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Cadernos de Pesquisa

versión impresa ISSN 0100-1574versión On-line ISSN 1980-5314

Cad. Pesqui. vol.52  São Paulo  2022  Epub 30-Mar-2022

https://doi.org/10.1590/198053148539 

HIGHER EDUCATION, PROFESSIONS, WORK

CONFLICTS AND MEDIATIONS: ALTERITY IN THE CONTEXT OF STUDENT FEMINISM

Vanessa Soares de CastroI 
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9320-3605

Adriane RosoII 
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7471-133X

Camila dos Santos GonçalvesIII 
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0655-8895

IInstituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia do Rio Grande do Sul (IFRS), Ibirubá (RS), Brasil; vanessascastro90@gmail.com

IIUniversidade Federal de Santa Maria (UFSM), Santa Maria (RS), Brasil; adriane.roso@ufsm.br

IIIUniversidade Federal de Santa Maria (UFSM), Santa Maria (RS), Brasil; camila.gon.79@gmail.com


Abstract

In this article, we reflect on the role of alterity in the construction of the activism of a student feminist collective inserted into a federal education institution. It is a participatory study, whose corpus of analysis consists of a field diary, documentary analysis and a conversation group with the participants. The study is in the field of Social Psychology, on the Theory of Social Representations and the Theory of Active Minorities, in dialogue with feminist theorists. We observed that the relationships of alterity form a key point in the creation and performance of the feminist collective participating in the school environment. We concluded that the performance of young women as an active minority played a central role for the collective to achieve its objectives and strengthen its identification with feminism.

Key words: ALTERITY; SOCIAL CONFLICT; SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: EDUCATION; SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

Resumo

Neste artigo, refletimos sobre a função da alteridade na construção do ativismo de um coletivo feminista estudantil inserido em uma instituição federal de educação. Trata-se de uma pesquisa participante, cujo corpus de análise é constituído por diário de campo, análise documental e roda de conversa. A pesquisa situa-se no campo da Psicologia Social, sustentando-se na Teoria das Representações Sociais e na Teoria das Minorias Ativas, em conversa com teóricas feministas. Observamos que as relações de alteridade formam um ponto nevrálgico na criação e atuação do coletivo feminista participante no ambiente escolar. Concluímos que a atuação das jovens enquanto uma minoria ativa cumpriu papel central para que o coletivo alcançasse seus objetivos e fortalecesse sua identificação com o feminismo.

Palavras-Chave: ALTERIDADE; CONFLITO SOCIAL; MOVIMENTOS SOCIAIS: EDUCAÇÃO; PSICOLOGIA SOCIAL

Resumen

En este artículo reflexionamos sobre el papel de la alteridad en la construcción del activismo de un colectivo feminista estudiantil insertado en una institución educativa federal. Se trata de una investigación participativa, cuyo corpus de análisis consistió en un diario de campo, análisis documental y conversación con los participantes. La investigación se ubica en el campo de la Psicología Social en conversación con teóricas feministas. Observamos que las relaciones de alteridad forman un punto clave en la creación y desempeño del colectivo feminista participante. Concluimos que el desempeño de las jóvenes como minoría activa jugó un papel central para que el colectivo haya logrado sus objetivos y fortalecido su identificación con el feminismo.

Palabras-clave: ALTERIDAD; CONFLICTO SOCIAL; MOVIMIENTOS SOCIALES: EDUCACIÓN; PSICOLOGÍA SOCIAL

Résumé

Cet article analyse le rôle de l’altérité dans la construction du militantisme d’un collectif féministe universitaire dans une institution fédérale d’enseignement. Il s’agit d’une recherche participative, dont le corpus d’analyse est composé d’un journal de bord, d’analyse documentaire et de cercles de conversation. La recherche se situe dans le champ de la Psychologie Sociale et s’appuie sur la théorie des représentations sociales ainsi que sur celle des minorités actives, en dialogue avec des théoriciennes féministes. Les relations d’altérité constituent un point névralgique de la création du collectif féministe et de ses interventions en milieu scolaire et en conclusion les actions de ces jeunes femmes en tant que minorité active ont joué un rôle central pour que le collectif atteigne ses objectifs et renforce son identification au féminisme.

Key words: ALTÉRITÉ; CONFLIT SOCIAL; MOUVEMENTS SOCIAUX: ÉDUCATION; PSYCHOLOGIE SOCIALE

The last few years have shown a growth of interest in some social issues, especially among young people. Between 2015 and 2017, the search for the term “feminism” on Google grew 200% (Google, 2017). Many schools witnessed high school students including issues such as female empowerment, harassment and sexism in their daily lives, articulating mobilizations inspired by feminism, such as demands for egalitarian ways of dressing between male and female students (Fraga, 2016; Torres, 2018) and protests against lists that objectify female students (Melo, 2019). This remarkable inclusion of young women in feminism, inside and outside the school environment, can be understood as part of the phenomenon described by Alvarez (2014) as a moment of sidestreaming, that is, of horizontal flow of feminist discourses and practices, which multiply, occupying the most diverse social, cultural and political spaces.

Seeking to observe how this spread of feminist movements takes place, especially within a school context, we carried out a research with a feminist collective called Movimento Ovelhas Negras (the Black Sheep Movement), formed mainly by female students from the Integrated High School modality of a Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology (IF), located in the countryside of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. It is a movement of young people who took feminist agendas into a technical school in the countryside of their state. Among its motivations, we can find the effervescent mobilization of online discussions, on social networks, blogs and discussion forums. And, still taking into consideration, the feeling of collectivity due to the growing response of other student groups across the country in defense of feminism. The investigation aimed to understand the interconnections between the meanings of feminism circulating in the participating collective and the ways in which its members seek to promote changes in daily school life.

