In defence of intersectionality

I find it almost impossible to speak with white women about race. There is no language, no practice, and (understandably) no ability to endure the tension around accommodating difference. Fear of being perceived as racist produces denial, avoidance and uneasiness, and the load of racist platitudes simmering below the surface makes me uncomfortable and makes me want to leave the room in turn. I’ve learned not to expect much in this respect, and the very few times there was ease around it, I was touched by how moving it can be when there is neither guilt, shyness, discomfort nor defensiveness. Just acceptance of difference. And we all deserve that.

Since I’ve left the queer cult, I live in a cleansed, predominantly white, gender critical world of many denominations of feminism, where (no surprise, but still recurringly disillusioning) we navigate many taboos and much is repressed, internalised, and instrumentalised.

For some time now, I have been watching how anything remotely associated with wokeness becomes a target for contempt and attacks. Feminism, social justice, intersectionality are all up for grabs. Many are joining in, some out of bitterness, some out of laziness, others because they think the law of the jungle (or free speech) gives them the best odds to turn the power ladder (it doesn’t). The collateral damage in this multiplayer contest over cultural hegemony is becoming harder to ignore, most of all for women and girls, including non-white ones (yes, this is a thing). To address this with white women is not easy. It has not been helped by subordinating everything to a common cause (GC), or by gleefully continuing to give intersectionality a bad name, or by happily and periodically circulating Open Letters to draw lines between one’s own power group and whoever transgresses. Nor has it been helped by the cowardly liberals (and left and progressives) who, for fear of appearing racist, are unable to name violence, exploitation and abuse when it keeps screaming in their face, because their ideological indoctrination has become their identity. In all cases, women and girls, including Black, Brown and migrant ones, are sacrificed by those who want to excel in purity.

I’ve wanted to write about this for a long time. The past weeks have provided many examples of unhinged takes from gender criticals who seem to have been lured by the temptations of anything-goes and the urge to expose edgy (extreme) views for clout, forgetting that the online world is not just their own dream den. It is hard not to despair about the state and future of any political movement.

I understand the confusion around what positions to keep and which ones to discard when one’s former political home no longer provides any reasonable guidance. It was disorienting enough to find myself on uncertain ground — no ground at all, really — when I began to question beliefs I once held (for example, the dogma that trans women are literally women). When I let go of one set of ideology, I had to look at what else I might have been getting wrong. But deconstruction is only half the process. After taking yourself apart, you have to decide what still holds, what’s worth keeping, and what you actually still believe. This is not easy and comes with many complicated feelings towards those who continue to push insane and harmful ideology. But sometimes we become more like them when we are trying to get away. The vengeance, hounding and spitefulness I see online are being nourished and harvested by new groupthink, new rules and rulers. It’s as if we’ve learned nothing at all.

Feminist movements know well the threat that division can pose. Intersectionality — and I will not abandon the principles in the concept — provided a tool to look at differences between women and assess whether, and when, they mattered, and how. In her famous 1851 speech ‘Ain’t I a Woman?,’ Sojourner Truth, a Black woman who had been enslaved (and was deeply religious), exposed the hypocrisy of a society that extended courtesy to white women while denying her the same recognition, even that of womanhood itself. The Combahee River Collective, a group of Black lesbian feminists in the USA, picked up on these themes in their 1977 statement. They argued that liberation for Black women requires confronting the intertwined systems of racism, sexism, class oppression and homophobia. They also insisted on the importance of speaking from their own experiences, refusing to be subsumed into either the mainstream women’s movement, which centred white middle-class women, or Black liberation movements, which often centred men.

Race issues in the USA have a different history, dimension and political context than in Europe. Here, discussions are tied not only to colour, but to region of origin, nationality, legal status and religion. But they also clearly intersect with other central categories of difference: sex and class. And there is tension between all of them.

And in all of us.

Addressing ambiguity, complexity, uncertainty and conflict is not easy. And it is almost impossible in a context (group, community or online hell) that reacts with knee-jerk defensiveness, deflection, accusation and judgement. No conversation can be held if we do not listen (or read) with consideration, and maybe a grain of goodwill.

This week, I heard about the feminist organisation FiLiA deplatforming the lesbian radical feminist Julia Beck from their conference. The reason seems to be that in 2019 Julia spoke at an event organised by the Heritage Foundation, and this was taken to contradict FiLiA’s anti-racist stance. The implicit accusations are guilt by association, betrayal (of feminism), wrongdoing (of feminism) and, in general, being a bad feminist. It even makes it seem as if this was (or is, as the error clearly must have ongoing effects) by extension furthering racism, thus a righteous decision for an anti-racist group to take. Reading Julia’s very considerate public statement, in which she explains what led to her decision, and knowing about her continuous commitment to radical feminism, I can only conclude that FiLiA lost an inspiring speaker. This makes our movement small. It is not anti-racism. It is vindictive penalisation of those who cross lines that others draw, take on risks at high personal cost, dare to stand alone and show principled integrity.

At the same time, some gender criticals who also call themselves feminists seem to have given up all pretence of being anti-racist, whatever their reasons may be. They enjoy chiming in with right-wing rhetoric about backward cultures or pointing at Black and Brown men in random clips that are supposed to be proof of bad manners, poor language, bad religion or the wrong origin. I wonder what they think of women and girls from those cultures who now, full circle, are faced with hostility and danger from within and outside their communities. Both the rampant racism in parts of the gender critical movement and the performed naïveté around issues of race, class and sex within the woke left harm the women who have to survive, exist and thrive — not by choice, but by circumstance — in, between and beyond categories that are rarely understood and readily weaponised to stir fire and score points.

‘All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave,’ published in 1982, is a Black feminist anthology that addressed the political and intellectual void in both the mainstream women’s movement and Black liberation movements, centring the experiences of Black women who had been ignored or erased in both. It is a similar reality for migrant women or women living in Muslim communities. And it is equally misleading to assume that (white) working-class women and girls would be affected only by dynamics around class and not also around sex. Or that any of these categories would be in competition or hierarchy with each other. They are not mutually exclusive categories. Each one deserves a proper look, analysis and critique, including of the internal conditions, challenges and contradictions. The Austrian-British social documentary photographer Edith Tudor-Hart, working in the 1930s and 1940s, used her camera to expose the realities of poverty and class inequality, showing how certain groups were marked as ‘less than’ even within Britain itself. As migration reshaped the country, a similar gaze of suspicion and exclusion was directed at Black and Brown communities, whose presence in working-class neighbourhoods intensified tensions around housing, labour and belonging. Politics of class cannot be disentangled from the politics of race and migration. And yet, it is necessary to take a closer look at the conditions surrounding and constituting class oppression, especially for women and girls, and to let this reality resonate on its own, without the reflex to immediately frame it in tension with race.

Still, many are trying to pit one against the other, and demand purity in positions (by which they mean choosing a side, and being loyal and obedient). They rejoice in creating new herds.

When I meet other women of colour, we usually have many stories to tell of what happened on our respective journeys to wherever our paths cross. Or the event we are attending. The panel we will be speaking on. We know what it’s like to be seen as dangerous, as victims, as exotic, as tokens, as projections. Our anecdotes are sometimes so absurd and so repetitive that we try to laugh about them — like when we actually get mistaken for each other, because we all have short black hair and brown skin (and yes, are butch lesbians).

It takes humour to meet each other amidst a world that often causes pain, and which cannot be lifted or borne by another. Humour is not the same as indifference. I have found it to be a good indicator of those who do not shy away from reality and who are able to stand alongside others carrying their pain.