Images of the Body and the
Reproductive System among Men
and Women living in Shantytowns
in Porto Alegre, Brazil
CeresG Victora, Daniela R Knauth
This paper presents the results of anthropological
research on graphic and verbal images of the
reproductive system carried out among 99 women and 103 men living in four shantytowns in Porto
Alegre, Brazil. Interviewers were instructed to ask for the drawings in the course of interviews
lasting 72-20 hours. Some 55 drawings of the female reproductive system by men and 99 by
women were produced and are analysed here together with information
from the interviews and
observational
data. The majority of the men’s drawings of women’s reproductive system tended to
include ‘external’ body parts only, in contrast with the ‘hidden’nature
of the internal body parts,
which were commonly depicted by the women. Women have been more exposed to the health
system than men and the majority made basic biomedical types of drawings. However, their verbal
representations
were sometimes informed by other notions and values and their physical
experience of their bodies. Lack of contact with the health system does not fully account for the
men’s apparent lack of knowledge about the reproductive body. Rather, biomedical knowledge was
simply not a point of reference for the men’s understandings
of the body. The majority of drawings
made by men of the female reproductive body portrayed the primacy of sexuality in their view of
the reproductive system.
Keywords: images of the body, sexuality,
W
reproduction,
HAT images do women and men have
in their minds to represent the male
and female body, sexual organs and
reproductive system? Are these images similar
to biomedical images of the body? Or to what
extent has exposure to biomedical images been
assimilated by the lay population? Finally, how
does gender-based experience influence these
images?
This paper presents the results of a threeyear anthropological study on these questions
among men and women of low income in four
shantytowns in Port0 Alegre, the capital of Rio
Grande do Sul, the southernmost state of Brazil.
According to previous ethnographic studies
22
low-income
groups, Brazil
carried out among working-class people in this
area, as well as research among similar social
strata in other cultures, the body and its reproductive functions are very much seen as a part
of women’s world, that is, women look after
those who are ill, take children to the doctor,
get pregnant and give birth, and look after
babies and feed the family.re6
It would be false to say that ‘bodies’ are a
women’s issue, however. Essential aspects of
the construction of male identity rely on the
body and on men’s experience of their bodies,
and images as well as concepts of sexuality and
reproduction are embedded in gender relations.
In the local sexual division of labour in Brazil,
Reproductive
among the roles assigned to men, providing for
and protecting the family require an extensive
use of the physical body. In order to understand the context in which images and concepts of the body, sexuality and reproduction
acquire meaning, the study therefore looked at
the perspectives of both men and women.
Studies and methods
From 1993 to 1996, a team of three anthropologists and 11 anthropology students carried out
ethnographic interviews with 99 women and
103 men in four shantytowns in Port0 Alegre:
Vila Sesc, Vila Floresta, Vila Dique and Vila
Divina Providencia. This was a WHO-funded
project entitled ‘Body, Sexuality and Reproduction: A Study of Social Representations’.4g7
The interviews lasted 12 to 20 hours each, over
three or four meetings per respondent. Considering the intimate nature of the issues to be
discussed in the interviews (sexuality, contraception, and abortion, among others) only male
researchers interviewed
men and female
researchers, women.
The sampling procedure was an intentional
quota sampling of 200 (plus one per cent to
make up for any missing cases), half men and
half women of reproductive age (14-60 years),
in line with the local population age distribution. The number of respondents was determined based on previous pilot ethnographic
studies in two of the shantytowns.1,3 Given the
costs and time constraints, the snowball method was used to find a total of 202 (99 women
and 103 men) who agreed to participate; each
field researcher made contact with a person
living in the shantytowns and followed their
network through successive suggestions.4 All
participants signed a consent form and were
assured that the information given would be
anonymous and that they had the right to
refuse to answer any questions.
