Intersectionality Hijacked

Raquel Rosario Sanchez’s essay, Intersectionality Hijacked, was written for a book on radical feminist theory, Spinning and Weaving: Radical Feminism for the 21st Century, edited by Elizabeth Miller and published by Tidal Time Press in spring 2021. You can listen to the FiLiA podcast with the Anthology’s editor here.

By Raquel Rosario Sánchez

Does intersectionality theory include women and girls? The mere question could be deemed ignorant or offensive. After all, when U.S. law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term in her 1989 academic paper “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” she was developing an explicit criticism of the realities which affect women, specifically Black women. It represented a Black feminist denunciation which sought to shed light on the intersecting forms of oppression impacting the lives of Black women, both through their race and, poignantly, their sex.

Crenshaw acknowledged the precedents set by fellow Black feminists such as Anna Julia Cooper, who in the 19th century similarly conceptualised this matter prior to Crenshaw’s legal essay, yet it was Crenshaw’s academic reasoning which catapulted intersectionality theory into the stratosphere of public thought. Published by the University of Chicago’s Legal Forum, Crenshaw criticised what she described as “the single-axis analysis which assumed that race and sex are mutually exclusive categories in the lives of Black women,” while utilising three legal cases which addressed both racial discrimination and sex discrimination in the United States: DeGraffenreid v. General Motors, Moore v. Hughes Helicopter, Inc., and Payne v. Travenol Laboratories, Inc.

She argued that, up until that point, in US law, discrimination against white females represented the standard sex discrimination claim presented before the courts. And that, similarly, Black men represented the standard envisioned for racial discrimination. This left Black women in the invidious position of being unable to bring forward claims which had so far been deemed “not pure enough” to qualify as both:

The court’s refusal in DeGraffenreid to acknowledge that Black women encounter combined race and sex discrimination implies that the boundaries of sex and race discrimination doctrine are defined respectively by white women's and Black men’s experiences. 

Under this view, Black women are protected only to the extent that their experiences coincide with those of either of the two groups. Where their experiences are distinct, Black women can expect little protection as long as approaches, such as that in DeGraffenreid, which completely obscure problems of intersectionality prevail.

A powerful analytical tool was born. Unfortunately, it appears that, at the same time that it has slowly but surely gained ground in larger society, intersectionality theory has been hijacked to include everyone’s privileges and oppressions, except those which affect women who advocate for their sex. 

Intersectionality…without females

Today, it is through Crenshaw’s analysis that we have arrived at what is sometimes called intersectional feminism. In July 2020 UN Women, the United Nations entity tasked with promoting the empowerment of women and “gender” (sex) equality, published an article advocating that the suitable way for enact feminist thought and practice was through an intersectional lens. UN Women defined it thusly: 

Intersectional feminism centres the voices of those experiencing overlapping, concurrent forms of oppression in order to understand the depths of the inequalities and the relationships among them in any given context. Using an intersectional lens also means recognizing the historical contexts surrounding an issue. 

Long histories of violence and systematic discrimination have created deep inequities that disadvantage some from the outset. These inequalities intersect with each other, for example, poverty, caste systems, racism and sexism, denying people their rights and equal opportunities. The impacts extend across generations.

Note how in defining their preferred vision for feminism, the self-defined “global champion for gender equality,” fails to mention women and girls… let alone the word female. 

“Intersectional feminism” represents an inclusive label used interchangeably to also signify “liberal feminist,” “third-wave feminism,” “mainstream feminism,” “postmodern feminism” and, because the vast majority of the population are not women’s rights theorists: feminism. 

In this article, I will write about the experiences of three women who, through their personal upbringing and professional work, ought to represent living and breathing examples of what intersectional feminism claims to champion, yet have been ostracised by proponents of the doctrine, as a result of their determination to defend their sex. These women are Indian filmmaker Vaishnavi Sundar, Nlaka’pamux and Diné scholar Cherry Smiley, and British criminal defence barrister Allison Bailey.

--Vaishnavi Sundar

Our first example is Vaishnavi Sundar, a self-taught filmmaker from Chennai, in South-Eastern India. She founded a production company called Lime Soda Films, which she utilises as a feminist vehicle creating women-centred films with her all-female, international crew. Sundar also created Women Making Films, an online global forum which promotes female filmmakers and their work through writing, workshops, screenings, film festivals and mentorship programmes. 

