title: Youth, identity, and homosexuality: the changing shape of sexual life in contemporary Brazil.
abstract: This essay examines the relationship between homosexuality and adolescence in contemporary Brazil, focusing on a distinction between two rather different systems of sexual meanings that have structured the experience of same-sex relations: a traditional model of the sexual universe that continues to dominate sexual life in rural areas, and a more modern set of notions that has become increasingly important in the cities. It examines the ways in which these rather different systems have affected the experience of same-sex desires and practices during youth or adolescence, and suggests some of the ways in which the emergence of a gay subculture in urban Brazil has transformed the range of sexual possibilities and choices currently available to young men and women.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley 94720.
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Parker
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000293:Adolescent; D001938:Brazil; D005260:Female; D005783:Gender Identity; D006716:Homosexuality / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D007062:Identification, Psychological; D008297:Male; D011606:Psychosexual Development; D012725:Sexual Behavior; D012922:Social Change