"Class Média": Max Gonzaga's X-Ray of the Brazilian Middle Class

 

"I can guarantee, Mr. Sebastian, that according to these statistics,

Brazil can consider itself to be a middle-class country."

"Ya see, woman? Ain' it great?"

A great song by Max Gonzaga in this electoral year here in Brazil. Also combines nicely with the recent release of Tropa de Elite 2....

Here's the video.

I'm middle class
I repeat everything I hear on the T.V. news
I believe that weekly newsmagazines are impartial

I'm middle class
I buy clothes and gas on my plastic
I hate to ride the bus
I drive my car that I bought on credit

I have to pay taxes
I'm always redlining my bank account
I hardly travel
Maybe a CVC package tour every three years

But I don't care
If drug dealers rule the favelas
I don't care
If people die or Itaquera floods
I'd like to see the urban periphery get blown to pieces

But I get pissed
At the State when anything bothers me
Like the starving beggars who ask for handouts
Or the street windshield cleaners who soap up my car
Or street vendors with their trinkets and candy
Or the jugglers who perform for change at the stoplights

But if it's a burglary in Moema
Or a murder in Jardins
Or an executive's daughter gets raped to death
Then the media will shout their regressive opinion to the skies
And call for the death penalty or a reduction in the age limits for imprisonment

And I, who am quite well informed, agree and join demonstrations
While the T.V. audience booms and papers sell like mad

Because I don't care
If drug dealers rule the favelas
I don't care
If people die or Itaquera floods
I'd like to see the urban periphery get bown to pieces
Tragedies are only real if they knock on my door
Because it's much easier to condemn someone who's already serving a life sentence.



Sou classe média
Papagaio de todo telejornal
Eu acredito
Na imparcialidade da revista semanal
Sou classe média
Compro roupa e gasolina no cartão
Odeio “coletivos”
E vou de carro que comprei a prestação
Só pago impostos
Estou sempre no limite do meu cheque especial
Eu viajo pouco, no máximo um pacote cvc tri-anual
Mais eu “to nem ai”
Se o traficante é quem manda na favela
Eu não “to nem aqui”
Se morre gente ou tem enchente em itaquera
Eu quero é que se exploda a periferia toda
Mas fico indignado com estado quando sou incomodado
Pelo pedinte esfomeado que me estende a mão
O pára-brisa ensaboado
É camelo, biju com bala
E as peripécias do artista malabarista do farol
Mas se o assalto é em moema
O assassinato é no “jardins”
A filha do executivo é estuprada até o fim
Ai a mídia manifesta a sua opinião regressa
De implantar pena de morte, ou reduzir a idade penal
E eu que sou bem informado concordo e faço passeata
Enquanto aumenta a audiência e a tiragem do jornal
Porque eu não “to nem ai”
Se o traficante é quem manda na favela
Eu não “to nem aqui”
Se morre gente ou tem enchente em itaquera
Eu quero é que se exploda a periferia toda
Toda tragédia só me importa quando bate em minha porta
Porque é mais fácil condenar quem já cumpre pena de vida

On why I have my doubts about the acquaintence rape panic...

Two young men getting ready to take advantage of each other while drunk.

In a word, I have my doubts about the date rape panic because many of the people who are beating this particular drum seem to support a dual sexual morality.

This dual morality says that men and boys are absolutely, one hundred percent responsible for their sexuality, even when shit-faced drunk, but that women and girls are not. It claims that any story of sex and rape, when told by a woman, must ipso-facto be true while men's testimony is entirely composed of self-serving lies.

Now, before someone splits a seam out there and demands that I turn in my feminist secret decoder ring, let me salient, underline, MAKE PERFECTLY FUCKING CLEAR that I am not defending date rape, nor am I saying that people who get out-of-control drunk deserve to be raped.

OK? Got it? Are we on the same page now?

What I am saying is that a sex-gender system which presumes that women should be chaste or assexual until marriage/love occurs and castigates and stigmatizes women who aren't, while not teaching its young women how to be responsible sexual beings, is going to generate a lot of sexual repression, guilt and false morality. Faced with this, a certain number of women are going to use booze as an excuse to have sex and then attempt to not face the consequences of their acts the next day by claiming that they were taken advantage of.

