Discussion anyone wants to talk about intersectionality?

[little helpers]

^ title says it all. title says it best. title is GOD. aw, man.

it's like, I been finding new understandings of it, talking with someone irl about their "intersectional bisexual experience". cuz for me, fresh-outta-the-head, first-time articulations of another's narrative, is always more enlightening than the age-old, bottom-of-the-pile ones I been told or have been telling myself for years.
gotta love being socially isolated!!

so, leave your comments if you wanna say/know/discuss something about it. I'm going to sleep soon. can't help posting it now. I'm feeling so impulsive doing this that po-po wants to put me in jail. but they'd have to wrestle with my shrink cuz I'm too high on emotions that I gotta make a phone call to Kimberle Crenshaw RIGHT NOW. this is strictly non-delusional cuz I know her number off yellow pages. you don't. you are too Gen-Z to know what yellow pages are. /s

I'm 20. smh.

anyways leave a comment if you'd like and I promise to read all of it when I wake up. thing is, you prolly be thinking I have bipolar by now, though I don't. but I got that diagnosis twice at psych wards so you better pick a side between me and shrinks. according to shrinks you should never believe me but according to me you should never believe shrinks. real tough situation for you, buddy. /s

 

[GrumpyFrog]

Hello, I am the resident asshole. I believe that intersectionality is yet another concept that is intended to increase herd mentality feeling of belonging to a group, but in curent social climate might be another dividing factor in the constantly intensifying, aggressive "us vs. them" mentality. Intersectionality recognises that all people from one social group are not the same, but at the end of the day it just upgrades them from being shoved in a box by one characteristic to being shoved in a box based on a combination of multiple characteristic, rather than being recognised as a unique individual in a unique set of circumstances with a one-of-a-kind life story, and it is sad.

 

[little helpers]

Hello, I am the resident asshole. I believe that intersectionality is yet another concept that is intended to increase herd mentality feeling of belonging to a group, but in curent social climate might be another dividing factor in the constantly intensifying, aggressive "us vs. them" mentality. Intersectionality recognises that all people from one social group are not the same, but at the end of the day it just upgrades them from being shoved in a box by one characteristic to being shoved in a box based on a combination of multiple characteristic, rather than being recognised as a unique individual in a unique set of circumstances with a one-of-a-kind life story, and it is sad.

thank you for your comment!

honestly I get what you're saying. and I'm sort of tired of identity politics myself. lesbianism being the best example. I stay as far from that as possible. you go on any late bloomers forum and there isn't one thing they can't label as comphet. or say MOGAI (I believe Mia Mulder on YT got better things to say 'bout this one). shea butter Twitter (smh). all of that.

but here's the thing. intersectionality is meant to be descriptive. besides being a method, of course. division gets described and people identify with it - well, that just goes to prove that the description is quite right. oppression is reproduced. so that division is. simple logic.

I think intersectionality implies a lot about, well, the topology of the overall class system. not the economic, "money" class. but the overall class structure. cuz while oppression is intersectional, racism and sexism still aren't equivalent. cuz every axis on the matrix of domination creates class. so like, women as a class. it's not about what women think (hell, I don't even think we can/should define the word "women", identity-wise), it's about the social realities that segregates meaning, rights, and redress.

a political identity is both external and internalized. no identity could exist if there isn't some form of segregation between one group and the rest. internally it affords us meaning and belonging. but externally it's the violent, discourse-laden segregation of who gets what and who doesn't.

Idk if I can explain this well, but you can prolly see that the level of privilege our political identity (an integral, inreductable, externally-defined identity) affords occupies a particular "height", if you will, on the power "ladder". women? Black women, White women, Latinx, Indigenous, Mixed and Asian women. further subdivided by classism, ableism, all of that. I know I'm making this a multiplication, categorical, I know. but I need a way to put this. so I guess we can say "microstates". you get "totally privileged identities" (Elon Musk, lol) at the top and "totally oppressed identities" (the basement) at the bottom. where everyone else are sandwiched between them, like steps of a ladder. oppression is the social relation of domination-subordination. reproduced materially and through discourse such that those dominating dominates more, over time, and those subordinated more subordinated. the overall shape of our class system grows longer and longer. without intervention, it gets streched out from a rounded something into a spaghetti noodle. I was imagining playdough there. lol.

when this thing gets closer and closer to noodle shape, infinitely thin and infinitely long, one day, I suppose that's the apocalypse situation. nobody's gonna listen to nobody cuz they're too far apart, their realities too divided. and nobody's gon find a comrade of nobody, cuz it's a thin shape, and you don't have many on the same level as you are. it's the "thought I might relate to this Asian girl cuz she anti-racist but, fuck!, she has huge problems with addicts" situation.

and I don't think it's an overstatement to say that we already are in that situation. be at the wrong place and it's a fault for me to just breathe - okay, so much for living, bye.

I don't have any more answers. I'm not the kind of person who wants to know whether anarchism (abolition of all forms of oppression, essentially) will or could be achieved. I don't care. my situation forces me to do something and maybe my mantra could just be "do something". even if it's just buying time. for the people we love. even if it all crashes down one day, some time.