generally only partial. The prostitutes
do not completely break with the world of family, and the dream of being
a "good" woman does not die. It is precisely because they do not give up
the dream of being a good woman that they refuse to accept the world of
marginality, of the "street" woman, as their own. Their silence stems from
the impossibility of finding a legitimate self-narrative, or a place in the
social world. The women remain suspended between these two worlds,
unable to completely identify with either of them. Bibeau and Perreault,
in their study of prostitutes, write, "Their narratives reveal broken, frac-
tional, segmented lives, as if the subjects were living many different lives
without being able to integrate them" (1995:55). In our research, we found
that life histories demonstrate that several identities struggle with each
other in a continuous and dynamic search by the subject to find a final and
conclusive self-narrative.
When a woman becomes a prostitute, she enters a marginal path that
is not located outside of the culture but within it. She is following the
 Narratives of Identity • 7

trajectory of the "street woman" and leaving that of the "house woman,"
the two defined roles for women in this country. This dichotomy reflects
the rationale frequently found in traditional societies in which the ideas of
"good" and "bad," "pure" and "dirty," and "high" and "low" are intrinsic
(Dumont 1983).

AN EffRNU FRONTIER: UMUUIITY AS A SOCIAL POSITION

In Van Gennep's (1960) study about rites of passage, the author shows
that important changes in the lives of subjects are ritualized. The ritual
helps to ease the transition for the person in question. The author main-
tains that these rituals are divided into three stages: the death of an old
social role, the margin or transition, and rebirth into a new role in society,
in another stage of the person's life. The margin corresponds to a time
when the subject lives in a liminal situation, between death and rebirth.
Social rules are suspended because the subject no longer belongs to the
old world, nor has the person entered the new world where he or she will
exist from now on. That is, at this moment the subject is in "nowhere land"
(Van Gennep 1960).
Using the concept of rites of passage from Van Gennep, Victor Turner
develops the concept of liminality in complex societies: "The attributes of
liminality or of liminal personae . . . are necessarily ambiguous, since this
condition and these persons elude or slip through the network of classifi-
cations that normally locates states and positions in cultural space. Limi-
nal entities are neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between the
positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention, and ceremo-
nial . . . liminality is frequently linked to death, to being in the womb, to
invisibility, to darkness, to bisexuality, to the wilderness, and to an eclipse
of the sun or moon" (Turner 1969:81). The prostitute, divided between the
world of the house woman and that of the street woman, is outside both of
them, living in a wild, liminal space.
Most of the women interviewed are prostitutes who do not accept it
and refuse to give up their ideal of being a house woman, a good woman,
and they do not cross the line dividing these two worlds. This keeps them
forever linked with the social project of a "house woman," to which they
no longer belong. Even if they keep their activity as prostitutes secret, it
remains tattooed on their minds as a stigma, poisoning their lives inside
and outside the prostitution zone. As a consequence, they cannot accept
that they belong to the streets and so do not entirely become part of the
world of marginality. The underground has its own rules, logic, ethic, and
aesthetic (De Meis 1999; Gaspar 1988; Severino 1993). But since these
women refuse to accept these rules and this ethic as their own, the under-
ground remains a liminal space where they are imprisoned, a space of
8 • ETHOS

emptiness and lack of rules. The "underground" becomes "street," in Da

Matta's sense. Liminality prevents the creation of any kind of relationship.
This means that, in Brazilian society, a person who does not have relation-
ships becomes a hostage of the threatening universe of the streets because
anonymity is "street."

UVM6 W IDE STREET: WJOUHCf. DISTRUST, RID SUSPtCKH

In the prostitutes' discourse, we find an incarnation of the spirit of the
streets in which distrust is a major concern. In the prostitution areas,
silence is the law: nobody knows anybody. Suspicion is the main emotion,
which is strongly reflected in what they say about each other. An almost
unanimous belief among the prostitutes interviewed was that one could
not trust a prostitute, or a "street woman." Carolina said, "I don't like
friendship here. Living alone is better. I never fought." Paula said, "A pros-
titute cannot have friends. The most important thing to me is my wallet,
when it has money. Everybody is mendacious here. My friends are women
who are not prostitutes." Another prostitute added, "In the streets, every-
body is a Judas, everybody is like a snake, you cannot have friends . . . you
cannot trust whores . . . all of them will betray you in a moment."
Some of them explained this lack of solidarity as a consequence of
competition and envy. Lucia stated,
Friends in prostitution V It is impossible. You see this scarV It was a fight. A woman from
this square told me: "You are pretty but very arrogant." I grabbed her and punched her.
After that, she jumped at me and cut my face. Then, I also cut her face with a bottle.
Her eye was wounded. I think she cannot see with it anymore . . . another time, a
woman came to me saying that I had gone out with her man. I told her that the money
was his. She came up to me and we fought. These are all envious and ugly women. They
are jealous . . . but I don't want to be prejudiced.

