Judith Butler suggests that in order to make a revolution happen, it is important to have a common, shared cause. This cause, according to Butler should not emerge out of lived experiences—because they are different for everyone—but out of shared humanity. While this idea is significant because it creates a new notion of unity which is based on natural similarity of being human as opposed to being defined in contrast to an other, it can be argued that mobilizing such a movement may not be that practical. The following analysis argues that as opposed to Butler’s approach, there is a need for intersectionality as established by Kimberle Crenshaw and Bell Hooks.

Crenshaw came up with the notion of intersectionality after observing the way black women are oppressed by both white and black men as well as white women. They are not only otherized on the basis of their race but also on the basis of their gender. For this reason, neither black men include them in their struggle for civil rights nor do white women include them in their feminist movements. Intersectionality is thus supposed to be an inclusive notion where all marginalized groups can unite.

Bell Hooks, in Ain’t I a Woman, also reflects on the need for a similar idea. She illustrates how black men and white woman—both marginalized groups—also oppress black women. She further elaborates on why this happens. Black men use black women as punching bags in order to take out their frustrations and insecurities. This behavior is enabled by patriarchal structures. White women, too, otherize black women simply because they consider them inferior, uncouth, and sexually deviant. These racial prejudices prevent them from incorporating black women into the feminist movement. Despite the movement’s claim of being inclusive, black women are continuously silenced or misrepresented.

White feminism has not been inclusive for black women, not only because of racial prejudices but also due to the differences in their issues. Since race determined socio-economic status, white women are more privileged than their counterparts. Their issues are concerning pay gaps, voting rights, and government representation. Black women, who are suffering to be treated as human beings have different priorities at the time Hooks is writing. These different needs cannot be met under a singular banner of feminism.

As a result, intersectionality becomes important. It recognizes that not all people are same. Just as their values differ, their priorities differ too. And more importantly, the oppression they suffer from may also differ. Acknowledgment of different kinds of oppression means a realization of the fact that different structures can be oppressive in different ways. Hooks also elaborates on how real freedom can only result from the destruction of structures like racism, sexism, and capitalism. Understanding that all such systems are oppressive paves the way for unity. Intersectionality enables this unity while also understanding that differences exist. This understanding is necessary for inclusion and also for the sake of tackling oppression on all fronts.

Intersectionality is a concept that is premised on recognition.

Crenshaw argues that by trying to understand oppression on a “single-axis” with regard to identity, multidimensional oppression cannot be understood. By extension, intersectional politics allows intersecting oppression to be recognized. Recognition is precisely what doubly oppressed groups do not get. Even historiographers do not account for their perspective.

The effects of such oppression linger on today. The theoretical framework of how discrimination is interpreted needs to change, which makes intersectional politics a necessity as it empowers those who have been silenced. The need for recognition is pertinent because intersecting oppressions continue to exist. Identities tend to be neatly demarcated, but in reality, there is quite often an overlap which empowers certain groups at the expense of others. There are power differentials present in every society which are inherently oppressive.

African American women have been marginalized along the fault lines of race and sex. Liberation movements prioritize the emancipation of a group over others. Hooks argues that these movements in the 20th century, further disenfranchised African American women by negating their identity. For instance, the women’s movement in the late 60s was both racist and sexist in its attitude towards black women. Instead of being inclusive towards all women irrespective of race, the movement was fronted by white women who supported the values imbued by white racial imperialism. Furthermore, black liberation leaders were unwilling to acknowledge the sexist oppression of black women by black men as it would “complicate efforts to resist racism.” As a result, black women were permanently cast to the background. Intersectional politics offer a way of rectifying such mistakes.

