Think/act: Intersectionality and feminism

I haven't decided how to respond to this, but it's been bothering me.

I'm presenting at a conference this month, giving a paper on a British-Pakistani poet. I'm frustrated because the conference organizers have put me on a panel called "Modern Ethnic Literature," whatever that means. Why wouldn't my paper be included in one of the several British literature panels at the conference?

I'm especially upset because my paper is on how multi-faceted identity is, how it's constantly changing and how one thing -- race, gender or sex -- cannot define a person. This panel, in other words, is the exact opposite of the thing I'm talking about. At the very least, it shows that no one bothered to read the abstract.

More than that, though, I'm frustrated because this isn't a problem specific to my university, as my roommate reminded me. I'm tired of the "ethnics" getting shucked into a neglected, undervalued corner of literature. I'm tired of that label in the first place. I'm tired of non-white, non-Western writers being labeled as the "Other." I'm tired of the fact that, in 2012, in the humanities, we're still using Western whiteness as the yardstick by which all other work is measured. I'm tired of the canon. I'm tired of exclusion.

As a white, middle-class woman, I know I'm speaking from a position of extreme privilege. But this conference has angered me especially at this moment, because I've been struggling with the failings of mainstream feminism to be inclusive and intersectional. I know I, as a feminist, can and must do better. I believe the onus absolutely falls on privileged groups to interrogate power structures, to actively challenge and oppose the same kind of binary thinking that we say we're against. The more I learn about feminisms, the more I see what work needs to be done. Mainstream feminism is still very much white, very much able-bodied, very much cis-gendered, very much straight. It's more exclusion.

Labels like "other" or, in the case above, "ethnic," then, are especially problematic. I'm upset about a minor paper at a tiny conference, yes, but it represents the larger, very real issues above. Separating literature in such an arbitrary, meaningless way hurts everyone. It denies the possibility of dialogue, of understanding how identity might really work. It denies the possibility of growth and inclusion. How can we become more inclusive if we can't even let everyone sit at the same table?