Britain, Anarchist Federation, Organise! #80 - Privilege Theory and Intersectionality

Aims and definitions ---- The purpose of this paper is to outline a class struggle 
anarchist analysis of Privilege Theory. Many of us feel ?privilege? is a useful term for 
discussing oppressions that go beyond economic class. It can help us to understand how 
these oppressions affect our social relations and the intersections of our struggles 
within the economic working class. It is written by members of the women?s caucus of the 
Anarchist Federation. It does not represent all our views and is part of an ongoing 
discussion within the federation. ---- What we mean by privilege What do we mean ? and 
what do we not mean ? by privilege? Privilege implies that wherever there is a system of 
oppression (such as capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, heteronormativity) there is 
an oppressed group and also a privileged group, who benefit from the oppressions that this 
system puts in place1.

The privileged group do not have to be
active supporters of the system of
oppression, or even aware of it,
in order to benefit from it. They
benefit from being viewed as
the norm and providing for their
needs being seen as what is natu-
rally done, while the oppressed
group is considered the ?other?,
and their needs are ?special
considerations?. Sometimes the
privileged group benefits from
the system in obvious, material
ways, such as when women are
expected to do most or all of the
housework, and male partners
benefit from their unpaid labour.
At other times the benefits are
more subtle and invisible and
involve certain pressures being
taken off a privileged group and
focused on others, for example
black and Asian youths being 28%
more likely to be stopped and
searched by the police than white
youths2. The point here is not
that police harassment doesn?t
happen to white youths or that
being working class or a white
European immigrant doesn?t also
mean you?re more likely to face
harassment; the point is that a
disproportionate number of black
and Asian people are targeted in
comparison to white people, and
the result of this is that if you are
carrying drugs and you are white,
then all other things being equal,
you are much more likely to get
away with it than if you were
black. In the UK, white people
are also less likely to be arrested
or jailed or to be the victim of
a personal crime3. Black peo-
ple currently face even greater
unemployment in the UK than
they do in the USA4. The point of
quoting this is not to suggest we
want a society in which people of
all races and ethnicities face equal
disadvantage ? we want to create
a society in which nobody faces
these disadvantages ? but part
of getting there is acknowledging
how systems of oppression work.
This means recognising that, if
black and ethnic minority groups
are more likely to face these
disadvantages, then by simple
maths, white people are less likely
to face them. That means they
have an advantage, a privilege,
including the privilege of not
needing to be aware of the extent
of the problem.

A privileged group may also, in
some ways, be oppressed by the
expectations of the system that
privileges them; for example men
under patriarchy are expected
to not show weakness or emo-
tion and are mistrusted as carers.
However, men are not oppressed
by patriarchy for being men;
they are oppressed in these ways
because it is necessary in order
to maintain women?s oppression.
For women to see themselves as
weak, irrational and suited only
to caring roles, they must believe
that men are stronger, less emo-
tional and incapable of caring
for those who need it. For these
reasons, men showing weakness,
emotion and a capacity for caring
labour are punished by patriar-
chy for letting the side down and
giving women the opportunity to
challenge their oppression.

It makes sense that where there
is an oppressed group, there is a
privileged group, because systems
of oppression wouldn?t last long if
nobody benefited from them. It is
crucial to understand that mem-
bers of the privileged group of
any of these systems may also be
oppressed by any of the others,
and this is what allows struggles
to be divided and revolutionary
activity crushed. We are divided,
socially and politically, by a lack
of awareness of our privileges
and how they are used to set our
interests against each other and
break our solidarity.