Sundar conceived, produced and directed India’s first full-length documentary on workplace sexual harassment, which was fundraised by the public. But What Was She Wearing? shed light on the sexual harassment women face in their places of work; ranging from corporate offices to construction sites. Sundar sought answers to questions such as “what constitutes a workplace?” “what happens if the harasser is your employer?” and to interrogate, “what rights do women have on paper (as policies) versus the reality of how these policies are implemented?” 

Vaishnavi Sundar is a feminist go-getter from the Global South whose voice ought to be amplified and celebrated by intersectional feminists. Right? 

Apparently not. In our current times of social media activism and cancel culture, it is not enough to be a woman so steadfast in her dedication to women’s rights that she teaches herself how to produce feminist movies. Yes, of course. A woman could do that if she so chooses… but it will account for nothing unless she acquiesces to a set of tenets establishing the nothingness of females. 

Writing an article on Medium about her experiences with intersectional feminism, Sundar disclosed how she was due to screen But What Was She Wearing in New York, on February 2020, having previously been invited by The Polis Project. This organisation prides itself on conducting research and journalism which contributes to “amplifying voices that are unique, critical and underrepresented” and to “speak truth to power.” Posters for Sundar’s film had already been designed for the event and she had been introduced to the moderator who would chair her screening. 

But, not to be! A week before the event was due to take place, the organiser contacted Sundar to inform her that she had been cancelled due to what they deemed “her transphobic views.” Intersectional feminists in India had learned of her scheduled screening in New York and complained to The Polis Project about social media exchanges Sundar had engaged in regarding the conflict between sex-based rights and “gender identity” issues, years before she produced her documentary.

But what had she said? Writing for Spiked, a political magazine based in London, Sundar reiterated her unconscionable ideas: 

Biological sex is not a social construct. Women’s sex-based oppression is real. Housing people with male genitalia in spaces with victims of male sexual violence can be harrowing to women inmates. Mental illnesses like autogynephilia and other dysphorias can cause dangerous, irrevocable damage. And gender theorists are erasing women, much like patriarchy does.

Where is the logic of shutting down professional opportunities for women like Sundar? How could this theoretical tool, which ought to include every intersection of oppression, have been weaponised to ostracise a woman whose sole crime has been to defend the rights of her own sex? Is intersectionality theory not wide enough to include her? 

After the New York screening fiasco, writing opportunities dried up for this freelance writer. Magazines and film outlets which would previously accept every one of her submissions suddenly made excuses to exclude her voice from their pages. The current theocratic oath which negates sex-based rights ought to be spoken loud, proud, and often… or else.

--Cherry Smiley

As a feminist campaigner, researcher and artist from the Nlaka’pamux (Thompson) and Diné (Navajo) Nations, Cherry Smiley is a fighter through and through. She has worked as an anti-violence worker in rape crisis centres and transition houses for battered women and their children, as the assistant coordinator for a drop-in anti-violence group for Indigenous girls, and as a project manager for a national native women’s organization. She is a recognised international speaker on the impact of sexualized colonial male violence against Indigenous women and girls, particularly in prostitution, and is currently a PhD candidate at Concordia University, in Canada, researching the topic.

Smiley is a co-founder of Indigenous Women Against the Sex Industry and founded Women Studies Online, a platform “informed and inspired by the radical feminist politics that initially guided the creation of Women’s Studies programs in universities across Canada and elsewhere” and relies on the consciousness-raising feminist tradition. Smiley’s intention in founding this effort is to put women back in the Women’s Studies academic field.

A born fighter, Cherry Smiley did not anticipate having to battle those who should have supported her work and experiences. Due to her opinions in defence of sex-based rights, which she shared both in her activist social justice circle and her writing for platforms such as Feminist Current, she has been subjected to the opprobrium of the intersectional feminist brigade who accuse her of committing violence through her words and thoughts. A violence so aggressively intolerant that people can barely finish her articles. She has been ostracised and deplatformed within academic circles, particularly those which claim to centre social justice as their pursuit. 