Is this the majority of women? Probably not. Is it even the majority of women who report date rate? Almost certainly not.

But in spite of the heart-felt claims of my sisters-in-struggle that women do not lie about date rape, I must insist that at least some of them do. I know this, because I have seen it with my own eyes on at least three seperate occasions.

Let me relate the last time I saw this occur, because I find it to be the most shocking...

A few years ago we had a young, self-declared lesbian woman who was here in Rio learning Portuguese in a gringo class at a local school. This young woman, Clarissa, was quite the LGBT activist and most in-class reports by her, as well as most of her critiques of Brazilian culture, were manifestos against androcentrism and homophobia. In spite of her at times shrill politics, we became fairly good friends.

One night, while we were out drinking, Clarissa told me a horrible story about how she had recently suffered a date rape in her home town. According to her, she went out to a bar and some guy slipped roofies in her drink. When she woke up at home the next day, she couldn't remember a thing about what happened after midnight. Her vagina was sore and puffy and her girlfriend immediately deduced that she had been date-raped. They thus went down to the hospital and took samples and evidence, then went to the cops. No suspects were arrested and according to this young lady, that was a clear indication of the kind of crap-sack, misogynist world in which we live.

Fast forward to Clarissa's last night in Brazil. She insisted that we all go drinking at a gay club, even though she's the only homosexual in the group. No problem: the bar she wanst to go to is a fun bar, so great! We go. While there, she proceeded to get drunk - so drunk, in fact, that she starts hitting on the gay men at the bar. My roomate at the time, Jorge (who's gay) met us at the club, saw what was happening and told me "Thad, you better get your gringa friend out of her before she causes a fight".

We thus all troop out to a taxi and move the party over to Emporium. In the taxi, out drunken lesbian friend starts feeling up one of the guys in the group ("John", a colleague from her Portuguese course) and by the time we reach our destination, Clarissa's swarming all over him. The public make-out session goes on for over two hours until the bar closes. On the way out Zeke, a mutual friend asks me to keep an eye on Clarissa because of her earlier experience. The happy couple and I thus go off to yet another bar, where we have water and diet coke and chat for an hour. Clarissa is completely lucid and what I would describe as "tipsy": certainly not "out-of-control, falling-down drunk". I offer to walk her home. She says "No, John's going to do that!" and laughs.

When John goes off to the bathroom I say "Listen, I'm worried. You guys have been making out for hours and he's obviously expecting sex. Seriously. You know this right? He's going to want to have sex with you if he walks you home and will probably try to push things, at least a bit, given all the tonsil-wrestling you two have been doing."

"No, duh!" responds my supposedly lesbian friend.

"So I just want to make sure," I push on. "You're cool with me leaving you with John, even though you guys are almost certainly going to wind up having sex?"

"Of course!" Clarissa replies. "I'm not a kid. I know what I'm doing."

I raise my hands. "OK, then. Have fun."

And I split for home.

The next day, I call Zeke and tell him what happened. It turns out that Zeke has been asked over to our Clarissa's house to help with her packing. He gets there and finds her neck is covered in hickies. Our lesbian friend says she can't remember what happened the night before and that she thinks she must have eaten something odd because look at how she's broken out in a rash. Zeke sits her down and says "Clarissa, those  those are hickies and what you were doing last night was making out with John. We all saw it and Thad walked you guys halfway home and gave you every opportunity in the world to back out graciously. He says you looked pretty damned in control of yourself and you told him you were up for sex with John, which is what you apparently went off and had."

To Clarissa's credit, she believed us and was very shaken, even rethinking her earlier experience of supposed "date rape". Talking to her over the following months, Zeke found out that she had been sexually abused as a kid and that her first stable loving relationship was with her current girlfriend. She just assumed then, that she must be a lesbian. And because her girlfriend's social circle despised bisexuals and so-called "daddy's money lesbians", Clarissa heavily repressed any heterosexual feelings she had. Drinking and acting out on those, and then lying to herself the next day about what occurred, was her way of dealing with this situation.

So this is one of THREE similar experiences that I have had, as opposed to four experiences where I'm damned certain a person I know went through acquaintence rape. I've heard many accusations from both sides - people (generally women) demanding that all claims of date rape MUST be treated as true and other folks (generally men) insisting that date rape is complete and utter bullshit. But for the seven cases in which I personally have been involved and got to see the evidence in some detail, three weigh out with the accused being innocent and four point to their guilt.

