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Violence is a crucial domain for better understanding intersectionality: the field of gender-based violence is at the heart of reflections on intersectionality and its exclusionary effects. The seminal article by K. Crenshaw (1991)(who coined the term but not the concept) indeed developed the framework of intersectionality based on an empirical investigation of gender-based violence politics in the US. But neither intersectionality, nor its relation to violence, started with Crenshaw; there has been a long running interest in how to conceptualise, theorise, and empirically analyse multiple simultaneously existing inequalities and the relationship between social groups, social justice projects, and feminist movements (Hartmann 1976; Brownmiller 1976; Verloo 2006; Walby, Armstrong, and Strid 2012). Because violence is shaped by social positions and gender orders, and multiple inequalities are cause and consequence of gender-based violence, violence is a crucial domain for better understanding intersectionality. Consequently, there cannot be a sound understanding of gender-based violence and its mechanisms without including intersectional components of gender inequality in its definition and practice.

This chapter explores feminist politics against violence as a social justice project, referring not only to feminist movements organised against gender-based violence, or what might be called the violence against women movement, but invoking a broader social justice project that involves a mixture of activism, political work, policy development, and research. For this ‘feminist project’, the chapter shows how intersectional gender relations regarding race …