Anytime we exclusively center women, we’re dragged through the mud.

100% agree!

So sick of hearing how “feminism is for everyone!” No, it’s for women. And no, it’s not a “gender equality” movement that should be renamed as such. It’s about the liberation of women from oppression. We shouldn’t be obliged to tackle all the other problems in the world first.

(Edit to add: I’m fully in favour of intersectionality in its true and original sense.)

"Feminism is for everyone" is the new All lives matter.

Because we are the household class, the caretaker class, the mother class, the cleaner class, the sex slave class, the babysitter class, the selfless class, the self-sacrificing class, the forever needed, relied-upon, labouring class, the class that must work itself to death trying to kiss better all of humanity's wrongs and evils before tending to its own grave injuries.

I never got what people meant with "white feminism". Maybe because I'm not American and have never lived in the US. The first time I ever heard it was in Australia, where society also loves to compartmentalize people in racial "casts" or very defined groups, and has a huge white guilt problem that gets so old and - how can't they see that - is in fact so DETRIMENTAL to overcoming racism and moving towards real equality (if the whole time you're apologizing for being white and insisting that "this is a very racist country, it's just who we are, did you know that this is actually stolen land?" - Yeah mate, the land was stolen, it was horrible, that happened in the whole of the American continent too. You can choose to acknowledge it and move on, ensuring that from now on people get more and more equal access, equal opportunities, and an equal perceived image in society, or you can keep weeping and apologizing from your privileged little corner while nothing changes, because after all "that's just who you are", like it's written in your code, or something - what a ludicrous attitude and mindset)

Anyway, I digress.

I disagree with intersectionalism because it invariably ends up becoming Oppression Olympics. If someone is disabled and black and homosexual, this person will be discriminated for being disabled, for being black and for being homosexual, independently, not for a special combination of these factors. If the person was, say, heterosexual, the person would still be discriminated for being black and for being disabled. And this person can count (or should be able to count) on every specific movement that caters to each or the specific discriminations against her / him.

Feminism shouldn't be intersectional, because Black women are women, Asian women are women, Mediterranean women are women, disabled women are women, immigrant women are women, lesbians are women, poor women are women, obese women are women, neurodivergent women are women, etc. "Women" is enough and feminism should stand up for all of them, without having to categorize and compartmentalize them (us) in subcategories. In @inTERFerence 's words:

It exists to divide us into smaller and smaller groups so that we can't name the problem at all.

From the moment we start separating "oh wait, but she's disabled, on top of it", we're:

1. addressing an issue that has nothing to do with the scope of feminism

2. opening space so that disabled non-women (aka MEN) start feeling in the right of being included as the target (and core) of whatever feminist initiatives, "because they do disabled people too".

Claiming that intersectionality should exist in feminism is saying that feminism doesn't give enough attention to women that aren't of a specific category (white, straight, able-bodied, etc), and I've never seen that (please educate me otherwise), or that it should treat women outside of this group with extra-special care (and we came to a point where white women need to bear a sort of Original Sin shame at all times and feel apologetic for their mere ethnicity, AND where in the name of "inclusion", it's opening the gates to a stampede of men).

I'm not white, btw.

EDIT because I've just read an article that someone linked here, that took me to another article on "white feminism". I maintain that "white feminism" is just a divisive term and it makes no sense. Yes, some women will be alienated and obnoxious and selfish and shallow. But aren't so many libfems too? It may be read as "that's because they're white and the other woman in question is black", and that may be the issue, but that's not "white feminism" then. The woman is a condescending racist. Period. This attitude has nothing to do with feminism.

When you seek to not be lumped into the conversation about oppressive systems against marginalized people, because you view yourself as woke, you are essentially screaming “not all men.”

No, you're actually saying "it's not just men, it's some women too".

And this weakens feminism incredibly, because now it's just a group of women oppressing another group of women, and the expectation that this should be solved by feminism. (I can even hear a man's voice mockingly saying "Ooooh cat fight!").

No, that is an issue that is SPECIFIC to anti-racism. That is for anti-racism to solve, so these 2 women can fight together for the same cause. Otherwise we're just saying that this "white feminist" in the example above is just as much as a feminist as the black feminist, only she's not "intersectional enough", which is bullshit.

When women of color begin to cry out about their pain, frustration, and utter outrage (...) we are often met with white women who tell us perhaps we should “say things a little nicer” if we want to be respected and heard.

