By Mariachiara Faraon
March 08, 2021
Women’s Day was first celebrated independently in a few countries across the globe as early as 1909, although on different days. Eventually, the 8th of March, the day that women gained their right to vote in Russia in 1917, was commemorated worldwide. It was then adopted by the feminist movement in 1967 and by the UN in 1977.
During the past century, we have achieved enormous accomplishments — women’s suffrage, policies against sex discrimination at work, the right to hold public office, equal pay, legal rights, reproductive rights, and many more. But the right on paper doesn’t necessarily equal the actual possibility to do something, and so these rights are concretely enjoyed by the women with the means to take advantage of them — mostly white Western women outside the lower classes. So what about the rest of the women? Enter intersectional feminism.
The term intersectional feminism was introduced in 1989 by Kimberlé Crenshaw, a Black American law professor. Intersectionality requires us to segment the population based on the type of inequality they are subjected to, and realize that some people belong to more than one group, as they are victims of more than one type of discrimination. In other words, classify inequality and notice where the different categories intersect.
Take race, for example. Not all people subjected to racial discrimination also suffer from gender inequality, but many do. Being Black and being female are two identities that overlap, and so do the related inequalities. The point of intersectional feminism is to recognize how racial discrimination exacerbates gender inequality. The same goes for class, sexuality, immigrant status, indigenous rights, disability. Society has muted the experience of Black people, LGBTQ+ people, poor people, immigrants, indigenous people and disabled people for too long, and feminism has been doing the same.
Why should feminism be intersectional? Because as long as our feminism doesn’t recognize the struggle of overlapping discriminated identities, then our feminism is not about equality, and it’s racially discriminating. Feminism which only includes white privileged women is just a female version of what white men have been doing for centuries — elevating themselves at the expense of others, while the gap gets wider and wider. And we don’t need any more of that.
The need for intersectionality and much of the consequences of the lack thereof has become clearer since the beginning of the pandemic. The reason is simple: if you are invisible in normal circumstances, you will definitely be during a crisis. Black women — and other identities overlapping with females — have been abandoned in the past year and have suffered the worst consequences of the COVID-19 emergency — higher infection rates, higher unemployment rates, difficulties being reached by the vaccine, higher domestic violence incidences, to name a few.
This leads us to the next intersectionality requirement: recognizing our own privilege in order to eliminate other’s oppression. Does this make you uncomfortable? Good, it means you may be getting it right. ’Breaking the glass ceiling’ and having more women in high corporate positions is great and all, but it only includes the women who can get to the corporate job in the first place (again, usually white women). What about the women who don’t have access to the same education? What about the women who can’t afford the baby-sitter in order to pursue their careers? And what about the women who won’t even be considered for the position because they are transgender, or disabled? If feminism doesn’t include them, then it’s not a movement of equality for all women, it’s about enlarging the platform of privilege but still keeping someone underneath to support it.
Another reason why more white women should start supporting intersectional feminism and stop feeling threatened by it is that working towards eliminating our own privilege doesn’t imply loss. Elevating Black women, disabled women, LGBTQ+ women, indigenous women, Latinxs, doesn’t make you lose what you have. It won’t compromise your salary, your reproductive rights, your high-rank job or your maternity leave. We don’t need to keep other women beneath us to stay where we are. When we are all on the same level, we don’t need elevated platforms anymore.
We need to get rid of this scarcity mentality that drives us women to constantly judge and bring each other down so that we can feel stronger. Men pushed this on us centuries ago, back when women were forced to denounce other women as witches to be burnt at the stake or else they would be considered accomplices and equally punished. They created this delusion to keep us at bay, and we had to go along with it to survive, but we don’t anymore. There is enough equality, rights and wealth for everyone.
Finally, recognizing your privilege doesn’t take anything away from your struggles. Acknowledging you are white and well-off doesn’t diminish your experience with mental illness or sexism. It just sheds light on the experience of who is doing worse than you and no one wants to listen to. It helps avoid other people having to feel more oppressed than what you have been feeling so far.
The feminist movement has achieved important goals in the past decades, but it’s time as white feminists we stop talking and start listening. Read a book, or listen to a podcast, by a feminist author different than you. When you do speak, work on your language. Stop using words like ‘ghetto’ or ‘psycho’ as insults, even if it’s sarcastically, even if it’s irony against yourself. The fact that we are the only ones who have had a voice until now doesn’t mean we are the only ones with something to say.
As queer Black feminist Audre Lorde famously said, “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.”