Cherry Smiley knows violence very well. Her work has always centred the eradication of male violence against Indigenous women and girls. Yet instead of joining her fight against the male violence which harms her people, social justice inquisitors have converted Smiley into the aggressor… enabling male perpetrators to disappear from their accusatory lens, both unchallenged and unaccountable.

Writing for Canadian platform Feminist Current against the ostracization of women who challenge doctrines of “gender identity” and defend sex-based rights, Smiley states: 

Too often, activists and academics who claim to be working for justice choose to side with individuals who use bully tactics to shut women that they don’t agree with up. There is nothing new or progressive or inclusive or diverse about telling feminist women to shut up. A strategy grounded in recognizing another’s humanity would include engaging, debating, and disagreeing passionately and respectfully at public events or holding an event to highlight one’s own particular political analysis and engaging in public discussion and advocacy around the issue at hand.

Silencing women considered dangerous for having thoughts and sharing them is not how we treat each other when we recognize each other as equals. I encourage all dangerous women and allies to speak out against the no-platforming and assault on women who express radical feminist opinions or critical ideas about prostitution and gender.

In what can only be considered a devastating irony, Smiley describes her PhD research project using words that illustrate a reality she herself has been subjected to as a scholar: 

Constructed as “squaws,” Indigenous women and girls are seen as savage, subhuman and disposable. They are depicted as women and girls who always want sex and are sexually available to men at all times. Despite their over-representation in street prostitution, Indigenous women occupy marginal positions in sexual exploitation discourse. This research posits the sexual exploitation of Indigenous women and girls as a site to understanding expressions of colonial male violence and their impacts on Indigenous women and girls.

In her own life and work, due to the demonisation of activists’ sectors which have weaponised intersectionality theory, Smiley has been constructed as yet another savage, subhuman, and disposable Indigenous woman. In the attempts to assassinate the character of an up-and-coming scholar who has dedicated her life to ending male violence, and whose sole wrongdoing was veering from the patriarchal and colonial scripts assigned to her, the misogynist trope of the aggressive woman of colour becomes reified by those who claim to promote anticolonial and antiracist politics. Who benefits from putting an outspoken Indigenous feminist “back in her place” and reinforcing colonial stereotypes? 

--Allison Bailey 

The daughter of Jamaican immigrant parents born in east Oxford and raised in the working-class neighbourhood of Crowley, Allison Bailey knew she wanted to fight for justice from a young age. Her background presents us with a resolute Black woman whose work in community advocacy and defence of the rights of same-sex attracted people spans decades, attesting to her commitment to equality. At 17 years old, Allison Bailey came out as a lesbian in a community in which support for her same-sex attraction was not a guarantee. This was also a time when the United Kingdom operated under Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988, which marginalised homosexuality by forbidding local authorities from “promoting” gay and lesbian relationships.

In her late teens, she moved to New York and then San Francisco, working and living in The Castro, a neighbourhood considered ground zero for United States left-wing political activism and LBGT rights, while the community was surviving the AIDS epidemic.

In 1992, on the night that the police officers who murdered a defenceless Rodney King were acquitted, Bailey peacefully protested the racial injustice taking place. She was arrested and imprisoned at the Santa Rita Women’s Jail. 

Today, Bailey is a very well-regarded criminal defence barrister and lifelong campaigner for racial equality, lesbian, gay, and bisexual rights. In 2018, her keen intellect detected that there was a serious conflict of rights brewing in the United Kingdom when the conservative government announced that they wanted to reform the Gender Recognition Act 2004, in order to include the nebulous concept of “self-identification” into the law. Individuals should be able to “self-identify” into the sex of their choosing through an expedited administrative process, the government maintained. The proposed reform was officially dropped in September 2020, but the years preceding the move witnessed social justice fighters embroiled a relentlessly acrimonious battle.

Radical and socialist feminist campaigners raised concerns that the proposed reform could create repercussions for the sex-based rights which are already enshrined in UK law through the Equality Act 2010; including the right to single-sex spaces such as women’s refuges, prisons, and changing facilities. The broader concept of “sex self-identification” therefore conflicted with the rights both of same-sex attracted people and of females.

The virulence and intimidation levelled at women, especially women of colour, by the intersectional feminist contingency advocating for these policy reforms demanded, according to Bailey, a social reckoning. With the aim of tackling this problem, she helped set up the LGB Alliance in 2019. She tweeted in support for the organisation she co-founded and witnessed all hell break loose in her professional life.