The wider research project aimed to study
sexual behaviour by combining qualitative
ethnographic research with statistical analysis
generating multivariate correspondence graphs,
leading to an overall anthropological interpretation. In order to understand sexuality, it was
necessary to enquire about respondents’ family,
work and social lives, their leisure activities,
and their views and behaviours related to gen-
Health Matters, Vol. 9, No. 18, November 2001
der roles, sexuality and reproduction, following
Lea1 and Fachel.7 In addition to socio-economic
information, the interview guideline covered
representations of the body, fertility and fertility control issues, sexual orientation and sexual practices, illness and HIV/AIDS.
This paper presents the data on representations mainly of the female reproductive body.
All respondents were asked to draw the reproductive system in an empty silhouette and to
explain how it worked. A data bank with 149
images was created, containing
analysable
drawings by 55 men and 94 women. A large
number of men (43 of 99) refused to do a
drawing and/or to explain it while only two
women did; eight images were missing at
analysis.
Graphic images of the reproductive
system
The drawing technique used to elicit representations of the body was inspired by MacCormack
and Daprer’s research in Jamaica,a in which
informants were also asked to make a graphic
representation of the reproductive system in an
empty silhouette. Classic studies on representations of sexuality and sexual organs in Brazil
and in other parts of the world have also been
a reference for the present study. Books by
Parker,g Martin, lo Gallagher and Laqueur,’ 1
Cormwall and Lindisfarne12 and HPritier13 are
examples of publications that describe perceptions of the body and genitals and how these
are related to gender identities.
Our aim was to motivate respondents to talk
about the reproductive system, and to find out
the extent to which biomedical views of anatomy and physiology had been assimilated, rejected or re-interpreted by them. Their drawings elicited comments that were recorded by
the researchers. The interpretation of the drawings and of the comments was carried out both
together and separately, and has been important in understanding the different ways people
perceive the functioning of their bodies and
reproductive systems.
The interviewers were instructed to ask for
the drawing in the course of the interview and
to adapt their language to the person’s style or
cultural background. For example, they might
first ask them to make a drawing of all the
23
Victora,
Knauth
organs involved in reproduction (todos OS
drgrios envolvidos na reproduqdo), and continue
by explaining that the drawing should show
what was involved in getting pregnant @car
grhida)
for women and getting a woman
pregnant (engravidar uma mulher) for men.
They could use words such as ‘organs necessary
for making a baby’ and those for ‘giving birth
to a baby’ (drgcios necesshios para fazer urn
bebt e para o nascimento de urn beb@).
Respondents: men and women
of better chances
Men
(n=103)
Women
(n=99)
0
14
38
42
9
17
10
37
23
12
32
71
36
61
35
45
23
53
36
9
6
57
35
5
1
53
42
3
Education
Little or no schooling
Started elementary school
Completed elementary school
Started high school
Completed high school
7
67
14
6
8
6
66
14
8
5
Occupation
Housewife
Unemployed
Employed, no contract
Irregular/seasonal
work
Employed, with contract
27
28
16
32
41
26
13
13
6
Characteristics
Age
< 16
16-19
20-30
31-40
> 40
in search
More than half were under 30 years of age, and
over two-thirds were married (Table 1). The
majority of both men and women had low
levels of schooling, poor housing conditions
and mostly insecure or no employment. Even if
a man was unemployed or had a very low-paid
job, however, the model ‘man-the provider/
woman-the housewife’ still remained. The jobs
women could get were usually as housemaids
or cleaners, and the decision to work was not
always an easy one. Going out to work meant
having to pay for transport to and from the
workplace and for someone to look after the
children while they were at work; a maid’s
wages were usually not enough to cover both
these costs.
Most of the families living in the shantytowns were first- or second-generation immigrants from other parts of Rio Grande do Sul or
the neighbouring state of Santa Catarina, who
had moved to Port0 Alegre in search of better
work opportunities
and wages. They came
mainly from rural areas with extensive cattle or
sheep breeding, where manual work has been
replaced by modern equipment and much of
the workforce has been made redundant, creating a significant social phenomenon of rural
exodus throughout Brazil.
