Intersectionality??

DeepFriedWine · 2022-04-22T02:55:00+00:00

A black woman living during the civil rights era is going to have a different experience than a black man or a white woman. Not exactly a controversial or original take. Intersectionality is a dubious way of formalizing in academia the study of how people fit into the fabric of their time, exclusively with regards to the dynamics of race, gender, and sometimes sexuality. It's not necessarily a wrong way to examine history and culture, but as practiced it is extremely, and deliberately, myopic.

And even then, myopic is an understatement. As practiced and as espoused in media and popular culture, it is exclusively framed in relation to a dominant white patriarchy that is assumed to be universal. I haven't seen any writings within the intersectionality dogma about the plight of being an Irish man in the 1700's being oppressed by the English. Or the intersectionality of being a Tamil ~~man~~ boy having to choose between being a child soldier for the Tigers or dying under the oppression of the Sinhalese. Or that white college-educated women in America are right now enjoying the benefits of a military hegemony that expropriates the labor and resources of most of the world so they can get women's studies degrees and median incomes that allow them to go to an all-inclusive in Cabo every year, because the exchange rate is so good. What's the intersectionality on that.

atropax · 2022-04-22T10:06:25+00:00

Perhaps Intersectionality might have some validity at a theoretical level, but its nothing more than a racket in practice. Making sweeping assumptions about demographics and then attempting to correct society's laws and policies based on those assumptions is an exercise in foolishness. If the answer to the question of how to fix perceived or assumed discrimination is actual, systemic discrimination, that person is not qualified to make decisions that affect other people.

If discrimination or any other crime can be proved, take it to court. If there's no evidence other than abuse and misinterpretation of statistics, get on with life.

LucasAngel_ · 2022-04-22T02:28:50+00:00

Men's issues make little sense and are highly limited without it. There's no universal manhood and our experiences are multifaceted and influenced by more than just our gender.

For example, whether the Migrant Caravan than approached America a few years ago was filled with "women and children" or "fighting aged men" was a gendered aspect of a largely racialized issue.

Black Lives Matter is a racial justice movement, but in 2021, 134 Black Men were killed by state agents, while 5 Black Women were.

Gay Men are more likely than any other LGBT person to experience a hate crime for their sexuality, while dealing with gender based bigotry and marginalization amongst LGBT people.

Most Men's issues are linked with class and finance. We work longer hours and harder jobs. We earn less than childfree women. We are falling behind in Primary and Secondary Education and are decreasing in college attendance.

I can go on like I have trouble relating to most Men's Issues on this and othe subreddits, because I'm gay and black and experience gender based struggles differently from White and Heterosexual brothers.

charlottehywd · 2022-04-22T22:11:39+00:00

It makes sense in theory that having a different set of identities can greatly affect your life. However, in practice it mostly seems like a way to limit the types of people you should feel empathy for. Contrary to popular belief, you can be a part of the majority group yet still be disadvantaged somehow.

AskingToFeminists · 2022-04-22T06:25:51+00:00

It's morally and intellectually bankrupt. That's because it rejects rationality and is totalitarian in its essence.

Let's first quote the article at the basis of the creation of intersectionality :

"mapping the margins" par Kimberlé Crenshaw

Over the last two decades, women have organized against the almost routine violence that shapes their lives.1 Drawing from the strength of shared experience, women have recognized that the political demands of millions speak more powerfully than the pleas of a few isolated voices. This politicization in turn has transformed the way we understand violence against women. For example, battering and rape, once seen as private (family matters) and aberrational (errant sexual aggression), are now largely recognized as part of a broad-scale system of domination that affects women as a class. This process of recognizing as social and systemic what was formerly perceived as isolated and individual has also characterized the identity politics of African Americans, other people of color, and gays and lesbians, among others. For all these groups, identity-based politics has been a source of strength, community, and intellectual development

The embrace of identity politics, however, has been in tension with dominant conceptions of social justice. Race, gender, and other identity categories are most often treated in mainstream liberal discourse as vestiges of bias or domination-that is, as intrinsically negative frameworks in which social power works to exclude or marginalize those who are different. According to this understanding, our liberatory objective should be to empty such categories of any social significance. Yet implicit in certain strands of feminist and racial liberation movements, for example is the view that the social power in delineating difference need not be the power of domination; it can instead be the source of social empowerment and and reconstruction.

