Intersectional feminism

The problem with the concept of intersectionality is that it conflates discrimination and oppression. Consequently everyone can claim to be oppressed and everyone can be considered an oppressor. And that is nonsensical and dangerous.

Oppression (real oppression not tumblr pomo identity politics oppression) involves exploitation plus a social construction that justifies that exploitation as "the natural order". Real oppression is structural and systematic, it creates classes and a rigid hierarchy is enforced using those classes. This is called a social order. An entire culture and hegemony is constructed which maintains and reinforces this social order as natural, inevitable and unquestionable. Not all systems of oppression distribute power in the same way but they all involve power and they all involve exploitation and control.

Discrimination is different. All oppressed peoples are discriminated against but not all people who experience discrimination are oppressed.

Some were willing for white women to have the vote and other rights before any black person. (thats for both men and women). Their interest was before anyone else's. Some of these women still exist and walk among us preaching feminism. Probably they have changed. Who knows. We know people are still racist

I'm a bit confused here. My understanding of this history (bearing in mind that I am not from the US) is that white women were instrumental in getting black men the vote - in fact women were told that the rights of black men to the franchise trumped anything else, including the rights of white women. Many white women worked tirelessly for black men's right to vote. This was granted in 1870. Black and white women did not gain the vote until 1920. I also understand that there were precious few men, white or black, who helped black and white women in the same way that women helped black men in their struggle for the franchise.

@fairy, I like your link and am going to read through it.

telling women we can't wear "pussy" hats in direct protest to Trump advising someone to "grab her by the pussy". I think that was lost in translation.
The assumption was that all of women's labium and the surrounding areas were pink. The people who did the design made it all pink. Some women of colour took offence to that because of the image and the hats was made to make a statement. It's like saying all skin colours are nude. Lots of people would take offence if I was to say that. But it was the norm not so long ago.
Probably you saw it more in relation to trans than what the colour was.

I'm also not entirely convinced (although am happy to be persuaded otherwise) that feminism was leaving all these 'sections' behind. Personally I can tick 2 other minority boxes (any DD could tick 3). My feminism didn't ignore those intersectional oppressions. It was informed by them. Yes they were. Some were willing for white women to have the vote and other rights before any black person. (thats for both men and women). Their interest was before anyone else's. Some of these women still exist and walk among us preaching feminism. Probably they have changed. Who knows. We know people are still racist.

What we don't need is silencing of women's voices because they are "wrong" (too white, too rich, too thin, too educated). That's how it became acceptable to not support Clinton in the US election and look how t how come black women backed her? Didn't we see all that you mentioned? Why would all those women who voted for trump turn away from Hilary? The bottom line is racism, backlash against change (that's why they are taking America back with the slogan. A place in time where white men ruled and their women stood by them) having a woman at the top would have broken them. It would have been too far. Yes! Trump has black people round him. But the are the type of black people who are slavery deniers.

I wonder if this has anything to do with women having to do and be everything for everyone it's about our issues being intertwined with other issues. Like I mentioned before. The only people it does not affect negatively are middle class and above men. Why would they care if they can't see the issue?

I read and follow Claire.
Having been part of international networks, I'm very aware that women have always used feminism and feminist critiques to mobilise and organise for change.
What tools do you think intersectionality has provided that were lacking? What results has it achieved?

Intentionally or not, intersectionalism seems to have become a means of dividing, distracting and silencing women. It is concept that is being manipulated so that women argue amongst themselves, preventing any useful progress towards equality for all groups of women. Technically not true. I knew intersectionality before i came across the word. It's the basis for black women's feminism existing wether they know the word or not. Basically before the word was coined in 1989. It's the part that racism plays in segregating women of colour.

I've seen few cases where black men / anti-racism activists have been warned to think about women / sexism and where men of the left have been warned to think about multiple other oppressions (just as examples). And rich, white, able-bodied men are rarely called on their privilege at all. Oh no! They wouldn't. Don't you know they are an endangered species according to head of Tesco.
An article I read recently was attaching liberals because they are the groups that think there has been a enough change. Radical people should shut up because everything is not as bad as it was before. I will post the link. It was about racism but I think the same would apply to feminism. You just have to fill in the gaps and translate it to how you understand feminism now.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/your-calls-for-unity-are-divisive-as-fckuss_58c19b3fe4b070e55af9ec79?
In 1963, while sitting in a jail cell in Alabama, Martin Luther King decided not to write about his jailers, but instead opted to drag “white moderates” who deemed his outspokenness “unwise and untimelyly_.” Sound familiar? Liberals of the day felt King was being divisive. Today, liberals quote King out of context, in order to silence Black radicals; and the circle of life continues.
When we suggest that critiques of liberal movements are problematic, what we’re really doing is telling marginalized people they need to shut up and be thankful for the hand they’ve been dealt. This is white supremacy (and cis-hetero patriarchy) in action. And it actually pushes those of us with the most to lose further away from aligning with those movements. It succeeds in doing the very thing it claims to be against — dividing and alienating. Using energy to chastise oppressed people with minimal privilege will ALWAYS be counterproductive to liberation work. Like good satire, a revolution requires directing our resistance upward, towards those in power. Anything else is just oppression in blue lipstick without lip liner. So what can we do?*