Others were manual workers who had left
small towns is search of work. Some of them
had large families and when the children
started to grow up they had moved to the state
capital in search of education, health care or
even just food for their children. There were
also a significant number of families from the
areas of the state known as ‘the colonies’ who
were descendants of German and Italian families who immigrated to Rio Grande do Sul at
24
Table 1. Socio-economic profile of
respondents
Marital
Single
Married
Housing
Very poor
Poor
Standard
Household
1
2-4
5-8
9+
*Information
status-
conditions*
members
missing
for one person
the beginning of the 20th century. Finally,
there were a small number of families who
came from other shantytowns in the city.
fogether, these make up the extensive, heterogeneous group known as the urban poor.
Among the male informants there were a few
regular factory workers, wall painters, truck
Reproductive
drivers and bricklayers. Others were working as
assistants in shops, supermarkets or petrol
stations. There were a large number of formally
unemployed men who were doing any manual
work that did not require training, such as
gardening, washing cars, loading and unloading trucks or picking up recyclable rubbish.
Some of the informants were not precise when
talking about their present occupation, especially those who survived through drug dealing
or burglary.
Health services were provided through the
Hospital Concei@o, a large public hospital
which runs community health centres in the
surrounding shantytowns and a large primary
health care clinic in the main hospital. All four
shantytowns had a Community Health Centre
providing medical consultations free of charge.
When asked what kind of health care they
sought when they were ill, only 36 per cent
mentioned they sought only medical care,
while 38 per cent mentioned religious healing
(28 per cent Afro-Brazilian cults; 3 per cent
Pentecostal religions, 7 per cent spiritism); 12
per cent mentioned using herbal teas at home
and 13 per cent said they went to local healers.
Although we could not measure to what extent
participants used the health services or for what
purpose, observational data strongly suggest
that women used the community health centres
much more frequently than men did, for themselves as well as for their children and elderly
members of their families.
Women and their reproductive
bodies
In the shantytowns,
changes in women’s
social status and their development as adult
reproductive beings are defined through a
cumulative process, whereby specific gendered bodily experiences, including menarche,
first sexual intercourse and the birth of their
first child contribute
to the increasingly
respected status of an adult woman. The life
stages of menina (girl), mocinha (young lady),
mulher (woman) and mde (mother) are cumulative in the sense that a woman has to go
through them all and in that order, i.e. the
experience of each one is necessary for the
accomplishment of the next.
Having children is extremely important for
women who desire to be seen and respected as
Health Matters, Vol. 9, No. 18, November 2001
adults. In the shantytowns, girls of 12 have
usually already dropped out of school, either to
look after younger siblings or because the
education offered is far too removed from
everyday needs. At 14, a girl’s leisure time will
be spent going around with her peers, going to
parties, dancing pagode or fink and watching
television. It is not surprising that girls’ social
status is not very high at this stage. Getting
married and having children are often considered an opportunity to improve their status.
On the other hand, in terms of bodily freedom, girls and young women are allowed much
more freedom with their bodies and can go out
and about freely. Married women are required
to change their behaviour; they are supposed to
be clean and well dressed, and to keep their
bodies at home. A husband’s status is described
as being directly related to the way his wife
behaves. A woman demonstrates her husband’s
‘potency’ through her body, in relation to:
l
l
l
his power to provide - so the woman can
afford to stay home;
his power to keep the woman faithful while
he is away at work;
his sexual power to make her pregnant.
