“Wow!” She exclaims, “Intersectional feminism!? That’s so edgy; what is that?”
Living in the year 2017, I’ve frankly heard this question more than I’d like to admit. In fact, the amount of times I’ve heard girls only praising women like Taylor Swift or Miley Cyrus as a feminist icons is all too many.
Intersectional feminism, or in broader terms intersectionality, is a term coined by Kimberle Crenshaw that essentially means “the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.” Unpacked this term merely articulates the importance of evaluating all backgrounds when advocating for equality in all aspects of the word, whether that be social or relating to legal rights. As many of us know, feminism itself means advocating for women’s rights on the basis of gender equality; however, in real life, the term feminism isn’t as inclusive as it sounds.
As Crenshaw outlines in her paper, entitled ‘Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex,’ the popular, yet flawed public mentality is to see matters of race and sex as separate issues, not as intersections. In fact, even popular and rather euro-centric widely accepted beauty standards depict the ideal feminine figure as white. When we discuss Black rights, conversation often shifts to the criminalization of the Black male. While both of these groups, black males and white females, are important and have valid struggles, blindly accepting social hierarchy that is inherently anti-intersectionalist invalidates and erases, as Crenshaw puts it, the experiences as well as struggles of the Black female community.
A prime example of a lack of intersectional thinking within pop culture is the VMAs of 2015. When Nicki Minaj spoke out via twitter against the lack of diversity and representation of Black women and women of diverse body types within VMA nominees for Video of the Year, artists Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus snapped back. Taylor Swift responded by saying Nicki was pitting women against each other; however, self proclaimed feminist icon Taylor did nothing in exposing or even accepting the truth behind Nicki’s words. Miley’s response was even worse. The singer, who also calls herself a feminist, responded by deeming Nicki’s remarks impolite and jealous, again doing nothing to reveal further investigate or realize the truth behind Nicki’s words. Feminism without intersectionality is a world in which feminism doesn’t actually exist. Here, Nicki words were ignored, simply because other artists, who call themselves feminists, felt less inclined to listen to the struggles of groups they merely didn’t feel they related to.
In reality, all feminism is in fact intersectional, for Black women and women of other backgrounds inherently exist as a part of the female community. People are in fact intersections. For the most part, not one person fits into a clear cut box or exists under one label. The sooner we can accept the diversity and wide range of peoples that fall into a single category, the faster we can make a truly compelling argument regarding social, legal, and systemic equality for all. Merely acknowledging and listening to community intersections gives previously ignored communities a voice. In all actually, intersections are our most powerful weapons, allies, brothers, and sisters.
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