That's about a 43% innocence rate.

This is why I will not join the "all date rape claims are true" bandwagon. Women, like men, fool themselves, lie to themselves and lie to others. There is absolutely no convincing evidence that I've seen, to date, that women or men always tell the truth about ANYTHING. In a falsely moral, intensely hypocritical society such as the United States, which has a very deep fear of human sexuality in general and female sexuality in  particular, it is no wonder that many people are going to be screwed up when it comes to sex. Date rape absolutists, on both sides of the issue, want to restrict this problem to the "other" gender - whichever that is.

Unfortunately for them, both genders lie.

Bullshit Patrol: One in Four College Women Will Be Raped Before They Graduate, According to Justice Department Study... Really?

It's back-to-school in the United States, so that means it's time to whip up the parents with stories of all the evil things which will happen to their progeny once they've left the nest. On the top of the heap this semester, we have a report by The Huffington Post that CBS news claims that one in four female college students will be raped by graduation day. Here's what CBS says:

A recent study fom the Department of Justice estimated that 25 percent of college women will be victims of rape or attempted rape before they graduate within a four-year college period, and that women between the ages of 16 to 24 will experience rape at a rate that's four times higher than the assault rate of all women.
 
There are a couple of problems with this report.

First of all, this is old, not recent news: the study which discovered this was published 10 years ago by Fisher, Cullen and Turner, in 2000. The current publication simply refers to that study: it is not itself a study, but a handbook regarding acquaintance rape. The original study can be found here. The handbook which ABC mistook for a recent study can be found here.

Secondly, the study does not indicate that 25% of all college women will be raped, but rather about half that number (13,75%). Ariana Huffington's krewe apparently has a hard time discerning between "rape" and "attempted rape". 

Furthermore, a methodologically similar study undertaken by the same Justice Department indicates a rape rate 11 TIMES LESS than that indicated by Fisher, et al.

Finally, Fisher et al note that only 46% of the 86 women who they classified as having suffered a rape believed themselves to have been raped. Basically, what these researchers are saying is that the women themselves do not agree with the way the researchers are classifying these incidents. Fisher et al haven't a clear idea of why this disharmony in classification occurs, other than "Well, maybe the women don't understand what rape is or don't want to talk about it" (odd, given that the women had to agree in writing to specifically participate in a survey on sexual violence and rape on campus). Call it anthropological belief in one's informants, but I think we can take it as a given that a person knows when they've been raped, folks. I think we should take their word on it primarily.

Part of the problem here may be a rather fuzzy and imprecise definition of rape which guided the researcher's analysis: "Forced sexual intercourse including both psychological coercion as well as physical force."  "Psychological coercion" is open to a wide range of subjective interpretations and the researcher's understanding of this might not coincide with that of their informants.

If we were to take Fisher et al's informants on their word, however, and classify as rape what these women say was rape, then we find that, far from 25% of all female college student's being raped by graduation day, as the headline implies, we're looking at (13.75 x .46) 6.32%.

It should be pointed out here that Fisher et al's study is pretty responsible and transparent (though they could have given us better information on how they were classifying rapes in opposition to their informants' classifications by presenting us with a series of case studies). Irresponsible scientific reporting is the problem here, with the media multiplying by 2 to 4 times what the study shows.

6% is, in any case, still a very high number. It's about 4 times the national average and indicates a significant problem. But one wonders, then, why so many people think they need to exagerate this number beyond all reasonable bounds? Most people who have gone through university, male or female, are going to have a "bullshit" reaction when they see that 25%. Ultimately, this sort of exageration ends up making people DISMISS the issue of acquaintence rape.

This problem, of course, is found wherever research runs up against public policy. People believe that there is a problem - rape on campus, say, or trafficking of persons. Researchers go out and find that the problem does indeed exist, but is quite complicated. Politicians and moral entrepeneurs then get on the bandwagon and distort and simplify the findings so that they seem more alarming. Then the old media comes along and distorts the findings some more, because "if it bleeds, it leads". Finally, bloggers and new media close the process by incorrectly citing the media's take on the politicians' understanding of the original findings. At each stage in this process, estimates of victims go up, up, up.

