Intersectional feminism is a term that was discovered by Kimberly Crewnshaw, "cultural patterns are interrelated, but are bound together and influenced by the intersectional systems of society". Activism is the act of campaigning to make change, whether political, social, economical, etc. Whereas an activist is someone who feels passionate about a topic and wants to implement and bring about social change and participates in activism.

To see the definition and examples of intersectionality, please see Introduction to Intersectionality.

What Is Intersectional Activism?

Intersectionality plays an important role when it comes to activism and bringing light to social justice issues in our world today. Intersectional activism is vital and can be conducted through many different ways, such as protests, lobbying, grassroots, petitions, and more. I chose to research intersectional activism because it is vital bringing awareness and change to our society. Though it is not often focused in mainstream media, it is viral over social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, Buzzfeed, etc. The framework of intersectional activism is being incorporated in a lot of today’s activism work and there is much emphasis behind it. The Black Lives Matter Movement (Say Her Name) and LGBTQ+ community are two great example of a movement/community that incorporate intersectionality into their activism. Overall I am looking at overall analysis and discussion on intersectional activism, it’s framework, and it’s practice today. 

In Social Change and Activism, Doetsch-Kidder discusses intersectionality and activism from a spiritual perspective, examining 25 oral histories on different activists who identified with different sexualities, genders, races, ethnicities, and more. This text also examines philosophies, activist motivations, activist’s beliefs and methods, and activist pleasures. A few of the feminist activists Doetsch-Kidder discusses in the book are Anzaldua, Lourde, and hooks, whom are widely known for their intersectional activism. Doetsch-Kidder believes that faith plays a crucial role in activism since belief plays a factor in shaping activist methods. Faith is actually considered as the foundation. Besides faith, understanding one’s identity is incredibly vital to activism. To understand your own identity, you are able to connect with those you surround yourself with. The concept of understanding and reflecting one your own identity helps develop relationships that benefit towards making social change.  Connections amongst activists is important and can be considered as a kind of “family”, especially for those who have been excluded or rejected by their communities due to their identify.  One more important concept to intersectional activism is spirituality. Spirituality has been fundamental to the activism of Native women and African American women for civil rights and decolonial struggles. 

Researching contemporary social movements, by Elizabeth Evans, a student from the University of Bristol, conducted three case studies on Slutwalk, Femen, and Muff Marches. She evaluates these three different campaigns by assessing whether their feminist activism is intersectional through symbolic representation, that symbol being the gendered body. The three cases were chosen because they have been symbolic feminists movements that have demonstrated the marginalization of ethnic minority women. Slutwalk is considered to be well known, but yet controversial form of feminist activism. The purpose behind Slutwalk is to reclaim the word ‘slut’ and to put an end to victimization. Evans states that the leading argument behind this movement is that it fails to think and examine the racial connotation behind the word ‘slut’ on behalf of black women. Femen is a Ukranian feminist activist group that specialize in ‘sextremism’, which is a non violent but highly aggressive type of activism. Femen are known to protest topless when addressing certain social justice movements. In order to be a Femen activist, you are supposed to physically look a certain way. Typically they are known for being skinny, white, and either blonde of brunette. Another issue with the group is that they are controversial when it comes to other religious groups, such as Islam. They protested Islam by staging an International Topless Jihad Day. The issue behind this is because they believe that all women who wear hijabs are oppressed, when in fact that isn’t the case for some. Their activism isn’t intersectional for the fact that they reject other body types and don’t consider other intersections of women’s lives when protesting. Lastly, Evans studies Muff Marches, which is a protest carried out by the group UK Feminista against cosmetic genital surgery. The problem behind this protest is that is more focused on cosmetic genital surgery instead of a more dangerous and serious issue, such as the practice of female genital mutilation. These case studies were done for the criticism of Slutwalk, Femen, and Muff Marches and how they fail upon the inclusivity of ethnic minority women. From this case studies, it was concluded that even though women of color due have some kind of role in feminist activism, white women still continue to overshadow them.

