Where does Intersectionality Come From?

This activity should take you about 15 minutes to complete.

In the previous activity, you’ll have seen that Alexa talks about the idea of intersectionality coming out of the experiences of Black women. The origins of intersectionality lie in the ideas, experiences and actions of the Combahee River Collective. The collective was active throughout the 1970’s in the US and was made up of Black women who were critical of dominant mainstream feminist movements. One of their criticisms was that mainstream feminism was partial. They said that a feminist project that sought the liberation of women while ignoring race inequality, broader social inequalities and discrimination against sexual and gender minorities can only ever be capable of liberating certain (white, affluent) women while leaving Black women, poor women, trans women, lesbians and bisexual women and disabled women behind. In other words, ‘women’ must include all women. They therefore concluded that women’s liberation will only come about when racism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, etc are also defeated. In short, liberating women necessitated that we completely transform how societies are organised.

Demita Frazier, Beverly Smith, and Barbara Smith, who authored the 1977
Combahee River Collective Statement
.

Kimberlé Crenshaw, an American civil rights advocate and a professor at Columbia Law School, built on the insights of the Combahee women developing the concept of what she called ‘intersectionality’. Take a look at this video, one of many, where she explains what she meant. Does anything she have to say resonate with you?

Kimberlé Crenshaw says ‘where there’s no name for a problem, you can’t see the problem, and when you can’t see the problem, you pretty much can’t solve it’. Intersectionality is a way of seeing the world around us, a way of framing the problems that we face as activists and advocates and a way of responding to those problems in a holistic, all-encompassing way. So, an intersectional ‘lens’ makes visible the experiences of people who are intersectionally marginalised, it makes visible the overarching structures that make up these experiences such as white supremacy, capitalism and neo-liberalism, patriarchy, ableism, homophobia etc.

Now go to Lesson 3 : An Intersectional Lens on Sex Work