Date of Award

5-2022

Document Type

Final Project

Course Title

WSS 690 MA Final Project

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Chair

Dr. Rajani Bhatia

Second Reader

Dr. Jennifer Dodge

Abstract

Responding to the increased visibility of socialist politics in the United States following the 2016 presidential election, this study explores current expressions of socialist feminism and socialist feminist perspectives on and experiences with electoral politics, political action(s), and identity mediation. Nine organizers were recruited from socialist organizations to participate in a onetime, semi-structured, in-depth interview and speak on their experiences in the current moment (2015-present). The data reveals that organizers in socialist spaces have easily reconciled their socialism with their feminism and reclaimed socialist feminism as a distinct theory and practice dispersed across several social justice issues, organizations, and campaigns. This study also finds that, within the various spaces the participants organize, their reliance on and use of intersectionality enables them to organize in a unique, and occasionally oppositional, manner by accounting for the differential impacts of multiple systems of oppression. The phrase little interventions everywhere is introduced as a descriptor of the resulting characteristic of current socialist feminism and as a method to unite allies in social justice. These findings suggest, by the nature of the socialist feminists’ distinct methods to organizing found in various non-socialist spaces, that intersectionality provides a bridge through which collaboration and coalition building across social justice issues and organizations is possible and supported

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