Intersectionality and Violence Against Women

This episode of CRT2 spotlights the struggles and fights of marginalized women of color against the backdrop of political and social movements which have taken place in the U.S. and across the globe. The episode spotlights three different struggles that marginalized women of color have experienced and continue to experience.

We discuss and unpack terms like intersectionality, and sexual violence as these terms relate to the experience of Black women. Black women often face disproportionate violence in all aspects of life, including work, school and in the home. Black women are also invisibilized in wider society and political culture. For example, although the “Me Too” movement was created by Tarana Burke, a Black woman, the movement only gained wider traction when white female celebrities co-opted it. This serves as an example of how Black women are often relegated to the sidelines of their own movements.

First, we discuss recent actions taken by women in Mexico to push for protection against all kinds of violence. These actions were sparked by both the January 2020 murder of Isabel Cabanillas, a 26 year-old designer, artist and women’s rights activist in Ciudad Juarez, and President Andres Lopez Obrador’s defense of Félix Salgado Macedonio who had been accused by several women of rape and sexual assault in early 2021. In response, thousands of Mexican women took to the streets in protest, and over 2,500 women signed a letter demanding President Lopez Obrador to create a national plan of protection for Mexican women against violence.

Next, we discuss the long saga of R. Kelly’s sexual assault allegations from Black girls and women, and the radical actions Black women have taken to seek justice when the traditional legal system has failed to provide it. Lastly, this episode discusses the #SayHerName movement which was formed to address the lack of attention given to Black women victims of police violence. We touch on how this lack of attention is partly the result of the “adultification” of Black women that causes them to not be seen as victims when they are harmed. 

We analyze these three stories using the Critical Race Theory concept of “intersectionality,” which was developed by Columbia and UCLA Law Professor Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw in 1989. The purpose of intersectionality is to capture and describe how race, class, gender and other individual characteristics “intersect” to create different modes of discrimination and privilege. The harms marginalized women of color experience are most poignantly analyzed with an intersectional lens that considers all of the intersecting identities that make them vulnerable to forms of oppression.