Many women represented how they viewed their
bodies using the image of a mechanism that
opens and closes. Thus, when the body is open,
menstrual blood is released. Menstrual blood is
considered sangue ruim (bad blood) or sangue
sujo (dirty blood). Menstruation is seen to be
necessary to clean the body, which is considered
to be renewed after each menstrual period.15
‘[Menstruation
is benepcial]. . . because it
cleans, takes away impurities. It cleans and
avoids disease.’ (E, 30 years old)
There is a quite common belief that the menstrual period and the fertile period coincide.‘s’4
At the beginning or the end of the period
especially, while the body is still ‘open’ but the
blood flow is not very heavy, women are
thought to be more likely to get pregnant. Also,
women should avoid sexual intercourse during
menstruation because the body is open:
‘The woman runs the risk of getting a sexually
transmitted disease, because the body is open,
bleeding.’ (S, 45 years old)
25
Victora, Knauth
‘. . . something might happen, either pregnancy
or damage. You can’t put anything inside you
when it is coming out.’ ( V, 28 years old)
relationship to men’s ‘need’ for sex was shown
in another informant’s explanation of how
semen is produced in the male body:
These ideas are consistent with the widespread
image of a moving body that opens and closes.
This way of conceptualising the body could not
be represented graphically in the silhouette
drawings, because it is a more experiential sort
of perception and description.
‘The man has a gland that produces sperm, sort
of, it varies, depending on the man. I had to
have a gland operation in my breast because it
was too big, it was accumulated semen. The
doctors said I have overproduction of sperm
and that I should have sex every time I feel like
it, otherwise it will accumulate again.’ (E, 40
years old)
Men and their reproductive
In E’s account his sexuality was so overwhelming that it had effects on several places
in his body. The mixing together of biomedical
discourse - ‘the gland that produces sperm’ with his personal interpretation of why he had
to have a ‘gland operation’ resulted in his belief
that there was a biomedical reason for him to
have as much sex as he wanted. Further, he
believed that the doctor’s words and advice
confirmed this.
But while men represented themselves during
the interviews as very potent and full of energy
for sex, the domains of sex and reproduction
were not related in their discourse. Sex was very
closely related to the masculine world, although
women were not seen only as passive objects of
sex either. In fact several men stressed that the
ideal female sexual partner was one who was
not passive. At the same time the men saw both
reproduction and contraception primarily as
coisas de mulher (women’s issues or domains).
This was made clear in the explanations the
men gave of the reproductive organs: more than
half of them (54 per cent) did not know how to
explain the functioning of the male or female
reproductive system. The other 46 per cent gave
biomedical explanations
(4 per cent), lay
explanations
(25 per cent) or a mix of
biomedical and lay information (11 per cent).
The rest did not respond.
bodies
Men’s images of the male body were of an
energetic body with a powerful image of masculinity. This was evident in the men’s descriptions of being ill. Except for those who had
a specific health problem, such as a back or
heart problem, most of the men interviewed
only considered themselves ill when they were
unable to go to work. Even those with a specific problem tended to blame it on hazardous
working conditions in the past rather than any
weakness in their bodies.
Another much-repeated image of the strong,
male body was in the belief that men were
always ready to have sexual intercourse and
needed more sex than women. This belief was
used to justify the fairly common practice of
men having extra-marital relationships.i6 This
belief was also present in the women’s discourse about male sexuality. In general, it is
thought to be much more acceptable for men to
have extra-marital
relationships
than for
women. Although the great majority of informants - male and female - regarded fidelity as
important for a marriage to work, they very
often considered infidelity to be part of men’s
nature to pular a cerca (literally ‘jump over the
fence’) in search of extra-marital sex. In fact,
the few men who said that they had experienced
unfaithfulness from their wives had separated
from them, while the same was not the case
among the women who knew their husbands
had been unfaithful.
Strong male bodies can cause the contraceptive pill to fail, according to one male informant. While some of the women talked about
the pill sometimes being too ‘weak’, one man
whose wife had become pregnant on the pill
said: ‘Maybe I was too strong.’ (V, 30 years old)
A similar account of male potency and its
26
Lay ex lanations by men of the
repro B uctive process
Men’s lay explanations of the functioning of the
reproductive system bore little if any resemblance to the biomedical model. Instead, they
tended to connect several parts of the body and
talked about fluids and moods. Regarding
women’s bodies, some men described the
Reproductive
Fig& 1. The trajectory of semen in the male
body - one man’s drawing
Health
Matters,
Vol. 9, No.
18, November
2001
produced in another part of the body, as shown
in the following statements:
‘Sperm comes from the brain. It is produced by
the spinal cord. There is a tube that brings it
down through the back.’ (J, 37 years old)
‘There is a tube that the blood flows through,
that the brain sends to the penis. That makes it
erect.’ (0, 46 years old)
‘Semen is made in the back part of the neck.’
(L, 39 years old)
Accompanying
his statement, L’s drawing
showed the trajectory of the semen from the
neck to the penis (Figure 1).
Men’s graphic images of women’s
reproductive bodies
experience of conception as being potentially
different for each woman:
‘A man generates about 3,500 eggs and the
woman one. Inside her body, if the eggs like
each other, they couple together. If not, they are
discharged in the urine. The female eggs come
down during the sexual act, because of the
emotion. To conceive, both man and woman have
to come at the same time. But I don’t think it
happens like that, because while the man has
one orgasm, the woman may have 100 or 200.
Seven days before menstruation and during menstruation the eggs are more exposed for coupling.
That is how it is for my wife and me. I don’t
know how it is for others.’ (C, 55 years old)
This man believed that the physical and emotional domains were inter-related. His description, however, contains an unresolved conflict between what he thinks is the correct
explanation and his own experience. Finally,
he resolves the problem by stressing that each
couple may be different.
A belief in the connectedness and interdependence of body parts is also seen in the
men’s explanations of the male ‘contribution’
to conception. Several men described the trajectory of sperm through ‘tubes’ after it is
The apparent lack of knowledge on the part of
men of the functioning of the reproductive process can be understood at least partly as a
consequence of the separation between the
female and male domains. The men’s drawings
were significantly different from the women’s,
suggesting a gender difference in their representations of the reproductive organs.
Men’s drawings of women’s bodies containing a face, breasts and/or vagina, but without
any internal organs (Type A, see Table 2),
were the most common type of drawing and
accounted for 20 of the 55 drawings (see Figure
2 for an example). The second most common
type included a vagina only, without a face or
any organs. This type was found in 12 of the
men’s drawings (see Figure 3 for an example).
The third most common type was similar to
the biomedical model, and also constituted 12
Table 2 . Men’s graphic images of women’s
reproductive bodies, types and number
Types
A. face, breasts and/or vagina
B. Vagina only
C. Similar to biomedical drawing
D. Connected organs
E. Face, breasts, other organs
F. No sexual organs
G. Scattered organs
Number
(n=55)
20
12
12
5
3
2
1
27
Victora, Knauth
Figure 2. Most common drawing of a woman’s
body by men
presence of breasts (however, never only
breasts) in 50 per cent of the men’s drawings as
compared with 20 per cent of the women’s
drawings indicates this distinction even further.
Further, in the women’s drawings of women’s
bodies the vagina was mainly depicted as part
of the ‘internal’ body and the vaginal canal as
a continuation
of the internal reproductive
organs, while in the men’s drawings the vagina
was pictured as an isolated part, facing ‘out’.
All the men whose drawings were like Figure
4, except one, were not ‘typical’ in that they
tended to have had more contact with other
sources of information, such as the army (two
of them had served in the army) or a political
party (two were involved in local politics). They
were also atypical in the sense that they had
had regular contact with sexual health professionals - one had regular HIV tests in
specialised clinics and the other had recently
had a vasectomy.
of the men’s drawings (see Figure 4 for an
example).
There were four other types of drawings
made by men but they accounted for only a
very small number of drawings. Type D (5
cases) clearly show through lines or tubes the
connection between organs often represented
in the men’s discourse about the functioning of
the body. Type E (3 cases) were similar to the
Type A drawing in Figure 2 and could even be
classified as a variation of it. These included
the presence of a face, vagina and breasts but
also a circle in the abdomen representing the
womb. Type F (2 cases) did not include any
sexual or reproductive organs but show a face
and ribs or dots in the abdominal cavity.