Writing for the blog Everyday Feminism, Patricia Valoy, explains why feminist activism needs to be intersectional. Valoy begins the article by talking about transnational feminism. Transnational feminism is a type of feminism that focuses on extreme issues that transnational feminists look at from a global perspective while considering how they intersect with our lived issues in the United States. Transnational feminists focus on intersections across nationalities that include race, gender, sex, ethnicity, and class within backgrounds of modern day imperialism and colonialism. Valoy explains that in Western feminism, there is usually an over emphasis on how gender roles are the sole reason behind women’s oppression. Western feminism lacks the foundation of incorporating other factors on how women of color are oppressed along class and race. A crucial part of transnational feminism is to understand that even though they may all identity as women, the way global issues affect women are not the same. That privilege and disenfranchisement can change depending on where one is geographically. 

In a second article from Everyday Feminism, by Breeshia Turner, discusses how movements such as the Civil Rights Movement to Black Lives Matter can incorporate intersectional views. First, Turner wants her readers to first understand that cis-gender, straight, able-bodied, white men have privileges, and not rights. If a certain right is unattainable to a group of people, it is not a right, but a privilege. She also says that once activists start developing an intersectional approach, it can be more effective in dismantling racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, and transmisogny. For her second reminder, she wants others to understand that overthrowing another person in order to feel free does not liberation. 

Shavon McKinstry, from Spark Movement, discusses the issue of feminism and how it lacks racism as an intersection. To be an intersectional activist, you must understand that racism is just as important as sexism and homophobia. In order to be intersectional, one must recognize that not all women are white, able-bodied, cis-gendered, and heterosexual. The first step on being an intersectional activist is to understand your privilege. Though it is uncomfortable at times to talk about privilege, the conversation still needs to take place in order for one's activism to be intersectional. Privilege is not considered a bad thing unless one consistently denies it and uses it intentionally against others through words and actions. She also discusses the Suffragist Movement on how it lacked in inclusivity of African American women. The National American Woman Suffrage Association intentionally excluded African American women to gain and accommodate to the racist beliefs some potential supporters had. Though not every early women's suffrage group lacked in inclusivity, the aftermath of that impact was lasting.

Though intersectional activism is being incorporated in a lot of social justice movements, there is still much work to be done on behalf of movements and groups that organize. Though the Suufragist Movement is a prime example of a movement that lacked in inclusivity, there are still some groups and movements such as Slutwalk, Muff Marches, and Femen that still need much improvement on behalf of inclusivity. There needs to be a foundational understanding that even though a group of people identity as women, they still don't have the same experience in regards to other parts of their identity (race, religion, sexual orientation, isims, etc).  Instead of focusing on just gender, there also needs to be focus on other factors behind one's oppression. There also needs to be an understanding between the difference of rights and privileges. Besides that, faith, understanding, and spirituality are considered crucial in the foundation of intersectional activism. 

References  

Doetsch-Kidder, S. (2012). Social change and intersectional activism: The spirit of social movement. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Evans, E. (2015). Intersectionality, Symbolic Representation and Feminist Activism. Retrieved from http://ecpr.eu/Filestore/PaperProposal/efc72537-05b7-4177-bb9d-54e2dc3dda9a.pdf

McKinstry, S. L. (2013, January 01). Race is a feminist issue. Retrieved from http://www.sparksummit.com/2013/01/01/race-is-a-feminist-issue/

Turner, B. (2016). 3 important reminders to help black activists keep our movements intersectional. Everyday Feminism. Retrieved May 03, 2016, from http://everydayfeminism.com/2016/03/black-activism-intersectional/

Valoy, P. (2015, January 28). Transnational feminism: why feminist activism needs to think globally. Everyday Feminism. Retrieved May 02, 2016, from http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/01/why-we-need-transnational-feminism/

Resources on Intersectionality and Activism

Cath, E., Ferrari, Y., & Vukovic, D. (2014). Dutchifying intersectionality: Intersectional activism in the Netherlands (or the lack thereof?). Humanity in Action. Retrieved May 02, 2016, from http://www.humanityinaction.org/knowledgebase/560-dutchifying-intersectionality-intersectional-activism-in-the-netherlands-or-the-lack-thereof

In the Netherlands in the 1970’s, non white feminists had created and organized a framework that would speak on their experiences and struggles due to the lack of representation they had in the mainstream feminist movement. Some time after discussion about intersectionality was finally adopted by Dutch academics. The Dutch began having conversations about intersectionality, but had only recognized gender and sexuality as intersections. Currently, there is much work to be done for their activism work to be intersectional. They are working towards developing the language to speak about issues of intersectionality in the Netherlands in order for it to be incorporated in their activism.