Valeria, another prostitute, affirmed, "Friendship is only with men, with

women it is impossible." Simone explained why she did not have real
friends in the square. She said that in the past, she had a friend whom she
helped financially, giving her food, a place to stay, and money when she
needed it. But one night, her friend had been drinking and using intrave-
nous drugs, and threw a glass in her face. She showed me the scar and
explained that since then, she never again had any close friendships in the
prostitution zone, concluding, "I come here, I work, I get my money, and
I go back home. Here it is just for money."
To understand these fights, it is important to know how the prosti-
tutes' hierarchy works. It is usually based on both beauty and the power
to attract men, two closely related characteristics, because if a woman is
beautiful she will be desired by more men. Consequently, men are the
markers of the prostitutes' status and prestige and the trigger for most of
 Narratives of Identity • 9

their fights. Therefore, when one prostitute wants to attack another, she
might go out with that prostitute's boyfriend or regular client.
One has to wonder whether competition is the only cause of all these
tights and quarrels. Certainly it is an important factor, but it does not
explain everything. In other professions, be it medical doctor or fashion
model, competition is also very strong, but this kind of direct physical
hostility is rare. However, other marginal groups display the same pattern
of physically aggressive behavior (Perlongher 1990, 1994; Silva 1993).
To understand the high incidence of physical violence in the prosti-
tution zone, we must situate this space within a specific "moral region"
(Park 1968) of the "underground." This same moral region includes drug
dealers, thieves, and others who have left the law-abiding world. One pros-
titute remarked, "there was a policeman who used to kill the prostitutes
for any little thing." The interesting point about this statement is that
everyone knew who the policeman—that is, the murderer—was, but he
was not reported. They think that if the word of a policeman is used in a
court against the word of a prostitute, she will lose because no one will
listen to her side of the story. As a result, no one denounced the policeman
who kills women in Tiradentes square.6 Perlongher writes, "a kind of terror
. . . is present in the underground . . . when one person kills, everybody
kills" (1990:72). Killing and dying are so ordinary that they can happen at
any time.
To understand this atmosphere of terror and violence in the under-
ground, it is important to define it as a "liminal space." It is a transitory,
fluid place because the majority of people who move through it do not
intend to live there, even when they really do. It is a place of shame and
transgression. The underground has its own rules and laws that are dealt
with and enforced in an ambiguous way, while constantly being broken;
thus, the underground is a threatening and treacherous place. How can
someone respect the rules of an unrespectable place? Treason and disloy-
alty prove to the subject and to the group that they are not united. They
are neither equals nor brothers and sisters; they are subjects without a
group.
Fights are so frequent in the prostitution area that they even have a
popular nickname, briga de quenga. From the 26 prostitutes interviewed
in Sao Joao Square, three (11.5 percent) had acute wounds from recent
fights, but if we also consider the older scars, this number increases con-
siderably. The scars are mainly left on the face and are intended to spoil
a woman's beauty. Only a few of the women did not have scars from fights,
and those who did not stated it proudly.
The fear of dying was almost always revealed in our interviews. It is a
common opinion in the square that prostitutes do not live long but, in-
stead, die young. Some prostitutes recounted dreams in which they saw
10 • ETHOS

themselves dead. The case of three prostitutes who were killed in the
square was repeated many times to me, and this story was almost a legend.
Another example of the major concern with death came from a 17-year-old
prostitute who told me that she did not believe she would live long enough
to see her daughter grow up.
This fear of death was not unfounded. Deeper in the world of the
streets, death and violence are daily events that were illustrated in the
words of some women of the square. The first account was that of Graca,
20 years old, whose face was being held together between operations by
various screws, clamps, and other orthopedic supports. She told us that a
client in the motel who did not intend to pay for her services shot her in
the face. A second example was Karen, whose face was almost completely
covered in bandages so that we could only see her eyes and mouth. She
told us her story in a flat voice, without emotion: "It was two men and one
woman . . . they followed me. The woman broke a bottle of beer on my
head and the men gave her a knife to cut me. There was a lot of blood, but
I picked up a piece of wood and chased after her." The only moment at
which Karen showed emotion was when she said that upon leaving the
men, she pursued the woman and they fought. She was beaten, but she
also beat the woman. She recounted, "When I was young, I was naive and
I was beaten and robbed every time." She only changed when an old black
prostitute, a leader in the square at that time, taught her how to fight. From
then on, she knew that when someone tried to hit her, she was to hit them
back. She was no longer naive.
In the "underground," people do not use legal means to deal with their
problems. A phrase by one prostitute helps to clarify this attitude: "No-
body trusts prostitutes. . . . If I would argue with someone like her (refer-
ring to my research assistant), she would win, even if I were the one who
was right." It is as though the prostitutes believe that the laws of the "city"
would not prevail in the shadows of the "underground." It is why Graca
and Karen did not go to the police to denounce their attackers. Both, fol-
lowing the laws of the underground, decided to take personal revenge.
Graca asked a friend to kill the man who shot her, and Karen followed her
aggressor and fought with her: "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."
Ideas such as the rights of citizenship and justice obtained by legal means
are foreign to these women.
Julia said she does not believe in justice and that the judge would
never believe her testimony if a policeman contradicted her. That is why
she did not use legal avenues to try to attain her objectives. Nevertheless,
in one prostitution area where the prostitutes' movement was powerful,
the leaders collected money and hired a lawyer to protect them legally.
After that, the beatings by policemen and fights in the area decreased con-
siderably.
 Narratives of Identity • 11

