Chapter 1 brings the American state into full view by showing the ways in which its policy arm reinforces gender, economic, and racial inequality. The chapter situates this institutional function within a larger historical context of patriarchal systems that reproduce these inequalities in ways that must be understood when it comes to addressing gendered violence. The chapter then introduces the original concept of intersectional advocacy and explains its theoretical and empirical contours: how it is rooted in Black Feminist theory and developed from a practical understanding of how advocacy groups represent intersectionally marginalized constituents. After establishing the theoretical and empirical groundwork for intersectional advocacy, the chapter ends with a discussion of why this practice is important, how it travels across issue contexts, and how it is studied throughout the book.

This essay was first published in the online magazine Quillette, in which I addressed the growing problem of identity politics, intersectionality theory, and the tribal divisiveness that has polarized politics today, particularly down racial lines, which is a perverse inversion of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream of judging people by the content of their character instead of the color of their skin, or their gender, or religion, or whom they are sexually attracted to, or any of the other intersectional categories, such as ethnicity, language, dialect, education, generation, occupation, political party, disability, marital status, veteran status, and more.