What Is Intersectionality, and Where Did It Go Wrong?
How a Tool for Understanding Injustice Became a Dogma of Division
Intersectionality began with a noble purpose. Coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, the theory sought to describe how overlapping identities, such as race, sex, sexuality, and disability, can combine to create unique experiences of disadvantage. A black woman, for example, might face compounded forms of discrimination not fully understood when looking at race or sex alone.
At its best, intersectionality encouraged the understanding of complex realities. It reminded us that social identities don’t operate in isolation and that broad categories like “women” or “black Americans” obscure important differences within them.
However, as intersectionality left legal theory and entered activism, bureaucracy, and culture, it morphed from a tool for understanding complexity into a rigid moral worldview. What started as a lens became a litmus test. What was once an invitation to think outside the box became a command to conform.
When Theory Becomes Dogma
The core problem isn’t intersectionality itself but what happens when any theory becomes a dogma. When ideas are treated not as nuanced frameworks but as unquestionable truths, they stop being tools and become hammers. Used indiscriminately, they flatten the very nuance they were meant to illuminate.
This is what has happened to intersectionality. Once a method for asking better questions, it has become a blueprint for creating rigid moral caste systems, ideological policing, and social fragmentation.
A Partisan Political Project, Not a Neutral Tool
Despite its law school origins, intersectionality today is widely viewed not as a neutral or objective framework but as a vehicle for advancing a particular progressive ideology. It does not merely describe how inequalities might overlap; it increasingly prescribes how institutions should be restructured, how people should speak and think, and how policies must be enacted.
This ideological shift is evident in the implementation of equity quotas, DEI trainings, speech codes, and the reshaping of academic and workplace cultures. In many settings, questioning intersectional assumptions is no longer seen as honest intellectual disagreement but as bigotry or privilege.
Where Intersectionality Breaks Down
Identity Reductionism and Victimhood Hierarchies
Rather than treating individuals as whole persons, intersectionality often reduces them to a sum of demographic traits, then ranks those traits by how marginalized they are. It has become a point system where the more oppressed identities one claims, the more authority one is granted. This has led to the so-called “oppression Olympics,” where victimhood becomes a currency and identity a shortcut to moral legitimacy.
This not only encourages grievance over growth, but flattens human complexity. People are judged not by the content of their ideas or character, but by their demographic standing.
Oppressor vs. Oppressed: The Moral Binary
Intersectionality often collapses society into two moral categories: oppressors and the oppressed. Entire groups—white people, men, Westerners, and heterosexuals—are labeled as inherently complicit in systemic injustice. Their perspectives are dismissed not because they’re wrong, but because they’re catalogued as privileged.
This binary thinking leads to moral contradictions. For example, LGBTQ+ activists have aligned with authoritarian regimes under banners like “Queers for Palestine”—even when those regimes actively persecute gays, lesbians, and transgender people. In this framework, “oppressed” status trumps actual values and actions.
A Conspiratorial Worldview
Intersectionality’s emphasis on the interconnectedness of all oppressions can slide into paranoia. Complex societal issues are interpreted as evidence of a vast, invisible matrix of white male heterosexual dominance. Everything, from social faux pas to institutional norms, is seen as intentional and systemically sinister.
This lens creates a conspiratorial mindset where disagreement is seen not as misunderstanding but as evidence of complicity in evil. It casts whole populations as architects of injustice.
Selective Solidarity and Antisemitism
One of the most disturbing byproducts of intersectional ideology is its tolerance, and even embrace, of antisemitism. Jews who are “white-passing,” affluent, or who support Israel are often labeled oppressors, regardless of their historical and personal realities. In this framework, Jewish suffering and discrimination are dismissed because they don’t fit the dominant narrative.
This has fueled a disturbing pattern. In pro-Palestinian activism, LGBT marches, and certain academic feminist ideologies, antisemitic tropes are increasingly common, and mainstream Jews are excluded. Intersectionality’s rigid binary leaves no room for the complex, diasporic, and often contradictory nature of Jewish identity.
Silencing, Censorship, and the Decline of Reasoned Debate
In many institutions, intersectionality has led to a culture of self-censorship. People in “privileged” groups often feel unable to speak freely, even on issues where they have expertise. Meanwhile, others are pressured to perform their marginalization in order to be heard.
Traditional standards of reason, including debate, evidence, viewpoint diversity, and universal values, are often dismissed as colonialist and patriarchal. This undermines critical thinking and promotes groupthink where orthodoxy is prized over inquiry.
Institutional Dysfunction and Ideological Capture
When intersectionality becomes institutional policy, dysfunction follows. Hiring and admissions can become performative, prioritizing demographic representation over competence. Academic fields are reshaped not by scholarly rigor, but by adherence to ideological commitments.
In activism, movements fracture over ideological purity tests. Instead of organizing around shared goals, coalitions collapse under the weight of internal policing. Energy is spent on infighting rather than real progress.
The Rejection by Minorities Who Don’t See Themselves as Victims
Not all minorities see themselves as oppressed, and most are not political progressives. Many reject the idea that their identity defines them as victims. They find the narrative limiting, infantilizing, and psychologically damaging.
Figures such as Ritchie Torres, a gay black Latino congressman, Irshad Manji, a lesbian Middle Eastern-South Asian Muslim educator, and Bari Weiss, a bisexual Jewish woman journalist, have publicly repudiated intersectionality as simplistic and distorting. They and others insist on being seen as individuals, not avatars of group identity. Their rising prominence signals a broader pushback against identity essentialism.
The Cultural and Political Backlash
Intersectionality’s rise has sparked a growing backlash, one that’s cultural, political, and moral. Most Americans instinctively reject the idea that fairness is about identity rather than character. They feel alienated by the moral hierarchies, purity tests, esoteric language, and social reengineering associated with intersectionality.
This backlash helped fuel populist movements, helped get Trump re-elected, and shifted political discourse. Even within progressive circles, moderate voices now warn of the dangers of ideological overreach. Democratic Party leaders such as Pete Buttigieg and Gavin Newsom have distanced themselves from intersectionality’s more extreme applications.
The rejection is not just about policy, but about principle. Most people want to be treated as individuals, not categories. They believe that disagreement is not hate, that fairness is not oppression, and that justice must be consistent, not selectively applied.
References
How “intersectionality” is misused, and how to do better (London School of Economics)
The Limits of Intersectionality (National Review)
Intersectionality and Antisemitism: A New Approach (Fathom Journal)
Years ago, before the term intersectionality was in vogue, I learned about levels of inequality, which took into consideration an individual’s societal disadvantages as well as their advantages. It was a more wholistic and respectful way of considering one’s life experience.
Dividing, ranking and centering people into oppressors and the oppressed by their intersectionality scores is a surefire way to exacerbate discrimination. It already contributed to giving us Trump II.