Running Head: INTERSECTIONALITY IN 2019

Intersectionality in 2019: A Discussion on the Complexity of Activism

PSYC 4P71 – Prejudice and Discrimination

Prof. Peter Sacco

Maia Andrew - 5983051

November 20th, 2019

Discrimination is behaviour that treats a specific group of people unfairly, due to our

prejudices or perceptions of the group identity within which they fall. These grounds for

discrimination may include gender, sex, race, religion, sexual orientation, ability, or lack thereof,

and many more. Many people may find themselves as part of multiple groups that are subject to

discrimination, such as Muslim disabled men, Transgendered people of Asian descent, or black

women. For these individuals, their experience of discrimination is compounded by more than

one marginalized group identity, and is not the same as those who experience discrimination on

the level of one group identity. This experience of discrimination from being at the crossroads of

“multiple categories of social membership” (Cole, 2009) is described as intersectionality. This

essay aims to explore the theory of intersectionality, and how it applies to modern day activism

and deconstruction of systematic discrimination.

The word “intersectionality” is a legal term coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989 to

describe to double discrimination that black women face in modern society. Multiple black

women claimed employment discrimination against companies, because they felt that they were

doubly wronged due to the power of both misogyny and racism that worked against them

(Adewunmi, 2014). However, these claims were dismissed in courts of law, because having the

compounded effect of discrimination would give black women what judges believed to be an

upper hand, as no other group of people at the time could claim to be oppressed by more than

one system. Additionally, because individuals of single identity, such as black men, and white

women, did not seem to experience to this discrimination, claims of separate misogyny and

racism did not seem to hold true. Of course, because no other group of people in the past had

been forced to call out the ways that discrimination can severally affect those of multiple identity
INTERSECTIONALITY IN 2019 3

groups, like the black women in these cases, the concept was rejected and perceived as a way to

get preferential treatment in their favour (Adewunmi, 2014).

This is the crux of intersectionality; the experiences of those who are part of one identity

group cannot account for the experiences of those who are of simultaneous identity groups.

Discrimination laws and action against social structures that leave marginalized communities

disadvantaged tackle discriminatory behaviours on singular fronts, and do not take into account

the multitude of ways inequity can affect those who are at the junction between one or more

identity. It is important to note that the individual is not required to actively identify with the

groups in which they fall, as bigotry does not take the victim’s personal convictions into account;

whether or not the person identifies as black, woman or black woman, they will still face the

effects of racism, or misogyny, or both, if the outgroup perceives them to fall within those

categories.

Many critics of intersectionality claim that the concept reduces individuals to victims of

their circumstances and the identities that they are a part of. These criticisms fall along the lines

of those court officials discussed earlier who denied black women of their claims of double

discrimination, with the reasoning that they were no more oppressed than their black male or

white female counterparts. This dismissal comes from a place of defensiveness, whereby those in

higher levels of power, or who receive the benefit of privilege of not being in an oppressed class

of people, decidedly want to keep this power (Coaston, 2019). Critics, especially those who are

revered as the ‘face of privilege’, those whose identities include white, cisgendered and male,

perceive that the practice of intersectional politics is an attack on their identity. These critics

perceive that the more oppressed groups a person has membership in, and the more overlap these

groups have on their discrimination experience, the more of a victim they are, and the guiltier
INTERSECTIONALITY IN 2019 4

they (white-cis-male) should feel, as a result of them wielding their privilege (Coaston, 2019).

This perception is not necessarily accurate, as the goal of identifying intersectionality is not to

start a war against those who benefit from that privilege, but against the systems that allow for

inequity and the discrepancy between the freedom of individuals on either side of the identity

spectrum.

In “The Battle of Woke Island”, the writer (Continetti, 2018) states that when an

individual claims membership to more than one systematically oppressed group, it has the

alternative effect to what one would think intuitively: their “status level increases”. This criticism

of intersectionality claims that those who are more oppressed are revered as having a higher

moral authority than those of one oppressed identity, or whose identities are typically

systematically in power, such as white males. The basics of this criticism stems from the skewed

perception that the more victimized a person is by the society based on their identities, the more

attention they receive and the more coddled they are (Continetti, 2018), when in fact, this is not

true. Throughout history, those people who did not fit the conventions of “normalcy” or

“preferred”, such as white, male, heterosexual, able-bodied, were ignored and treated as second

class citizens. This is the exact reason that people who are the opposite of those norms (coloured,

female, LGBTQ+, differently abled, etc.) are referred to as oppressed groups today. Therefore,

the perception that these exceptions to the norm receive better treatment than those who neatly

fall into society’s ‘normal’ is a misrepresentation. This perception, again, may come from a place

of defence: if a person who was previously privy to good treatment sees that treatment now being

transferred to all individuals (not just those of the preferred group) there may be a perception that

equity for all means less privilege or preferential treatment for the initial group.
INTERSECTIONALITY IN 2019 5