People who inhabit the marginal world are not used to dealing with
legal affairs. When someone breaks with the world of order, of family, and
enters the margins, it means acquiring a completely new language and
renouncing the old one. It means becoming alienated from the world of
legality, forgetting its rules and codes. During an informal conversation, a
leader of the prostitutes ironically commented on the ingenuousness of a
well-known malandro (a petty criminal or idler familiar with the ways of
the underground and accustomed to taking advantage of people and situ-
ations) when he tried to sell his motorcycle. In a panic over his inability
to deal with papers and legal matters, he asked another man more familiar
with these affairs to do it for him. He did what even an inexperienced
middle-class adolescent would never do: He gave all his signed documents
to this person. The result was that this much-feared malandro lost his
motorcycle. The man never returned with the money or the motorcycle.
The very experienced man of the underground was a child in the world of
documents and laws; he did not comprehend its language or logic. For the
prostitutes, I suggest that this feeling of being a stranger to the world of
papers, laws, and institutions may be another factor that influences their
perception of the legal apparatus as hostile and as something that they
would never imagine using to solve their personal quarrels.
The law in the red light district is, "Here you do . . . here you pay." It
can be illustrated by an event we took part in during our fieldwork. I had
often tried to record the prostitutes' interviews, but none of them allowed
this. There was one exception with a prostitute who was different from the
others in many ways. The only one who allowed herself to be recorded,
she suggested that the interview take place in a crowded bar close to the
prostitution area. When we entered the bar, all of the customers stared at
us, especially when I took the tape recorder from my bag. It was a very
awkward situation. The prostitute was not bothered; in fact, she talked and
talked. I could not understand her confused and disconnected speech, and
thought she may have had a mental disorder. A drunken man sitting close
to us suddenly stood up and cried out the interviewee's name, ordering her
to shut up. He screamed angrily, "You are speaking too much," and in a
threatening manner he said, "Here you do, here you pay." The man then
left abruptly. I was very concerned, but the prostitute continued to speak
as if nothing had happened. She then told us that she knew a person who
had committed murder, and she divulged a name. I was panicking; I had
never dreamed of becoming involved in a murder case. People were look-
ing at us. I gently ended the interview, thanked the prostitute, paid the bill,
and gratefully left the bar.
12 • ETHOS

DEFENSES AGJUNST UK SUGHU OF nwsnnmoN

During the interviews, a theme consistently emerged: The woman

tried to prevent her activity as a prostitute from contaminating her private
life (De Meis 1999; De Meis and De Vasconcellos 1992) and would adopt
several strategies to this end.
The nome de guerra (battle name) is a fictitious name the prostitute
uses in the prostitution zone. This artifice is created so that her baptismal
name, which is sacred to her and is part of her family heritage representing
her "true essence," will not be contaminated by her activity as a prostitute.
We frequently encountered this strategy in our interviews. Along the same
line of reasoning, Castaneda et al. points out that clothes and makeup are
used by prostitutes to prevent the stigma of prostitution from touching
their private lives:
Cosmetics hide reality and blur the appearance; makeup covers the pores, and there-
fore preserves the identity of the woman-mother-daytime-named, the omnipresent
central figure of the family group, and the intermediary with society. "Making up" is
the creation of the prostitute-actress-nighttime-anonymous, located in time (the night,
transient), in space (the street, open, exposed) and facing someone specific (the client,
the environment). Makeup creates a second skin, which seals and buries the "woman,"
it is part of profane reality; this is why it must be removed each night. As in a purifica-
tion ritual, the face is cleaned, clothing is changed, a rebirth occurs before returning
home, to the sacred reality. (1996:241)
The interviewees revealed a constant attempt to separate their personal
lives from the activity of prostitution with many small purification rituals.
On another level, the prostitutes try to distance themselves from
other prostitutes. Gloria was representative of this approach: "Some
women fight, act scandalously, use drugs. It's not normal! I am not like
this, and I don't have any kind of relationship with these people. You must
learn how to choose your friends. Some people say that prostitutes are all
the same, but they are wrong. We are very different from each other. /
don \feel as if I was a prostitute. I am very different from them." To help
clarify such a statement, Gaspar writes, "The girls demarcate frontiers and
boundaries in order to admit that they are actually prostitutes, but that
they are different, and consequently are better than the ones that 'stay in
certain streets' or the ones who use too many drugs. The mechanism of
attributing the stigma to other styles of prostitution is consequently a
structural part of the process of building identity among these prostitutes"
(Gaspar 1988:89). All of these strategies are used to convey to both the
prostitute and to others that prostitution is a temporary stage in her life,
not a true part of her identity. These strategies are derived from the pros-
titute's perception of her activity as something degrading.
Most prostitutes affirmed their intentions to leave prostitution as soon
as possible and achieve a real vocation, that of "family woman." Eighty
 Narratives of Identity • 13