In this article, we reflect specifically on the role of alterity in the construction of activism of the collective in question, which is a key concept to understand the interplay of relations of power and domination observed in the researched reality. Alterity, as Flickinger explains it (2018, p. 139), is “a relationship that is qualified by the existential involvement of people”, whose origins are in the Latin term that designates “the perception of the other as an alter of myself”. This is a relationship that involves an “other”, different from an “I”, who comes to meet me and, in doing so, forces me to take a stand in front of him/her, to react to him/her.

Otherness has been a theoretical category of analysis for different fields of knowledge, especially in anthropology, being also central to social psychology (Arruda, 1998). In this field of knowledge, we work specifically with the Social Representations Theory (SRT), which is based on alterity relations. At the heart of this theory is the conception that the Self (Ego) and the Other (Alter) are interdependent, both building together the social reality, the object of knowledge, forming the Ego-Alter-object triad (Marková, 2017). This “other”, which is referred to by SRT, can be an individual, a group, a society, a certain culture; on the other hand, the “object” is understood as the world or symbols/representations of the world (Marková, 2000). The Ego and the Alter communicate, so that the Alter intervenes in the relationship between the Ego and the object of social knowledge, building and rebuilding this object in a dialogical process, socially and historically marked, through creativity and innovations produced by people (Jodelet, 1998; Marková, 2000). In this triad, all the elements act together, in constant tension, building and modifying each other, in a continuous interrelationship with each other and with the historical, cultural and political context in which they inserted. That is, not only the object, but also the Self and the ‘Other’ are modified in the relationship.

Furthermore, otherness involves a simultaneous process of construction and exclusion (Jodelet, 1998). Construction, insofar as the Self tries to define what it is; exclusion, as it tries to define what is not, as well as what the Other is. Jodelet (1998) says that by “designating the character of the other, the notion of otherness is always placed in counterpoint: ‘not me’ of an ‘I’, ‘another’ of the ‘same’” (p. 48). Thus, from relations of alterity, social subjects and collectivities build their identities, representations about themselves and countless others, identifying characteristics, practices, customs that define them and differentiate them from others. However, as this Self “is involved with the other, it becomes too complicated to try to surround and limit only what belongs to the Self, since it was dynamically constructed in the relationship with an other” (Roso et al., 2015, p. 137). This construction movement, due to its fluid and ramified nature, provokes changes in the relationships themselves, in people’s lives and in communities. Thus, urging changes in social relationships. It is this relationship that enables the construction of meanings about our ways of living, as well as about the other and about ourselves (Roso et al., 2015).

Traditionally, however, psychology has focused its attention on how social majorities create norms and place their views and opinions in the public space and how minorities are supposed to just submit to those. In other words, the majorities, that is, the groups that conveyed dominant, mostly accepted points of view, were taken as the only ones capable of creating and transforming social reality. This functionalist model of social influence, which views it unilaterally, is criticized by Serge Moscovici in his Active Minorities Theory (AMT), in which he assumes “the task of measuring the innovative effect of a minority within a group, by means of conflict with the majority, and offers an analysis of the role of active minorities that bring innovations to social groups” (Rodrigues, 2018, p. 8). AMT will draw attention to the independence of minorities, their non-compliance and their potential to transform social relations, based on the concept that each individual or subgroup of society is, at the same time, a source and receiver of influence, with all acting on each other (Moscovici, 2011).

All individuals and subgroups, whether they are a majority or minority, will be involved in the process of constant co-construction of the world, making it impossible to separate and fragment the reception and emission of influence (Moscovici, 2011). Thus, a majority, when trying to impose their views of the world on a minority, will, on the other hand, suffer pressure from the minority to understand and accept their conceptions of the world (Hernandez & Freitas, 2017). These majority and minority groups, then, confront each other in the public space, building the world and themselves not only from their own eyes, but also from the gaze of one another (Jovchelovitch, 1995), which means, they transform themselves and the world also through alterity.

The relationships between social minorities and majorities as part of the Self-Other-object triad, however, are also marked by the relations of power and domination that act in the social arena in which the subjects are inserted. The possibilities of exerting influence (power) and the capacity for domination (violence) will be delimited both by the objective conditions of the subjects, and by the relationships between the circulating social representations - in the case analyzed here, representations of the feminine, of feminism itself, of school, of social movement etc. The power relations that circulate in the public space provoke hegemonic and counter-hegemonic representations to come into conflict. In this process, according to Jovchelovitch (2008), they can either compete with each other or interpenetrate and form new representations, or even establish relations of domination, which contribute to the permanence of hegemonic social representations. This happens because someone, or a group of people, forces their will, desires and interests on an ‘Other’ or several Others. In this type of relationship, the dominator uses the conflict to place the Other in the position of inferiority and of a subject without desires. However, the Other has the possibility of resisting and coming into conflict with the relationship of domination, even if its (re)action may not be recognized or even suffer processes of erasure, delegitimization or even criminalization.

In view of these social and intergroup processes exposed so far, we consider that the experiences of feminist students and activists - their relations of conflict, confrontation, mediation and other kinds - constitute fruitful material for reflecting on what feminist practices provoke in people and in communities and how they are capable of engendering transformations, especially in the school environment. In this study, the question that drives our reflections is: how are these young women identified as a feminist collective able to exert influence within a school context? Our research adds to the existing efforts to make the experiences of minorities visible and show how they activate their knowledge to transform themselves, others and the world. We also want, through this study, to articulate feminist theories with SRT, a need already signaled by Angela Arruda (2002), and with AMT, in addition to bringing together two theories created by the same author, Serge Moscovici, but which are both distinct, temporally, and in its object of analysis.

Research procedures

The study presented here expands discussions present in the master’s thesis called Movimentos feministas, minorias ativas (Feminist movements, active minorities): percurso de um coletivo de estudantes brasileiras do Ensino Médio Integrado (the trajectory of a collective of Brazilian students from the Integrated High School System), which is part of the larger project named “Vidas precárias no cibermundo - estudos sobre violências, poder e interseccionalidade nos sistemas hierárquicos” (Precarious lives in the cyber world - studies on violence, power and intersectionality in hierarchical systems). The research was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM) and follows all the principles and guidelines of ethical regulations for research with human beings.