Chun, J. J., Lipsitz, G., & Shin, Y. (2013). Intersectionality as a social movement strategy: asian immigrant women advocates. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 38(4), 917-940.

Chun, Lipsitz, and Shin talk about intersectionality and how it is used as a strategic social movement strategy for the community organization AIWA (Asian Immigrant Women Advocates). This article focuses on the importance of intersectionality for organizing the campaign and its framework. Intersectionality in this campaign is used to understand the relationship between sex, gender, family, work, nationality and more for this community organization. This article also suggests that intersectionality has helped promote new identities within their organization

Crenshaw, K. (n.d.). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity, politics, and violence against women of color. Racial Equity Tools. Retrieved May 2, 2016, from http://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/mapping-margins.pdf

This paper was written by Crenshaw, who is known for the introduction and theory development of intersectionality. In this article, she discusses how intersectionality works and how women of color are affected in cases of domestic violence and rape. On behalf of activism, intersectionality is important in the cases of when activists are attempting to receive support services and resources for Asian American and African American women. Not only that, but the issue of activists not being able to help minority women for cases of domestic violence due to language barriers, race, and such.

Doetsch-Kidder, S. (2012). Social change and intersectional activism: The spirit of social movement. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Written by Sharon Doetsch-Kidder, this book discusses the challengers and spiritual journey of practicing intersectionality as activists and in social justice movements. Her book consists of spiritual philosophies, activist motivations, and connecting activist’s beliefs and methods. Throughout the book, she talks about her experience of gaining more knowledge or intersectionality, her experiences in activism and the people she encounters in this journey. Doetsch-Kidder also talks about how Buddhist philosophy helped her gain more of a knowledge and understanding of intersectional activism to where she began to see spirituality as being central to the activism of people of color.

Evans, E. (2015). Intersectionality, Symbolic Representation and Feminist Activism. ECPR. Retrieved from http://ecpr.eu/Filestore/PaperProposal/efc72537-05b7-4177-bb9d-54e2dc3dda9a.pdf

Evans begins her paper by stating that intersectionality is critical part to Western feminist theory. Though it is critical, it is still not incorporated in feminist activism and is not inclusive to ethnic minority women. In her paper, Evans does three cases studies on intersectionality and feminist activism for Slutwalk, Femen, and Muff March. Though all three are very different from one another, she still goes into research for all three in order to see where they stand on being inclusive to women of color.

Kara, R. (2016, April 18). Activism needs to be intersectional, because bigotry already is. Beyond the Binary. Retrieved May 02, 2016, from http://beyondthebinary.co.uk/activism-needs-to-be-intersectional/

Kara begins the article by talking about how gender will always intersect with race, class, sexuality, age, and etc. That though others say there is progress in our society today when it comes to many social justice movements; it is hard to believe due to the lack of inclusivity in these movements. Even though Kara’s experiences are different than another’s, other’s experiences should never be ignored. Kara talks about how their experience is the only one they are able to vocalize, other’s experiences need to be addressed as well. This article is about incorporating intersectionality and activism in order for there to be actual progress in social justice movements.

Mallbin, C. K. (n.d.). Introducing intersectional theory to activists - DiVA portal. DiVa Portal. Retrieved May 2, 2016, from http://liu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:728438/FULLTEXT01.pdf

This thesis by Mallbin is about introducing intersectionality to self-identified activists at Kvinnofolkhögskolan in Gothenburg, Sweden. Mallbin starts introducing intersectionality to her students by having them participate in semi-structured discussions by talking about intersectionality theory and activism. Not only had she done this with a group of students, but also with two teachers as well in a separate discussion. Mallbin concluded that students had expectations of believing that learning and discussing more of intersectional theory would provide them with answers and possibilities of them being able to produce an all inclusive way of organizing as activists. But instead, students were left to realize that intersectional knowledge was the foundation of intersectional awareness, which involves responsible limitations.

McKinstry, S. L. (2013, January 01). Race is a feminist issue. Spark Movement. Retrieved from http://www.sparksummit.com/2013/01/01/race-is-a-feminist-issue/

This article wants readers to understand that racism is just as important as sexism, homophobia, and other types of discrimination. McKinstry states that feminism needs to be intersectional and being aware of the privilege you have. In early feminists activism, women of color were often excluded in order to appeal to a wider audience (American women’s suffrage movement). McKinstry wants her readers to acknowledge and accept intersectionality as part of feminism and it being a very important factor to different things such as activism, media, and more.

