Thoughts on Barkley, Higginbotham, and Intersectional Feminism-- Tate

I find it striking that Higginbotham and Barkley’s pieces, published in 1992, 6 years before I was born, still ring true today. Their positions on the feminism movement’s lack of intersectionality is still a big issue today, one that has yet to be addressed and is only now starting to be discussed by a larger audience. As a self-proclaimed feminist, this really made me reflect on the movement as a whole. I had never thought about how there is no universal female experience; there isn’t even a universal black woman experience. As a black woman, I share struggles with the general female population, I share struggles with the black population, and I have the greatest overlap of struggles with the black female population, but within this community I am an individual. My needs and experiences are different from those of many black women and that is OK. I think that many movements, such as one’s for racial or gender equality, tend to oversimplify the problem in hopes of making the message more accessible to more people. Members of the movement attempt to erase differences and incongruities among members to enable them to present a united front. Unity among those striving for equality certainly makes sense, but I think that it has been taken too far by the mainstream feminism movement, which is often white washed. The experiences and expectations of women from different races are different because they are from different races, as Brown pointed out. The experiences of heterosexual middle class white women have been normalized to a point where they don’t have to be distinguished as such. This pervasive sense of whiteness as the default by our society has blinded white women to the way race operates in their lives, and not just in the lives of people of color.  Barkley’s point that “race is operative even when all parties involved are white” is one that I have never considered, but is completely valid. White women have a completely different history with sex, sexuality, and sexual abuse than do black women, precisely because of their races. Many white feminists have taken up the fight against preconceived notions and expectations of women to be docile, gentle, and maternal. They fight for a right to be sexual, to not behave like the “ladies” they’re expected to be. When I think about it, though, when you consider mainstream media and society’s portrayal of black women, no one expects the same of back women. In fact, black female bodies have been sexualized and dehumanized against our will since forever. While women of all races are attempting to regain control of their sexualities, white women must reject the respectability conferred on them and black women have to fight for the respect denied them. For feminism to really work, we need to come together under the things that unite us, such as taking control of our sexualities. But recognize the historical and contextual differences among different groups in the movements, and work to address each one, rather than sweeping them under the rug.