In Your Lane and Knowing Your Place

This chapter traces how intersectionality as a concept was taken up in online feminist knowledge cultures. Intersectionality in online feminist knowledge cultures worked as a relational ordering mechanism simplifying and plotting identities on a grid of privilege and disadvantage. Translated as a “standard,” rather than as a framework, young feminists walked a precarious line between opposing binaries of being “intersectional” or raising red flags of “not being inclusive.” This was intensified for white middle-class participants, linked to the earnest desire to do good, as well as the implicit self-assurance that what they said and did was of crucial importance. Thus, intersectionality, in its popularity, was interpreted as addressed to white feminists in particular, with participants of color often feeling that it was no longer “for” them.