“Is Our Feminism Bullshit? The Importance Of Intersectionality In Adopting A Feminist Identity” by Rhea Ashley Hoskin, Kay E. Jenson and Karen L. Blair: Summary and Critique

🧠 Feminism as a Moral and Political Worldview

• Ideological Lens: Feminism framed as a belief system, ethical stance, or theoretical paradigm by 39.2% of participants.
• Ethos, Not Just Politics: Feminism seen as an ethical commitment to equity and justice.

“Feminism is the view that people should never be limited… on the basis of their perceived or real sex or gender identity” (Feminist, white, female; p. 8).

👎 Negativity and Misconceptions

• Limited Negativity: Only 10.5% of the sample expressed negative views; 96.6% of feminists provided positive definitions.
• Critique of Misandry: Non-feminists who did express negativity often framed feminism as “anti-men” or exclusionary.

“Feminism is now an excuse for misandry” (Non-feminist, 45, non-binary, white; p. 11).

📊 Quantitative Results: What Predicts Feminist Identity?

• Key Predictors (Hoskin et al., 2017, p. 13):
  • Being female: 3.08× more likely to identify as feminist.
  • Not defining feminism negatively: 11.6× more likely.
  • Defining feminism as intersectional: 4.24× more likely.
• No Significant Impact: Ethnicity did not significantly predict feminist identification in this sample.

💬 Mainstream vs. Intersectional Feminism

• Celebrity Influence: High-profile feminists may reduce stigma but risk simplifying feminism into a consumer identity.
• Critique of Pop Feminism: Often fails to center systemic oppression or intersectional struggles (Zeisler, 2016).

“Mainstream representations… continue to benefit from a privilege-based, white, heteropatriarchal society” (p. 14).

📢 Conclusion: “My Feminism Will Be Intersectional or It Will Be Bullshit”

• Thesis of the Paper: Intersectionality is not optional but essential for meaningful feminist identity and solidarity.
• Feminism’s Credibility: Without intersectionality, feminism risks becoming exclusive and ineffective.

“When we understand feminism as exclusively ‘equality for women’… feminist teachings are lost” (Zinn et al., 1986, as cited in Hoskin et al., 2017, p. 15).

📝 Critique

• ✅ Strengths:
  • Mixed methods approach provides rich insights.
  • Highlights disconnect between ideology and identification.
  • Adds to scholarship on evolving feminist identities.
• ❌ Limitations:
  • Sample lacks racial and socioeconomic diversity.
  • Self-selection bias likely (participants drawn to a gender-focused study).
  • Little exploration of how media narratives shape feminist definitions.

📚 1. Feminist Literary Theory

Contribution: Reinforces the need to move beyond essentialist, white-centric feminist narratives in both literary and sociocultural discourses.

• Challenges the reductive definition of feminism as “equality for women” alone, urging a redefinition that includes race, class, sexuality, and gender identity.
• Critiques the mainstream or “whitewashed” representation of feminism that often dominates literature and media.
• Calls for more inclusive feminist epistemologies that reflect diverse lived experiences.

“When we understand feminism as exclusively ‘equality for women’… feminist teachings are lost and the struggles of minoritized populations are diminished” (p. 15).
“These fractures gave way to modern feminist critiques of ‘global sisterhood’” (p. 2).

🔀 2. Intersectionality Theory (Black Feminist & Critical Race Theory)

Contribution: Applies and empirically validates intersectionality as a core component of feminist identity construction—shaping how feminism should be theorized and practiced.

• Demonstrates that people who define feminism in intersectional terms are 4.24× more likely to identify as feminists.
• Reaffirms Kimberlé Crenshaw’s theory by showing how race, gender, class, and sexuality must be co-considered in any valid feminist framework.

“True feminism is intersectional” (Participant quote, p. 10).
“Intersectionality… requires an intersecting approach in order to elicit social change” (p. 12).
“Dzodan questioned Slutwalk’s failure to address systemic racism within their movement…” (p. 15).

🎭 3. Poststructuralist Theory

Contribution: Challenges fixed, monolithic meanings of feminism by emphasizing its discursive fluidity and multiplicity.

