
SOCIAL JUSTICE =
› The full participation and inclusion of all
people in society, together with the
promotion and protection of their legal,
civil, and human rights.

THE AIM/GOAL OF SOCIAL JUSTICE =
› To achieve a just and equitable society
where all share in the prosperity of that
society.
› Pursued by individuals and groups
through collaborative social action.

THEORY =
› The analysis of a set of facts in their
relation to one another.
› Abstract, rational thought.

EPISTEMOLOGY =
› The study of how we know or gain
knowledge (how we know what we
know).
› Example: Feminist epistemology refers to
the way feminists as a whole have
constructed alternative forms of
knowledge and self-expression.
 Anti-Racist
 Queer
Theory
Theory
 Feminist
Theory
 Intersectionality
 Anti-Racist
 Queer
Theory
Theory
 Feminist
Theory
 Intersectionality

RACISM =

1. A belief or doctrine
that inherent
differences among the
various human beings
determine cultural or
individual
achievement, usually
involving the idea that
one's own “race” is
superior and has the
right to rule others.

2. A policy, system of
government, etc.,
based upon or
fostering such a
doctrine;
discrimination.

3. Hatred or
intolerance of another
race or other races.

ANTI-RACISM =
› Includes beliefs, actions, movements, and
policies adopted or developed to
oppose racism.
› The concept of anti-racism is based in
theory and practice on action.

ANTI-RACISM =
› In general, anti-racism is intended to
promote an egalitarian society in which
people do not face discrimination on the
basis of their race/ethnicity, however
defined.
ANTI-RACIST THEORY/
 CRITICAL RACE THEORY =

› Anti-racist Theory analyzes/critiques
racism and how it operates, and this
theory provides a basis for taking action
to eliminate racism.

ANTI-RACIST THEORY: THE UNDERSTANDINGS =
› Understanding race and racism is rooted in
understanding the experience of racialized
people.
› This does not mean looking at difference or
"the other," which often happens in a
multicultural approach where we celebrate
difference with song, dance, and food.

ANTI-RACIST THEORY:
THE UNDERSTANDINGS =
› Understanding racism involves becoming
aware of how "race" and racism affects
the lived experience of people of colour
and Aboriginal people, as well as
becoming aware of how white people
participate, often unknowingly, in racism.

ANTI-RACIST THEORY: THE ACTIVE PROCESS =
› Anti-racism is the active process of
identifying, challenging, and changing
the values, structures, and behaviors that
perpetuate systemic racism.

ANTI-RACIST THEORY: “BIRTHDAY” =
› Emerged in a response to feminist and
civil rights movements around 1960s1970s.

ANTI-RACIST THEORY: ITS CRITIQUE =
› It critiques traditional feminists who
constructed "race" as one category,
assumed women's experiences were
universal, ignored the individual
experiences of women, and did not look
at the interconnection of racism and
sexism.

ANTI-RACIST THEORY: THE CHALLENGE =
› For anti-racist feminists/activists the
starting point was challenging racism
instead of challenging patriarchy.

A FEW KEY THEORISTS =
› bell hooks
› Sherene Razack
› Himani Bannerji
News
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TW
hPigzv2Vc

The Prom!
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDl
a-r2uj7U

 Anti-Racist
 Queer
Theory
Theory
 Feminist
Theory
 Intersectionality

WHAT IS QUEER? =
› Think of queer as an umbrella term.
› It includes anyone who:
 a) wants to identify as queer and
 b) who feels somehow outside of the societal
norms in regards to gender, sexuality or/and
even politics.

WHAT IS QUEER? =
› This, therefore, could include/queer is:
 the straight ally who marches during
pride
 the conservative lesbian
 the trans person who highly values
queer theory concepts and would
rather not identify with any particular
label

QUEER INLCUDES/IS =
› the gender fluid bisexual
› the gender fluid heterosexual
› the questioning LGBTQIA (Lesbian, gay,
bisexual, transgender, questioning, intersex,
and asexual+) person
› the person who just doesn’t feel like they
quite fit in to societal norms and wants to
bond with a community over that

QUEER THEORY: “DATE OF BIRTH” =
› A brand-new branch of study or
theoretical speculation; it has only been
named as an area since about 1991.

