Violence and Desire in Brazilian Lesbian Relationships

In Violence and Desire in Brazilian Lesbian Relationships, Allen examines the lives of Brazilian women in same-sex relationships. This examination contributes to interdisciplinary discussions of female same-sex sexuality, violence, race, and citizenship. Using fifteen months of ethnographic fieldwork, primarily with Afro-Brazilian women in the city of Salvador da Bahia, Allen argues that Brazilian lesbian women reject Brazilian cultural norms that encourage male domination and female submission through their engagement in romantic relationships with each other. At the same time Allen claims lesbian women also reproduce Brazilian cultural ideals that associate passion, intensity, and power with physical dominance through their engagement in infidelity and intimate partner violence. The book demonstrates that lesbian women are nonetheless marginalized as Brazilian citizens through widespread social and political invisibility despite these apparent displays of masculinized power.

"Delving into the complex lives of lesbians from all social classes living in Salvador, Bahia, a city rich with Afro-Brazilian traditions, Allen tackles the controversial topic of intimate partner violence. Her sophisticated and meticulous research reveals that this violence is often triggered by feelings of jealousy and acts of infidelity that are closely intertwined with notions of race, gender, sexuality, heteronomativity, and homophobia, all of which significantly shape the everyday lives of the women she studies." - James N. Green, Carlos Manuel Céspedes Professor of Latin American History, Brown University, USA

"This book courageously takes on a subject that we would rather ignore, since it does not fit comfortably into dominant notions of gendered and sexualized femininity. Violence and Desire in Brazilian Lesbian Relationships foregrounds interpersonal violence between lesbians or intendidas in Salvador de Bahia, and the local 'moral world' that they inhabit. Allen deftly paints a portrait of these phantasmal citizens, lodged in a culture of invisibility, both embodying and breaking through cultural ideologies." - Gloria Wekker, Professor Emeritus of Gender and Ethnicity, University of Utrecht, the Netherlands, and author of The Politics of Passion (2006).

Andrea Stevenson Allen is Lecturer in the Department of Women's Studies and Feminist Research at the University of Western Ontario, Canada.