At the Crossroads of Modern Feminism and Intersectionality
You can’t call yourself a feminist unless you focus on the intersection of all identities and work for justice and equality for all people.
Growing up, I always struggled with the term “feminist.” I saw it used as an equivalent to being a “man-hater” and someone who wanted to be better than men. Living with three brothers, this bothered me. In school, I never liked splitting off by “boys versus girls” because it helped create a boy-hating atmosphere and assumed a gender binary in the class. I continued to struggle with the term feminist until I joined a student group the second half of my first year of college.
The 2016 election took place my first year at the University of Minnesota. Like many people, I was angry that Trump was elected and I wanted to do something. I decided to march in the Women’s March with my friend the day after his Trump’s inauguration. I thought the march was great in that it had thousands and thousands of people. I noticed, however, that the attendees were predominantly white, middle to upper-class women marching around while wearing pink pussy hats. The vast majority of these people looked mostly the same and it seemed wrong.
Later in the semester, I joined a campus group called Women For Political Change. In one of my first meetings, we discussed the term “intersectionality.” Coined by the scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, intersectionality is the idea that “all social justice problems are often overlapping, creating multiple levels of social injustice.” In the student group, we talked about how you cannot call yourself a feminist unless you advocate for all oppressed groups and we discussed that this is where the Women’s March fell short.
Though the pussy hats at the Women’s March were a reaction to a recording of Trump’s disgusting comments about grabbing women by the pussy and an effort to build strength out of this oppression, the hats are actually unintentional tools of oppression. Not every person who identifies as female has a pussy and not all pussies are pink. When I learned about this, I realized that feminism in its current state was not created for everyone.
For many of the people marching that day, it was their first time participating in any sort of activism. In the St. Paul, around 100,000 people marched in the Women’s March. They would never go to a Black Lives Matter event protesting police brutality and the criminal (in)justice system. In fact, only 50 people showed up that same year for the Black Lives Matter protest at the State Fair. It’s good to have self-interest when working in activism because it motivates you and allows others to determine if they can work with you, but there is a point when that self-interest becomes selfishness.
After Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court, the white actress, Molly Ringwald, suggested that women singers kneel during the national anthem to protest Kavanaugh and rape culture as a whole. As much as I loathe Kavanaugh’s confirmation, this request was extremely ignorant. To try to steal a symbol of protest from people of color for your own cause when Ringwald (and most white women) never knelt in solidarity with Kaepernick against police brutality is just preposterous. It is yet another example of white people exploiting black lives.
Feminism has historically alienated women of color during the women’s suffrage and fights for reproductive freedom, but intersectionality cannot wait for the next wave of feminism. The feminist movement cannot continue to fail to recognize some marginalized identities and exploit people of color and non-binary folks. You cannot be a feminist if you do not advocate for all communities. Issues are not separate; they are all perpetuated by a similar capitalist system of oppression.
In her article Feminism: A Movement to End Sexist Oppression, bell hooks says there has not been a definition of feminism that everyone agrees upon. hooks states that feminism has been seen as seeking the social equality of men. Feminism, however, must not be defined as a movement to gain social equality of men because not all men are equal due to economic and racial oppression. One, therefore, cannot ignore the oppression caused by our nation’s history of systemic racism and capitalism.
The movement must recognize the need to get rid of the cultural basis and causes of sexism, as well as other forms of oppression. Feminists must recognize the interconnectedness of sexism, racism, classism, xenophobia, transphobia, homophobia, heterosexism, antitheism, and ableism.
Feminism may never work unless white feminists make the movement intersectional. Activism and community organizing must include all oppressed peoples, not just white, middle-class, cis-women. The Executive Director at Jewish Community Action, Carin Mrotz, said, “community organizing is about connecting, it is the literal antidote to isolation and fear.” Although she was speaking about the Jewish community, I realized this could apply specifically to other groups, including white feminists. Once white feminists start organizing and connecting across communities through intersectionality, only then will isolation of the white feminist community from all other social justice movements be demolished. I encourage every self-proclaimed white feminist to reflect, act and challenge the dominant narrative of white feminism.
Below are a few resources for white feminists who are interested in educating themselves:
http://www.showingupforracialjustice.org/white-feminism.html
https://www.ted.com/talks/kimberle_crenshaw_the_urgency_of_intersectionality?language=en#t-300026
https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/politics/a22717725/what-is-toxic-white-feminism/
