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> What a weird take on things: let's apply neat little discrete labels to every person and pretend that the experiences of each particular combination of labels

> What a weird take on things: let's apply neat little discrete labels to every person and pretend that the experiences of each particular combination of labels is so radically different from everybody else's that we can't possibly learn anything from anybody else. This is called "intersectionality", a term coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in the late 1980s but some of the key concepts date back to the work of bell hooks in the 1970s. It's a generally accepted pillar of modern feminism. Something bubbled up on StalkedIn a couple days back: it had images of King Charles III and Ozzy Osbourne, and it said both were white, male, British, born in 1948, married twice, and on and so forth. And it said "A customer is not their demographics. A customer is their individual goals and needs" or something like that. Which, while still laden with business-speak, was something of a contrarian take in today's DEI-mediated world. You gotta be careful with this intersectionality stuff. The endgame of intersectionality is -- gasp -- considering people as individuals.

hnbad 3y ago
> The endgame of intersectionality is -- gasp -- considering people as individuals. I'm not sure I read your tone correctly but this is indeed what authors like bell hooks try to get at: being Black is one thing, being a woman is another and being a Black woman can be different from either of those things in isolation; ultimately our experiences are defined not by each attribute individually but the way they interact in combination. Any subset of attributes will always give you an incomplete understanding but they can still be useful lenses. Charles and Ozzy do have a lot of things in common and they do have many shared experiences because of them and do experience many things similarly because of them. Of course those things are not all there is to them and e.g. being born into the royal family may significantly outweigh most of the attributes they have in common for many such experiences. Modern feminist critique is intersectional because it recognizes these complexities and recognizes the limitations. But feminist critique explicitly challenges the systems underlying our society. Girlboss pop feminism did the opposite, an infamously inane example argument being that then-state secretary Hillary Clinton is underprivileged compared to a homeless man because she's a woman. Corporate DEI is a step up from this but still falls flat because its ability to critique systems is limited by being beholden to the corporate structures that allow for it to exist: it's essentially the "more female drone pilots" joke but without a hint of irony. Again, that does not mean DEI can't do good things (e.g. being mindful of inclusivity can reduce artificial or cultural barriers to entry and increase representation) but it can't solve systemic issues because it can't meaningfully challenge the systems it exists within. This is what led to the tensions resulting in stunts like those at Basecamp or Coinbase where the owners of the respective companies decided to expel DEI and claim to create a "politics-free" workplace because the people involved in their DEI projects refused to stay in the comfortable confines of feel-good corporate (literal) virtue signalling and got dangerously close to critiquing the structures around them. You need to consider people as individuals but if you want to make sense of systems you need to pick subsets (plural!) of the attributes that define each individual. Where DEI falls short is that it usually by design is only allowed to pick a limited number of attributes and is even more limited in what systems it is allowed to look at. Wheelchair-accessible workspaces, yes. Racism towards Black employees by their peers, yes. Sexual misconduct by middle managers, yes. But anything that challenges the leadership or ownership structure of the company is too close to unionization for comfort.
david-gpu 3y ago
There is some nuance here. As I understand it, intersectionality simply highlights that the experiences of a collective built from the intersection of several traits can be quite different to the experience of an adjacent collective. E.g. the queer descendants of Asian immigrants may often share experiences that are quite distinct from those of queer black folks. I have no problem with that. My point of contention is whether or not it is okay to shush a person talking about a collective simply because they aren't members of it. Or more broadly, whether it is okay to dismiss, silence and minimize the struggles of a collective because of some twisted notion that they deserve it. Why is it that we all agree that an old "boys' club" is repugnant, a "whites-only" association is disgustingly racist, but a "girls-only" lessons or a "black only" show are things to celebrate? We demand diversity and inclusivity, but somehow the more "able-bodied neurotypical white heterosexual male" checkboxes you tick, the less we care about your opinion and well-being, and thus the less important it is to include you. (And I only tick two of those)
- roenxi 3y ago
  > Why is it that... If you go with ye old class analysis, you'll notice the big threat to the status of VHNW is a free and fair free market. They benefit a lot from regulation and handouts to preserve the status quo. If you look at what plays out in practice, the rational move for the ultra-wealthy is to quietly align with the poor against the middle class. It isn't too blatant, but quietly just make it harder for people to jump up orders of magnitude in wealth. The intersectionality as pushed in the public debate is probably emanating from people looking to create a divided political climate to make it harder for poor and middle to unite and look for political change. I don't think most people want to institutionalise anti-white racism. Indeed, I suspect a "white's only" association wouldn't disgust many people, on the basis that we can have black or girl-only associations and they are fine. It would still be racist, obviously. But people have
  - david-gpu 3y ago
    > I suspect a "white's only" association wouldn't disgust many people, on the basis that we can have black or girl-only associations and they are fine. It would still be racist, obviously Well, it would disgust me. I have so-called mixed-heritage children and I dread the day when I have to explain to them that they can't join this or that activity with their friends because they have the wrong skin color or the wrong gender. I may be in the minority, but I find associations that exclude people based on any of the protected classes (gender, sexual orientation, etc.) very distasteful. By all means, feel free to organize an event centered around X community, but allow everybody to attend.

