Standing in the Intersection: Feminist Voices, Feminist Practices in Communication Studies

4. Placing Sex/Gender at the Forefront: Feminisms, Intersectionality, and Communication Studies

97 Chapter 4 Placing Sex/Gender at the Forefront: Feminisms, Intersectionality, and Communication Studies Sara Hayden and D. Lynn O’Brien Hallstein1 The problem with calling this work third-­ wave feminism is not that it isn’t necessarily feminist; the problem is that how the work is feminist is not articulated in most cases. If the new feminism means that gender is not always the central category of analysis, then more work needs to be done to specify when and why it should or should not be. —Carissa Showden2 Over the past several decades, scholars in communication studies have incorporated intersectional thinking into our work. Stemming from feminist theorizing, intersectional thinking involves attending to the multiple and intersecting axes of power that form identities and upon which instances of oppression and resistance are enacted. As feminist rhetorical scholars, we are intrigued by and committed to participating in efforts to engage in intersectional work. At the same time, however, our commitment to feminism specifically—the exploration of sex/gender and the eradication of barriers to women’s agency—means that our efforts to engage in intersectional work are coupled with a commitment to placing sex/ gender at the forefront of our research, albeit always in the context of multiple axes of power. We recognize that the previous statement may cause some readers to pause; indeed, to some it may even seem to be an oxymoron. After all, one of the goals of intersectional work is to offer a corrective to the racist, classist, and heterosexist assumptions that undergird Sara Hayden and D. Lynn O’Brien Hallstein 98 some earlier feminist scholarship—scholarship that focuses on “women” but discusses only women who are white, straight, cisgendered ,3 able bodied, and middle class. Yet we do not believe that the foregrounding of sex/gender necessarily reflects such assumptions , and we maintain that a sustained commitment to exploring sex/gender can be held in the context of intersectional work. In this chapter, then, one of our goals is to explain what a commitment to placing sex/gender at the forefront of our scholarship means to us, why we make this commitment, and what we believe is to be gained from this approach. Ultimately, we make the case that foregrounding sex/gender can be compatible with intersectional thinking. Equally important, however, is a related goal: to explore intellectual and methodological concerns we have about how intersectionality functions in practice. In brief, our decision to maintain a focus on sex/gender (again, always in the context of other forms of power) also stems from our concern over the ways that some third-­ wave feminist scholars and activists have engaged in intersectional work. As we discuss in detail below, in an effort to address the multiple axes of power within which identities are formed and instances of oppression and resistance are enacted, some third-­ wave feminists turn their attention away from gender such that it is not clear what is feminist about their work. Indeed, some third-­ wave feminists short shrift issues related to sex/gender, ironically replicating a sexist system in which women’s issues are considered of lesser importance than other issues. The tendency of some third-­ wave feminists to minimize sex/ gender points to a lacuna in discussions of intersectionality. That is, while there has been much work discussing what intersectionality means as a theory, less has been done to ferret out what it means to engage intersectional scholarship in practice—as a method. Intersectionality calls on scholars and activists to consider multiple and intersecting axes of power, yet because it is impossible to consider “everything,” or to assume a “god’s eye view,” scholars must always make choices about where and how to focus on intersecting axes of power. Those choices are best made reflexively and transparently.4 Our concern with third-­ wave intersectional thinking, then, is that it needs more justificatory grounds and explanation when put into practice. In other words, we suggest that we all would do well to provide justificatory grounds to explain our foci, including in intersectional scholarship. In the case of the third-­ wave feminist scholarship discussed below, we suggest that it is a lack of reflexivity that leads to the short shrifting of sex/gender. In contrast, as we incorporate intersectional Placing Sex/Gender at the Forefront 99 thinking into our work, we choose to reflexively and transparently foreground sex/gender, but we do so...