percent of those interviewed in Mangue wanted to leave prostitution as

soon as possible, and 87 percent stated that they did not enter prostitution
by choice. In Sao Joao square, these percentages were 84 percent and 79
percent, respectively. It is important to note that these affirmations con-
tinue even if the woman stays in prostitution for many years, or even the
rest of her life.
In this context, Gastafleda et al. further elaborates on the work of
Deleuze and Guattari to affirm that the prostitutes live with a kind of "so-
cial schizophrenia." Their lifestyle implies "a separation and a simultane-
ous combination of at least two worlds and two types of behavior: the world
of the family on the one hand and the sphere of commercial sex on the
other; a daytime personal life and a nighttime professional life; two faces
of a single person" (Gastafleda et al. 1996:229). Even if this constructed
metaphor of "social schizophrenia" is somewhat problematic because of
its pathologizing tone, it is useful because it suggests the coexistence of
two separate worlds within the woman. Thus, I consider Turner's (1969,
1993) metaphor of liminality more accurate and powerful.

AUTE IN TRANSIT
Prostitutes change their work locations frequently. They move from
one place to another in the same city, and also from one city to another
(Mazzariol 1976; Severino 1993). Most live in cheap hotels rooms that are
paid for daily, which has an important symbolic effect because it means
that this "home" is always seen as transitory, even when the woman lives
there for many years. It validates their affirmations that their activities as
prostitutes are temporary. Thus, "home" is the "street"; the prostitutes
move frequently because they do not develop links to specific people or
places.
A more in-depth look at this situation reveals that these transitory
lifestyles are also promoted by the owners of the prostitution houses and
by the owners of the nightclubs that prostitutes attend. The main ingredi-
ent for success in these clubs is playfulness, which translates as "novelty."
The clubs depend on this novelty (provided by a high turnover among the
women) to attract their clientele. For Gaspar (1988), the lack of emotional
involvement on the nightclub scene is part of the ethos of the group,
whereby all relationships have the character of a casual pickup or a fortui-
tous relationship, in which continuity is not intended. Maintaining this
attitude is another way for the women to detach themselves from their
prostitution activities; they believe they are only in this situation tempo-
rarily. Gaspar states that
the difficulty offindingpeople and of maintaining longer and deeper contacts is a real-
ity among the relationships existing in the nightclubs. The girls attend the clubs but
14 • ETHOS

are not employed by the owners. They are colleagues among themselves, but, at the
same time, are in a situation of strong competition. And the clients are mostly tourists
that they probably won't see again. The girls are linked to the nightclubs, but they
consider their presence in these establishments as transitory, just as they consider
their activity as prostitutes transitory. They socialize with their peers but set limits to
these relationships . . . they attribute a high value to a lack of commitment, when each
event overlaps the other, without any rigid planning. Actually, they see themselves as
living in the immediate, the here and now, without thinking of the future, and this
notion of time appears both in their day-to-day obligations and in the way they organize
their own finances. (1988:54)

Life is lived moment by moment.

During the interviews, the prostitutes frequently stated, "The money
made in prostitution doesn't last because it is cursed." This phrase, re-
peated many times, has an important moral meaning. More profoundly, it
is not the money that is cursed; instead, it is their own minds and hands.
It is a social and psychological curse they have introjected from society
that makes their lives chaotic and prevents them from saving money. To
organize one's life, it is essential to stop continually moving and begin to
create links with people and places. But, imprisoned in liminality, the
prostitutes run wildly to reach nowhere, rather, to reach death. It is why
prostitutes die young, as many of them stated.
An indication of the prostitutes' relationship with time is precisely
confirmed by their way of dealing with money. Ordinarily, saving money
implies that one intends to use it for a future project, and not saving it
indicates a lack of concern for the future. In our study, one prostitute said,
"I don't think about the future . . . I don't save money, I'm the mostfucked
up one in the family anyway." If we consider how much money prostitutes
earn, it is quite a lot; however, they do not want to advance in this career
(which, deep inside, they despise), and they do not invest in it. Their
money is lost, because they stay in prostitution and consequently do not
invest in another job or project.
Again, as an example, when I asked a 17-year-old prostitute whether
she had plans for the future, she answered that she would marry at 22 and
buy a house. When she told me that she usually earned a lot of money, I
asked her why she did not buy a house now. She did not understand my
question and answered in the same manner as she already had, saying that
she would marry and only then would she buy the house. In this dialogue,
it seems clear that for this prostitute, as well for most women in Brazil, the
only possibility of having a house would be as a married woman. Having a
house without a family had no meaning for her. Her future would depend
on finding a husband to be able to buy the house she desired so much, thus
fulfilling her plans for the future she desired. But until this happened, she
had to continue living in different places all the time while being stuck on
a time/space continuum where the future lay in the chance of finding a
husband to save her from prostitution and reintegrate her into the luminous
 Narratives of Identity • 15

world of the "house woman." Only in this way would she be able to build
a future that she would really feel belonged to her. Only in this way would
she be able to leave the "street" and arrive at "home."