Have you read Claire Heuchan on this issue. She makes a lot of sense to me. Her blog is here: sisteroutrider.wordpress.com and she has also just contributed to a book of essays: Nasty Women.
She is a young black lesbian radfem, active on twitter as @ClaireShrugged. She recently had to come off twitter for a bit after an article she wrote on Scottish nationalism brought down a massive shit storm on her head, which brought it home that while women come in for a load of vile shit on social media, black women come in for even more, hence misogynoir.

What intersectionality means to me.
It certainly does not mean centring transwomen in my politics. My feminism always centres women not men, but it means being aware that women may experience multiple oppressions- not just sex, but race, class, age, disability, etc.
I am white and I am a feminist, but I see the term 'white feminist/m' used as a way of telling me to shut up (especially when uttered by white trans women such as Paris Lees).

Black women should have any less rights than me as a white woman. They have the same rights not to be subjected to FGM, forced marriage, sharia law, as I do as a white woman, and I will campaign alongside them for those rights. Women who have the burden of multiple discriminations should not be expected to do all the work to fight those discriminations. As a white woman I can add my voice to theirs to help them be heard. I can also listen to the experience of other women in different situations and with different experiences.

I thought we were of similar age but not after checking again. Am between late 20 and early 30s.

Ok! This is how I understand it. A few years ago on Mn. The running them before, around and after women's day has been about women who don't like feminism or see as something that's not necessary. I wish I could remember the names from two years. The only one is humanist. The other might have been absolutist. Something like that and liberals. Last year was all about liberals and those who don't see the need for feminism and the a newspaper printed an article with lost of views from these women.
Surprise! surprise! , this year is about trans. My argument here is that there is a link. The more women move away from the idea of feminism or reject the idea that we are not equal yet, the more space is left for people to fill. And no, don't blame black women for it. We have our own issues that ties in with feminism and that's not going anywhere soon. It s the more comfortable people who seem to give up because every thing is ok now. Why complain. You have your rights to vote/ work and so on.

Intersectionality to me was not a movement but a methodology and it still is for black women to get people to understand their plight. It's there to explain the issues faced by women of colour that is not by white women specifically. Seeing that it's a method the same way you would have a mathematical one, any one is allowed to use it to pin point different conundrums that contradicts what society accepts as the norm.

Op, the black women blame are sometimes done without naming names but we can always tell. It does not take a genius to work it out on a post. What I will say is that I have to stand a long side my black men and children to fight for racism. then fight against black men and men in general against sexism and misogyny or misogynior. I don't have to chose one or the other because for black women it comes hand in hand.

FGM. I think for every child in the west should be protected from FGM the same way you would do if a child was beaten, starved or neglected by those responsible or in caring position for that child.
even though we're all equally outraged and together we could get some shit done) and also the fact it happens to females seems to piss off the transactivists who don't want vaginas equated with womanhood think about it and why? My simple explanation is that some of them will mutilate their penis to have a vagina. If we campaign to say that it's wrong, that is placing quilt or putting them in awkward positions. on those who will wilfully do it as adults or even advocate for it for young boys. Not just give five year olds hormones but cut them off early too. They want that option open. I think people need to start thinking beyond what females think, but also, what other people are thinking and why, for us to find solutions before they happen. I know cutting a penis off is not FGM but am using it as an explanation for why they might be fighting against FGM. It infringes on their possibility of having a vagina as long as the debate continues.

I think much can be done if we stick to what is important- freeing ALL women from the oppression of the patriarchy. And leaving other people's issues alone. Nice thought! But almost all issues comes down to the setup of our society, Patriarchy and who it benefits. That includes wars, feminism, cultural, trans issues (because I believe that if they were comfortable to be who they are, they would not have the need to be women), class and others I cannot think of at the moment. In order for feminism to become a non issues, you need everyone involved to fight their own corners against patriarchy and dismantle it. If we do it alone, we hit walls after walls with lots of push backs. Raise your son a feminist. Teach young boys feminism too.
Patriarchy is not just a system but a mental state of being. It's like
brain-washing. You can change the system, but it's the people who will need to change to stop uprising against it. Example, how trump won.