Type G (1 case) contained scattered organs,
perhaps an unsuccessful attempt to draw the
biomedical model.
The majority of the men’s drawings of
women’s reproductive organs tended to include
‘external’ body parts only, in contrast with the
‘hidden’ nature of the internal body parts. Thus,
35 of the 55 drawings included the vagina or
the vagina and breasts only (Table 2, Types A,
B, E). This suggests that for the men, sexuality
had priority over conception, in spite of the
inter-dependency of the parts of the body. The
In general when the women who were interviewed were asked to ‘fill in’ the empty silhouette of a woman’s body, they attempted to
recall what the biomedical model looked like,
which indicated that they had seen a picture of
Women’s graphic images of women’s bodies
28
Figure 3. Second most common drawing of a
woman’s body by men
Reproductive
Figure 4. Third most common drawing of a
woman’s body by men
Health Matters, Vol. 9, No. 18, November 2001
Table 3. Women’s graphic images of women’s
reproductive bodies, types and number
Number
Types
H. Biomedical drawing
I. Scattered organs
J. Face, breasts, vagina, reproductive
K. No face, baby in the belly
L. Vagina only, no face
M. Vagina, face
the internal reproductive organs. At the same
time, they showed a certain detachment, as if
the biomedical picture did not necessarily
represent their bodies. Thus, when they talked
about the functioning of the reproductive system, they often gave non-biomedical explanations for what took place. For example, one
woman (C, 23 years old) made a drawing with
a fairly well-shaped womb, Fallopian tubes,
ovaries and vagina. She identified the fertile
period as being lo-12 days after menstruation
and said that during that time the womb was
‘more humid’ and ‘can absorb male fluids
better’. C had taken the contraceptive pill in the
past; her description of how it worked was:
‘The pill spins around the womb, preventing
the sperm meeting the eggs, by immobilising
the sperm.’ She also thought there was a risk of
getting pregnant during the menstrual period
because ‘that area is very wet and the pill
cannot remain around the womb’.
The most common type of women’s drawing
of women’s bodies (47 of 94 drawings) contained the reproductive organs as in the biomedical model, but no face (Type H, see Table
3). Half of the women were able to draw a basic
picture of the Fallopian tubes, ovaries and
womb: some included the vagina, others did
organs
(n=94)
47
22
15
6
3
1
not (see Figure 5 for an example). Interestingly,
there were no faces in over 80 per cent of the
women’s drawings of women’s bodies compared with less than 50 per cent without faces
in the men’s drawings.
The second most common type of drawing
by the women, made by 22 women, presented
a number of scattered organs which, though
they do resemble organs are not the ones
present in the biomedical model (Type I, see
Figure 6 for an example). We interpret this type
as an attempt to depict the biomedical model.
The third most common type of drawing by
women (15 drawings) shows a face, breasts and
vagina as well as internal organs (Type J, see
Figure 7 for an example). The fourth most
Figure 5. Most common drawing of a woman’s
body by women
29
Victora, Knauth
common type shows either an empty circle to
represent the uterus or a circle with a baby in
it (6 drawings, see Figure 8 for an example).
The drawing in Figure 8 does not try to represent the reproductive organs as such but rather
to represent the function of the reproductive
system, by showing the experience of a pregnancy or the space where pregnancy takes place.
Some women who gave a verbal description of
the biomedical model of the reproductive system
during their interviews referred to ‘that space in
the body’. One woman, having made a fairly
accurate biomedical drawing of the body, when
asked what she felt was inside her body, replied:
Figure 7. Third most common drawing of a
woman’s body by .women
‘I don’t feel anything. Ifeel I am empty. ’ (E, 15
years old)
The least common types of drawings, made by
4 per cent of the women, showed only breasts
and/or vagina. They may also be closely related
to the drawings that indicate an empty space in
the abdomen, or to difficulties in picturing the
inside of the body at all. These least common
types of women’s drawings could be compared
to the most common type of men’s drawings,
but it is difficult to say whether the two types
had the same meaning for the men and women
who drew them.
