8.7: Summary/Review

Conclusion

In this chapter we learned that intersectionality is a necessary framing that recognizes how racial/ethnic identity, for example, overlaps with gender, sexuality, class, and nationality/immigration status. This shapes the reality of the most marginalized, including women of color, Queer and Trans people of color (QTPOC), poor women, immigrant women, and more. Although Crenshaw is credited with naming this framing, the understanding of intersectionality and the importance of recognizing how racism, sexism, classism, and imperialism simultaneously impact certain communities has existed for a long time, as expressed by various Black women and women of color feminists and thinkers. Such framing continues to inform movements today, including #BlackLivesMatter.

Intersectionality is central to understanding how women of color and QTPOC are violated by interlocking systems of power including white supremacy, imperialism, cisheteropatriarchy, and capitalism. For example, how reproductive actions have been controlled or limited, particularly for the most vulnerable fertile people of our society. An intersectionality framing is also paramount in allowing us to name and recognize each other’s humanity, and ultimately lead us to transformational liberation. This has been achieved by generations of reproductive justice work by women of color who’ve resisted classist and sexist policies and practices such as the elimination of full reproductive health services, including abortions, and forced sterilization.

The work of transformational liberation is also achieved through radical self-love which demands seeing our whole selves and our whole bodies, for all its complexities. A decolonial praxis is another expression of radical love and transformational liberation, such as the revival of the Hupa Ch’ilwa:l, or Flower Dance ceremony, that focuses on a young woman’s coming of age. This practice in the Hupa community of Northern California has supported healing from generations of colonial violence and sexism.

Key Terms

• LGTBQIA: Stands for Lesbian Gay Transgender Bisexual Queer/Questioning Intersex Asexual and Ally
• Queer: an identity that describes sexual and gender identities other than straight and cisgender, such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender.
• Intersectionality: The study of multiple or intersecting social identities that people carry with them, for example, how race and gender intersect to shape the experiences of women of color. Furthermore, intersectionality examines the intersecting structures of power (such as white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism) that limit, marginalize, or oppress people based on race, class, gender, gender identity, immigration status, sexual orientation, language, religion, ability, and other notable markers of difference.
• The Mythical Norm: a phrase coined by Audre Lorde representing “white, thin, male, young, heterosexual, christian, and financially secure” people
• Women of color: Cis and trans women who are not racialized as white, including Black, Arab, Asian, Chicana, Indigenous, Latina, Pacific Islander, and mixed race women
• Heteropatriarchy: A combination of heterosexism and patriarchy, this term refers to the ways that define gender, masculinity and feminity in restrictive binaries that reinforce a dominant (male, straight, cis) and subordinate (female, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or not straight) relationship. It points to the normalization of these hierarchal social order that privilege cis-straight men over women and LGBTQ people. Heteropatriarchy also works in conjunction with other social hierarchies, including white supremacy, settler colonialism, and imperialism.
• Third World Feminism: Third world feminism points out the added elements of racism and imperialism to the gender and class oppression experienced by women from the "third world" or the "global south" and to women who come from "underdeveloped and overexploited" nations who reside in the "developed/First World." Third World feminism critiques feminist theory that only focus on the antisexist struggle while ignoring how sexism overlaps with racial, class, and colonial oppression.
• Womanist: Coined by authors, Alice Walker, womanist is used to describe “a Black feminist or feminist of color” whose priorities are laid with the entire community, both male and female. Such a term stressed the sentiment amongst Third World women that their feminist struggles were not separate from the struggles against racism and economic exploitation that their communities shared.
• Pinayism: A term coined by Asian American Studies professor, Allyson Tintinagco-Cubales, pinayism is “a radical pinay sisterhood that connects the global, local, and personal stories of Pinay struggle, survival, service, sisterhood, and strength to mentally, physically, politically, and spiritually uplift ourselves” (1995). She clarifies that pinayism is not simply a “Filipino version of feminism or womanism” but that it instead draws from various philosophies and examines the complexity of where race/ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality intersect, and connects issues across the diaspora. See the Pinayism website for more.
• Reproductive justice movement: This is a women of color-led movement which applies an intersectional lens and expands the concerns beyond the limited framing of pro-choice v. pro-life. The movement offers a broader understanding of restrictions placed on reproductive actions, examining the ways oppressions related to race, gender, class, and sexuality operate simultaneously. They address access to full reproductive services, including abortion, forced sterilization and harmful reproductive restrictions placed on women of color without their consent, and access to resources that allow parents to raise children in safe and healthy environments. According to reproductive justice movement leader, Loretta Ross, reproductive justice has three primary values: the right not to have a child; the right to have a child; and the right to parent children in safe and healthy environments.
• Eugenics: This ideology is related to claims of white racial superiority and push that humans must reproduce only "the 'best examples' of humanity and eradicate 'negative expressions' of human life" (Ross and Solinger, 2017, p. 30). Genetic inferiority was blamed for larger social issues including criminality, poverty, prostitution, and mental illness, and eugenicists eagerly believed that removing supposedly inferior genes would “foster a superior human race free of these social ills.” (Rojas, 2009, p. 98). Groups considered undesirable were nonwhites, the poor, and anybody with psychological, physical, and cognitive disabilities.
• Radical self-love: Sonya Renee Taylor invites people affected by various forms of oppression to go beyond self-esteem and self-acceptance toward a concept of radical self-love. The concept envisions “a world free from the systems of oppression that make it difficult and sometimes deadly to live in our bodies'' (2018, p. 4). It's a type of self-love that's rooted in our relationship to ourselves and the word radical reminds us that our society requires drastic transformation, as the United States was built on the idea of excluding bodies outside land-owning white men. Radical self-love is also foundational to radical human love and connection to others.

