Hostname: page-component-7dd5485656-wxk4p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-10-30T06:41:53.732Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Intersectionality, Metaphors, and the Multiplicity of Gender

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2020

Ann Garry
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Although intersectional analyses of gender have been widely adopted by feminist theorists in many disciplines, controversy remains over their character, limitations, and implications. I support intersectionality, cautioning against asking too much of it. It provides standards for the uses of methods or frameworks rather than theories of power, oppression, agency, or identity. I want feminist philosophers to incorporate intersectional analyses more fully into our work so that our theories can, in fact, have the pluralistic and inclusive character to which we give lip service. To this end, I advocate an intersectional family resemblance strategy that does not create philosophical problems for feminists. I test my approach against María Lugones's argument in “Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System” (Lugones 2007) to determine, in particular, whether we can successfully resist a move to create multiple genders for women. If we can successfully resist this move, then we can answer the objection that intersectionality fragments women both theoretically and politically. I also argue that my approach avoids Lugones's critique of forms of intersectionality that fall within “the logic of purity.”

Information

Type
Responsibility and Identity in Global Justice
Information
Hypatia , Volume 26 , Issue 4: Special Issue: 2nd FEAST Special Issue , Fall 2011 , pp. 826 - 850
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Allen, Paula Gunn. 1986/1992. The sacred hoop: Recovering the feminine in American Indian tradition. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Anzaldúa, Gloria. 1983. La prieta. In This bridge called my back. 2nd edition. ed. Moraga, Cherríe and Anzaldúa, Gloria. Watertown, Mass.: Persephone Press.Google Scholar
Anzaldúa, Gloria. 1987. Borderlands/La frontera: The new mestiza. San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute.Google Scholar
Bailey, Alison. 2009. On intersectionality, empathy, and feminist solidarity: A reply to Naomi Zack. Journal for Peace and Justice Studies 19(1): 14–26.10.5840/peacejustice200919116CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bailey, Alison. 2010. On intersectionality and the whiteness of feminist philosophy. In The center must not hold: White women on the whiteness of philosophy, ed. Yancy, George. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield.Google ScholarPubMed
Brown, Wendy. 1997. The impossibility of women's studies. differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 9(3): 79–101.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Carastathis, Anna. 2008. The invisibility of privilege: A critique of intersectional models of identity. Les ateliers de l'ethique 3(2): 23–28.10.7202/1044594arCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, Patricia Hill. 1990. Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Collins, Patricia Hill. 1993/2008. Toward a new vision: Race, class, and gender as categories of analysis and connection. Race, Sex, and Class 1(1): 25–46. Reprinted in The matrix reader, ed. Abby L. Ferber, Christina Jimenez, Andrea Herrera, and Dena Samuels. New York: McGraw‐Hill. Page references are to Ferber et al. 2008.Google Scholar
Cooper, Anna Julia. 1892. A voice from the south. Xenia, Ohio: The Aldine Printing House.Google Scholar
Crenshaw, Kimberlé. 1989. Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory, and antiracist politics. The University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989: 139–67.Google Scholar
Crenshaw, Kimberlé. 1991. Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review 43(6): 1241–99.10.2307/1229039CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crenshaw, Kimberlé. 1993. Beyond racism and misogyny: Black feminism and 2 live crew. In Words that wound, ed. Matsuda, Mari J., Lawrence, Charles R. III, Delgado, Richard, and Crenshaw, Kimberlé. Boulder, Colo: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Crenshaw, Kimberlé. 2008. On gendered violence and racializing prisons: A tale of two movements. Given at UC Santa Barbara, February 15, 2008. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1v9E83yTNA (accessed November 18, 2009).Google Scholar
Davis, Kathy. 2008. Intersectionality as buzzword: A sociology of science perspective on what makes a feminist theory successful. Feminist Theory 9(1): 67–86.10.1177/1464700108086364CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferber, Abby L., Jimenez, Christina, Herrera, Andrea, and Samuels, Dena, eds. 2008. The matrix reader. New York: McGraw‐Hill.Google Scholar
Fricker, Miranda. 2007. Epistemic injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing. New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198237907.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frye, Marilyn. 1983. The Politics of reality: Essays in feminist theory. Trumansburg, N.Y.: Crossing Press.Google Scholar
Frye, Marilyn. 1996. The possibility of feminist theory. In Women, knowledge, and reality: Explorations in feminist philosophy. 2nd edition. ed. Garry, Ann and Pearsall, Marilyn. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Frye, Marilyn. 2011. Metaphors of being a Φ. In Feminist metaphysics: Explorations in the ontology of sex gender, and the self, ed. Witt, Charlotte. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Garry, Ann. 2007. Should feminist philosophers care about essences? Published as “Feministo tetsugakusha ha honshitsu o ki ni kakeru beki ka.Tetsugaku-Zasshi [Philosophical Studies] 122: 113–39.Google Scholar
Garry, Ann. 2008a. Essences, intersections, and American feminism. In The Oxford handbook of American philosophy, ed. Misak, Cheryl. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Garry, Ann. 2008b. Intersections, social change, and “engaged” theories: Implications of North American feminism. Pacific and American Studies 8 (March): 99–111.Google Scholar
