Doing Intersectionality
Intersectionality is a key tenet of feminist theory and a way of making sense of the many aspects of identity (like race, class, caste, ability, sexual orientation and more) that impact our lives. Intersectionality has served as a conceptual cornerstone for how today’s activists, movements for social change, and non-profit organizations alike account for intersecting oppressions and it is an essential framework for building effective and strategic social movements. Intersectionality as a concept has helped women of color to name the ways that are so often asked to show their allegiances by gender or their race, even as they face oppressive social systems because of each of these aspects of their identities―often many more.
While the term was coined by legal scholar and law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, it draws on a framework of understanding wrestled with decades before by Black feminist activists the likes of Demita Frasier and Barbara Smith, founding members of the Combahee River Collective. Rooted in a long tradition of Black feminist theory, Crenshaw’s articulation of intersectionality has helped us to better understand how identity shapes our relationship to social systems of power, particularly within legal systems and social policy. In Crenshaw article article Mapping the Margins, she gives the example of an African-American woman who sued a manufacturing company for not hiring her. The judge in the case dismissed her claim, noting that the company had hired people of her color, and had hired people of her gender―it just hadn’t happened to hire people who were both. Being both Black and a woman, meant living at an intersection that was invisible to the law.
Within SAYHU, we see the framework of intersectionality as a vital tool that we can use to understand how each of our identities can impact the way we experience the world.
“All feminists are students in one way or another. We have to study the world in order to transform it. We will all assemble different survival kits. I encourage each student to assemble their own. I have a lot of books in mine...” - Sara Ahmed, Notes of a Feminist Killjoy
SAYHU’s approach to feminism reflects a commitment to helping our community apply an intersectional framework. We are building individual and collective survival kits to help us understand how things like misogyny, patriarchy, masculinity, homophobia, classism and ableism impact our lives.
