Abstract

Introduction

Female prostitution is characterized as commercialization of sex, an activity in which male power is legitimized by a financial transaction in which the payer has unrestricted access to the woman’s body. It has been common along history, but only capitalism have linked prostitution and money, in such a way that it has intensified the exploitation and disposal of sex workers¹1 Russo G. No labirinto da prostituição: o dinheiro e seus aspectos simbólicos. Cad CRH. 2007; 20(51):497-514..

In contemporary societies, sexual exploitation of young people, forced and bonded prostitution, trafficking in women, and pornography constitute one of the most profitable businesses worldwide. On the other hand, trading sex for money is a survival alternative for poor, racialized young women in patriarchal societies where the state does not guarantee rights, including education, employment, income, and social protection²2 McKinnon C. Trafficking, prostitution and inequality. Harv Civ Rights-Civil Lib Law Rev. 2011; 46:271-309.^,33 Guimarães RM. Prostituição: patologia, trabalho, prazer? O discurso de mulheres prostitutas [dissertação]. Ribeirão Preto: Faculdade de Filosofia Ciências e Letras-USP; 2007.. In this system, women have little or no power regarding the control of the activity and are mostly exploited by middlemen.

Patriarchy is a power system in which men are in superiority, and women are given the status of subordinates. Patriarchal ideology ensures male sexual access to the use of both feminine and feminized bodies, cements the social role of women, enhances the unequal power relations between the sexes, granting men the right to access sex when and how they want it, supplying sexual fantasies through pornography and the purchase of sexual services from women used as commodities⁴4 Delphy H. Patriarcado. In: Hirata H, Laborie F, Doaré H, Senotier D. Dicionário crítico do feminismo. São Paulo: Editora Unesp; 2009. p. 173-8.. For Carole Pateman⁵5 Pateman C. O contrato sexual. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra; 1993., prostitution expresses the condition of social and political inferiority of women, so the prostitute sells her body in the capitalist market, therefore selling herself.

It is estimated that there are 40 to 42 million women practicing prostitution worldwide, 75% between the ages of 13 and 25, most of them victims of human trafficking⁶6 Goldmann C. Current assessment of the state of prostitution. Paris: Fondation Scelles; 2011.. Prostitution is more prevalent in places where the social protection network is precarious or nonexistent, where gender relations are marked by strong inequalities, and where access to education and job markets are difficult for women⁷7 Amaya A, Canaval GE, Viáfara E. Estigmatización de las trabajadoras sexuales: influencias en la salud. Colomb Med. 2005; 36(3):65-74.

8 Ribeiro F. Proibições, abolições e a imaginação de politicas inclusivas para o trabalho sexual. In: Silva M, Ribeiro F, editores. Mulheres da vida. Mulheres com vida: prostituição, estado e políticas. Famalicão: Húmus; 2010. p. 277-88.^-99 Schissel L, Fedec K. The selling of innocence: the Gestalt of danger in the lives of youth prostitutes. Can J Criminol. 1999; 41(1):33-46..

There are factors in poor and peripheral countries, such as poverty, low levels of education, lack of job skills, absence of social support networks, and/or the presence of armed conflicts that make young women more susceptible to being recruited for sex work. They are more exposed to violence, which, in many situations, begins in childhood with the use of physical force, abuse, and sexual exploitation⁶6 Goldmann C. Current assessment of the state of prostitution. Paris: Fondation Scelles; 2011..

In Brazil, albeit the changes incorporated by Law No. 12,015 of 2009 in the Criminal Code of 1940, recognizing the right to freedom of choice and protection of sex workers, there is a lack of firm support for these workers¹⁰10 Mirabete J, Fabbrini RN. Manual de direito penal. São Paulo: Editora Atlas; 2015.

11 Donel P. A regularização da prostituição. Jus Brasil [Internet]. 2011 [citado 6 Mar 2021]. Disponível em: https://espaco-vital.jusbrasil.com.br/noticias/2629880/a-regularizacao-da-prostituicao
https://espaco-vital.jusbrasil.com.br/no... ^-1212 Lipszyc C. Prostitución o esclavitud sexual? Lima: CLADEM; 2003..

