This past weekend, the Women’s March on Washington had between 3 and 4 million attendants in total, three times more than Trump’s inauguration. However, it’s essential that we understand the feminist movement has always prioritized white women and ignored women of color. If the feminism that we are marching for isn’t intersectional, then it is actively harmful.
The term intersectionality was coined by Kimberle Crenshaw in 1989. Intersectionality seeks to understand the interactions among different types of identities in society. It speaks to issues surrounding the popularization of white feminism, or feminism only benefiting white women. This manifests itself in many different ways. It usually covers white women taking charge of feminist events and only protesting the issues — abortion access, equal pay, etc. — that directly affect them. This completely ignores the struggles of women of color.
The Women’s March was praised for being extremely peaceful compared to other recent protests, but this is an extremely unfair comparison. This protest had more white people than any other protest in recent history. When white women are the majority, cops are not going to be hostile. Consider, for example, statistics about racial profiling showing police are twice as likely to stop black drivers, or numbers from New York City’s stop and frisk program that showed minorities were disproportionally likely to be stopped by police.
White feminism is also known to propagate transmisogyny. Those who attended the marches saw many women directly correlating womanhood to their genitalia through signs with slogans like “pussy grabs back.” Reproductive rights are definitely an important feminist issue that must be addressed, but the key is to do so in a way that does not exclude transgender people
We, gender conforming white women, have a lot of work to do. It is time we step back and listen to women of color and transgendered women and help their voices be heard in any way we can.
emmagetz@umail.iu.edu