This is an effect of Social Dominance Orientation, where individuals seek to establish a

hierarchy between different social groups and identities (Dhont & Hodson, 2014). The

maintenance of this hierarchy means that there is an established discrepancy between the

privileges and power that groups on the top of the hierarchy have from those on the bottom. The

theory of intersectionality and the practice of using intersectionality as a means of identifying the

multiple factors that affect an oppressed party’s life experience in society directly opposes the

theory of social dominance(Adewunmi, 2014; Cole, 2009). There is a power in identifying the

differential experiences of individuals who are members of more than one marginalized group, a

power that those of privileged groups may feel threatened by, because they perceive that this

identification automatically means that their time of receiving benefits in the form of societal

power and privilege is up. As mentioned above, this is not the goal of intersectional activism, as

the identification of the experiences of people in multiple groups does not seek to completely end

the privilege of those on the top of the hierarchy; this identification just aims to move towards a

framework that assesses the discrepancy between groups, how this compounds for those in

multiple groups and how the privilege and power can be shared equitably, so that the hierarchy

itself is dismantled, and all groups are on a level playing field (Cole, 2009). Hence, practicing

intersectional activism does not take away the power of the privileged, rather it ‘shares the

wealth’ of power among all.

The problem with the way that activism is practiced today is that those individuals of

more privileged status, who still experience some sort of oppression or discrimination, for

example, white females, black men, white gay men, engage in an erasure of their intersectional

counterparts. In the feminist community, for example, there is a divide between what is called

“white feminism” and “intersectional feminism”, where white feminists are often ignorant to the
INTERSECTIONALITY IN 2019 6

plight of their coloured counterparts. Gordon (2018) recalls the start of this divide, when white

feminists were quicker to have their rights to vote made known, rather than the rights of all

people to vote. In a time when neither black people nor women had a say in their democracy, the

self-interest that these white feminists chose to invest in, rather than the collective victory for all

women, black people, and those who fell into both categories, was a sabotage on their mission

(Gordon, 2018). As a result, many black women and non-black women of colour are hesitant to

join the traditional feminist movement, as they doubt their interest will be achieved. It is not

surprising then, that representation for women of colour, and individuals of other multiple

identity groups, is lacking in many realms, such as the corporate world and media and

entertainment.

The complexity of having membership in more than one group means that there are often

more barriers to break in order to achieve equity. As referred to in Women and Women of Colour

in Leadership (Sanchez-Hucles & Davis, 2010), the “concrete wall or sticky floor” that women

of colour face in the corporate world, when compared to the “glass ceiling” that women in

general (particularly, white women) face, is especially difficult to deconstruct because of the

multiplicity of their intersectional experience. Intersectionality put a name to this complexity,

and is considered a safe space for black women and non-black women of colour to identify their

experience. The operationalization of this term allows for concern of all women in feminism, all

people within the LGTBQ+ community in activism for discrimination against gender and sexual

orientation expression, and all people with disabilities, not just those who fit a certain mould, or

the mould and boundaries that society sets for what a person (of any background should be)

(Sanchez-Hucles & Davis, 2010).

In conclusion, the theory of intersectionality calls on an analysis of discrimination

through an interactional approach, rather than looking at group identities as singular and separate

from one another. In the case of individuals who are members of more than one group, their

experiences in society are shaped by their multiple identities, and these identities are

compounded (Sanchez-Hucles & Davis, 2010). The identity of being black interacts with the

identity of being a woman. The identity of being gay interacts with the identity of being

differently abled. Therefore, the experiences of individuals who fall along intersectional lines are

not the sum of their identities, but rather a complexed equation that results in their own unique

encounter with societal constructs.

References

Adewunmi, B. (2014). Kimberlé Crenshaw on intersectionality: “I wanted to come up with an

everyday metaphor that anyone could use”. Retrieved 17 November 2019, from

https://www.newstatesman.com/lifestyle/2014/04/kimberl-crenshaw-intersectionality-i-

wanted-come-everyday-metaphor-anyone-could

Coaston, J. (2019). The intersectionality wars. Retrieved 17 November 2019, from

https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/5/20/18542843/intersectionality-conservatism-

law-race-gender-discrimination

Cole, E. (2009). Intersectionality and research in psychology. American Psychologist, 64(3),

170-180. doi: 10.1037/a0014564

Continetti, M. (2018). The Battle of Woke Island | National Review. Retrieved 17 November

2019, from https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/04/the-battle-of-woke-island/

Dhont, K., & Hodson, G. (2014). Why do right-wing adherents engage in more animal

exploitation and meat consumption?. Personality And Individual Differences, 64, 12-17.

doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2014.02.002

Gordon, T. (2018). Breaking Up with Intersectional Feminism. Retrieved 17 November 2019,

from https://medium.com/@shewritestolive/breaking-up-with-intersectional-feminism-

689cfab82b7e

Sanchez-Hucles, J., & Davis, D. (2010). Women and women of color in leadership: Complexity,

identity, and intersectionality. American Psychologist, 65(3), 171-181. doi:

10.1037/a0017459