1. Chapter 7: What's So Funny about Rape?
1.1. Rape, is an extremely serious offense, and it provokes retaliatory violence
1.1.1. robbery and rape story provided a way for sexuality and violence and female victimization to be dealt with through humor
1.1.1.1. Also explains the expectations women had for the men in their lives
1.2. Battling Mothers and Daughters
1.2.1. Mother is extremely strict in that her daughters remain virgins for as long as they could
1.2.1.1. Daughter claims that with her mothers harsh accusations of her losing her virginity, caused her to just got out and lose her virginity
1.2.1.1.1. One excess led to another excess
1.2.1.2. Considers young pregnancy irresponsible because both man and woman usually do not have the income to support a child
1.2.1.2.1. ideally, the mother wanted her daughter to demand more economic support from their male partners, partly in due from her dissatisfaction with her own partners
1.2.2. Woman are talented storytellers
1.2.2.1. tales describe the troubled nature of male-female relations and of everyday life
1.2.2.1.1. The retelling of the rape story through attention to various humorous details allowed for the venting of anger about a series of issues that would normally be difficult to discuss
1.3. Legal Universe of Rape
1.3.1. Distrust of the police, therefore crimes and rape usually not reported to the police
1.3.2. legal system composed of anachronistic legal codes regarding class (and therefore race), gender and sexuality
1.3.2.1. Cultural norms of the dominant classes have become embedded in the legal system making rape difficult to adjudicate in court
1.3.3. Esteves 1900-In Riio
1.3.3.1. Young women from lower classes had to hide their true values and beliefs about sexuality from their middle-class neighbors and bosses who would not approve of their attitudes or behavior
1.3.4. Ardaillon and Debert 1981-1986
1.3.4.1. rape has been difficult to adjudicate in the Brazilian court system because it relies on stereotyped gender views of both the perpetrator and the victim
1.3.5. Courts are caught in anachronistic understandings of class, gender, and sexuality thus leaving poor women with little or no legal recourse in their everyday negotiation with men, gangs, and criminals
1.4. Black Humor as the only response
1.4.1. Humor can only be understood in its place and place is always circumscribed by relations of class, gender, race, and sexuality
1.4.1.1. May have originated within the dominated or the "popular" classes because it is their only recourse in a universe of limiting options
1.4.1.1.1. Comprehensible response to a moral and legal system that is currently incapable of addressing the grievances of women in the dominated classes
1.5. Rape, is an extremely serious offense, and it provokes retaliatory violence
2. Conclusion
2.1. Ethnographic Context
2.1.1. Ideational systems
2.1.2. Power relations, that restrict the actors
2.2. women are encouraged to seek partners for economic support and to commodity their bodies
2.3. Women in these settings are continually striving to mediate their perspectives on sexuality in a society that is incredibly sex-positive but that does very little to protect the bodies of women from transgressive male behavior
2.4. the daily structuring of class, race, gender, sexuality, and violence in which these jokes and stories are embedded and entangled. Such context allows us to "get" the joke, even as the humor both masks and reaveals the very structures and hierarchies on which the humor depends
