Running + Intersectional Feminism: All Flourishing is Mutual
Upon a cursory search of the word “feminism” the first definition that comes up is, “the advocacy of women's rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes.” Which, as many folks know, is just a tiny fraction of what feminism is. If you search the word “intersectionality” you will find that intersectionality was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw which she defines as, “A metaphor for understanding the ways that multiple forms of inequality or disadvantage sometimes compound themselves and they create obstacles that are often not understood within conventional ways of thinking of anti-racism or feminism.” This is a more complete and accurate way to view feminism—through an intersectional lens. Intersectional feminism amplifies the voices of those facing multiple, overlapping oppressions to understand the complexities of inequalities and their interconnections.
It would be beneficial for us runners to look at running through an intersectional lens. If we say we run for community and to support others, we have to put actions behind those words. Which is why I had to talk with Ayako about representation, specifically of female runners who have been systemically excluded. Ayako explains, “I consider myself a feminist but if and only if it is intersectional. The way I see it, these so-called feminists in running…of which the majority are white, well off, and elitist…aren’t really feminists to me. When “feminism” [which she puts in quotes intentionally] in running ignores trans women, BIPOC women, older women, differently-abled women, and slower women…it ain’t feminism. I will say that with my full chest!” Ayako is someone who sees the need for change, thinks critically about running culture, and puts words and ideas into actions, “I always say, the things that I love the most are the things I want to improve the most. And if your reaction is to be defensive, then you're probably the problem.” Sure, running can be as easy as putting on a pair of shoes and running out of your front door, but if we look at running through an intersectional lens, we see that is not true for many runners.
Perhaps obstacles and barriers to running are not well understood within conventional ways of thinking about races, run clubs, or initiatives for women in running, or perhaps they are and still in the face of that knowledge some folks continue to uphold white supremacy characteristics within running culture—power hoarding, scarcity mindset, sense of urgency, and right to comfort, just to name a few. I will refer you to the comments on this instagram post to get an idea of what is still very common within running culture and representation in running. The, “Here for the Woman’s Race” is a well-intentioned initiative on women’s equity in trail running. But as with many attempts to uplift women, this initiative falls short as the focus is white women with the means to participate as athletes in trail running. If you look at the organization that supports this initiative, Professional Trail Runners Association, you will find under their “Women’s Equality” working group that their long-term goal is to, “Encourage and support growth of higher percentage of diverse participation in races.” They also have a separate “Accessibility, Inclusivity, and Diversity” working group with the long-term goal to, “Make trail running more diverse in a sustainable and lasting way, enabling all sorts of people access to international races, events, and circuits.” First of all—I’m sorry, WHAT? “All sorts of people.” This made me laugh, but also, if you can’t name what your diversity goals are, and name who you want showing up, you aren’t serious in achieving diversity within trail running. NAME IT. Second, I am curious why they have separated their accessibility, inclusion, and diversity working group from their women’s equality working group. Equality can easily be centered on whiteness. Equality doesn’t have to have the goals of diversity and inclusion to accomplish better media exposure, higher race participation, and equal prize money for women. That can all be accomplished under equality while centering whiteness. We live in a culture where making mistakes is looked upon as shameful, rather than an opportunity for learning and growth. We also live in a culture where questioning and critical thinking are not as common as one would hope. And look, I don’t critique to be a “hater” and I don’t critique without thoughtful ideas or solutions or the want for all of us to be better. In a world that moves fast and doesn’t wait for people to catch up, it can be inconvenient to take time to be an intentional listener and learner. Sitting down and talking with Ayako I learned some of what has shaped her ideas and thoughts on running and the culture within the sport, especially around representation of all women.
Ayako describes herself as being a proud woman and being a Japanese-American who is very rooted in her Japanese culture. As someone who grew up without cultural practices, I love hearing about the practices people have so I ask her to share examples of her Japanese culture, “I think I was rooted in my culture in all the ways. The more practical ways like language, tradition, holidays, but also in the cultural societal ways that are deeply ingrained in us. Like the concept of obligation, ‘gaman’ to persevere, not being a nuisance—just shut up and don’t be a bother, which for me are all very much part of how I am. But the ‘counter (Japanese) culture’ part of me is that I’m an Asian woman who stands up for herself now, speaks out on things even when it’s not popular or gets backlash. A fuck-the-patriarchy feminist and anti-gender norms/roles. That is how I see myself as extremely bi-cultural.” What Ayako calls the counter culture part of her, to me, is an example of thinking and questioning who makes the rules? Who sets the standards and why? Do these practices benefit the collective or the few? Which brings me to the writings of Anuradha Ghandy, who I only recently learned about in this podcast episode. For the purposes of this conversation, I think her critique of liberal feminism is a helpful framework to understand why the only approach to feminism in running culture (and, in turn, big C culture) must be intersectional. In, Philosophical Trends in the Feminist Movement, Ghandy writes:
Liberalism has the following weaknesses:
1. It focuses on the individual rights rather than collective rights.
2. It is ahistorical. It does not have a comprehensive understanding of women’s role in history nor has it any analysis for the subordination (subjugation) of women.
3. It tends to be mechanical in its support for formal equality without a concrete understanding of the condition of different sections/classes of women and their specific problems. Hence it was able to express the demands of the middle classes (white women from middle classes in the US and upper class, upper caste women in India) but not those of women from various oppressed ethnic groups, castes and the working, labouring classes.
4. It is restricted to changes in the law, educational and employment opportunities, welfare measures etc and does not question the economic and political structures of the society which give rise to patriarchal discrimination. Hence it is reformist in its orientation, both in theory and in practice.
5. It believes that the state is neutral and can be made to intervene in favour of women when in fact the bourgeois state in the capitalist countries and the semicolonial and semi-feudal Indian state are patriarchal and will not support women’s struggle for emancipation. The State is defending the interests of the ruling classes who benefit from the subordination and devalued status of women.
6. Since it focuses on changes in the law, and stateschemes for women, it has emphasised lobbying and petitioning as means to get their demands. The liberal trend most often has restricted its activity to meetings and conventions and mobilising petitions calling for changes. It has rarely mobilised the strength of the mass of women and is in fact afraid of the militant mobilisation of poor women in large numbers.
Ghandy’s first, second, and third points align well within running culture, while points 4-6 align within our big C culture. Considering this, I want to bring it back to my conversation with Ayako. When she began trail running around she quickly fell in love with it. “[In 2021] there was a women’s half marathon in Colorado and I thought, ‘Great! More female athletes!’ but it was so white; it was uncomfortably white for me. The more I went to trail runs or races outside of the Bay Area, I just started to notice [the whiteness]. Even in the Bay Area the sport is still super white, but I think as a region we have a little bit more diversity than some other parts of the country. It's not something I was consciously trying to think about but it was something that I started to notice.” Personally, I find that when you start to notice ways of being that don’t feel right, or see injustices to people and the planet, it can feel overwhelming. The alienation we experience under capitalism has us believing if it isn’t happening to us, it isn’t our problem—we shrug our shoulders and say, “Well, what can you do?” But Ayako thinks we can do better and shares, “In 2020, the world was shut down and there were also a lot of social injustices happening in this country that got a lot of attention but [I thought] what does that mean? That is when I got involved with Anti-Racist Run Club.” This run club uses running and their platform to center communities affected by racism, as well as educate runners how racism shows up in running spaces, as well as outside of running, and what we can do to fight back against a racist and white supremacist culture. Ayako’s intention with being involved with Anti-Racist Run Club was turning conversations around social justice issues into actions, and in 2021 she became co-leader of the club. 2021 is also when she became a co-leader of We Run Long, a community of BIPOC runners. In 2024, coming full circle from her trail race experience three years earlier in Colorado, Ayako and 25 of her We Run Far teammates came together for the inaugural Camp We Run Long in the same town where she had her (very white) trail race experience. The camp was fully sponsored by Altra, as well as the race director who gave the runners free entries into the race. This is a powerful example of what can be accomplished when people who are typically excluded come together and decide to change standards and change the rules. How we think ripples out to how we behave, so we can embrace change within running culture and shape it in a way as to benefit us all, or we fight it until we realize, holy shit—the fight against change, against representation and intersectionality, the fight to keep whiteness centered, has led to such environmental degradation that we are being forced into some very uncomfortable changes.
We Run Long team members at the start line of the race during their inaugural Camp We Run Long.
Photo credit: Jordan Chapell
Photos: 1. BIPOC joy, Queer joy, Trans joy. 2. Ayako crying tears of joy when the final finisher crossed the finish line. 3. We Run Far leadership team.
