Do conflito ao rapto: relações de gênero e experiências afetivo-sexuais na cidade do Recife (1944-1960)

Abstract

Typified in the Penal Code of 1940 as a sexual crime, kidnapping refers to the act of taking an honest woman for libidinous purposes, with or without her consent. Taking into account the occurrences of this crime in the Brazilian historical landscape, this paper aims to historicize the practices of kidnapping that took place in Recife between 1944 and 1960 then, based on them, discuss gender relations and affective-sexual experiences woven by the poor. To this end, we used as sources the kidnapping criminal cases, the news from the periodicals Diário de Pernambuco and Jornal Pequeno, and the legal text "Comentários ao Código Penal de 1940". We tried to apprehend the motivations that led to the choice of kidnapping, the means by which it was carried out, and the ways in which it unfolded in the courts. The discourses, the various versions of the testimonies, and the uses of justice operated by the social and legal actors helped us to reflect on the limits of morality and the subjectivities of men and women involved in a society constituted from patriarchal codes, norms, and values, in which unequal and binary gender conventions are maintained through the moral discourse of honor and are engendered in dialogue with race and class. In this scenario of tensions, the stories of love, struggle, resistance, oppression, and transgression erupt like fireworks in the sky - visibly, loudly, and colorfully - as they both move towards reproducing the dominant patriarchal patterns and towards obstructing the expected patterns of family, love relationships, and sexuality. Thus, the relevance of this work is not only in the fact that it points out the gender technologies that constitute feminine and masculine identities based on inequality and hierarchy, but also in the fact that it contests such fixed identities and points out their instabilities from the process of showing, within varied spaces, feminine agencies.