Even though social media driven socio-political movements in the contemporary era appear to be inclusive, intersectional politics allows Black women still have to carve out a space to give prominence to their respective grievances. The African American Policy Forum (AAPF), a gender and racial equity think tank, has initiated social media campaigns and published reports to challenge the narrative that victims of institutionalized racism are mostly black men. Black Lives Matter is a social movement initiated after the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the shooting of African American teen Trayvon Martin in 2012. While the movement appeared to be for “all Black lives along the gender spectrum,” in reality, it failed to acknowledge the work of Black women, trans people, and queer people within contemporary movements for racial justice. Furthermore, Treva B. Lindsey criticized Black Lives Matter for promoting a narrative against racial violence which was premised on a Black masculine perspective. In the three years following Black Lives Matter, more than seventy Black women have lost their lives to police violence. For every Trayvon Martin, there has been a Rekia Boyd. In the documentary The Lives of Black Women, Rekia’s brother stated: “They barely talk about women. Why is that? It’s crazy, because you see that even in death, women play the second role.” In response to instances of racial injustice against Black women being forgotten, the AAPF launched two social media campaigns—#BlackGirlsMatter and #SayHerName. In collaboration with the think tank, Crenshaw published a report titled “Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, Overpoliced, and Underprotected” to illustrate how disciplinary policies negatively impacted Black girls and other girls of color. The aim of the report was to understand “the ways [these girls] experience inhospitable educational environments and to produce recommendations designed to eliminate those inequities.”

Moreover, SayHerName was launched in 2015 after the death of Sandra Bland who died in police custody. Her story was representative of how many Black women were mistreated by the criminal justice system, and how they were disregarded by the wider public. The neglect shown toward Black women has not entirely been a matter of missing facts. Even where women are present in the data, “narratives framing police profiling and lethal force as exclusively male experiences lead researchers, the media, and advocates to exclude them.” The report titled “Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women” demonstrates how Black women who are “profiled, beaten, sexually assaulted, and killed by law enforcement officials are conspicuously absent from this frame even when their experiences are identical [to Black men].” Choo and Ferree note that the aim of this campaign was to “meet the locational standard of intersectionality by which the perspectives of the oppressed move from margin to center.” If activism fails to incorporate violence against Black women, they are further marginalized and rendered invisible. In order to prevent these women from being cast into a “zone of nonbeing” in which they question their own identity, activism has to be inclusive in both its ideology and documentation while condemning state-sanctioned violence against Black people.

If intersecting oppressions are not taken into consideration, the condition of certain groups can worsen. For the individual experiencing these multifaceted identities, it can be difficult to process their experiences. Their reality can be wrongfully interpreted as destiny instead of what it actually is—a manifestation of discriminatory norms.

“And when they appear to destroy me, it will not be long before they appear to destroy you.”

Audre Lorde said that an oppressed group cannot afford to combat oppression on one front. If one is to believe that the right of freedom from intolerance belongs to only one group, that belief, in itself embodies discrimination and exclusion and it won’t be long, before the same forces oppressing others come for you because those forces function on the same belief. Lorde argues that attacks directed against lesbian and gay communities are also anti black because the oppressed mirror one another and of course there are differences in the degree of oppression but the basic principle that they must be excluded and discriminated against applies across the board. In this scheme of things, politics of intersectionality is not only liberating but a necessity.

The Combahee River Collective aimed to establish a political framework that is both anti-racist and anti-sexist. Their main argument being that there can be no emancipatory politics which is not inclusive, and which does not acknowledge those who suffer the most because of inter-sectional oppression. Black feminists supported the Civil Rights Movement wholeheartedly, because the belief was that it was everyone’s fight but if black men refuse to acknowledge their internalized misogyny and continue to marginalize and abuse women, rather base their politics on the patriarchal claim that men are to be leaders and women followers, then they cannot claim to speak for black people. The speak only for black men. If white women are to speak of a universal sisterhood but do not address their internalized racism, against black women, they do not get to claim that speak for all women. They speak only for white women. And if black men and white women do not acknowledge the inadequacy of their politics, they are also guilty of excluding, discriminating and making totalizing claims, the very things they claimed to rally against.

“We reject queenhood, pedestals and walking 10 paces behind. To be recognized as human, and levelly human, is enough.”  The politics of intersectionality, from this lens is a politics of recognition and that is liberating, for there is a refusal to accept the deadening, oppressive silence the world imposes on one’s self. The critique against intersectional politics is that if oppressed groups start seeing their identities as natural and cannot see themselves beyond their fixed identities of black, women, lesbian and so on and so forth, but black feminism is a very wholesome reply to this critique.