The term ?privilege? has a com-
plex relationship with class strug-
gle, and to understand why, we
need to look at some of the differ-
ences and confusions between
economic and social class. Social
class describes the cultural identi-
ties of working class, middle class
and upper class. These identities,
much like those built on gender
or race, are socially constructed,
created by a society based on
its prejudices and expectations
of people in those categories.
Economic class is different: It de-
scribes the economic working and
ruling classes, as defined by Marx.
It functions through capitalism
and is based on the ownership of
material resources, regardless of
your personal identity or social
status. This is why a wealthy,
knighted capitalist like Alan Sugar
can describe himself as a ?work-
ing class boy made good?. He is
clearly not working class if we
look at it economically, but he
clings to that social identity in the
belief that it in some way justifies
or excuses the exploitation within
his business empire. He confuses
social and economic class in order
to identify himself with an op-
pressed group (the social work-
ing class) and so deny his own
significant privilege (as part of the
economic ruling class). Being part
of the ruling class of capitalism
makes it impossible to support
struggles against that system. This
is because, unlike any other privi-
leged group, the ruling class are
directly responsible for the very
exploitation they would be claim-
ing to oppose.

This doesn't make economic class
a "primary" oppression, or the
others "secondary", but it does
mean that resistance in economic
class struggle takes different
forms and has slightly different
aims to struggles based on cul-
tural identities. For example, we
aim to end capitalism through a
revolution in which the working
class seize the means of produc-
tion from the ruling class and
create an anarchist communist
society in which there is no rul-
ing class. For the other struggles
mentioned, this doesn't quite
work the same way; we can't
force men to give up their male-
ness, or white people to give up
their whiteness, or send them all
to the guillotine and reclaim their
power and privilege as if it were a
resource that they were hoarding.
Instead we need to take apart and
understand the systems that tend
to concentrate power and re-
sources in the hands of the cultur-
ally privileged and question the
very concepts of gender, sexuality,
race etc. that are used to build
the identities that divide us.

A large part of the resentment of
the term "privilege" within class
struggle movements comes from
trying to make a direct com-
parison with ruling class privi-
lege, which doesn't quite work.
Somebody born into a family who
owns a chain of supermarkets or
factories can, when they inherit
their fortune, forgo it; they can
collectivise their empire and give
it to the workers and work in it
themselves for the same share
of the profits as everybody else.
Capitalists can, if they choose,
give up their privilege. This makes
it OK for us to think of them as
bad people if they don't and
justifies taking it from them by
force in a revolutionary situa-
tion. Men, white people, straight
people, cisgendered people etc.,
can't give up their privilege - no
matter how much they may
want to. It is forced on them by a
system they cannot opt out of, or
choose to stop benefiting from.
This comparison with ruling class
privilege makes many feel as if
they're being accused of hoarding
something they're not entitled
to, that they're being blamed for
this and asked to feel guilty or
undergo some kind of endless
penance to be given absolution
for their privilege. This is not the
case. Guilt isn't useful, aware-
ness and thoughtful action are. If
you take nothing else away from
this document, take this: You are
not responsible for the system
that gives you your privilege, only
for how you respond to it. The
privileged (apart from the ruling
class) have a vital role to play in
the struggle against the systems
that privilege them - it's just not a
leadership role.

Answering objections to privilege

So if they didn?t choose it and
there?s nothing they can do
about it, why describe people as
?Privileged?? Isn?t it enough to
talk about racism, sexism, homo-
phobia etc. without having to call
white, male and straight people
something that offends them?
If it?s just the terminology you
object to, be aware that radical
black activists, feminists, queer
activists and disabled activists
widely use the term privilege.
Oppressed groups need to lead
the struggles to end their op-
pressions, and that means these
oppressed groups get to define
the struggle and the terms we use
to talk about it. It is, on one level,
simply not up to class struggle
groups made up of a majority
of white males to tell people of
colour and women what words
are useful in the struggles against
white supremacy and patriarchy.
If you dislike the term but agree
with the concept, then it would
show practical solidarity to leave
your personal discomfort out of
the argument, accept that the
terminology has been chosen
and start using the same term as
those at the forefront of these
struggles.

Another common objection to
the concept of privilege is that it
makes a cultural status out of the
lack of an oppression. You could
say that not facing systematic
prejudice for your skin colour isn?t
a privilege, it?s how things should
be for everyone. To face racism
is the aberration; to not face it
should be the default experience.
The problem is, if not experienc-
ing oppression is the default
experience, then experiencing the
oppression puts you outside the
default experience, in a special
category, which in turn makes a
lot of the oppression invisible.
To talk about privilege reveals
what is normal to those without
the oppression, yet cannot be
taken for granted by those with
it. To talk about homophobia
alone may reveal the existence of
prejudices ? stereotypes about
how gay men and lesbian women
behave perhaps, or violence
targeted against people for their
sexuality. It?s unusual to find
an anarchist who won?t con-
demn these things. To talk about
straight privilege, however, shows
the other side of the system, the
invisible side: what behaviour is
considered ?typical? for straight
people? There isn?t one ? straight
isn?t treated like a sexual catego-
ry, it is treated like the absence
of ?gay?. You don?t have to worry
about whether you come across
as ?too straight? when you?re
going to a job interview, whether
your straight friends will think
you?re denying your straightness
if you don?t dress or talk straight
enough, whether your gay friends
will be uncomfortable if you
take them to a straight club or if
they?ll embarrass you by saying
something ignorant about get-
ting hit on by somebody of the
opposite sex. This analysis goes
beyond worries about discrimi-
nation or prejudice to the very
heart of what we consider normal
and neutral, what we consider
different and other, what needs
explaining, what?s taken as read ?
the prejudices in favour of being
straight aren?t recognisable as
prejudices, because they?re built
into our very perceptions of what
is the default way to be.

It?s useful to see this, because
when we look at oppressions in
isolation, we tend to attribute
them to personal or societal prej-
udice, a homophobic law that can
be repealed or a racial discrimina-
tion that can be legislated against.
Alone, terms like ?racism?, ?sex-
ism? and ?ablism? don?t describe
how oppression is woven into the
fabric of a society and is a normal
part of life, rather than an easily
isolated stain on society that can
be removed without trace, leav-
ing the fabric intact.5

Privilege theory is systematic. It
explains why removing prejudice
and discrimination isn?t enough
to remove oppression. It shows
how society itself needs to be
ordered differently. When people
talk about being ?colour-blind?
in relation to race, they think it
means they?re not racist, but it
usually means that they think
they can safely ignore differences
of background and life experi-
ence due to race and expect that
the priorities and world views of
everybody should be the same as
those of white people, which they
consider to be ?normal?. It means
they think they don?t have to
listen to people who are trying to
explain why a situation is different
for them. They want difference to
go away, so that everybody can
be equal, yet by trying to ignore
difference they are reinforcing
it. Recognising privilege means
recognising that differences of
experience exist which we may
not be aware of. It means being
willing to listen when people tell
us about how their experience
differs from ours. It means trying
to conceive of a new ?normal?
that we can bring about through
a differently structured society,
instead of erasing experiences
that don?t fit into our privileged
concept of ?normal?.

Intersectionality and Kyriarchy

Kyriarchy is the concept of com-
bined systems of oppression; the
idea that capitalism, patriarchy,
white supremacy, heteronorma-
tivity, cisnormativity, theocracy
and other systems that we don?t
necessarily have names for are
all connected, influencing and
supporting each other. The word
?kyriarchy? is also a handy ver-
bal shortcut that saves having to
list all the systems of oppression
every time you want to explain
this concept. It means everybody
who?s fighting oppression of any
kind is fighting the same war; we
just fight it on a myriad of differ-
ent fronts.

Intersectionality is the idea that
we are all privileged by some of
these systems and oppressed by
others, and that, because those
systems affect one another, our
oppressions and privileges inter-
sect. This means that we each
experience oppression in ways
specific to our particular com-
binations of class, gender, race,
sexuality, disability, age etc. 6 7

Class struggle analyses tend to
mark out capitalism as separate
from the other systems in kyri-
archy. As explained above, capi-
talism operates differently from
systems of oppression based on
identity or culture, but it would
be too simplistic to dismiss these
oppressions as secondary or as
mere aspects of capitalism. Patri-
archy, in particular, existed long
before modern industrial capi-
talism and, there?s evidence to
suggest, before the invention of
money itself8, and it?s not difficult
to imagine a post-capitalist soci-
ety in which oppressive gender
roles still hold true9. As anarchists
are opposed to all systems of op-
pression, we recognise that fight-
ing capitalism alone is not enough
and that other oppressions won?t
melt away ?after the revolution?.
If we want a post-revolutionary
society free of all oppression, we
need all the oppressed to have an
equal role in creating it, and that
means listening to experiences of
oppression that we don?t share
and working to understand how
each system operates: in isola-
tion, in relation to capitalism and
other systems of oppression and
as part of kyriarchy.10

We're used to talking about sex-
ism or racism as divisive of the
working class. Kyriarchy allows us
to get away from the primacy of
class, while keeping it very much
in the picture. Just as sexism
and racism divide class strug-
gle, capitalism and racism divide
gender struggles, and sexism and
capitalism divide race struggles.
All systems of oppression divide
the struggles against all the other
systems that they intersect with.
This is because we find our loyal-
ties divided by our own particular
combinations of privilege and
oppression, and we prioritise the
struggles we see as primary, to
the detriment of others and to
the detriment of solidarity. This
is why the Anarchist Federation's
3rd Aim & Principle11 cautions
against cross-class alliances, but
we should be avoiding campaigns
that forward the cause of any
oppressed group against the
interests of any other - not just
class. That doesn't mean that
every campaign has to forward
the cause of every single strug-
gle equally, but it does mean that
we need to be aware of how our
privileges can blind us to the op-
pressions we could be ignorantly
walking all over in our campaigns.
We have to consider a whole lot
more than class struggle when
we think about whether a cam-
paign is moving us forwards or
backwards as anarchists. Being
able to analyse and point out how
systems of oppression intersect is
vital, as hitting these systems of
oppression at their intersections
can be our most effective way of
uniting struggles and building soli-
darity across a number of ideo-
logical fronts.

Some examples:

In the early 1800s, there were
several strikes of male textile
workers against women be-
ing employed at their factories
because their poorer pay al-
lowed them to undercut male
workers12. The intersection of
capitalism and patriarchy meant
that women were oppressed by
capitalists as both workers and
women (being exploited for lower
pay than men), and by men as
both women and workers (kept in
the domestic sphere, doing even
lower paid work). When changing
conditions (mechanisation) made
it too difficult to restrict women
to their traditional work roles,
unions finally saw reason and
campaigned across the intersec-
tion, allowing women to join the
unions and campaigning for their
pay to be raised.

From the 70s to the present day,
certain strands of radical femi-
nism have refused to accept the
validity of trans* struggles, keep-
ing trans women out of women?s
spaces (see the controversies over
Radfem 2012 and some of the
workshops at Women Up North
2012 over their ?women born
women? policies). The outcome
of this is as above: the most op-
pressed get the shitty end of both
sticks (in this case cisnormativity
and patriarchy), with feminism,
the movement that is supposed
to be at the forefront of fighting
the oppression that affects both
parties (patriarchy) failing at one
of its sharpest intersections. This
also led to the fracturing of the
feminist movement and stagna-
tion of theory through failure
to communicate with trans*
activists, whose priorities and
struggles have such a massive
crossover with feminism. One
positive that?s come out of these
recent examples is the joining
together of feminist and trans*
activist groups to challenge the
entry policy of Radfem 2012. This
is leading to more communica-
tion, solidarity and the possibility
of joint actions between these
groups.

