This study aims to explore how intersecting identities of race, gender, sexuality, and religion shape personal and professional experiences and to highlight the role of intersectionality in understanding marginalized identities.
This paper uses autoethnographic reflection.
The narrative reveals the tensions of navigating conflicting cultural expectations, queerness and professional identity. It emphasizes how intersectionality provides a framework for healing, self-understanding, and advocacy in educational and therapeutic spaces.
This paper is an autoethnographic reflection and does not claim generalizability. Instead, it highlights how lived experience can illuminate the complexities of intersecting identities. While the narrative is grounded in a single perspective, it provides insight into how intersectionality can be applied as a framework in both educational and therapeutic settings. Future research might expand this work by including multiple narratives or comparative analyses across different communities to deepen understanding of how overlapping identities shape personal and professional life.
Educators, counselors and practitioners can use these reflections to better understand the layered challenges faced by individuals at the intersections of race, gender, sexuality and religion. The paper emphasizes the need for culturally responsive and non-pathologizing approaches that recognize how identity, faith and family expectations shape student and client experiences. It encourages professionals to create inclusive environments that validate complexity rather than demanding assimilation, offering language and frameworks that can help guide practice in both educational and clinical contexts.
By centering a Black Latina lesbian perspective, this paper contributes to broader conversations about identity, equity and belonging. It underscores how cultural, religious and familial pressures often marginalize queer people of color and how intersectionality provides a lens for challenging such constraints. The narrative demonstrates how lived experience can inform more just and inclusive policies and practices in schools, universities and clinical spaces. Ultimately, it calls for social structures that embrace rather than erase the multiplicity of identities.
This paper offers a rare autoethnographic account from the perspective of a Black Latina lesbian navigating the intersections of race, sexuality, gender expression and religion. By situating personal narrative within the framework of intersectionality, it contributes to scholarship that bridges lived experience with critical theory. Its value lies in foregrounding voices often marginalized in both academic and professional spaces, providing insight into how identity complexity shapes personal growth, professional practice and advocacy. This contribution deepens understandings of identity in education and counseling and expands the possibilities for more inclusive frameworks.
As a Black Latina lesbian who expresses herself along a masculine spectrum and utilizes she/her pronouns, I relate strongly to the concept of a multi-layered view of sexuality. Intersectionality plays a significant role in my life. I see the identities I wear as quite complex. Interestingly, while I have worn these titles all my life, it has been easier for me to not give them attention. Yet, I benefit from the concept when I dissect, or rather when I let it dissect me. Navigating the multilayered experience of my identity has been challenging at times, yet I thrive as a result of looking inward since discovering this concept.
I entered the dating world at age 23. This may seem a bit on the older side, but for a religious family, this was about right. On my Black mother's side, we are practicing Jehovah's Witnesses. On my Dominican father's side, we are practicing Catholics as well as followers of Santeria. Without knowing much about any of those religions, one only needs to be aware that they are strict practices with specific belief systems. To my Catholic father and Christian mother, you do not have sexuality until you have an education and a career. So that is what I did. I graduated college, established a career, and then, I began to date. As a 23-year-old in my home environment that met plenty of expectations of faith and religious studiousness, I struggled to know what it meant to be a sexual person. Up to that point I spent most of my life making sure all parts of my body were covered and I did not exude any sexuality. In my household, it was best you pretend you do not know what sexuality is until you suddenly are engaged to be married to a man in the same faith as you. At age 23, I met a boy who was interested in me. This was an odd experience for me considering that by that point found comfort in wearing clothes typically worn by men. There was no particular reason for my clothing of choice other than this is what I was encouraged to wear to cover up my feminine body so that men did not notice me. This suppression of sexuality came from a place of safety, as my parents were adamant about protecting me from unsafe individuals in the world. However, here we were, a boy interested in a girl and a girl not sure what to do with this.