 Within their statement, the Combahee River Collective, reiterates that men are not enemies because of their biology but because of the maleness they have been socialized to conform to. Bell Hooks said that being an oppressor in just as anti-human as being the oppressed is; men, themselves are victims of patriarchy. Within that statement the collective also argues that they are Marxist because they understand how freedom can never be divorced from the class question and that capitalism, in itself, promotes a certain kind of masculinity. Hooks argued that the masculinity that the capitalist-patriarchy nexus created derived its power from exercising violence on the bodies of women. Similarly, white women are not inherently evil but if they don’t actively acknowledge the racism that they have been socialized with, they can never form a sisterhood with black women.

These identities are not natural, but they are very real, and, in that sense, emancipatory politics is much more complex and will miss out on what it claims to represent, which is an end to marginalization and discrimination, if it continues to do single issue politics. Oppression has no hierarchy when the ideal is a place for Everyone on the rendezvous of victory.

The reading traces Gloria Anzaldúa’s experiences of existing entirely intersectionally. She exists in the borderlands of geography, culture and sexuality. She destroys or at least puts into question these categories into which people are forced to fit into. For her, having to be one thing or the other, compartmentalising into specific, “natural” categories and having to choose between very limited options is nothing less than cruelty. It reduces any possibility of other ways of being. Any identity which does not fit into the set categories and binaries is deemed abnormal and even deviant.

If an identity challenges the norm it is subhuman and nonhuman. Those living in these subversive categories (or borderlands) are constantly struggling to find ways to express themselves while also trying to come to terms with their own duality. They have to live every day as ostracised beings who do not belong while simultaneously being shunned and silenced for who they are. These people need to find ways to deal with their identities which punish them but also are their reality.

As part of the borderlands, she provides great insight into what methods they use to cope. One way in which she describes they do so is by creating a new language, Chicano Spanish. It is a means for them to make the borderlands comfortable and familiar. From her own experience, we can see how difficult it is to be living outside the binaries. She loves her culture and tries to embrace it completely but she is also aware of the toxic elements of it. She disassociates from those parts but does not try to immerse herself in the colonial culture. For doing so she is deemed a sellout by many of her own people. They try to silence her. But she breaks that silence. She believes that if going back to one’s own people is not an option because they do not accept your nonbinary identity (be it of any kind) then one must create a new home and try to keep it open to all, which is a beautiful way to encourage people on the borderlands to start anew, to find new beginnings when the familiar closes its doors on them.

Gloria Anzaldua writes about revolution. A revolution that is necessitated by means of a specific kind of evolution. The process of evolution, one would assume, is naturally occurring; it is separate from notions of politics, norms, culture and so on. Yet she reveals, through her paragraph titled “Half and Half” that perhaps our expectations from nature are not neutral, are not apolitical after all.

Growing up is organic, is normal, is an “evolution” that is expected. Should that same organically mediated process defy the expectations or the wishes of the body, it is a sign of defiance. Something that must be addressed immediately, attacked and- in most cases- removed. A growth, an evolution, that defies expectations, becomes a revolution.

Gloria Anzaldua states how a muchacha was deemed one “of the Others” because her body did not conform to the process of evolution that the townspeople consigned to. Her body defied the binaries through which we make sense of the world in neat, calculated terms. A binary defied, as Anzaldua observes, does not -for some reason- induce the observers to perhaps create room for the intended individual; for some reason, our first instinct is to cast the individual aside as a freak, as a “deviation of nature”. An individual such as the muchacha,leaves the observer “horrified” at the way nature has been “inverted”.

This observation of nature being this or that begs the question: who are we to say what is and what is not natural? Who decides the terms on which nature functions, let alone the terms on which it is inverted?

Is it arrogance or is it cowardice that prevents us from seeing diverse peoples, people with different bodies, different skins, different features, as equally human? Gloria Anzaldua takes a very generous approach to this supposed “abnormality”: her point of view celebrates the individual’s “abnormality” as a physical manifestation of their “inborn extraordinary gift”. This romanticization might be her way of coping with the notion of diversity and its lack of acceptance into the mainstream. If they are not allowed to assimilate, then these “abnormal” individuals should stand apart with pride- atleast that is what Anzaldua seems to infer. 

