In the U.S., we tend to organize politically according to identities. For example, we have a Gay Liberation Movement, a Women’s Movement, and the Civil Rights Movement, to name three big ones. All of these are personal characteristics made political.
The cartoon below, by Miriam Dobson, does a great job of showing one of the downsides of fighting for progressive social change in this way. For one, it can make people who carry multiple marginalized identities (for example, gay black men) feel unwelcome. And, two, it makes it seem like people without the identity can’t be part of the movement.
One solution is to think about oppressions in terms of intersectionality: we are all a mix of identities that resonate with each other in complicated ways. This is a rich idea, but one lesson that it has taught us is that the strategy of divide-and-conquer has been an effective way to keep multiple groups marginalized.
Instead of emphasizing identities, we could identify issues. And if our issue is oppression, we can join-to-resist. As the graphic explains: “oppression of one affects us all.”
Via Sociology Source, Another Angry Woman, and The Sociological Imagination.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Comments 9
Kali — October 4, 2013
Intersectionality is a fancy euphemism for "bros before hos".
Yrro Simyarin — October 4, 2013
The problem is, many times the level of oppression is not related to the level of public acceptability. Think of the common example of Gay Pride parades -- these often combine the two causes of the social acceptance of kink and sexual "deviancy", and the rights of gays at large.
There is little legal discrimination against kink, but much against gays. On the other hand, gays have had much more success being *socially* recognized than kinks.
It makes the intersection of these two issues very controversial and difficult with regard to practical political progress.
[Cool]lection | Foreign Holidays — October 11, 2013
[...] What is intersectionality? Why I’m glad you asked…. [...]
ASHLEY MARQUEZ — September 13, 2021
Intersectionality to me is the idea that life isn't the same for everyone even for people who shared identity characteristics. One may have the same race as another but they everyone has different aspects in their religion, sexual identity and gender and other minority groups. It goes more on than just identity and race. It is a mix of minority categories that one identifies itself as. It is an intersection of identities that can creat discrimination from different identites one may have. Intersection is understanding an individual or groups well-being but it's not as simple as just adding a and addressing each one individually racism sexism and table isn't exist on their own but when combined they can pound and transform the experience of oppression intersectionality acknowledges that unique impressions exists but is also dedicated to understanding how they change in combination the roots of intersectionality.