As I navigated this relationship, I was very aware of the lack of interest I had in him. However, I was even more acutely attending to the differences in our skin. He, a mestizo Puerto Rican, and I, a non-ambiguous Black Dominican, decided to pursue a relationship. The dynamics of men and women in Hispanic culture dictate that the male partner takes on a dominant role. The developmental stage we were both at also dictated how we moved. Traditionally, he would do the driving, the planning and the decision-making. I would let him do those things and encourage even more dominance from him. I was aware of this dynamic because it was prevalent within the nuclear family to which I belong. However, as a Dominican woman, I was also taught to hate him. Traditionally and historically, our two groups did not interact, and my family tended to uphold this behavior. However, I was already 23 and showed no interest in any man, nor had any shown interest in me, so it felt as if I should make this work. I was challenged with this. On the one hand, should I not find a husband to settle down with by now so that my parents are pleased? However, on the other hand, should I not uphold the family tradition and marry a Dominican man? In addition, should I not uphold family tradition and marry a Black person? Should this man not exude “machismo” and be able to dominate me and our lives together? Should he not be in control of me and my body since we are both of the age to make family and future decisions? Should I not assert myself, set boundaries around sex and go against this man who clearly wants to form a family with me? Which aspect of myself or my family expectations should I uphold? Which one mattered more than the other? These were questions I struggled with because there was not one aspect to my identity that was more important than the next. Yet I, like so many women in Western culture, was faced with deciding which of those meant more.
Within our relationship were many colorist issues. Traditionally, we were both from respective cultures that reinforced anti-Black rhetoric. It is not uncommon in the Spanish language to use derogatory language to communicate with a person who is darker than you. Up until recently this practice was normal and not challenged. It was just laughed off. As the submissive partner in the relationship, it was to be accepted by me. Yet, as a Black woman raised to have pride in her Blackness, was I also not meant to address this? How does one choose which one is more important? How does one decide which battle would make my family proud of me? It is an impossible task to choose, of course. One is not meant to decide that one identity is more important than the next. Should I be Black first or a woman first? If I choose Blackness first, am I less of a woman? If I choose womanhood first, do I love my Blackness less? Unfortunately, it is a regular conversation among Black and Afro-Latina women to decide, are you Black first or are you a woman first? Imagine being 16 years old and having to answer that when none of those identities were solidified yet. It is a ridiculous choice to have to make, yet Black women are faced with this question daily.
When I was finally faced with the impossibility of living a heterosexual lifestyle, I had to leave this relationship. I can argue that at that time I made a choice. However, it does not always feel that way. Often, it feels that because it was so difficult to live this life despite how hard I tried, the choice to finally come out to myself and my loved ones was made for me. I would suffocate if I did not admit that this man, who was always kind to me, was the last person on earth I wanted to be with. At that time, I was again faced with choosing among distinct yet equally important parts of me. I had religious and spiritual expectations to live a godly life with a man. My religion was incredibly important to me. Therefore, the idea of leaving my faith was synonymous with letting go of a large part of myself and my identity. Yet, choosing to live a lie, playing a role on a stage as a heterosexual person, felt like I was taking my own life. Which part of me was I supposed to kill, and which part was allowed to live? Intersectionality played a role in my life for as long as I was able to form an identity. While this aspect of my life was a private battle, it shaped so much of who I am today.
As a therapist, I am faced with the challenge of choosing professional over personal often. I work in a group practice where 5 therapists out of 41 are Black, 2 out of 41 are Latina and 0 out of 41 are Asian. I find myself struggling between the identities I wear and deciding which one should be emphasized on a given day. When advocating for the needs of clients who are Black or Hispanic, I often must battle with the professional opinions that feel like judgements from my white colleagues. While I do not believe my colleagues are directly racist or have negative intentions toward any of the individuals we work with, there is a prevalent and overarching misalignment of values when prioritizing the needs of the clients. It is a challenging place to constantly find oneself having to be the spokesperson for all the people of color that enter our office. I often feel that I am seen as a Black person that offers a Black perspective and has a Black agenda, but that is it; that is all I offer. It is the only octave of my voice that is reachable. The other octaves do not seem to matter to anyone. Instead, perhaps from their perspective, I have no other voice.
Pursuing critical sexuality studies through the lens of intersectionality has been the single most important pursuit I have undertaken this year. As I have understood this concept, it has opened many wounds of the past that I have been able to work through and heal. It was unbeknownst to me that this endeavor would be this transformative. It is a privilege to take up space in rooms where current and future scholars discuss scholars of the past to try to bring change to the study of critical sexuality. It leaves me longing for other people to also experience the same growth and personal development, whether through social justice pursuits or within a relationship dynamic that opens the door for it.