Those who participated in the research are the current and former students from a campus of a Federal Institution of Education, Science and Technology (IF) in a municipality located in the countryside of the state of Rio Grande do Sul with about 20 thousand inhabitants, in a microregion strongly marked by agricultural activity, mainly involving soy production, and also the metalworking industry. The participating collective calls itself Movimento Ovelhas Negras. It was formed in 2016 by a group of students from a 3rd year class of the Integrated High School System - a teaching modality in which regular high school education is carried out jointly and inseparably from professional technical training.

The approach towards the collective was made by the first author of the article, who works as a psychologist at the institution where it was created. The collective is made up only of female students, with men as external supporters and participants. Seventeen students participated in the research, being 12 students from the institution at the time of the research and five graduates. The field research took place between 2017 and 2018. In order to be able to more clearly demarcate the collective and its characteristics, it is important to point out that, in this period, the group was mostly composed of white, middle-class young people, aged between 15 and 20 years old, residing in the urban and central area of the municipality.

The investigation with the Movimento Ovelhas Negras was a participatory research. Carlos Rodrigues Brandão (2006) points to participatory research as a dialogical learning instrument, part of a broader process of construction of popular knowledge and part of the trajectory of empowerment of social movements, together with popular education. Participatory research can be based on different theoretical foundations and styles of knowledge construction, making use of different techniques and methods, as long as they allow for dialogue, creating spaces for debate (Brandão, 2006; Silva, 2006). The research was developed through different methods: participant observation, document analysis and conducting a conversation circle in order to systematize the analyzed experiences.

The trajectory in the research field consisted of the participation of the first author in meetings and actions promoted by the collective, emphasizing the observation of events, dialogues and interactions in their daily lives. This route was registered in a field diary, also containing images, photographs and some writings of the participants, registered with their permission. The document analysis consisted of examining written materials (posts on social networks, cell phone messages, posters and other materials), both produced by the members of the collective and by other subjects, but that were related to the collective.

A conversation round was held to systematize experiences based on Oscar Jara Holliday’s (2006) proposal, who describes it as a process that allows understanding the experience to improve practice. This systematization makes it possible to share the experiences and teachings of the collective/group in question with others alike, and enriches the theoretical debate, as it offers a dialogue between theory and practice. So as to carry out this systematization, a meeting was proposed, in the form of a conversation round, with members and former members of the collective to recover the history of the group’s experiences, ordering its elements, how they happened and how they were experienced and perceived by the collective as a whole. This meeting was recorded and transcribed, in order to facilitate discursive analyses. The names used in the extracts from the speeches given, which will be presented below, are fictitious, in order to protect the identity of the interlocutors.

Results and discussion

The educational process, as Flickinger (2018, p. 148) puts it, requires the encounter with the other, the “surrender to the challenging presence of the other”. As much as the author refers specifically to the role of the teacher/professor, it is clear that each and every subject who participates in the educational process is involved in this meeting process. What we observed in the field and what we will try to discuss here is how the placement of the element of feminist activism by young students is positioned in this network of alterity relations in the school environment. The institutional setting in the initial period of the collective’s performance had few discussions about gender and sexual diversity in an organized way, limited to specific interventions made by some teachers/professors in the classroom. The Centers for Studies and Research in Gender and Sexuality (NEPGS), which address these themes, were only officially regulated in 2017 at the institution. On the campus in question, the nucleus started activities shy of internal discussions in 2016 and, with feedback from the students’ movements, was able to hold events and open conversation rounds at the end of the year. Based on this, in later years, events and actions began to be held annually, addressing feminism, gender, LGBTphobia, among other topics. It is in this scenario that we will explore how alterity takes place in the relationship with the antagonists of feminism, and then address the dialogical potential of feminism in the investigated context.

During the period in which we followed the Movimento Ovelhas Negras, it was possible to observe the two main defining objectives of the group: 1) promote changes at school through confrontation and unveiling of chauvinistic, sexist and prejudiced discourses and attitudes; and 2) strengthen and empower other young women, creating spaces for union and mutual help within the school context. In order to pursue both goals, your activism needs to develop both from relationships with people who have similar (if not identical) goals and worldviews, as well as from relationships with antagonists, people and groups with whom you disagree and seek to differentiate yourselves from them. We understand antagonists as those who, overtly or implicitly, oppose the feminist discourse, both in relation to the collective of students and in general. This category does not include subjects who criticize certain feminism(s) - or rather, some of its aspects -, but who understand and position themselves as defenders of their ideals.

Relations of antagonism to feminism: alterity and everyday conflicts

As we have already seen, there is no way to think about society without alterity, as any collectivity is defined based on an Other that is in front of it. Also in the discussion of gender relations, alterity becomes a fundamental concept. Simone de Beauvoir (1967) proposes that the woman has been constructed, throughout human history, as the Other in relation to the man. Man would be the Self, the subject, and the woman would be defined in relation to him; the man would be the parameter, the universal and neutral human existence, while the woman would be a specific being, marked by characteristics that make her a “deviation” from this universal standard. This is how Beauvoir affirms that the man places himself as the subject, and the woman as the object, which is only possible, according to the philosopher, due to the woman’s acceptance of being placed as the Other. In order to break with this submission, Beauvoir says it is necessary for women to say “we”, that is, to place themselves as a collective subject.

In her time, Beauvoir (1967) understood that there were no material conditions for women to place themselves as subjects, as they would not have a past, some solidarity around interests that united them, being dispersed in the world and more linked to men than among themselves. Regarding the author’s conclusion, Saffioti (1999) reminds us that Beauvoir was not only unfamiliar with the profession of historians, which meant that she did not verify the existence of times and spaces in which women were not limited to being the Other in relation to men, as well as that, at that time, there were no feminist historians who sought to make visible the role of women as subjects of History. In the contemporary Western world, it is mainly through feminisms that women began to demonstrate their participation in the construction of society and demand recognition of their role as a category, increasingly contesting the hegemony of men, seeking to get rid of the condition of an object, while they put themselves as the subjects.