Gender-related murders of women are called feminicides, a political and legal term characterized by the exercise of unequal power relations between the sexes that culminate in the death of one or more women¹³13 Russel D, Caputti J. Femicide: the politics of women killing. New York: Twayne Publisher; 1992.^,1414 Carcedo A. No olvidamos ni aceptamos: femicidio em Centro América, 2000-2006. San Jose: CEFEMINA; 2010.. More than half of all murders of women correspond to feminicides, and among the countries with the highest rates are Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, in Central America¹⁵15 Global Burden of Armed Violence. When the victim is a women [Internet]. Geneva: GBAV; 2011 [citado 7 Mar 2021]. p.113-44. Disponível em: http://www.genevadeclaration.org/fileadmin/docs/GBAV2/GBAV2011_CH4.pdf
http://www.genevadeclaration.org/fileadm... , where sexual exploitation of girls is also high¹⁶16 United Nations Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC). Nações Unidas. Relatório Global sobre Tráfico de Pessoas. Viena: Nações Unidas; 2018.. Brazil also ranks fifth worldwide¹⁷17 Waiselfisz J. Mapa da violência 2012: homicídio de mulheres no Brasil. São Paulo: Instituto Sangari; 2012. (Caderno complementar 1)..

Sex workers are at a higher risk of being victims of feminicide and post-mortem mutilation. In Italy¹⁸18 Zara G, Theobald D, Veggi S, Freilone F, Biondi E, Mattutino G, et al. Violence against prostitutes and non-prostitutes: an analysis of frequency, variety and severity. J Interpers Violence. 2021: 1-27. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/08862605211005145.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0886260521100514... this risk is five times greater, in the United States¹⁹19 Potterat JJ. Mortality in a long term open cohort of prostitute women. Am J Epidemiol. 2004; 159(8):778-85. it is eighteen times greater, and in England²⁰20 Salfati CG, James AR, Ferguson L. Prostitute homicides: a descriptive study. J Interpers Violence. 2008; 23(4):505-43. it is 60 to 120 times greater than for other women. Although feminicides occur in greater proportions among those who work on the streets²¹21 Lowman J. Violence and the outlaw status of (street) prostitution in Canada. Violence Against Women. 2000; 6(9):987-1011., an analysis carried out in the United Kingdom over the last twenty years has shown an increase in migrants and sex workers who work in enclosed spaces²²22 Cunningham S, Sanders T, Platt L, Grenfell P, Macioti PG. Sex work and occupational homicide: analysis of a UK murder database. Homicide Stud. 2018; 22(3):1-18..

The lack of recognition of prostitution as an employment contributes to the stigmatization of sex work, keeping sex workers in the underground economy and with their safety at risk. In addition, sex workers rarely report crimes to the police, so decriminalizing the activity would add to their safety, and feminicides would be considered work-related deaths²²22 Cunningham S, Sanders T, Platt L, Grenfell P, Macioti PG. Sex work and occupational homicide: analysis of a UK murder database. Homicide Stud. 2018; 22(3):1-18.^,2323 Campbell R, Sanders T, Scoular J, Pitcher J, Cunningham S. Risking safety and rights: online sex work, crimes and ‘blended safety repertories’. Br J Sociol. 2019; 70(4):507-18..

The feminicides of sex workers are still little publicized, although they constitute an important public health problem. They occur more frequently in metropolitan areas, where social and gender inequalities contribute to the increase of illegal activities, such as sexual exploitation and commerce²⁰20 Salfati CG, James AR, Ferguson L. Prostitute homicides: a descriptive study. J Interpers Violence. 2008; 23(4):505-43.^,2424 Kinnel H. Violence and sex work in Britain. In: Day S, Ward H, editores. Sex work, mobility and health in Europe. London: Routledge; 2004. p. 179-94.^,2525 Sharpe K. Red light, blue light prostitutes, punters and the police. Abington: Routledge; 1998..

