Archiving Intersectionality: An analysis of the “Sam the Sexual Harassment Man” case
By Miranda Alyssia Renda
Third
wave feminism focused on various intersecting oppressions; it was no longer
only concerned white women’s issues.[i]
Feminist legal scholar Kimberle
Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality in 1989 to “denote the various ways
in which race and gender interact and shape the multiple dimensions of Black
women's experiences”.[ii]
In her article “Mapping the Margins”, Crenshaw brings an institutional and
critical awareness to intersecting patterns of sexism and racism, to highlight
the gaps in social movements at the time where intersecting experiences were
not represented within feminism and antiracism.[iii] However, although
there was awareness of intersecting oppressions, sexism, and racism were still
not treated as intersecting issues. In this paper, I will draw an archival
newspaper article from 1990 from the Quebec Gay Archives which discusses a
sexism case in a local Montreal record store. This case was brought to the
Human Rights Commission for sexual harassment in the workplace where similar
cases were previously won.[iv]
For
the purposes of this assignment, this paper will highlight how despite talk
about intersectionality at the time, the archival article “Sam the Harassment
Man” demonstrates how racism was not being represented in mainstream feminist
movements. Here, I will stress the impact that the failure to include race in
feminist movements had on racism movements as there was a gap in thinking about
race and sexism as correlated issues. Although this archival article represents
a past moment, this is still a crucial issue feminist’s movements are facing
today.
An
archival article collected from the Quebec Gay Archives which is located in
Montreal and was started in 1983 by two archivists with the intent to create a
space for Queered material speaks to the issue of sexism during the late
1980’s.[v]
The article was published in The Link, the Concordia University newspaper in
Montreal, on December 4th, 1990 titled “Sam the Sexual Harassment Man”. The
article is about a Concordia student who took her experience of sexual
harassment in the workplace to the Human Rights Commission.[vi] Paula Luther, the plaintiff, reported
that “her boss forbid her from close-cropping her hair, stating that it was too
“extreme” of a haircut for a woman while allowing at least five male employees
to wear the same hairstyle”. Luther was then fired from her job,
which was when she decided to take this case to the Human Rights Commission.
Luther spoke out about her boss “humiliating her in public, commenting on her
sweatshirt that bore the slogan “No Means No”,…and other forms of violence”.[vii]
She hoped that this would set a “precedent for harassment not involving sexual
advances”.[viii]
Luther’s bravery is a representation of the strong collective movement to end
violence against women in Montreal. It was during this time that the
Polytechnique massacre took the life of fourteen women who the shooter called
feminists. As a result of this
tragedy, activism about institutional and workplace sexism was strengthened by
Canadian feminists.[ix]
This
archival article and the Polytechnique tragedy highlight the brevity of
activism that was necessary to organize the growing issue of violence against
women. It was said that the
massacre spurred numerous campaigns to end violence against women and create
international solidarity.[x]
The political conditions in Montreal lead to an urging importance for
anti-sexism and anti-violence against women. However, despite intersectionality
discourse becoming prominent during this time period, the voices of women of
color were largely left out of this movement as race was never a factor that
was mentioned. Therefore, the massacre and the archival article highlight how
white women can gain attention during this time, while violence against women
of color was not in the mainstream news. As Crenshaw stresses in her article,
“the effort to politicize violence against women will do little to address the
experiences of nonwhite women until the ramifications of racial stratification
among women are acknowledged”.[xi]
As such, the Sam the Record Man case is representative of the ways in which
intersectionality had not yet been put into practice in the mainstream feminist
discourses.
Furthermore, although the period of the
late 1980’s, early 1990’s had a growing dialogue addressing intersecting
oppressions, without the societal influence from the feminist movements taking
on different oppressions, racism movements failed to do so as well. Racism was certainly a topic of
discussion as Peggy McIntosh’s article titled “White Privilege: Unpacking the
Invisible Knapsack” demonstrates the realization at the end of the 1980’s that
white people inherently had a privilege compared to their non-white equals.
