The use of intersectionality in criminology

Abstract 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.