This study aims to analyze police inquiries (IP in the Portuguese acronym) regarding feminicides of sex workers that occurred in the city of Porto Alegre, capital of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, between 2006 and 2010.

Methodological pathway

This is a qualitative study using the social case study method to analyze murders of sex workers. The social case study investigates a contemporary situation within a real-life context seeking to understand the behavior and possible determinants of the phenomena studied²⁶26 Becker H. Métodos de pesquisa em ciências sociais. São Paulo: Hucitec; 1993..

It is also part of a larger research study that analyzed 94 inquiries from 2006 to 2010 obtained from the Police State Department of Porto Alegre (DH in the Portuguese acronym). These correspond to 45% of the total of female deaths by aggression notified to the Mortality Information System (SIM in the Portuguese acronym) of DATASUS in the period, which constituted a total of 207 deaths. Among the 94 female deaths by aggression, 64 feminicides were identified, among which 12 were perpetrated on women practicing prostitution and analyzed in this article.

The research focused on the specifics of the individual cases, presenting a synthesis of each one, while at the same time, considering the deaths as singular and unique. We used data extracted from the IPs, a first stage in the criminal process, which begins with the report of a crime to the police authority and the completion of the police report (BO in the Portuguese acronym), which is characterized by a standardized form filled out by the police staff recording information about the victim, the aggressor, steps to be taken, and the history of the occurrence. After the BO is elaborated, the IP is opened, having, initially, 30 days to hear the involved people, locate the witnesses, request necroscopic exams, perform weapon and crime scene examinations, raise evidence of authorship and of the “materiality of the crime”. The statements heard during the IP are mediated by the police chief, who guides the writing in the Terms of Testimony and Records of Qualification and Interrogation, using standardized language. The IP is concluded with the report of the police station chief, which presents the first version of the crime, translating the language into legal language. After the IP is sent to the Forum for a criminal action to be filed²⁷27 Pasinato W. Justiça e violência contra a mulher. O papel do sistema judiciário na solução de conflitos de gênero. São Paulo: Fapesp; 1998. .

The data from the 12 IPs were compiled into a text corpus in order to proceed to the analysis and reconstruction of the narratives, understanding the triggers of the crimes, the scenarios where they occurred, the description of the act and characteristics of the deaths. To characterize these crimes, the theoretical references of Carcedo¹⁴14 Carcedo A. No olvidamos ni aceptamos: femicidio em Centro América, 2000-2006. San Jose: CEFEMINA; 2010. were used, making it possible to categorize them in three groups: crimes of poverty, sexual crimes, and hate crimes.

In the reports of the investigations, the study respected the standardized spelling and linguistic style present in police records. For each of the deaths a descriptive sentence was used, trying to express the synthesis of the case, and the women victims were identified according to demographic characteristics referring to age and race/color.

The study is part of a research project entitled “Gender-based Femicides and Murders in Rio Grande do Sul”²⁸28 Meneghel SN. Femicídios e crimes pautados em gênero no sul do Brasil [projeto de pesquisa]. Porto Alegre: Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul; 2011. and the project was approved by the Ethics and Research Committee of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul under number 473/2009 . Although these data were compiled in the DH of Porto Alegre approximately ten years ago, in the itinerary of this research on feminicides²⁸28 Meneghel SN. Femicídios e crimes pautados em gênero no sul do Brasil [projeto de pesquisa]. Porto Alegre: Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul; 2011., they remain valid to the extent that feminicides of sex workers continue to occur at increasing levels, with a portion of them related to new femicide scenarios: the networks of sexual exploitation and criminal groups linked to trafficking¹⁴14 Carcedo A. No olvidamos ni aceptamos: femicidio em Centro América, 2000-2006. San Jose: CEFEMINA; 2010.^,1616 United Nations Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC). Nações Unidas. Relatório Global sobre Tráfico de Pessoas. Viena: Nações Unidas; 2018..

Feminicides of prostitutes: who are they and how do they die?