Discussion Questions

1. What framing does intersectionality provide and why do we need this framing in order to see or understand the experiences of women of color? What happens without this framing?
2. What were the main critiques of mainstream white feminism by women of color and third world women? Name two other feminist ideologies offered instead.
3. What are the ways you’ve been taught to perform gender?

Journal Prompts

1. Consider and write down your racial/and or ethnic identity. Then write down your gender (or gender identity), class/socioeconomic background, sexual orientation, religion, ability, and citizenship or immigration status. How have the social identities you considered impacted your experiences such as at work and education opportunities, day-to-day interaction with others, family relationships, social status, and/or access to resources like jobs, higher education, housing, etc.? For example, does your immigration status impact access to financial aid, social services, housing, jobs, etc.? Does your skin color impact how you're treated in a store? or by police? Does your socioeconomic background inform access to high education? housing? Does your gender/gender identity influence how your coworker treats you?
2. How can learning about women of color and intersectionality help us resist oppressive systems of power that exist in our society? In answering this question, also consider at least 2 examples of resistance by women of color/third world feminists and/or social movement activists. You may also consider how this applies to your own identity or experiences, whether you identify as a “woman of color” or not.
3. Define and explain why reproductive justice is a major issue for women of color and how this is related to the history of the US controlling raced and gendered bodies. Then summarize at least 2 examples of barriers poor women of color face in particular when it comes to accessing reproductive health. Optionally, you may also connect key ideas with your own experiences around access (or lack of) to comprehensive reproductive health or how the overturning of Roe v. Wade may impact women of color and poor women.

Class Activities

"Doing" Gender Skits using Theater of the Oppressed

1. Self-reflection: Have students brainstorm ways they may have been implicitly or explicitly taught to "do" gender. For example, were they ever told "Boys don't cry" or "Girls can't play with trucks"? Were they conditioned to act "ladylike" or "like a man"? Have them think back to as young as they can. They may work in groups or independently.
2. Then have them consider how these moments or experiences might intersect with their race, culture, nationality, social class, sexual orientation, religion, or other markers of difference. For example, "Gay people don't exist in Korea" or "This is how Black men are supposed to act."
3. Acting out: Put students into small groups, have them share their examples and then select one example. Following the methods of Augusto Boal's Theater of the Oppressed, direct students to act out a scenario based on an example of "doing gender" that they selected. First, have the group act out the scenario according to the student's memory.
4. Discuss: Once the scene is completed, have students discuss what they observed, how they felt, and how they might change the situation. What would they do differently? How might they alter the dialogue so that instead of the scene focusing on an oppressive action reinforcing gender standards, students can challenge gender norms and expectations?
5. Stepping in: Then have them act out the same scene again. This time though, students will be allowed to intervene and offer alternatives. They can yell "Stop" to freeze the actors in mid-action. Then that individual can step in and take over the role of the protagonist in the scene and act out a different solution.
6. For example: If students were acting out a scene where a father tells his 5-year-old son to stop crying and "act like a man," the second time around what can the father do differently? Or can another family member step in and challenge what the father tells his son in a productive way?

Reproductive Justice

This lesson can be done online or in-person.

1. Have students work in small groups to map out barriers that women of color and fertile people have historically and continue to face when it comes to reproductive issues. Have them consider examples of population control, eugenics, forced sterilization, limited access to abortion and reproductive care. They can create lists, charts, brainstorming maps, or even illustrate what they learn from sections 8.4 and 8.5 in this chapter.
2. Then have students brainstorm ways that women of color have historically led the way in the reproductive justice movement. What are they critiquing? What are they advocating?
3. Students can create a protest poster advocating for one of these changes or critiques. Or you can ask them to record a mini-presentation of what they're advocating for and upload it onto an online platform. Either way, the objective is for students to consider addressing a reproductive injustice that women of color and fertile people of color have faced or continue to face, and how to advocate for justice.
4. For example: If the issue is access to abortion services, the poster might call for the passage of state or local legislation that calls for the protection of rights to abortion services.