• Views feminism as mutable, evolving, and context-dependent, resisting essential definitions—core to poststructuralist thought.
• Encourages interrogation of dominant narratives and recognition of power-laden identity constructs.

“There is no single ‘Feminism’ but rather there are multiple feminisms rooted in the desire for equal treatment” (p. 9).
“Feminism is a set of multiple theories” (p. 9).

🧱 4. Queer Theory

Contribution: Challenges cisnormative and heteronormative boundaries of mainstream feminism, reflecting queer theoretical concerns.

• Includes genderqueer, trans, and non-binary perspectives as central to feminist discourse—not as peripheral.
• Highlights critiques of feminism’s failure to include trans voices and queer perspectives.

“Feminism… often very exclusionary towards trans people” (Genderqueer participant, p. 11).
“Fractures transpire when those whose identities have been marginalized… carve out space…” (p. 2).

🎬 5. Media and Cultural Theory

Contribution: Critiques the commodification and celebrity branding of feminism in pop culture—especially in how it flattens the political into a digestible aesthetic.

• Warns that mainstream feminism’s visibility in media often comes at the cost of ideological depth and political intersectionality.

“Mainstream representations… continue to benefit from a privilege-based, white, heteropatriarchal society” (p. 14).
“Perhaps it would be more beneficial to focus on the complex and accountable politic into which feminism has grown” (p. 14).

📖 6. Reader-Response Theory (Sociological Turn)

Contribution: Highlights the gap between individual understandings of feminism and collective textual (or cultural) representations.

• Shows how lay definitions shape, accept, or reject feminist texts and ideologies.
• Encourages scholars to examine how audiences perceive and internalize feminism based on lived experiences.

“We cannot completely understand the reasons why people may or may not identify as a feminist if we do not have a complete understanding of how people conceptualize and define feminism” (p. 3).
“Participants were asked to provide their definition of feminism…” (p. 5).

🔍 Limited Racial Diversity in the Sample

• Despite the study’s intersectional goals, the participant pool was 81.7% white, potentially limiting the generalizability of findings related to race and intersectionality.

“Although there were no significant group differences based on ethnicity…” (p. 12) – this may reflect sample homogeneity rather than actual equality in feminist understanding.

📉 Overreliance on Self-Reported Definitions

• Definitions of feminism were self-reported and unprompted, which can reflect participants’ rhetorical knowledge more than their actual ideological commitment or action.
• Participants might articulate politically correct definitions that don’t reflect deeper beliefs or behaviors.

🧪 Methodological Constraints of Thematic Analysis

• Thematic analysis, while rich, is subjective, and the study offers limited transparency about how final themes were resolved among coders beyond quoting inter-rater reliability.

Possible bias in the categorization of what counts as “intersectional” vs. “non-intersectional.”

📊 Ambiguity Around Intersectionality Definition

• The study does not operationalize “intersectionality” with precision. It treats it as a value in participant responses without interrogating how deeply or consistently it is understood.

One can claim “feminism is for everyone” without meaningfully engaging with systems of racial, class, or queer oppression.

🧭 Neglect of Transnational and Decolonial Feminist Voices

• The critique of mainstream Western feminism is valid, but the paper centers U.S. and Canadian perspectives, missing broader transnational feminist frameworks (e.g., Mohanty, Spivak).
• This risks reinforcing the Western academic gaze even while critiquing it.

🧱 Underdeveloped Engagement with Queer and Trans Feminist Theory

• While the study includes gender-diverse participants, the engagement with queer theory and trans feminism is underexplored conceptually.

Trans inclusion is mentioned, but not deeply theorized beyond participant responses.

🪞 Binary Framing of Feminist Identity

• The study operates within a binary of “feminist vs. non-feminist”, which may oversimplify nuanced identities such as “pro-feminist,” “feminist-leaning,” or “post-feminist.”

Risk of flattening complexity in political identity formation.

🎯 Potential Overshadowing of Other Feminist Goals

• By focusing heavily on identity (i.e., who calls themselves a feminist), the study risks decoupling feminist identity from action or organizing.

Structural goals like policy change, labor rights, and bodily autonomy are largely sidelined.