What cannot be elaborated from the female body returns in the form of prostitution?

Abstract

The article analyzes female prostitution from a psychoanalytic, historical and social perspective, articulating gender, sexuality and stigma. The research, linked to a PhD study currently underway at USP, is based on interviews with seven cis and trans women who work in prostitution, discussing their narratives in light of prostitute feminist authors, such as Monique Prada and Melissa Gira Grant, and Freudian and contemporary psychoanalytic frameworks. The study highlights how society constructs the division of femininity, reducing women to the binary of virgin/whore, and how the female body, historically controlled by patriarchy and Christian morality, returns as a subversive act through prostitution. The stigmatization of this activity reveals the social difficulty of elaborating female sexuality, which is often repressed and transformed into an object of symbolic and concrete violence. The interviewees’ statements show contradictions between desire, morality, and power, exposing the role of prostitution as a space of resistance and paradoxical support for the institution of marriage. It is concluded that discussing prostitution is essential to deconstruct stigmas, rethink social values regarding women’s sexuality, and highlight the return of the repressed in society, as “what cannot be elaborated in the female body returns in the form of prostitution.”