Accessible Theory: Intersectionality
- De Flore
- Aug 18, 2022
- 2 min read
First coined by US lawyer Kimberlé Crenshaw in her paper ‘Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex,’ the term was meant to define the struggle of black women in America whose oppression lay at the intersection between race and gender. Since her original paper, ‘intersectionality’ has come to define a multitude of struggles.
Crenshaw states;
“Intersectionality is a lens through which you can see where power comes and collides, where it interlocks and intersects. It’s not simply that there’s a race problem here, a gender problem here, and a class or LGBTQ problem there. Many times that framework erases what happens to people who are subject to all of these things.”
While Crenshaw named it, the concept of ‘intersectionality’ dates back to 1851. In a speech entitled ‘Ain’t I a woman’, Sojourner Truth expresses the struggle of race and the struggle of gender cannot and should not be separated.
In the simplest of terms, Intersectionality recognises that oppression is complex and multi-faceted. There are many layers to understanding how any individual is oppressed and looking at the intersection of them all can be argued to prove the most beneficial in trying to remove inequality.
The pursuit of intersectionality is one that has often failed within popular feminist pursuits. “The work of feminist scholars on intersectionality and embodiment,” Smith & Gökarıksel say “provide us with tools to theorise and work against these exclusionary politics.” In the paper “Intersectional feminism beyond U.S. flag hijab and pussy hats in Trump’s America” Smith & Gökarıksel unpack this. They argue that much of popular feminism is centred on the struggles of white, middle/upper-class cis women. The struggle is not against the system, not against capitalism or white supremacy, it's for “equality” in line with men.
Intersectionality for feminism is key to unravelling the complexity of oppression.
Further resources on Intersectionality:
Ted Talk: The Urgency of Intersectionality - Kimberlé Crenshaw
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