Hale, C. Jacob. 1996. Are lesbians women? Hypatia 11(2): 94–121.10.1111/j.1527-2001.1996.tb00666.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hancock, Ange‐Marie. 2007a. Intersectionality as a normative and empirical paradigm. Politics and Gender 3(2): 248–54.Google Scholar
Hancock, Ange‐Marie. 2007b. When multiplication doesn't equal quick addition: Examining intersectionality as a research paradigm. Perspectives on Politics 5(1): 63–79.10.1017/S1537592707070065CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harding, Sandra. 1991. Whose science? whose knowledge?: Thinking from women's lives. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Heyes, Cressida J. 2000. Line drawings: Defining women through feminist practice. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
hooks, bell. 1984 Sisterhood: Political solidarity among women. Feminist theory: From margin to center. Cambridge, Mass.: South End Press.Google Scholar
Kairys, David, ed. 1998. The politics of law. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Lugones, María. 2003. Pilgrimages/peregrinajes: Theorizing coalition against multiple oppressions. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Lugones, María. 2007. Heterosexualism and the colonial/modern gender system. Hypatia 22(1): 186–209.Google Scholar
Lugones, María. 2010. Toward a decolonial feminism. Hypatia 25(4): 742–59.10.1111/j.1527-2001.2010.01137.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCall, Leslie. 2005. The complexity of intersectionality. Signs 30(3): 1771–800.10.1086/426800CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Medina, José. 2003. Identity trouble: Disidentification and the problem of difference. Philosophy and Social Criticism 29(6): 655–80.10.1177/0191453703296002CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mikkola, Mari. 2009. Gender concepts and intuitions. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 39(4): 559–84.10.1353/cjp.0.0060CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mills, Charles W. 1997. The racial contract. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Mills, Charles W. 1998. Blackness visible: Essays on philosophy and race. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Moraga, Cherríe. 1983. Loving in the war years: Lo que nunca pasó por sus labios. Boston: South End Press.Google Scholar
Nash, Jennifer C. 2008. Re‐thinking intersectionality. Feminist Review 89(1): 1–15.10.1057/fr.2008.4CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, Hilde Lindemann. 2002. Wittgenstein meets ‘woman’ in the language‐game of theorizing feminism. In Feminist interpretations of Ludwig Wittgenstein, ed. Scheman, Naomi and O'Connor, Peg. University Park, Pa.: Penn State University Press.Google Scholar
Oyéwumi, Oyerónké. 1997. The invention of women: Making an African sense of Western gender discourses. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Quijano, Anibal. 1991. Colonialidad, modernidad/racionalidad. Peru Indigena 13(29): 11–29.Google Scholar
Quijano, Anibal. 2000a. Colonialidad del poder y clasificacion social. Journal of World Systems Research 5(2): 342–86.Google Scholar
Quijano, Anibal. 2000b. Colonialidad del poder, eurocentrismo y America Latina. Colonialidad del Saber, Eurocentrismo y Ciencias Sicales. Buenos Aires: CLACSO‐UNESCO. Reprinted: Michael Ennis, trans. (2000). “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America.” Nepantla: Views from South 1 (3): 533–80.Google Scholar
Quijano, Anibal. 2001/2002. Colonialidad del poder, globalización y democracia. Revista de Ciencias Sociales de la Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León 4(7–8): 1–23.Google Scholar
Razack, Sherene H. 1998. Looking white people in the eye: Gender, race, and culture in courtrooms and classrooms. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Spelman, Elizabeth V. 1988. Inessential woman: Problems of exclusion in feminist thought. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Stoljar, Natalie. 1995. Essence, identity, and the concept of woman. Philosophical Topics 23(2): 261–93.10.5840/philtopics19952328CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stubblefield, Anna. 2005. Meditations on post supremacist philosophy. In White on white, black on black, ed. Yancy, George. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Stubblefield, Anna. 2007. Beyond the pale: Tainted whiteness, cognitive disability, and eugenic sterilization. Hypatia 22(2): 162–81.Google Scholar
Shannon, Sullivan, and Tuana, Nancy, eds. 2007. Race and epistemologies of ignorance. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Tanesini, Alessandra. 1996. Whose language? In Women, knowledge, and reality. 2nd edition. ed. Garry, Ann and Pearsall, Marilyn. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Trujillo, Carla M. 1991. Chicana lesbians: The girls our mothers warned us about. Berkeley, Calif.: Third Woman Press.Google Scholar
Tuana, Nancy, and Sullivan, Shannon, eds. 2006. Hypatia Special Issue: Feminist Epistemologies of Ignorance 21(3).10.1353/hyp.2006.0036CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weldon, S. Laurel. 2006. The structure of intersectionality: A comparative politics of gender. Politics and Gender 2(2): 235–48.Google Scholar
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1958. Philosophical investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Yancy, George, ed. 2004. What white looks like: African‐American philosophers on the whiteness question. New York: Routledge.10.4324/9780203499719CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yancy, George. 2010. The center must not hold: White women on the whiteness of philosophy. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield.Google ScholarPubMed
Zack, Naomi. 2005. Inclusive feminism: A third wave theory of women's commonality. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Zerilli, Linda. 1998. Doing without knowing: Feminism's politics of the ordinary. Political Theory 26(4): 435–58.10.1177/0090591798026004001CrossRefGoogle Scholar