This commonly used term in feminist circles nowadays was first coined in 1989 by Kimberle Crenshaw as a way to help explain the oppression of African-American women. She explains that intersectional feminism is a lens through which you can see where power comes and collides, where it interlocks and intersects.
Intersectionality has been around since the third wave of feminism, as a way to broaden the fight of feminism due to the fact some women might experience “layers of oppression” caused by factors such as race, ethnicity, social class, cultural identities, disability and gender.
Although the term flourished during the third wave of feminism, we have seen it around more and more during the fourth wave we’ve been living since 2010/2012, and that is mostly due to the misuse of the term by liberal feminists and the militants of queer/postmodern theories, but also trans activists, misinterpreting it and using it as a branch of feminism, when it’s supposed to be a tool to help us understand, study and go to the root of the oppression some women face for their sex, for their sexual orientation, their class, their race and many other aspects whilst dissecting it by layers.
The political subject of feminism is women, the human adult/child female; and as the centre and focus of the feminist fight, intersectionality helps us include women with different backgrounds with the purpose to get a better understanding of where their oppression comes from and find ways to dismantle it. Intersectionality doesn’t mean feminism should include men by the sole claim they feel like a woman or identify with the gender roles imposed into women by society, because women’s oppression comes and derives from our biological sex and reproductive capacity. Issues like reproductive rights, sexual trafficking and exploitation, child brides, obstetric violence, glass ceiling, FGM, would never be faced by men and we need to be able to discuss this intersectionality in order for us to make meaningful changes.
In recent years the concept has been losing its original significance due to the contentious context we are living. Why? Well, mostly because the intersectionality of sex and power have taken the front stage in public debate. With the hashtag #intersectionalfeminism, much frivolous content has been de-contextualized and used as temporary signifiers, subjective opinions, and filled with ideologies and concepts of a postmodern era in which many still conflate and exchange the idea of sex and gender so easily that many vulnerable women are being left unprotected.
Just like feminism is not the “mother of all the fights”, and can’t be an umbrella to defend and exterminate all the problems in the world, intersectional feminism can’t be the the answer to all ills that include men, but an indispensable and critical tool within feminism–that is a movement for women by women.
Mother, lawyer, ecologist, migrant, radfem