Intersectionality can usefully describe the effects of multiple oppressions. It does not, however, offer an adequate explanatory framework for addressing the root causes of social inequality in the capitalist socioeconomic system.
Why we desperately need real intersectional feminism. Nadasen asks us to reject a narrow, superficial understanding of race or gender, she suggests that intersectionality at its core is a politics of liberation that we can—that we must—all embrace.
Representation alone isn’t enough to make a show political. You have to do something with it. Claws finds a way to tie its characters to a broader political narrative in almost every episode.
How can you attempt to craft a political, artistically rich narrative that trades in the real-life experiences of black and brown women, while ignoring them and the ways sexism intersects with racism? The bodies and histories of black and brown women prove to be useful templates for shows like The Handmaid’s Tale, but our actual voices aren’t.
Whether intentionally or by virtue of the fact that the populations historically affected by low-wage, abusive workplaces are people of color, MLOV’s DC on Strike May Day rally was intersectional, highlighting how the most vulnerable communities are always those with the most complex identities.
The women's marches in Washington DC and around the country were stunning, inspiring and the first of a million steps that will be needed to build the resistance to Trump. It might not have been as black, brown or working class as many might have liked. But criticizing it from the sidelines doesn't help anyone.
As the creator of a program that has become a vital example both of the transgender rights movement’s growing steam and of streaming television’s revolutionary power, “Transparent” creator, writer, and director Jill Soloway has become something of a lightning rod, too. As beloved as “Transparent” is, the show has also received criticism for the casting of a cisgender man (Jeffrey Tambor) as a transgender woman.
As #BlackLivesMatter co-founder Alicia Garza said explicitly at the Roosevelt event in conversation with Melissa Harris-Perry and Nobel Prize–winning economist Joe Stiglitz, “any policy that we develop needs to have an intersectional lens.”
While a sharp contribution to discussions of women's oppression and liberation, the book under review is faulted for not demonstrating the actual radical connection between class and other forms of oppression. While rejecting a tendency to reduce Marxism to a one-dimensional critique of class, the book's author is faulted for downplaying the limits of intersectionality as not articulating--but instead fudging--the existing gulf between identity politics and Marxism.
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