QUEER THEORY’S LGBT + FEMINIST ROOTS =
› It grew out of gay/lesbian (LGBT) studies a
discipline which itself is very new, existing
in any kind of organized form only since
about the mid-1980s.
› Gay/lesbian studies, in turn, grew out of
feminist studies and feminist theory.

QUEER THEORY: FEMINIST CHALLENGES =
› Builds both upon feminist challenges to
the idea that gender is part of the
essential self.
› Gender, according to feminist theorists, is
an unequally created social construct
which is shaped by other factors such as
"race", class, heterosexism etc..

QUEER THEORY: LGBTQI EXAMINATIONS =
› Also builds upon gay/lesbian studies'
close examination of the socially
constructed nature of sexual acts and
identities, that is, if challenges the social
constructs which define the idea of
sexuality as an act and as an identity.

QUEER THEORY: “NORMAL” VS. “DEVIANT” =
› Whereas gay/lesbian studies focused its
inquiries into "natural" and "unnatural"
behavior with respect to homosexual
behavior, Queer Theory expands its focus
to encompass any kind of sexual activity
or identity that falls into normative and/or
deviant categories.

QUEER THEORY: MISMATCHES =
› Focuses on mismatches between sex,
gender, and desire.
› It has been associated most prominently
with lesbian and gay subjects, but
analytic framework also includes such
topics as cross-dressing, intersexism,
gender ambiguity and gender-corrective
surgery.

WHAT IS QUEER THEORY: DEBUNKING =
› Queer Theory's debunking of stable sexes,
genders, and sexualities develops out of
the specifically lesbian and gay
reworking of the figuring of identity as a
constellation of multiple and unstable
positions.

QUEER THEORY, in other words =
› Looks at anything that falls into normal
and/or deviant categories specifically
sexual activities and identities and how
they function in the world and how they
are socially constructed and labeled as
normal or deviant.

A FEW QUEER THEORISTS =
› Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
› Judith Butler
› Gloria Anzaldúa
 Anti-Racist
 Queer
Theory
Theory
 Feminist
Theory
 Intersectionality

FEMINISM =
› The belief in and the movement for the
social, political, and economic equality
of all men and women (of all human
beings).
› The movement for social, political and
economic change, and access to
information to achieve these goals.

FEMINISTS =
› Each and every politically and socially
conscious women, man or another
gender who works for equality within or
outside the movement, writes about
feminism, or calls herself, himself, their self
a feminist in the name of furthering
equality.

TYPES OF FEMINISM
› Maternal
Liberal feminism
Cultural feminism
Eco feminism
Anti-racist
feminism
› Marxist feminism
› Socialist feminism
›
›
›
›
›
›
›
›
›
feminism
Postcolonial
feminism
Radical feminism
Psychoanalytic
feminism
Conservative
feminism
Etc.

FEMINIST THEORY =
› One of the major contemporary critical
theories, which analyzes the status of
women and men in society with the
purpose of using that knowledge to better
women’s (and men’s + others) lives.

FEMINIST THEORY: THE EMERGENCE =
› Roots in Canada go back to the early to mid-
1800s (suffragette movement).
› Roots in the USA go back to Sojourner Truth
(abolitionist, women’s right activist) in the 1850s.
› The ideas behind Feminism began in the
Western Europe in the 1400s.

FEMINIST THEORISTS =
› Question the differences between
women, including how class, ethnicity,
sexual orientation, ability, and age
intersect with gender = intersectionality
(more about this later).

FEMINIST THEORISTS =
› Focus on situated knowledge = is
knowledge specific to a particular
situation; coined by feminist theorist
Donna Haraway.

SITUATED KNOWLEDGE(S) =
› As asserted by Sandra Harding, the term
"offers a more adequate, richer, better
account of a world, in order to live in it
well and in critical, reflexive relation to
our own as well as others' practices of
domination and the unequal parts of
privilege and oppression that makes up
all positions."

SITUATED KNOWLEDGE(S) =
› Situated knowledges is the idea that
there is no one truth out there to be
uncovered and, as a result, all
knowledge is partial and linked to the
contexts in which it is created.

SITUATED KNOWLEDGE(S) =
› "Representation of the world, like the
world itself, is the work of men; they
describe it from their own point of view,
which they confuse with the absolute
truth.“
– Simone de Beauvoir. The Second
Sex. Translated by H. M. Parshley. New York:
Vintage Books, 1989, p. 143.