Yet one cannot help questioning, again, who decides what is and what is not an abnormality? Setting aside the question of whether or not this muchachatruly embodied the kind of personhood imposed onto her as a trans individual, there is a great deal more betrayed in the way that she is portrayed by others. It is interesting and of value, to note that there is an ‘other’ that is far more superior in its reach, in its influence, than this singular entity, this one Other. It is also important to remain cognizant of the fact that the only “abnormal” aspect of her existence lies in reference to her genitalia. Again, begging the question: what is so abnormal about a body that one is born into? One that has had no changes made to it, is naturally occurring, just like the existence of any other person.

A minor discrepancy, purely physical in nature, that takes nothing away from the richness of her personhood is somehow made the focal point of her existence. What Anzaldua offers, through this brief example, is perhaps a larger social commentary. A commentary on our obsession with and our fetishization of, these minor (supposed) discrepancies, ranging from sexuality to genitalia. A commentary on the notion of decision making that later constitutes a narrative; a narrative that the concerned individuals have no role in making. 

Perhaps Anzaldua’s (romantic) acceptance of difference as an inherent gift has merit in the way it seeks to invert the terms by which ‘different’ people are addressed. It may be her way of celebrating a difference that is otherwise chastised. That understanding holds merit in itself.

Yet it is this confusion about what to call someone, how to talk to them and even look at them, that begs the question: perhaps our understanding of difference and our ways of dealing with difference speak volumes about us, and not the person we are commenting on. Perhaps it is more a projection of our own insecurities, a betrayal of our bigotry, than it is a judgement on the person we are evaluating. A person we place on a pedestal to dissect, to criticize, to shame, for  simply existing in a way that does not conform to our expectations. 

To have something as pure as existence, mediated through the lens of bigoted narratives is an evil that goes unquestioned because these Others, these sources of ridicule, reside along the margins of society. Anzaldua emphasizes, through this example of the muchacha, the absurdity of our obsession with bodies, with a specific kind of existence. An existence that does not require a label yet has one imposed onto it for the convenience of everyone but the individual in question.

In a world where the cries for democracy seemingly coincide with the ideals of Western liberalism, the ‘free’ world in other words, the cries of minorities and women lie crushed beneath the patriarchal majority’s jackboot as they have for thousands of years. The branch of feminism which we know as intersectionality caters to this problem. Breaking down the political and social structure with regards to gender discrimination, it delves into the alarming problems associated with the ideas of seemingly flawless systems in the free world as well as blatantly totalitarian systems.

The productivity of intersectionality relies, as the word indicates, on the multifaceted deviance from mainstream politics to what we refer to as identity politics. Intersectionality brings to light the many faces of oppression often ignored or glossed over in the face of seemingly bigger issues such as race, religion etc. It is due to intersectionality that there is resistance in favor of the doubly, triply and so on, oppressed members of society. Take African American women, for example. In light of their people’s history in the United States, the idea of racial equality has remained prevalent at the forefront of the civil rights movement. The women were considered victims of merely racial prejudice and not gender based prejudice. This double oppression was ignored in the face of the race question and therefore without intersectional politics these intricate, societal foundations for discrimination never come to light. Take African American women who are part of the LGBTQ community. They suffer what we can call a triple form of oppression i.e. racial, sexual and gender-based discrimination. Without intersectional politics only the racial part would have ever come to light though usually people under the weight of this three-tier oppression have their voices drowned out altogether.

Conclusively, intersectional politics can be productive in shedding light on multifaced forms of oppression instead of ignoring the rest and focusing on the one big question. Moreover in their deviance from mainstream politics provides a different perspective that might cater to the needs of the minorities and women in society. Unlike mainstream politics, intersectional politics leave out nothing and no one in their many pronged approach towards long established hierarchies and other structures in society.