The 12 inquiries regarding feminicides of sex workers in Porto Alegre in the years 2006 to 2010 represented 13% of the 64 deaths categorized as feminicides. However, these 64 IPs provided by the DH constituted only 45% of the total. Expanding the total number of deaths and considering the 207 deaths recorded in the SIM, feminicides in prostitutes would correspond to 6% of the cases, indicating a high risk of death for this professional group, in line with other studies²⁰20 Salfati CG, James AR, Ferguson L. Prostitute homicides: a descriptive study. J Interpers Violence. 2008; 23(4):505-43.^,2424 Kinnel H. Violence and sex work in Britain. In: Day S, Ward H, editores. Sex work, mobility and health in Europe. London: Routledge; 2004. p. 179-94..

The victims were young women, average age of 21 years, two of them minors, pointing out to a juvenilization of those who practice prostitution. They had little or no schooling, and in several statements, there were references that they prostituted themselves out of economic necessity.

Two of them were declared to be black, but it must be taking into account that in the case of homicide, the racial declaration is made by the expert at the Forensic General Institute. Thus, many black women may have been considered white, which is common in a country still ruled by racism, causing social workers, when filling in the question of race/color, to “whiten” the service users.

The settings where women live contribute to this type of crime. Porto Alegre, the city where the study was carried out, has suffered in the last years a process that Monica McWilliams²⁹29 McWilliams M. Violence against women in societies under stress. In: Dobash RE, Dobash RP, editores. Sage series on violence against women, v. 9. Rethinking violence against women. New York: Sage Publications; 1998. p. 111-40. calls “stress society”, in which there is an increase in violence against women. These territories are undergoing transformations, which may include gentrification with removal of residents and eviction of buildings, lack of housing, work, and social facilities, increase of the street population, presence of drug gangs, militias, and urban violence.

The murdered women lived and prostituted themselves in the poorest areas of the city, in neighborhoods marked by violence and drug trafficking and in urban spaces where the State has little or no presence, where prostitution and other social practices are ruled by parallel, masculine, male chauvinist and misogynist law of organized crime.

Women who work on the streets are more vulnerable to violence from clients, pimps, johns, and other profiteers⁵5 Pateman C. O contrato sexual. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra; 1993. and have a higher risk of being murdered than those who work indoors²⁴24 Kinnel H. Violence and sex work in Britain. In: Day S, Ward H, editores. Sex work, mobility and health in Europe. London: Routledge; 2004. p. 179-94.. Six of them worked on the streets and some used public spaces, such as vacant lots, for commercial sex. They were murdered in these same places, in the exercise of prostitution, while in the population as a whole, most feminicides occur in the domestic environment³⁰30 Margarites AF, Meneghel SN, Ceccon RF. Feminicídios na cidade de Porto Alegre: Quantos são? Quem são? Rev Bras Epidemiol. 2017; 20(2):225-36..

The inquiries analyzed presented little information, while in some cases, only the police report and the death certificate were included, and they were closed due to lack of evidence. In five inquiries there were no indictments and several of the aggressors indicted were not found because they were fugitives. Some of them had criminal records and two were serving semi-open sentences, indicating that sex workers who are murdered are most of the time murdered by aggressors with criminal records³¹31 United Nations Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC). Global study of homicide. Gender-related killing of women and girls. Vienna: United Nations; 2018.. In a study that analyzed a cohort of feminicides in prostitutes in the United States, it was observed that most were killed by clients and the motives included free use of sexual services, executions, and frivolous motives, such as fights, robberies, and drug use or debts related to them¹⁹19 Potterat JJ. Mortality in a long term open cohort of prostitute women. Am J Epidemiol. 2004; 159(8):778-85..

Reading the indictments, it may be observed the construction of a discourse that has as its reference the evaluation of the previous lives of the victims and the accused, whose conduct and habits are investigated and their social and psychological profiles are inferred²⁷27 Pasinato W. Justiça e violência contra a mulher. O papel do sistema judiciário na solução de conflitos de gênero. São Paulo: Fapesp; 1998.. Therefore, it is common to include aspects such as family and economic situation, including the profile of the aggressor, who most of the time has a criminal record; and of the victims, who are stigmatized for their sex work and/or (bad) maternity, and these factors are investigated and catalogued, in addition to psychological aspects such as the use of alcohol/drugs and depression.

