Continuing the discussion from I Pit Babale: this is an interesting topic that deserves more light and less heat.
For discussion, what is intersectionality and what is the oppression pyramid?
Some useful comments that’d I like to understand better:
I have some half-formed opinions myself, but I’m more interested in what better-informed people think.
Intersectionality means one thing in Academic circles when used by people who study this stuff and talk about it very carefully.
There is also a set of behaviors that are practiced by regular people who support Progressive ideas that doesn’t really line up with what Intersectionality is supposed to be, but might (at least in part) be inspired by misinterpretations of the academic term, and which are often criticized under the name “Intersectionality”.
Which of these two distinct concepts are you asking about?
It’s crucial, in my opinion, to understand both. Understanding the meaning of “intersectionality” when used by academics allows for one level of critique. Understanding the meaning of “intersectionality” when used by people who use the concept as a cudgel allows for another level of critique. Understanding how it’s used as a snarl word on the right allows for a third level of critique.
Both. This is the sort thing I opened the thread to learn about.
I have a hard time considering it a right wing strawman of intersectionality when Occupy Wall Street was using the “progressive stack” fifteen years ago. Progressive stack - Wikipedia
I am uncomfortable claiming I’m well-informed, but I have a Master’s Degree in Social Work with a macro concentration, which is a very progressive arena, and I have known me some hard-core leftists. I see ‘‘intersectionality’’ play out in terms of practical professional application in providing services to individuals who have one or more marginalized identities, including but not limited to people of color, LGBTQ people, people with disabilities, etc. I see this primarily in the context of providing domestic violence and sexual assault services in a relatively diverse metropolitan area. I have been working in the DVSA field for ten years and I’ve been working in progressive nonprofit agencies for 15 years.
It is my opinion that this is the reason we even have the concept of intersectionality. It wasn’t invented for people to score oppression points or anything, though some people have certainly run with that interpretation. It was created to take into account, on a service provision, policy and research level, the specific needs that certain populations have.
For example, individuals who are LGBTQ who are in abusive relationships have experiences that are unique to that population. For trans people, there are higher rates of sex trafficking. Their abuser may threaten to or actually withhold their gender-affirming medication and medical care. If they show up to our medical clinic for a forensic exam after a sexual assault, it is critical that they receive gender-affirming care that takes into account their medical complexities and how the nature of their trauma may differ. They share some characteristics of rural populations as well, in the sense that they tend to be highly insular communities where everybody knows everybody and there is a lot of social pressure not to speak up about abuse. If such a person seeks therapy, the counselors should have regular, ongoing training about these dynamics and how they might manifest during therapy.
In short, it is the ethical responsibility of anyone who provides services to these populations to be well-versed in the ways this affects them.
When you have multiple marginalized identities, the picture gets even more complex, and the types of services and interventions do as well. I am not an expert on providing these services myself, but I write grants for the people who are. So, that’s the gist.
This would be my stance, as it has happened to me in my own circles, and ultimately drove me off social media. While I’ve been on the receiving end of, ''You’re not X, so what would you know?" I’ve also been attacked in feminist circles for having differing opinions about these issues and how to solve them, for having an evidence-based position, and the primary means of damaging my credibility was to assert that their trauma was worse than mine, or accuse me of tone policing when I spoke out against misandry.
At work, during staff trainings, I’ve seen people stand up and say the conversation, which is open to everyone, is centering white voices and experiences** because they obviously couldn’t deal with the fact that our discussion of identity included things like mental health limitations and being a religious minority, which both fall lower on the totem pole than race. In general, I’ve seen many forums on ‘‘intersectionality’’ default to discussions of race and LGBTQ issues to the exclusion of pretty much everything else.
As a writer, I’ve seen it happen in publishing and author circles. As a parent, I’ve seen it very aggressively from high-functioning autistics against parents of severely disabled autistic children. I’ve seen support Level 1 autistics insist that they understand the parents’ children’s needs better, even though they never met the child or the parents, simply because they are on the same (extremely broad, extremely varied) autism spectrum. They have also discounted scientific research on autism because the researchers aren’t autistic. I saw this long before I had an autistic child and determined to stay the hell out of it, but ultimately I had to become what the internet loathes and make decisions that leave r/autism frothing at the mouth. (Fortunately I have stayed out of it online.)
In fact, it’s hard for me to think of any domain of any social issue where I haven’t seen the oppression pyramid somewhere. Mostly online.
None of these observations make me any less committed to serving marginalized populations, or any less liberal in my political orientation. But at the same time I find it really alienating.
**An interesting point about that is, the facilitator was reading aloud anonymous responses we had submitted on index cards, so the complainant had no way to determine the race or sexual orientation of the people making the responses
Sure, I suppose we can analyze it on three levels.
As used in academia, myunderstanding is that Intersectionality is basically just the idea that you experience various forms of prejudice differently depending on other advantaged or disadvantaged groups you fall into.
So a Black man and a Black woman experience anti-Black racism in different ways, and the Black woman experiences sexism differently than a white woman would. A poor rural white drug addict experiences addiction differently than a poor urban white drug addict. Hispanic trans people experience transphobia differently than Asian trans people. Etc, etc.
None of it is about ranking or even necessarily comparing - it’s just about understanding that the specific forms of prejudice experienced by people depend on the totality of their experience, not just the one group we identified the prejudice as targeting. And as I noted with some of my examples, we can use intersectionality to analyze how prejudices impact white people, men, rich people, whatever - the fact that they’re in one privileged group impact how they experience prejudice targeted at non privileged groups that they are also a part of.
The way something potentially related to intersectionality it “wielded as a cudgel”, as LHOD put it, is that in some communities - especially younger, more politically active, more “online” communities - criticism, even criticism that has nothing to do with race, is condemned as offensive if it comes from a person who is viewed as “more privileged” than the target of the criticism; at the same time, attacks (even directly racialized attacks) against people viewed as more privileged are excused.
The example under discussion that led to the creation of this thread involved a white event organizer and PAC founder joining a video call where people were criticizing the event to address some of the points that were made; this was viewed as such a “severe microaggression” that the event organizer was asked to step down from her role at the PAC so she could be replaced with someone less racist. And as I noted in the other thread - the problem isn’t just that a handful of crazy nutjobs derailed the event with unfair criticism - the problem is that the community surrounding the event sided with the people demanding the event organizer’s cancellation.
Meanwhile, in this same video call, one of the participants called the event organizer a “lipless, flat assed bitch”. These are very clearly racialized, sexist insults - if the event organizer called a Black woman the reverse of that phrase, I’m sure we’d all agree that she should be cancelled. But no one in this community saw things this way.
The right wing usage of the term as a sneer word doesn’t have much going for it to examine. I’m sure they might use the term to criticize the event I described, but they’d also use the term to describe pretty much anything else, so I’m not super interested in that analysis.
The oppression pyramid, or misery poker as I call it, isn’t a right wing fantasy. It’s something I’ve observed mainly in online forums though less frequently than 5+ years ago. Oddly enough, I can’t think of a time I ever experienced it in a face to face conversation. Even when I was taking a few gender studies courses as an undergraduate, nobody made me feel as though I couldn’t fully participate because I wasn’t oppressed enough.
I absolutely consider you well-informed on this subject, and thank you for an excellent, detailed, nuanced post.
I think you’ve left out some important details, in that AFAICT the video call was supposed to be for Black women only, and that she specifically had been asked not to attend. Frankly, I’m rather puzzled by the decision of her detractors to describe her actions as only “micro” aggressions.
Which leads to a point of discussion: do we think it’s reasonable for members of minority groups to demand “safe spaces” in which only people who identify a certain way are welcome? I certainly think it is, at least in some contexts.
In some contexts, sure. But why limit it to minority groups? Maybe Republicans, Democrats, or even white males want a safe space.
Thank you. And, as someone with a vested interest in real social change, this phenomenon bums me out. Not only because diversity of thought is important for tackling social issues, but because marginalized groups don’t gain power unless they ally with privileged groups. You think women got the vote on their own somehow? I mean come on.
It’s also almost always logically inconsistent. You don’t have get to have an opinion because you’re white, but if another person of color agrees with you then that person is wrong for some other reason, usually because they’re self-hating or something. So even among minority groups, minorities are discriminated against for differing viewpoints. Their lived experience doesn’t ‘‘count’’ for whatever reason.
Sr. Weasel has had some bad experiences, too. And unfortunately it just put him off trying to learn more from those groups. That’s the end result of this. People disengage.
One conclusion I’ve come around to as a result of all this is that having an experience of something does not make you an expert on that thing. It makes you an expert on your own experience. And that viewpoint should certainly be taken into consideration, but so should the viewpoints of, say, people who have been studying the subject for decades, or people related to the issue in other ways, or even privileged people who can more effectively pinpoint the best ways to intervene among other privileged people. You know who knows the most about white people? White people.
I know a lot of staff members I work with have experienced or know someone who experienced domestic and sexual violence. Why else would you stay in such a hard job? But imagine if tomorrow we just took everyone from our shelter and put them in charge of things. People with no training, no grounding in the research, with their own personal biases and unhealed trauma. How do you suppose they would do? We absolutely look to survivor voices to help us better understand the survivor experience. They are recruited in a lot of ways including our Coordinated Community Response Teams - where they join a panel of experts from various fields, from law enforcement to family court. Their input is extremely valued and necessary. But it’s not the only input we need to get the work done.
As long as a safe space does not become an isolation bubble,and there is the understanding that to get things done you will have to go out into the common space, certainly it is a reasonable thing to have.
