See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love

by Valarie Kaur

Dr. King named three evils—racism, poverty, and militarism. But he left out a fourth—sexism. The assumption that women and girls are less than equal and therefore deserve less dignity and freedom is perhaps the most ancient, pervasive, and insidious evil of them all. But sexism is not a single issue. “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives,” said black feminist Audre Lorde. “Intersectionality,” a term coined by scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, is a concept that black women have used since Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman” speech in 1851. It describes how women fight on multiple fronts: Women of color must fight racism in addition to sexism; if they are poor and rural women, they must also fight poverty; if they are queer women, homophobia; if they are trans women, transphobia; if they are disabled women, stigma and barriers to access; if they are undocumented women, the threat of detention, deportation, and family separation. Since multiple inequalities determine our power and privilege and lived experience in society, these inequalities must be fought together, by all of us. Otherwise we fail our movements and ourselves.