Simultaneously, the death of activist Gabriela Leite has lead to a renewal of leadership and a reformulation of theoretical approaches in the movement. In this context, putafeminismo is becoming established as an intersectional approach to race, class, and gender rooted in local historical contexts. Putafeministas recover puta as a term applied to women working outside the family, unprotected from sexual violence. Looking at Brazilian history, they situate the sale of sex as a practical inevitability for a racially-identified female working population, whose horizons of possibility were bounded by cheap labor, marriage and prostitution.
Here, we follow a growing intellectual and political trend in Brazil and Argentina β Putafeminismo , which postulates that fighting the social stigma of the whore is a necessary precondition for any social justice struggle involving sex workers. We begin with an overview of how the current battles surrounding sex work are not being played out on a level playing field between equally matched sides.
We explore the concept of pornophobia 2 and its deeply set roots in the historical development of the concept of the whore. We look at some of the shortcomings of the theoretical lenses most commonly employed by feminism to explore prostitution.
We describe how putafeminismo has developed in Brazil as an overarching alliance of sex workers, academics, feminists, and others who understand whore as a political term capable of creating bridges between sex workers and other working-class movements fighting against a neo-liberalism that threatens labour rights and democratic urbanism.
In our concluding section, we look at what this movement structured around putafeminismo has done to date and outline what needs to happen, in the future, if we are to be successful at creating greater social justice for the women who sell sex in our country.
