This Bridge Called My Back, Fourth Edition: Writings by Radical Women of Color

"I love This Bridge Called My Back . It was edited by two iconic feminists, Cherríe Moraga and Gloria E. Anzaldúa, in the 1980s. They brought together a diverse group of radical women to create a collection about intersectional feminism. They didn’t have the word intersectional then, it was coined by law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, but that’s effectively what it was. The essays are by Black women, women of color, indigenous women, Latinx women, disabled women, working class, women who were outside of the framework of what we now call ‘white feminism.’ This collection came out at a time when the feminist voices that people were hearing were those of iconic white feminists. The contributions, by the likes of Toni Cade Bambara and Audre Lorde, were so radical for its time. The collection was saying, ‘listen to something broader than white feminism’. White feminism today is usually associated with just fighting misogyny. Women like me have more to fight than just misogyny. I fight all the tentacles of the octopus. “Patriarchy is like an octopus and each one of its eight tentacles is one of the oppressions that privilege male dominance” There’s a quote I like to use from Gloria E. Anzaldúa, which really encapsulates the power of her feminism. She encourages women to speak out because we’re so often censored and she says, “Write with your eyes like painters, with your ears like musicians, with your feet like dancers. You are the truthsayer with quill and torch. Write with your tongues of fire. Don’t let the pen banish you from yourself. Don’t let the ink coagulate in your pens. Don’t let the censor snuff out the spark, nor the gags muffle your voice. Put your shit on the paper.” That’s a powerful statement and for me is was transformative. I put that quote as a preface to my first book. It really represents the spirit of This Bridge Called My Back . It’s one of the most vital issues today. In the UK and US, there is a horrendous amount of transphobia that is now translating into hateful legislation. It’s especially important for me now, as a perimenopausal woman. Transphobes who claim to be feminists would argue, ‘don’t reduce me to my ability to have children, I’m not just a baby-making machine’. But now they’re talking about biological determinism in a really ugly and cruel way. In order to evolve and to fight that tentacle of the octopus that is transphobia, what feminism has to do is reject the binary of gender and reject the binary of sex as well—especially as we learn more about indigenous cultures and especially as we come to realize that the binaries around gender and sex were in so many cases vestiges of colonialism. That’s why I continue to insist that we reject them now."