The above examples mean that
thinking about our privileges
and oppressions is essential: for
organising together; for recognis-
ing where other struggles inter-
sect with our own and what our
role should be in those situations;
where our experiences will be
useful and where they will be
disruptive; where we should be
listening carefully and where we
can contribute constructively. Ac-
knowledging privilege in this situ-
ation means acknowledging that
it?s not just the responsibility of
the oppressed group to challenge
the system that oppresses them,
it?s everybody?s responsibility,
because being part of a privileged
group doesn?t make you neutral,
it means you?re facing an advan-
tage. That said, when we join the
struggle against our own advan-
tages, we need to remember
that it isn?t about duty or guilt or
altruism, because all our struggles
are all connected. The more we
can make alliances over the op-
pressions that have been used to
divide us, the more we can unite
against the forces that exploit us
all. None of us can do it alone.

The myth of the ?Oppression Olympics?

The parallels that are drawn
between the Black and women's
movements can always turn
into an 11-plus: who is more
exploited? Our purpose here is
not parallels. We are seeking to
describe that complex interweav-
ing of forces which is the working
class; we are seeking to break
down the power relations among
us on which is based the hierar-
chical rule of international capital.
For no man can represent us as
women any more than whites
can speak about and themselves
end the Black experience. Nor do
we seek to convince men of our
feminism. Ultimately they will be
"convinced" by our power. We of-
fer them what we offer the most
privileged women: power over
their enemies. The price is an end
to their privilege over us.13

To say that somebody has white
privilege isn?t to suggest that they
can?t also have a whole host of
other oppressions. To say that
somebody suffers oppression by
patriarchy doesn?t mean they
can?t also have a lot of other privi-
leges. There is no points system
for working out how privileged or
oppressed you are in relation to
somebody else, and no point in
trying to do so. The only way that
privilege or oppression makes
your contributions to a struggle
more or less valid is through that
struggle's relevance to your lived
experience.

A black, disabled working class
lesbian may not necessarily have
had a harder life than a white,
able-bodied working class straight
cis-man, but she will have a
much greater understanding of
the intersections between class,
race, disability, gender and sexu-
ality. The point isn?t that, as the
most oppressed in the room,
she should lead the discussion;
it?s that her experience gives her
insights he won?t have on the
relevant points of struggle: the
demands that will be most effec-
tive, the bosses who represent
the biggest problem, the best
places and times to hold meet-
ings or how to phrase a callout
for a mass meeting so that it will
appeal to a wider range of peo-
ple; ways of dealing with issues
that will very probably not occur
to anybody whose oppression
is along fewer intersections. He
should be listening to her, not
because she is more oppressed
than him (though she may well
be), but because it is vital to the
struggle that she is heard, and be-
cause the prejudices that society
has conditioned into us, and that
still affect the most socially aware
of us, continue to make it more
difficult for her to be heard, for us
to hear her.

Some would argue that govern-
ments, public bodies and cor-
porations have been known to
use arguments like these to put
forward or promote particular
people into positions of power
or responsibility, either as a
well-meaning attempt to ensure
that oppressed groups are repre-
sented or as a cynical exercise in
tokenism to improve their public
image. This serves the state and
capital by encouraging people to
believe that they are represented,
and that their most effective op-
portunities for change will come
through supporting or petition-
ing these representatives. This
is what we mean by cross-class
alliances in the 3rd A&P, and obvi-
ously we oppose the idea that, for
instance, a woman Prime Minister
will be likely to do anything more
for working class women than a
male Prime Minister will do for
working class men. It should be
remembered that privilege theory
is not a movement in itself but an
analysis used by a diverse range
of movements, liberal and radi-
cal, reformist and revolutionary.
By the same token, the rhetoric
of solidarity and class unity is
used by leftists to gain power
for themselves, even as we use
those same concepts to fight the
power structures they use. The
fact that some people will use
the idea of privilege to promote
themselves as community leaders
and reformist electoral candidates
doesn't mean that that's the core
reasoning or inevitable outcome
of privilege theory. For us, as class
struggle anarchists, the identities
imposed on us by kyriarchy and
the politics that go with them are
about uniting in struggle against
all oppression, not entrenching
social constructs, congratulating
ourselves on how aware we are,
claiming special rights accord-
ing to our background or biology
and certainly not creating ranked
hierarchies of the most oppressed
to put forward for tokenistic posi-
tions of power.

