Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion Podcast

Intersectionality

• Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst and Megan Goodwin • Season 2 • Episode 202

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In which we build upon the work of Prof. Kimberlé Crenshaw to think about how race-, gender-, and sexuality-based oppressions overlap and inform how our understandings of religion

Keywords: intersectionality, womanism, discrimination, oppression

Storytime: Audre Lorde, "An Open Letter to Mary Daly"

As always, be sure to visit keepingit101.com for full show notes, homework, transcripts, & more!

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Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion is proud to be part of the Amplify Podcast Network.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst :

This is keeping it 101 a killjoys introduction to religion podcast. This season our work is made possible in part through a generous grant from the New England humanities Consortium, and with additional support from the University of Vermont's Humanities Center. We are grateful to live teach and record on the ancestral and unseeded lands of the abenaki wabanaki and Aqua Cisco peoples.

Megan Goodwin :

What's up nerds?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst :

Hi, hello, I'm Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst! a scholar of religion Islam, race and racialization, and history--and one half of our killjoy duo.

Megan Goodwin :

I Hello, I'm Megan Goodwin, a scholar of American religions, race, and gender, and the other taller half of our killjoy duo. Here's hoping all you out there and radio land are well healthy and setting literal or figurative fire. We are not picking to any number of insidiously, racist, sexist, classist, transphobic and or homophobic things. That's the kind of energy we expect to killjoys. So let's dive in. Let's start with a check in what did you set fire today? ditch? Did you even queer anything?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst :

Mm hmm.

Megan Goodwin :

Today, we're defining and thinking with a crucial key word for anyone working on race, gender and religion, which is what season two is all about? That keyword is intersectionality.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst :

What's that I hear? The faint sound of 1000 Moleskins rustling? It must be time for the lesson plan. Today we're talking to you about intersectionality a term that's both crucial for understanding how identities and oppressions overlap. Am And one that gets misused and misunderstood a lot. Yep. So today's thesis is, if religion is what people do, then we're not understanding religion if we're not also thinking about race, gender, sex, and all the other ways we're taught to make sense of our bodies, and the bodies of those around us. intersectionality insists that we pay attention to power and privilege and oppression and how we belong or don't in systems and communities. And religion is a space where we see the messy tangle of race and gender and sex and more both inform and be shaped by how we make meaning in and of the world around us.

Megan Goodwin :

That's a lot.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst :

It is! It's a big episode y'all.

Megan Goodwin :

Yup glad we decided to start things simple. Keeping it 101: On Today--The segment where we do some Professor work. Like we've been saying religion is messy because people are messy. Messier these days it seems, but maybe that's not fair. Anyway, in part we're messy because we're made up of so many different ways of understanding ourselves and one another. So like me having gender isn't separate from me having race or class or sexuality or ability, or those identities and experiences of privilege and oppression having me I guess, these are all happening at once in my person, and they're shaped by when and where I live. So like individual issues like growing up in a white Irish, German Catholic family living outside Philadelphia in the late 20th century, and broader social issues like we live in a country that it's economically legally and culturally constructed to privilege white folks at the expense of people of color at every conceivable level. Yeah, starting off light--

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst :

Wait, timeout

Megan Goodwin :

Yes

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst :

Can I guess offer a little bit of a--we keep apologizing to our nerds that it's not light. And part of that's like both of our tic in classrooms, but I, I think we should stop doing that. This shouldn't be light and we shouldn't feel comfortable, right?

Megan Goodwin :

No, that's, that's I really appreciate that you're right, we should feel uncomfortable. It is--It is a weird space to be occupying where we want our education to be like fun and engaging. But also, these are big, serious topics that are hard, and they force us to ask really hard questions about ourselves and the systems that we benefit from (or don't). So you're right. You're right. Let's let's try to stop apologizing for talking about things that matter.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst :

Yeah, are nerds are with us! You're with us, right nerds?!

