Main Stream Feminism: The True Meaning of Intersectionality
By Sabrina Adhikari
Many women in the western hemisphere today identify themselves as being feminists, or believing in equal rights for women. Surrounded by articles related to feminism, many of them have the opportunity to be open about taboo topics such as periods, sex, and their own anatomy. When Women’s History Month comes around at March in the United States, many tend to celebrate historical feminists like Susan B. Anthony or Elizabeth Cady Staton, whom are considered to be the “leaders” of the feminist movement.
However, the feminism being presented in main stream media today is not only an inaccurate and privileged version of women’s rights, but it completely disregards things like race, class, and sexuality that impacts women all over the world. Much of the feminism seen in the forefront of media pertains to privileged white women, actively harming women of the global majority.
Coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, the term "intersectional feminism" is defined as "a prism for seeing the way in which various forms of inequality often operate together and exacerbate each other.”
This form of feminism addresses things like racism, classism, and ableism, that many women globally deal with along with misogyny. However, not many women who consume main stream feminism are intersectional feminists. Not many know about, or even consider intersectional feminism.
Main stream feminism is a west centered movement that not only disregards women’s rights in other “developing” countries, but also seeks to actively harm those women by focusing on inconvenient and trivial matters. For example, although there are popular articles related to “freeing period blood,” there are very few western medias talking about the huge period poverty and other taboo in other places of the world. There are barely any popular feminist medias talking about practices like Chaupadi being practiced in western Nepal, where women are forced to go to windowless mudhouses during their period. They’re not given good food, proper accommodation to the cold temperature, or proper period sanitation supplies. This practice has been illegal since 2005, and yet Chaupadi is widely practiced.
Although many “feminist” articles talk about equal rights for women even in prison, a lot of these articles refuse to address the overrepresentation of Black and Latinx people currently in prison in the United States due to systemic racism. Nor do they address the fact that Native American women are facing more than ten times the chances of being murdered compared to any other demographics.
Main stream feminism tackles only surface level issues, but refuses to actually attack the basis in which misogyny was formed. It focuses too much on individual “power,” and not enough on systemic oppression.
Even in the western countries, main stream feminism, also commonly known as white feminism, only focuses on the struggles of white women, and ignores the struggles of women of color who face racism along with misogyny. In many conversations surrounding feminist leaders, women like Angela Davis, Constance Baker Motley, Sylvia Méndez, and Pasang Lhamu Sherpa are conveniently left out even when white supremacists like Susan B. Anthony are praised. Additionally, when topics like abortion and femicide is talked about, white feminism refuses to address the poverty of many women of color, mainly Native American, Black, and Hispanic women, that leads them to have more abortions. By self centering themselves in the feminist movement and only focusing on their struggles as women, white feminists refuse to acknowledge the institutional race and class issue that women of the global majority face in their daily lives.
Mainstream feminism has always been a movement created solely for the benefit of white women. White feminists fail to consider that they are seen as white before they are seen as women. They forget that along with their oppression, they also have immense privilege. They disregard the fact that women of color are sometimes not even viewed as human. They ignore the truth that misogyny isn’t the only battle we’re fighting, and that feminism is equality for all, not just privileged women. They overlook their privilege and attempt to drown it with their oppression.
The global feminist movement at the forefront of media today has historically been created with the foundation of white supremacy, as many of its early leaders like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were white supremacists. All that this main stream feminism does is highlight issues that white women face and ignore issues of race, class, and sexuality that goes along with misogyny. It gives voice to the already privileged and marginalizes the already oppressed. It gives white women a shield and a sword to fight and protect themselves, and women of color a piece of duct tape to muffle their voices with.