However, this is not a rupture achieved easily. In general, feminist movements encounter resistance in the process of questioning male domination - and other types of domination, in the case of feminist movements that go beyond the gender debate - and subvert existing hierarchies, and so did the collective female students of the Movimento Ovelhas Negras in its context of action. At various times, the antagonistic relationships in their midst stand out as a result of strong opposition to feminist agendas. As an example, we can cite the reactions that the collective obtained after drafting a petition against harassment and bullying on campus. In the text of the document, written with the help of some male teachers/professors, supporters of their cause, the students took a stand on the way their bodies, and, more broadly, the bodies of all teenagers, are treated in the campus environment where they are vulnerable to bullying from older students.

The Movimento Ovelhas Negras, on behalf of the collective and the students, are hereby informing and complaining about the attitudes of some male students from the higher education Agronomy program, who have been harassing and bullying Integrated High School students. The complaint is due to the fact that some girls reported having to change route or even fail to do something, such as getting a snack in the kitchen, purchasing products at the bar, to avoid going through the lobby, where the harassment and bullying take place. Such a situation makes them feel insecure, embarrassed, humiliated and relegated. . . It is also worth noting that this group [Agronomy students] has attitudes against movements and events in favor of, for example, discussion of gender and sexuality, feminism and other human rights issues, preying upon and silencing students from the Integrated Technical Courses. (Excerpt from the petition, reproduced in the field diary, record of 04/06/2017, pp. 6-7).

In the excerpt of the document reproduced, the members of the collective clearly indicate who are the people they are opposing ‒ specific men, higher education students. In the document, they describe how the treatment given to them affects them objectively, as well as subjectively, making them feel limited and restricted within the school environment. This repression is aimed both at their bodies, at a time when they need to rethink the way they move around the school to avoid harassment and bullying, as well as their ideas and convictions, as they have their posters and interventions destroyed. One of the young women summarizes the intention with the document and what kind of situations they sought to face:

In short, we were telling a bunch of adult males that they couldn’t just call us ‘hot stuff’, that they couldn’t and it wasn’t simply, like, “hey, beautiful”, I heard really heavy stuff there, such as “sit down here”, “how much do you charge?”. Like, dude, really?! (Round of systematization of experiences on 04/28/2018).

In her speech, the female student justifies that they are not situations of flirtations and love conquests among peers, but rather unilateral insinuations, carried out in an invasive way. So as to publicize the document and request signatures of support, the students went through all the classrooms of the school’s Integrated High School, getting reactions of support, as well as those of disdain and disapproval. After delivering the petition to the institution’s management, the students in the aforementioned higher education course were reprimanded by the principal in a speech in the classroom, addressed to them as a whole, without major repercussions or individual sanctions. After a few days, a group of boys and girls, high school students, requested the removal of their names from the petition. The group claimed that, even recognizing and partially agreeing with the complaint made, “they did not want anything serious to be done with the Agronomy students”, and that they had felt “coerced to sign the document, because the girls were looking intimidatingly at them, almost forcing them to sign” (Field diary, record of 04/06/2017, p. 7).

The students who requested the removal of their names from the petition, even though they were part of the group of high school students, that is, the one who was suffering harassment and bullying, seem to have identified and sympathized more with the agents of the harassment than with the students who filed the complaint. This reaction takes us back to what Jodelet (2014) says about how, in a structure of domination of one group over another, there is a tendency for the dominated ones to devalue their own group in favor of the dominant group. Here, we identify the dominant group as that formed by higher education students, whose subjects are older, of legal age, who enjoy less control by the institution (they can leave the campus at any time, as well as circulate through its facilities even during class time, different from high school students), and who attend a program widely valued in the region and at the college level, which even many of these high school students hope to enroll later on. The values and beliefs shared in the context make it easy to disregard the alterity of the harassed people - in this case, the young female students - and make it difficult to adopt a position that goes against the one that is dominant in the social group.

In order to think about this phenomenon that we observed in the field, it is also interesting to bring up the reflections of Rodrigues (2018), who proposes a dialogue between Kelman’s Theory of Social Influence, Kohlberg’s cognitive approach to moral development and AMT. When analyzing research that indicates that the majority of the Brazilian university population is at the Conventional level of moral thinking - that is, one in which there is compliance with what is seen as “natural”, majority behavior (Kohlberg & Hersh1 apud Rodrigues, 2018) - Rodrigues (2018, p. 6) argues that “this majority exerts strong psychological pressure to achieve compliance. . . , acting for the conservation of society as it is and in defense of the current authority”, being this authority, in many situations, a perpetuator of injustice. Just like Rodrigues, we believe that minorities need to part with the majority’s conventional thinking process, which can only be done if the minority, which, according to the author, must present Post-Conventional moral thinking, knowing “how to organize and act to face the legitimacy of the thinking process of a majority” (Rodrigues, 2018, p. 6).

In this regard, we understand that AMT can offer some answers, as we will see later when we address the ways in which active minorities can influence majorities. From the perspective of AMT, the influence always “is exerted in two directions: of the majority in relation to the minority and of the minority in relation to the majority” (Moscovici, 2011, p. 74). In this sense, based on its performance, the collective was able to make the other students sign the petition even if, later, the majority group influenced them to go back on their decision. The document prepared by the young women ended up, then, by straining relations within the campus, opening up existing conflicts and announcing to the collective that, despite their genuine belief in the justice of their demand, their actions based on feminist ideals would have detractors and would not be so easily accepted.

