What do you think about the term and application of "intersectionality"?

NoPast · 2022-02-18T22:47:29+00:00

It is a really useless concept, if not misused is just the discovering of hot water dressed as revolutionary concept (very few leftists are true class reductionist or believe that there are not unjust hierarchies besides the economic sphere). Like it is used in academia and by activists (as "hierarchy of oppression") it does nothing beside replacing class analysis rooted in materialistic analysis of the world with a liberal bourgoise "oppressor vs oppressed" framework that is very moralistic in nature and quickly leads to oppression olympics and resentment.

echonian · 2022-02-18T21:31:10+00:00

The term itself is fine. It effectively aims to bring greater nuance into social issues in particular, which I think is a good thing - nuance is good! Understanding that issues can be relevant in a wider context than you might initially define can be useful to solving those issues in a better way.

The problem is with people misusing such a phrase to include irrelevant details into an issue, polluting it and making discussion or actual progression very difficult.

Algoresball · 2022-02-19T00:07:03+00:00

The term is a good one but application is awful (at least in my profession). Its an academic framework that’s being pushed on professionals and as more and more students graduate form programs that focused on it, it’s becoming too influential and competing too much with person centered approach

The idea that an individual can have multiple identities that impact them in different ways is true. The idea that someone can be privileged in one way and oppressed in another is also true. It’s an important frame work. A person could be privileged based on the skin color but oppressed based on their disability status. Those two things can co occur in the same person.

The problem with how it’s implemented is that it tries to explain privilege power and oppression instead of inform it. Privilege power and oppressed are impacted by so many things beyond intersectional identity. Considering a clients identity is important, but it’s nowhere near as important as maintaining a person centered approach.

Gender should also be left out of Intersectional framework. A able bodied person is always going to have privilege that a person with a disability doesn’t. In America a white person is almost always going to have privilege that a person of color doesn’t. But the relationship between men and women is more complicated than that and it depends too much on the individual circumstances.

I think students should learn about intersectionality and professionals should be aware of it when working with clients, but it’s overemphasized.

Edit:

I’d also posit that there is a massive difference between the way most people understand the word “oppression” and the way academics define it and I don’t think that unintentional

BloomingBrains · 2022-02-18T21:14:14+00:00

Intersectionality only encourages people to focus on their differences, which is ironic for a movement that claims to be anti-bigot. The logic goes that a gay trans black jew is more oppressed than a gay black male, and this means they should have more priority to have their voice heard when talking about social issues. This ironically elevates the gay black trans jew above the gay black male in the hierarchy of these far left circles. And the end result of this is of course things like BLM attacking gay pride parades and Bernie Sanders rallies, simply because those events (while liberal) weren't about THEM. Its a actually a very selfish and fascist mindset. And it encourages this strange form of competition about who can apply more labels to themselves, which is probably why we see things like the hundreds of made up "tumblr genders".

Focusing on our differences, even if some people have it worse than others, only leads to infighting that impedes the progress of all.

Cyb3rd31ic_Citiz3n · 2022-02-18T17:37:28+00:00

Its a misused tool and barely even that. It's just a fancy way of saying "how conditions meet". It's no differenta process than that of an analysis of a chair. Yes, it's made of wood but also it fixtured. It has cushioning but also is coated in a patterned fabric. The fabric has orange triangles on it. It has legs but also a back. Combine these together and we have a chair.

The difference between what I did and how intersectionality is used is firstly its applied to people, second that intersectionality is misused by applying an contextualisation of "oppression".

The problem with this misuse is that its as much a test for, say, racism or sexism as if a women is a witch by dunking in water. The outcome has been decided, they're using the method to justify their biases. Everyone has had issues, events and varying circumstances that affect our lives. Intersectionality by itself plots points of convergence but that's it.

How political minds chose to use that tool is another question.

bigdtbone · 2022-02-19T14:35:26+00:00

I think that intersectionality was invented as a way for white women to participate /as/ an oppressed segment rather than by being allies with oppressed segments. Being able to say “I’m LGBTQ” or “I’m neurodiverse” in a conversation about race allows them cover to offer opinions about shit they have no business in.

However, at the end of the day, I think that men’s groups would do well to embrace intersectionality as an alternative or competing concept of privilege. Intersectionality masks a lot of privilege, particularly in people who are socioeconomicly disadvantaged.

We just need to claim it as ours.

lightning_palm · 2022-02-19T15:36:28+00:00

Intersectionality looks at intersections of different social identities, which often distracts from understanding men's issues. By looking at men only in terms of the other sub-groups that their gender intersects with, we miss broader trends and obscure the fact that men, in general, need help; this has been the case with research tackling suicide, academic underperformance, and discussions about sentencing bias and police shootings. Furthermore, it is a type of Gamma Bias (a cognitive distortion in which people minimize male disadvantages and magnify female ones).

For further information, see the following, which has a section on intersectionality:

Seager M., Barry J.A. (2019) Cognitive Distortion in Thinking About Gender Issues: Gamma Bias and the Gender Distortion Matrix. In: Barry J., Kingerlee R., Seager M., Sullivan L. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Male Psychology and Mental Health. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04384-1_5

Furthermore, an alternative to intersectionality that captures the fact that men are more vulnerable to discrimination based on intersections with their other social identities has been proposed:

Veenstra, G. The Gendered Nature of Discriminatory Experiences by Race, Class, and Sexuality: A Comparison of Intersectionality Theory and the Subordinate Male Target Hypothesis. Sex Roles 68, 646–659 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-012-0243-2

politicsthrowaway230 · 2022-02-18T17:42:36+00:00

It's a nice concept and would be great if it were applied properly, but to them eg. "the intersection of gender and racism" basically just means "the intersection of misogyny and racism", despite the fact the definite existence of racialised misandry, especially with black and Asian men. If you ask these "feminists" this, they'll just say without a hint of irony "but that's a race problem !!!".