Photo credit: John Larracas
The irony of whitness’ right to comfort is that it is creating uncomfortable and unsustainable living, social, cultural, environmental, and running conditions. As mentioned earlier, power hoarding, scarcity mindset, and sense of urgency all show up within running culture. In this glaring example of an attempt at uplifting women in the sport, there is not one woman of color. They want equal gender media coverage, but equal for who? Some of the same folks involved in this video continued their missteps with launching the, “Here for the Women’s Race” campaign in June 2024, which I previously mentioned. Not only did they center white women, they even tried to use a well-known indigenous runner’s name to gain legitimacy for their campaign. It is shameful. And most recently the Women’s Trail Running Fund (WTF as they refer to it, so clever) announced a new advisory committee member—a woman whose races have anti-trans policies. This is not inclusive and is a continuation of their shameful behavior and uninformed understanding of what it truly means to support all women. So again, I will refer you to Anuradha Ghandy’s critique of liberal feminism and that, “It tends to be mechanical in its support for formal equality without a concrete understanding of the condition of different sections/classes of women and their specific problems. Hence it [is] able to express the demands of the middle classes (white women from middle classes in the US and upper class…) but not those of women from various oppressed ethnic groups, castes and the working, labouring classes.” This kind of feminism upholds white supremacy, patriarchy, and though they may not think it, it also upholds individualism and alienation. This mediocre attempt at feminism needs to stop.
A theme of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s new book, The Serviceberry, Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, is that all flourishing is mutual. If all flourishing is mutual we don’t need to hoard power, it doesn’t make sense to exclude people because they don’t fit within what you know. Giving women of color what they need to flourish in the small world of running doesn’t stop white women from also flourishing. Giving trans women a voice in the sport, doesn’t silence cis-gender women. In fact, wouldn’t it actually make the small world of running just a little bit bigger, and allow for the physical and mental benefits of running and being in community to reach more people, in turn reaching people who aren’t even in that world. That is when we begin to see changes beyond running culture and within our big C culture. Ayako shares her thoughts on making more space in running, “At the end of the day, yes it is a small sport. It might be really tiny incremental changes but what we can't forget is that runners are people, so if runners are people then people are shifting mindsets and learning and doing things better. [We have to remember] that runners are also parents, runners are also doctors or politicians, or teachers, right? And so I think of the runners I know and how we are in so many other spaces—whether it's a profession or their role in their community or their role in their families. To me, it doesn't matter if it’s only 100 people that change their minds or saw something different [which] sparked something. I don't think anybody should feel discouraged to try to implement change or make an impact in a really small way because we all take that and go somewhere once we leave that trail race or leave our long run. We are out there as humans [so] it is this little web that becomes a very big web.” It may seem strange to mention “economy” here because we tend to have a capitalistic understanding of the word, but a “gift economy” which Kimmerer refers to in The Serviceberry, is explained as, “gift economy nurtures the community bonds that enhance mutual well-being; the economic unit is ‘we’ rather than ‘I,’ as all flourishing is mutual.”
Imagine running as our gift for the renewal of the world, and the web of connections it makes as we intentionally create spaces for all runners to flourish.
A note on the photos:
Images of womxn on trails by Miya Hirabayashi, taken on the gorgeous East Bay trails in Oakland, CA.
Film images by me, taken on various East Bay Trails and a few of the clouds at Lake Merritt.
I chose to use flowers, clouds, and soft landscape shots as a way to have us think about how women are expected to be, or what traditional qualities we have been conditioned to think of when we think of the word feminine (at least here in the US since colonization). Flowers and nature can be considered fragile, soft, delicate, but when I think of nature I think more of the resilience, strength, and life-giving forces of the natural world. Which, of course, includes humans. Miya’s photos do this as well. If you’ve been lucky enough to see her shoot or be a part of a photo shoot of hers, you know the life she brings to her creativity, which clearly comes across in her photos.
Photos from Ayako of We Run Far teammates at Camp We Run Far, shot by John Larracas and Jordan Chapell. These images are very powerful and demonstrate the cultural changes that are possible when we have diverse leadership. All women deserve to run and compete as they are. All women deserve joy, respect, safety, and to be celebrated. We Run Far is an example of what is possible.
You can watch a short documentary, filmed by Tony DiPasquale, of Camp We Run Far at the Trail Film Festival this year. For now, check out this highlight reel of the camp.