hnbad 3y ago

> The endgame of intersectionality is -- gasp -- considering people as individuals. I'm not sure I read your tone correctly but this is indeed what authors like bell hooks try to get at: being Black is one thing, being a woman is another and being a Black woman can be different from either of those things in isolation; ultimately our experiences are defined not by each attribute individually but the way they interact in combination. Any subset of attributes will always give you an incomplete understanding but they can still be useful lenses. Charles and Ozzy do have a lot of things in common and they do have many shared experiences because of them and do experience many things similarly because of them. Of course those things are not all there is to them and e.g. being born into the royal family may significantly outweigh most of the attributes they have in common for many such experiences. Modern feminist critique is intersectional because it recognizes these complexities and recognizes the limitations. But feminist critique explicitly challenges the systems underlying our society. Girlboss pop feminism did the opposite, an infamously inane example argument being that then-state secretary Hillary Clinton is underprivileged compared to a homeless man because she's a woman. Corporate DEI is a step up from this but still falls flat because its ability to critique systems is limited by being beholden to the corporate structures that allow for it to exist: it's essentially the "more female drone pilots" joke but without a hint of irony. Again, that does not mean DEI can't do good things (e.g. being mindful of inclusivity can reduce artificial or cultural barriers to entry and increase representation) but it can't solve systemic issues because it can't meaningfully challenge the systems it exists within. This is what led to the tensions resulting in stunts like those at Basecamp or Coinbase where the owners of the respective companies decided to expel DEI and claim to create a "politics-free" workplace because the people involved in their DEI projects refused to stay in the comfortable confines of feel-good corporate (literal) virtue signalling and got dangerously close to critiquing the structures around them. You need to consider people as individuals but if you want to make sense of systems you need to pick subsets (plural!) of the attributes that define each individual. Where DEI falls short is that it usually by design is only allowed to pick a limited number of attributes and is even more limited in what systems it is allowed to look at. Wheelchair-accessible workspaces, yes. Racism towards Black employees by their peers, yes. Sexual misconduct by middle managers, yes. But anything that challenges the leadership or ownership structure of the company is too close to unionization for comfort.

david-gpu 3y ago

There is some nuance here. As I understand it, intersectionality simply highlights that the experiences of a collective built from the intersection of several traits can be quite different to the experience of an adjacent collective. E.g. the queer descendants of Asian immigrants may often share experiences that are quite distinct from those of queer black folks. I have no problem with that. My point of contention is whether or not it is okay to shush a person talking about a collective simply because they aren't members of it. Or more broadly, whether it is okay to dismiss, silence and minimize the struggles of a collective because of some twisted notion that they deserve it. Why is it that we all agree that an old "boys' club" is repugnant, a "whites-only" association is disgustingly racist, but a "girls-only" lessons or a "black only" show are things to celebrate? We demand diversity and inclusivity, but somehow the more "able-bodied neurotypical white heterosexual male" checkboxes you tick, the less we care about your opinion and well-being, and thus the less important it is to include you. (And I only tick two of those)

roenxi 3y ago
> Why is it that... If you go with ye old class analysis, you'll notice the big threat to the status of VHNW is a free and fair free market. They benefit a lot from regulation and handouts to preserve the status quo. If you look at what plays out in practice, the rational move for the ultra-wealthy is to quietly align with the poor against the middle class. It isn't too blatant, but quietly just make it harder for people to jump up orders of magnitude in wealth. The intersectionality as pushed in the public debate is probably emanating from people looking to create a divided political climate to make it harder for poor and middle to unite and look for political change. I don't think most people want to institutionalise anti-white racism. Indeed, I suspect a "white's only" association wouldn't disgust many people, on the basis that we can have black or girl-only associations and they are fine. It would still be racist, obviously. But people have
- david-gpu 3y ago
  > I suspect a "white's only" association wouldn't disgust many people, on the basis that we can have black or girl-only associations and they are fine. It would still be racist, obviously Well, it would disgust me. I have so-called mixed-heritage children and I dread the day when I have to explain to them that they can't join this or that activity with their friends because they have the wrong skin color or the wrong gender. I may be in the minority, but I find associations that exclude people based on any of the protected classes (gender, sexual orientation, etc.) very distasteful. By all means, feel free to organize an event centered around X community, but allow everybody to attend.