The problem with identity politics is not that it fails to transcend difference, as some critics charge, but rather the opposite-that it frequently conflates or ignores intragroup differences. In the context of violence against women, this elision of difference in identity politics is problematic, fundamentally because the violence that many women experience is often shaped by other dimensions of their identities, such as race and class. Moreover, ignoring difference within groups contributes to tension among groups, an- other problem of identity politics that bears on efforts to politicize violence against women.

Basically, let's give up the idea that we all have a shared humanity, and share problems and can reach an understanding of each others. Instead, let's focus more on our identity, and how it makes us different. Let's abandon liberalism to focus more on identity politics. If identity politics didn't give good results, it's just because there wasn't enough of it. It is deeply and by design antithetical to the civil rights movement, explicitly taking the polar opposite approach.

There's more to it, but that's just the beginning of it. Let me quote from a textbook used to teach intersectionality in university :

"is everyone really equal" par Özlem Sensoy et Robin DiAngelo

The second challenge surfaces when we consider what it means to practice social justice. Generally, because most people see themselves as valuing social justice, most people also see themselves as acting justly in their lives. In response to questions about how they practice social justice, many would say that they treat everyone the same without regard to differences; because they do this, their actions are aligned with their values. While these ways of conceptualizing social justice are very common, we see them as woefully inadequate.

If you care about equality between people, intersectionality is not for you.

To clarify our definition, let’s start with the concept social justice. While some scholars and activists prefer to use the term social justice in order to reclaim its true commitments, in this book we prefer the term critical social justice. We do so in order to distinguish our standpoint on social justice from mainstream standpoints. A critical approach to social justice refers to specific theoretical perspectives that recognize that society is stratified (i.e., divided and unequal) in significant and far-reaching ways along social group lines that include race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability. Critical social justice recognizes inequality as deeply embedded in the fabric of society (i.e., as structural), and actively seeks to change this.

I emphasize that last sentence because it's particularly important :

Society in itself is inherently unjust, as a whole, down to its very own fabric. And the goal of intersectionality is to change all of it. The goal is therefore to change the very fabric if society. That's called a revolution. This is pure assertion treated as facts, and taught to impressionable kids by figures of authority whom they can not question without endangering their ability to get their diploma, which they paid at great cost. Or, as we call that, indoctrination, brainwashing, in order to radicalize people into destroying society. But let me quote more to you, just in case you have a doubt :

The definition we apply is rooted in a critical theoretical approach. While this approach refers to a broad range of fields, there are some important shared principles:

-All people are individuals, but they are also members of social groups.

-These social groups are valued unequally in society.

-Social groups that are valued more highly have greater access to the resources of a society.

-Social injustice is real, exists today, and results in unequal access to resources between groups of people.

-Those who claim to be for social justice must be engaged in self-reflection about their own socialization into these groups (their “positionality”) and must strategically act from that awareness in ways that challenge social injustice.

-This action requires a commitment to an ongoing and lifelong process.

Those are the axioms it operate under. No questions allowed. And if you are with them, it's forever, and it requires you to reframe your whole life and self according to those axioms. No rationality need apply to those axioms. Indeed :

Critical Theory developed in part as a response to this presumed infallibility of scientific method, and raised questions about whose rationality and whose presumed objectivity underlies scientific methods

STOP: From a critical social justice framework, informed knowledge does not refer exclusively to academic scholarship, but also includes the lived experiences and perspectives that marginalized groups bring to bear on an issue, due to their insider standing. However, scholarship can provide useful language with which marginalized groups can frame their experiences within the broader society.

As a scientist, this makes me puke. This also disqualifies anything remotely touched by intersectionality to ever be considered scientific. This is the enshrinement of bias as equivalent to the scientific method.

If you claim the witch doctor can call lightning from the sky, it's just as valid as all the scientific experiments that show he can't.

