TEACHING ABOUT INTERLOCKING OPPRESSIONS: THE CASE OF HIV AND WOMEN

by Donna A. Champeau and Susan M. Shaw

Perhaps one of the most difficult concepts in feminist thought for undergraduate students to grasp is that of interlocking oppressions, or what Patricia Hill Collins calls "the matrix of domination" (1996, 225). While students may understand a great deal about individual oppressions, such as racism, sexism, or classism, often their thinking about the intersections of gender, race, and class is more additive than interlocking. They assume that with the addition of each form of difference, oppression is worsened; but they do not realize that each oppression actually gives shape to the others and that the intersection of gender, race, and class is itself what structures each person's relationships of domination and subordination within the matrix.