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Intersectionality is the only rule
(media.kbin.social)
cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/my_mouldy_memes/t/310874
THE FUTURE OF FEMINISM
IS ONLY AS POWERFUL
AS THE FUTURE OF ANTI-RACISM
CLEO WADE
This seems to assume that there's a certain fixed amount of "bad shit" that must be placed on one minority or another. If I eliminated all police brutality (which in the US disproportionately is aimed at black people), does that somehow make things any worse for women?
It doesn't assume there's a fixed amount of bad shit. It's saying that if you talk exclusively about oppression against one group, you miss out on the bigger picture. The oppression experienced by black women is similar, yet different to the oppression experienced by black men or white women. Intersectionality came out of the experiences of black women who felt they weren't being heard or recognized in civil rights movements about women and movements about black people. In the women's groups, they were marginalized because of racist attitudes that many in the movement tolerated. In black liberation groups, they were sidelined by misogyny.
These intelligent black women recognized these challenges and worked to address this by promoting intersectional thinking in civil rights spaces. They highlighted how there's no single black experience or single woman experience. There were commonalities, yes but there were also differences. The civil rights movement is diverse, with there not being a single universal experience among them. There are many ways to experience discrimination, so instead of creating cliques of similarity, civil rights movements should embrace the diversity within their own movements.
If you eliminated all police abuse, it would be amazing. It would certainly help things. However, there are still other things to consider in parallel to that. For instance, is abuse in the private sector being addressed? Are companies hiring thugs to intimidate rather than using cops. Are we also trying to end other forms of abuse by the state, like imperialism. If you ended police brutality, it might not even lead to increases in those things, but they would still need to be addressed. Basically our work is not over until all unfair hierarchies are addressed. Police are only part of the hierarchy, and we should listen to those who are victims of other parts of it.
Thank you for this explanation. Really helped me.
Do... Do you think Black women don't exist?
Are you just not even making an attempt to understand my point? In this scenario, of course black women would benefit, as they'd experience no police brutality. My point is that this magical elimination of a racial inequality problem would not make a gender related issue (e.g. the wage gap) automatically worse somehow, which seemed to be Leylaa's point if I'm understanding that correctly.
You missed the point.
Intersectionality isn't that there is a fixed amount of bad things or that fixing/working on one of them is a problem. Your example would obviously be a good thing.
Intersectionality is that there are more bad things than one or the other individually. The sum of the parts is less than the whole.
The point is that even if you fixed all of the racism/inequalities faced by each group individually there would still be inequalities left over that the people at the intersection of those two groups face.
I see, thanks for clarifying. Where I was confused by Leylaa's comment was when she said that getting rid of one type of discrimination would merely "shift" it to another group, which does not sound like the same thing you are saying here.
I see, let me add some words.
(Or the difficulties that women of color face that don't affect white women won't be addressed at all, and this the discrimination that is left over is shifted solely to black women).
As an example, feminism of the 30s and 40s was only for the promotion of white women.
Feminism today suffers these same problems. As I have said elsewhere, JK Rowling is a feminist. She is also a terf. Feminism, without the inclusion of trans rights, will result in actions that will exclude the rights of trans women. Without the knowledge that terfs are a thing terfs would 100% silently advocate for the removal of trans women's rights from the feminist movement.
The same thing happened, and is happening, to black women.
We (the royal we) like to say that feminism is for all women... But is it? Is it for women if black women's issues(which are unique to black women) are not included? Is it feminism if black women aren't included?
That's the point.
They said it in a slightly incorrect way. It's not like there's an unaddressable amount of discrimination that gets shifted over. It's that other forms of bigotry can fester in a movement if diverse voices are not part of the conversation. Intersectionality is about praxis: not just theory, but how movements practically function as well.