MRWMG JIT HOME: T K WHORE

In our study, we created two metaphors to represent two paths out of
the world of liminality: that of the "sex worker" and that of the "whore."7
These two roles, or trajectories, should not be confused. In both cases,
women transform the "street" into a "house," but in opposite senses.
While both of them leave liminality, the first one does so by integrating the
notion of "good" and "bad" as relative values, and by recognizing herself
as a citizen with rights as an individual and as a worker. The second way
never goes beyond this fundamental dichotomy between "good" and
"bad," but in spite of this, the subject will still leave liminality by accepting
the "bad" as being her place, her choice. She will never see herself as a
person with legal rights, as a citizen, or even as a worker; these are con-
cepts she does not understand. She is the "other woman," the mistress,
and she accepts it. While the sex worker is influenced by individualistic
values surrounding the idea of "worker," the whore is mainly traditional.
I must emphasize that these types are more theoretical than real. The
"sex worker," the "whore," and the "liminal woman" are metaphors that
do not correspond to real beings. All three types of narrative may be pre-
sent in a single woman, although usually, there is a preponderance of one
of these types of narrative. The narrative of the liminal woman was by far
the most commonly found in our research.
When a woman begins to perceive prostitution as an option and voca-
tion in her life and thus sees herself as being either a sex worker or a
whore, she leaves her transitory way of life, buys a house, saves money,
and becomes more supportive toward her peers in the prostitution zone.
What was the "street" becomes "house," and she leaves the liminal world.
One example of the "whore" is Margarida. She is one of the oldest
prostitutes in Sao Joao square, and one of the few who claimed to enjoy
being a prostitute and said that she did not want to leave that activity.
Prostitution had come to represent warmth, or a home, for her. Margarida
said, "Everybody is fond of me. I don't make any trouble, everybody is nice
to me . . . I think women shouldn't be ashamed of being prostitutes. You
just have to know how to behave yourself. For example, I don't use ob-
scenities." She also said she knew most of the women in the square, and
that she helped them if they were having any problems. For instance, Mar-
garida invited a homeless prostitute to stay in her own house until she
could find a regular place. In another situation, Margarida took care of
Karen, the prostitute who had her face cut, providing her with antibiotics
and food.
16 • ETHOS

Certain prostitutes show a tendency toward fighting, while others

show more solidarity with their peers. Some of them, like Margarida, were
more implicated, while others remained aloof from the group. Usually, the
prostitutes who showed the most group solidarity were the ones who said
that they enjoyed being prostitutes and wanted to stay in Sao Joao square.
One question comes to mind. Why do Margarida, along with certain
others who differ from the majority of the prostitutes of the square, iden-
tify themselves with prostitution, even if they come from a universe where
hierarchical and traditional values dominate, where values are not per-
ceived in relative terms, and where the prostitute's social position is not
well regarded? Why do they succeed in disengaging themselves from the
ideal of the "good woman"?
The history of Margarida, specifically that of her childhood, sheds
light on this question. Her father was crippled and walked on his knees
with rubber pads that protected them from the roughness of the ground.
Margarida, ever since she was a child, loved and admired her father. This
is significant because, early in life, she developed an aesthetic of the "ugly"
as "beautiful." Although her father could not use his legs, through Mar-
garida's words his body jumped and ran. The character she described was
a happy man. She was not ashamed of her crippled father but, instead, was
inordinately proud of this "man-hero."
It does not matter whether this almost-perfect father described by
Margarida really existed. More important is that this personage became the
myth that illuminated and gave meaning to her life. What does matter is
to understand how Margarida represented her childhood and the charac-
ters associated with her, as well as how she represented and identified
herself with them.
There are many crippled fathers and prostitute mothers, but usually
these people are represented as "bad" or "weak" people of whom one feels
ashamed. Many mothers of these prostitutes were themselves prostitutes,
many of their fathers were thieves, and the majority are ashamed of this.
These parents are represented by their children as the opposite of "beau-
tiful," "virtuous," or "strong." And later, when they became prostitutes,
the women felt ashamed of themselves too. In Margarida s history, what I
observed was the opposite. She learned to love a crippled father and later
to like being a prostitute. Margarida identified herself with die "ugly," and
that is why she was not ashamed of being a "whore," for she believed that
what others think ugly is really beautiful. Margarida was kind to the aban-
doned children and to the other prostitutes in the square. She was benevo-
lent toward the "ugly" and learned to love them; perhaps this is why she
claimed to enjoy being a prostitute.
Nevertheless, I take care not to project Margarida's personal story
onto all of the women. In fact, each prostitute, during her own life, finds
 Narratives of Identity • 17

