The use of intersectionality in criminology

Abstract

https://doi.org/10.1590/2179-8966/2023/69792i

This article aims to demonstrate that the use of intersectionality, as an analytical, political
and social strategy, is compatible with a critical and radical reading of criminology,
considering LGBT issues as a central point of the implications of violence and vulnerability.
Intersectionality is used as a strategy for contemporary criminological thinking, given its
analytical potential regarding the intersection of power systems and the production of
inequalities. The course of reflections, which has LGBTphobic violence as a starting point,
begins with a brief exposition of Brazilian data on homotransphobia and its relations with
the intersectional perspective. It then justifies the choice of Patricia Hill Collins and her
approach to intersectionality as a critical social theory. It advances the analysis of
intersectional thinking as a necessary strategy for contemporary criminological criticism,
by repositioning reflections on vulnerability, especially regarding LGBT debates. The
results of these discussions leave open possibilities for a paradigm shift in Brazilian critical
criminological thinking, which has become accustomed to working with social markers of
difference in a generic or isolationist bias, a perspective that can be overcome with the
intersectional criminology proposed by Hillary Potter.

Keywords: Intersectionality; Criminology; Vulnerability; Social markers of difference;
Lgbtphobia.