The infantilisation of white women: a device of race, gender and class in the construction of subjectivities

dispositivo de raça, gênero e classe na construção de subjetividades

Abstract

This article seeks to discuss the construction of subjectivity of white women as infantilized. For this, we make use of Autoethnography as a method that allows us to bring our experiences of black women in interaction with the former, because constructed as the Other of white women, we realize how much we are "adultized" from an early age, placed in the relationship with them as their advisors, caregivers, listeners and support, material and emotional. The theoretical framework to weave our reflections and support our arguments is given, above all, by the studies on Racial Relations and Black Feminist Theory.  Black feminists show the intersection in the forms of oppression and the impacts on subjectivities and, consequently, on the way of being and being in the world. Women do not share the same gender condition, since this marker alone cannot explain the differences in our existences. Race and class distance us, sometimes even from the idea of gender, which, as Angela Davis says, has been denied to us when they want to appropriate our labour, equating us to the labour force of black men or animalising us. White women occupy a symbolic and structural place, which guarantees them differentiated forms of treatment such as "paparization" and infantilization.