Only for White, Middle-class Feminists? Issues of Intersectionality within the Worlds of Contemporary Digital Feminist Campaigns

摘要

Intersectionality was a term first articulated by Kimberle Crenshaw in 1989; Crenshaw describesintersectionality as the acknowledgement that domination exists along multiple axes, including thoserelated to class, race, sexuality, and disability. Initially being incorporated into feminism’s third wave,intersectionality continues to play a prominent role in contemporary feminist groups and campaigns.Furthermore, Alison Winch (2014) argues that it can be “dangerous” not to engage with the histories anddebates of feminism, as this helps us to recognise why some feminists—and their existing campaigns—aremore visible than others. Using qualitative interview data, I examine the role of intersectionality withina contemporary Australian-based campaign: Destroy the Joint (DtJ). DtJ has previously received criticismfor their approach to intersectionality; resultantly, I will consider questions of access, diversity, and voiceas existing within DtJ’s ‘world’, and analyse how the campaign has previously handled and addressedthese critiques. Can feminists equally access and contribute to these campaigns in a social media-basedspace? Does DtJ fully emphasise issues that impact women of colour, queer women, and women of otherminority groups? These questions are further complicated by the existence of DtJ within an online space—one in which the “blocking” of opposing voices is as straightforward as clicking a button. This paperargues that intersectionality should be a central activity and consideration for social media-basedfeminist campaigns, and that to ignore this issue is understood by other feminists to presume to speak forother women