Ana Ester Pádua Freire
BIOGRAPHY
Ana Ester is a Brazilian feminist-lesbian-queer theologian and holds a Ph.D. and Master’s in Religious Studies. She is ordained in the Metropolitan Community Churches. She is the current co-chair of the Board of Directors for the Global Interfaith Network for People of All Sexes, Sexual Orientations, Gender Identities and Expressions (GIN-SSOGIE). She is also a member of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and the Brazilian Association of Trans-Homoculture Studies (ABETH).
ABSTRACT
Ana Ester Pádua Freire, “Liberating fixed identities: a decolonial examination of theo/ideology”
Colonizing Christianity has historically worked in Latin America as a colonial pedagogy that teaches how things are and how relationships should take place. Christian heterosexual ideology sacralizes and fixes identities based on norms that marginalize any experience challenging the rigid hierarchical gender binary (male/ female, heterosexual/ homosexual, cisgender/ transgender). In this context, a decolonial examination analyzes the ideology that regulates gender, and the material effects it has on the lives it disciplines.
Contributing to this examination are Marcella Althaus-Reid’s analysis of “hetero/sexual theo/ideology”, María Lugones’ concept of “fractured locus”, and Gloria Anzaldúa’s proposal of a “mestiza identity”. The objective of a decolonial analysis is to denounce the historical processes of docility of bodies, as well as to announce more creative forms of identity and sociability, which free fixed identities, thus guaranteeing a more just existence for people of all sexes, sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions.