Intersectional Solidarity Research Articles

A Qualitative Systematic Review of Stigma, Violence, Victimization, and Associated Coping Among Transgender People Engaged in Sex Work.

Globally, transgender people engaged in sex work experience disproportionately high risks of victimization. While qualitative studies on the perspectives of transgender people engaged in sex work can shed light on their intersecting experiences, a qualitative synthesis could offer a systematic understanding and inform anti-oppressive practices and policies. This review explores the experience of stigma, violence, victimization, and associated coping strategies among transgender people engaged in sex work. We conducted a literature search in November 2023 on MEDLINE, Social Work Abstracts, and CINAHL PLUS from EBSCOhost, APA PsycInfo, ASSIA, and Sociological Abstracts from ProQuest and SCOPUS (PROSPERO ID: CRD42023478844). From 1,085 studies retrieved, 64 were included in this review. Thematic synthesis identified seven themes: (a) individual struggle, (b) interpersonal violence, (c) community transphobia and exclusion, (d) systemic oppression, (e) individual coping strategies, (f) community resources, and (g) organizational support as coping resources. This review contributes to the discussion around the health vulnerabilities of transgender people engaged in sex work that inherently result from intersecting victimization in a larger global context, including trafficking, urban planning, migration, and COVID-19. Identification of the coping strategies of transgender people engaged in sex work also highlights their resilience and sites of empowerment. Policymakers and professionals should be mindful of the intersectional identities of transgender people engaged in sex work and initiate peer- and community-led interventions to support them in building intersectional solidarity and resisting victimization.

The Role of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians in Engendering Theological Higher Education in Africa

This article explores the transformative role of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians in engendering higher theological education in Africa. Grounded in African Women’s theology, the study analyses initiatives in championing gender equality, inclusivity, and intersectional solidarity within theological academia. The study highlights the historic journey of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians in promoting the integration of gender-sensitive curricular and nurturing a new generation of African women theologians. Methodologically, I adopt a qualitative design and use African Women’s Theology as a lens to understand the transformative strides made by the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians towards engendering theological higher education in Africa.

Intersectional solidarity, empathy, or pity? Exploring representations of migrant women in German and British newspapers during the pandemic

ABSTRACT This research examines migrant women’s representation in British and German news during the COVID-19 pandemic, paying particular attention to expressions of solidarity. While previous research has focused on the representation of women and migrants, studies have largely treated these groups as distinct entities. Combining topic modelling with informed grounded theory, this research compares the representation of migrant women, including women from ethnic minorities, across a diverse corpus covering 2020–21. This two-step methodology facilitates intersectional analysis at the macro and micro level, revealing the salience, topical concentration and context of migrant women’s coverage. Findings show that solidarity emerged through the platforming of migrant women’s voices, and connected to discourses of class, poverty and precarity. Representations containing empathy and pity – less likely drivers of social change – were more prevalent. This research contributes to our understanding of migrant women’s coverage during the pandemic and provides a granular and intersectional lens for analysing minoritized group representation.

Intersectional praxis for social-ecological transformations: Lessons from North Macedonia's grassroots Green Deal

Intersectional praxis - the practical application of intersectional theorizing into action - can be highly relevant for pursuing social-ecological transformations. Yet, we know little about the benefits and challenges of trying to mobilize such praxis for pursuing transformations. In this contribution to critical feminist and political ecology scholarship, we explore this gap empirically through a case study of producing a grassroots Green Deal in North Macedonia in which intersectional theory principles were employed in a process of collective visioning and grassroots organizing around that endeavor. To identify benefits and challenges related to this process, we inquire into the documents produced and the experience of organizers coordinating and catalyzing those efforts. We find that the benefits of enacting intersectional praxis relate to strategizing and mobilizing, collective action, and intersectional solidarity building. Challenges faced included fears concerning the unfamiliarity with the concept of intersectionality, and issues related to the capacity of individuals from subaltern groups to participate in collective visioning processes under conditions of precarious existence. We conclude that grassroots organizing around the Green Deal framework could have a potential to address some critiques of mainstream Green Deals, shift narratives of socio-ecological transformations (SETs), unite different movements working towards climate and social justice, and mobilize people power under an umbrella framework that dominates the policy arena, such as the Green Deal.

Minoritized Communities in Iran: The Struggle for Unconditional Equality

Following the tragic murder of Jina Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish woman, in 2022, subsequent protests in 2022–23 presented a significant intersectional challenge to the Islamic Republic of Iran's (IRI) political order, revealing deep-seated issues of ethnic, economic, gender, and political discrimination. Originating in the Kurdish region, these protests quickly spread across Iran and its diaspora, offering a glimpse of potential intersectional solidarity cutting across ethnic, gender, and religious lines. Notably, Kurds and Baluchis played a leading role in the protests, bearing the highest toll in terms of lives lost and injuries sustained. The Iranian regime responded ruthlessly, employing military violence to supress dissent and systematically dehumanizing these communities in an attempt to undermine their vocal opposition to the exclusionary and hierarchical rule rooted in Persian and Shiite dominance. Throughout history, the Kurds have consistently stood at the vanguard of resistance against the political authority in Tehran, as well as challenging the dominance of Persian and Shiite supremacy. This enduring opposition is instrumental to understanding the widespread, well-articulated, and mobilized resistance to the IRI's abuses of power. This resistance finds its epitome in the Women, Life, Freedom social movement.1

Resisting fascism: The Argentine Junta de la Victoria and its president, 1941-1955

Created in 1941, the Junta de la Victoria (Victory Board, JV) was a Popular Front movement that supplied the Allies. It attracted about 45,000 diverse women throughout Argentina. The JV challenged local fascism by modelling a genuine democracy based on pluralism, intersectional solidarity, freedom, and women's political incorporation. Members created ties across social differences. The JV's promotion of multiculturalism facilitated a shift from the Argentine ideal of a melting pot to one of ethnic diversity. Its president, Ana Rosa Schlieper, seemed an unlikely resistance fighter. Initially her main identities were those of wife, philanthropist, and upper-class socialite. Her whiteness, beauty, and charm enhanced her prestige. In the mid-1930s Schlieper added antifascist and feminist to her intertwined identities. Seizing power in 1943, military officers suppressed the JV, seeing it as a communist organisation. Some Argentine and U. S. officials accused Schlieper of being a communist dupe, although she was loyal to the democratic centrist Radical party. Under populist president Juan Perón (1946-1955), her class and political identities became liabilities. Peronist hegemony and fear of being identified with an anti-Peronist and leftist group obliterated the public memory of Schlieper and the JV until recently.

Stories of Antiracist Gay/Lesbian Gender Alliance: Articulating Intersectional Solidarity in the 1980s

This article shows how in the early 1980s, Black and White Men Together (BWMT), an interracial group of antiracist gay men, constructed relations of connection with antiracist feminist lesbians of color. My analysis details how BWMT engaged in storytelling through newsletters, reporting their creation of relations of connection with Black, “Third World,” antiracist lesbians and constructing these relations as a multidimensional gender alliance involving important processes of creating networks of reciprocal solidarity, forging political alignment, and creating intentional spaces of camaraderie to sustain intersectional solidarity. This research substantively expands our understanding of U.S. LGBTQ+ intersectional movement(s) activism with the concept of multidimensional gender alliance and analytically expands our understandings of intersectional solidarity.

Intersectional Politics of the International Women’s Strike

ABSTRACT Increasingly, progressive organizing faces pressures to adopt intersectional forms of solidarity. Intersectional solidarity consists of an ongoing process of creating ties and coalitions across social group differences by negotiating power asymmetries. This approach to organizing is not a static outcome that movements achieve and preserve. Movements that seek to enact intersectional solidarity must engage in ongoing struggles to sustain it. This article focuses on the case of the International Women’s Strike (IWS) of 2017 and 2018 in Spain. We use this case to identify circumstances that can lead to failures to sustain intersectional solidarity and the consequences of the ruptures that follow. In the case of the International Women’s Strike, initial calls to organize around the subject of women and women’s labor mobilized broad support in 2017. Black women in Spain affiliated with a group known as Afroféminas called on expanding the subject of local IWS mobilization to center the experiences of Black subjects. In a broadly circulated announcement, Afroféminas called out this experience and announced that they would not participate in the International Women’s Strike. The case of the International Women’s Strike in Spain showcases an instance under which the search for intersectional solidarity can generate broad intersectional consciousness even when it leads to separate organizing tracks. The development of autonomous Black activist spaces informed the continuity and deepening of intersectional consciousness but limited the magnitude of the praxis (e.g. Afroféminas did not participate in the broader praxis that generated disruptive tactics and mobilized larger masses). In choosing to consider racism as a form of violence within one system of capitalist exploitation, limited notions of subjectivity dominated IWS. On the other hand, Afroféminas’ withdrawal of participation limited the scope of praxis and raised questions about the representativeness and inclusiveness of the broader movement. Thus, intersectional and oppositional consciousness can emerge from the withdrawal of intersectionally marginalized groups from coalition work while challenging the enactment of mass intersectional praxis.

