Male-dominated Black spaces, meanwhile, are plagued by misogyny and, similarly, homophobia. Largely-white feminist spaces, she writes, are often ridden with racism and homophobia. Too often, though, Lorde writes, even nominally tolerant and progressive communities expect their members to shed and disguise that complexity, elevating one identity above all others. Moreover, she argues, nearly every person experiences life at the intersection of a complex, mingling set of identities. More recently, the term has been used in a broader sense to refer to discrimination on the basis of sexuality, class, age, religion, and a variety of other factors.Īudre Lorde frequently reminds her readers that her experience as a Black woman, a lesbian, and a mother is unique, connected to but distinct from the experience of living with any one of these identities.

She argued that Black women were subjugated in unique ways entirely distinct from those used to subjugate white women or Black men. Crenshaw argued that the legal system had failed to take into account the discrete category of discrimination against Black women, which had affected the plaintiffs in this case but had not affected the white women or Black men employed by General Motors. The courts found no evidence of either widespread racial discrimination or gender discrimination in their workplace, and therefore these women lost their case. Crenshaw demonstrated her analysis by referencing a 1976 case in which several Black, female employees of General Motors sued their employer for racial and gender discrimination. What exactly is intersectionality? According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, it is 'the complex, cumulative way in which the effects of multiple forms of discrimination (such as racism, sexism, and classism) combine, overlap, or intersect especially in the experiences of marginalized individuals or groups.” Crenshaw developed this concept specifically to address the injustices and forms of discrimination leveled against Black women in the workplace. In many ways, this makes her ahead of her time-in the decades since the publication of Mapping the Margins, the concept has become one of the guiding principles of third-wave feminism.

It was further popularized in Crenshaw's 1991 article 'Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color.' Though Sister, Outsider was indeed published prior to Crenshaw's articulation of this idea, Lorde advocates an intersectional framework in her writing. The term 'intersectionality,' meanwhile, was coined slightly later, in 1989, by the legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw. Sister, Outsider was published in 1984, though the original dates of publication for the essays and speeches in it range from throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

Outsider sister