By placing itself in the school environment and demanding recognition of its presence, the feminist collective causes a discomfort, its presence is what Flickinger (2018, p. 143) calls “a provocation that requires reaction”. In everyday school life, the students who are part of the Movimento Ovelhas Negras began to differentiate themselves - and to be differentiated - by their demarcation as feminists and as a collective. By taking a stand, defining a name and an identity, they placed themselves in front of their ‘Others’, which are a diffuse, imprecise majority, without a specific brand or organization - we observe that, no matter how much they have appointed students in a particular course as opponents at one point, opposition to the collective was not restricted to them. In one of the events held on campus by NEPGS2 in partnership with the Movimento Ovelhas Negras, it was possible to record the speech of one of the members of the collective about the following:

Adelise spoke a lot about how they have the courage to show their face, to put their positions out there, in front of everyone, and how those who disagree with them hide away. . . they don’t expose themselves, they don’t have the courage to raise their hands and speak about what they believe in, to disagree with us. She said that she has always been open to debate, to have an open dialogue, that this is what the Movimento Ovelhas Negras are always looking for, and invited those who disagree with them to speak their minds and to exchange opinions. (Field diary, record of 09/04/2018).

From the report presented, we are able to see how the members of the collective are involved, without fear of exposure, while their opponents do not manifest themselves openly, not having a face or name. They are what Moscovici (2011) called majorities, while they are the active minorities, which strain the majority knowledge by presenting controversial social representations. The Movimento Ovelhas Negras are collectively looked at, identified and differentiated by their ‘Others’ based on the majority social representations of feminism, socially and historically constructed, at school, in their families, in the media and in the other environments they inhabit. In this way, not only does the majority gain different meanings as an Other for the collective, but the members of the movement are also seen as Others and receive different meanings about themselves as a collectivity. The situation narrated below, witnessed by a research participant while on the school bus, shows part of this differentiation between feminists and non-feminists that came into force at the school:

On the bus, she [member of the collective] saw two girls talking to each other about the mess their classroom has been in, and said that one of the girls mentioned that, far from being a feminist, but “the boys never clean the toasters” [students take household items to the classroom in some classes, as they spend most of the day at school]. (Field diary, record of 07/18/2017, p. 15).

In this excerpt, the student tells how she realized that other young women were already trying to differentiate themselves from feminism and, consequently, from the Movimento Ovelhas Negras. The tension at school began to cause polarization, and demonstrated how much care needed to be taken to clarify the different meanings linked to feminism that coexisted in that space. As feminism is seen by many as the hatred of men, and feminists as “unloved” women, men’s enemies (Saldanha et al., 2013), a complaint about them would need to be accompanied by a “statement” that her broadcaster was not a feminist. This fear of being mistaken for a feminist reminds us of the fear that “healthy” people in Jodelet’s (2005) research had of contagion from the “crazy” they lived with - not only a biological contagion of the disease, but also a symbolic contagion, to lose their identity, to become confused with the other, even more so since this other is so delegitimized.

In this way, it makes sense that women who claimed other places in society in the Middle Ages were classified as witches - they were insane, dangerous or, in the words of Moscovici (2011), deviant minorities, minorities active in their time and place. Today, our research indicates the mobility of these representations, when women - as active minorities - shift from the representation of witches and the insane ones to “feminists”, maintaining the differentiation and attempt at villainization of the claiming posture. More precisely, the attacks on feminism and feminists are renewed and gaining strength today with the growing neoconservatism, a political thought that emerged in the first half of the 20th century and which attributes economic crises to a moral crisis and the abandonment of traditional society values in the name of an equality considered harmful and unnatural (Almeida, 2018). The discourse of a return to traditional gender and family relations “appears as solutions for returning to some kind of order amidst the instability felt in the face of rapid and intense political-social transformations” (Freitas & Gonçalves, 2021, p. 186). In Brazil, as shown by Freitas and Gonçalves (2021), this process has occurred even more strongly since 2010, with the election of Dilma Roussef, by the Workers’ Party (PT), aggravated by her forced removal from the presidency in 2016 and with the election of Jair Bolsonaro in 2018. This election advanced with “familist, conservative, anti-gender, privatist, punitive, militarist and ufanist rhetoric” (p. 202), which found an echo in Brazilian society at the time.

An illustrative example of this point is in the way we observe the students’ manifestation on the school walls. A common action of the Movimento Ovelhas Negras in the school context was the placement of posters with images, drawings, sayings and feminist phrases. In Picture 1, we see the photograph of posters that were posted on a mural in the lobby of the campus, next to the posters that had been made by the members of the collective, as a way of opposing their speech. There is no signature or identification of the authors of the posters, which confirms the diffuse character and lack of clear identification of their opponents.

Source: Research data (Field diary by Vanessa S. Castro).

PICTURE 1 Photograph of other posters placed next to those of the Movimento Ovelhas Negras on the campus wall in May 2017 

The first poster makes a clear reference to anti-feminism, with a prohibition sign on one of the most representative images of feminism - the symbol of the goddess Venus with a clenched fist inside; the second, seeks to create a narrative about historical figures and their relationship with the feminist movement, extolling those who supposedly would not represent feminism and devaluing those who, in fact, would represent feminist ideals, with the aim of delegitimizing the movement. The poster promotes a speech about the represented figures and about feminism based on moral judgment and historical decontextualization. By searching Google, you can find this material with images and text identical to what was posted on campus. There are also several other materials that use the image of the Marie Curie chemist (represented in the photograph on the left) in an attempt to delegitimize feminism using the same discourse presented in the poster. Thus, we can also understand that the use of social media and online forums is also a tool for sharing and disseminating anti-feminist discourses.

For Marques (2014), anti-feminism involves not only opposition to feminism as a political movement, but is based on “the social order of a Judeo-Christian matrix that influences and defines Western society and, thus, is at the origin of anti-feminine manifestations” (p. 276). With this, the author refers to discourses that fundamentally attribute to the feminine negative characteristics, placing femininity as a target of censorship and surveillance. This posture can be adopted both consciously, making use of scientific and rational discourses that justify the subjugation of women (and any expression socially associated with femininity), or in a latent way, a result of the way the feminine is traditionally represented (Marques, 2014). At the time, we observed this type of manifestation in the images posted on the campus wall with the clear purpose of opposing feminism and the organization of young women who had started their movement at school. There were also posters on the campus with the image of Jair Bolsonaro, as well as the depredation of a copy of the petition of the young women pasted on a wall, with a piece of writing in pen saying “BOLSONARO2018”. These demonstrations clearly refer to movements based on the neoconservative ideas mentioned above. On the other hand, the attack on the petition can be understood as being closer to a latent form of antifeminism, as it does not directly attack feminist and feminine discourse, but rather its form, considered too “intimidating” and threatening.