Most of the criticism I’ve seen, outside of the specific article linked in the other thread, is about microaggression related stuff: a moment when she told someone who kept interrupting her that she was trying to “bully” her into quiet, or when she described someone as “yelling” at an Arab staffer. I think the argument that terms like “bully” or “yell” when applied to black women are racist (or at least racially charged terms) is a pretty accurate description of how the term “microaggression” is used?
For the second instance, she was called out for this in the call itself; the woman she described as “yelling” said, it is racist for you to use that term for a situation when a black woman speaks to a white woman; and when the event organizer said that the staffer in question was Arab, the response was “Arabs can be white”.
Mind you, Zee is also part of this world; I think it’s pretty weird that she was specifically complaining that calling the event disorganized is disrespectful to people of color who worked on the event. It’s actually disrespectful to everyone who worked on the event, and the the event itself, and to the mission behind it - why single out POC staffers?
Likewise, Zee brought up the fact that the staffer who was being yelled at is Arab, as if that makes it worse that she was being yelled at - and the response was “Arabs can be white”, as if that makes it BETTER.
So while I agree that there’s more to the discussion than the microaggression issue, like the questions you raised, I think it’s still a valid way to view it.
This is also a good question. I think a safe space is one thing; but if you’re going to get into your safe space and then attack people who are outside that safe space, you’re kinda bringing down the protective walls by doing that.
I’ll second this.
Just a point to add to this. In some ways, intersectionality shows up in ways you wouldn’t expect. Guess how many resources are out there for straight, male survivors of rape?
We serve survivors of any gender identity but this is a consistently underreported minority because just getting through the social hurdles of getting a straight man to even acknowledge to himself that he has been raped is a herculean effort. Getting him to then take the additional step of getting an invasive medical forensic exam and sit in a room full of advocates and learn about his legal options, I mean…
This system, in an effort to address gender inequality, is functionally built to serve women. But women are not the only victims. I once read a study (yonks ago, sorry I have no cite) that indicated if you expand the definition of rape to include being forced to penetrate someone, men are almost as likely to be raped as women.
Yet when I look at our service numbers, they don’t reflect that. Not even close.
I can offer up another example, although hopefully this will turn out to be just someone being silly without successfully imposing their demands.
David Hogg is a Parkland shooting survivor and now one of the vice chairs of the DNC. He’s come under a lot of fire recently because he is leading an effort to primary Democrats he feels are “out of touch”, and many Democrats feel it is inappropriate for someone with a high ranking DNC position to act against Democratic politicians.
I think I agree with the arguments against a DNC vice chair doing such a thing, but I haven’t given it a ton of thought and it’s possible I’m motivated by my favorable view of some of the Democrats he wants to replace.
Aside from that, he’s a huge gun control advocate; as a staunch supporter of strict gun control, I say to that - holy shit, are you kidding me? Look, I agree with you, but now is not the fucking time. Let’s worry about gun control once fascism is off the table again.
All that is to say - I have somewhat complex feelings about Hogg. I like him personally, I think he’s driven and animated and young and that’s exactly what Democrats lack, but I disagree with him strategically and ideologically on a number of issues.
That said, I see an effort to unseat him on what seem to be frivolous grounds, and I’m flabbergasted on his behalf:
So, there unless I am grossly misunderstanding something, there was no rule that said DNC vice chair seats gave to be split among different races or sexes, with no specific allocation of seats to women or people of color; of five candidates, the two who won were a straight white guy and a gay black men; and somehow this means that the election was unfair, and the straight white guy has to give up his seat so a woman of color can run for it (apparently we aren’t debating whether the gay black guy needs to give up his seat? Why not?).
None of this makes sense, and I hope the Democrats reject this argument. But the fact that it’s being made at all, in regards to one of the top positions for Democrats, is pretty concerning.
Yeah, that’s a great point. That’s also a form of intersectionality (in the academic sense).
Hell, when a right winger says “Oh, you think a poor white person in Appalachia is more privileged than a the Obama’s??”, they don’t know it, but they’re engaging in analysis through the lens of intersectionality.
Actually, that would probably be a great way to explain it to a skeptic.
It’s a weird combination of hiding behind her employee’s ethnicity while simultaneously throwing them under the bus. She’s saying that criticizing her PAC is racist, because of all the POC who work for her, while at the same time declining to take any responsibility for how her PAC is actually being run - “It’s not my fault if the PAC is being run poorly, that’s down to the employees! And criticizing my employees is racist!”
Even if the initial complaint was baseless, if you’re putting yourself forward as the representative of an organization, you need to know how to handle baseless complaints gracefully, and she really failed hard at that. If that’s generally representative of her management technique, I can see the content creators backing away from it. Especially after it came out that the PAC was basically her vanity project, and couldn’t exist if the person running it wasn’t willing to treat it as an unpaid hobby - if she’s bad at her job, and completely insulated from accountability, I’d run from her PAC as fast as I could.
To put intersectionality succinctly: You cannot understand the problems faced by a black woman by looking just at the problems faced by black men and the problems faced by white women. Or substitute any two other demographics, of course.