There are four main components of feminist
theory that attempt to explain the societal
differences (inequality) between women ,
men and other genders:
› Gender Difference
› Gender Inequality
› Gender Oppression
› Structural Oppression

GENDER =
› "Gender" refers to the socially
constructed roles, behaviours, activities,
and attributes that a given society
considers appropriate for the binary
categories of "men" and "women."

SEX =
› "Sex" refers to the biological and
physiological characteristics that define
men and women; more or less our
primary sex characteristics (our parts).

GENDER VS. SEX =
› "Male" and "female" are sex categories,
while "masculine/men" and
"feminine/women" are gender
categories.
› Aspects of sex will not vary substantially
between different human societies, while
aspects of gender may vary greatly.

OPPRESSION =
› The exercise of authority or power in a
burdensome, cruel, or unjust manner
› An act or instance of oppressing
› The state of being oppressed

Four main components of feminist theory
that attempt to explain inequality amongst
the genders:
› Gender Difference
› Gender Inequality
› Gender Oppression
› Structural Oppression
› Gender Difference =
› The gender difference perspective
examines how women's location in, and
experience of, social situations differ from
men's.
› Gender Difference Examples:
› Cultural feminists look to the different values
associated with womanhood and femininity
as a reason why men and women experience
the social world differently.
› Gender Difference Examples:
› Other feminist theorists believe that the
different roles assigned to women and men
within institutions better explain gender
difference, including the sexual division of
labor in the household.
› Gender Difference Examples:
› Existential and phenomenological feminists
focus on how women have been
marginalized and defined as the “other” in
patriarchal societies; women are thus seen as
objects and are denied the opportunity for
self-realization.
› Gender Inequality =
› Gender-inequality theories recognize that
women's location in, and experience of,
social situations are not only different but
also unequal to men's.
› Gender Inequality Examples:
› Liberal feminists argue that women have the
same capacity as men for moral reasoning
and agency, but that patriarchy, particularly
the sexist patterning of the division of labor,
has historically denied women the opportunity
to express and practice this reasoning.
› Gender Inequality Examples:
› Women have been isolated to the private
sphere of the household and, thus, left
without a voice in the public sphere. Even
after women enter the public sphere, they
are still expected to manage the private
sphere and take care of household duties
and child rearing.
› Gender Inequality Examples:
› Liberal feminists point out that (traditional)
marriage is a site of gender inequality and
that women do not benefit from being
married as men do. Indeed, many married
women have higher levels of stress than
unmarried women and married men.
According to liberal feminists, the sexual
division of labor in both the public and private
spheres needs to be altered in order for
women to achieve equality.
› Gender Oppression
› Theories of gender oppression go further
than theories of gender difference and
gender inequality by arguing that not
only are women constructed as different
from or unequal to men, but that they
are actively oppressed, subordinated,
and, in many situations, abused by men.
› Gender Oppression Examples:
› Power is the key variable in the two main
theories of gender oppression: psychoanalytic
feminism and radical feminism.
› Gender Oppression Examples:
› Psychoanalytic feminists attempt to explain
power relations between men and women
by reformulating Freud's theories of the
subconscious and unconscious, human
emotions, and childhood development. They
feel that conscious calculation cannot fully
explain the production and reproduction of
patriarchy.
› Gender Oppression Examples:
› Radical feminists argue that being a woman is a
positive thing in and of itself, but that this is not
acknowledged in patriarchal societies where
women are oppressed. They identify physical
violence as being at the base of patriarchy, but
they think that patriarchy can be defeated if
women recognize their own value and strength,
establish a “sisterhood” of trust with other women,
confront oppression critically, and form female
separatist networks in the private and public
spheres.
› Structural Oppression
› Structural oppression theories posit that
women's oppression and inequality are a
result of capitalism, patriarchy,
heterosexism, and racism.
› Structural Oppression Examples:
› Socialist feminists agree with Karl Marx and
Freidrich Engels that the working class is
exploited as a consequence of the capitalist
mode of production, but they seek to extend
this exploitation not just to class but also to
gender.
› Structural Oppression Examples:
› Intersectionality theorists seek to explain
oppression and inequality across a variety of
variables, including class, gender, "race“
/ethnicity, sexual orientation, and age. They
make the important insight that not all women
experience oppression in the same way. White
women and black women, for example, face
different forms of discrimination in the workplace.
Thus, different groups of women come to view
the world through a shared standpoint of
"heterogeneous commonality."

