Com o diabo na cabeça: um estudo sobre as ressignificações do masculino e do feminino no contexto da lei Maria da Penha”.

Abstract

The thesis presents a narrative study of women and men who triggered the legal mechanism of Law 11.340 - the Maria da Penha Law. In Brazil, the change within the paradigm of reporting and criminalizing males shows that the escaping argumentative route of "defense of honor and strong emotion," is no longer accepted in a process that validates by force of law women's rights; recognizing legally the private and intimate, and taking from the man his former prerogatives in the sense of a unitary and absolute power. The general aim of this study is to propose a more extensive discussion of the situation of women and men in the context of heterosexual relationships in an attempt to identify crucial points to understand the processes of rediscovering the female and male. A woman using the legal provisions of the Maria da Penha Law opens a new process of social behavior effecting a reworking of an active role that has renewed the search for Combating Violence against Women. The procedure used here is that of the ethnomethodology as proposed by Bertaux (2010) and other authors that support the thesis as Turner (1974, 1985, 2004), Lauretis (1994), Strathern (2006), Mahmood (2009) Giddens (2003) and Das (1999); also statistical data from a "survey" collected at the Bureau of Women's Defense including all municipalities in the State of Ceará, merging with the stories of men and women on domestic violence, to show how this denunciation process may emphasize a new perception of relationships by women and men, following in this way a denouncement ritual that is launched by the Maria da Penha Law, featuring new and old patterns of social and cultural behavior, on being male and female, building other subjective values directed to this new social time.