Marks of desire: a study on the color/race/ethnicity criteria in the selection of partners in male homoerotic relations created online in the City of São Carlos

• Grant number: 12/13148-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: November 01, 2012
• End date: February 28, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology - Other specific Sociologies
• Principal Investigator: Richard Miskolci Escudeiro
• Grantee: Keith Diego Kurashige
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The objective of this Project is to investigate how new male homoerotic relations started thanks to the use of digital media, specially how and according to which criteria happens the search for partners in online chatrooms direct toward the public of São Carlos, a middle city of the interior of the state of São Paulo. We intend to understand how "color/race/ethnicity" differences are articulated and negotiated in those web platforms. Besides contributing to comprehend how these relations take place outside the metropolitan spaces in which most of the sexuality researches in Brazil were made, this investigation also intends to contribute to delineate the characteristics of the closet in Brazilian contemporary society. The dissemination of the internet use has created new forms of social interaction for those people who try to engage in homoerotic relations keeping a straight image in public life. A new "closet" emerged regulating public and private spaces maintaining the first associated to heterosexuality relegating homosexual relations to the intimate life and, in general, in secrecy. Based on Brazilian studies on sexuality and Queer Theory this research will be conduced articulating online ethnographic work with face to face interaction trying to reconstitute and comprehend the criteria for the selection of partners that are part of a national erotic grammar.