Published on Jul 8, 2014

What is Feminism? By Laci Green

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJP
T_U97lNs&list=PLTXiNEUzXWKT9xrbU3aUxq
YloEL_W-8rr (4:28)

Published on June 9, 2014

High school boys New York City reflect on
their experience taking a feminism class
and the impact it made on their lives. They
unanimously declare that they are feminists.
Are you?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Vh60
p4p2QM (6:02)

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie a
renowned Nigerian novelist

Published on Apr 12, 2013
Video: 30:15 minutes
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg
3umXU_qWc

› A FEW KEY THEORISTS =
› Betty Friedan
› Gloria Steinem
› Naomi Wolf
 Anti-Racist
 Queer
Theory
Theory
 Feminist
Theory
 Intersectionality

INTERSECTIONALITY has become one of
critical theory’s (feminist, critical race/antiracist, + queer theory) most generative
concepts.

INTERSECTIONALITY is a feminist sociological
theory (sociology = the study of human
society) first highlighted by Kimberlé
Crenshaw (1989 – “birth date”) to explain
how racialized oppression and gender
oppression interact in Black women’s lives.

INTERSECTIONALITY DESCRIBES =
› Is a concept often used in critical theories to
describe the ways the formation of our
social identities are informed by multiple
oppressive institutions (i.e. racism, sexism,
homophobia, transphobia, ableism,
xenophobia, classism, etc.) and are
interconnected (“interlocking systems of
oppression”) thus cannot be examined
separately from one another.

INTERSECTIONALITY, in other words, can be
seen in two ways:
› 1) Look at it from the point of view of the
intersections in peoples lives in terms of
the different positions they hold in relation
to gender, racialization, class and other
social categories.
› 2) Looking at intersections is not so much
a question of finding out what inequalities
exist and for whom, but to understand
the processes involved in creating
inequality.

INTERSECTIONALITY THEORY:
THE CENTRAL ISSUE =
› The central issue is the understanding that
women (and men) experience
oppression in varying configurations and
in varying degrees of intensity.

INTERSECTIONALITY THEORY
THE VARIATION EXPLANATION =
› The explanation for that variation is while all
women potentially experience oppression
on the basis of gender, women are,
nevertheless, differentially oppressed by the
varied intersections of other arrangements.

INTERSECTIONALITY THEORY
THE ARGUMENT =
› The argument is that it is intersection itself that
produces a particular experience of oppression,
and one cannot arrive at an adequate
explanation by using an additive strategy of
gender plus racialization, plus class, plus
sexuality, plus etc = no one singular force causes
the injustice; they (class, race, gender, etc.)all
come into play.

INEQUALITY functions on three levels:
› Personal/Individual
› Groups/Community
› Structural = Institutions/Societies

According to Patricia Hill-Collins (1990), at
all three levels one must look at all the
domination (the matrix of domination) that
is occurring.

FOR EXAMPLE, many black women
frequently experience discrimination in
employment because they are black
women, but courts routinely refuse to
recognize this intersection of discrimination
– it is a case of what is considered general
discrimination, “sex discrimination," or "race
discrimination."

THE SOCIAL HIERARCHY OF BEING
Male
White
Heterosexual
Middle-Upper Class
Capitalist
Young-Middle Aged
Able-bodied/minded
Christian
European/North American

Verses all the OTHER social categories:
Female/Transgendered
People of Colour
Homosexual/Queer
Lower-Working Class
Capitalist or non-capitalist
Able bodied/minded or disabled
Non- Christian
Non-European/North American
Etc.

IMPORTANT UNDERSTANDINGS #1:
› Just because you are a women, or man,
or disabled, or a person of colour, does
not mean that your experiences of
sexism, ableism, or racism are an exact
match for experiences of other kinds of
oppression (or even exactly like sexism,
ableism or racism for someone else, of
course).

IMPORTANT UNDERSTANDINGS #2:
› And it does not mean that you are
doubly, triply or quadruply oppressed.

INTERSECTIONALITY: AN ANALOGY
› Intersectionality is like a multi-lane
highway with numerous roads meeting,
crossing and merging in chaotic and
complicated ways.

INTERSECTIONALITY: AN ANALOGY
› There are many different types of roads:
paved and gravel roads, roads with
shoulders and those without and roads
with low speed limits, high speed limits
and even no speed limits.