Gloria Anzaldua, in Borderlands, describes her position as an ‘in-between’ who belongs to a community existing at the border of Mexico and the USA. Her inbetweenness is not only evident through the struggles of belonging that she describes but also through the way she narrates them. Anzaldua presents a mixture of prose and poetry. She does not stick to one form just like she does not use a single language to explain her experience. Anzaldua’s chapter, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” describes how as a Chicano woman, her language became a “synergy of two cultures with various degrees of Mexicanness or Angloness” (63). Her accent, pronunciation, and vocabulary were different from both Mexicans and Americans. The borderland had a language of its own and this language became a signifier of her difference. At home, she was considered not Spanish enough, and in school she was asked to speak in proper English. This led to a “kind of dual identity” which “internalized the borderland conflict” in a way that at times, Anzaldua felt that one identity cancelled out the other, leaving her as “nothing” and “no one” (63). The power of language and how it is able to create and represent identity is what was most striking in this text; Anzaldua shows that one needs to take ownership of language to be truly free. It resonates with me because a similar kind of juxtaposition of languages is happening with Urdu and English in postcolonial Pakistan.

Anzaldua refers to a “tradition of silence” which all marginalized people are forced to follow. She starts with an example of language being “a male discourse” (54). As a woman, she had always been taught that “well bred girls don’t answer back” (54). Some words in her language were only “derogatory if applied to women” and some words did not even have a feminine plural. It was not only that women were silenced because of cultural norms that associated silence with good breeding, but also the language itself gave them no words to speak. Anzaldua thus shows that language is molded by whoever is in power. It is a male discourse, and a white male discourse at that.

When the white man’s language is spoken by anyone who is not of the same race, it can be seen in a few ways. One way to look at it is to see it as the white man’s victory because he has been successful in enlightening the less intellectual beings. Another way, the one I think Anzaldua too proposes, is to see it as the colored person’s reclamation of power. If one establishes that the white man’s language is the language of power, whoever makes use of it should be understood as exercising that power. Chicano Spanish is the language spoken by the people on the peripheries who are otherized by their colored peers. One reason they speak both English and Spanish is because of their location. Another is that they feel powerless when they are rejected by both sides of the border. They speak the languages that they consider their own but that have been used as a tool oppression against them in order to empower themselves. These multilingual people then codeswitch and form a new “forked tongue,” a “secret language” (55). By creating the Chicano Spanish, these people took ownership of both the languages by molding them in their ways. It helped them communicate and gave them the sense of belonging which neither English nor Spanish could. This language consisted of “archaisms” of Spanish language as well as “anglicisms” which resulted from the English language being imposed on Spanish speakers. In this way, it had the essence of both the languages.

However, Anzaldua mentions how even then, these people were constantly reprimanded. They were blamed for “speaking the oppressor’s tongue by speaking English” or for speaking “poor” and “illegitimate” Spanish (55, 58). These attacks diminish their “sense of self” (58) and force them to prove to one another who the real Chicano person is, not recognizing the fact that “there is no one Chicano language just as there is no one Chicano experience” (58).

This chapter on language is relevant to postcolonial states as reclaiming language is a part of the decolonizing project. If we take Pakistan as an example, and consider the imposition of the English language in the subcontinent, we can still see how people here are trying recover from the colonial hangover. The people here are multilingual and they too codeswtich between English and their local languages in daily conversation. The language spoken in Pakistan isn’t simply Urdu or Punjabi or any other regional language. It is a mixture of the local language and the colonizer’s language and it has become to norm across classes. Every now and then, someone on social media points out how sentences like “She was karing this (doing this)” with both English and Urdu words are funny. People view them as a joke. I propose, they are not a joke. They are, as seen through Anzaldua, a way of reclaiming power by reclaiming language.

Lastly, Aznzaldua also mentions how she would rather write without having to translate her words. In this chapter, she uses many Spanish phrases and she translates most of them because she is writing for an English speaking reader. This reminded me of Moni Mohsin’s The Diary of a Social Butterfly which is a novel of fiction and warrants no comparison to Anzaldua’s work except that Mohsin uses codeswitching and writes the entire novel in a language only decipherable to those who not only speak English and Urdu but also are familiar with the grammatical norms through which they’re juxtaposed. Anzaldua seems to be reaching towards a similar kind of goal; she wants to be herself unapologetically and rightfully points out that language plays a key role in doing so. Until she is able to achieve this kind of decolonization and freedom, she acknowledges that she will be bound and her language will be considered illegitimate.

