Introduction to Intersectionality

Intersectionality: A mode of analysis articulated by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw ($1991$).

It views race, class, gender, sexuality, age, and ability as mutually constitutive aspects of identity, meaning they are experienced simultaneously and shape one another.

Contrast with Single-Determinant Identity Models: These models assume one aspect of identity dictates power access (e.g., 'global sisterhood' ignores differing needs of women based on race, class, region).

Contrast with Additive Models of Identity: Simply adds privileged and disadvantaged identities; fails to account for how cultural ideas of gender are racialized and race is gendered (e.g., wage gap statistics, while descriptive, don't explain intersectional experiences).

Sociologist Patricia Hill Collins ($2005$) used an intersectional framework to analyze the racialized and gendered representations of Black sexuality, showing how race, gender, and sexuality are interconnected and mutually enforcing.

Critiques of Intersectionality:

• Often reduces to symbolizing specific differences of 'women of color,' thereby re-centering white women (Puar $2012$).

• US-centric, replicating Euro-American bias in feminist inquiry (Puar $2012$).

• Assumes fixed categories of identity (race, gender, class, sexuality).

Assemblage (Puar $2012$): An alternative perspective viewing categories as events, actions, and encounters rather than fixed attributes, emphasizing relations and connections.

Overall: Intersectionality provides a more sophisticated understanding than single-determinant and additive models, examining how identities and social structures intersect for everyone, influencing access to resources.