And the cherry on top :

We hope to take our readers on a journey that results in an increased ability to seebeyond the immediate surface level to the deeply embedded injustice below; injustice that for so many of us is normal and taken for granted. Looking head-on at injustice can be painful, especially when we understand that we all have a role in it. However, in taking our readers on this journey we do not intend to inspire guilt or assign blame. At this point insociety, guilt and blame are not useful or constructive; no one reading this book had a hand in creating the systems that hold injustice in place. But each of us does have a choice aboutwhether we are going to work to interrupt and dismantle these systems or support their existence by ignoring them. *There is no neutral ground; to choose not to act against injustice is to choose to allow it. *

There is no neutral ground, you're either with us or against us. You're either complicit in injustice or blindly following us.

Let's recap : you're either with us or complicit in injustice. If you're with us, it's lifelong and permanent. All of society is inherently unjust, in its entirety and down to the very part, and need to be overthrown. And we know it through "lived experience" no matter what evidence can say, so there's no reasoning with us.

And the bonus round :

"women's studies as a virus"

This paper theorizes that one future pedagogical priority of women’s studies is to train students not only to master a body of knowledge but also to serve as symbolic “viruses” that infect, unsettle, and disrupt traditional and entrenched fields.

"by the way, our goal in the institutions of education is not to educate, it's to create radicalized activists seeking to dismantle society"

redgarnetamaranth · 2022-04-22T05:37:07+00:00

At the end of the day a philosophical argument against intersectionality doesn't matter. Philosophies don't mean much if they don't serve a practical purpose(not that intersectionality is even a comprehensive philosophy), and people who advocate it just don't care about or acknowledge that men's issues exist. We absolutely incorporate tenets of what you could call intersectionality with how sexism that affects men affects black men worse. The problem isn't that we aren't doing intersectionality properly, the problem is that they don't care.

AdAcademic4290 · 2022-04-22T19:32:00+00:00

The problem is, intersectionality is presented as being like a sturdy, closely woven cloth...maybe tweed? It's actually an open net, with very large holes in it, made up of fragile filaments. A vast amount falls through the gaps. It's not a cohesive theory, more a series of bullet points to be considered as a small element of a much more complex study. It really can be effectively replaced by the use of a Venn diagram.

International_Crew89 · 2022-04-23T20:10:38+00:00

I think it's an inherently flawed concept. Of course humans treat each other with group-bias, so intersectionality does have some logic to it (because we're still instinctually very tribal); but I would much rather we try to educate people to eliminate those biases as much as possible rather than leaning into them.

I do support many (not all) policies based off intersectional thinking that address ethnic groups and attempt to correct the generational disadvantages that have ensued as a result of historical injustices. Same goes for policies attempting to make life easier/more fair for folks disadvantaged by physical or mental conditions (which could or could have happened to any of us through no fault of our own). I'm all for making opportunities (not outcomes) as fair as possible for everyone.

However, I've found that when intersectional logic is applied amongst individuals, the results are usually contrary to egalitarianism and/or empathy (if not downright toxic), and have no place in my personal life/preferred circle of friends. I also find intersectionality quite often lacking nuance (which is ironic, because it's supposed to be a logical argument FOR nuance).

The whole concept breaks down (at least in the 'developed' world) when you bring gender into the mix, as intersectionality is basically subordinate to the exaggerations and flawed premises & solutions (speaking conservatively) touted by modern feminism.

Reddit1984Censorship · 2022-04-22T20:42:30+00:00

Against intersectionality:
* The variables are infinite, chosing specific variables like gender or sexuality or race leave out the other infinite variables that affect an individuals life, it doesnt matter how many more you add in, theres always more, and any and all of those variables wich are not yet added to the interesectional pool are being discriminated against by the intersectional system itself.
In other words, intersectionalism pushed to the infinite becomes individualism (wich doesnt need to deal with infinities).
Is the similar situation that rises when discussing a planned economy vs a free market, wich in my view is why intersectioanlism is considered to be cultural marxism.
* Intersectionality's postmodernist foundation relies on the postmodernism's foundation itself being true, wich is ''theres no truth, everyone has their own truth, therfore all there is is power dynamics of groups againts groups''.
I can disprove this very easily, read this sentence carefully:
''Nothing is true''
What is wrong with this sentence? Well if nothing is true, then the sentence itself is not true, wich means something is true, is a circular falacy.

JustDeetjies · 2022-04-22T13:24:50+00:00

This is 100% the most confusing subreddit I have been in.

