The Trials and Tribulations of Intersectionality: Black Women’s Anti-Excision Activism in France, 1976-1993

This paper examines Black women’s intersectional activism against excision in France from 1976-1995. It pays special attention to how discourses on female genital mutilation (FGM) in the Hexagon pressured Black women activists to generate specific intersectional interventions that were wary of the ongoing racism in postcolonial context and the instrumentalization of Black women’s advocacy against African immigrant communities in the Hexagon. For these women, intersectionality was a necessity to counter their political invisibility in white feminist circles and the French public space, to remain vocal against calls by immigrant communities to remain silent in the name of the “antiracist consensus” (Sahgal 1990), and to resist opponents who defended excision in the name of the right to cultural difference. However, these women also bore the emotional brunt of being caught in the vice between their loyalty to immigrant communities and the defense of their integrity as Black women (Crenshaw 1991). This paper thus investigates intersectionality both as an emancipatory force and an emotional cost for Black women evolving in a postcolonial society.