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INTERSECTIONAL FEMINISM

WGS 101 Fall 2018

INTERSECTIONALITY

Concept first introduced by Professor Kimberle Crenshaw in 1989

From Okazawa-Rey (pg. 376): “dynamic interaction and interrelatedness of social ascription, such as gender, class, race, and nation…

and the power, privilege, and disadvantage they entail, often in contradictory ways, depending on the context” (Okazawa Rey 376)

From Smooth (pg. 439): “reject(s) treating women as a homogeneous group…

as well as the idea that gender can be parceled out as a single category without attention to other politically salient categories, such as race, class, and sexuality…

“…pushes us to think about the differences among women, and offers a means for embracing the complexities produced”

INTERSECTIONALITY IS AND/BOTH

Hill Collins distinguishes between theories of oppression grounded in either/or VS. and/ both thinking

Either/or thinking is dichotomous and hierarchical

Identities are defined through oppositional binaries (male/female & Black/White, for example)

Each side of the binary is viewed as either privileged or oppressed

Reduces complexity of identity to a ‘master status’ oppression

Intersectionality recognizes that identities — and oppressions — are interlocking

Both female and white; both privileged and oppressed as determined through contextual and relational analyses

DEFINING DISABILITY

Disability is not disadvantage; it is difference

The Social Model of Disability (Hirschmann pg. 2):

Disability is “what society, social conditions, prejudices, biases, and the built environment have produced…

It is “…not applicable to the body per se but to the body in a hostile social environment.”

Contrast this with the “Medical Model of Disability,” which says disabilities are individual disorders that must be fixed or cured

Bodies are disabled or facilitated by ‘social relations, the built environment, laws, customs’ (

AT THE INTERSECTIONS OF…

Feminism & Disability

Women, War & Nation

Race, Gender and Politics