Intersectionality

[Nigel Irritable]

Gender oppression, racism, ableism etc are tools of capitalist oppression - so we should smash them all.

This isn't what people here object to about the intersectionalist/privilege package that has quite suddenly migrated from the American campuses to British social media discussions. In fact, the way you put this part above would raise suspicions amongst intersectionalistas that you are an old fashioned class reductionist, opposing other forms of oppression simply because they divide the working class.

Intersectionalism isn't just the statement of the bleeding obvious that different forms of oppression interact with each other. It's a whole set of assumptions about how they interact, and how to deal with them. That's the part that gets the grief around here.

 

[BigTom]

I don't quite understand the beef some have here with intersectional politics? Most people I encounter that identify as intersectional do not lack a class based analysis, nor downplay it's effects, instead they recognise racism, patriachy, ableism, transphobia etc all serve as a divide and rule tactic for the elite. If you recognise how implicitly pervasive not only capitalism, but these other forms of discrimination, is in shaping our lives, interactions, and relationships, on a subconscious level, then what is the point in only trying to tackle capitalism without addressing these other issues? To me it just sits happily with my politics, that everyone is of equal value and should deserve an equal say, and intersectionality is promoting these values within our own communities/protest groups whilst fighting capitalism. Gender oppression, racism, ableism etc are tools of capitalist oppression - so we should smash them all.

I do also have issues with the language of academia and the way certain types just throw out complicated jargon expecting us all to understand it.

At its core, intersectionality says something simple, that different people are oppressed in different ways, which I'd fair enough.

Problems come because this is oversimplified and becomes a top trumps game, so Michelle Obama being a black woman is more oppressed than a white homeless man.

It often seems divisive, so I can't say anything about a woman's oppression cos I'm a man, when to me it should be unifying, that I can understand about a woman's oppression because of what I've experienced elsewhere. For me this was thrown into stark relief when I first heard feminists talking about micro aggressions, read about what they meant and thought, hey I recognise this from depression but when I'd talk about how I dealt with this stuff I'd be told to be quiet cos I'm a man.

It is totally individualistic as well, entirely about the individual identity of a person and not about the structures that lie behind that.

 

[barney_pig]

What's the cotton ceiling?

 

[Casually Red]

its something middle class people invented to completely destroy socialism

anyone who agrees do jazz hands now

 

[Balbi]

They're not expecting you to understand it at all. It's more to disguise that they don't understand whilst fooling non-academics into thinking they're really clever (when they're not). In my opinion.

Balbi started a thread on this topic a while ago, had a lot of good stuff in it.

Did I?

 

[equationgirl]

Did I?

You did, you explained it well. Might have been last year some time.

 

[Balbi]

I am twenty eight years old, and I cannot remember this

 

[belboid]

Did I?

http://www.urban75.net/forums/threa...k-on-transsexuals.304875/page-2#post-11876993

that post, I presume. Which is a fair summary, imo.

 

[xenon]

I am twenty eight years old, and I cannot remember this

Dude it was your tagline for ages too. (I just remember these things.)

Personlly I CBA reading political theory for the most part. (Sorry didn't read your thread.) Academic jargan preserving the domain of the custodians of knowledge is a common phenominum across discaplins. This one seems particularly pernicious though from what I've observed.

 

[frogwoman]

butchersapron surely the class only stuff people are thinking of is like the grantite/stalinist "homosexuality as a bourgeois deviation" crap?

 

[Nigel Irritable]

butchersapron surely the class only stuff people are thinking of is like the grantite/stalinist "homosexuality as a bourgeois deviation" crap?

That wasn't Socialist Appeal's position. They simply never mentioned lgbt liberation either way up until recently. The full on "bourgeois deviation" position was very rare anywhere on the left in recent decades. And even where it did exist, as with the US RCP (Maoists), it did not coexist with a "class only" framework - for instance on race. If anything some people here would have considered them "identity politics" sorts themselves, just ones who weren't keen on gays.

 

[belboid]

The full on "bourgeois deviation" position was very rare anywhere on the left in recent decades.

Royston Bulls lot still say it!

 

[gawkrodger]

and the University of Birmingham

oh dear.

Having no interaction with any students of said institution I'm pleased to say I've managed to avoid this!

 

[Lo Siento.]

I don't quite understand the beef some have here with intersectional politics? Most people I encounter that identify as intersectional do not lack a class based analysis, nor downplay it's effects

I'd say that's exactly the case. If most of the prominent advocates of intersectional politics have a class based analysis they hide it real well. Take a quick look at the nomenclature, how much of it is related to class issues? I mean there's #killallmen, terfs, #solidarityisforwhitewomen, manarchy, brocialism, whitesplaining, mansplaining, nice guy syndrome. Where are the catchy hashtags and concepts for describing the myriad of ways in which middle class university-educated activists (like me and them) elbow their way to the front of "liberation movements". Where is the critique of intersectional feminism's fairly obvious class basis to go alongside the critique of white male dominance of revolutionary groups? If it genuinely is there, then you'd have to admit it's pretty damn peripheral to their politics.

