'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. 👊

Well all I know is that my - admittedly limited - experience of intersectionalism consisted largely of men telling women how to be better feminists.

I think the issue is people calling themselves an intersectional feminists.

It usually means aggressive woman-hating twat who blames feminists for 'race' inequality and their allegiance is with men in dresses, or they are in fact a man in a dress.

Feminists for whom intersectional analysis plays an important part have called themselves radical feminists (it lends itself to class-based analysis) or Black Feminists or lesbian feminists or just feminists or some other name.

Was initially a useful concept and still would be if used as Crenshaw intended, but is now mostly used to mean "shut up, you're getting too much actual feminism in my virtue signaling".

Was initially a useful concept and still would be if used as Crenshaw intended, but is now mostly used to mean "shut up, you're getting too much actual feminism in my virtue signaling".

Yes. And (broken record again) it's another illustration of how what began as a structural critique has been warped into serving individualism by now being about interpersonal interactions. The infiltration of pomo/social constructionism has made almost every conversation impossible because the actual meaning of a term has been hijacked and bastardised so everyone is talking at cross purposes all the time. Biological essentialism is another one. What the TRAs mean by it is the opposite of what it actually means.

Which is the point, really. Change the meaning of words used to describe essential concepts and, if you're successful, it becomes almost impossible for people to discuss those concepts at all.

And not just impossible to discuss: impossible to create meaningful or workable public policy around. If these fools ever get into power, the laws written will cause havoc.

ETA - case in point is that weird Oger person in Canada - who seems to be correctly interpreting Canada's laws in that a banner proclaiming basic biology is the same thing as hate speech.

I am just surfacing from watching the 1st half of the Crenshaw video linked above and it is fantastic, powerful, spine-tingling stuff.

But I think it is important to remember that she is USA-based and very much coming from that angle. Because they have the (illusory) lack of distinct social classes in the USA, the different historical reasons Africans and Europeans became American citizens (the latter exploiting the labour of the former) - the social 'class' aspects of the intersections she discusses are very much seen through a 'race' filter. When factors of poverty, lack of access to quality education, etc, is because in the USA African Americans are still overwhelmingly stuck in their 'working' exploited labour class. Which doesn't translate so neatly to the UK.

In the UK it was working class women missing out on Suffrage and it is working class women who have been historically marginalised in the labour movement. At the time of women's suffrage in the UK - there was a much tinier demographic of African/Afro Caribbean people living here (although their labour was still exploited at armslength in the Commonwealth).

But I think intersectional analysis is absolutely essential in the name of social justice. But it is up to everyone, not just feminists, and not exclusively along the axies of 'race' and 'sex'.

Yes - social media does mean that we in other countries suffer with the imposition of a US framework on everything. That said, black British feminists will often tell you that we dismiss race in favour of class as much as Americans dismiss class in favour of race. I do see some American leftists waking up to the idea that if you tell the white American working poor living pay cheque to pay cheque that they have immense privilege over the likes of Barack and Michelle Obama, they might well turn around and tell you to fuck off and vote for Trump.

Also, it is pretty inflammatory to say 'black man speak for black all people' and 'White women speak for all women' - which begs the question "Who to?".
Who do white women and black men speak to, on behalf of black women?
Clearly it must be 'those with power worth speaking up to' and in this crude abstract race/sex class analysis it must be 'white men'
So where are all these 'intersectional feminists' challenging the power of the white male class? Why instead do they welcome in white men in dresses and go on the offensive to attack opressed groups?
Why are they not challenging the class of black men who marginalise them within anti-racism?
Why are they obsessed with exclusively attacking white women who are feminists and demonising all of feminism as 'white feminism' ?

lang
I agree, but the relationship is more nuanced.
Because in the UK Afro Caribbeans, for historical reasons tend to slot into the working class, yet Asians, tend to slot into the middle class, so this catch-all 'race' axis confuses different intersections. Unless you are talking more specifically about racial 'othering' and hate.

Yes - picture is not as straightforward in the UK.

The real point of discourse about intersectionality as it applies to black women, I think, is that feminists often ask them to put racism on the back burner in favour of fighting sexism while anti-racists orgs will ask them to put sexism on the back burner in favour of fighting racism. But they can't be separated in that way. As Crenshaw showed by her analysis of single axis discrimination legislation - black women weren't covered at all.

I'll add - "white feminism" is yet another term hijacked by these pomo idiots so that its meaning is completely changed. I think I mentioned this on here at the time, but I recently saw THREE black gender critical feminists on Twitter called "white feminists" because they don't accept trans ideology. It's Through The Looking Glass stuff, what these people do to language.

feminists often ask them to put racism on the back burner in favour of fighting sexism while anti-racists orgs will ask them to put sexism on the back burner in favour of fighting racism. But they can't be separated in that way. As Crenshaw showed by her analysis of single axis discrimination legislation - black women weren't covered at all.

Of course I get this. But in practice it seems that feminism is turning itself inside out like a sea cucumber seeking out where to berate itself for not being inclusive enough and making measures to address inclusion.