an individual way to attain a valuable narrative for herself and a positive

identity. It is impossible to predict whether this happens through some
positive identification. Margarida is presented here only to illustrate this
process.
When we look at the narrative of the whore, we frequently find the
figure of the "madam" or "Queen-Mother," another side of the "whore."
Most of the madams and brothel owners are ex-prostitutes. Becoming a
madam is thus a promotion in the career of a prostitute. For Severino, "to
be a madam means the culmination of the whole career of a prostitute,
reached by following the steps according to the rules that dictate the rites
of passage. It's not enough to want to be a madam; the woman, in her
apprenticeship process, must acquire the ethos, the soul of this profes-
sion" (1993:65). This means that in order to ascend to the level of madam,
it is essential that the woman create a meaningful connection with the
activity of prostitution and cease to perceive it as a transitory situation. It
is necessary that she involve herself and start making plans related to her
permanence in the activity.
Severino writes that the space in which the prostitute is inserted, be-
cause of its liminality, has no codes (Severino 1993). I do not agree with
this statement because, during our research, this space was revealed as a
place colored by rules and values. It may appear to be codeless because
many prostitutes do not accept these rules and values as their own. In-
deed, as I have shown, most prostitutes utilize defense mechanisms to
increase their self-esteem and to prevent them from being part of the mar-
ginal world of prostitution. They refuse to accept any kind of link with
them and thus stay imprisoned in the social space of nonbeing, or liminal-
ity. Conversely, the more closely the woman links herself with the activity,
the more she is able to leave this liminal situation and interject the new
ethos. It allows the future, which had ceased to exist, to be reborn with
projects and plans such as ascending the career ladder, saving money, or
buying a house. As an example, I again refer to Margarida, who proudly
told us that she was saving money: "I have a savings account and a bank
card." She was going to buy land to build a house for herself. Consequently,
for Margarida, time was no longer limited to the immediate; the future was
reborn. The money was no longer cursed and slipping from her fingers.
Margarida was a leader in the square. The prostitution zone was not threat-
ening anymore; the underground was not "street" anymore, but "home."

ARRIVING AT HOME: THE SEX WORKERS

It has been suggested that AIDS prevention should be carried out
jointly with community groups in order to promote their empowerment
and education (Nutbeam et al. 1991; Stone 1992). The essence of this
18 • ETHOS

strategy is based on the individualistic values of self-reliance, liberty, and

citizenship. AIDS prevention among prostitutes in Brazil has been devel-
oped mainly through empowerment groups (NGOs) based on the dis-
course of the "sex worker." Therefore, this kind of rhetoric reaches only a
limited proportion of Brazilian prostitutes (Larvie 1997). The idea of pros-
titutes being workers and citizens does not constitute a consensus among
the prostitutes themselves; it is accepted by only a few. Prostitutes who
identify themselves with the narrative of the liminal woman or the whore
are not reached by this kind of rhetoric. It has already been amply de-
scribed in the literature that the transfer of this model of empowerment
and education, which was so successful among gay men in North America,
is ineffective when applied in other contexts (Aggleton et al. 1994; Asthana
and Oostvogels 1996; Woelk 1992).
The concept of "sex workers" was born in Brazil approximately 15
years ago with the prostitutes' grassroots movement that was strongly in-
fluenced by the idea of AIDS prevention and empowerment. The prosti-
tutes' movement has often been helped by governmental institutions such
as the Brazilian Ministry of Health and by several national and interna-
tional foundations (Larvie 1997). Assistance has usually come in the form
of money for AIDS prevention projects and condom distribution.
The discourse of the sex workers differed from that of the women who
worked in Sao Joao square, the majority of whom did not know about the
prostitutes' movement. The prostitutes involved in the movement stated
proudly that they were prostitutes and that it was a profession like any
other (De Meis 1999; Moraes 1996). The women also affirmed that they
enjoyed their profession and that their families knew they were prosti-
tutes. They usually emphasized the positive aspects of the activity, pre-
senting a discourse that included friendship, solidarity, and a class spirit.
Raquel participates in the movement. What I observed in her account
was that when she contacted the prostitutes' grassroots movement, it gave
new meaning to all her memories. Starting prostitution was then seen as
a personal choice and not fatalistically determined. Her past assumed dif-
ferent associations and meanings as she questioned the stigma that society
had imposed on her. She questioned society and its values and rules: "Be-
fore, I used to think that the other women were different, that they would
not like me. I would never say what I wanted, and I didn't value myself at
a l l . . . I was a quarrelsome person . . . I already cut many people . . . I was
aggressive . . . I robbed the other women . . . I was a savage, rebellious . . .
but now 1 am not like that anymore." She commented on a close friend
who was also part of the movement, "Our class was very disunited, e v e n -
one used to say bad things about the others . . . but now it is changing . . .
it is not like that anymore." She finished by talking about her children:
"It's not because their mother is a prostitute that they will be marginalized
 Narratives of Identity • 19