Mediations as transformation potentials: the meeting with ‘the other’ through dialogism

These and other forms of interpreting feminism are attempts to delegitimize it as a minority movement, whether seeking to delegitimize its methods of action or invalidate its agenda. However, accepting a minority of these limitations would entail renouncing their transformative potential (Sobottka, 2010). By forming a collective and proposing the feminist debate in everyday school life, the students placed themselves in situations in which they were confronted with their Others and needed to relate to these, thus, becoming unable to create a “feminist bubble” for themselves. The term “feminist bubble” is used by young university activists interviewed by Lacey Lanigan (2008, p. 71), who created the activist collective “Miss G_Project” in Ontario, Canada, to refer to the situation they found themselves in. They did not come into contact with the critics of their feminist agendas, to the point of forgetting that the world outside their collective, their social milieu and their university course was not feminist.

This is not the case with the researched collective, as we have shown. From our experiences and observations with the participants, we deduced that this is mainly due to two factors. First, because the movement finds itself in a rural town, having little direct contact with other openly feminist people/groups. Most of the content and movements with which the members had contact was through social networks, on pages dedicated to these themes. The construction of meanings produced in these contacts encouraged the young women to start their activism, even if they had little contact with other activists in their daily lives. Therefore, as a group that presents non-hegemonic attitudes and ideas, the condition of isolation makes young women a target of stigmatization even outside the school environment. The fear of “feminist contagion” coming from outside the institution could be observed in the speech of a student who had just entered the school, who said that “she had already heard people saying bad things about the Movimento Ovelhas Negras, and had already been told that if she entered this school, she would go to become a feminist” (Field diary, record dated 10/01/2018, p. 66).

The second factor that we understand to have driven away the formation of a “feminist bubble” around the Movimento Ovelhas Negras - and which, in part, may be a consequence of its location in a context in which it would be unlikely to escape the open conflict - is that its members actively sought conflict with ideas different from their own, often demonstrating their willingness to debate with those they disagreed with and make their point of view reach places where they knew, at least in principle, it would not be accepted at all. It is by taking a stand and questioning the dominant mentality, creating a conflict, that an active minority presses against the general consensus and shows its worldview as valid (Moscovici, 2011). A minority that resists the imposition of majority worldviews will pressure the dominant group to understand and accept their minority values, in such a way that this conflict destabilizes institutionalized relationships, opening paths so that changes can begin in the world (Hernandez & Freitas, 2017; Hernandez, 2010). Therefore, the conflict, however arduous it may be for the counter-hegemonic minorities, is also essential, since, without it, the minorities do not reach the visibility of their demands and, consequently, do not achieve the transformations they strive for.

For them [members of the collective], despite there being disagreements with the collective, there are people who do not even want to hear what the collective has to say, people who already have “one foot out the door” due to their previous actions; but, even so they managed to achieve some of their goals. They realized, as they talked, that what they had set out to do - to put an end to the hallway bullying occurrences - they had successfully achieved it. They said that you don’t hear anything anymore when you go there, and that they haven’t heard reports from other girls who have gone through it again. (Field diary, record of 07/04/2017, p. 13).

In this fragment of the field diary, we see how the conflict fulfilled its function and helped the students to reach their objective, putting pressure on the institution’s management and motivating students to face the problem pointed out. In addition to the conflict, it was also essential, for the continuity of their activism, that the young women adopt certain behaviors, ways of acting as a collective. Moscovici (2011), when developing the Theory of Active Minorities (AMT), points out that the adoption of certain behavior styles by minorities is crucial for them to exert social influence. The styles described by the author are those that demonstrate effort, autonomy, consistency, rigidity and fairness. We seek to observe how each of these behaviors raised by Moscovici fulfilled its role in the performance of the participating collective.

Starting with striving behavior, which describes a minority who persists even in situations where gains are uncertain and in which losses or punishments may arise as a result of their actions. This way of acting communicates confidence and certainty in their choices, as well as commitment and appreciation for their causes (Moscovici, 2011). The speech of one of the participants demonstrates that resistance to a situation of pressure also has an impact on the minority’s view of themselves:

Yeah, at the beginning I didn’t participate, anyway, in the creation and the like, but after I joined the movement, it was really crazy, because . . . it was something I didn’t think about, and things like that, and I found myself in a world where you can debate and discuss about stuff, and people are there to support you, you know, and that’s really good. And I think that… . . the culmination of everything was with the Agronomy students [situation involving the petition], which was a moment when I had to stop and think if that was what I truly wanted. And that was the moment when I recognized myself and managed to say “I’m a feminist”, you know, because I think that’s the most complicated part of it, I mean, for you to assume yourself as something that people criticize so much and talk badly about. (Conversation Round, 04/28/2018).

This speech shows how the direct confrontation was important for the student to feel the “heaviness” of being a feminist. She experienced in practice the discomfort that feminism causes, the social split that often emerges from this discomfort, and she had to make a decision about how to position herself about it. In other words, resisting the conflict caused by the defense of counter-hegemonic ideals resulted in a subjective change within the student, which also provoked a political transformation, in the sense of rethinking what it means to be a feminist. As Alvarez (2014) puts it, political formation is part of the constitution of discursive spaces for social mobilization, as they are spaces in which “citizenship is constructed and exercised, rights are imagined, not just demanded, identities and needs are forged and powers and principles are negotiated and disputed” (p. 19).

