Intersectionality 101
THE WOMEN’S MARCH came to Washington, D.C., on January 21, 2017, the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration. Its purpose was to call attention to the incoming president’s history of appalling behavior toward women—behavior to which Trump had all but admitted in the infamous hot-mic moment during an Access Hollywood taping. “When you’re a star, they let you do it,” Trump had said. “You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy.”
This was a statement that rightly offended millions of Americans of all political stripes—Trump’s electoral fortunes were never lower than immediately after the tape’s release—and thus the march held the promise of uniting the country around a universal, positive message: It’s not OK to abuse women.
More than half a million people descended on D.C. for the march, making it the largest protest in the United States since the Vietnam War era. It was a fairly awe-inspiring spectacle. Walking just a few blocks from my apartment, I was greeted by a sea of pink hats. Many of the protesters had chosen to reclaim Trump’s own vulgar language, and I saw dozens of signs bearing some variant of the slogan “This pussy grabs back.” Others were less confrontational: A young woman with pink streaks in her brown hair held a sign that said, “To love, we must survive; to survive, we must fight; to fight, we must love.” Her friend stood next to her, waving a sign that featured a hand-drawn Donald Trump with the universally recognized emoji for excrement atop his head and the words Dump Trump.
All in all, the Women’s March was a success for the nascent anti-Trump movement informally known as the #Resistance. More people showed up to protest than to attend the inauguration—something that seemed to infuriate the president, forcing several Trump staffers to make false statements about the relative sizes of the crowds. (This was the genesis of presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway’s now infamous line about “alternative facts.”)
Yet many of the young leftists I interviewed told me they thought the protest was a disgrace. According to them, it became too inclusive.
“That’s actually fucking right,” said Laila, a 26-year-old Muslim woman and political activist, when I asked if that was why she did not attend the march. Although she lives in Washington, D.C., Laila skipped town that weekend. “I’m tired of being a poster child for someone else’s attempt at inclusivity,” she explained.
In her view, by including so many different perspectives, organizers had watered down the message and ended up marginalizing the people who should have been the focus. They took “an approach that co-opted the narratives of many who have already been fighting in this space, specifically, black women.”
Laila was hardly the only young activist who felt that way about the Women’s March. Juniper, a 19-year-old trans woman, castigated the event as “super white” and “super cisgender-centric.” (, the opposite of , describes people who identify as the gender they were assigned at birth.) She was skeptical of it at best, she said.
