Intersectionality
To define the term intersectionality, we have translated an excerpt from La Escocesa’s feminist protocol, which addresses gender-based violence, discrimination, and conflicts related to gender. It was written by Genera, an association that defends sexual and gender freedom and rights and specializes in feminist consultancy.
Intersectionality is a term coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989. It is a tool that allows us to analyze how structural oppressions intersect in a given social context. Its objective is to provide a more complex vision than an analysis focused only on one separate issue (such as focusing only on gender as the explanatory axis of everything), while at the same time serving to analyze the different forms of power dominance. Thus, intersectionality provides us with a perspective to understand how new social categories emerge and how inequalities and/or social advantages are formed at their intersections. This shows us where social actors are situated within power relations in specific sociohistorical contexts and how they have different points of view on different social issues.
Intersectionality helps us understand how differences also configure trajectories of gradual exclusion/inclusion and are therefore established asymmetrically through systems such as patriarchy, homophobia, transphobia, classism, racism, or ableism.
What does intersectionality entail, and how can we work with it within an institutional or collective framework?
- Take into account which axes of domination emerge as relevant in cases of violence or harassment. It is not about locating intersectionality in the people but rather about paying attention to how different structural factors affect the case, such as sexism, classism, racism, or citizenship status (origin and administrative situation), among others.
- Understand and address vulnerability by focusing not only on the person but mainly on the structures that generate the specific vulnerability of gender, race, sexuality, or health and their relationship with the rest of the power structures.
- Understand that the way in which interventions and services are proposed, as well as the way of understanding violence and women’s recovery path, is socially and materially situated and often responds to criteria established according to the needs of women whose situation is viewed as “normal” (usually the most privileged).
- Pay special attention to the accessibility of your services, learn about material and symbolic barriers, and think about the necessary actions to approach those most at risk.
- Understand the need to analyze violence in intersectional terms, especially in relation to the economic conditions, housing, and administrative situation experienced by those who suffer violence.
- Make sure you acknowledge all the factors that may be affecting the person being cared for (such as public services that are failing them due to prejudices, fear of police presence due to lack of legalized administrative status, etc.).
- When focusing on one person, take into account what intervention strategies may reproduce existing power relations. It is necessary that the tools we develop are not built on harmful patterns of systemic violence but create space for agency and empowerment.
The feminist protocol aims to be a tool for transformation and social change, not only in relation to specific situations that may arise at La Escocesa but also for any cultural agent promoting the ideas of feminist and transformative justice. This approach allows, on the one hand, for any affected individual to be placed at the center of the intervention and, on the other, for the defense of principles we consider the most ethical and beneficial for individual care and social and community transformation.