by society . . . they are like everybody." Thus, Raquel, who used to think
of herself as the worst woman in the world, had begun to revolt by ques-
tioning society and the stigma that it had imposed on her.
When Raquel questioned society, she did not feel as marginal any-
more. She grew in self-esteem, creating a new ethic and aesthetic in which
prostitution was no longer shameful but was instead a legitimate profes-
sion like any other. Another prostitute, commenting on her entrance to
the movement, added, "My life changed a lot. . . . Before, I used to feel a
scrap, an invalid; it changed a lot. . . . Now I see life differently." Jussara,
one of the leaders of the movement in another prostitution area, told us,
"The girls don't participate in the movement. . . . We must assume it our-
selves . . . we are the ones who are breaking with the prejudices, we must
assume it to be able to face other people." Again the rebellion was re-
peated, with an urgent call to challenge prejudices and change society.8
On the one hand, among prostitutes in Sao Joao square, violence is
accepted with resignation; it is a tacit, inevitable, and inexorable part of
their activity. On the other hand, among members of the prostitutes' grass-
roots movement, this reality is always treated with indignation. Among the
latter group, police violence is no longer tolerated, and possible ways to
fight it are a frequent issue of discussion.
Gabriela, one of the leaders of the prostitutes' grassroots movement,
explained that through their own organization, they had already stopped
police violence against prostitutes in several areas of Rio de Janeiro. She
added that the prostitutes' association of Porto Alegre already had 500
members who collected money among themselves to hire a lawyer to de-
fend them in legal cases. What was accepted with resignation has now
become a platform for revolution. The prostitutes now claim the legal tools
from outside the underground to protect themselves from violence. It has
become essential for them to detach themselves from the underground
and from its laws and language, because now, to them, prostitution is not
immoral anymore but has become a legitimate profession. In an interview
for a Brazilian magazine, Maria Campos, a leader of the prostitutes' move-
ment in Sao Paulo, said, "Since we began to organize ourselves, the police
respect us much more. The beatings have almost finished" (Mateos
1995:21). She added that "this experience [of participating in the prosti-
tutes' movement) also reduced the fights and considerably increased the
solidarity among the prostitutes themselves, which makes it easier to expand
activities, from literacy to the prevention of sexually-transmitted diseases"
(1995:21). The important issue that the women should have documents
has emerged from this movement. Again, what was "street" has become
"house." What was wild, anonymous, and without rules may become ruled
and warm. There is a sense of promise that the underground will share the
same light as the rest of the city.
20 • ETHOS

DISCUSSION
This ethnographic study illustrates how Da Matta's dynamic of
"house" and "street" can be observed among Brazilian prostitutes with the
creation of new social narratives of identity. In my study, this process
takes form in the metaphors of the "whore" and the "sex worker," two
completely different worlds of discourse and values that culminate in the
same process of creation of new narratives and in the same process of
disengagement from the social space of nonbeing, or liminality. The
"whore" does so by accepting the underground as her home, and the "sex
worker" does so when she finally dissociates her activity from the rules
and the spirit of the underground, and bases herself in the idea of citizen-
ship and individual freedom.
We must be careful not to view this model as static. As with any other
model, it is, in essence, arbitrary. Reality is dynamic and defies classifica-
tion. People's subjectivity is like a river that never stops flowing. Today
will be always different from tomorrow, and one person will be always
different from another. Consequently, this model must be read in a dy-
namic way, because on a given day, a prostitute will produce a kind of
narrative that is closer to the metaphor of the "whore," and on another
day the same prostitute may present a narrative that is more closely re-
lated to the concept of the "liminal prostitute." If a prostitute is kind to
others, she may feel more attached to her identity as a prostitute. Alter-
natively, when someone from the prostitution area hurts her, she may feel
more detached from the group and deny any identification with it. Conse-
quently, the "whore," the "sex worker," and the "liminal woman" are ideal
types, not real characters. They are used here as a didactic tool and, there-
fore, should not be read in a literal way. Nonetheless, we can observe that
in spite of the frequent switches in the women's narratives, some tend to
identify more consistently with one type of narrative (the "whore" or the
"sex worker"), while others identify more frequently with another type
(the "liminal woman").
The narrative of the liminal woman was the one most frequently en-
countered among the prostitutes we interviewed, and it may be repeated
even if the woman has been working in prostitution for many years and
may never leave it. In this type of narrative, the activity of prostitution is
always perceived as transitory. More important is that it will always be
seen as something foreign to a woman's true identity. Consequently, how
can a prostitute who does not consider herself to be a prostitute be ex-
pected fight for the cause of prostitutes? The discouragement I have often
observed in the NGO personnel who work with prostitutes is not surpris-
ing. The volunteers start out full of excitement and ideals, and after a short
time become annoyed with, and even resentful toward, the subject group.
 Narratives of Identity • 21