 

[revol68]

It's embarrassingly crass, there is no coherent theory, just a series of slogans and self aggrandisement, either by "calling others out" or even creepier through transparent "self criticism" whereby they use it to reassert how much they will learn from this and "grow", it's all so mired in an insidious passive aggressiveness, like Butchers said, Heathers with politics.

The joke is that no one is actually worried that they want to "kill all men" or "cis scum", it is simply posturing, like punks constantly going on about "ACAB" (except at least Cop is a social function and being called a bastard looks pretty tame compared to being wished murdered). I don't feel offended "as a cis man" when I hear this crap, I just shake my privileged head at how comically theatrical it all is. Saying that though the implicit politics they are forwarding are worrying and do have more serious consequences than twitter rows. Identity politics might be a little top trumps game for university politicos but when you look at it's actual affect through state backed "multiculturalism" or in Northern Ireland the entrenchment of "two communities" who having moved from a low scale civil war, are now locked in a ever more tedious game of oppression trump cards, the new weapons being "culture and heritage" and of course that most pervasive of terms "offence". Shit is getting so bad that we now have new terms for both "communities" in line with this PC sectarianism, PUL and CNR, that's Protestant, Unionist and Loyalist and Catholic, Nationalist, Republican respectively.

It should hardly be surprising that this kind of shit is popular with students, just look at the wave of Maoism in the 60's, sloganistic drivel, authoritarianism dressed as self criticism and a complete and utter detachment from the "bought off" imperialistic working classes (white/straight/cis scum that they are).

 

[Miss-Shelf]

Well this thread has been an interesting way to spend an hour in the middle of a sleepless night

 

[William of Walworth]

"Cis" ???

 

[Delroy Booth]

Intersectionality is the belief that Lavish P is being oppressed by the people who bag his groceries and clean his penthouse.

 

[BigTom]

"Cis" ???

Cis is the Latin (? Or Greek) antonym for trans and is a perfectly good word to describe those born into the right body gender-wise, just a recent addition to our language and probably won't ever be widely used, but a word was needed for this and it's a good one imo.

 

[JimW]

Cis is the Latin (? Or Greek) antonym for trans and is a perfectly good word to describe those born into the right body gender-wise, just a recent addition to our language and probably won't ever be widely used, but a word was needed for this and it's a good one imo.

Heard it in its modern usage for a while now, but I sadly already knew what it meant from playing some Roman Empire computer game with the provinces of Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul - cis being this side and trans being across t'other.

 

[Delroy Booth]

Heard it in its modern usage for a while now, but I sadly already knew what it meant from playing some Roman Empire computer game with the provinces of Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul - cis being this side and trans being across t'other.

Don't feel bad. I first starting learning German from listening to Rammstein albums.

which is probably why my German ist schrecklich

 

[JimW]

Don't feel bad. I first starting learning German from listening to Rammstein albums.

which is probably why my German ist schrecklich

Obviously you have to be careful not to listen to the Rammstein while playing the game or you end up really confused.

 

[SpineyNorman]

Intersectionality is the belief that Lavish P is being oppressed by the people who bag his groceries and clean his penthouse.

My God, who is that cunt?

 

[Delroy Booth]

My God, who is that cunt?

It's Lavish, bitch.

He gets everything he wants, peasant.

 

[DotCommunist]

shit rapper

 

[seventh bullet]

Intersectionality is the belief that Lavish P is being oppressed by the people who bag his groceries and clean his penthouse.

'You made your bed, so sleep in it peasants.'

One of them makes his every day. I hope he/she leaves drawing pins in it and steals his wads of cash.

 

[Delroy Booth]

'You made your bed, so sleep in it peasants.'

One of them makes his every day. I hope he/she leaves drawing pins in it and steals his wads of cash.

Plenty more where that came from.

 

[TruXta]

Problems come because this is oversimplified and becomes a top trumps game, so Michelle Obama being a black woman is more oppressed than a white homeless man.

Is this hyperbole on your part or has anyone with any kind of intersectional authority said this?

 

[Pickman's model]

Is this hyperbole on your part or has anyone with any kind of intersectional authority said this?

isn't intersectional authority some sort of oxymoron?

 

[TruXta]

isn't intersectional authority some sort of oxymoron?

I was hoping someone would pick up on that