"A rua é coisa pra macho": impactos da violência na construção das masculinidades de homens em situação de rua.

Abstract

Although they represent a majority group, homeless men face specific vulnerabilities that are intrinsic and pervasive throughout their lives. Even though they are exposed to multiple forms of violence, they often must resort to survival strategies that are themselves forms of violence and oppression. This highlights the importance of recognizing, alongside material precariousness, the subjective aspects related to becoming a man in our culture, which are often invisible and delegitimized. Given this, this research aimed to understand the impacts of violence on the construction of masculinities among homeless men. Specifically, it sought to: understand the daily experiences of homeless men, analyze the meanings that homeless men attribute to their masculinities, and map the practices of violence developed by homeless men throughout their lives. The action research perspective was adopted as a methodological approach, based on participant observations, experiential groups, and field diaries with homeless men who attended activities at Casa of Sopa. Using Atlas.TI software to organize the corpus of information, dialogical maps were created that inspired the analysis of the production of meanings from the discourse repertoires of the interlocutors who make up the textual material of the research. It was found that the experiences of homeless men are shaped by a system capable of regulating their attitudes and actions to ensure survival in this inhospitable condition. This fact produces the need to perform violent masculinity, that is, those who distance themselves from the imposed codes feel that they do not have the vital imperatives to be respected. Furthermore, violence is seen as a beneficial resource in the face of the dangers and risks that living on the streets inflicts, so that these men constantly experience a paradoxical relationship between suffering and exercising violence. Contexts of extreme poverty and social vulnerability, in which basic rights and minimum needs for survival are denied, tend to produce effects of shock and invisibility in the eyes of those who are distant, who begin to see deprivation, misery, and hardship, mutilating the subjects of other dimensions that constitute them. When dealing with homeless men, these effects were exacerbated by gender norms and practices of violence resulting from the reality in which they are immersed. I believe that this research has succeeded in bringing to light the trajectories of subjects who resist the material and, above all, subjective inequalities of the street context. Invaluable thanks to the CAPES scholarship for funding the research.