Crimes of misery: victims of inequality

In recent decades poverty got a feminine face and, even in countries where women have reached educational levels equivalent to men and in places where there is protection against gender discrimination, unemployment, precarious female workwore-houseand prostitution have increased. Prostitution is often the only alternative for survival³²32 Moreira ICCC, Monteiro CFS. A violência no cotidiano da prostituição: invisibilidades e ambiguidades. Rev Lat Am Enfermagem. 2012; 20(5):1-7.

33 Nascimento SD. Precarização do trabalho feminino: a realidade das mulheres no mundo do trabalho. Rev Polit Publicas. 2016; Esp:339-46.^-3434 Mathieu L. Ninguém se prostitui por prazer. Le monde diplomatique Brasil [Internet]. 1 Fev 2003 [citado 7 Mar 2021]. Disponível em: https://diplomatique.org.br/ninguem-se-prostitui-por-prazer/
https://diplomatique.org.br/ninguem-se-p... .

Currently, sex work is being organized on a large scale through transnational exploitation groups that place women in other countries and regions. Thus, they are left without safety nets, withholding their passports and/or forcing them to work under slave-like conditions¹⁴14 Carcedo A. No olvidamos ni aceptamos: femicidio em Centro América, 2000-2006. San Jose: CEFEMINA; 2010.^,1616 United Nations Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC). Nações Unidas. Relatório Global sobre Tráfico de Pessoas. Viena: Nações Unidas; 2018..

The term “crimes of misery” was used because all the murdered women lived in conditions of poverty, varying only in its intensity, in which the lack of resources to live on facilitates their entry into prostitution as an alternative for survival³²32 Moreira ICCC, Monteiro CFS. A violência no cotidiano da prostituição: invisibilidades e ambiguidades. Rev Lat Am Enfermagem. 2012; 20(5):1-7.^,3434 Mathieu L. Ninguém se prostitui por prazer. Le monde diplomatique Brasil [Internet]. 1 Fev 2003 [citado 7 Mar 2021]. Disponível em: https://diplomatique.org.br/ninguem-se-prostitui-por-prazer/
https://diplomatique.org.br/ninguem-se-p... . This description was in many IPs: “she began to prostitute herself out of economic necessity”; “she prostituted herself on [avenue] Farrapos, a poor prostitution area”; “she prostituted herself in the bush”, among other statements. The place where they lived, the settings and motives for the crime attested to the futility of the act and the derisory value of these lives, in which poverty aggravated vulnerability, marked the routes and facilitated the perpetration of feminicide.

It may be stated that these homicides would happen even if the women were not prostitutes, since executions due to debts and/or problems with trafficking, marital conflicts, and frivolous fights can happen to any woman. However, the empirical data show that when this woman, besides being poor, is a prostitute, lives in an area of trafficking and violence, and works on the streets, her life is worth next to nothing.

As evidenced by these cases, in a scenario of deepening inequalities of gender, race, and social class, women are the most affected by unemployment and job insecurity. They are left with sex work, whose lowest rank is street prostitution, living in poor and slum areas, and connections to trafficking for their own use, to negotiate debts, to ask for protection, or to be executed³²32 Moreira ICCC, Monteiro CFS. A violência no cotidiano da prostituição: invisibilidades e ambiguidades. Rev Lat Am Enfermagem. 2012; 20(5):1-7.^,3333 Nascimento SD. Precarização do trabalho feminino: a realidade das mulheres no mundo do trabalho. Rev Polit Publicas. 2016; Esp:339-46..

As they may be easily eliminated, the motives are frivolous: small debts, fights among colleagues, borrowing used clothes, whose value does not exceed two dollars. Society’s misogyny has repercussions among the women, who don’t show solidarity among themselves and exercise gratuitous violence, accentuated by the trivialization of the use of weapons: “Do what you have to do and let’s go, shoot at once”, said her “friend” to the hired killer.

