Does intersectionality pose a problem for human rights?

By interpreting our political reality exclusively in terms of power and control, intersectional analysis can exacerbate social divisions, whereby strong groups are inevitably oppressive groups and disadvantaged groups need to join forces to fight against them.

The feminist intellectual bell hooks, who died recently, left an inspiring legacy of reflections about race, gender, class, and social justice. Indeed, she discussed these issues long before the concept of intersectionality tied them together. Much of her writing focused on solidarity. She argued that women’s solidarity is a foundational pillar in the success of the feminist movement to bring about significant social change. Solidarity meant fighting oppression while building a strong bond that crosses their social, racial and cultural differences.

Hooks criticised the way certain conceptions of solidarity within the feminist movement tended to build on the victimhood of its members, and argued that this way of conceiving of victimhood represented a weakness in the movement. She stressed that feelings of oppression change according to class, culture, and race, and therefore, a shared sense of victimhood may overlook women who experience oppression differently.

For example, she pointed out that the feminist movement mostly ignored the oppression of black women because they were perceived as strong. This tendency, she argued, enabled the persistence of different forms of oppression, such as racism and classism, which are both expressions of patriarchal oppression against which the feminist movement has to fight. Rather than victimhood, hooks proposed a conception of solidarity in which women embrace and grow from their inherent racial, social, cultural, and even gender differences and confront together these various forms of oppression.

Hooks urged feminists to look beyond social categories and harness diversity in order to bring social change. In her book Feminism is for Everybody, she insisted that feminism is not against men but against mechanisms of oppression. As such, it can also include men who oppose these mechanisms. In a broader perspective, hooks reverberated Martin Luther King’s ideas of social cohesion. The solidarity she offered sought to neutralise the divisive forces of social categories and narratives and to invite different social groups to unite to face together the social ills of oppression, discrimination, and exploitation.

The importance of bell hooks is widely acknowledged, but her ideas about solidarity are often overlooked in contemporary intersectionality-based social activism which sometimes relies on racial and social categories to emphasise the victimhood of oppressed groups. I contend that utilising these categories as part of the struggle against oppression sometimes undermines the human rights to dignity, autonomy, and self-determination in the struggle for racial and social justice.

Published in ABC religion and Ethics - Read full article here