The end result is this: a Department of Justice study found 34 women who claimed to have been raped over a seven month period out of a total of 4,446 women surveyed. Applying their own etic version of "rape", the researchers more than doubled this number to 74. By including attempted rapes, the number was pushed to 123. Then, by presuming that this rate is stable for the entire five year period of a woman's college career, it was reported that 25% of all college women will be raped or suffer an attempted rape during their school years. Desperate for "back-to-school" scare stories, CBS picks this up and  broadcasts it to the four winds as "new research" when, in fact, it's the same old research of ten years ago in a new wrapper. Finally, the Huffington Post reports CBS' coverage and drops the "attempted rape".

Boom: a political meme is born: 25% of American female college grads are rape victims.

Sarah Palin ganha premiação de pior mãe da América

All content here is owned by Mrs. Betty Bowers. My use and translation of her material is not intended to be a challenge if ownership, but a homage.

Betty Bowers, também conhecida como "A Melhor Cristã da América", premia a Sarah Palin com o trofeu para a pior mãe da América, no jantar anual da B.I.T.C.H. (Bringing Integrity To Christian Homemakers).

Confere: "Sarah Palin Wins Worst Mother in America Award".

Segue abaixo a minha tradução bruta desse momento histórico...


BETTY BOWERS: [bafafá] Quieta, senhoras. [tiros] Guarde o revolver!

 Boa noite, donas de casa cristões verdadeiras e bemvindas aos prémios B.I.T.C.H. para a "Pior Mãe na América", apoiado por Rifles Remington e Xanax!

Meninas, foi uma corrida competitiva esse ano e muitas figurões públicas – e até algumas pessoas sem shows de realidade – têm se relutado de cotovelo para essa premiação. Mas o prêmio foi assegurado pelas notícias de que Willow Palin está continuando a tradição baixa-calão de sua família de bebida e de investigações policiais abafadas!

(Tem algumas perdedoras amargas lá na mesa três que afirmam que nossa prestigiada não é a pior mãe da America. Bem, amenos que Dina Lohan consegue se capotar por uma overdose antes da chegada da sobremesa...)

DINA LOHAN: [Palavra não cristão]-se! [cheirada]
BETTY: Nossa! Embora nossa premiada talvez seja somente a quarta ou quinta pior mãe na América, ela ganha nosso trofeu com honra e mérito pelo fato que seus discursos sobre ser mãe não tiveram nada a ver com sua práticas.

Como uma ex-amiga da ex-Patsy Ramsey, pode ter confiança em mim: conheço mãe podre. Então é com muitíssmo prazer que dou o prêmio e tiara para “A PIOR MÃE NA AMÉRICA” para aquela emergente-política e ensaista-de-alguel, Sarah Palin.

Sarah, sua determinação incansável para ignorar sua família (enquando você não está cuidadosamente a explorando) é inspiração para todos os figurões públicos egoístas que são forçados a fingir que amam seus entes queridos. Enquando você se ausentou de sua casarão em Alasca fazendo – e dizendo – absolutamente qualquer coisa para atrair atenção (ou dólares) suas crianças piradas ficaram absolutamente selvagens, uma atrás da outra, embriagando-se em festas e cheirando cocaina. Você sabe o que dizem: sempre tem menos neve em Alasca quando as crianças Palin estão por aí!

E desde que a ganhadora deste prémio está nós cobrando $50,000 dólares por hora para estar presente para esta honra...

SARAH PALIN: Cadê a porra de minha premiação?

BETTY: ...realmente não temos tempo para detalhar por inteiro a amplitude de seu abondono doméstico, mas vamos dar uma olhada nos pontos altos, neh?

[Prop # 1 "O Primeiro Cara"]: Sarah, antes que John McCain amarrou seu burro a uma estrela cadente, aquela famosa piscada sua de cocote já era um convite para participar num verbo, soletrado com quatro letras (que não são, por sinal, V-O-T-E). Você não só teve sexo antes do casamento com seu marido futuro [1º filho concebido um mês antes do casamento], você tambem o traiu com seu parceiro de negócios. E como vai a sua vida de vagabunda e piranha, Sarah?

