Day 5| Intersectionality and Afrofeminisms, two keys to dismantle sexist violence

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Lirians Gordillo Pineapple

SemMéxico/SEMlac, Havana, Cuba, November 29, 2022.- Little by little, the intersectional perspective is incorporated into the social analysis and approach to sexist violence in Cuba. This push has as protagonists Afrofeminists from the academy, community spaces, cyberactivists, entrepreneurs, artists and creators.

In her more than 30 years of work and activism, the social psychologist Norma Rita Guillard Limonta has been able to verify the different forms of oppression that intersect in black, lesbian, transgender women or those living with HIV. If you add to these personal characteristics being a migrant, poor, living with a disability, being a rural woman or an older adult, then the degree of oppression increases.

The also president of the Section of Identities and Diversity in Social Communication (Seres) of the Cuban Society of Psychology warns about the subjective impact of mistreatment that even comes from the cradle, since the hegemonic patterns have been installed culturally and are reproduced in family ties and practices.

Guillard Limonta is part of the board of directors of the Cuban Network of Afro-descendant Women, in its Cuban chapter, and from activism she also identifies essential contributions to address gender violence in the country.

Why is the intersectional analysis of violence against women and girls important?

There are many intersections that occur in an act of gender violence, so an analysis that includes all the realities that are mediating is essential.

An analysis with an intersectional approach implies, from the outset, a search for the origins of inequality, injustice and, above all, knowing where the privileges of holding power lie. It is about the need to confront the hegemonic paradigm of the white, heterosexual man, who lives as if he had a social passport that allows him to always move as owner and master.

This analysis is like a magnifying glass that helps to visualize different forms of subordination of which we humans, women, girls, and even more black and indigenous women, have been victims.

It allows us to open ourselves to the search for a claim and rescue of people evaluated as inferior, breaking schemes that for years have been promoted as a form of violence by subordination and that will lead us to dismantle, little by little, a whole history of domination.

There have been many oppressions that have traversed us since slavery, in which gender, class, race and sexuality interact, provoking in one way or another the aggressions and acts of violence. Therefore, it is time to wake up and, in this sense, intersectional analysis is being very useful, a great ally, hence its importance.

What would you recommend to incorporate this position in the responses to gender violence?

The intersectionality theory works as an emerging approach and offers a critical vision of aspects that are generally kept invisible, by allowing inequalities to be identified and studied.

It is essential to locate the intersectional analysis in a more weighted place, to give answers to gender violence, so it must be included in public policies.

Intersectionality helps more precisely to recognize the affectations, including all the different situations that affect the problems of each woman or man, thus helping political actions in a multidimensional way and from the search for equity.

Another way of incorporating it into the analyzes is by connecting the structural bases of the sexist, racist and classist constructions; Analyzing them in their social context is how they impact the victims and their ability to recognize the situations of oppression that surround them.

When intersectional analysis is used in violence, privileges and exclusions can be included as variables, recognizing inequalities that are not always so clear, because they are invisible.

One more piece of advice would be to adopt the social sciences as a perspective of analysis, and in particular psychology, since it constitutes an analytical tool to understand more specifically how the different systems of oppression are articulated and connected in a given context and affect the lives of people.

How much are Cuban Afrofeminisms contributing to the intersectional vision of discrimination as a form of gender violence?

Cuban Afrofeminisms are breaking schemes, showing a great impulse to face this history of domination and with actions that help us to decolonize the mind.

There are already several independent spaces, declared or not declared as Afro-feminists and anti-racists, that face the recognition of their history as black people, from an early age; that identify the different forms of discrimination and racism that, in not a few cases, place them in situations of exclusion and seek a way to deal with it.

In Cuba there are several projects and spaces dedicated to providing training on issues that make historical domination, oppression and inequalities visible. The empowerment workshops in these spaces have made it possible to recognize that women from disadvantaged areas can undertake and improve their economy. The increase in self-esteem, promoted in these sorority meetings, becomes a strength for empowerment, family support and incorporation into social development.

Some projects work on the image and promotion of hairstyles and advice on how to look and enjoy racial identity, based on the recognition that from birth they experience derogatory treatment and devaluation due to their skin color, hair type, phenotypic traits such as the nose, the mouth and the objectification of the body.

In the workshops with the families, popular education is used to dismantle these prejudices and stereotypes that emerge in phrases such as: “she came out black like her grandmother”, “there is no one to comb that hair”, “what kind of bemba did she get” , “what a wider ñata” or “how pretty the girl, but she took out your dad’s ñata”.

These phrases mark, from a very early age, the construction of subjectivity; but now, with greater awareness, it is possible to influence family education and have tools for when other obstacles arise outside the home.

These spaces also seek to discuss the lack of a non-racist referent in the family, the limitations of the educational system or the socio-community environment that serves as a protective and compensating factor for confronting racist stereotypes and prejudices.

One of the tasks of the Cuban Network of Afro-Latin American, Afro-Caribbean and Diaspora Women, in its Cuban chapter, is to search for and support those anti-racist spaces, to make visible the violence that living in a labeled racist culture implies, where fear of black is still a reality. In addition, work is being done on an attempt to establish an observatory that allows confronting discrimination in the media, both in soap operas and in any other communication product.

The approach, from Psychology, on the importance and rescue of spirituality and the strength of the values ​​provided by the codes inherited from African and indigenous cultures, which have traditionally been silenced, is pending.

Among the steps forward, the Cuban Afrofeminist Articulation was recently created, seeking to make alliances with all those groups, spaces and projects that exist and gain strength to confront violence and discrimination in any of its facets.

Efforts continue to grow with the support of the National Program against Racism and Discrimination, in addition to the fact that there is a government commission that brings together and debates these issues at the country level. But, despite some achievements, much remains to be done to achieve more effective results in relation to violence and racism, there is a need to raise awareness in all spaces.

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