Ruefully, Bailey herself would not be safe from the Postmodern Inquisition. Not even her legal chambers in London would protect her. In fact, Garden Court stands accused of colluding with LGBT lobby group Stonewall, in an attempt to punish her for her entirely lawful beliefs. She had previously raised concerns with her chambers about Stonewall’s “Diversity Champions” scheme, to which Garden Court subscribes because, in her opinion, it allowed an activist organisation to police employees thoughts and opinions. And that is exactly what she says happened to her at her place of work.

Garden Court’s stated philosophy is that their legal practice is visionary and bold, affirming: 

Our motto, “Do right, fear no one,” embodies our longstanding ethos: we are dedicated to fighting your corner, no matter how formidable the opponent might seem. Equally, our approach is progressive. We help many clients use the law to advance social justice and equality.

Allison Bailey would soon learn otherwise. As she started to publicly voice her concerns about a brewing conflict in law, Stonewall complained to Garden Court, which publicly announced that they had started a process to “investigate” her. 

She wrote in the text for her Crowdjustice effort:

I realised that the new trans activism operated a crude but effective system of punishment and reward: agree with every demand of the trans lobby and be safe; object and face vilification, abuse, boycott, character assassination and cancellation. The label of transphobic has been applied to me and to others like me who recognise that sex is immutable.  

A person may identify as they identify, and they should be protected and respected for their identity. However, a person’s identity is not a license to cause distress or intimidation to others, and can never legitimately be used to put others to harm. There are necessary exceptions to the acceptance of males in female spaces, and those exceptions are necessary to protect women.

Bailey’s experience suggests that Garden Court’s progressive vision and fearlessness does not extend to protecting their own Black, lesbian human rights defender from persecution. On the contrary, her chambers dragged her through an internal complaints process, while allegedly secretively coordinating with the outside lobby group regarding her. The complaint against her was upheld and thus, the viciousness which has rained upon her ever since, much of it constituting racialised abuse, became legitimised. 

Predictably, feeling emboldened by the fact that yet another institution backed down in response to their howls for symbolic female sacrifice, far from receding, the bullies demanded more. Intersectional feminist warriors complained to the crowdfunding platform that the text in which she describes her background and announced her legal fight to challenge both her chambers and Stonewall, was in itself discriminatory. That is, it was alleged that the words of this Black barrister with a life-long dedication to justice were so unconscionably harmful that they ought to be censored. And equally predictably, within hours of the complaint, Crowdjustice removed Allison Bailey’s page from public view, but not before she was able to raise an astonishing £60K in less than 24 hours. Such was the support for her case.

In these dynamics, we all get to witness the spectre of an intersection of oppressive systems rearing its head to put this measured lawyer back into the cynical toy box where all the “angry black woman,” “rampant black woman” and “ignorant black woman” stereotypes fester. Sticking the knife in, the same crowdfunding platform which took a cut from all donations people gave towards Bailey’s legal battle went one step further by attempting to remove her voice from the public domain, as if this woman’s words humanising herself were best sight unseen. Whose social justice is this? 

Moving forward, group-think free

The aforementioned UN Women’s article on intersectional feminism made a point of not linking this theoretical approach to the actual word “women.” It does feature the voices of campaigners whose work focuses on women and girls, but the international agency itself recoils from making the connection to females. Instead, it speaks of an unexplained “we,” an imprecise “those,” and the importance of striving towards a better future “for all.”

A feminist theory which does not centre women and girls. A liberatory movement without a clear subject. What is feminism, if we do not strive for women’s liberation? A care-giving political enterprise, preoccupied with the class struggles of everyone but ourselves? Have we learned nothing from our histories of struggle? Far from outdated, the old adage which states that unless we make a point of explicitly naming and centring women’s lives and experiences in our efforts, they become invisibilised (at best), remains the norm in public life. 

Today, Vaishnavi Sundar continues both to produce documentaries and to write articles problematising the material conditions of women and girls in India. Far from shying away from the conflict between sex-based rights and “gender identity” theory, she is in the process of producing a documentary about it. Undaunted, Sundar poignantly writes:

By being outcast, I was essentially being told that the feminism I live by – the feminism of Mary Wollstonecraft, Emmeline Pankhurst and Andrea Dworkin – was exclusionary because it rejected males in female safe spaces. My intersectionality wasn’t expansive enough to accommodate men. My feminism did not embrace the “choice” of carrying water for patriarchy.

