But for its advocates, intersectionality is a way of centering those who’ve been historically at the margins of the LGBTQ+ community, whose interests were little served by the arrival of marriage equality. Critics like New York magazine’s Andrew Sullivan have dismissed intersectionality as a neo-Marxist “academic craze” and a form of secular religion. Even if the LGBTQ+ movement wins all its goals, that black trans woman will continue to suffer the consequences of racism and sexism, which include crippling poverty and pervasive discrimination. As Marc Stein, a professor of LGBTQ+ history at San Francisco State University said about our current era, “‘Intersectionality’ has become the buzzword.”įirst coined by the American scholar and civil rights activist Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw in 1989, the term “intersectionality” posits that people experience oppression on multiple, “intersecting” fronts, and that activism focused narrowly on, say, LGBTQ+ rights will fail to address the needs of someone who is, for instance, transgender, black, and a woman.
