Regarding the intersectional argument brought before the courts by the Fédération des femmes du Québec (FFQ), Ms.me Christiane Pelchat asserts, in The duty of February 28, “that we did not wait for this new ideology to combat discrimination against all women, whatever their origins or social classes”. By the way, the word ideology subtly devalues a thought instead of considering it for what it is; intersectionality is first an analysis.
Indeed, we did not wait for the word intersectionality to fight against cross-discrimination. The FFQ only formally adopted the term intersectionality in 2015, without denying what it had already identified as the source of the cross-discrimination it had been fighting for twenty years; in 2003, its political platform declined the rights of women by taking into account “the interpenetration of the systems of oppression, exploitation, marginalization or exclusion of women on a planetary scale that are patriarchy, racism and capitalism. Indeed, the combined forces of these systems perpetuate the inequalities, discriminations and violence of which women are the object”.
The choice of intersectional analysis highlights that the fight against discrimination, when it aims to be universalist, often misses this reality of power systems.
This is a far cry from the victimization contests denounced by some critics, blind to established power structures that favor dominant groups over oppressed groups. Because it is here that the shoe pinches: the intersectional analysis highlights the privileges enjoyed by groups that do not have to experience certain exclusions, or by people simply because they belong to such a group.
Here are raised the shields. Men find that feminists exaggerate, more or less deliberately ignoring the discrimination and violence experienced by women because they are women. White people find that anti-racists exaggerate, more or less deliberately minimizing discrimination and violence against racialized people because they are racialized. However, white women know how few men understand what they experience as a dominated group; they can therefore use this experience to question their own ignorance of the experience of racialized groups.
Because it is not a question of pointing out individuals, but of highlighting the inequalities of power in society. Who dominates politics? Who dominates the economy? Who are the (sometimes minority) social groups that make the decisions affecting the lives of millions of others? Who consumes energy at such a rate that the countries of the South find themselves in the grip of climatic catastrophes and lethal famines? And who finds himself at the bottom of the ladder of power, having to fight for his dignity and his survival?
You have to name a spade a spade. The world is dominated by unjust and deleterious systems of power for which we are not responsible as individuals, but which we have the responsibility to contribute, however little, to transforming. This is what groups that promote intersectionality highlight when they are prompted by their analyzes to take action.
We can favor another vision and other strategies of social transformation towards justice. Both Universalists and Intersectionalists seek in good faith pathways to structures that ensure the rights of all women—and all humans—on a livable planet. It seems to me necessary, beyond the sometimes caricatural radicalism of each other, to recognize the right of citizenship of various political options and to fight without appropriating the right right for oneself alone.