Intersectionality and the Oppression Pyramid

[DemonTree]

@Alessan

And in a conversation about poverty, should the voice of a poor white man take precedence over that of a middle-class black queer woman?

This is a great question, which nobody has tried to answer yet.

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@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

It does exist. And it’s sometimes problematic. My objection, I think, is to the broad-brush critique, as if “progressives” as a group, not just certain enclaves of progressives, are constantly engaged in this activity.

My issue is that when I bring up an easily observable dynamic, I get blanket denials and accusations that it’s all right-wing propaganda. It feels unpleasantly like being gaslit. Criticising it as too broad a brush, rather than denying it entirely, would be a much more constructive start to the conversation.

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

Then the Black woman spoke up. She said (paraphrased), “I just think it’s kind of weird, that we’re in here watching all these videos of happy Black kids, when our school is full of so many Black kids that don’t feel welcome in this space. As a Black woman that strikes me the wrong way.”

And we listened, and paused, and thought about it. And nobody came back to explain to her why she was wrong or off-topic to bring this up or why she shouldn’t feel bad, because that would’ve been super dickish of us. Instead, she was offering a perspective that we needed to consider. She wasn’t being awful about it, she wasn’t bullying us, she was just saying something that needed saying. It cast the rest of our conversation in a different light, and got us to remember a problem that maybe we weren’t thinking about at the moment.

I daresay there are people out there who object to this, but it’s definitely not what I’m complaining about. I didn’t mean to imply there is nothing good or useful in these ideas; that’s not what I believe. I think it’s good and important to listen to people with personal experience in an issue. But there are also a lot of ways this principle can be dysfunctional: when people are told they aren’t allowed to criticise - or worse, not allowed to express an opinion on at all - a group they don’t belong to; but only if it’s a group considered more oppressed. When members of groups generally considered more privileged are not given the same chance to speak about problems relevant to them, or their problems are disregarded or minimised. When people use their trauma as a way to divert criticism or silence others.

I don’t think this is just a result of assholes abusing the system. I believe the problem is the abandonment of the principle of treating people equally, which makes it far too easy to justify these excesses if anyone tries to push back against them. Reaffirming this principle wouldn’t mean you can’t value lived experience or personal knowledge, but it would stop people using identity as a cudgel, and it would make the left far less likely to alienate people from privileged groups, especially young men.

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

Maybe a big part of the problem is that progressive circles lack sufficient tools, and social support, for recognizing when someone is taking a valid, valuable structure and perverting it to manipulate and control a group. I think a lot of progressives are so worried about being unjust that, when they face a bullshit accusation of injustice, we fold instead of treating the accusation thoughtfully and critically.

IMHO a big part of the problem is unwillingness to accept criticism. You can’t re-evaluate if you refuse to listen when people tell you something is wrong. There seems to be an overriding fear that allowing criticism will help the right, and/or hurt marginalised groups, and solidarity is the best way to avoid this. But you can’t deal with bad actors if you don’t allow criticism of them and of the dynamics enabling them.