Vox Meditantis

Thirty-five years after Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality,” we find ourselves in the midst of a fierce intellectual and political battle over what was once an obscure legal concept. What began as a precise analytical tool to understand how Black women experienced compound discrimination has morphed into both a rallying cry for social justice movements and a lightning rod for conservative fury. The question we must confront is stark: has intersectionality become too politically charged to serve its original analytical purpose, or are its critics simply uncomfortable with the uncomfortable truths it reveals about power?

What Intersectionality Actually Means

Before we can assess the critiques, we must be crystal clear about what intersectionality actually entails. Crenshaw defines it as “a lens through which you can see where power comes and collides, where it interlocks and intersects”. This is not, despite popular misconceptions, about celebrating individual uniqueness or accumulating victimhood points.

The theory emerged from Crenshaw’s observation that legal frameworks treated race and gender discrimination as separate phenomena, leaving Black women who experienced both forms simultaneously without adequate legal recourse. In the landmark case DeGraffenreid v. General Motors, courts dismissed claims of compound discrimination because they found that white women were hired for office jobs and Black men for factory work, somehow proving that neither racial nor gender discrimination existed.

Intersectionality comprises three building blocks: social identities, systems of oppression, and their intersections. It recognises that “discrimination against black women cannot be explained as a simple combination of misogyny and racism, but as something more complicated”. This is analytical rigour, not ideological posturing.

The Academic-Political Divide

Yet intersectionality has undeniably transcended its academic origins. The concept has “gone viral” over the past decade, resulting in both widespread adoption and fierce backlash. This transformation raises legitimate questions about whether academic frameworks can maintain their analytical integrity when they become political tools.

Nancy Fraser’s work illuminates this tension perfectly. She argues that contemporary social movements have become “increasingly divided between claims for redistribution, on the one hand, and claims for recognition, on the other”. The worry is that intersectionality, in practice, has tilted too heavily towards recognition politics—celebrating difference rather than challenging material inequality.

This criticism carries weight. When intersectionality becomes primarily about identity rather than power structures, it risks what Fraser calls “surface redistribution”—reshuffling resources within existing systems rather than transforming them. The irony is palpable: a theory designed to reveal how power operates may inadvertently obscure class-based oppression by fragmenting potential coalitions.

The Fragmentation Challenge

The most serious academic critique of intersectionality concerns fragmentation. Some scholars argue that the theory’s emphasis on multiple, interconnected identities leads inevitably to political and ontological fragmentation. If every intersection creates a unique form of oppression, how can we build solidarity across groups?

This fragmentation argument operates on two levels. First, there’s ontological fragmentation—the concern that categories like “women” cease to exist as meaningful political subjects when subjected to intersectional analysis. Second, there’s political fragmentation—the worry that emphasising difference undermines the possibility of unified action.

The regress argument is particularly challenging: if Black women experience oppression differently from white women and Black men, and working-class Black women differently from middle-class Black women, where does the subdivision end? Critics worry this leads to infinite particularisation, reducing politics to individual experience.

But this critique misunderstands intersectionality’s purpose. As scholars note, “intersectionality promotes a deeper comprehension of social justice matters and supports cooperative initiatives that more successfully confront systemic oppression”. The goal isn’t division but rather more effective coalition-building based on genuine understanding of different groups’ experiences.

Universalism Versus Particularity

The deeper philosophical tension lies between universalist and particularist approaches to justice. Conservative critics particularly object to intersectionality’s challenge to universalist principles, seeing it as creating “special standards, special treatment” for minorities. They prefer colour-blind, gender-neutral approaches that treat everyone identically.

This universalist critique reveals a fundamental misunderstanding. True universalism requires accounting for how supposedly neutral systems actually advantage some groups over others. When courts in the 1980s treated gender and race discrimination as entirely separate phenomena, they weren’t being universal—they were protecting existing hierarchies through willful blindness.

The real divide isn’t between universal and particular approaches but between genuine and false universalism. Genuine universalism recognises that achieving equal treatment often requires different treatment. False universalism uses the language of equality to maintain inequality.

The Misappropriation Problem

Perhaps the most damaging critique of intersectionality concerns its misappropriation by those who should know better. Research reveals how “additive intersectionality” has been deployed by white feminists to appear inclusive while maintaining their structural advantages. This approach treats intersectionality as a box-ticking exercise—adding women of colour to predominantly white organisations without fundamentally altering power structures.

This misuse is particularly insidious because it allows privileged groups to appropriate intersectionality’s moral authority while avoiding its uncomfortable implications. When white-led organisations claim to embrace intersectionality but refuse to examine their own complicity in structural racism, they transform a tool of liberation into one of legitimation.

The solution isn’t to abandon intersectionality but to insist on its proper application. This means recognising that “intersectionality is fundamentally about recognition of the interrelation of structures of inequality”—not merely about including diverse voices in existing frameworks.

Building Genuine Solidarity

Critics are right that intersectionality poses challenges for traditional forms of solidarity. But these challenges reflect real political problems, not theoretical flaws. Working-class women of different racial backgrounds do experience capitalism differently. LGBTQ+ people of colour do face distinct forms of violence. Ignoring these differences doesn’t create unity—it creates false consciousness.

Intersectional solidarity offers a more robust foundation for political action. Rather than demanding that marginalised groups subordinate their specific concerns to supposedly universal struggles, it seeks to understand how different forms of oppression reinforce each other. This approach “highlights the importance of recognizing and addressing the interconnections between various social identities”.

The #SayHerName movement exemplifies this approach. By highlighting police violence against Black women—which had been marginalised within both anti-racism and feminist movements—Crenshaw demonstrated how intersectional analysis can strengthen rather than weaken political coalitions.

The Conservative Backlash

The virulent conservative opposition to intersectionality reveals its analytical power. When right-wing commentators describe it as “really dangerous” or a “conspiracy theory of victimisation,” they’re responding to its effectiveness in revealing how power actually operates. Their concern isn’t that intersectionality is wrong but that it’s right.

This backlash also demonstrates intersectionality’s political significance. Academic theories don’t typically provoke such intense responses unless they threaten existing arrangements. The fact that conservatives have made intersectionality a primary target suggests it poses genuine challenges to established hierarchies.

Conclusion: Defending Analytical Rigour

The debate over intersectionality ultimately concerns the relationship between knowledge and power. Those who benefit from existing arrangements naturally prefer analytical frameworks that leave those arrangements unexamined. Intersectionality’s great contribution is its insistence that we examine power in all its complexity.

Yes, intersectionality can be misappropriated, oversimplified, or weaponised. But this reflects the political stakes involved, not theoretical weaknesses. The solution isn’t to retreat from intersectional analysis but to apply it more rigorously and honestly.

Crenshaw created intersectionality to address a specific problem: legal systems that failed Black women by treating their experiences as impossible to understand. Thirty-five years later, that problem persists in new forms. Until we develop better tools for understanding how power operates across multiple dimensions simultaneously, intersectionality remains indispensable.

The real question isn’t whether intersectionality is too political but whether we’re prepared to follow its insights wherever they lead—even when they make us uncomfortable about our own positions in systems of power and privilege.

Bob Lynn | © 2025 Vox Meditantis. All rights reserved.

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