-Angela Valenzuela
A Brief, Convoluted History of the Word ‘Intersectionality’
How an academic term morphed into a buzzword
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By Kory Stamper
The third act of
Sunday’s Oscars featured a pre-taped segment that celebrated and encouraged
diversity in Hollywood, introduced by Ashley Judd, Salma Hayek, and Annabella
Sciorra — three women who
had accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual misconduct and assault. They had a message for the Academy about
the new paradigm of speaking up and expecting change. “We work together,” said
Judd, “to make sure that the next 90 years empower these limitless
possibilities of equality, diversity, inclusion, intersectionality — that’s what this
year has promised us.”
“Intersectionality”
in its modern use dates back to a 1989 paper by Kimberlé Crenshaw, a legal
scholar and civil-rights activist who founded the African American Policy Forum
at Columbia University. The paper is a scholarly
critique of antidiscrimination theory and how, in practice, it fails black
women by denying that they face unique discrimination due to their overlapping
identities:
I argue that
Black women are sometimes excluded from feminist theory and antiracist policy
discourse because both are predicated on a discrete set of experiences that
often does not accurately reflect the interaction of race and gender. These
problems of exclusion cannot be solved simply by including Black women within
an already established analytical structure. Because the intersectional
experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism, any analysis that does
not take intersectionality into account cannot sufficiently address the
particular manner in which Black women are subordinated.
Later in the
paper, and perhaps in anticipation of critique, Crenshaw explains
intersectionality literally. Imagine an intersection, she says. Imagine that
traffic flows through it from all four directions. Imagine being a person
standing in the middle of that intersection. Danger can hit you from any side.
Crenshaw’s
“intersectionality” was an instant hit among academics, where it was broadened
beyond the scope of black women’s experiences. It showed up in queer theory,
feminist legal theory, studies on race and gender and sexuality. It was a
useful word, one that provided a framework for discussing broader patterns of
oppression, power, discrimination — but
one that remained in academia for years.
Though
“intersectionality” peeked its head above the parapets of the ivory tower
occasionally, its first major appearance in general press was around the 2017
Women’s March on Washington. The March was surrounded by debates about which women it was for, and
“intersectionality” became the go-to word to explain the aims and goals of the
March. Nearly overnight, major newsoutlets published
explainers on intersectionality and intersectional feminism.
So far, lexically
speaking, so good. The way that English grows is by spreading outward from an
originating point, like a ripple in a pond. Words move from thought to speech
to writing to other people. But that transmission isn’t always smooth. There
are other currents to contend with.
Before
“intersectionality” had its moment in the sun, its meaning was already being
moved further afield of Crenshaw’s definition. A 2014 movie review in the
Washington Post defines “intersectionality” as something that “seeks
to describe how identity is conditioned, not by one reductive quality, but by
multiple tastes, impulses, desires and fears.” The traffic through this
intersection is entirely different: tastes and desires rather than identities.
“You can also just call it ‘life,’” writer Ann Hornaday sums up — not inaccurately,
but not entirely accurately, either. In 2015, writer Rich Lowry glossed
“intersectionality” as “membership in two or more historically oppressed
groups,” which isn’t technically incorrect, but the broader context in which he
gives his definition confuses
things:
The political
benefit of what feminists call intersectionality — membership
in two or more historically oppressed groups — is
not having to choose which accusation of bias to make. One day, it can be
racism; the next it can be sexism. Or, different people can make different
charges of an -ism on the same day. The possibilities to mix and match are endless.
Lowry makes
intersectionality a cafeteria from which you object to whichever bias seems
tastiest at that moment. This contradicts exactly the force of Crenshaw’s
“intersectionality”: that bias and discrimination are additive, not
subtractive.
The confusion
continues, even after primers on intersectionality appeared in places
like Teen Vogue and USA Today. Art influencer JiaJia Fei was
quoted recently in Vogue as saying Telfar Clemens’ 2018
show at Fashion Week was “a total work of art: music, fashion, and art. There
was a lot of intersectionality, not just in identity but also in creativity.”
Can creativity be “intersectional” in the traditional sense of the word? What
is the traditional sense of the word? Explanations everywhere, and yet
the top Google searches for
“intersectionality” all have to do with its definition.
That may be
because the connotative force of the word is outstripping the academic meaning
of the word. Lexicographers reiterate that it is entirely expected and natural
that, as a word moves farther away from its originating point, its meaning changes.
This is a part of healthy language growth. But when the word is one like
“intersectionality,” this gets complicated. Latoya Peterson, formerly of
Racialicious and now at ESPN’s the Undefeated, wrotein 2015 that the word
“intersectionality” was losing its punch: it was becoming a label that
feminists could claim as their own, which absolved them of any of the hard work
required by intersectionality. “Unfortunately,” she writes, “when I encounter
conversations about intersectionality online, the term is often uttered merely
as cultural shorthand, the social justice equivalent of ‘You go girl!,’ ready
to be GIFed, Tumbled, or tee-shirted.” Crenshaw herself objects to this
hashtaggable use of “intersectionality.” “Intersectionality can get used as a
blanket term to mean, ‘Well, it’s complicated,’” she says in a 2017 interview.“Sometimes, ‘It’s
complicated’ is an excuse not to do anything.”
When words move
from a specialized arena into the mainstream, they often get a little flabby:
their sharply delineated corners blur a bit as the word is passed down a long
line of speakers. Crenshaw likens the
confusion over what “intersectionality” means to “a very bad game of
telephone,” but that is exactly what language growth looks like most of the
time. There will be those who dig in and hold fast to the academic meaning
“intersectionality” originally had, and then there will be those who lump it in
with other terms they perceive to be a wave in a particular direction:
diversity, equality, systemic oppression, privilege. Sometimes words lose
potency as they gain traction.
While the fight
for “intersectionality” and its meaning intensifies among the
intelligentsia, however, the word continues its slow march forward, quietly
breaking new ground. The week opened with “intersectionality’s” appearance at
the Academy Awards, and closes with its supporting-actress turn during
International Women’s Day, describing the day’s Google Doodle.
Kory Stamper is
the author of Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries, now
out in paperback.
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