Another crucial behavior raised by Moscovici, and which is related to the meanings and concepts used by active minorities, is consistency. In order to exert influence, minorities need to be aware of the relationships between the intention to use the sign and its external manifestation; expressing themselves “systematically and consistently in order to avoid a misunderstanding on the part of the receiver” (Moscovici, 2011, p. 118); and maintain word meanings throughout interactions so that behaviors and their meanings are not lost. Consistent behavior offers firm convictions for situations in which there are normally many doubts involved, through the avoidance of contradictions, the repetition of terms and patterns of behavior and the quest for logically proving the defended ideals (Moscovici, 2011).

This consistency is related to what Alvarez (2014) calls a “political grammar” shared in the same discursive field. The author understands feminism as a discursive field, in which not only formal, organized movements and groups of civil society are inserted, but also more flexible collectivities and groupings, such as that which is part of our research. The field of feminism, therefore, constitutes a “universe of meanings that are translated or (re)constructed as they flow along various political-communicative theories, guiding the strategies and identities of actors who collate in this field” (Alvarez, 2014, p. 19), which are articulated through languages, meanings, worldviews, even if partially shared.

The young Movimento Ovelhas Negras participants are inserted in this field, adopting feminist terms in their posters and in their speeches and putting them as an agenda in everyday school life (for example, feminism, harassment, sorority, machismo, questioning gender roles, body rights, among others - for an analysis of the uses of these terms in the collective in question, see Castro et al., 2021). For this purpose, they reported seeking to study these and other themes, such as the different strands of feminism, as well as participating, as much as possible, in lectures and events on the topic at hand, especially in a reasonably close, medium-sized city, which has a greater offer in terms of this type of activity. In other words, they seek to deepen their insertion in this field.

What the observation of the field shows us, however, is that convincing others just through what is rational and logical is not enough for an active minority to bring about change. After all, as Arruda (2009) reminds us, social representations do not only contain rational elements; they are also formed by “elements that involve interests, exercise of power, desire for acceptance, occasional circumstantial issues, composing a new design traced by the various crossings of the social aspect” (p. 747). Group values and interests, as well as the need for belonging and acceptance, affections, beliefs, act to maintain and transform the representations of subjects and groups about the world (Arruda, 2009). This understanding reinforces the importance of behavior styles for the performance of minorities in the social arena, since it is not enough for the counter-hegemonic message to be rationally valid or fair; it needs to be presented in such a way as to be at least minimally accepted by others.

Autonomous behavior, another one of the styles described in AMT, is inserted in this space where rationality, by itself, is not enough. The autonomy of a minority can be seen when it demonstrates independence to act, without being subordinated to hidden interests that go beyond its stated ideals and principles. Behaviors that can be read as extremist, such as when, for example, a minority refuses to make certain concessions or agreements, can also be seen as autonomous, as they demonstrate commitment to their ideals (Moscovici, 2011). In addition to the extremism of which the Movimento Ovelhas Negras were sometimes accused by their interlocutors, another way in which the girls exhibited autonomous behavior was showing that their goal is only to make the school and its surroundings fairer in terms of gender and help other girls like them to discuss feminism without getting personal gain from it.

Observing the speeches of the “antagonists” of the Movimento Ovelhas Negras, it was possible to notice that, in general, they recognized the autonomous performance of the collective and, at times, even claimed to agree, to a certain extent, with its agenda. Demonstrating the validity of Arruda’s (2009) words about the elements that move (or keep static) social representations, detractors present social and affective elements, of sociability and intergroup disputes, to justify their positions, as shown in following excerpt from the field diary:

[Meeting at lunch break in the school yard] All the girls present, agreed that they are very much targeted, that they are always being attacked in some way. About these attacks, they mentioned the posters on the wall, and Adelise showed me some audios that were sent in the group [from the WhatsApp application] of the class, which were sent by one of her colleagues, but recorded as a group (multiple voices were heard at the same time). In the two audios that I heard, there was a shout of people, and some boys’ voices were heard, sounding a little drunk, saying they hate the Sheep and hurling some curses at the group. Adelise said she went to confront one of the boys about the audio (one who is no longer in school), and that he dodged it. She said she asked him if he hated the Sheep (“Oh, so you hate the Movimento Ovelhas Negras, do yah?!”), and he would have said he understands the cause, but when you’re drunk with your friends, you talk nonsense. Cecilia and Joice commented that it was absurd, in their opinion, for them to get together to drink and think about cursing them. . . . They talked about how it shows that they are “moving” things around, provoking others. (Field diary, record of 07/04/2017, pp. 11-12).

This excerpt reaffirms the search for the confrontation of ideas as a crucial point for the participating collective, as well as the importance of conflict as a way of giving visibility and guaranteeing acceptance of their agendas in the social arena in which they operate. It also demonstrates that the dispute over minority agendas goes beyond merely rational persuasion, also passing through affections and intergroup dynamics. It is in this context of direct, face-to- -face intergroup contact that the latest of the behavioral styles described by Moscovici, rigidity and fairness, take place. They refer to how the minority group positions itself and is perceived by the majority group, whether in a rigid and inflexible way, without concern for negotiating its terms, or whether in an equitable way, showing a willingness to dialogue and take into account opposing opinions

Moscovici (2011) argues that the use of each of these behaviors must be related to the objective and the moment experienced by the minority in question. If the minority seeks to distance itself and oppose another group, it would be more successful if it adopted a rigid stance; on the other hand, if you want to converge with the other, flexible behavior is valid (Moscovici, 2011). The author understands that rigidity is necessary when establishing a minority group, when it differs from the majority. After achieving some stability within itself, the group can allow itself to be more flexible and equitable, being able to establish alliances and commitments without running the risk of falling apart. We observe this in the performance of the participating collective when it manages to differentiate itself and draw attention to its agendas in the school context precisely when it comes into direct conflict with the majority group, starting to be seen as a “radical group”. Subsequently, the collective also sought to approach and dialogue with those with whom they had not come into direct conflict yet. An example of this is the reception that the Movimento Ovelhas Negras has held annually for students entering the campus, in order to dialogue about feminism, harassment, machismo and masculinity with groups of girls and boys, separately. Another example was a moment when they promoted a conversation about harassment as part of International Women’s Day in all Integrated High School classrooms.

