Talk a little bit about the significance of that social and historical context?

 Talk a little bit about the significance of that social and historical context? 

I spent a lot of time talking about intersectionality which is the idea that was developed first by Kimberle Crenshaw, who is at Columbia, and is really grounded in Black feminist studies. The whole idea is that there are multiple, interlocking systems of oppression. It’s not additive, it’s multiplicative, right? You can’t can’t separate somebody’s race from their sex, right? So thinking about racism and sexism and the interacting effects of that is different than just racism or sexism.

The joint impacts of racism and sexism actually have a long-lasting influence on practices around feminine care, for lack of a better word. And a lot of that also goes back to the time of slavery. Odors around the vagina. They’re considered dirty or bad for everybody, right? So there’s a lot of misogyny. When white slave owners were creating racial categories—which are arbitrary—they were totally created as a way to separate. It had to do with skin color, hair texture features. But they also incorporated scent.