In Porto Alegre and as pointed out by other authors¹⁹19 Potterat JJ. Mortality in a long term open cohort of prostitute women. Am J Epidemiol. 2004; 159(8):778-85.^,3131 United Nations Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC). Global study of homicide. Gender-related killing of women and girls. Vienna: United Nations; 2018., these feminicides occurred in poverty settings, commercial sex in dangerous places, proximity to crime areas, drug use, and relations with the drug trade. In these locations, poverty and machismo are accentuated, and we can add racialization and violence, which act synergistically in producing the premature death of these young women.

Sexual crimes: gender victims

Sexual violence goes hand-in-hand with the lives of girls and women and keeps thousands of them in situations of sexual exploitation¹⁵15 Global Burden of Armed Violence. When the victim is a women [Internet]. Geneva: GBAV; 2011 [citado 7 Mar 2021]. p.113-44. Disponível em: http://www.genevadeclaration.org/fileadmin/docs/GBAV2/GBAV2011_CH4.pdf
http://www.genevadeclaration.org/fileadm...

16 United Nations Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC). Nações Unidas. Relatório Global sobre Tráfico de Pessoas. Viena: Nações Unidas; 2018.^-1717 Waiselfisz J. Mapa da violência 2012: homicídio de mulheres no Brasil. São Paulo: Instituto Sangari; 2012. (Caderno complementar 1).. Sexual violence occurs in a commercial relationship when the type of sexual intercourse is unwanted or not agreed upon, when the client refuses to use a condom, when there is pain, discomfort, or bleeding, when the woman asks to stop and the client does not comply, when objects are introduced into the genitals causing pain, when there are practices that put the woman’s life at risk. It includes rape, harassment, forced sex, unwanted sexual practices, and genital injuries, which can lead to genital mutilation and death³⁵35 Farley M, Barkan H. Prostitution, violence and posttraumatic stress disorder. Women Health. 1998; 27(3):37-49.^,3636 Krug E, Dahlberg L, Mercy J. Informe mundial sobre violencia y salud. Washington: OPAS, OMS; 2004..

Prostitutes have a higher exposure to sexual violence, a situation resulting from the unequal power relationship established between the woman and the client, since in the act of buying sex, the man also feels entitled to rape the prostitute⁵5 Pateman C. O contrato sexual. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra; 1993..

In the inquiries analyzed, it was reported that some of them were found naked: “she was wearing only blue panties and was barefoot”; “the body was found with her clothes off (pants and panties)”; they presented aggression marks, bleeding and genital lesions, additionally to used condoms next to the bodies “near the body a key chain, two used condoms, a lighter, a crack pipe”.

Raping is among the practices used to impose territorial control, including over dead bodies, says Ana Carcedo¹⁴14 Carcedo A. No olvidamos ni aceptamos: femicidio em Centro América, 2000-2006. San Jose: CEFEMINA; 2010., and women murdered by gangs, trafficking, militias, and war conflicts are raped and stripped of their clothes, while men do not go through this sexualized exposure, since stripping a body naked after death means a form of feminized humiliation.

There were seven feminicides in which sexual violence occurred, if hate crimes are included in this category, in addition to sexual crimes. Although the killers can be any men from the women’s relationships or strangers, feminicides of prostitutes are usually perpetrated by clients or pimps³¹31 United Nations Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC). Global study of homicide. Gender-related killing of women and girls. Vienna: United Nations; 2018.. “She went to serve two clients, in Vila Cruzeiro”; “prostitute and dancer in nightclub, supported her boyfriend and pimp”. In this context, men consider themselves owners of female bodies, especially of sex workers, feeling liberated to use them and discard them when they are no longer useful for them.

The feminine hierarchization into categories, in which prostitutes are in a less privileged position, means that these deaths do not produce empathy in society, not even among other women, and it is usual to put the blame on the victims themselves.

