Tackling Misogynoir & Intersectionality

As we finish celebrating Black History Month and plunge into Women’s History Month, Black and Brown women find themselves dealing with the uniquely American contempt that began with the Atlantic slave trade and continues in various transmuting forms to this day. We consider ourselves inclusive but are not treated as such.

When Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality” thirty years ago, it began as a relatively obscure legal concept about how social identities (such as gender, race, ethnicity, social class, religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity) overlap with one another and is a measuring stick on how the systems of power oppress and advantage people in the workplace and broader community.

Before the idea of intersectionality was widely known, most people assumed Black women experienced the culmination of racism (based on the experiences of Black men) and sexism (based on the experiences of White women). They did not acknowledge that Black women’s experiences can be completely distinct from either group. Intersectionality was initially defined as a unique form of oppression that only Black women face.

There is no doubt that white women constantly deal with barriers and inequities, but Black and Brown women deal with this at an even higher level because racism and sexism interact to create unique inequities. But it does not stop there. You can have multiple identities, but the difference is how those identities are affected by deep-rooted institutional racism or bias.

Often, people think of intersectionality as only gender and race. They forget about things like sexuality, ability, age, immigration status—all these different identities can interplay and are subject to systems of power that privilege certain people over others. For example, when you say “women,” it often implies that one is only thinking about white women and “women of color” are considered a separate category. Now that the term has become more mainstream, intersectionality is conceptualized as the experiences faced by those with intersecting identities, including all women of color, queer people of color, people of differing abilities, and older individuals.

While intersectionality has become an important consideration, a newer term, “misogynoir,” was coined by author and scholar Moya Bailey around 2008 to initially discuss misogyny toward Black women in the hip hop community. The term combines misogyny and noir to describe anti-black sexism faced by Black women. The term “transmisogynoir” has been credited to a blogger known as Trudy of the now-defunct womanist blog, Gradient Lair. Transmisogynoir refers to the intersection between transmisogyny and misogynoir (meaning the oppression of Black trans women) and encompasses transphobia, misogyny, and antiblackness. By 2015, authors Aimee Wodda and Vanessa R. Panfil reiterated in the Albany Law Review this claim by writing those trans women of color experience violence at a greater rate than other populations.

Terms like intersectionality, misogynoir and transmisogynoir recognize how racial and gender identities are strongly connected. Intersectionality and misogynoir are not just theories; they can be seen in the lives of Black and Brown women and girls every day. They are constantly and systemically degraded and dismissed. As history shows, Black and Brown women have worked on cataloging and organizing against these “interlocking” systems of oppression for a long time. But this is not just a Black and Brown women’s problem; it is an American problem. Instead of ignoring and silencing survivors, we as a society must acknowledge the intersectional layers of discrimination against women of color, whether they are straight or queer, African American or a woman of color from different nationalities, by fully participating in resolving this. We must further investigate intersectionality and misogynoir, understand how it manifests, and arrive at ways to comprehensively integrate it into feminist initiatives so that experiences of misogynoir can be fought and remedied. In the end, it will make the celebrations of Black History and Women’s History months more meaningful to all Americans.

–Gabrielle David, Publisher