VULVA NEGRA - The Ascension of Black Women in the Brazilian Materialist Feminism Movement

Vulva Negra (Black Vulva)

Vulva Negra Instagram Profile

Vulva Negra (Black Vulva) is the first materialist feminist project founded by a black woman in Brazil. Currently, the page has more than nineteen thousand followers on Instagram and has a comprehensive performance in social media. Created on December 19 of 2018, the Vulva Negra project was born from the desire to unite the materialist perspective of radical feminism with the narratives of black theorists and the lived experience of black Brazilian and Afro-Latin women. 

Founded by Yasmin Morais, a Brazilian writer, journalism student, and activist, who was only eighteen when she developed the project, one of her greatest inspirations was black and northeastern Brazilian women, who were in anti-slavery revolutions and led the Quilombos (communities organized by ex-slaves and indigenous people in colonial Brazil). “Black Brazilian women had enormous participation in the movements for the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of the country. Names such as Tereza de Benguela, Luísa Mahin, Maria Felipa, and Dandara dos Palmares should not be forgotten”. The aesthetics of the project, which has the colours red, white, black, and grey, are inspired by the Orisha Oyá, the Yoruba goddess known as the lady of storms, female strength, and revolution.

Yasmin Morais has been producing articles based on feminism and ethnic studies for some years. Currently, she produces all the theoretical content available on the Vulva Negra page. One of her motivations for this project is the invisibility of black women in the radical feminist segment and the constant persecution experienced by racialized and feminist women. Historically, the intellectual production of black women has been obscured, distorted, or erased. The claims based on the materiality of sex and ethnicity tend to be subordinate.

The page's publications reach Brazilian women of all ages. Some of the following themes are approached from a radical feminist perspective, such as compulsory motherhood, rape culture, exploitation of domestic work, and social stereotypes that reinforce violence against black women in Brazil and the diaspora. Since the foundation of the Vulva Negra project, several black, and racialized women, who are radical feminists, have felt comfortable in founding their projects and elaborating their narratives about the experience of racialized women in Brazil.