Feminism is a social and political movement that was born from the need to end the oppression of women. Despite maintaining its objective, this movement has been evolving and incorporating new currents and contributions that nourish the knowledge of feminist theory. Currently, the concept of intersectionality It is key to understanding the contemporary feminist movement.
If you want to know what intersectional feminism is, keep reading our Psychology-Online article in which we will talk about Intersectional feminism: what it is, types, books and phrases.
Since the beginning of the 60s, within the feminist movement there began to be question systematically the universality of a single female subject (white Western, heterosexual and bourgeois woman) as representative of the reality of all women and the category “woman”. This universal subject omitted and ignored the differences of race, class and sexuality, so it was questioned whether the knowledge produced from feminism was universal and could be generalized to the experience of all women.
This is why, since the 1960s, black feminism has criticized the fact that the discourse of white middle-class women is central within the hegemonic feminist movement. This criticism focuses, therefore, on liberal feminism, whose feminism is individualistic and reflects only the values of a part of women, in this case, privileged white women without including those of the rest of the women.
Thus, the activist Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989 coin the term intersectionality which refers to the approach by which each subject suffers oppression or discrimination based on their membership in different social categories, among which we find gender, race, class, ethnicity, disability, sexuality, etc.
These oppressions interact with each other and are intertwined. Thus, they must be analyzed simultaneously and merged, and not as separate and independent categories, to fully address and understand one’s own identity. The latter implies not analyzing the experience as “woman” and “immigrant” separately, but as “immigrant woman.”
What is intersectionality
Intersectionality in feminism reveals that the experience of a white middle-class woman is not the same as that of a black woman from the black class due to the breed componentjust as it is not that of a middle-class black woman who practices as a doctor and that of a poor immigrant black woman due to the class component. Intersectionality argues that the more a subject deviates from the norm, in this case a rich heterosexual white man, the more discrimination or oppression he will experience, intertwined with each other.
However, before the appearance of the term “intersectional”, this denunciation of feminism as a movement that is not representative of the reality and oppression of all women was already made to the suffrage movement, at the beginning of the 20th century, among others by Sojourner Truth and Flora Tristán . Sojourner was a black slave who spoke of the double oppression of being a woman and a black woman, while Flora highlights the double oppression of being a woman and a worker.
Intersectionality is a theoretical framework used to analyze and understand how different forms of oppression, discrimination and inequality intertwine. If you want to know more about this proposal, we recommend reading the book “Intersectionality”, which puts on the table existing debates at the international level about this concept and proposes its own approach. Do not miss it!
The definition of intersectional feminism is one that recognizes that there is no single axis of oppression, gender, that has to be taken into account in the theory and practice of , which would be transversal feminismwhich omits oppression and defends the category of woman as unitary and abstract.
Rather, intersectional feminism recognizes and defends that there are multiple intersecting axes of discrimination. This feminism is what breaks with the universality of women’s experience and is built by the diversity of women and their experiences and struggles. Therefore, intersectional feminism is not based on the premise of unifying identity and seeking the interests shared by all women, but rather arises from recognize different needs and experiences of all women, and defends alliances as the basis of the collective organization of the movement.
With this decentering of the political subject of feminism and as a result of intersectional feminism, different feminisms that already exist and previous to the concept of intersectional feminism are included, as well as new ones emerge. They are born from the need to complete feminist theory. They are a reflection of the different concerns and discriminations of women.
- Black feminism: Regarding the category of “race”, it is during the movement to defend black identity in the 1960s when black feminism criticizes the representation made of black women from the predominant hegemonic discourse. They defended the existence of the intersectionality of race, gender and class.
- Lesbian feminism: It became popular between 1970 and 1980, arose from the union of the feminist and homosexual movements, and analyzed the discrimination of women from the axis of compulsory heterosexuality as a system and institution. Likewise, she criticizes the discrimination of lesbian women within the hegemonic feminist movement.
- Chicano feminism: movement initiated by Hispanic women that lays the foundations of border thinking and reflects the being and coming of a border. They demand their right to recognize themselves with more than one identity not recognized until now by prevailing feminism.
- Indigenous feminism: movement in which women have a double militancy or struggle: the gender struggle and the fight for the autonomy of their roots and peoples, as well as the defense of their culture.
- Arab feminism: feminism of the Arab world at the end of the 20th century that defended women’s rights, secular identity and independence from European colonialist domination.
- Gypsy feminism: seeks the real relationship between women and men, but they also criticize and point out ethnic-racial and socioeconomic privileges as a source of oppression of Gypsy women.
- Socialist feminism: This movement places the oppression of women not only in the patriarchal system, but in the capitalist one, defending that women’s liberation will only be a reality when both systems are put to an end.
- Transfeminism: Apart from the fight for women’s liberation, it conceptualizes gender as an oppressive system that seeks to control, limit and adapt those bodies that do not conform to socially normative ones.
These are some of the feminist movements that can be identified today, however, the reality is changing and voices of women and activists continually arise who denounce the oppressions experienced by the group to which they belong, such as women, prostitutes, neurodivergents, etc It is necessary to listen to all of them and carry out an exercise of critical reflection on our own ideas, attitudes and practices within feminism.