"Say things a little nicer" is a norm that comes FROM THE PATRIARCHY, not from "a division of feminism". What the hell.

Any behavior attributed to "white feminism" should be addressed by anti-racism, anti-classism, anti-nationalism, etc. If you, as a woman, are being condescending towards other women, using other women's struggle to look good on social media, being selfish, being narcissistic, or whatever, that doesn't make you a "category of feminist", a member of a "branch of feminism", it simply makes you not a feminist, regardless of how you feel.

"Oh but they call themselves feminists". So what? A bunch of men call themselves "lesbians", and we, actual feminists, are not saying "well, if they say so, then they are, and we must be intersectional to include all types of lesbians".

"White feminism" is a great way to get women of different ethnicities fighting against each other, instead of uniting to fight the actual problem, aka the patriarchy and male violence against women. Any other dispute and disagreement doesn't belong to feminism, and we'll never get unity while we insist it does.

In my opinion, you answered your own question:

... women are always the ones expected to care for everyone.

Nobody ever tries to call out BLM, disabled people, or the working class for not being inclusive enough

They do. There are activists who insist that BLM should be centered on Black Trans Lives. There were many self-identified progressives who criticized Bernie Sanders, a class-focused social democrat, for not saying enough about race and gender.

The difference between these movements and feminism is not that they aren’t attacked for lacking intersectionality, but that they’re somewhat better at remaining focused on their core issues despite the critiques. (I say somewhat better because they make concessions too: the national leadership of the BLM organization is big into queer shit, and Bernie Sanders invoked race and gender more often in 2020 than in 2016.)

For years I only knew 'intersectional feminism' as feminism meant to include women from all backgrounds. Still weird to me it should mean anything else. I mean, why the f*ck should it include men. Dumb.

I also think intersectionalism is important and useful when applied correctly. It does make sense.

Not only is feminism sliced and diced to oblivion in the name of intersectionality, but also: TRAs fail at intersectionality constantly - whenever they scream that there is no possible justification for "AFAB" women to distinguish themselves from TIMs, for example.

This is a really interesting post. Identity politics are absolutely divisive. Intersectional analysis seems useful though and I wouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I just wanted to comment on this:

Nobody ever tries to call out...the working class for not being inclusive enough.

because I'm not certain I agree. I tend to find labor and economic issues/ideas get handwaved away by my NYT-reading-Democrat-voting-"left" friends as not being inclusive enough or specifically intersectional enough to be worth discussing... Or worse, conservative/right wing as I increasingly hear in recent years. I've been told the economy is not as important as people's lives, when the economy, pretty much no matter where you live, is actually pretty central to the average person's ability to conduct their life.

I had a crazy discussion with a social worker friend where she refused to admit the affordable housing crisis was the cause of homelessness in CA especially but in the wider US as well. She didn't support low-entry barrier housing (Housing First) because

• some of them want to live in tents
• they are mentally ill and don't care about their health
• they have addictions and you have to get clean before you can be "given" housing

This is a girl who represents herself as The Social Justice Warrior ™ but I don't even feel like these attitudes are uncommon in my younger Millennial cohort. She can't see the structural economic causes of these people's problems (and doesn't respect Maslow's Hierarchy I guess?) and individualizes them down to problematic/sick humans who want to live in tents. Idk where I'm going with this just that economic/labor analysis isn't inclusive enough for the bleeding hearts like my friend who circlejerk to ideas of marching out to the Hoovervilles and providing relief aid to AIDS-infested hopeless junkies in their shanties.

While working towards the superficial aim of inclusivity mediated through identity politics, material analysis gets discarded.

Has anyone got links to good/concise reading on the original meaning of intersectionality? I'd do my own digging but because that word is everywhere I feel like I'm not going to get much relevant

Intersectional isn't about inclusion, and never was.

It was about recognizing that someone might not discriminate against black men, or white women, but they still might discriminate against black women. That that intersection of human traits could face it's own unique discrimination.

When people here complain about liberal feminists... it's almost always self identified "intersectional" feminists who do not use the original definition, and instead mean "inclusive of everyone" and "every choice is a feminist choice if a woman makes it" and other kinds of feel-good girl-power takes.

You'd expect feminism to be the only such movement if women actually didn't matter at all. Which seems to be the case not only for men, but for a good percentage of women in our world . . .