On the Margins: Exploring Minority News Media Representations of Women during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a disproportionately negative affect on women, especially women from minoritized groups. Minority news media are an important information source for these groups, when it comes to providing alternative views, and health related information. Whilst the poor representation of women in COVID-19 related mainstream news coverage is acknowledged, little is known regarding the representation of women in digital minority news content, during the pandemic and beyond. Considering this gap, we examine how women have been represented within a diverse corpus of minority news, and explore how these representations serve to bridge between different social groups. Critically analyzing the representation of these marginalized groups offers a lens through which we can better understand the function of minority news media in a democracy. Using critical discourse analysis, this study examines three online minority newspapers and one podcast from the US. Findings show that women are covered in an inclusive and empowering way, containing perspectives and concerns unique to the minority group, strengthening identities, platforming community-specific issues, communicating a call to action, and promoting intersectional solidarity. These representations also reveal the complex tensions between counterhegemonic and dominant publics which minority news media sources constantly negotiate through their content.

“Kill the Armenian/Indian; Save the Turk/Man: Carceral Humanitarianism, the Transfer of Children and a Comparative History of Indigenous Genocide”

Abstract This article draws the genocide of the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire into the comparative study of indigenous genocide. Using a Human Rights Studies approach, I focus on the transfer of indigenous children by state authorities through carceral institutions to argue that the ideology and practice of modern humanitarianism is a definitive shared element of indigenous genocides across the late-19th and early-20th Centuries. Common experiences of denial by powerful states and cultural erasure invite added comparison and intersectional solidarity. The article is written to address Native American and Armenian Studies scholars together, elaborate a working vocabulary for future collaborative research in Human Rights Studies and serve as a point of departure for public scholarship and policy engagement.

Cargas Coming down: Chronic stress, Chicana‐Indigenous spiritual healing, and feminist fugitive potentiality

AbstractThe bodies of low‐income Chicana‐Indigenous women are often sites of chronic racialized and gendered stress, as well as tremendous potentiality. I examine the relationship between stress and possibility as shaped by Chicana‐Indigenous spiritual healing among members of a women's healing collective in California. These women articulate chronic stresses as cargas, Spanish for burden, baggage, or charge. Unloading these stresses among each other, or descargando, leads to actions mobilized as anticarceral activism. Attention to their sense of stress carried collectively as cargas builds on Black feminist understandings of stress as structured by racialized criminalization and state and carceral violence while illuminating the materiality and potentiality of this embodiment in Chicana‐Indigenous contexts. The strategies cultivated for healing in these conditions underscore that stress is a worldly phenomenon, requiring emergent coalitions addressing social and structural conditions rather than solely individual therapeutic remedy or resilience. Working from feminist and fugitive anthropological commitments, centering descargando as an embodied knowledge praxis, I argue that an anthropological concern with potentiality must have an active, liberatory ethics, rooted in intersectional solidarity, accountability, and care.

Doing More than Thanking Black Women: The Influence of Intersectional Solidarity on Public Support for Policies

ABSTRACT There have been numerous calls to “thank” Black women for their consistent support of the Democratic Party. Vice President Kamala Harris tweeted that we need to do more than “congratulate” Black women. Harris stated, “Let’s address issues that disproportionately affect Black women.” With this in mind, understanding the formation of public opinion about issues that affect Black women is important. In service of this goal, I offer a theory and measure of a form of group consciousness called intersectional solidarity. I define intersectional solidarity as a set of political beliefs that is characterized by awareness of and distress over marginalized subgroups’ oppression. In this article I explore the influence of intersectional solidarity on policy support with a focus on policies that disproportionately affect Black women. Specifically, I examine the circumstances under which people support the Maternal CARE Act, a policy that addresses the racial disparity in maternal healthcare, as well as Equal Pay Certification which is a policy that addresses the race/gender pay gap. This article informs our expectations regarding both the barriers to but also the possibilities for support for policies that benefit marginalized subgroups like Black women. In doing so, this project provides insight into the possibilities for intersectional politics.

