O voyeur no jardim de Alah: uma etnografia sobre os prazeres sexuais semipúblicos na orla de Salvador

Abstract

The present ethnography derived from interactions, mainly homoerotic, that extend across the Atlantic coast in Salvador da Bahia (Brazil). When visiting the beaches of Salvador, I realized that these spaces are organized for different purposes beyond tourist attractions and places for family entertainment. On Jardim de Alah beach, the field chosen as the locus of this research, I observed that these spaces can also be taken as places for male sociability, a system of erotic and sexual exchanges that my interlocutors call “pegação no Paredão”. In this place, especially at night, the beach takes on a different configuration than the dynamics maintained during the day. Under the banks of the rocky wall that supports Costa Azul Park and separates part of the shore, men gather in search of homoerotic encounters in the sand. This research intersects a discussion about urban space, sexual practices (such as voyeurism) and mechanisms for controlling sexuality, with the aim of understanding how men in Paredão articulate means of appropriating urban public space in the search for sexual pleasures in open places. Categories such as: public and private, exposure and privacy, permission and prohibition are analyzed in this study.