Can see both sides of that M0stly. The work is easier physically but also standards are higher so there isn't that much less of it.
It's like computers - they were going to either steal all the jobs or give us loads of leisure time. Instead we now have a massive industry all about making/programming the computers and jobs endlessly emailing each other and creating electronic content.
It's why I can't get too worked up about robotics.

We know there is a whole section of society -mainly women - who are plugging the gaps left by cuts to services. They are in a caring role at work and at home. Why are they so easily dismissed?

I look at the gender pay gap and all the chat is about 'the boardroom.' And yet inlook st our public sector and see traditionally male jobs which were/are heavily unionised are paid much better than traditionally female roles. No one gives a toss. And yet this type of work is done by women of all ethnicities and is low paid and insecure.

For me, intersectional feminism doesn't provide an adequate explanation nor solution for this situation. To me it seems like a way if looking at society which brings important factors into focus. But it's not the whole of feminism. Feminism should also be about winning economic and political power for those women who don't have it because they are too busy holding everyone else's shit together.

Bog your experiences remind me so much of listening to my grandmother's generation talk about their lives as young women. And reminds me of an argument I had as a student with one of my lecturers who was a historian of technology. She was arguing the then trendy thesis that domestic appliances (the washing machine, the hoover etc) hadn't actually made women's lives any easier because people's standards of cleanliness just got adjusted so that women's days were still filled. This was so much at odds with what my relatives - working class women - had told me of their lives. Carrying pails of water to heat in the boiler, carrying buckets of coal to fire it up, pounding the washing by hand, hauling heavy wet sheets out and running them through the mangle - all absolutely back-breaking manual labour, and in my grandmother's case on top of a 9-5 job in a shop because her husband had done a runner and hers was the sole income. The lecturer simply refused to believe me, because didn't I know that women of that generation sent their sheets out to the laundry. (I dunno who she was basing her oral history on - Mrs fucking Minniver perhaps?)

Bit of a digression, but this supposedly feminist lecturer was so wedded to the idea that her version of domestic history had to be such that women's lives could not have got easier in any material way that she simply refused to admit any evidence to the contrary.

Great thread.

And that is foolish

Possibly APlaceonthecouch. Although I think it does more harm than good.

For me intersectionality is no more than a fancy word identity politics concept. It doesn't do anything and it's not a movement. It is the very opposite of collective, there can only be division and individualism. Which of course is toxic to class action / struggle / movements (like feminism) and the result is the status quo remains untouched and unchallenged.

Plus it cuts us off from our history. The women's rights movement is being cut off from its history and is turning it's back on the hard work and heavy lifting that has been done by our predecessors. At that is foolish.

Beachcomber you and Catharine MacKinnon are right. I think female socialisation means I feel obliged to say 'good effort; poor execution'. When in actuality, I find intersectional feminists unwilling to make any effort that would cause them to look too closely at the experiences of women outside their immediate intersectional cohort.
Where I struggle to deny its value completely is that someone somewhere may be reaching a feminist understanding through it. It may be a gateway. But the intersectionality I see in practice on social media is not for me.

my male partner they cannot possibly know I am bisexual unless I say "I am bisexual" but apparently i am biphobic for saying my struggle is not as tough as someone with a female partner who would face abuse

I find the attitude to bisexuality interesting (and personally challenging) too. I'm attracted to men and women however have been in a het relationship with the same man for almost 20 years. I feel like to label myself "bisexual" would be pretty meaningless really. Because in reality and to all intents and purposes at the moment I'm straight and have been for yonks.
I don't really feel comfortable talking about my sexuality because it feels to me like talking about fantasies at this point - better kept private. I don't feel oppressed by it at all because it is not a material thing - materially I'm in a her marriage with kids. How would my sexual attraction oppress me? I could potentially use the bisexual label in a game of privilege bingo but what would be the point?
Maybe I have entrenched biphobia or maybe I'm just realistic. It's a headfuck though

Just place marking - might not add anything as I'm not clued up on this as those who have already posted & want to learn more.

Me too. 😀

I had never even heard of intersectional feminism.

Thugs = things

Personal identity does seem to be the 'unit of power' as it were, rather than class. I think there's also an assumed middle class guilt, which I don't feel as I'm not from that background.

