Como diferentes plataformas digitais têm (re)produzido as lesbianidades e sapatonices? Uma análise sobre a colonialidade de dados nos processos de plataformização de gênero e sexualidades

Abstract

This research maps the various ways in which digital platforms have operated in the (re)production of lesbian identities and “sapatonices” (a Brazilian Portuguese term referring to lesbian expressions and subjectivities), through documentation that accounts for how different platforms (re)produce lesbophobia while simultaneously helping to provide new notions, reinscriptions, and rearticulations of lesbian existence. To this end, the study also evaluates how processes of data coloniality and technological coloniality contribute to the intensification of semiotic-material discrimination against lesbians. The research addresses the impact of these processes on lesbians through the outputs of platforms originating in Silicon Valley and operating in Latin American countries, with an emphasis on Brazil, focusing specifically on Instagram, ChatGPT, and Google Search. These platforms were selected based on incidents and controversies reported by users, who denounced them as exhibiting lesbophobic expressions embedded in their structures. Through a theoretical framework grounded in decolonial perspectives (Anzaldúa, 2021; Lugones, 2014; Ricaurte, 2019; Quijano, 2000; Mignolo, 2014) and discussions on algorithmic bias (Buolamwini & Raji, 2019; Bucher, 2018; Noble, 2018; Silva, 2019, 2020a, 2020b, 2022), this study analyzes the entanglement between algorithmic bias and the coloniality of bodies, data, and platforms from the perspective of lesbian identities and “sapatonices”. Thus, the research also seeks to understand how algorithms and other agencies involved in digital platforms contribute to the dispositifs of sexuality and gender (Foucault, 2013).