McIntosh points out that there is “a phenomenon of white privilege that
was…denied and protected”.[xii]
However, racism movements solely focused on one oppression which was race. This
can be seen as a consequence of feminist movements failing to address
intersections of racism as it does not illustrate a societal urge to forward
the interests of people who experience intersecting issues. This is emphasized
by Crenshaw when she states that “racism as experienced by people of color who
are of a particular gender-male-tends to determine the
parameters of antiracist strategies, just as sexism as experienced by women who
are of a particular race-white-tends to ground the women’s movement”.[xiii]
An example is the 1995 “Million Man March, when black Americans from across the
country rallied in Washington, D.C. to unify under a mission which aimed to
revitalize the black community”.[xiv]
This event is striking as it demonstrates an organized march by a majority of men
who are representing the black community, including women, to combat “the
harmful stereotypes often portrayed against them”.[xv] In
similarity to the archival article about Sam the Record Man, this movement also
only focused on one oppression despite current discussion about
intersectionality. Therefore, this demonstrates that without the influence of
racism being represented in feminist movements, racism movements did not feel the
need to further their agendas by focusing on other oppressions besides race.
Overall,
despite the period of the late 1980’s and early 1990’s being marked by the
third wave of feminism, we still see sexism and racism being treated as
separate. As seen in the archival article, the feminist movement heavily
focused on the issue of sexism but failed to acknowledge how sexism may be
affected differently by someone with other oppressions as well. This is one of
many feminist movements that continued to ignore the effects of intersecting
oppressions. As Crenshaw states, “the failure of feminism to interrogate race
means that the resistance strategies of feminism will often replicate and
reinforce the subordination of people of color”.[xvi] The archival
article from The Link demonstrates that although intersectionality is an
important part of the discussion during that time , race was not being
represented in the feminist movement as some feminist movements were still
primarily focusing on the single oppression activism. This becomes problematic,
as the feminist activism that executed consciousness raising about sexism were
ignoring other oppressions. This results in a societal influence for other
realms of activism to also ignore intersecting oppressions. As was seen in the
“Million Man March”, black men from around the country gathered together to
advocate for racial equality on the behalf of all black people in the country,
including women. There was no platform for women although their needs may have
been different. Comparably, the feminist movement behind the “Sam the
Harassment Man” case also rallied behind one oppression and failed to have a
platform for those facing intersecting oppressions. As Crenshaw states, “the
failure of anti-racism to interrogate patriarchy means that anti-racism will
frequently reproduce the subordination of women”.[xvii] Therefore,
because intersectionality did not translate into feminist movements at the
time, anti- racism movements were not influenced to further their agendas and
take into account further oppressions other than race.
In
conclusion, for many years, sexism and racism were seen as separate issues. As
observed by Crenshaw, “Feminist efforts to politicize the experiences of women
and anti-racist efforts to politicize experiences of people of color have
frequently proceeded as though the issues and experiences they each detail occur
on mutually exclusive terrains”.[xviii]
Historically, feminist activism was dominated by single issue politics, while
the introduction of the last leg of the second and third wave of feminism
brought about an awareness for thinking about various oppressions in our
everyday lives. Although Crenshaw coined this intersectionality in 1989,
anti-sexism and anti-racism movements were still shown to treat these issues as
separate. Therefore, although there was a growing consciousness towards the way
sexism and race intersect, it was still ignored in major discourses. This is
seen in the violence against women movements in Montreal in the early 1990’s,
and their lack of consciousness for women of color and their differing battles.
This becomes problematic as it does not create a societal urge for other movements
to adopt intersectionality. Moreover, the awareness for intersectionality did
not directly translate into activist movements at the time the awareness was
raised. As I have read, it is still a relevant issue today that people from
various oppressed backgrounds have to fight for focus on their unique
intersecting political life struggles.
[i] Alexandra Ketchum, Sexual Diversity and Social Movement(s)
Histories, McGill University, May 2, 2018.
[ii] Kimberle Crenshaw,
"Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence
against Women of Color." Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (1991):
1241-299. doi:10.2307/1229039, 2.
[iii] Kimberle Crenshaw,
"Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence
against Women of Color.", 1.
[v] “The Quebec Gay Archives, yesterday and today”, accessed May 14,
2019, http://agq.qc.ca/en/background/.
[vi] Michael Orsini, “Sam the Sexual Harassment Man”, 3.
[xi] Kimberle Crenshaw,
"Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence
against Women of Color.", 12.
[xii] Peggy McIntosh, 1988,
“White Privilege and Education.” Encyclopedia of Diversity in Education.
doi:10.4135/9781452218533.n724, 1.
[xiii] Kimberle Crenshaw,
"Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence
against Women of Color.", 5.
[xiv] Lilly Workneh, “Million Man March”, Huffington Post, 2015,1.
[xvi] Kimberle Crenshaw,
"Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence
against Women of Color.", 5.
[xvii] Kimberle Crenshaw,
"Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence
against Women of Color.", 5.
[xviii] Kimberle Crenshaw,
"Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence
against Women of Color.", 2.
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