That move is often about re-centering. When Black women name race and gender together, the response isn’t just disagreement—it’s
That move is often about re-centering.
Photo by Taylor Turtle
When Black women name race and gender together, the response isn’t just disagreement—it’s anxiety about losing narrative control. Saying “misogyny is older” becomes a way to:
-
Reassert a single hierarchy of harm
-
Keep the conversation legible to white experience
-
Avoid reckoning with racial accountability
-
Frame complexity as distraction
It’s not about history.
It’s about who gets to define the terms.
So What Happens When Women With Disabilities Speak?
Here’s where it gets complicated.
Yes—women with disabilities do get pushback
But it often looks different.
They are frequently:
-
Infantilized rather than accused
-
Pitied rather than challenged
-
Spoken about instead of spoken with
-
Treated as exceptions rather than structural evidence
Their pain is often acknowledged in theory, but ignored in practice.
Where the Difference Shows
When women with disabilities name misogyny without challenging race, they are often welcomed as reinforcing the “misogyny first” frame.
But when disabled women—especially disabled Black women—name race, gender, disability, class, and power together, the tone shifts.
That’s when:
-
They’re told they’re “overcomplicating things”
-
Their insights are labeled “too much”
-
Their needs are framed as impractical
-
Their survival strategies are questioned
Sound familiar?
The Pattern Beneath Both
What’s being resisted isn’t disability.
It isn’t race.
It isn’t gender.
It’s multiplicity.
Any woman who says:
“More than one system is harming me at the same time”
…threatens a framework that depends on:
-
Clean categories
-
Linear explanations
-
One dominant story
Black women are punished fastest for this because our lives force the issue immediately. There is no version of our existence that is single-axis.
Disabled women experience pushback when their reality refuses to stay tidy.
Disabled Black women experience it most sharply, because there is no way to separate anything.
Why This Feels So Infuriating
The problem is not the claim itself.
The problem is how selectively it is used.
If “misogyny is older” were a true guiding principle—and not a convenience—then it would be applied consistently.
That would mean:
-
Disability would always be centered, because disabled women face some of the oldest and most entrenched forms of exclusion, control, and vulnerability.
-
Class would always be prioritized, because economic exploitation predates most modern political systems and shapes who can leave harm and who cannot.
-
Colonial harm would never be postponed, because empire and conquest reorganized the entire world—and still determine whose lives are extractable today.
But that is not what happens.
Those harms are often allowed into feminist conversations.
They are acknowledged, named, and even used to expand analysis.
Race is treated differently.
When race is raised—especially by Black women—it is framed as:
-
A derailment
-
A distraction
-
A complication
-
A threat to unity
Not because it is less serious, but because it challenges who is centered.
What the Inconsistency Reveals
This selective logic exposes an uncomfortable truth:
The argument is not really about history.
It is about control of the narrative.
Race is the one axis that directly calls into question:
-
Who feminism is built around
-
Whose experience is treated as the default
-
Who gets to speak without explanation
-
Who is expected to adapt
That is why race is labeled “divisive” while other harms are described as “important additions.”
The Quiet Rule at Work
There’s an unspoken rule in many feminist spaces:
“You may bring your whole self—
as long as it doesn’t challenge white women’s centrality.”
Black women break that rule by existing honestly.
A Grounding Reframe
So no—you’re not imagining it.
Women with disabilities do face dismissal.
But Black women face a specific kind of pushback tied to:
-
Racial authority
-
Narrative ownership
-
Who feminism imagines as its default subject
That’s why the “misogyny is older” line lands differently when it’s aimed at you.
It’s not history.
It’s hierarchy.
And you’re allowed to name that—without apology.