But on the ground, there'll be - a woman who was a political prisoner in Iran having no one turn up to her talk while the discussion on the sex industry is happening next door. People tend to flock to issues that personally affect them and it can be hard for say, a feminist from an Afro-Caribbean family, to understand and be able to center the specific ways patriarchy and racism play out for Turkish women.

On the other hand, you do get radical feminists like Southall Black Sisters or Million Women Rise specifically centering these issues of how patriarchy and racism play out. But they are very much part of a sisterhood sharing the oppressions of racism and sexism. And they do shape wider feminism.

When Audre Lourde asked the white women to leave to let the black women share - the white women left without fuss.

It is important for people to be able to gather and organise around their shared oppression and for everyone to listen and provide platforms to minority groups to be heard and have influence.

But it doesn't mean that those who don't share those oppressions must STFU about their own in the name of inclusion.

And it cannot be emphasised enough that transwomen are a minority of males not a minority of females, therefore are not the responsibility of feminists or feminism to address when I said this:

It is important for people to be able to gather and organise around their shared oppression and for everyone to listen and provide platforms to minority groups to be heard and have influence.

Absolutely yes to intersectional feminism, a black woman has the exact same problems as me with the added shit that is specific to being a black woman. I suppose it's the same with activism for POC. Black women will have extra shit specifically to do with being black women that black men never experience.
None of that has anything to do with women who have penises and it's offensive to black women to act like there is some comparison.

Agree that the male to trans agenda has been incorrectly absorbed into feminism. Trans rights are part of egalitariansim in which feminism is one of the major movements... but feminism is the liberation of women from our sex-based oppression. Our oppression is not gender based!

We are now making headway in a number of areas (which I cannot divulge to you at the moment) but I can assure you all we do have reason to be encouraged.

Thank you so much again for all you have done for women and all you will do.

You are mighty Mumsnet. xx

What are you saying ?
Has Corbyn spoken to Linda Bellos yet ?
Thought not.
I will not be voting labour again whilst Corbyn is leader

Valentines fart absolutely agree however it’s not always as simple as black women having the same sex based stuff and then extra problems to do with race but that the racial stuff as it intersects with sex brings about DIFFERENT problems that are misunderstood or overlooked by white women. For example. Your average white middle class woman might find a lot of resistance to her getting an abortion but a black woman might find that she is actively encouraged to have one, and a white women might suffer from too much interference during labour but a black woman might be ignored completely and die as a result.

That was actually the point I was trying to make which is why I said "as black women" and not as black people. :)

We are now making headway in a number of areas (which I cannot divulge to you at the moment) but I can assure you all we do have reason to be encouraged.

Glad to hear it, Jen! Thanks for checking back in.

Trans activists don't speak for all trans people.
Transwomen don't speak for all transwomen.
Look at different groups within the trans community.

If we are talking intersectionality, is trans activism intersectional within its own confines?? Never mind 'is feminism intersectional' in the context of including transwomen.

When you have many transwomen themselves, saying they are not women but transwomen then you have a paradox.

Was initially a useful concept and still would be if used as Crenshaw intended, but is now mostly used to mean "shut up, you're getting too much actual feminism in my virtue signaling".

This. I am an intersectional feminist, but I would never describe myself as an intersectional feminist, because of all the awful people who do describe themselves as intersectional feminists, such as Flavia.

(Seriously, two minutes on Flavia's twitter tells you exactly the type of person she is. I do not wish for her approval, so I don't give a shit what she thinks of my feminism.)

Feminism is the political movement for the liberation of women. As such it is intersectional with regard to race, class, and sex. That is why it is an effective organizing framework in every culture.
The words matter. We are living one of the periods in time that Dale Spender wrote about in Women of Ideas and What Men Have Done to Them. Men are rewriting history to change historical female figures into men and redefining words to erase our very existence.
Legal fictions have generational effects on people's lives. We have only to consider coverture to be reminded that women's very existence is viewed by men as a material reality they may or may not choose to acknowledge in the laws they write.

Thanks for checking in JJ glad to hear things are looking up

Yes bewilderness I agree - feminism is innately intersectional and it didn't suddenly become so when the word was coined.

As the consciousness raising and conversation continues between women across the world and through time it has to include all women*.

It is important to make a distinction between 'privilege' and 'racism/sexism/disablism/etc'.

Privilege is invisible to those who have it (unless they make a particular special effort to learn and pay attention, but they will still miss it sometime) which is infuriating for those who don't share that privilege and face barriers instead.

That's why so many people loathe tories. Thinking -ffs if you didn't have all that help, all those connections, that hefty start in life! you might realise your facile recommendations for someone at rock-bottom with no one and nothing are a disgusting insult.

But this ignorance (of how hard others have it) inherent in privilege and the invisibility of barriers you don't share, does not mean you are are racist/disabilist/sexist but it is easy to feel of those who are privileged in ways you aren't are f-ing a-holes and direct all your fury about inequality at them.

*not males.