Megan Goodwin :

Okay, no more apologies. Yes, good. So when we're thinking about intersectionality, we're thinking about both individual identity stuff and broader social issues and systems of power and control. I can choose how I express my identities and privileges and oppressions and belongings. So like, I pick out my clothes and I choose my friends and my partners, I take meds. But I'm never starting with a blank slate. I learned how to make sense of my body and other's bodies from the people around me. I'm still learning that. I had and have specific opportunities available to me because of the body I was born into. Folks respond to me differently because of the body I occupy, despite the fact that I didn't pick my body. And that I think--like gender and race aren't just made up but are violence we do too, and on bodies. I can know that the way that I was taught to make sense of my body is based in systems we made up but also knowing that we made it up doesn't put me outside sexism or racism. Because as we keep saying, people are a damn mess. But people are also all we've got. So okay, let's dive into intersectionality. Both use this theory differently, but I think it's pretty central to both of our work.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst :

But I think it's important to us in radically different ways. So, so yeah, let's jump in. Kimberlé Crenshaw, coined intersectionality in 1989, in an article called "Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex, colon, a Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics." In this article Crenshaw, specifically and explicitly centered--though, like she still centers, she's out here being a rock star--

Megan Goodwin :

yuuuup

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst :

--Black women in her work. I'm gonna paraphrase here but ahead of her definition of intersectional

Detox :

it's our secret word of the day!

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst :

She said that rather simply: she was looking to think about the ways in which sometimes Black women's experiences of discrimination and oppression are similar to white women's experiences of discrimination and oppression, and other times Black women's experiences of discrimination and oppression are similar to Black men's experiences of discrimination and oppression. But as a population that is both Black and women, Black women's experiences of discrimination and oppression are not only about race, nor are they only about gender. But wait, the important bit of Crenshaw and--and like quite frankly, it's all really important. So I don't want to suggest that it isn't. But the the takeaway message--and I think what's vital to us here--is that Crenshaw argued that divvying up Black women's unique experiences into "woman" and "Black" totally hides the ways that discrimination and oppression both work. So to rethink discriminations and oppressions we need to think intersectionally: that's the 101! It's brilliant theory. It's rooted in legal history and it has a prescription for us to do more both as scholars and as activists. It is in some ways realms called activist scholarship, whatever that means, because it wants more than casual observation. It certainly doesn't want insta-memes using intersectionality as a cover all.

Megan Goodwin :

Yeah, and it especially doesn't want like white feminist websites selling stupid t-shirts saying "my feminism will be intersectional," and not directing funds or support to black women and other oppressed women in US and globally. It does not want that. No. So activist scholarship always sounds like a critique, but this is scholarship that needs doing. So like not just that needs doing out in the world, but like, it's not enough to read it. You got to do it.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst :

Yes.

Megan Goodwin :

So weirdly, because Twitter is a weird place, there was an active argument about exactly what intersectionality means, how white feminists were using intersectionality on Twitter, and probably on insta--I don't really do insta--not that long ago. Basically, we saw a lot of well intentioned white ladies use intersectionality like people use that damn "Coexist" bumper sticker. Like: people are different, but let's all just get along. You can hear the sound of my voice.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst :

[Raspberry sound]

Megan Goodwin :

Yes to that [raspberry sound].

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst :

I added my own sound effect. I apologize.

Megan Goodwin :

No! take--take it back. I celebrate that fact! That is also how I feel about the coexist bumper sticker and people who slap intersectionality on shit and think we're done. Boo. So many Black feminists and womanists pushed back against this definition. Another key word alert!

Detox :

It's our secret word of the day.

Megan Goodwin :

Womanism centers the experiences of women of color and strives for justice for those women. It's a term coined by Alice Walker, and has been complicated and and thought about in deep ways for, gosh, decades now. But so these twitterers emphasize the black women thinkers like Kimberlé Crenshaw and Patricia Hill Collins weren't just talking about like, benign difference. They were highlighting that the intersection of oppressions amplifies those impressions. So the important thing here, dear nerds--one of the important things--intersectionality requires us not just to think about difference, but about power. Right? We keep asking who is protected, who's left vulnerable, what parts of us give us privilege (which is unearned an unconscious advantage over others)? What parts of us make us more likely to face discrimination (or bias on an individual level), or oppression, (which is systemic bias)? There's so much to say here. And we're gonna be talking about this all season slash semester. But for me, the most important thing is that A) intersectionality isn't just about difference. It's about access or lack of access to power and privilege. And B), oppression is quantifiable. It's not about your feelings, which is, if you remember my primary source from last time, why when I said in my very first Women's Studies class that I didn't feel oppressed, that that is a dumb thing to say. But that is why we take classes right. Like Maya Angelou taught us when you know better you do better. So yeah, oppression is not about how you feel it's about how many women are elected into government, how many Black women are heads of Fortune 500 companies: you can count it. So when we're thinking about religion and intersectionality, we are thinking about systemic inequality, like, whose religion counts as real religion in the courts. I will give you one guess and you don't need it, because you already know that it's white men's religion, and specifically white men's mainstream Christianity. Who are we most likely to elect into office, white Christian men--again, we can count them. Or who is most unsafe to express religious difference in public? If we're looking at a recent case study in New York City, it's Black Muslim women for the Bronx who cover. So the short version here is that intersectionality insists not only that we acknowledge our different identities, but also and more importantly, that we pay attention to the unequal way those identities grant us access to privilege or make us vulnerable to discrimination and oppression.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst :

Yeah, it's a big term.

Megan Goodwin :

It is!

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst :

And that's a pretty big picture definition. But, you know, Megan, this has been my long standing critique: I don't do super great with theory in the sky. You do not! So what does that mean, O!, ye religion nerds? Whaddya actually do with this stuff? So personally, I come at intersectionality through a variety of other kinds of studies that are interdisciplinary in the academy. So subaltern studies, ethnic studies, area studies, post-colonial studies, all of that's actually really different than, though related to theories, of race rooted especially in both Black scholarship and Black experiences in the US. So maybe it seems strange that I'm excited about Crenshaw's work in in these new in different ways. But what I find really valuable in applying Crenshaw is in the slipperiness of identity on the whole as well as the idea that when we only focus on women or Black, we miss Black women as having unique experiences and contours, and places where we can learn how oppression namely functions. Expanding that out for me, so questions like, what what do we miss? I mean, like, more specifically, what am I missing? When the historical record I use only preserves the voices of rich elite Muslim men from really particular cities in North India, and usually written in very specific clusters of languages? And--and so yes, yes, South Asianists, What is erased in archives is important! I've written a lot about this. I spend so much time on that. But that's not actually what--that's not the only thing I mean here. I don't just mean erased in terms of like imperial erasure, like not including that piece of paper in the archive in the first place, or a book has gone missing, or the patriarchy--so women weren't allowed in the archive ever. What I mean is, what am I missing in terms of thinking? What is thinkable? Precisely because the way that say imperialism impacted poor Muslim women were like the record is not only missing poor on its own, poor people, Muslim people, women...people--

Megan Goodwin :

That doesn't sound right, are you sure? Women? People?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst :

--over-lapping nexus of a poor Muslim woman. and that existence--that "poor Muslim women"--has its own singularity, its own experience, its own information and its own richness. And so when I'm thinking archives, I'm painfully aware of what's missing physically--those books, those writings, those speeches--but also functionally. I can't think about that category poor Muslim woman. Because poor is missing, Muslim is missing, woman is missing. And that sum--that collective poor Muslim woman is more than the sum of of her parts. The other way that I use this theory, dear nerds, is that I have found real spaciousness in thinking with intersectionality as a concept, again, even if I'm using it differently than scholars looking at the United States and how race in specific works in the United States. As an example, in application again, my work--this new book that I'm that I'm writing is on Islamophobia and antisemitism. Though it was the book I was writing before COVID paused everything. Anyway, this book that is in process trades in both theories of ethnicity and of race, and I'm struck by how Crenshaw as part of the slate of folks that I'm rereading in isolation again, is able to be applied and make sense of these identity markers that are one-word--so in my research Jew and Muslim, but contain multitudes. It's broad strokes but bear with me, Jew and Muslim are often not just religion. They have long been affiliated as a as a collective as Masuzawa points out in _Invention of World Religions_ as Semites, right? I'm looking at archival records where British officials look at the social, religious, racial, ethnic landscape of places like South Asia, and they're literally like, I'm not kidding, this is like a written sentence. Quote, "the Muslims are the Jews of India." ,

Megan Goodwin :

wait, what does that even mean? Also, there are Jews in India. When it mmkay, sorry. Sorry.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst :

I know it's painful. But for the record, the Jews that the British at that time would have encountered would have been Portuguese, which was its own.

Megan Goodwin :

Okay.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst :

nationalized racialized, ethnic sized identity. But anyway, the Jews--the Muslims are the Jews of India, and the archive says, and and, and the set this cluster of authors go on to essentially say, "so we know them. We know how to govern in South Asia, because we know what we need to do with Jews at home." And Jew and Muslim here are functioning like race, these are identifiable groups, they are different than the groups around them, despite living in that place, speaking that language, existing as neighbors paying taxes, whatever. So here they function like race and other places where my research is happening "Jew" and "Muslim" function like class markers. We know what kind of wealth these folks have access to based on this word alone. There's linguistic contours where the words "Jew," "Muslim" and in some places "Turk" are indicative of something essential--that's all we need to know about this group. These are racialized groups. Now, here's where I'm using Crenshaw. If intersectional thinking can get out the particular experience Have people with within overlapping systems of oppression? Then I think both of these categories--these ethnicities and racialized religions, that I'm working on in this new book--have a lot of overlap. And that question of what we miss not just factually, but theoretically, when we can't make sense of intersecting oppressions, has been super central to me as a piece together, frankly, too many sets of archival notes. So maybe that's not what Crenshaw anticipated, dear nerds, but that is how I'm citing her and I hope that's that's how I'm thinking alongside her. Megan, do you have anything, anything to add there. How are you using intersectional? What do you think? Or where do you think it's useful for us as scholars?

Megan Goodwin :

I think like we said at the top that if you're not thinking about our identities and oppressions overlap in the humans that are doing religion, then like you're not actually studying religion at all. So full stop. All scholars everywhere, just go read all the Kimberlyé Crenshaw or like, maybe subscribe to our podcast. But for me, I just wrote a book--I might have mentioned that I wrote a book I did. It's it's, I wrote one it's called Abusing Religion, about how America and Americans use race and gender and religion, specifically to privilege white mainstream Christianity and not just to privilege it like, okay, we have more white Christian men in the Senate, but also to understand what counts or doesn't as religion in racial, religious, gendered, and pro heterosexuality ways. So specific kinds of sexuality, a specific kinds of religion get coded as like really American. And we use these assumptions to punish folks who do religion, sexuality, gender and race differently. I suspect I will be doing more of that work. For scholars in general, building on Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality means we pay attention to the complicated mess that is people. It means that we need to get past thinking of race or gender or sex as, like, a special day on the syllabus. Everyone has gender and race and sexuality. And for scholars of religion, specifically: if our understanding of religion isn’t also accounting for race, gender, sexuality, etc. then we are doing it wrong. The end.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst :

We put the me in team. It's Primary Sources.

Megan Goodwin :

Primary sources! [singing]

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst :

One day you'll stop laughing at your own joke. It's the best.

Megan Goodwin :

I won't.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst :

Listen Megan, normally when we do Primary Sources we link it up to the theme of the episode but it's a little bit bonkers to talk about intersectionality as an experience as two--as two white women. So let's reframe here a bit. Since nerds seem to love this bit, what do you want to share today about race, gender and religion? And I want to ask specifically does intersectionality resonate in your biography?

Megan Goodwin :

Uh, yeah, yeah. Although I think I started thinking about different aspects of my intersectional self a sooner or later, depending on honestly my privilege, right, so okay! I'm gonna skip ahead a little bit since this actually involves one of our storytime characters, Mary Daly. But when I was a tiny witchlet, I was very excited about writers like Daly suggesting that Christianity, and especially Catholicism--which I might have mentioned, I have a relationship with and do--Daly suggested that Christianity and Catholicism were so damaged by patriarchy, that they were unsafe and honestly damaging to women. So, again, I did 13 years of Catholic school K through 12 and a woman with three doctorates saying like "Eine Minuten bitte, this is a problem and we need to get out," really did a thing to me. So like I read a ton of Mary Daly on goddess worship and witches, and why the language we use for the divine really matters and if I'm being honest there still honestly an awful lot of Daly in my writing. She was a big fan both of making up new words and using familiar seeming words and funky new ways. And now so am I, which makes both Ilyse who reads all my stuff and any of my copy editors just like fucking nuts.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst :

Can confirm.

Megan Goodwin :

The number of marginalia: like what does this even--you're not--you just made that word up--you have to define it--come back! Anyway. So okay, so I'm reading tons of Daily and I'm running reading a bunch of Other white feminists about white witches and white goddesses. And all of that is very exciting and important for me. And then I got to grad school and realize just how white all of my thinking about witches and goddesses was. So thank you, Audre Lorde, to whom we will return in a moment. And also to Traci West, who co-taught my prosem. It doesn't mean that the earlier stuff that I read is now useless. But it does mean that it's incomplete and that I (and we) need to keep reading and learning from more folks whose experiences don't map neatly on to my slash our own. So that's, that's how I'm thinking.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst :

Yeah. I think I think my primary sources is going to be about racists. So, content warning, white people are racists. Gasp!

Megan Goodwin :

You can't just tell people they're white startup. You can know some people are white. Go ahead.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst :

Wait what?

Megan Goodwin :

I'm sorry, I keep forgetting that you've never seen Mean Girls so you never get any of my Mean Girls jokes, but there's a thing in there where you can't just ask people why they're white. Keep going.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst :

Okay, I'm sorry.

Megan Goodwin :

It's okay.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst :

Often I find myself defending the word intersectional in classes sometimes with some bold Devil's advocates-types. And listen students, if you are listening, the devil in whom I do not believe is the literal devil. Why are you advocating for make-believe evil, personified? It means you're doing actual evil, so stop it.

Megan Goodwin :

Also, he has plenty of lawyers, he's good. He does.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst :

We saw that Al Pacino movie I'm well aware.

Megan Goodwin :

I was I was actually thinking William Barr but please: continue.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst :

Often though, this defending of the word intersectional is in my public lecture work. So often, some well meaning usually white women though sometimes men does a does a "but intersectionality isn't real." Or more more likely, like something along the "everyone has hardships," with some version tacked on of "when we played misery poker, no one wins." And like, I just eyerolled but no one can see that. You, Megan, did all of the definitional work about oppression and discrimination at the top and how our bodies predict overlapping experiences of these systems. And that is the point of intersectionality. Yeah, but I think--I think for today in primary sources, I want to name that this language--the language of intersectionality, coined by a Black scholar that is meant not at all to empower but to expose the reality of Black women often strikes casually racist, systemically racist, maybe overtly racist white folks as like whining. And maybe even you fall into that category dear nerd if this is new to you. Bbut intersectional oppression isn't about your feelings as Megan already said. Or Your experience: a white man's privilege doesn't mean his life is easy or good. Just that systemic racism and sexism aren't the reasons it's bad. So if you're one of the people who always raises their hand to argue with me about intersectionality, and whether we need it, please stop. And my primary source gift to you is that I haven't named you out loud, but I kind of wanted to and now I need a cookie.

Megan Goodwin :

I want you to have chips for that. Yes, please. And thank you. I am also realizing that I want to include the "explaining privilege to a broke white person" in our resources. So I will do that at the end.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst :

Great. Well, Megan, that was primary sources,

Megan Goodwin :

primary sources. [singing!] Like we only told white people that they're racist and also worked through my own white supremacy, which is like a light primary sources for us

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst :

We did really good. I didn't talk about being adopted at all.

Megan Goodwin :

Until now.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst :

Who doesn't love curl up with some righteous theory. It's storytime.

Krusty the Klown :

Hey, kids it story time.

Megan Goodwin :

Yes! We cheated so hard on this episode we front loaded Crenshaw, I already teased Mary Daly and Audre Lorde, you're getting so many theorists today. But you're smart, you can hack it. So in the study of religion, Audre Lorde's "Open Letter to Mary Daly" is an electric example of why intersectional critique is mandatory for the study of religion. Crenshaw's piece came a full decade after Lorde's, which we think shows both it's important--because she's naming a phenomenon that helps us recognize it elsewhere. But also its predecessors, right, like we're all building on each other's work. This is why we think citational politics (shout out to Sara Ahmed, as always) is so important. So Crenshaw herself later said in 2014, that what she wanted to do was create, quote, "a metaphor that anyone could use," and they do not always well, but very usable. So she did, and we're going to take a look at what pre Crenshaw critique that we read as intersectional thinking looks like. So I have already mentioned Mary Daly to you but if you're not familiar with her work super quick: Mary Daly was a post-Catholic lesbian academic who insisted that Christianity was irredeemably patriarchal. She famously said, "If God is man, then man is God." And she called on all women to create new ways of knowing and being in the world. You can hear in my voice that like--again, she's a problem, but she was, she also, I think, leaned into TERF-iness in the end of her life--but a lot of her writings are still very important to me. And in her book Gynecology, that's GYN slash ecology [Gyn/ecology]. (This is the kind of stuff that she did and that I still do and makesIlyse nuts.) Daly celebrated white European goddess worship as liberatory for all women, while lamenting patriarchal violence, like foot binding and female genital mutilation. Audre Lorde was a Black feminist thinker who called herself "black lesbian mother warrior poet," and if you have not read her, I give you permission to turn off this podcast right now and go do so at once. Daly and Lorde were contemporaries. Daly quoted Lorde's poetry in Gyn/ecology, but Daly did not include any goddesses from African traditions or any examples of powerful women of color. She only ever--Daly only ever showed women of color being victims of patriarchal violence. So Lorde wrote Daly and open letter calling to her--calling her to account and insisting Daly's understanding of gender was violently incomplete. So this is the bit from her letter. She says: "Within the community of women, racism is a reality force in my life as it is not in yours. The white women with hoods on in Ohio handing out KKK literature on the street may not like what you have to say, but they will shoot me on site. If you and I were to walk into a classroom of women in Dismal Gulch, Alabama, where the only thing they knew about each of us is that we were both lesbian radical feminists, you would see exactly what I mean." "The oppression of women knows no ethnic nor racial boundaries, true, but that does not mean is identical within those differences. Nor do the reservoirs of our ancient power know these boundaries to deal with one without even alluding to the other is to distort our commonalities as well as our difference for them beyond sisterhood is still racism." IRMF, help us unpack this.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst :

Yeah. That gives me chills every time. I do this lesson plan in my theory class and so yeah, I just--okay anyway, Lorde's piece is so short, nerds, go read it and Daly's Gyn/ecology piece--the book, the whole thing is actually online, we will link. This bit that you just read like 10,000% gets at the idea of intersectional, as you mentioned, well before the term was coined by Crenshaw. I think that tells me something about how scholarship works, how we're all building on each other, how a word--intersectional--can have so much power. So obviously Lorde is not the fir--like herself stands with others. She is not the first Black thinker to note and call out how white folks' liberalism or radicalism flat out ignored Black people. Like of course she's not the first person to notice that. But what I find striking here is that Lorde is getting at the missed overlaps of oppression and what took Lorde mere pages to write is, in Crenshaw's singular word symbolized. And I freaking love that about good theory. One word--however made up-- can do all this heavy lifting and signify all these big important thoughts. I'll also say that what hits in Lorde's essay, it's her comment on Daly's dismissal thrice over at least as I see it. So first Lorde comes for the ways which Daly excludes Black and Africana examples in her writing. Second, she comes for the ways that Daly vilified Black and Africana experiences--so like when they're mentioned, as you say, it's in a terrible light as victims often Third, she comes for the way that Daly ignores Black scholarship. Yeah, so it's a nexus of power and discrimination and oppression. The subject doesn't exist in any substantive way and when it does exist, it's as a negative foil, and it belittles her colleagues so much as to erase their work. Shit. The exchange so pointed, so honest and so devastating. I fucking love it so much.

Megan Goodwin :

I know, I know, extremely saying because, honestly, it's both so devastating and it's so generous. Like, because we didn't read the whole thing, although I kind of feel like we could. We could. But all of the things that you're saying is true. And one of the pieces that's most heartbreaking for me is having Lorde say, like, it's not just that you left us out, you twisted my words against me and made me a victim, while at the same time insisting that I should find like freedom and liberation and white goddesses, but never imagining that you could be empowered by celebrate Black goddesses, Asian goddesses. (And like appropriation of Goddess figures from around the world as a conversation for another time.) But the the idea that Daly couldn't see Lorde as a scholar or as an activist, but just use her words to like paint Black women as victims is so heartbreaking, so and truly violent. So for Lorde's response not to be like, fuck this white lady, I'm out. But to be like, Mary, you did violence to me and I am going to take the time and the effort and the energy to explain how badly you messed up in the hopes that you can correct this and do better next time, is just, I think, unthinkably gracious. Like this is a famous white feminist, Daly, who clearly thinks she's doing intensely radical work, and she is kind of, except that it can't be truly radical work if it also does violence to Black women. Lorde, by the way, is also battling cancer while she's writing this, and she gave her time and her energy to explain to Daly how badly she fucked up and why it matters, but also how she and other white feminists can and must do better. Just like: [sighs] thank you, thank you Professor Lorde. Don't pack up your stuff yet nerds. You have homework!

Simpsons :

homework, what homework?

Megan Goodwin :

We have--We have already cited so very much. So we are, we're going to try to keep our homework simple. Nerds: You know by now the talking too fast is kind of our thing. So if you missed anything, don't forget about the show notes. Each episode has a website with detailed notes that include transcripts, links, citations and images so you can learn more and so that we never pretend we know all this on our own. Okay, IRMF, what do you want to assign before besides all the million things that we already mentioned?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst :

yeah, ummmmm... Okay, so if you are interested in some of the stuff that I talked about in my own new research, you could read Gil Anidjar's Semites, or Aamir Mufti's Enlightenment in the Colony. Both are kind of about Jews and Muslims and colonization and race theory, and I do not know that either of them really critically engaged with with intersectionality but both of them could be glossed as doing that kind of labor. I guess I also recommend like all of Audre Lorde? Is that cheating? I just I return again and again to Sister Outsider personally, which is a collection of essays and speeches. And I also want to shout out the Audre Lorde Project, which is a nonprofit organization doing, like all caps WORK in the most broadest defined queer community which explicitly centres folks of color. And I will I will link to their website. The Cite Black Women podcast has so much to listen to and if citational politics are kind of your thing, which I expect that they are dear nerds, they're a great place to start. And so the Cite Black Women Collective has loads of different digital avenues but the podcast, if you're into podcasts, I assume you are, is a great place to start. And speaking of podcasts, Secret Feminist Agenda is a favorite of ours, high recommend the whole thing, but specifically check out Hannah McGregor's chat with another favorite feminist of ours, who we keep citing, Sara Ahmed. I will link to that specific episode. It's season three episode 28, "Living a Feminist Life with Sara Ahmed." All of those things I think embody that intersectional space.