Cherry Smiley ploughs through, as well. The academic rejection and the targeting she has experienced at the hands of those who would otherwise celebrate her, had it not been for her defence of sex-based rights, has been enacted with the purpose of breaking her spirit. But she refuses to acquiesce to her own erasure: 

No woman owes anyone a justification as to why she dares to say, in public no less, that she and other women matter. No woman should ever be asked, expected, or feel pressured to reveal to anyone the hurt men have caused to her to justify her analysis of issues that impact her. We don’t owe anyone an apology or an explanation or a justification for saying that we are not menstruators. We are women, and we matter. We will continue to describe our bodies and realities as we know them to be.

Same with Allison Bailey. Doing right and fearing no one, the lady lawyer defends herself from the edict forced upon her by so-called justice warriors. She pushes through, committing the ultimate sin by becoming the witch who, having being caught, refuses to repent:

I reject the suggestion by trans activists and their supporters, including so called anti-fascist journalists, that women like me must give way in our activism to more worthy causes and just shut up about our concerns about the new trans activism, as advocated for by Stonewall. This argument seems itself racist, misogynist, naive and self-indulgent.

Just as there may finally be a reckoning about racial injustice, I hope there may also one day soon be a similar reckoning about male violence, oppression and woman-hatred; including a reckoning about this moment in history when men tried to run off with women’s rights.

Although they all are lifelong campaigners for the human rights of females, Vaishnavi Sundar, Cherry Smiley, and Allison Bailey are vastly different women. Each one has faced hardships and privileges which could not be replicated in each other, due to the particularities of their upbringing and position in the world. But apart from their sex and their dedication to women’s rights, something which they share is the ostracism and virulence they have been subjected to by proponents of intersectional feminism. 

It was never Kimberlé Crenshaw’s intention to exclude women who defend their sex from the all-encompassing prism her theoretical analysis provides. On the contrary, she admits that there have been “distortions” to its purpose and reminds those who utilise her analytical tool that it was never meant to be “identity politics on steroids.” 

The legal scholar’s warning has gone, so far, unheeded by her own self-professed disciples. Perhaps because “intersectional feminists” do not want to respect her intentions, and instead prefer to project their own reinterpretations of the theory, as opposed to what Crenshaw truly meant. She acknowledges this crux, stating during an interview with left-wing political magazine Vox: 

Usually with ideas that people take seriously, they actually try to master them, or at least try to read the sources that they are citing for the proposition. Often, that doesn’t happen with intersectionality, and there are any number of theories as to why that’s the case, but what many people have heard or know about intersectionality comes more from what people say than what they’ve actually encountered themselves.

By deeming the women presented in this article as unacceptable, the age-old stereotypes of the ignorant Indian woman, the savage Indigenous woman, and the angry Black woman become reified in society’s consciousness. None of them are anything of the sort, yet the weaponising of intersectionality theory has opened the door to activists who are usually far more privileged than they are to put them back in the oppressive place which patriarchy, imperialism, racism, and colonialism designed for women with their background. 

By removing sex from the intersectionality prism, activists who have taken up its mantle without researching its source render it toothless. A theory which cannot address the material conditions of half of the population, including the segment within that who is born Black, represents a diluted and ineffective way of enacting structural transformation. This is contrary to what Kimberlé Crenshaw meant to do, so the slap that so-called social justice warriors are inflicting with their defanging of intersectionality theory is not only to the faces of Sundar, Smiley and Bailey, but to its author as well.

Far from repeating platitudes about diversity and inclusion, we ought to critically examine the oppressive behaviour being excused through the hijacking of an analytical tool which was meant to be liberational. What happens to the women who agree that our experiences involve overlapping, concurrent forms of oppression (and privilege) which we must untangle in other to better understand the depths of inequalities, but who also fight to defend our sex? What happens to the women who also agree that we need a liberatory approach which illuminates the connections between all fights for justice, but who equally want to centre females? 

Sadly, as of 2020, it appears those women are still best left off the margins.