International Women’s Day was this week and across the country, women banned together to celebrate with protests, Instagram posts about feminism, and even McDonald’s flipped their iconic “M” symbol upside down in honor of the day (I feel like paying their workers a living wage or giving women more promotions to directly combat The Glass Ceiling would be more beneficial, but I guess a “W” for women is fine too?) Sadly, a common theme among most of these events was that the feminism was not intersectional.
Intersectional Feminism is “a holistic understanding of women’s rights that includes space for women from aforementioned identity groups whose realities challenge our privilege–comes right down to your own body and the conscious (and unconscious) choices you’re making every day as you decide what to wear. Or whose surface-level narrative you might be buying into and therefore paralyzing you from doing something about it” (Source: Hoda Katebi, Joojoo Azad)
It is the opposite of “white feminism” which ignores issues facing women of color, excludes them, and does not recognize white privilege. Be cautious of the feminism you see in mainstream media, because more often than not, it only represents white women.
We cannot talk about women’s rights, without talking about women of color, trans* women, and other minorities. It was personally alarming to me, how many posts I saw on Twitter and Instagram that used vaginas and ovaries to represent being a woman. The discussion around reproductive rights is more than necessary and so is this imagery for pro-women movements, but it is important to remember that not every woman has female genitalia. Trans* women are women too. There is a lot of power in femininity, but it is not the be all end all of womanhood.
Men already have the upper hand and they do not need our help to push women down and keep them from power. All women must work together and put their prejudices aside, so we can finally get the equality we deserve. So keep your feminism intersectional cause’ who run the world?