Nair, A. (2015, December 09). Today's student activists illuminate path to progress. NASPA. Retrieved May 02, 2016, from https://www.naspa.org/about/blog/todays-student-activists-illuminate-path-to-progress

Nair sees that higher education institutions are changing now due to a new wave of student activism. He sees that student activism is moving from multiculturalism to polyculturalism. Multiculturalism defines individuals by race, religion, ethnicity, or something else by placing these individuals in these certain categories, but still overlooks other parts of their identity. On the other hand, polyculturalism embraces and acknowledges the multidimensionality of one’s identity as being complex with many other identities. With this, Nair believes that’s polyculturalism will produce more inclusivity, collaboration, accountability, and transparency among student activism in higher education institutions.

Nishida, A., & Fine, M. (2014). Creating classrooms of and for activism at the intersections of class, race, ethnicity, gender, and disability. Multicultural Perspectives, 16(1), 8-11.

Nishida and Fine’s journal article focuses on a classroom experience of incorporating intersectionality, inclusiveness, oppression, and applying activism inside and outside of the classroom. This experiment first begins with the foundation of intersectionality by having discussions and challenging the students for them to understand different isims. After the foundation of establishing a discussion of intersectionality among the students, they begin to practice activism in their classroom by practicing interdependence through the creation of a accessible learning space. Once they are done with this, they start incorporating it into their lives by applying the tools they learned in order to resist and counter oppression. 

Price-Johnson, T. (2013). Intersectionality: Feminism and equality activism. Pilot TV. Retrieved May 1, 2016, from http://pilottvnews.com/2013/11/intersection-feminism-equality/

This article focuses on intersectionality and how critical and fundamental it is to feminism. Price-Johnson states that intersectionality is so fundamental, that it needs to pertain to both social and political theory when it comes equality activism. In order to be an intersectional activist, one must not ignore the experiences of another’s identity, even if they are much different to your own intersections. To be an intersectional feminist activist, you must ensure that there will be equal opportunity for all.

Swank, E., & Fahs, B. (2012). An intersectional analysis of gender and race for sexual minorities who engage in gay and lesbian rights activism. Sex Roles, 68(11-12), 660-674.

This journal article is about intersectional analysis when it comes to gay and lesbian activism. Those behind this study conducted a survey for gays and lesbians from different backgrounds to identify the main factors that have contributed to four different types of gay and lesbian rights activism. The survey for this study had intersectional analysis that was incorporated into it. Besides finding out about different factors that contributed to different kinds of activism, they also found out that when they were to experience more discrimination, it would conclude to more activism.

T, C. (2015, April 15). Meet the teens using intersectional art as feminist activism. Fbomb. Retrieved May 02, 2016, from http://thefbomb.org/2015/04/meet-the-teen-activists-combining-feminism-race-and-art/

This article talks about intersectional activism and how it is projected onto artwork. The author, T, talks about how she found herself and feminism through art, and eventually she discovered activism through art as well. Cheyenne interviews two teenagers who practice intersectional activism through their artwork as well and interviews them on their artwork and being young intersectional feminist activists. One discusses intersectional activism and how it’s important to understand oppression on a different level and being inclusive is what she tries to aim for when it comes to her artwork.

Turner, B. (2016). 3 important reminders to help black activists keep our movements intersectional. Everyday Feminism. Retrieved May 03, 2016, from http://everydayfeminism.com/2016/03/black-activism-intersectional/

This article from Everyday Feminism is about helping black activists in keeping social justice movements intersectional.  One reminder is that Turner discusses one way to assist black activists is to remember that cis-gender, straight, able, white men have privilege and do not have rights. Turner discusses these reminders in order for social justice movements to be more productive and knowledge for those who aren’t aware of their privileges and such. These reminders are an important step towards developing an intentional practice.

Valoy, P. (2015, January 28). Transnational feminism: why feminist activism needs to think globally. Everyday Feminism. Retrieved May 02, 2016, from http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/01/why-we-need-transnational-feminism/

This article from Everyday Feminism is about intersectional feminist activism and why it is so important. The author talks about how feminists need to understand how important it is to understand different historical events that have shaped the world we live in today. Transnational feminists focus on intersections across nationality, sex, gender, and class. She ends the article stating that in order for her feminism to leave an impact on this world, it needs to be transnational or there will never be an end to systematic oppression.