The occurrence of feminicide, a type of crime linked to the patriarchal system that makes women vulnerable to a greater or lesser degree, stems, in the case of prostitutes, from the fact that they are women available to everyone. This arrangement makes the man who buys the service feel like the possessor of a body and flesh that for him no longer represents a human being, but becomes an object⁵5 Pateman C. O contrato sexual. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra; 1993.^,3737 Caputi J, Russell DEH. Feminicidio: sexismo terrorista contra las mujeres. In: Russell DE, Radford J, organizadores. Feminicidio: la política del asesinato de las mujeres. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México–CEIICH; 2006. p. 53-69.: “I choked her out of pity”.

Hate crimes: victims of cruelty

Hate crimes are considered those committed against a person because of their belonging to an ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, social, physical or mental condition. The aggression is carried out to affect the group to which the victim belongs and to manifest the desire for extermination or elimination of a group of people³⁸38 Ortega FT. O que são os crimes de ódio? Jus Brasil [Internet]. 2016 [citado 7 Mar 2021]. Disponível em: https://draflaviaortega.jusbrasil.com.br/noticias/309394678/o-que-sao-os-crimes-de-odio
https://draflaviaortega.jusbrasil.com.br... .

Law No. 13104³⁹39 Brasil. Presidência da República. Lei nº 13.104, de 9 de Março de 2015. Altera o art. 121 do Decreto-Lei nº 2.848, de 7 de Dezembro de 1940 - Código Penal, para prever o feminicídio como circunstância qualificadora do crime de homicídio, e o art. 1º da Lei nº 8.072, de 25 de Julho de 1990, para incluir o feminicídio no rol dos crimes hediondos. Brasília: Presidência da República; 2015., known as the “feminicide law,” enacted in Brazil in 2015, categorizes the deaths of women for gender reasons as feminicides, considered a type of qualified homicide, included in the list of heinous crimes or hate crimes against women.

Feminicide, an act of control by men over women, functions supporting patriarchy⁴⁰40 Biglia B, San Martin C. Estado de Wonder Bra. Entretejiendo narraciones feministas sobre las violencias de género. Barcelona: Virus Editorial; 2007. and when it occurs in terror and hate scenarios, it is not limited to death, and there is rape, torture, mutilation, or collective rape before the murder. The goal is to destroy the victim’s identity by striking her face, disfiguring her features, making her unrecognizable, and establishing total control over the woman’s body and sexuality, used as territory to be not only occupied but also destroyed. In this way, it is not just about killing the victim, but dominating her.

The use of cruelty is a way to show that the aggressors control the lives, the bodies, and the sensations of their victims, configuring the logic of the torturer, carrying out true terrorism on women, to frighten and paralyze them if they transgress the masculine mandate¹⁴14 Carcedo A. No olvidamos ni aceptamos: femicidio em Centro América, 2000-2006. San Jose: CEFEMINA; 2010..

By Law 13.104, all feminicides, regardless of class, race, sexual orientation, age, or occupation, are considered heinous crimes. The cases presented below are categorized as hate crimes, which mean that these killings were perpetrated with extreme cruelty and in terror scenes:

Rape happening in hate crimes has as its objective the annihilation of the victim’s will, who is expropriated of the control over her body-space. For Rita Segato⁴¹41 Segato R. La guerra contra las mujeres. Madrid, Argentina: Traficantes de Sueños; 2016. this act is political and repeats with a specific woman the colonial process of subordination of poor populations from peripheral countries. Thus, there is a message when a woman is eliminated with an absurdly high number of shots or stabs, “there were 38 wounds produced by a knife”, since it doesn’t take more than a shot from a firearm or a stab wound to take someone’s life. The writing on the victim’s body represents a male message, that in reality a weak and powerless man, to show off in front of other men.

An analysis on serial crimes in the United States, showed that although they have decreased over the last twenty years, when they occur there is a high probability that the victim is a prostitute and, the men who commit this type of crime go on to kill other victims⁴²42 Quinet K. Prostitutes as victims of serial homicide: trends and case characteristics: 1970-2009. Homicide Stud. 2011; 15(1):74-100..