[Prop # 2 "Track"]: Sempre estamos ouvindo falar que seu filho mais velho, Track, está no excercito, fato que você esfrega constantemente em nossas caras através daquela brochinha estrelhada que você use em todos os lugares – igualzinho a uma fanzoca de Justin Beiber com uma crachá laminada para o camarim. Mas nunca ouvimos falar de porque seu filho está servindo o país: é porque ele foi servido – com um mandato de preso, no colégio. Sim, o marginalzinho foi mandado ao Iraque como punição pública após de ter roubado uma garrafa de vodka de uma loja de bebidas e ter vandalizado 44 onibus escolares, cortando os cabos da embriagem dos veículos que levem os filhos de seus vizinhos à escola! Que heróico!

Talvez ele estava chapado por causa de toda aquela cocaina e oxycotin que cheirou? Afinal das contas, as crianças não precisam de um sistema de saúde pública quando carregam farmácias inteiras em suas mochilas!

[Prop # 3 "Bristol"] Como todos sabemos, você e sua filha virgem-nascida-de-novo Bristol adoraram transar antes do casamento – até o momento em que foram forçadas a se posicionar contra. Você até deixou Bristol dormir em sua casa com Levi Johnson. E qual foi sua resposta maternal previsível quando você descobriu que se engravidou? Você mandou a piranhinha para viver com parentes, para que o comportamento dela não refletisse negativamente em suas ambições políticas. A única “abstinência” em que você acredite, Sarah, é de absterse de ser mãe.

[Prop # 4 "Willow"] E parabens! O Willow é agora sua 3ª criança a ser presa. Enquando você estava andando por ai em sua busca narcissicista para a atenção pública, Willow estava invadindo casas fechadas para organziar festas de sexo e bebida com seus coleguinhos de colégio. Sarah, já posso ver a sala de estar de sua casa, cheia de fotografias polícias de suas crianças em quadros bonitos e caros de Olan Mills!

[Prop # 5 Trig"] Presumindo ilogicamente que o Trig é de fato seu filho, após do início de seu parto na gravidez problemática, o que é que você fez? Você deu uma palestra em Texas e viajou 9 horas num avião apertado, sem médico! Honestamente, Sarah, e você afirma que você é anti-aborto? Eu tenho visto viciadas em craque que demonstraram mais preocupação e carinho para seus filhos não-nascidos.

[Prop # 6 AKA "A bandeira americana"] É isto, meu bem: você pode se embrulhar em bandeiras e nos peles de criaturas ameaçadas de extinção, pode se virar papagaia de pirata do Tea Party e incentivar hordas de racistas fulminantes e semi-alfabetos a tentar votar com balas, mas você não pode gerenciar uma casa ordinária, muito menos uma Casa Branca. Para dizer a verdade, existem puteiros que são gerenciados com mais decoro e com menos visitas da polícia!

Então é meu prazer aceitar essa premiação para "A Pior Mãe da América" em nome da Sarah Palin, que está lá sentada nos fundos, na mesa 17. Não, não se levanta, meu bem.

SARAH: Ninguém bota uma baracuda de escanteio!

BETTY: Taffy, bala nela.

SARAH: Insisto naquela tal da liberdade de expressão!

BETTY: Querida, quando você cobra $200 dólares para cada palavra mal-escolhida, seu speech não é nada free. Seguranças, pega nela e confiram que não está roubando os talhares. Ela pode fazer seu discurso de agradecimento mais tarde... após de levar os pratos sujos à cozinha.

Que diversão. Taffy, querida, vamos rezar para riquezas.

Gringo Gear: The Kick-Ass Kindle

by Thaddeus

 XKCD rightly compares the Kindle to another famous electronic book...

This is a new feature here at O Mangue: reviews of products which make gringo life that much easier.

When I first came to Brazil in 1984, I hit a wall I hadn't anticipated. I am a book worm. A serious bookworm. I go through two or three books a week. Not all these books are high-minded texts: in fact, most of them are pulp fiction. But if I don't have reading material of some sort on me all the time, I start getting jumpy.

