Intersectionality

The term was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, an Afro-American academic, to highlight the way in which gender, race, social class, sexual orientation, and other individual identity characteristics intersect to create a different personal experience regarding systematic oppression. This is a way to understand social relations through the intersection of the different types of discrimination that people face. According to Crenshaw’s theory, the experiences can be divided between the categories of privilege and oppression. The privilege identities do not entail a social, legal, and economic obstacle, while the oppression identities do. 

This term should not be confused with multiple discrimination which refers to various or many types of discrimination and fails to reflect the main characteristic of intersectional discrimination, which is convergence. In other words, identify the type of discrimination specifically. 

In terms of feminisms, being a white middle class woman is not the same as being a young racialized migrant woman with some type of disability. The latter faces greater discrimination since these multiple identities intersect. In terms of sexual diversity, the concept of being gay, for example, varies depending on a person’s ethnicity. It is not the same thing to be afro-descendant and gay than to be white and gay. Social stigma is greater for afro-descendants as they are more prone to violence and discrimination simply because the media spreads the idea that gay refers to a white person with medium-high purchasing power, as revealed by the Brazilian LGBT Violence Observatory.

Bell Hooks argued that intersectionality was important in feminism. She said, ‘Every women’s movement in America, from its earliest origin to the present day, has been built on a racist foundation, a fact which in no way invalidates feminism as a political ideology. The racial apartheid social structure that characterized 19th and early 20th century American life was mirrored in the women’s rights movement. The first white women’s rights advocates were never seeking social equality for all women. They were seeking social equality for white women.’ (Bell Hooks, Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism)