Intersectionality and the Opportunity to Create Belonging

A few weeks ago, I was excited to attend a women’s retreat, a daylong event with other women from my faith community that would include journaling, art, and storytelling. Although I had seen the annual event announced several years in a row without registering, I felt especially motivated to attend this time because I wanted to go with my daughter, who was nearly eighteen and had begun living life as her true gender a little less than a year before. I wanted to welcome her with open arms into the world of womanhood and, in so doing, help her gain access to the support available in that world.

I reached out to the organizers ahead of time and communicated my intention. I received a very welcoming response, encouraging me to bring her. It meant a good deal to me that this was not a group who would see “trans” and “woman” as two words that were mutually exclusive.

When I arrived, the energy was warm and friendly, and I was excited to begin the day. After coffee and conversation, we were asked to gather around on meditation pillows as one of the facilitators read from the activity book we had been informed they would be using. She asked us to close our eyes.

As the facilitator continued reading, I realized that this first exercise was a body scan of sorts. This was a familiar mindfulness exercise that invites connection to the present moment by centering attention on the sensations of the body. As a survivor of childhood sexual trauma, I have often struggled to participate fully in this kind of exercise, which can bring up panic and a pull to dissociate. Ok, I told myself. Hold on. It can only last so long. You’ll get through to the other side. I really wanted to make this work, so that I could stay and participate. I tried to let my mind wander away from the instructions as I stayed in place, appearing to participate.

However, the mounting panic sensations heightened when I realized I was now being asked to imagine myself in the body I possessed at (coincidentally) the same age when a major victimization had occurred, to visualize my small hands and feel my five-year-old feet on the ground. I realized then that I would be unwise to continue this kind of exercise outside my therapist’s office. I needed to get up and take a break.

Maybe it was easier because of the warm welcome I had received in response to including my daughter, but it felt okay to take care of myself. I still felt panic sensations in my body, but they were enveloped in a larger surrounding calm. I stood up and walked into a quiet nearby room to sit in a rocking chair.

I was soon tended to warmly and compassionately by other participants who noticed I’d left the room, and I asked the co-facilitator some honest questions about the rest of the day’s activities, which were answered just as honestly. This helped me to make the decision to leave. This activity was just not something well-suited to my needs right now. I left without hard feelings and have since received a check-in email and an invitation to participate in an upcoming group that would not include that body-based work.

Although I felt a little disappointed, the best-case scenario had happened—which was that I was allowed to care for myself, offer constructive feedback, and even leave—all without sacrificing the sense of belonging and welcome I had first received.

I experienced that morning’s events as a woman, but also as the mother of a trans child and also as the survivor of childhood sexual trauma, a person living with a mental health disability associated with such experiences.

My point in telling you all this is—we are never just one thing. Our experience of the world is informed by our group identities and also by the places where they intersect.

The description of One Circle’s Unity Circle curriculum on the website contains the following thought, “One Circle Foundation acknowledges and explores the complex ways in which race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, culture, and gender intersect and shape, impede and/or strengthen the relational experiences and dimensions of adolescent development.”

This points to an important concept, known as “intersectionality.”

The term “intersectionality” is credited to Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, a Professor of Law at Columbia University. She first used the term in a 1989 paper published in the University of Chicago Legal Forum, which laid the legal groundwork for arguing that discrimination—not just against Black people or women—but against Black women as a group had to be considered. Her paper criticized both anti-discrimination doctrine and feminist theory that ignored the ways in which intersecting identities shape discrimination. She argued that, by treating racism and sexism as mutually exclusive categories, the real-life experiences of Black women were made invisible. Solutions designed to empower Black men were not adequate to empower Black women, and that inequity was felt both as racism and as sexism by them.

How might this show up in groups of young people? In a random elementary school Girl’s Circle group, there will likely be a child present who have experienced body-based trauma. There will be children who will later identify as lesbians and some who already do. Perhaps, there may be one or more trans girls, a girl who is Native American and Hispanic, a girl with autism who is also the child of Chinese immigrants. There will be at least one girl living with multigenerational poverty and another who comes from family wealth. Perhaps, there could be a child in a wheelchair and other children whose “wheelchair” is invisible—those living with learning disabilities, processing challenges, or chronic anxiety.

What will it take for each child in this group to feel welcome and safe? Can these multiple variables of experience be treated as important all at once? I think they can.

The lesson of considering intersectionality in this context is not that every unique combination of needs can always be anticipated and prepared for, or that all activities must be drilled down to the lowest common denominator to enable everyone to take part. The fundamental truth is that none of us experiences life in terms of only one aspect of our identity.

Fostering true belonging is about honing our responsiveness to individual experience, which is shaped by a cross-section of identities. This means we have to think expansively about what creates a welcoming space.

If we are working toward equity by making a protected space in our groups for the experience of queer kids, we also need to ask ourselves if we are allowing these same queer kids to come with their racial identity, their socioeconomic status, their ability status, their gender identity, their religious affiliation, and everything else that makes them who they are.

In my earliest days as a white woman engaged in equity work, I often focused on how I could avoid causing offense. What were the right words? The wrong words?

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with wanting to avoid offending others, but humans are complex, and nobody speaks for all members of their group. If I am told by my Indigenous friend that she likes the inclusion of land acknowledgments before doing group work, I am told by my Indigenous husband that he finds them pretentious and uncomfortable. If I try to work out which thing is right and apply that rule to all the groups that I plan, how can I avoid offense?

As I gained more experience, I began to realize that my fear of offending was mostly a way to avoid difficult feelings, rather than true responsiveness to the experiences of others.

My youngest child is a neurodiverse, trans, pansexual Native American girl who grew up in a liberal religious community and is used to being treated like she is smart. She has had the advantages of a middle-class lifestyle. She is also bi-racial, and her family’s history includes Jewish experiences. She was raised by a bisexual mother, who is the daughter of a bisexual mother. Depression and anxiety run in our family and she herself has struggled with these things, especially early in her gender transition. Each category she belongs to is salient, and the way they intersect shapes her experience.

But there are too many dimensions here to anticipate all her needs in a group unless you solicit her input and listen to what she says.

What this kind of complexity helps me to remember is that genuine inclusivity is expressed in our honest consideration of diverse needs, in our transparency about the details of planned activities before they are undertaken, in our welcoming approach to constructive criticism, and in our willingness to apologize for the impact of any action we took that resulted in offense, despite what we may have intended.

When I walked into that women’s retreat, my identities as a woman and as a member of my faith community were known. My mental health needs were not. However, by accepting those needs without overwrought apologies or defensiveness, the women at the retreat made sure I knew that I was valued. I provided them the feedback that it would be helpful to clearly indicate when there will be an activity that involves body-based mindfulness, so that people can ask further questions or simply choose not to go. My advice was accepted appreciatively, and I suspect that, in the future, gatherings will be more trauma-informed. This will make things better for others like me with trauma-related symptoms, especially those who might find it too hard to leave the room.

Every time someone with unfamiliar identities enters our space, we have a chance to learn something new that will help us to do better next time. We can receive valuable new feedback about how our practices affect them if we are open to it. Many young people participating with us won’t have the words to express their needs precisely, and they may not have spent time in environments where their self-advocacy was welcome. It’s often up to us as adults to notice signs of discomfort and find a non-threatening way to check in.

Intersectionality can lend our work both dimension and humility. We are continually invited to broaden the circle of who belongs. As we shift from avoidance of conflict to curiosity, we become less afraid and bolder in the work we do.