Rather than seeing intersectionality as a tool used to divide groups that were previously cohesive due to shared societal oppression, Dorothy Roberts and Sujatha Jesudason did a study that demonstrated how intersectionality in activist spaces can be used as a tool of coalition-building by creating alliances between disparate identity groups.

There is a claim that intersectionality theory does not consider individuals lived experiences of intersecting identities. Yet, intersectionality foregrounds the ways identities intersect within individuals and can help individuals make sense of their lived experience at the intersection of identities in a system that gives meaning to those identities. At a societal level intersectionality works to make visible systems of hierarchy and oppression.