INTERSECTIONALITY: AN ANALOGY
› There is no map. The most important
feature of these intersections, though, is
that they look very different depending
on your location (Chris Bell, 2010, P100).

INTERSECTIONALITY: ANOTHER ANALOGY
› Intersectionality is like traffic in an
intersection, coming and going in all four
directions.
› Discrimination, like traffic through an
intersection, may flow in one direction,
and it may flow in another.

INTERSECTIONALITY: ANOTHER ANALOGY
› If an accident happens in an intersection,
it can be caused by cars traveling from
any number of directions and,
sometimes, from all of them.

INTERSECTIONALITY: ANOTHER ANALOGY
› Similarly, if a Black woman is harmed
because she is in an intersection, her
injury could result from sex discrimination
or racial discrimination or . . .

INTERSECTIONALITY: ANOTHER ANALOGY
› But it is not always easy to reconstruct an
accident: Sometimes the skid marks and
the injuries simply indicate that they
occurred simultaneously, frustrating
efforts to determine which driver caused
the harm (Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw,
1989, P149).

INTERSECTIONALITY ANALOGY EXPLAINED
› Intersectionality helps us to understand how
gender, class, racialization, and other factors
in our experience fit together.
› It helps us come up with better critical
politics that seek the emancipation of all
people.

INTERSECTIONALITY + LIBERATION
› If feminism and other critical theories are
to be truly liberatory politics seeking the
freedom of all oppressed people, they
have to recognize this important insight:

INTERSECTIONALITY + LIBERATION
› That I am not free while any woman [or
man] is unfree, even when her shackles
are very different from my own - that I am
not free as long as any oppressed person
remains chained.

INTERSECTIONALITY + FEMINISM: PWF
› Privileged white feminists (PWF) involved
in the feminist movements in US and
Canada failed to realize this, and instead
continually over-generalized their own
specific experience as the experience of
all women.

INTERSECTIONALITY + FEMINISM: PWF
› They fell prey to “divide and conquer”
strategies that distracted them from
realizing what is the real source of their
oppression, and how the privileges they are
granted in virtue of their racialization, class,
heterosexuality and national status, are
based on the oppression of other women not just an élite minority of privileged
women.

INTERSECTIONALITY + FEMINISM:
A SHARED OPPRESSOR
› It helps us understand that some
problems we share as women and girls,
and others we don’t share.
› But what we all share as oppressed
people is a common enemy: a shared
oppressor.

INTERSECTIONALITY + FEMINISM: IDENTITY
› Intersectional approaches to feminist
theorizing and activism can help us
overcome the “Oppression Olympics”
problem and the problem of having to
focus on one aspect of one’s identity at
the expense of ignoring another.

INTERSECTIONALITY + FEMINISM:
WHAT IS SHOWS US
› Intersectionality can help us understand
feminism as a much broader project than
it has been construed by privileged white
feminists in the US and Canada.

INTERSECTIONALITY + FEMINISM:
WHAT IS SHOWS US
› It can show us that as feminists we need
to be anti-racists and queer minded, we
need to oppose colonialism (starting with
internal colonialism in Canada and the
US of Aboriginal Peoples), imperialism and
corporate globalization, and to defend
the rights of workers to determine the
conditions of their labour.

INTERSECTIONALITY + FEMINISM:
WHAT WE NEED
› As critical theorists, we need to imagine
alternatives to capitalism/consumerism
for organizing how we produce/purchase
things to meet needs in our society.

INTERSECTIONALITY + FEMINISM:
WHAT WE NEED
› We need to recognize that war and
violent domination are the flip side of
“business as usual,” and that we will never
see true peace until we see justice
enacted in our society.

INTERSECTIONALITY + FEMINISM: WHAT WE NEED
› Intersectionality can show us the connections
between the imperialist wars on Iraq and
Afghanistan, the war on Indigenous people
struggling for self-determination by the
Canadian and US state, the war on women,
waged here and elsewhere through
gendered and racialized violence, poverty,
and exploitation.

INTERSECTIONALITY + FEMINISM:
WHAT WE NEED
› And it can help us create critically and
social justice based politics that embody
our aspirations for a completely different
world.

A FEW KEY THEORISTS =
› Kimberlé Crenshaw
› Patricia Hill Collins
› Audre Lorde