In these deaths, considered hate crimes, the violence directed toward the annihilation of the other, in this case an unknown, poor woman, working as a prostitute in the homeless space of the street, occupying the lowest step in the social hierarchy, was so disproportionate that it goes back to the crimes that occurred in Ciudad Juarez⁴³43 Segato RL. Território, soberania e crimes de segundo Estado: a escritura nos corpos das mulheres de Ciudad Juarez. Brasília: Editora UNB; 2005., a territory of a peripheral capitalist country where the law of the militias, the maras, the gangs, and drug trafficking is in force, and where feminicides occur to reinforce the toxic masculinity of these groups.

Even in the presence of violence in a (perhaps) smaller dimension, this type of feminicide also happens in Porto Alegre, where a young woman “was found in the bushes, on all fours, without underwear, tied to a tree with an extender and steel cable”.

Final considerations

The present article analyzes a series of cases of feminicides on women who practiced prostitution in the city of Porto Alegre between the years 2006 and 2010. A social case study, it is also a piece of denunciation research, which showed the high frequency of feminicides, including hate crimes, and sexual violence perpetrated on poor women and sex workers.

A limitation of this study is that not all homicides of sex workers are gender-related, as considered by the United Nations study³¹31 United Nations Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC). Global study of homicide. Gender-related killing of women and girls. Vienna: United Nations; 2018., therefore not all of these deaths are typified as feminicides. However, when considering the precarious and violent settings in which these 12 women lived, we included all the sex worker victims in this analysis, even the four feminicides perpetrated by an intimate partner, one of them a pimp, and the two executions by traffickers. The fact of being a prostitute means being stigmatized and segregated, it means having no support network and no family support, increasing her vulnerability to all types of violence, including lethal violence. This vulnerability is socially expressed, as these crimes do not produce any commotion or empathy, since the moralistic view that considers prostitutes to be “easy-lifers” is still in effect; concealing the fact that they are, in reality, “easy-dead women”⁴⁴44 Meneghel SN, Ceccon RF, Hesler LZ, Margarites AF, Rosa S, Vasconcelos VD, et al. Femicídios: narrativas de crimes de gênero. Interface (Botucatu). 2013; 17(43):523-33..

An additional fact to be considered is that these data were retrieved from the Police State Department of Porto Alegre until the year 2015, but were not published and represent a problem still scarcely studied in the literature, in addition to maintaining the rising prevalence of this type of death, related to new femicide scenarios: the networks of sexual exploitation and criminal groups linked to trafficking¹⁴14 Carcedo A. No olvidamos ni aceptamos: femicidio em Centro América, 2000-2006. San Jose: CEFEMINA; 2010.^,1616 United Nations Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC). Nações Unidas. Relatório Global sobre Tráfico de Pessoas. Viena: Nações Unidas; 2018., currently affecting trans women⁴⁵45 Souza R. Epidemia de feminicídios, as mulheres querem viver, não sobreviver [Internet]. Midia Ninja; 2021 [citado 7 Mar 2021]. Disponível em: https://midianinja.org/renatasouza/epidemia-de-feminicidios-as-mulheres-querem-viver-nao-sobreviver/
https://midianinja.org/renatasouza/epide... ^,4646 Benevides BG, Nogueira SNB. Dossiê dos assassinatos e da violência contra travestis e transexuais brasileiras em 2020. São Paulo: Expressão Popular, ANTRA, IBTE; 2021. who perform sex work.

Finally, feminicides of sex workers are common in the patriarchal system, in which there is eroticization of violence, dehumanization, and treatment of women as objects. This context imprints a connection between aggressive masculinity and pleasure, so that feminicide comes to represent the maximum expression of sexuality as a form of power³⁷37 Caputi J, Russell DEH. Feminicidio: sexismo terrorista contra las mujeres. In: Russell DE, Radford J, organizadores. Feminicidio: la política del asesinato de las mujeres. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México–CEIICH; 2006. p. 53-69..

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