2.5. What is to be done?
2.5.1. Middle and upper classes will need to address the differential application of the rule of law
2.5.1.1. They will need to work in favor of human rights
2.5.2. Democratic consolidation cannot occur without without reform of the police forces and an end to human rights abuses and corruption within that institution
2.5.2.1. need credible law that is applied to citizens without distinctions of class, race, or gender
2.6. Good faith social services need to treat everyday private injustices
2.6.1. Courts would need to be reformed into a believable set of institutions that could deal with the many different levels of crime and abuse
3. Chapter 6: Partial Truths, or the Carnivalization of Desire
3.1. Sexuality in the Context of Local Culture
3.1.1. Particular form of machismo present in places like Felicidade Eterna, one that is naturalized and normalized within the flow of everyday life in which men and women both participate
3.1.2. Sexuality is important to Carioca idendity
3.1.2.1. Sexuality is a key metaphor used by Cariocas in their everyday language, used with humor to describe all aspects of social life
3.1.2.1.1. Sexual teasing and banter
3.1.2.2. Brasilidade - "sex positiveness"
3.1.2.2.1. Well-known gendered standard on fidelity
3.2. The Carnivalization of Desire
3.2.1. Social facts
3.2.1.1. Sexual permissiveness
3.2.1.2. Sex-positiveness
3.2.1.3. Bodily liberation
3.2.2. Public flirtation considered a public game, not considered objectification of women's body, but appreciated as pleasurably and complimentary
3.2.2.1. Public recognition of appearing sexually desirable is important
3.2.2.1.1. Being ignored is considered true punishment - a fate worse than death
3.2.3. Homosexuality
3.2.3.1. Upper-class model
3.2.3.1.1. connects one's sexual and social identity with one's sexual object choice.
3.2.3.2. Lower-class model
3.2.3.2.1. Homens
3.2.3.2.2. Bichas
3.2.4. Trangressive play
3.2.4.1. Women play the role of "boundary setters"
3.2.4.2. Men being expected to act as trangressors
3.3. Feminst literature on sexuality
3.3.1. Viewed as too essentialist
3.3.2. Perceived as too "sex negative"
3.3.3. Divisions within Brazilian feminism served to taint any feminism that addressed issues of sexuality in ways that echoed NA versions at that time.
3.3.4. Absence of feminist critique of gendered power relations and normative heterosexual relations, some partial truths have remained hidden
3.3.4.1. The inability to speak critically about sexuality leaves poorer, darker-skinned Afro-Brazilian women in the position of second class citizens, unable to fully critique some of their own local subculture's particular approach to sexuality.
3.4. Ethnography: Local Sexual Culture in Felicidade Eterna
3.4.1. Metaphors about food and eating are used to express ideas about sexuality.
3.4.1.1. You are defined by whether you are a person who eats or one who is eaten , that is whether you are active or passive in the consumption process
3.4.1.1.1. In this sexual hierarchy, females are to be consumed and they are viewed negatively when they assume the role of the active consumers.
3.4.1.2. Sexual humor functions as a window expressing their resistance to the traditional metaphorical and real constraints on their sexual selves
3.4.1.2.1. Women commodify men and men's resources in response to their own commodification as sexualized, racialized and eroticized Others
3.4.2. Women expect men to be providers, and this is a key element in a woman's recognition of a partner's good qualities
3.4.3. Woman complaints of male privilege
3.4.3.1. men are inadequate economic providers
3.4.3.2. men are not to be trusted in terms of fidelity
3.4.3.2.1. Women are expected to be loyal to their partners simply because they are women, and their disloyalty shames and dishonors their partners
3.4.4. Normative Masculinization and heterosexuality
3.4.4.1. Class specific regimes of sexuality do exist
3.4.4.1.1. Among the working class Cariocas it is considered unhealthy for men to go too long without sex: it can provoke insanity
3.4.5. Sacanagem, Transgression, and Female Boundary-setting
3.4.5.1. Sacanagem
3.4.5.1.1. important organizing concept in the realm of Brazilian sexuality
3.4.5.1.2. linking the notions of aggression and hostility, play and amusement, sexual excitement and erotic practice in a single symbolic complex
3.4.5.1.3. often applied in the context of sexuality that borders on the transgressive
3.4.5.2. Stepfathers
3.4.5.2.1. considered dangerous, discourse on stepfathers completely different from that of biological fathers
3.4.5.2.2. men considered outsiders to the family unit
3.4.5.3. Male sexuality spans both the private and public world , but acceptable females sexuality is symbolically bound within the walls of the house, very private
3.4.6. Partial Truths
3.4.6.1. Poor women are left as the guardians against a socially constructed transgressive male sexuality