Feminist

There is so much nuance in each person’s life experience. We all have several different identities and all of those variables determine how we move through and interact with the world. I think about this a lot, how the different identities that I hold and have held have affected me. How the identities of others have affected them and may explain their behavior. When you start to reflect on all the different positions you and others hold it starts to get overwhelming. Human minds like to put things in categories so really anything can be turned into a label. Are you a cat owner? A bus rider? Do you prefer cold or hot? Even the most trivial things can come together to make someone who they are.

When I took my woman and gender studies class in college I started to think about feminism differently. As someone who, in the past, was scared of conflict and not very confident, I was so scared to be difficult. The only thing I had ever heard about feminists was that they were difficult. However, when I started to dig deeper into feminism, specifically intersectional feminism, I realized it was exactly what I believed. I just had a name for those beliefs now. Realizing that I already had beliefs in line with feminism made me less afraid to explore what that ment.

As said in a 2020 article put out by UN women, intersectional feminism looks at overlapping, concurrent forms of oppression in order to understand the depths of the inequalities. Since we are all people who play multiple roles in life and are made up of many parts, it makes more sense to look at oppression and inequality though a lens that sees those intersections of identity. This term was coined by Kimberle’ Crenshaw, a lawyer and teacher at the UCLA school of law and Colombia law school. (She has also done a bunch of other cool things with activism and scholarly work.) The purpose of intersectional feminism is to make the world a just one for everyone in it. Traditional feminism is limited since it only looks for gender inequality. Often, in traditional feminism, women (mostly white) work to try to achieve the same power as white men but do not fight for that same power for those who may be disabled or queer or minorities.  If you asked most people to describe themselves their gender is not the only thing they would tell you about. I am certain that being a woman has kept me from opportunities but so has having a learning disability, so has being victimized, so has being overweight, ect. Looking at all the intersections of oppression in the lives of others and myself as also helped me to see my privilege in new ways. I’ve had the privilege of being white, of having parents who love me and want to help me how they can, of being middle class, of having a job and an education. I have worked hard to get to where I am but I’ve also gotten lucky.

I hope someday we can get to a point where all people have the power and autonomy to live a full and happy life. I don’t know how to get there but I want to work toward a world where everyone at least has the opportunity to succeed. One of the really difficult things about social problems is you aren’t just starting from square one, you are starting from square -258 because our country was built on and still displays institutionalized oppression. Sometimes the problems just seem to big and it’s frustrating to keep trying. In those times, I remind myself that I’m moving through life anyway, why not do the right thing on the way. Intersectional feminism is one of the tools I use to deepen my understanding of what’s right. I know I won’t live to see all the problems solved but I hold out hope that, by the time I leave this world, things will be a little bit better. If, at the end of my life, all I can say is I did the right thing, I will die proud.