Response to Distinguished Lecture

Response to Distinguished Lecture Maureen O. Gallagher I am grateful for the opportunity to read and respond to Thomas O. Haakenson's essay and contribute to a broader discussion of decolonization in the field of German studies, which is a topic long overdue to reach the pages of German Studies Review. Haakenson's thought-provoking essay discusses the decolonial potential of Dada and the avant-garde more broadly. Haakenson's essay reflects on Dada as both an art movement with a specific chronology associated with cities such as Zurich, New York, Paris, and Berlin and connected to the racialized legacies of colonialism and appropriation, as well as an artistic praxis, with techniques such as juxtaposition and obfuscation rife with critical possibilities. This is what is at work in Black Dada, as exemplified by Adam Pendleton's Dada Dancers. As Haakenson describes, Pendleton's use of obscured and layered versions of the source photograph of Dada artists Sophie Taeuber and Erika Schlegel dressed in costumes modeled after Hopi Kachina figures challenges the primacy of the appropriative image, drawing attention back to the original Hopi reference. Pendleton's approach resists simple categorization and allows for ambiguities and double meanings, and it is here, Haakenson argues, that we see the critical power of the avant-garde and Dada's decolonial potential. I find Haakenson's description of Pendleton's methods and this type of critical praxis a convincing account of the potential for this kind of avant-garde criticality, perhaps particularly appealing to those of us who advocate for the centrality of the humanities, in particular world languages, for teaching critical thinking and new perspectives, but I wonder how generalizable Pendleton's approach is. Is the kind of "aesthetic appropriation as a form of intersectional solidarity" that Haakenson describes practicable as a pedagogical and methodological approach in the field of German studies more broadly? I think here of Audre Lorde's reminder that "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."1 In his essay, Haakenson engages with Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang's groundbreaking 2012 essay, "Decolonization is not a Metaphor."2 Haakenson rightly points [End Page 351] out that theirs is a narrower or more specific conceptualization of decolonization than that which dominates Europe and consequently German studies, exemplified by the title of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's influential 1986 book, Decolonising the Mind, and focusing on the more immaterial impact of colonization on structures and conceptions of knowledge.3 As important as this type of decolonization is, Tuck and Yang bring a more specific focus. When they center the concept of repatriation in their definition of decolonization, they are not primarily talking about the repatriation of cultural artifacts but instead the literal return of the land. For those of us who teach and research in the field of German studies in settler states such as the United States, Canada, Australia, or Aotearoa (New Zealand), we do so on expropriated Indigenous land, and when Tuck and Yang argue against the metaphorization of decolonization, they are asking us to remember this fact. Haakenson's inclusion of a land acknowledgment in his essay is a reminder of this important point. While Haakenson gave his lecture in Berlin, I tuned in live from Kansas City, home to many Indigenous nations, including the Sioux, Osage, Kaw, and Kickapoo peoples. When I began drafting these remarks, I was in an airplane somewhere over the Pacific, embarking on a long-delayed journey to a new academic position in Australia after eighteen months of remote teaching and research, and I finish them from my new office in Ngunnawal and Ngambri country. My story of migration and displacement is not entirely dissimilar to Haakenson's aunt Hiede to whom he dedicates the essay. Haakenson's invocation of the "wonderful world of words" is for me an expression not just of the personal impact that learning German has had on my life and career but also a reminder that German studies is not solely embedded in European contexts. The settler contexts of German studies in which many of us work, teach, study, and research require grappling with a different set of questions and circumstances than...

Farmers against Fascism: How India’s Farmers’ Protests Cultivated Alternatives to Neoliberal Hindu Nationalist Dystopia

Abstract In this article I analyze the mass mobilizations mounted by Indian farmers against three pro-corporate agricultural bills passed by the far-right government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. I argue that the discourse of civil protest is insufficient to understand these mobilizations. On the contrary, they embody the principles of mutual aid, direct action, and intersectional and international solidarity, pointing to the possibility of collective life beyond the limits imposed by neoliberal Hindu nationalism. At the same time the emancipatory possibilities offered by these practices are qualified by persistent social divisions and the hegemony of nonviolence, alongside pressing circumstantial factors.

