Immobilizing intersectionality: The performative inclusion of feminist expertise within PSI sexual violence policies

Abstract

In light of public scandals and legislative pressure, Canadian universities have instituted sexualized violence policies in an attempt to curb harm on campus. As the first step, policy-making committees and task forces were established to spearhead institutional change. Using data from 49 qualitative interviews with feminist faculty across Canada, we examine how these policy-making committees utilized feminist expertise, particularly whether feminists with intersectional positionalities and expertise were invited to the table and if their expertise was used to inform the resulting institutional policies. As our findings illustrate, even though policies profess to seek or incorporate intersectionality, experts in intersectionality– particularly those with intersectional positionalities– are rarely invited or heard. As we argue in this article, post-secondary institutions actively work against intersectionality by narrowing the mandates of committees and siloing task forces from other Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) concerns. Additionally, invitations to serve as experts on sexualized violence committees are often reserved for feminists deemed by administrators to be palatable, and those invited who embody diversity are used to rubber stamp the process of creating sexualized violence responses instead of informing the policies. This article illustrates the various ways in which PSI committees' constitutions and their mandates tend to make intersectionality a performative rather than informative guiding principle.