This Bridge Called My Back: A Feminist Analysis

I consider myself to be a feminist. I believe that every woman and man deserve equal rights no matter gender, sexual orientation, or race. Therefore, this week was very interesting to me because I got to see that my ideas of feminism are my own, shaped by my personal experiences. I have a White woman’s version of feminism because I haven’t experienced the trials and tribulations Black women, Asian women, Latino women have experienced. I can’t speak for them just like they can’t speak for me. My ideas haven’t changed too much this week because I have always been aware of this fact, but it was nice to expand on my ideas and put a name to this separation of thought: intersectionality. In my Sociology class, we spent the last week discussing the topics we talked about on Tuesday and actually wrote a paper on the idea of intersectionality. We read an excerpt from “This Bridge Called My Back” entitled “A Black Feminist Statement”, which dived into the ideas of intersectionality. It showed us that if we look only at gender as “female” v. “male”, we neglect the unique struggles of a Black woman or a gay man, for example. Black women can connect to …show more content…
It was shocking to see that Serena Williams was mocked for her body at a match. Even her amazing talent and hard-work can’t stop her from being subjected to racism. Melissa Harris-Perry was even the subject of this discrimination via her show. When she used her “national voice” and spoke out on her show, she was describes as having “lost it” and was “turned into the angry Black woman… not the insightful, brilliant Black woman”. Bell hooks noted that if this had been a White male commentary, they would have been seen as “boldly speak(ing) their truth”. There is still this struggle against the media’s insistence on “categorizing the Black female