Fauche on the subject of 'if this was racism it would be dealt with' I think that to a lot of white men in particular, racism is something they've actively been made aware of through education, so with thugs like racist terms they are able to spot them very easily, quite possibly as they've grown up in a non-diverse area so have a more 'academic' understanding. However, sexism is part of their lives and beliefs, part of their families and they don't see it, and they feel very threatened by it, when they 'know' they're not racist, because they don't ever really have to face that.

I am in a political job and have been called a white feminist three times recently by male colleagues. I have found it really upsetting and confusing - firstly that they are clearly using the term as an insult and secondly because most of my work is intersectional (or at least I think it is) I find it really confusing. I actually don't think that these colleagues are interested in what I do or don't do in my work - I think they just want to express disgust at some intangible middle-class whiteness that I apparently embody. Sometimes it just feels like thinly disguised misogyny to me.

I agree with what Catharine MacKinnon says in her essay "From Practice to Theory, or What is a White Woman Anyway?"

www.feminist-reprise.org/docs/from%20practice%20to%20theory.htm

It is common to say that something is good in theory but not in practice. I always want to say, then it is not such a good theory, is it?

Unlike other women, the white woman who is not poor or working class or lesbian or Jewish or disabled or old or young does not share her oppression with any man. That does not make her condition any more definitive of the meaning of "women" than the condition of any other woman is. But trivializing her oppression, because it is not even potentially racist or class-biased or heterosexist or anti-Semitic, does define the meaning of being "anti-woman" with a special clarity. How the white woman is imagined and constructed and treated becomes a particularly sensitive indicator of the degree to which women, as such, are despised.

I have just seen this thread and I don't know where to start.
@Fauch i think we are in similar age group and I applaud you for starting this thread. The comments though yikes! I can see why womanism appealed to me more and more when I stated getting involved in feminism.

The conclusion, I have come up with is that I must have a very sheltered way of reading my materials and groups I communicate with. The focus mainly being black women. Trans encroaching on female space didn't even come into my radar before Mn. For me the trans debate blew up after Caitlin Jenner and started noticing it more and more.

I wonder whether the focus on identity as power is also a response to the collapse of traditional left wing politics and past ideas about class solidarity.

I think there are so many positives in the way young people support each other to be themselves and be happy.

But in the end - we all know what 50% of the population is good for wiping arses etc

Place - I think you've expressed something I've been struggling to recently, in that intersectional feminism cannot see that it's very Western, and actually American in its understanding. The US has a very specific understanding of slavery, for example - and the criticism of the Pankhurst quote 'I'd rather be a rebel than a slave' seemed to be based on the fact that slavery means black slavery in the US and nothing else.

I think most women who have experienced pregnancy, birth and looking after a baby can probably relate to each other, even if we're on the other side of the world and in completely different circumstances, we could have a conversation about this and a lot of the experiences will be the same because they are primal human experiences. It's this kind of thing that I think the idea of 'the sisterhood' is based on, and it's something I've only understood since having a baby as I felt quite individual before then. However, to say this is unacceptable as 'are you saying women who can't have children or don't want to have children aren't women?' OF COURSE IM NOT BLOODY SAYING THAT.

This is a great thread, Fauche, and I think I'll have to reread a couple of times as I've been turning these ideas over in my mind lately and now I've got a lot more to think about.

I understood intersectionality to have come about due to the way discrimination law is only built to tackle single instances of discrimination, so let black women down as the issues they were fighting couldn't be 'proven' in the legal sense as they weren't experienced by white women or black men, so their arguments failed along both sex and race lines individually, despite the discrimination being real.

It's contemporary use seems to be a lot more about identity politics and validation. It's all a bit 'teenage' for me and it reminds me of the 'alternative' group at school, who were mainly middle class kids with angst who felt 'different' and were very vocal about that, and set great importance on how they dressed etc.

I feel like I'm intersectional on a personal level. I've often talked about the frustration of people explaining issues of sexism away with non-white men friends, who have experienced the same with race issues. The issues aren't the same at all, but we can both understand that feeling and it has probably made us both more understanding.

The identity stuff I just can't get on board with. I don't think we have complete control over how we're perceived, and I don't feel the need to have my vision of myself validated by anyone else.

BogQueen - I so totally get you. I've not been personally in your shoes, but I lived in that world once and I know where you are coming from. It totally fucks me off that class (about boring shit like work, fatigue and poverty) and not about sexy stuff (like sex, identity, fashion, who one fucks) is totally forgotten in this brave new world. Yet, class is still fundamental, even if it has changed in essence. It's not exciting enough for the current SJWs, though, even if they accuse women of being middle class just like most of them are.