Figure 6. Second most common drawing of a
woman’s body by women
30
Discussion
The aim of this paper was to present an ethnographic and graphic account of how men and
women in the shantytowns of Port0 Alegre
represented the reproductive
system both
during interviews and through drawings. The
data show that even when lay people have been
exposed to biomedical drawings, their own
representations (graphic and/or verbal) may be
informed by other notions, values and experiences. Even when respondents spoke about
their reproductive organs or represented them
graphically according to the biomedical model,
they often attached their own particular meanings to them, based on physical sensations they
had experienced or emotional
and social
experiences. lv2
We would also suggest that gender-related
bodily experiences helped to give shape and
meaning to these representations and understandings of the body, and also influenced
people’s behaviour. Thus, the fact that in many
cases the men did not feel they could make a
drawing at all, nor explain the functioning of
the reproductive system,. was connected to the
way in which they experienced their own
bodies.
Reproductive
Figure 8. Fourth most common drawing of a
woman’s body by women
Furthermore, any graphic image of the
reproductive system is an image that has been
‘learned’ through contact with the health care
system. During the interviews, it became clear
that unlike the women, the men had not had
much contact with the health services. One of
the reasons for this was the cultural belief that
men have strong bodies and hardly ever get ill,
and that the domains of health and sickness
are, to a great extent, women’s issues and
domestic problems. Although people also think
that most diseases are contracted during
contact with the outside world, because women
are the ones who take children to the doctor
and treatment takes place by and large at
home, women tend to have much more contact
with the health system.
However, the lack of contact with the health
system does not fully account for the men’s
apparent lack of knowledge about reproduction. The fact is that biomedical knowledge was
simply not a point of reference for these men’s
understandings of the body.
Should the refusal to make drawings by two
per cent of women and 41 per cent of the men
be interpreted to mean that graphic depictions
are more meaningful to women than to men?
Health Matters, Vol. 9, No. 18, November 2001
Or is it rather that in the power relations intrinsic to ethnographic encounters, women informants feel more bound to comply with
requests than men? Or is it just the opposite,
that female ethnographers established higher
levels of rapport with and managed to engage
female informants in the project much more
than male ethnographers with male informants? These questions could not be answered
in the present analysis but nevertheless should
be asked.
The majority of men who did not refuse to
make a drawing or to give a verbal account of
the reproductive system, most commonly portrayed the ‘external’ parts of a woman’s body.
These images point to the primacy of sexuality
for the men. In biomedicine, the reproductive
system is the domain of sexuality. But in these
men’s views, it would be reasonable to speak of
the ‘sexual system’, in which reproduction is
seen to play a subsidiary role.
For women, the drawings of the body show
that they have been more exposed to the
biomedical model and that most of them can
reproduce the basic biomedical model in a
drawing. But this model does not seem to inform the women’s embodied experiences of
sexuality and reproduction. Instead, descriptions of their experiences of sexuality and
reproduction, as contained in the ethnographic
data, show that they tend to individualise what
happens in the female body based on personal
and social experiences.
This means that for women, the biomedical
model is only one way rather than the only
way of knowing the body. The women relied
heavily on their life experiences, and the meanings they conveyed as to the functioning of the
reproductive organs were often based on their
physical perceptions of them. Besides, it is in
contact with other people in the shantytown
who shared the same cultural values that they
had learned to read the signs of their bodily
experiences.
The work of teachers and health professionals with people from different
sociocultural backgrounds could be improved if
they paid more attention to the way in which
people conceive of the reproductive
body.
Listening
carefully to what students and
patients say, without prejudice, might be a
good beginning.
31
Victora, Knauth
Acknowledgements
The data presented in this paper were collected
during the course of the project ‘Body, Sexuality
and Reproduction: a Study of Social Representations’, co-ordinated by Prof Ondina F Leal.