The recognition of black misandry is emerging to be fair, Ibram X Kendi talks about it in his how to be an anti-racist, and Tommy Curry wrote the bizarre sentence "black men are the worst effected by the patriarchy". Presumably he's using that word just because he has to dress it all up in the correct jargon to be taken seriously.

TheSpaceDuck · 2022-02-18T21:21:23+00:00

As others have mentioned, it would be a very productive outlook if it were used with honesty and without bias. Unfortunately, whenever someone calls themselves an "intersectional feminist" the opposite always happens.

To quote one of my recent comments:

This is one of feminism's biggest flaws, and a shocking one considering the movement calls itself "intersectional". Feminism is so blinded by the dogma of patriarchy theory ("men and white = in power, everyone else = oppressed") that they fail to realize that discrimination affecting men is often the same as the discrimination affecting e.g. African Americans.

And most of the time it stems from a negative portrayal of the group as violent or a threat. Socially and legally men as a demographic have a lot more in common with African Americans than women do.

SexEleven · 2022-02-19T14:39:38+00:00

Intersectionality is a useful term for legal theory. Crenshaw’s argument for unique workplace discrimination of Black women on the basis of their intersecting race and sex was revolutionary and helpful. But when it comes to broad social analysis or creating a worldview, it is a flashy new word for multivariate thinking. Any social scientist will tell you that of course every human phenomenon is explained by multiple variables and these variables interact. Interaction effects are taught in stats 101. Basically, if you’re not a child, an ideologue, or an idiot, you already know the main ideas of Intersectionality - multivariate explanation and interaction effects.

So because of this, I think you have to look for another reason for why Intersectionality is used and is so popular. It’s because it’s an ideology, a marker of group membership, and a status symbol. It’s anti-science and thus unhelpful because it assumes a ranking of social group oppression rather than using empirical science. If it were empirical, it would realize the gender gap in criminal justice that you mentioned and how in many, many areas, Black men are more oppressed than Black women because they are men.

RockmanXX · 2022-02-18T18:16:54+00:00

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DekajaSukunda · 2022-02-18T19:42:13+00:00

In my experience it's just used to lure in minorities into feminism. Feminism is an academic movement, and in many countries, academic achievement is an upper class privilege. Ivy-League educated, white, rich American women are literally some of the most privileged people on Earth. If they want to be taken seriously when talking about oppression, they kinda have to be talking about other people's experiences.

As a young gay kid that was a victim of bullying and abuse by classmates and a father that I'd have no qualms calling "toxic masculine" (I hate that term, but it fits those fuckers like a glove), feminism was quite appealing to me. I was resentful of those men. It felt good to have that anger and my victimhood constantly validated. It felt good to feel like I belonged to something bigger than myself. Like I was on the right side of some culture war.

It look a lot of dissapointments to realise I was just an accessory to them, and that they didn't really care. A lot of reading some outrageously homophobic comments from people who claimed to be my allies. Like, my dad and those fuckers at school sucked, but at least they weren't pretending to not be homophobic.

Pm_Me_Dirty_Thought · 2022-02-18T18:29:41+00:00

What people on the left don't understand is that Intersectionality is nothing but an analytical framework. It does not lead to policy proposals nor it seeks to solve problems. Socialism has always been "intersectional", it always understood the conditions of the Irish under English rule, or the struggles of black Americans pre civil rights or even women liberation. Unfortunately the adoption of this framework caused a lot of confusion and paralysis on the left because we end up focusing important time and resources on cosmetic measures.

Example: Medicare 4 all is something that would help all workers across the spectrum, but using intersectional framework we would have to address issues concerning to trans workers, or black workers, or women workers and etc...

thereslcjg2000 · 2022-02-19T01:22:08+00:00

I think it’s a good idea in theory. It’s true that a lot of aspects of one’s identity influence how one is treated in society. However, I think that its application is pretty lousy. More often than not it leads to oversimplified discussions that amount to little more than “trait x = oppressed, trait y = oppressed, x + y = double the oppression”. In my mind there’s far more nuance than that.

CoffeehasSentience · 2022-02-19T03:14:06+00:00

I love it. I wish it was applied more, though. A lot of times comes off as lip service.

International_Crew89 · 2022-02-19T21:28:55+00:00

I think the term is valid and should be appreciated at face value, just like "feminsm=equality", but as you alluded, it's the implementation that is often lacking, particularly because people are so bad at understanding nuance in general that they tend to simplify said implementation. For example, the idea that oppressed groups should be heard more and more often is usually interpreted by binary-thinking folks to mean that oppressed groups/individuals should get to drown out every other perspective. Aside from the problems associated with fairness, I don't agree that it's best to let the most damaged people in society dictate reforms, as they are the most likely in any given situation to react with extreme prejudice on their given issue ( as in swinging the pendulum too far the other way, acting vengefully, forming opinions from biased perspective, etc.)

KtownManiac · 2022-02-23T23:25:39+00:00

Everything about it is idiotic. It's a cancer and needs to go.

reverbiscrap · 2022-02-27T05:43:09+00:00

The concept doesn't actually work.

Intersectionality is a concept created by and for black female feminists that was co-opted by white female feminists in the 2010s. It also is proven false by the data we have.

Multidimensionality was created to serve as a working paradigm instead.

Title	What do you think about the term and application of "intersectionality"?
Author	NurturedByNature_0_0
Upvotes	38
Comments	50
Date	February 18, 2022 4:48 PM UTC (4 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/svmi26/what_do_you_think_about_the_term_and_application/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/what-do-you-think-about-the-term-and-application.1102615 https://theredarchive.com/post/1102615

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