You’ve Probably Heard Of Intersectionality, But What Is It Really?

For those of us who are part of one (or no!) marginalized groups, it’s easy to assume that all marginalized groups are separate from one another. Intersectionality explores what it’s like to belong to multiple marginalized groups and how this manifests into unique experiences of privilege and/or oppression. It is used as a tool to assess “intersecting” social, political and economic hierarchies in order to get rid of them for good! Basically, in order to effectively address inequality, we need to be aware of all the factors that cause discrimination against different people and how those factors can overlap. 

For example, let’s look at the wage gap. It often gets framed as being between “men and women” (if it gets acknowledged at all). However, when we look at which men and women we’re talking about more specifically, we find that according to Business Insider, for every dollar a white man makes on average in America, Asian women make 84% of that on average, white women make 75% of that on average, Black women make 60% of that and Hispanic women make 55% of that. 

Intersectionality tries to figure out why this is by looking at the history of how these groups have been treated differently in the United States and how that history has informed the present-day policies, discourse, visibility, stereotypes and rights for these groups. Moreover, we could look at how other factors such as religion, disability, and being LGBTQ affect these statistics and why in order to find holistic solutions. 

Law professor at UCLA and founder of Critical Race Theory Kimberlé Crenshaw initially coined “intersectionality” as a legal term in her 1991 academic article “Mapping the Margins.” Today, the term has blown up in mainstream feminist discussions, especially online.

The Roots of Intersectionality

Intersectionality has been around long before there was a coined term for it. For times sake, we’ll begin the story at the height of the United States second-wave feminist movement that roughly began in the 1960s and ended in the 1980s with the Reagan administration. Betty Friedan’s 1963 book, The Feminine Mystique, uncovered “the problem that had no name,” bringing to light widespread depression among middle-class white American housewives. It received national attention and placed the experiences of discrimination among middle-class white women at the forefront of second-wave feminist discussions. In consciousness-raising groups created by the Women’s Liberation Movement, white middle-class women mistakenly assumed their experiences were universal to all women. Today this is referred to as “white feminism.” 

Consequently, issues regarding race, sexuality, ableism, nationality, and class were largely pushed aside until the 1970s when Black and LGBTQ feminist scholars and activists, such as the Combahee River Collective, developed groundbreaking theoretical frameworks that made mainstream feminism less exclusive. They exposed the patterns among interlocking social, political, legal and economic obstacles that define women’s experiences from all walks of life, and the need for the law to address them.

For example, in the 1976 court case DeGraffenreid v. General Motors, five Black women filed a class action Title VII suit against General Motors for a layoff policy that targeted them. Yet, the court decided that they “could not combine the claims” of race and sex discrimination finding it “beyond the scope of title VII.”  Strikingly, the court also claimed that “The prospect of the creation of new classes of protected minorities…[would open a] Pandora’s box” of marginalized communities asking to be seen by the law. Because the law compartmentalized discrimination into neat and tidy little boxes, Black women and many others were essentially unrecognized and unprotected.

True Feminism Must Be Intersectional

Intersectionality is purposefully inclusive because all the different factors that could benefit or disadvantage individuals are endless and not mutually exclusive. Basically, we can use the metaphor of a map to envision intersectionality. Let’s say different identities are different places on a map. You may have only seen one place, been to a couple different places, or travelled all over. Maybe you have not been somewhere, but received a flyer about the place and now base your entire view of it on the flyer information. Yet, you only really know what the places you have actually been to are like, unless you learn a lot about them. Maybe one destination you hear about even reminds you of another spot, which you use to imagine how that other place is similar or different. 

One spot on this map that everyone has been to is gender — or the ways we physically express ourselves based on socially constructed ideas of masculinity and femininity. Feminism focuses a lens on not just women, but also on how gender roles impact everyone. Consequently, feminism is not feminism if it is not intersectional, as women and those impacted by gender norms include everyone from all backgrounds, all across the world. As a result, we can use our own experiences of discrimination to empathize with and learn from others to work toward an authentically equitable future for everyone.

Backlash

Many conservatives bag on the term intersectionality. One conservative blog even referred to it as “the new caste system.” Ironically, intersectionality aims to do the opposite by forging coalitions between all groups through recognizing the nuanced ways in which all forms of marginalization uphold each other to perpetuate the larger system of inequality. Scholars of intersectionality assert that failing to recognize this complexity is failing to accept reality. No one person or group can or should have a monopoly on what “reality” is when we are all experiencing different ones. 

This is the sort-of commonsense notion that those who are committed to being intersectional practice. However, the definition of intersectionality is constantly misunderstood and even debated among feminists — but intersectionality ultimately cannot be reduced to a single definition. Rather, it should be used as a conceptual tool to analyze power relations and dynamics. Who is afforded certain human rights, who is not? Whose stories are told in the news and media, whose are not? Who represents us in politics and who is shut out? Who is able to accumulate the most wealth and who is not? Who faces the most violence, who and what perpetuates this violence? Who is taught about in history class, who is left out? Who are we able to give constructive criticism to, who are we not? When we allow diverse voices to share their stories and needs on their own terms, we gain valuable insight into what needs to be fixed and how, from the source of those who are being directly affected. Refusing to recognize differences altogether makes this process of checks and balances much more lengthy and difficult. 

There Is No Hierarchy of Oppressions

Legendary Black intersectional feminist poet Audre Lorde put it perfectly in her passage from 1983, “There is No Hierarchy of Oppressions.” You can read it below or listen to it in the video above.

I was born Black, and a woman. I am trying to become the strongest person I can become to live the life I have been given and to help effect change toward a liveable future for this earth and for my children. As a Black, lesbian, feminist, socialist, poet, mother of two including one boy and a member of an interracial couple, I usually find myself part of some group in which the majority defines me as deviant, difficult, inferior or just plain “wrong.”

From my membership in all of these groups I have learned that oppression and the intolerance of difference come in all shapes and sexes and colors and sexualities; and that among those of us who share the goals of liberation and a workable future for our children, there can be no hierarchies of oppression. I have learned that sexism and heterosexism both arise from the same source as racism…I know that my people cannot possibly profit from the oppression of any other group which seeks the right to peaceful existence. Rather, we diminish ourselves by denying to others what we have shed blood to obtain for our children. And those children need to learn that they do not have to become like each other in order to work together for a future they will all share.

Within the lesbian community I am Black, and within the Black community I am a lesbian. Any attack against Black people is a lesbian and gay issue, because I and thousands of other Black women are part of the lesbian community. Any attack against lesbians and gays is a Black issue, because thousands of lesbians and gay men are Black. There is no hierarchy of oppression…I cannot afford the luxury of fighting one form of oppression only. I cannot afford to believe that freedom from intolerance is the right of only one particular group. And I cannot afford to choose between the fronts upon which I must battle these forces of discrimination, wherever they appear to destroy me. And when they appear to destroy me, it will not be long before they appear to destroy you.

We hope this article provided you with a fuller understanding of intersectionality! Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

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