At this year’s Pride Parade in Washington, D.C., there was not only pride but also conflict.

As revelers strolled down P Street toward Logan Circle at around 5:30 p.m. on June 10, a chain of demonstrators handcuffed together spread along 15th Street to halt them, anchored to a railing at one end and a car at the other. Radical protest group No Justice, No Pride had come to stop the party.

“What side are my people? What side are you on?” chanted other members of the group, which consists of “black, brown, queer, trans, gender nonconforming, bisexual, indigenous, two-spirit, formerly incarcerated, disabled, [and] white allies.”

As LGBT editor at ThinkProgress Zack Ford reported at the time, protesters not participating in the blockage handed out pink flyers enumerating their demands. Chief among them: the expulsion of D.C. police and corporate sponsors like Wells Fargo, which has come under fire for helping to finance the Dakota Access Pipeline, and Lockheed Martin, a defense contractor and weapons manufacturer. “Capital Pride will honor the legacy of Pride and the trans women of color who inspired it by ensuring that trans women of color play a central role in decision-making processes,” began the list.

The partygoers were not pleased. As the parade backed up at a turn two blocks back, spectators jeered from balconies overhead. Others flipped protesters the bird and shouted, “Shame!”

"Fuck you for ruining a nice parade!" yelled a blond older guy from the sidewalk, who then made an abortive attempt to start a counter-chant: “No respect, no pride!”

No Justice, No Pride and Black Lives Matter–affiliated groups reprised the protest in cities across the country throughout the summer.

The Capital Pride confrontation and others like it have laid bare a growing chasm within the LGBTQ+ community between older activists and younger; between gay white cisgender men who feel like they can celebrate post-marriage equality and those who fear for their lives under a Trump administration; between those whose biggest stumbling block in life is being gay and those who feel their freedom is contingent not only on LGBTQ+ rights but also on issues like police reform, reproductive rights, and economic inequality. It is, in sum, a rift between the intersectionalists and the non-intersectionalists.

As Marc Stein, a professor of LGBTQ+ history at San Francisco State University said about our current era, “‘Intersectionality’ has become the buzzword.”

Intersectionality and Its Discontents

First coined by the American scholar and civil rights activist Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw in 1989, the term “intersectionality” posits that people experience oppression on multiple, “intersecting” fronts, and that activism focused narrowly on, say, LGBTQ+ rights will fail to address the needs of someone who is, for instance, transgender, black, and a woman. Even if the LGBTQ+ movement wins all its goals, that black trans woman will continue to suffer the consequences of racism and sexism, which include crippling poverty and pervasive discrimination. Critics like New York magazine’s Andrew Sullivan have dismissed intersectionality as a neo-Marxist “academic craze” and a form of secular religion. But for its advocates, intersectionality is a way of centering those who’ve been historically at the margins of the LGBTQ+ community, whose interests were little served by the arrival of marriage equality.

“Sexism and racism are not just additive, but multiplicative,” said Jillian Weiss, executive director of the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund. Weiss said that in order to liberate all members of the LGBTQ+ community, it is necessary to elevate those with the least privilege. “Intersectionality is absolutely crucial to our movement — it’s not just one thing at a time that we need to fight.”