Intersectional Feminism 101 (An Essay For English 3 Honors)
Feminism is nothing new. It’s been in existence for centuries, perhaps even millennia, and as always, it tends to benefit the women already in power. Common figures cited as feminists include Hillary Clinton, Taylor Swift, and Susan B. Anthony, the historic women’s suffragist. These three have several things in common; first is the obvious: they’re women, and secondly, they’re white women, and very much White Feminists. Students hear year after year about the work of Elizabeth Cady, much more so than Tiwonge Chimbalanga, a Malawian transgender woman imprisoned for getting engaged to a man, or Bernice Bing, Chinese-American lesbian artist. White LGBT people and allies tend to favor Caitlyn Jenner over Laverne Cox for her wealth and whiteness, even though this preference, and the underlying reasons behind it, often go unrecognized.
Mainstream feminism is often defined as the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes, but that simply isn’t enough. It is often led by white, cisgender, heterosexual, abled, middle-class women who focus on their experiences alone and are apathetic to those fellow women who are oppressed on additional axes. Take, as an above example, Swift, who appears to exclusively empower women like her, appropriates brown and Black cultures recklessly, and then, says Laura Jue of Fem Magazine, “undermines black women for expressing frustration over their lack of recognition”; or, more historically, Anthony, who is notorious for preferring to “cut off this right arm of mine before I will ever work or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the woman.” This is called White Feminism, with emphasis on the White, and the key to solving it is intersectionality, or the recognition that people oppressed on multiple axes do not suffer as such from the sum of these axes, but live the unique experience of being all these things at once. The term was coined in 1989 by Black law scholar and race theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw.
To understand intersectionality, one must first understand the concept of privilege. Compared to lesbian, bisexual, and transgender women, especially of color, straight, cisgender, white women are far less likely to experience physical or sexual violence. Being a feminist who is white does not necessarily make a White Feminist, but in order not to become such, one must recognize and work through one’s own inherent implicit bias against marginalized groups one does not belong to, call others out on their bigotry (whether intentional or not), and above all, give other marginalized people room to speak, listen to what they have to say, and use one’s privilege to boost marginalized voices that are otherwise not taken seriously. For instance, consider a much less well-known axis of identity and systemic impression: disability. The voices of disabled people are all too often dismissed or outright silenced; we are called lazy, overdramatic, put on dehumanizing pedestals as angels sent from heaven, and against our will labeled either too high functioning to understand what it’s “really” like to be disabled, or too low functioning to be considered autonomous human beings. The consequences get worse still when a person experiences the often lethal intersection of racism and ableism. In October of 2014, a Black teenager named LaQuan McDonald was shot and killed by Chicago police while “acting erratically and holding a knife,” according to NBC News. “Prosecutors took the unusual step of charging an officer with first degree murder, noting McDonald did not pose a lethal threat to the officers who had surrounded him.” It was posthumously revealed that McDonald suffered from PTSD and other “complex mental health problems” - and he was far from the only one. About half of the people murdered at the hands of police have some form of disability.
Bigotry comes in all flavors, most being more subtle, and though it’s tempting to point fingers and push the blame onto others while claiming to be tolerant and accepting, self-reflection is the first, most essential step to intersectional activism. One must remember to do one’s own research and constantly look for ways to improve one’s allyship rather than expect marginalized people, who have to deal with constant systemic violence, to walk one through how not to hurt them. The common saying goes that no one is perfect, and implicit bias, in this way, can never be completely obliterated from the mind. This is important to recognize; there’s always work to be done, always progress to be made. One cannot change the world without changing oneself first, and a good place to start is consciously keeping all women in mind when fighting for their rights.
