I'm Kimberly Crenshaw, and this is Season 2 of Intersectionality Matters, the podcast that brings

intersectionality to life by exploring the hidden dimensions of today's most pressing issues,

from Say Her Name and Me Too to the War on Civil Rights and the Global Rise of Fascism.

This idea travelogue lifts up the work of leading activists, artists, and scholars

and helps listeners understand politics, the law, social movements, and even their own lives

in deeper, more nuanced ways.

Facts about the black vagina.

My thinking about the relationship between slavery and intersectionality came to a head about

15 years ago.

I was asked by Eve Insler to write a vagina fact for a special

benefit performance of the vagina monologues at the Apollo Theater. Has the black vagina received

the respect she deserves? No. Y'all know.

The experience of performing this poem at the Apollo with so many actresses that I admired

was otherworldly.

I can't sing.

I have no other artistic skills.

So I never, ever, ever dreamed that I'd ever have the

opportunity. Is the black vagina respected when we, and I mean we, men as well as women, readily

embrace our men accused of rape and chastise women for not having the good sense God gave her.

Here's a little bit more of the poem that speaks directly to the relationship between intersectionality and slavery.

It wasn't the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, or the Stars and Stripes that gave birth to America.

It was the black vagina that laid the golden egg, or rather the shadow slave.

...