“PROGRAMA” (TRICK), MALE ESCORTS (GAROTOS DE PROGRAMA / GPs), AND CLIENTS: GENDER TECHNOLOGY AND LABOUR PERFORMATIVITY

Abstract

This paper investigates the deconstruction and reimagining of the concept of “sex work”, focusing on the process of producing corporealities in relation to the circulation of goods and money, based on fieldwork conducted with male sex workers (garotos de programa / GPs) in São Paulo. The proliferation of lateral categories (pornographer, massagist, escort, etc.) and the vulnerability evidenced by structural violence highlight the process through which this profession-form emerges performatively (in contrast, for example, with the friendship-form). The proposed approach, anti-essentialist and intersectional, takes as its premise the fact that the fundamental subjectivities of the prostitutional relationship, GP and client, are forged through the systematic chaining of “programa”[trick]-situations. The “programa” is seen as an attitudinal cell through which these becomings are established and reproduced, mobilizing a network that involves institutions, services, and non-humans, and multiplying territorialities.