In the AF, we already acknowl-
edge in our Aims and Principles
the necessity of autonomous
struggle for people in oppressed
groups; but rather than analyse
why this is necessary, we only
warn against cross-class alliances
within their struggles. The unspo-
ken reason why it is necessary for
them to organise independently
is privilege. Any reason you can
think of why it might be neces-
sary, is down to privilege: the
possible presence of abusers; the
potential of experiences of op-
pression being misunderstood,
mistrusted, dismissed or requir-
ing a huge amount of explanation
before they are accepted and the
meeting can move onto actions
around them; even internalised
feelings of inferiority are trig-
gered by our own awareness of
the presence of members of the
privileged group. This may not
be their fault, but it is due to the
existence of systems that privi-
lege them. The reason we need
to organise autonomously is that
we need to be free of the pres-
ence of privilege to speak freely.
After speaking freely, we can
identify and work to change the
conditions that prevented us from
doing so before ? breaking down
the influence of those systems on
ourselves and lessening the privi-
lege of others in their relations
with us ? but the speaking freely
has to come first.

To equate talk of ?privilege?
with liberalism, electoralism and
cross-class struggles is to deny
oppressed groups the space and
the language to identify their
experiences of oppression and so
effectively organise against the
systems that oppress them. If we
acknowledge that these organis-
ing spaces are necessary, and that
it is possible for them to function
without engaging in liberalism
and cross-class struggles, then we
must acknowledge that privilege
theory does not, of necessity, lead
to liberalism and cross-class strug-
gles. It may do so when it is used
by liberals and reformists but
not when used by revolutionary
class struggle anarchists. Privilege
theory doesn't come with com-
pulsory liberalism any more than
the idea of class struggle comes
with compulsory Leninism.

The class struggle analysis of privilege

This may all seem, at first, to
make class struggle just one
struggle among many, but the
unique way in which ruling class
privilege operates provides an
overarching context for all the
other systems. While any system
can be used as a ?context? for any
other, depending on which inter-
sections we?re looking at, capi-
talism is particularly important,
because those privileged within it
have overt control over resources,
rather than just a default cul-
tural status of normalcy. They are
necessarily active oppressors, and
cannot be passive or unwilling re-
cipients of the benefits of others?
oppression. The ruling class and
the working class have opposing
interests, while the privileged and
oppressed groups of other sys-
tems only have differing interests,
which differ less as the influence
of those systems is reduced.

This doesn?t make economic
class a primary oppression or
the others secondary, because
our oppressions and privileges
intersect. If women?s issues were
considered secondary to class is-
sues, this would imply that work-
ing class men's issues were more
important than those of working
class women. Economic class is
not so much the primary struggle
as the all-encompassing strug-
gle. Issues that only face queer
people in the ruling class (such
as a member of an aristocratic
family having to remain in the
closet and marry for the sake of
the family line) are not second-
ary to our concerns but com-
pletely irrelevant, because they
are among the few oppressions
that truly will melt away after
the revolution, when there is no
ruling class to enforce them on
itself. We may condemn racism,
sexism, homophobia and general
snobbery shown by members of
the ruling class to one another,
but we don?t have common cause
in struggle with those suffering
these, even those with whom we
share a cultural identity, because
they remain our direct and active
oppressors.

When we try to apply this across
other intersections than eco-
nomic class, we don?t see con-
cerns that are irrelevant to all
but the privileged group, but we
do find that the limited perspec-
tive of privileged activists gives
campaigns an overly narrow
focus. For instance, overwhelm-
ingly white, middle class feminist
organisations of the 60s and 70s
have been criticised by women of
colour and disabled women for
focusing solely on the legalisation
of abortion at a time when Puer-
to-Rican women and disabled
women faced forced sterilisation,
and many women lacked access
to essential services during preg-
nancy and childbirth. Although
the availability of abortion cer-
tainly wasn?t irrelevant to these
women, the campaigns failed to
also consider the affordability of
abortion and completely ignored
the concerns of women being
denied the right to have a child.
Most feminist groups now tend to
talk about ?reproductive rights?
rather than ?abortion rights? and
demand free or affordable fam-
ily planning services that include
abortion, contraception, sexual
health screening, antenatal and
post-natal care, issues relevant to
women of all backgrounds.14

