The Envoy

I can recall the moment I lost respect for feminism when a woman harassed my coworker for communicating in her native tongue. 

At our local grocery store in Harlem in the summer of 2022, an elderly lady had gathered the unwarranted audacity to intervene by saying, “This is America. Speak English. Go back to your own country if you want to speak Spanish.”

I was stunned. I had never encountered prejudice in such an explicit manner before. 

“What did you just say to her?” I asked demandingly. My voice trembled, but my anger was stern.

“Oh, you speak English. You should explain to your friend that, in America, we speak English, not Spanish,” the woman said.

That was my last straw. To hell with the “customer is always right” notion. To hell with feminism, because what happened to “women support women?”

“Well, ma’am,” I started. “I’m sorry if my coworker is not perfect and can’t master English like you’ve mastered harassing people in their workplace. I am reserving my right to deny service.”

Customers who entered the store during the encounter gradually began agreeing with me, yelling at the lady to get out.

“Racist!” they scolded.

A woman approached and praised me, calling me a strong and lovely girl. But why hadn’t she done anything? Why was my coworker rendered invisible by the other women until I spoke up? 

The situation revealed to me that the feminist movement’s objective of eradicating sexism, sexist exploitation, oppression and achieving full gender equality does not take into account the oppression that women of color face, particularly from white women. It’s fruitful promises of equality were unrealistic for me as a young, first-generation immigrant woman. I felt like it forced me to tolerate hatred by ignoring my unique identity and utilizing it as one division among women.  

If you haven’t been a victim of hate, you may see it as something for others to endure. This was certainly true for me before the realization that I was not a feminist, and everything I had ever felt or thought about feminism vanished with me, especially since Maria’s incident was not the only time I had felt excluded from Feminism. 

Hunter College is an institution whose female students make up 64.4% of the undergraduate population as of 2023, hailing from a majority Black, Asian, and Hispanic student body. Some of these students especially aim to come together to learn and promote their upward social mobility. As a Latina woman myself, I speak directly to those who walk these halls and may find pieces of themselves in my story.

On the last day of my first semester at Hunter, I noticed writing on a bathroom stall door. 

“You dumb [expletive] migrants from socialist countries, Venezuela and Cuba — stop coming,” the door read. It didn’t appear to be anything wide-scale, but, as a Venezuelan, it hurt as I reread it. 

Here at Hunter College’s bathroom, in this “supposed” safe space for women, my identity as an immigrant and a woman overlap. I wasn’t only a target of sexism; the racist writing targeted the intersectionality of my race and gender.

That day was a reminder that the feminist movement, as I understood it then, only seemed to address my struggles when it was convenient and when it fit a cookie-cutter narrative. 

I wish I could share an anecdote about how, despite everything, I found purpose in the feminist movement on my own. Instead, I enrolled in a gender and sexuality studies class in the fall 2023 semester to fulfill my degree requirement. 

“Who among us is a feminist?” inquired the professor. 

I was embarrassed and coy to show that I didn’t care for feminism, but everybody else seemed happy to be a part of the movement. Nonetheless, I did not raise my hand.

 It felt as though the feminist movement saw only a segment of my womanhood; being an immigrant is part of my unique experience of womanhood, but my status was used to exclude me by some female demographics. The feminist movement only offered to help if gender, not racial conflict had overtly harmed me.

But Maria’s experience, and my own, invoked a realization that I owe it to her and countless other women suffering the brutal intersection of sexism and racism, to participate in the female-led fight against oppression. 

As the semester progressed, I became aware of the intersection of my situation with racism and sexism, overly aware of my multifaceted identity. Kimberlé Crenshaw defined such phenomena as “intersectionality” in her famous Ted Talk, “The Urgency of Intersectionality.”  

“Intersectionality,” I murmured, trying out the word.

“Many years ago, I began to use the term ‘intersectionality’ to deal with the fact that many of our social justice problems, like racism and sexism, are often overlapping, creating multiple levels of social injustice,” said Crenshaw. 

Intersectionality argues that everyone is subject to numerous forms of oppression, including but not limited to their ethnicity, class, race, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, and other identity markers. 

Suppose intersectionality recognizes my unique qualities rather than confining them into a narrow category that differentiates me from other women. Why didn’t I feel like I belonged in the feminist movement? Why did I still find it so alienating? 

What I knew of the feminist movement either demanded that I give up my overlapping identities and experiences or offered the weak defense that they don’t exist. 

This sentiment remained until the end of the semester when I encountered Audre Lorde’s “There Is No Hierarchy Of Oppression.” 

“Within the lesbian community, I am Black, and within the Black community, I am a lesbian. Any attack against Black people is a lesbian and gay issue because I and thousands of other Black women are part of the lesbian community. Any attack against lesbians and gays is a Black issue because thousands of lesbians and gay men are Black. There is no hierarchy of oppression,” Lorde wrote.

Any hostility directed toward the immigrant community is an attack on the feminist community since many immigrants (myself included), are also committed to achieving gender equality and ending sexual exploitation, misogyny, and oppression, according to Lorde.

Through this, I’ve learned that intersectionality in feminism can exist, and it matters. It’s not just about gender; it’s about recognizing how race, class and other identities can interact to create unique forms of oppression. 

Perhaps I am a feminist after all, even if that means pushing the boundaries of the movement itself. I’ve come to understand that feminism is a large umbrella, and there’s room for all voices. Together, we can build a more inclusive movement without having to give up parts of ourselves to feel identified with its cause.

 A recently established Hunter chapter of the National Organization of Women (NOW) creates spaces like this on our own campus, for our majority Black and Brown students. At an event hosted by the club on May 10, attendees got to enjoy boba and cookies while they talked about women’s rights and the work Hunter NOW specifically does in advocacy work for issues such as racial and economic injustice, reproductive rights, and constitutional protections.

 While I was talking to some of the students and sharing how my experience at Hunter helped me understand intersectionality, I realized I wasn’t the only one who had felt excluded from the feminist movement at some point during our college careers. And I felt a huge responsibility to be a torch of bravery, morality and a dedicated commitment to making a better Hunter for all, even though some were already graduating.

“It will not be long before they appear to destroy you,” Lorde writes in “There Is No Hierarchy Of Oppression.” 

It’s not a question of whether discriminatory forces will appear to destroy us, but rather of when and where they will do so, like the overturning of Roe v. Wade or the disturbing writing on the women’s bathroom stall. 

 Let’s not stand for hate in any form, especially within the walls of our own school.

As our school motto “mihi cura fituri” reads, the care of the future is yours and in your hands. Nurture it, nourish it, and change it.