Intersectioanlity is being subject to a multiplicity of oppressions due to belonging to a certain race, gender, and sexual orientation and so on, which pushes people further into marginalization. It is when different identities layer over each other to create unique levels and modes of discrimination. This concept is heavily reliant of identity politics, which can be negative or positive. However, before debating that it is vital to understand the main thing which makes intersectionality productive.

As Crenshaw states in her paper as well as in her TED Talk is that intersectionality in its elementary sense allows the victims and affected people to name the problem. When she explains the cases such as DeGraffenreid vs. General Motors, she explains that the women struggled to name the problem that they were facing as so it was treated as there was no problem at all. This became the basis of the dismissal of the discrimination they said they had faced. Intersectionality then becomes productive in that it gives a term to the problem which is the first step to solving the issue. It expands the terms of comprehending oppression that does not fit into the conventional way of thinking. It takes into account the experiences of different groups and how various discriminations come together to marginalise them.

Intersectional politics, then definitely becomes productive by allowing the oppressed to express their marginalisation and the cause behind it. This leads to the process of enacting policies that help take them out of that oppression. The term brings such subjugation into the conventional understanding of oppression. It does bring with it the possibility of creating more binaries, of supporting essentialism but intersectional politics is necessary to shed light on unique experiences.

Further thinking about the productivity of intersectionality, it is necessary to have an insight into how identity is thought about. When identity is thought of as Judith Butler explains it to be: constructed, discursive and fluid, then identity politics becomes liberating in that it empowers. This form of identity politics causes intersectionality to be productive, one step further than just naming the problem. It causes a sense of ‘uniformity not unanimity.’ On the contrary, when identity is taken for granted and is reduced to essence through the view that identities are fixed and natural, the identity politics becomes divisive. This causes intersectionality to become restrictive. Identity politics in this way surrenders to the power structures that have produced these identities rather than giving the possibility to question those processes.

Is intersectional politics then productive? Yes, because it names the problem. However, the extent to which that productivity is taken is dependent upon whether identity is used to create a solidarity which includes diversity and liberates or whether identity is appropriated to exacerbate the differences.

Visibility is perhaps one of the most crucial tasks undertaken by intersectional politics. It is not that this branch of politics provides individuals with the visibility they are entitled to, that would be to infantilize them; intersectional politics seems to be geared towards acceptance, towards acknowledgment, which is followed by embrace of the individuals’ unique existence. 

It is important to highlight the reason why this visibility is necessary. The burden of multiple intersecting oppressions is a burden that is abused by those in power, even if that power is only incrementally greater. Bell Hooks mentions how, for example, white women leverage their womanhood to gain physical support from black women, as do black men when they require the support of fellow black bodies. What is left out of this equation is the inherent significance of black women as fully involved participants, as sites of the convergence of two identities, not as either black or women.

This under-representation must not be taken lightly as an unintentional consequence of a person’s inability to process complex identities, it is a consciously cultivated blindness that must be acknowledged for what it is: the effective dehumanization of an individual to serve a specific political purpose. 

It is a violentprocess, this forceful separation of one identity from another, when neither can be- and should not be- erased. It is necessary for this reduction to take place, of course, because the existing paradigms do not support, or even acknowledge, the existence of non-binary identities. 

It is in this context that intersectional politics cater to identities that are more human than theoretical, considering that binaries cater to neat concepts over flesh and blood humans. It is this bifurcation between the idealized version of the human that contrasts the human in its situated reality. this reality could take the form of one’s existence as a queer person in Pakistan, as someone who feels misrepresented by the terms male or female, as someone who wishes to identify as a woman at one point in their life and later on, as male. These confusions, these seeming contradictions, are exactly the narratives that intersectional politics aim to create space for. 

It is not the elevation of one particular kind of existence, it is the acceptance of all kinds of existence that intersectionality facilitates. Considering that even within that framework, there are bound to be certain narratives that are excluded, or identities that evolve to represent some kind of identity politics, one must remain cognizant of the fact that the function of intersectional politics is to create space and facilitate the visibility of those who have been forced to perch on the sidelines for too long.