Megan Goodwin :

Yeah, I was joking on Twitter the other day that I should just have like CF Sara Ahmed like tattooed on my body somewhere just to save time.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst :

You can get it done. I mean, I'm in the tattoo phase of COVID isolation so...

Megan Goodwin :

it's true but I need the Octavia Butler one first because "God is change," anyway... Okay, I need you all to go out and find a copy of This Bridge Called My Back, which includes Lorde's "Open Letter," although not Daly's response and we'll make sure you get a link to the Daly's response as well. A Bridge Called My Back also includes a whole lot of other life changing work. Traci West recommended to me in grad school and seriously, my life has just never been the same. So go find it, read it, live it, love it. Professor Crenshaw has a podcast! Check out "intersectionality matters." Vox also has a great video explainer on intersectionality. When I talk about intersectionality my classes I very often assigned Dorothy Allison's essay "A Question of Class." And--so she is a she is a white, queer woman who grew up in devastating poverty, and does some really beautiful and detailed and devastating thinking about how her identity entities overlap and intersect and her experiences of oppression were complicated by those intersections. And I mentioned this earlier but there's also a short piece called "explaining privilege to a broke white person" that I use in like intro classes just to get a sense of like, okay the the young woman or man or gender non binary person who is raising their hand--just I feel like the NBs would be less likely to pull this--anyway, saying, oh, intersectionality isn't real or we all have struggles is like, okay, the fact that you're not oppressed on race, doesn't mean that your experience of poverty isn't valid or wasn't traumatizing, but also it does mean no one's being racist toward you. Okay, what else? Ah, I strongly recommend Anzaldua's Borderlands La Frontera the New Mestiza. She, for me, redefined scholarship and poetry about race and religion and belonging. She's also one of the co-editors of This Bridge Called My Back. She did that work with Chicana feminist activist slash scholar Cherrie Moraga. As always, we love to recommend that you look at amina wadud's work. And she's got a great conversation specifically about her conversion and experiencing antiBlackness in the Muslim community that's available on her Patreon. And then in the spirit of Audre Lorde, pushing us to reimagine the divine in terms of Black femininity, I'm going to encourage folks to check out the work Beyonce is doing with African and African diasporic goddesses and Orisha, both in Lemonade, and in Black is King. Her work with Oshun is particularly stunning. And I'm including this not just because Beyonce is Beyonce, although, obviously she is, but also because I think it is easy, at least for me, to get tied up in paying attention to violence and trauma and oppression and forget that these intersections of ourselves also make space for incredible creativity and new ways of seeing the world and beyond. So it's just one little piece of that. So.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst :

yeah! All right nerds. That's it for us today. If you can spare the time to rate and review the podcast, we'd appreciate it. And if you're teaching with us, let us know! A big thanks to Katherine Brennan, our transcription queen. If you want to learn how to teach with us find us over on Twitter.

Megan Goodwin :

Yes, we do nerdy threads! You can find Megan (that's me!) on twitter at mpg PhD, and Ilyse at ProfIRMF or the show at keeping it_101 find the website at keeping it 101 dot com.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst :

Peace out nerds!

Megan Goodwin :

do your homework on the syllabus.

Snoop Dogg :

Message from big Snoop D-O-double G to all the university students. Yeah, syllabus. You got to do it. You got to read it, man! I'm telling you, the more you know, the further you go. Tell 'em Snoop Dogg sent you. Syllabus. I know all about it. Catch up so we can have a conversation. Don't be late. Let's go.

People on this episode

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Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst

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Megan Goodwin

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