Afirmação da identidade na prática da prostituição na Rua do Bagamoyo, na Cidade de Maputo

Abstract

The present study has as its field of analysis the practice of prostitution, focusing on the issue of the construction and affirmation of the identity between women who practice prostitution and the risks that this practice offers. The place of study is downtown Maputo, at “Rua do Bagamoyo”. The risk in prostitution is related to the actual practice of the sexual act, in the place where the activity is carried out because the practitioners are enticed with the increase of money to have sex without the use of condoms being more vulnerable to the contamination of sexually transmitted diseases such as the case of HIV / AIDS, STDs, unwanted pregnancies, among others. Another risk factor in this activity is related to the robberies of money that prostitutes suffer in the middle of the street and also the assaults on the part of clients who request their services at their homes or in pensions distant from ”Rua do Bagamoyo”. The work also analyzes the self-concept of prostitutes in “Rua do Bagamoyo”, how they identify themselves in their prostitution activity and how they manage the risks in which they are exposed in their workplace. It was possible to notice through the researched data based on the ethnographic method combined with direct observation, semi-structured interviews and using life stories, that the reason for the practice of prostitution is relative for each prostitute and that the cause is not always the lack of money or lack of job that leads them to enter the life of prostitutes, but rather for the desire to want freedom and fun, they end up being enticed by friends who have been in this activity for a long time. From the analysis of some practices and customs that these prostitutes have developed in “Rua do Bagamoyo", it was possible to understand that the identity of the prostitute is a social construction with a certain personal negotiation of other identities of her daily life, because this prostitute is mother, wife, girlfriend, daughter, student, believer, etc. But when she is present in her activity she considers herself a “whore”, a sex seller. (TRADUÇÃO NOSSA)