Intersectionality, Masculine Domination, & Black Feminist Ambivalence

• In Event: Pluralism and Intersectional Politics

Abstract

This paper assesses Kimberlé Crenshaw’s analysis of the problem of sexual violence in relation to her theorization of intersectionality. I intervene in ongoing debates over intersectionality’s applicability to the study of sexuality and argue that Crenshaw’s foundational texts are explicitly critical engagements with how sexual harassment and violence are constitutive of Black women’s experiences of exclusion and marginalization. I further argue that because intersectionality is understood primarily as a critique of whiteness in feminist theory and feminist movements, Crenshaw’s analysis of masculine domination in antiracist movements has been excised from intersectional theory. In this paper, I return intersectionality to the question of sexual violence by closely attending to Crenshaw’s analysis of the sexual marginalization of Black women and girls in her foundational and contemporary works on intersectionality. In so doing, I argue that these texts illuminate both a strong critique of masculine domination in relation to intersectionality as well as an ambivalence this critique generates. I conclude that Crenshaw’s analysis of sexual violence leads her to take up an ambivalent position in regards to solidarity or the terms of unity that Black feminism might require of its subjects. For Crenshaw, intersectional politics are saturated with ambivalence in regards to solidarity or “the terms of unity” that coalitional identity politics (like feminism and antiracism) require. I suggest that thinking within this ambivalence, rather than attempting to resolve it, can be generative for thinking intersectional politics anew.

Author

• Rhiannon Love Auriemma, Northwestern University