They invest in their work and ideals, but the prostitutes only seek them
out when they want a favor or help. When the prostitutes are supposed to
participate in activities of empowerment, the results are generally poor.
Anecdotally, I can relate the disgust of a lawyer who had had a group of
transvestite prostitutes as clients in Rio de Janeiro. The lawyer told Silva,
a Brazilian anthropologist, that in spite of his efforts to organize a move-
ment to fight for the cause of the transvestites, he received no support from
the transvestites themselves. He angrily concluded, "One can't help them.
They want to live in shit, anyway!" (Silva 1993:74).
My own experience has revealed this kind of difficulty as experienced by
the NGOs working on AIDS prevention among prostitutes. A demonstration
was organized by one of the NGOs to promote condom use among clients and
prostitutes. Many posters and banners were prepared by the organizers of the
event. The march was to be led by the prostitutes, starting in the prostitution
zone and continuing in contiguous neighborhoods. Condoms were to be dis-
tributed during the event. But when the march began, none of the prostitutes
joined it. Consequently, the group that marched in the forefront included a
lawyer who worked for feminist causes, three actresses linked to a university
theater group that had participated in discussions on feminist and prostitu-
tion issues, a representative of the Workers Party, the organizers of the pa-
rade, and myself. Everyone participated but the prostitutes, who laughingly
watched this strange spectacle going on in front of them.
Based on these examples, it seems clear that the prostitutes were unre-
sponsive to the discourse and proposals of the NGOs. We can conclude that
it is not productive to utilize only the narrative of the "sex worker" with
respect to all prostitutes, because only some of them are able to accept it.
Having the humility and sensitivity to see the tragedy of the "liminal prosti-
tute," with all her contradictions, conflicts, and suffering, is an important step
toward better communication between NGOs and Brazil's prostitutes. Pros-
titutes and transvestites are disunited not because they are ill willed or selfish
but because they cannot be different. Change may come, but it is a delicate,
slow, and difficult process. Understanding this might make the relationship
between NGOs and prostitutes more productive and eliminate much suffering
and resentment on both sides.

CARLA DE MEIS is a postdoctoral fellow at University de Montreal.

NOTES
Acknowledgments. My thanks go to Profa. Jane A. Russo and Prof. JoSo Ferrelra da Silva
Filho of the Institute of Psychiatry of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro as well as to
Profa. Ellen Gorin of the Psychosocial Researoh Center at the Douglas Hospital, McCJill
2 2 • ETHOS

University, and Prof. Gilles Bibeau of the Department of Anthropology, University de Mon-
treal. This study was financially supported, at different stages, by two Brazilian foundations:
GNPq (Gonselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnologico) and GAPES (Fun-
dacao Coordenacao de Aperfei9oamento de Pessoal de Nivel Superior). I am also very grate-
ful to the anonymous reviewers of this journal for their comments and to Beth Muller for
editing and revising the final manuscript.
1. The team was made up of Ana Claudia Pinheiro de Vasconcellos, Maria Jos6 de Andrada
Serpa, Denise Linhares, and myself (De Meis et al. 1991).
2. The names of the prostitutes interviewed have been changed here to protect their privacy.
3. My research assistant, Ana Beatriz Farah Emiliano, was beginning her medical studies.
4. AIDS prevention among Prostitutes in Rio de Janeiro Forum (It took place in a Catholic
church in Duque de Caxias); play presented at downtown to commemorate the Interna-
tional AIDS Awareness Day; X Meeting of AIDS' NGOs (four days of activity in Belo Hori-
zonte); meetings with HIV seropositives people in PELAVIDA (Pro-Life).
5. It is important to state that this kind of value will be reproduced even by prostitutes. It
means that a prostitute, like any other Latin mother, will usually teach her children this
same model, in which prostitution is seen as the bad side of woman. Consistent with this
view, we learned that most prostitutes do not tell their children what their occupation is,
and not one of the subjects interviewed wanted her daughter to become a prostitute in the
future. Consequently, the children of prostitutes learn to fear and despise prostitutes, just as
any other Latin children do.
6. The policeman is an important and powerful person in the underground. He has an
ambiguous role, as he shares the laws and rules of the two worlds: the city and the under-
ground. He moves easily through both worlds, taking advantage of each of them in each
situation. Indeed, his official role as a legal agent allows him to possess and carry guns and
to justify the use of violence by invoking the power of the law. This power can be used with
impunity when performing illegal acts and can be manipulated to combat adversaries. All of
these characteristics can make him an important and powerful player in the hierarchy of the
underground.
7. I chose the term whore; the term sex workers is frequently used by prostitutes in-
volved in the grassroots movement instead of the word prostitute, which they consider re-
flects social prejudice.
8. For Corin, the permanent dynamic between the core and the margin produces a con-
tinuous renewal and a questioning of the central values of the culture. Deviance challenges
the social order permitting a constant renewal of values of society (Corin 1995).

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