'Midwife for Power': Towards a Mujerista / Womanist Model of Community Organizing


 
 
 In recent years, communities have responded to police violence in U.S. cities through confrontational models of community organising that evolved from patriarchal and male approaches. Very often, these approaches have not produced the hoped-for outcomes. In this article, I argue that a women-led community organising model, grounded in feminine relational power-with epistemologies, can lead to innovative policy changes, including in contexts of intractable problems, such as police misconduct. This article presents the Midwife for Power community organising model, which creates space for women organisers to nurture solidarity and creativity across all lines of difference, centres personal testimony and uses collective inquiry to create relational power to address injustice. Theoretically, this model draws on the rich insights of Black and Latina organisers and scholars, as well as traditions of intersectional solidarity. In order to illustrate the model, this article presents an empirical case study of a successful police accountability campaign.
 
 

Uncanny, abject, mutant monster: From Frankenstein to Genderpunk

This article starts with the key figure of Frankenstein’s monster and traces it from its tragic Gothic origins to its use in transphobic scholarship and on to its reclamation both by queer scholars and a growing trend in queer culture towards claiming monsters and monstrosity as their own. Gothic and psychoanalytic understandings of monstrosity, the uncanny and the abject are explored in relationship to queer theory about performativity, failure and ‘anarchitectural’ identity formation. The social media phenomenon ‘the Babadook is Gay’ and the figure of the mutant in popular culture bridge to the new Gothic and the formulation of the ‘genderpunk gayme’ as an aesthetic and political form with a commitment to queer acceptance and intersectional solidarity.

Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic to the Asian and Asian American Communities: Persistent History, Collective Resistance, and Intersectional Solidarity

Th e impact of the COVID- 19 global pandemic to American communities extends beyond physical health problems to include political, economic, education, business, mental health, and social relation impacts. This essay, based on a summer and fall 2020 place-based research project collaboration between Purdue Honors College students and the Purdue Asian American and Asian Resource and Cultural Center, examines impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic to the Asian and Asian American communities. Th e research asks what the impacts of COVID-19 are to Asian/American communities, how COVID-19 anti-Asian racism is unique or not unique, how the Asian American communities have collectively responded to the racism connected to the pandemic, and how Asian American communities displayed solidarity with other communities during this difficult time in public health and racial justice. Th e essay connects extensive media and archival research to detail COVID-19 impacts in the areas of health and wellness, job security, and social/racial justice. The essay then documents the persistent history of stereotyping and racism to Asian/American communities particularly in the midst of larger changes in political, national security, or public health situations. The next part of the essay provides an analysis of the rising number of reporting centers utilizing different platforms to counter the experience of racism. Finally, with the tragic deaths of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd that sparked forms of solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, the essay examines specific online and offline eff orts in regard to Asian and Asian American solidarity.

Feminist alliances: the ideas, practices and politics of intersectional solidarity

Feminist alliances: the ideas, practices and politics of intersectional solidarity

Personal Reflections on Shared Identity and Contemporary Relationships of Mutual Support and Intersectional Solidarity of Rwandan Tutsi and Jewish Human Rights Advocates

This article is a qualitative case study of the relationships being formed between Jews and Rwandan Tutsis and the ways in which six individuals, four Tutsis and two Jews involved in advocating for the human rights and welfare of Rwandan genocide survivors articulate their understanding of the bonds between the two communities, their shared experiences, and how their history of having survived persecution and genocide brings them together. Through their testimonies, it examines similarities and differences between the Jewish and Tutsi experiences of vulnerability and persecution, ways in which Tutsis and Jews work in partnership to advance human rights and, in particular, the rights of Rwandan genocide survivors, and how their narratives of identity have evolved in interaction with one another and continue to develop. It discusses the particular projects and advocacy efforts in which both groups have engaged to advance the human rights of Rwandan genocide survivors and how through these efforts Jews and Rwandan Tutsis give expression to a shared understanding of and commitment to human rights.

Unpacking intersectional solidarity: dimensions of power in coalitions

Scholars have often oscillated between celebrating the transformative potential of solidarity and recognising the ambivalent nature of cooperation for disadvantaged and marginalised groups. How can we make sense of these differences? This article addresses this question by unpacking intersectional solidarity along two dimensions: the ways issues are framed; and the extent to which organisations adopt a transformative praxis to redress disparities in resources and representation. By focusing on the interplay between discursive and material dimensions of power, we identify four types of intersectional solidarity, with different transformative potential. The usefulness of this typology is illustrated by means of secondary analysis of coalition work developed around reproductive justice and domestic workers’ rights. It shows that only an ideal form of transformative solidarity reflects feminist normative theorising of an alliance across differences.