We have to challenge ourselves
to look out for campaigns that,
due to the privilege of those who
initiate them, lack awareness of
how an issue differs across inter-
sections. We need to broaden out
our own campaigns to include the
perspectives of all those affected
by the issues we cover. This will
allow us to bring more issues
together, gather greater solidarity,
fight more oppressions and build
a movement that can challenge
the whole of kyriarchy, which is
the only way to ever defeat any
part of it, including capitalism.

Notes

1 ?A common form of blindness to
privilege is that women and peo-
ple of colour are often described
as being treated unequally, but
men and whites are not. This...
is logically impossible. Unequal
simply means ?not equal,? which
describes those who receive less
than their fair share and those
who receive more. But there
can?t be a short end of the stick
without a long end, because it?s
the longness of the long end
that makes the short end short.
To pretend otherwise makes
privilege and those who receive
it invisible.? Allan G. Johnson,
Privilege, Power and Difference
(2006).

2 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/
uk-16552489, http://www.guard-
ian.co.uk/uk/2012/jun/12/police-
stop-and-search-black-people
(statistics not available for Scot-
land)

3 http://www.justice.gov.uk/
downloads/statistics/mojstats/
stats-race-cjs-2010.pdf

4 http://www.guardian.co.uk/
world/2012/apr/13/black-people-
unemployed-britain-us

5 ?While it is important that
individuals work to transform
their consciousness, striving to be
anti-racist, it is important for us
to remember that the struggle to
end white supremacy is a strug-
gle to change a system, a struc-
ture...For our efforts to end white
supremacy to be truly effective,
individual struggle to change
consciousness must be funda-
mentally linked to collective effort
to transform those structures that
reinforce and perpetuate white
supremacy.? bell hooks, Killing
Rage: Ending Racism, 1995

6 http://whatever.scalzi.
com/2012/05/15/straight-white-
male-the-lowest-difficulty-set-
tingthere- is/

7 Intersectionality as a term and
an idea has been developed by,
among others: Kimberle Williams
Crenshaw, bell hooks, Audre
Lorde, Patricia Hill Collins, Leslie
McCall, if you are interested in
further reading.

8 Graeber?s ?Debt: The First 5,000
Years? suggests that young wom-
en were used in some pre-money
societies as an early form of cur-
rency or debt tally.

9 See the chapter with all the
beautiful and sexually available
house-keeping-cleaning-serving
women in William Morris? utopia
News from Nowhere.

10 One anarchist analysis of in-
tersectionality: http://libcom.org/
library/refusing-waitanarchism-
intersectionality.

11 ?We believe that fighting
systems of oppression that divide
the working class, such as racism
and sexism, is essential to class
struggle. Anarchist-Communism
cannot be achieved while these
inequalities still exist. In order to
be effective in our various strug-
gles against oppression, both
within society and within the
working class, we at times need
to organise independently as peo-
ple who are oppressed according
to gender, sexuality, ethnicity
or ability. We do this as working
class people, as cross-class move-
ments hide real class differences
and achieve little for us. Full
emancipation cannot be achieved
without the abolition of capital-
ism.? http://www.afed.org.uk/
organisation/aims-and-principles.
html

12 See Chapter 7 of The Struggle
for the Breeches: Gender and the
Making of the British Working
Class by Anna Clark.

13 Selma James, ?Sex, Race and
Class? 1975

14 Links to these examples are
on these posts at the Angry Black
Woman blog: http://theang-
ryblackwoman.com/2010/02/26/
reproductive-justice-linkspam-
a-starting-point/, http://theang-
ryblackwoman.com/2008/04/14/
poc-and-the-politics-of-medical-
research/