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Article : Intersectionality

What I Am Doing:

I am basically reading through the historical background section of the page and looking at what needs to be added in terms of more sources, and making the language more accessible to people that are not scholars, such as the everyday person. I also plan to add a sentence making it clear that the history is more United States centric and is in no way a global perspective. My plan is also to make this section more inclusive of its history so that it does not have merely state things from the perspective of one feminist or a specific feminist group. Lastly, I plan to do some copy-editing to make sure that the section flows well. A group member and I have may some changes so far and our version of the article is below. To see the original version, go to the article and look at the historical background section.

Chunk:

Historical Background

The concept of intersectionality is intended to illuminate dynamics that have often been overlooked by feminist movements and theory.[3] As articulated by author bell hooks, the emergence of intersectionality "challenged the notion that 'gender' was the primary factor determining a woman's fate".[4] The historical exclusion of black women from the feminist movement in the United States resulted in many black 19th and 20th century feminists, such as Anna Julia Cooper, challenging the exclusion. This movement disputed the ideas of earlier feminist movements – which were primarily led by white middle-class women – such as the idea that women were a homogenous category who shared the same life experiences.[5] Recognizing that the forms of oppression experienced by white middle-class women were different from those experienced by black, poor, or disabled women, feminists began seeking to understand the ways in which gender, race, and class combine to "determine the female destiny".[4]

Racial inequality was a factor that was largely ignored by first-wave feminism, which was primarily concerned with gaining political equality between men and women. Early women's rights movements, often exclusively pertained to the membership, concerns, and struggles of white women alone.[6] Second-wave feminism stemmed from Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique and worked to dismantle sexism relating to the perceived domestic purpose of women. While feminists during this time had success through the Equal Pay Act of 1963, Title IX, and Roe v. Wade, they largely alienated black women from the platforms of the mainstream movement. ( https://www.vox.com/2018/3/20/16955588/feminism-waves-explained-first-second-third-fourth ) However, third-wave feminism – which emerged shortly after the term "intersectionality" was coined in the late 1980s – notes the lack of attention to race, class, sexual orientation, and gender identity in early feminist movements, and tries to provide a channel to address political and social disparities.[7] Intersectionality recognizes these issues which were ignored by early social justice movements. Many recent academics such as Leslie McCall have argued that the introduction of the intersectionality theory was vital to sociology, and that before the development of the theory there was little research that specifically addressed the experiences of people who are subjected to multiple forms of subordination within society.[8] An example of this is Iris Marion Young arguing that differences must be acknowledged in order to find unifying social justice issues that in effect create coalitions that aid in changing society for the better.[Resource4] More specifically, this relates to the ideals of the NCNW. The term also has historical and theoretical links to the concept of "simultaneity", which was advanced during the 1970s by members of the Combahee River Collective in Boston, Massachusetts.[9] Simultaneity is explained as the simultaneous influences of race, class, gender, and sexuality, which informed the members lives and their resistance to oppression. Thus, the women of the Combahee River Collective advanced an understanding of African-American experiences that challenged analyses emerging from Black and male-centered social movements, as well as those from mainstream white, middle-class, heterosexual feminists.[11]

Other writers and theorists were using intersectional analysis in their work before the term was coined. For example, Gloria Wekker describes how Gloria Anzaldúa’s work as a Chicana feminist theorist exemplifies how "existent categories for identity are strikingly not dealt with in separate or mutually exclusive terms, but are always referred to in relation to one another".[12] Wekker also points to the words and activism of Sojourner Truth as an example of an intersectional approach to social justice.[12]