So back in 1984, when I didn't yet know how to read Portuguese, I rapidly ran through all the books I had brought with me. At the time, I was living in Riberão Preto and this was long before anyone had invented the term "globalization". There was one English-language book outlet in Riberão - at the mall - and it had about 50 books, all on sale for the equivalent of 6 times their American price. Even so, I was desperate. By the time a year had passed in Ribeirão (and I had learned enough Portuguese to read stuff like Feliz Ano Velho and A Queda para o Alto), I had bought pretty much everything in that store that I could stomach and had read through The Rise and Fall of The Third Reich four or five times. Things got so bad that every time I left Ribeirão to visit another city, I'd spend my first day searching for English-language book stores.

When I came back to Brazil in 1990, things hadn't changed much. In fact, I got my first job in Brazil, working for Devir Livraria, as a direct result of an all-weekend English book quest in São Paulo. One of the best perks at Devir was being allowed to order my own reading material (and getting a 20% discount to boot).

A pity that Amazon.com's Kindle didn't exist back then. God knows how my life would have been different.

As most Americans reading this probably know, the Kindle is Amazon.com's e-book reader. I was an early adaptor, buying my first one back in early 2008. I'm now on my third.

There are several book readers on the market and the Kindle is the only one I've used so far. I have no wish to change to something else for two reasons: the device's electronic paper screen and the fact that it's backed up by Amazon.com's distribution empire.

For those who've not yet seen a Kindle, it's a plastic device about the size and weight of a large paperback. You read books on a grey and black electronic paper screen. This is crucial: electronic paper emits no light and the words are physically present. This means that the experience of reading is exactly as if one were reading printed text: no headaches from looking at LEDs for hours on end.

The Kindle 2 in all its plastic glory. A newer version called the DX is also available.

You turn pages by pressing on buttons at the side of the device. Pages flip slightly slower than with a regular book, but not enough to bother me - and I'm a fast reader. The Kindle also allows you to turn the corner of virtual pages to mark places in the text as well as write notes in virtual "margins". Text can also be highlighted. Both notes and highlights go to a .txt file where they can later be downloaded directly to your computer. The Kindle also allows you to search text - not only in a book, but in your whole virtual library. The device comes with a built-in 3G system that allows you to buy and download books from Amazon.com at will. In the first editions of the Kindle, this feature was blocked in Brazil. In my new second edition machine, however, it's fully operative. Last Friday, in fact, I sat down next to the Pará River in Belém, at the mouth of the Amazon, and downloaded three books while waiting for my breaded filhote. Sure, Belém's not the middle of the rainforest, but when I recall scrambling to find English-language reading material in 1980s Brazil... Well, the Kindle's nothing short of miraculous to me.

Though the Kindle supposedly only reads proprietor-format Amazon.com texts, there are now plenty of programs on the 'net which allow you to freely transcribe texts back and forth between various other formats. I now routinely translate colleagues' Word and PDF papers into Kindle format and read them virtually. It saves time and paper.

The best thing about the Kindle, however, is that it allows you to port virtual libraries with no effort at all. Last winter, Ana and I took over 50 books along with us on our vacation to Visconde de Mauá.

In terms of user-friendliness, it took me about two hours of reading to be able to completely ignore the fact that I was not reading a traditional book. The interface is VERY intuitive and I'd be willing to bet that even such confirmed technophobes as my 67-year-old mother could use the device with little difficulty.


The Kindle does have a few downsides, however...

In the first place, it isn't very good for academic work where one needs to be constantly zipping back and forth in a text. It has no page numbers (only location markers) and this also makes attributing quotes difficult. Finally, of course, not all texts have been digitalized (though this is something that's rapidly going to change with the growing popularity of digital reading devices), so you might find that what you need isn't available.

For light and entertainment-based reading - as well as a portable reference library - the Kindle is fantastic. For serious academics, I think we're probbly never going to get completely away from paper.

If you're a gringo or an immigrant far from home, however, and you love reading, investing in a device of this sort is an absolute must.

 And for those of you who are unscrupilous criminals, entire collections literature can be found for the Kindle, for free, at The Pirate Bay. But we here at O Mangue would never wish to be seen as supporting file piracy, so please don't go there. Oh, and ask yourself "What Would Jesus Do?" (always presuming, of course, that Jesus wanted to get ahold of some high-quality Jenna Jameson porn without paying for it...)