Intersectionality attempts to link the openings between the several axes through which an individual may experience oppression. Crenshaw explains intersectionality as a way to observe the numerous self-categories through which women—especially Black women and women of color—experience violence and oppression, ways that cannot simply be explained by their gender or their race (Crenshaw). Crenshaw uses an intersectional lens to analyze violence against women and how women form against it and disputes that this lens is predominantly important when analyzing violence against women because “the violence that many women experience is often shaped by other dimensions of their identities, such as race and class” (Crenshaw). She directly criticizes…
As we have learned throughout the course, intersectionality affects our experiences within our social category. Intersectionality can either give us privilege or reduce privilege depending on which categories we fall into. Each individual’s personal experience in a situation will differ due to intersectionality. In Heather Kuttai’s “Maternity Rolls”, we see how her experience with disability is shaped by her gender, and vice-versa.…
There is so much happening in the world around you if you stop your inner dialogue and just take a second to listen to what is happening around you. Listening has always been something that has been hard for me; I’ve always wanted to make sure that my ideas were heard. However, in shouting out my ideas have I been covering up other ideas of people whose voices are barely heard in the first place? I as young white woman have been able to voice my opinions pretty openly, but I never thought of whose voices I was covering up and those in which I should be listening to instead of talking over. This idea of being heard and listening to new perspectives is not something new to 2016; it has been an issue long before that.…
In reading Kimberlé Crenshaw’s article, she passionately writes about intersectionality, a call for racial injustice awareness, and a vision for social equality that is inclusive of all overlapping identities. Intersectionality is a label that is being used to define an individual’s layered identity in society. Subsequently, this term exists because intersectionality should “highlight the multiple avenues through which racial and gender oppression were experienced.” (Crenshaw, 2015 para. 4) As a law professor, Ms. Crenshaw encompasses the word “intersectionality” to address anti-discrimination problems affecting black women.…
Understanding intersectionality is something that is important in the practice of social work. One must be able to understand and deal with one’s clients and their specific positions in life and understand how all of their different identities and places in society interact with each other. However, before one can understand intersectionality in others, one must examine the different areas of one’s own life and how they interact to form a unique identity. I will examine my specific roles in life and how they interact with each other going forward, specifically regarding gender, ethnicity and nationality, race, sexual orientation, abilities and disabilities, class, and religion.…
The concept of intersectionality has made significant contribution to feminist theories. Intersectionality allows for feminist theories to account for the differences between women. This political theory allows implications for feminist theory and practice. As a result of the diversity that intersectionality has, it can be embraced by various strands of feminist theory, providing a means of cooperation between scholars who have different political views. The use of these terms shows how it is impossible to theorize about women’s lives by looking at one part of a person’s complex and multidimensional identity.…
Intersectionality is an integral factor in explaining the varying experiences of differing individuals. It primarily “emphasizes that each person belongs to multiple social groups, based on categories such as ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and social class,” (Matlin, 2012). This indicates that experiences of a white lesbian may differ from the experience of a lesbian of African American decent and so forth. Matlin (2012) states intersectionality declares that one cannot simply combine the experiences of two individuals to match that of someone with both of their identities. For instance, the experience of a white straight women cannot be combined with the experience of a black gay male in order to equate the experience of a black lesbian.…
Crenshaw emphasizes the salience of recognizing race and gender as factors of identity that intersect to shape women of color's (WOC) experiences of violence. Outlining this concept via discussions of social structure, politics, and representation, she also points to the manner in which WOC commonly become marginalized within both anti-racist and feminist activism. Crenshaw states that WOC endure "subordination based on both race and gender" (1270). As targets of racism and sexism, they are immersed in a reality of oppression, and are frequently excluded as "primary beneficiaries" of the movements working to end these injustices (1269).…
I have chosen to write about intersectionality, a study introduced to contemporary feminist theory by Kimberle W. Crenshaw. The study consists of “various ways in which race and gender intersect in shaping structural, political and representational aspects of violence against women of color etc. Structural intersectionality in regards to racism contributes to the silence of violence; as in the issue raised regarding the marriage fraud provision of the Immigration and Nationalities act. This act involved immigrants who remained properly married to united citizens for 2 years in order to become permanent residents in the United States. Most endured battery, extreme cruelty and were reluctant to leave due to fear of being deported etc.…
Prior to starting Social Inequalities in January, intersectionality was a term that I did not even know existed. I had never taken a sociology course before, and I honestly did not have much interest in learning about it. Throughout the course though, my eyes were opened to so many of the inequalities in our society, and also, the oppression that comes along with being different in any way from the majority. As I started to discover so many things about oppression, privilege and discrimination, I also began to understand how many different things can make up one single person. Often, when we look at a stranger, we see one particular characteristic, such as race, and define them based on that.…
Intersectionality is recognizing the different aspects of a human being. It is not just your gender, but your race and your social class. Our gender is not just one lone aspect about us a humans, but it intersects other ways in which we identify. In the reading “Why Race, Class, and Gender Still Matter” it talks about the importance of understanding how big a part intersectionality plays in our lives, and it isn’t about focusing on one social aspect of one another, but all of them together. It talks about changing our perception of white experiences.…
Research Proposal 1. Kimberle Crenshaw’s article “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color” is an essay that exposes the reality of being a colored woman today. It compares the unfair treatment of colored women to the treatment of white women in various scenarios. Colored women not only face discrimination due to sexism but they also experience racism. Facing both make it a hard intersection for many colored women.…
The American professor and critical theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the word intersectionality as a term to use for many types of discrimination. She offered a definition to gender oppression, inequality in work places and society in the lives of black women; particularly in the US, a defined word that many can identify and relate to in the world today. To explain how she defined such multi categorized pattern of bias activity she used the idea of a traffic intersection. “an analogy to traffic in an intersection, coming and going in all four directions. Discrimination, like traffic through an intersection, may flow in one direction, and it may flow in another (…)…
Introduction Traditional theories are important to understand as they are the foundation alternative theories come from and are the groundwork of many social work beliefs and constructions. Traditional theories were developed in a time that cultural diversity was not common, women were not seen as equals, and socioeconomic status was not considered among many other elements overlooked at impacting a person’s development. However, what traditional theories lack in is what led to the development of alternative theories.…
Intersectionalism as defined in the article Intersectionality by Christina Emba of the Washington Post is “how different forms of oppression can overlap and interact.” Lizzie is a woman and because of historical gender roles imbedded into our social construct, she is discriminated against. Lizzie is also a sex worker which is one of the least desirable and least respected occupations. The discrimination faced because she is a sex worker overlaps and exceeds that of being a woman. Some have said it is her class that causes her to face dual discrimination but truly, it is her occupation because had she been a poor laborer she would atleast have some respect from the townspeople for doing hard work.…