They said that they entered the first classes with a certain trepidation, afraid of how the debate would be, but that later, they were calm, even when arriving in the third-year classes of Agriculture and Mechanics (classes they already knew well, and where they considered that there would be more people against their speech). They were alone, without monitoring by any mediator. They said that the conversation went much better than they expected, that they even got applause from these third-year classes. (Field diary, record of 03/14/2018, p. 40).

From the studies he analyzed, Moscovici (2011) also found that, by acting in a more “dogmatic” manner (p. 155) and rigid, minorities are more likely to influence those who already show sympathy for their worldviews; on the other hand, by acting equitably, minorities are also able to reach subjects who, initially, did not sympathize with their causes. For this reason, the author lists rigid behavior as compatible with relationships within the minority group, and equitable behavior as more important in contact with other groups, so that “it is not possible to behave in the same way inside and outside of the group” (Moscovici, 2011, p. 157). It is in this sense that we saw that, in their conversations with each other, the Movimento Ovelhas Negras played around, made jokes, resorted to exaggerations and to terms that they did not use when trying to dialogue with their Others. In doing so, they reinforced the feeling of group belonging, encouraging participants to feel the collective space as a safe place to express positions that would be seen as extremist or radical by the dominant common sense. In general, then, we saw in the collective itself an analysis of the context in which they were and the objectives they sought to achieve when defining their behavior in their different spaces of circulation.

As Alvarez (2014, p. 20) observes, “[the] flows of the feminist field result from its dynamic interactions with the fields of power in which it is inserted in a certain historical context”, so that this broader context enables and even demands certain forms of action, at the same time in which it limits others. By analyzing a snippet of the trajectory of the participating collective, we proposed to unveil some of the dynamics that came into play in the placement of feminism in the school context by young women. These dynamics can help in understanding similar scenarios, especially at the moment marked by spread both of feminism, as well as of those who oppose it.

Final considerations

In this article, we aimed to reflect on the role of alterity in the construction of activism of the Movimento Ovelhas Negras - a collective defined by its main objectives, which are to promote changes in schools through the confrontation and unveiling of chauvinistic, sexist and prejudiced speeches and attitudes, as well as strengthening and empowering other young women. These goals are pursued in dialogue with people who have aims and worldviews similar to the Movimento Ovelhas Negras and with people who are antagonistic to the Movement's ideas.

When trying to put their agendas and positions, activists face tensions and resistance, even from the “dominated” groups that somehow approach feminist ideas, but which, in the end, tended to benefit the dominant group in the “clash” that took place. An example of this is the fight against harassment and bullying on campus perpetrated by higher education students, which gained initial support from them, but ended up “protecting” the aggressors (Agronomy students) as they identified and sympathized with the filmmakers of harassment. In short, “empathy” for feminist ideas was not enough to bring about change. In the field of gender relations, the majority continued to exert strong pressure for gender relations to remain unchanged, resisting the transformation of representations about women and the ways in which their bodies are treated in public spaces.

However, we need to look not only at the final result (not the transformation of representations), but at the crossing, as it is there that we can take a glimpse at the potential for change. The signature of the petition, even if followed by regret on the part of some subjects, tensioned and gave visibility to unfair relationships within the campus, displacing naturalized dynamics and marking a “small” victory - or, at least, a small collective provocation, which demanded a reaction.

Even more important is the record, in the institution’s memory, of the collective’s audacity to openly contest injustices and present other ways of making it happen and thinking about things, which is a typical characteristics of active minorities. This record destabilizes the instituted at the same time as it produces a symbolic mark of the split of the institutional body into two distinct poles: feminists and non-feminists. A more positive polarization than in the past, which seeks to break with placing the former as the “crazy” and the latter as the “sane”, by placing the feminist stance as viable and legitimate. A polarization that opens up to a fundamental question for further research: how can feminist activists dialogue with non-feminists and the latent anti-feminist movement?

This is a challenging question. Our study showed that conflict and mediations are precisely the power of transformation, via alterity and dialogism. Despite the majority discourse trying to delegitimize feminism, the Movimento Ovelhas Negras were not intimidated and did not appropriate dialogism to continue their journey. They could perhaps have tried to take a shortcut and end up in a “feminist bubble”, but they actively decided on a style of behavior characteristic of active minorities, maintaining the debate with those they disagreed with and the consistent, continuous and supported positioning in discourses and practices of other feminists. And the results were positive, given that the collective gained visibility, including among male students, harassment seems to have ceased to be ubiquitous in the institution, and other students began to recognize themselves as feminists. The actions of the young women had a long-term impact on the institutional culture, collaborating with the inclusion of the discussion of feminism at school, which produced new practices of interaction that have lasted until the present day.

This contact with the ‘Other’, permeated both by conflict, mediation and dialogue, enables young feminists to experience the political character of feminism, which brings into dispute, in the social arena, debates that were previously considered personal and individual. The journey of dissidents is long and needs to continue despite the ‘Other’, but also with the ‘Other’, as it is in the alterity that we feel restless and give new meaning to things.

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Data availability statement The data underlying the research text is informed in the article.

1Kohlberg, L., & Hersh, R. H. (1977). Moral Development: A review of the theory. Theory into Practice, 16(2), 53-59.

2The NEPGS are proactive and consultative sectors, created by an ordinance instituted in each campus, which encourages and promotes teaching, research and extension actions dedicated to the theme of education for gender and sexuality diversity.

Received: April 03, 2021; Accepted: October 29, 2021

TRANSLATED BY Luciane JacquesIV

IV

Traduzca; luciane@traduzca.com.br

Note on authorship

Vanessa Soares de Castro: responsible for the conception, data collection, data analysis, drafting of the manuscript and writing of the article, derived from her master’s thesis. Adriane Roso: conception, writing, discussion of results, review and approval of the final version and supervision of the thesis. Camila dos Santos Gonçalves: writing, discussion of results, review and approval of the final version and co-orientation of the thesis.

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