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What is intersectional politics?

• beerbajay 12y ago
  "Intersectionality" is the observation that your status/lack-of-status in society is the result of not just single systems (black/white, rich/poor, native/immigrant, male/female, hetero/homo, cis/trans) but a combination of all of these. So a specific person in a specific place is privileged/oppressed as the sum of the advantages/disadvantages provided by each of the identifiable systems. As an example, being a man is usually a net positive in terms of societal privileges, but being black at the same time? Being female is a disadvantage, but if you're also rich, you're still coming out ahead.
• potatolicious 12y ago
  That privilege (and the lack thereof) is a highly complex system that is more than the sum of its parts, and therefore cannot be easily separated and evaluated in isolation. For example, while women are disadvantaged in our society in many ways, the ways in which this disadvantage works is remarkably different for black women and white women - or women from higher-class backgrounds vs. lower-class backgrounds. Ditto, while "white men" are commonly perceived to be privileged, this privilege works differently (and to varying degrees) depending on if you're wealthy or poor, urban or suburban, jock or nerd, etc. And the effect in totality is not the simple sum of all the properties of the individual. Therefore, attempts to separate the discussion of privilege and disadvantage into discrete "women/men" "rich/poor" "white/black" "straight/gay" variables is doomed to failure - the way an individual is treated in society is the complex intersection of many attributes of who they are. A straight black woman faces different discrimination than a gay white woman, who faces different discrimination than a straight white poor woman - and the dynamics of the privileges they hold and lack cannot be simply isolated like an algebra equation.