DefiantDepth8932 · 2022-04-25T07:53:34+00:00

It seems an interesting concept but the people who subscribe to it are extremely adamant on holding the narrative that men are privileged opressors even though almost all the victims of racism, homophobia, anti-immigrant sentiment, islamophobia etc. that they talk about are men. Lemme explain this way.

If you ask them for examples of LGBTQ+ discrimination, they'd talk about how many countries have outlawed MALE homosexuality(that's usually the case) and how gay men are treated like predators

When the Gabby Petito case was in the news cycle, they were complaining how all the attention goes to missing white WOMEN.

Ask them about refugees? They'll talk about how badly the male refugees of certain countries are treated.

All the victims of discrimination against any type of group that the intersectionalists raise awareness about are men... yet they are so adamant in their denial of the fact that men are heavily discriminated against

Tinfoil_Haberdashery · 2022-04-26T01:09:07+00:00

The biggest problem I have with intersectionality as a concept is that it treats privilege as fungible.

Like, maybe scoring high on the "maleness" axis is worth 8 privilege points, being Asian is worth -1 on the Race axis, but at least you're straight so that's another 5 from the Sexuality axis, and your parents were rich so that's at least 10 right there in Class. Shame about the diabetes, that's a -2 on the Ablism axis.

And then you add them all up and you learn that you have to check your privilege at a 20-point handicap in the golf game of life, or whatever. These things aren't quantified that precisely, but the idea is that they more or less could be.

But the problem is, privilege, to the extent that it's a meaningful concept, is always situational. Even feminists would admit that male privilege doesn't spend in a lot of professions. One of my disabilities (perforated eardrums) is a drawback in lots of circumstances that require...you know, water, or hearing, but was a major benefit in the best-paying job I've ever had (aviation--I'm not affected at all by changing pressure with altitude).

I think some of these axes are more situational than others. Being rich is pretty much never a drawback, for example, and I think it's clear that being black is pretty disadvantageous on balance in American society--but even there, "race" is such a jumbled mess that it doesn't even really make sense as an axis. You're trying to reduce to a single value a vast array of qualitative biases and concepts.

It feels less like a coherent theory and more like an inkblot test for sociology.

JustDeetjies · 2022-04-22T13:40:22+00:00

Surely, intersectionality as a framework can also highlight the various interconnected web of harm/struggle/oppression men face - through being gay/a POC/Disabled/etc and can also be used to highlight how men experience harm from a patriarchal capitalist system.

I immediately think of how men who are middle class or lower are harmed through capitalism - their bodies, mental health and physical safety are often exploited which informs and perpetuates harmful stereotypes of men or even perpetuates forms of masculinity that are toxic.

Or even the inequality of how single fathers are treated and viewed by society. Or how black men have an even harder time getting custody for a variety of reasons (Similar to how the gap between wages for white women and women of colour)

Why is there a strong dislike for this framework?

Darkwolf90 · 2022-04-22T01:43:14+00:00

Its a description of the complexity of reality? Any object is only an object due to the personal defining of its relavance to your specific description of an object in the context of your communication. You are a human, you are ~37.2 trillion cells, you are ~372,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms. All of these are accurate however non-descriptive. Intersectionality is technically accurate however its often abused and generally suffers from conformation bias in order to justify sexist and racist behavior. It's a common issue of logical, rational processes being used to complicate and obfuscate irrational, illogical conclusions.

JustDeetjies · 2022-04-23T19:25:18+00:00

Okay but then can you explain how that power dynamic would work in both cases and how you can tell if on an individual basis a male feminist or MRA has more power? What kind of power? Compared to who?

And here is dictionary definition of patriarchy https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/patriarchy

And here is wiki with some great links to further research and discussions on patriarchy.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriarchy

fndo84 · 2022-04-27T14:52:07+00:00

The whole idea is mathematically flawed since its inception. A simple mathematical analysis shows that the combination of variables as low as 300 objects (n) with a sample size (r) as low as 5 result in more than 19 billion cases. With this low variables, we've already reached a number greater than world population, so intersectionality at its core leads to individualism: the intersection of a few traits numerically leads to combinations that may only be applicable at individual level.

Title	Intersectionality??
Author	Metrorexz
Upvotes	25
Comments	152
Date	April 22, 2022 12:56 AM UTC (4 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/u928z7/intersectionality/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/intersectionality.1111686 https://theredarchive.com/post/1111686

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