'My feminism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit" - Flavia Drozdan

[JenniferJames]

A frustrated Flavia Drozdan once wrote this line in an essay which opened up a raging debate within feminism about who, exactly, feminism is for. Interested to hear people's thoughts?

Will check back, ppl. Mumsnet: you are mighty. 👊

My feminism will be reality based or it will be bullshit.

That black women face racism and misogyny is a fact. That lesbians face homophobia and misogyny is a fact. That poor women face economic disempowerment and misogyny is a fact.

That a person born with a penis can be female if they declare themselves to be is not a fact. That biological sex is a social construct is not a fact. That some nebulous feminine gendered soul, not their biological sex, makes someone a woman is not a fact. That male people do not recieve male socializations because they feel female is not a fact.

If you don't base your politics and activism in actual reality, it's useless.

TransCult throws women of disadvantaged groups under the bus even more than white middle class women.

You can not be intersectional if you include TIMs.

Here is Crenshaw herself, explaining why intersectionality is about the way in which structural oppressions intersect in ways that certain women cannot avoid. Here is Crenshaw herself, explaining why intersectionality has fuck all to do with identity politics.

Poor woman's probably going to have to make another video soon, explaining why intersectionality does not intersect with penis.

This is Kimberle Crenshaw, the woman who coined the term intersectionality for a specific, employment discrimination law context, that allows us to look at the intersection of race and sex, notice it, act on it in a legal framework so that black women don’t need to choose race or sex as grounds for discrimination
and can draw attention to the specific differences they encounter . Obviously this idea can be applied to other intersectional differences too. I was lucky to see her give this talk. What a brilliant speaker.
m.youtube.com/watch?v=-DW4HLgYPlA

Ha! Snap Lang great minds think alike

Nooo! I was watching and it just stopped!

I think the second link is to the full talk.

wrappedupinmyselflikeaspool

LOL! I saw her at the LSE. Brilliant woman.

It comes to something when the originator of a term and serious legal scholar has to make a bloody video explaining that a bunch of pomo-addled queer studies fools have got the whole thing entirely wrong.

I googled and wikied flavia drozdan and got nothing. I want to read this essay guardianlions refers to. Any help appreciated.

Lang yup! I’m ashamed to say I didn’t know who she was till that day at WOW but so glad I stumbled across her like that. Some sanity amid the nonsense. She’s such a clear speaker too. Wonder what she thinks of it all.

tigerbeatdown.com/2011/10/10/my-feminism-will-be-intersectional-or-it-will-be-bullshit/

There you go. She's something like um @redlightvoices on Twitter?

wrapped - me too. I mean, she may be fully trans supportive for all I know. Because being trans supportive or not literally has nothing whatsoever to do with the structural legal critique she wrote and what intersectionality actually is!

IMO everything that needs to be said about intersectionality has been said here now and it is done with,
But I wanted to share my thoughts about a quote from the high priestess of the queergenders Judith Butler-distinguishing between the different arms of activism is what social activists do. I always thought social activists brought people together to fight their shared oppression. Silly me! Social activists are suppose to help people find out their differences and create divisions. Such a positive message.

I seem to say this a lot on these boards but many, maybe most young feminists have no idea about what's gone before in feminism.

Everything seems to be taught through a queer/pomo/gender studies lense now and the works of the feminist mothers are often regarded as old fashioned and not worth bothering with at best, and dangerous bigoted nonsense at worst.

Not helped by certain little shits with big mouths talking like they invented feminism.

Do you know where that idea originated Marilla? I know it emerged in the 70s but where and how? Also, I know it’s not new as I’d read bell hooks and Audre Lorde before Crenshaw but what Crenshaw brings is an important way of visualising difference, the intersection, where we have to make a choice. Black women were forced to make a choice. Crenshaw uses the point of intersection as the point at which we should understand how discrimination works. I like it as an analogy because it works for class and disability, sexually, even gendered identity. The problem is only that the idea has been co opted to mean trans and only trans.

This is great thanks for link, hadn't heard of this woman before. 👍

wrapped my understanding was that the concept emerged from a specific case in the US car industry which was analogous to the sewing machinists in Dagenham, but with the added complication of race as well as sex discrimination.

A group of black women tried to argue that a specific car manufacturer (I forget which one) was discriminating against them. The manufacturer came back with the argument "we don't discriminate against women or black people, because look at all these women in the accounts department, and these black guys on the assembly line." I think the company was successful in its defence - but the black women were screwed, because all the women in the office were white, and all the black people on the assembly line were men - so still no jobs for people who were simultaneously black and female.

Someone more knowledgeable than I am may be able to find a link to the case.

I used to follow a lot of ig pages about feminism (I loved the ones that posted how guys react to tinder rejections) until I realized they are all intersectional, liberal bs (and there was an inverse relationship between being on ig and reading here), and posted nonsense that is just based on "who do I feel sorry for the most today" (and this from someone who in another forum I regularly use was viewed by many as a "bleeding heart, SJW, white knight, etc. etc.). If you think most about how what you think, might affect how someone else feels, and completely focus on feelings and not even yours but others', you lose all capability of critical thought.

Intersectionality is what led to trans agenda. The practical reality of it is a hierarchy of who is the most oppressed. Turns out trans win, there's the least of them, and they have mental health problems (perfect for suicide gaslighting). Internationality makes this possible in practice, because how could you talk about more women in politics when you have poor women, how could you talk about poor white women when there's black women, etc. etc. until you get to "how can you fight for cis women when there's poor trans women".

I like the theory of intersectional feminism. I’m a white, middle class feminist - absolutely nothing I can do about that. Being aware that poor women and women of colour (for example) face multiple axes of oppression is important. Being conscious that my voice may well be louder than other women’s, and considering what that means.

But it doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to have an opinion and have to sit in a corner beating myself up about my privilege. And it doesn’t mean that “intersectional feminism is standing up for all oppressed groups” as I was told on Twitter last week. And it absolutely doesn’t mean that everything intersects with penis.

“The criticism of feminists for ignoring other oppressed characteristics appears to be aimed at silencing the women who have half a chance at making themselves heard on behalf of all women.”

Before I heard of intersectionality, I heard MRAs say “feminism in the West isn’t needed, go to places like the Middle East where it’s actually needed”. Same exact thing.

It’s not the same thing. Intersectionality is being misinterpreted and misunderstood by trans ideologues. Watch Crenshaw talk about it in the link it will make much more sense, it’s not about a hierarchy of oppression, it’s not even really about oppression but about sex discrimination and race discrimination and how they meet for black women, though clearly this is an idea that can be extended to other situations.

Hairy ball thank you, great explanation but I already knew that. my question was directed at the person who said Crenshaws idea wasn’t new. I wondered if anyone knew what the source of the idea might be if it wasn’t her. If it was a single essay or more of a movement. I’ve read as many black feminists as I can, British and US, and there are a lot of people saying the same thing but wondering what was the lightbulb moment for white women?

wrappedup I think it has quite a long history in the making- with WoC in America being sidelined in the movement for women's suffrage, and then being sidelined again in the civil rights movements - I can't remember the actual quote, but Martin Luther King effectively told them to get back in the kitchen...

What it is in theory and what it has been hijacked as are not the same thing. But which matters more? When someone says they are an intersectional feminist, do you go oh yes, or oh no?