The project was carried out by the Nucleo de
Pesquisa em Antropologia do Corpo e da Satide
(NUPACS) research team, Department of Anthropology, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do
Sul, and supported by the Special Programme of
Research, Development and Research Training in
Human Reproduction, World Health Organization
Salvador,
(Project 91398 BSDA Brazil). These data are
included here with their kind permission. I would
also like to thank Adriane Bofi Alessandro
Gomes, Andrea Fachel Leal, Antonddia Borges,
Ben Berardi, Denise Jardim, Jodo Anibal dos
Santos, Jose Carlos dos Anjos, Leandro Saraiva,
Mario Guimaraes and Zulmira Borges who were
the interviewers for this project.
Correspondence
Ceres G Victora, Porto Alegre, Brazil. E-mail:
[email protected]
Brazil
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32
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Une recherche anthropologique
a 6tudiP les
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enquCteurs ont demand6 des dessins pendant
les entretiens durant de 12 B 20 heures.
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fkminin ont CtP produits (55 par des hommes et
94 par des femmes) et sont analysks ici avec des
informations tirees des entretiens et des observations. La majorite des dessins des hommes
tendaient B inclure uniquement les organes
fkminins Nextemes )), par opposition g la nature
Hcachke D des organes internes, habituellement
d&-its par les femmes. Les femmes ont et6 plus
exposCesau systkme de Sante que les hommes
et la majorite ont fait des dessins de type
biomedical. Nkanmoins, leurs representations
verbales ktaient parfois influencees par d’autres
notions et valeurs et leur experience physique
de leur corps. Le manque de contacts avec le
systkme de santP n’explique pas totalement
l’ignorance apparente des hommes g propos de
l’appareil reproducteur. La connaissance biomedicale n’Ptait simplement pas un point de
rkfkence pour la comprkhension du corps par
leshommes. La majoritk des dessins rkalids par
les hommes ne montraient que les organes
fkminins u externes w, denotant la primautk de
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reproducteurs.
contraceptivas. In: Lea1 OF (ed).
Corpo e Sign@-ado. Editora da
Universidade, Port0 Alegre.
15. All translations of quotes from
Portuguese were made by the
authors.
16. Only one 18-year-old male
informant mentioned having
had sex with other men. He said
he ‘used to have fun’ with the
gay prostitutes and transvestites
who hung around a large car
parts shop not far from where
our research was carried out.
When asked by the interviewer
about his sexual orientation he
replied: ‘I am not a homosexual,
but I ended up enjoying myself
with what they did’, referring to
anal and oral sex with them.
Una investigacibn antropol6gica acerca de las
imigenes de1 sistema reproductive fue realizada entre 99 hombres y 103 mujeres viviendo
en las favelas de Port0 Alegre, Brasil. Los
entrevistadores recogieron alrededor de 149
dibujos de1 sistema reproductive femenino (55
por hombres y 94 por mujeres) que son analizados aqui junto con informacibn proveniente de
las entrevistas y de la observack. La mayoria
de 10s dibujos producidos por 10s hombres
incluyeron solamente las partes corporales
“externas”, en contraste con la naturaleza
“oculta” de las partes corporales internas
comtinmente representadas por las mujeres.
Ellas han estado m6s expuestas al sistema de
salud que 10s hombres, y la mayoria hicieron
dibujos de1 tipo biomedico bkico. Sin embargo, sus representaciones verbales eran a
veces informadas por otras nociones y valores
y por la experiencia fisica de sus cuerpos. La
falta de contact0 con el sistema de salud no
explica enteramente la aparente falta de conocimiento acerca de1 cuerpo reproductive de
parte de 10s hombres. M& bien, para ellos el
conocimiento biomedico simplemente no era
un punto de referencia para la comprensi6n de1
cuerpo. La mayoria de 10s dibujoshechos por
10s hombres representaba solamente las partes
“externas”,
sedalando
la primacia de la
sexualidad en su visualizaci6n de 10s 6rganos
reproductivos.
33