Intersectionality

[DotCommunist]

thread needs more wheeeeeel of OPPRESSION!

 

[Lo Siento.]

isn't the main difference between #killallmen and acab that noone is trying to organise with cops?

 

[Delroy Booth]

isn't the main difference between #killallmen and acab that noone is trying to organise with cops?

That's what you think

 

[Das Uberdog]

LOL @ 'unattractive' on the oppression wheel

 

[Das Uberdog]

hahahahahahahaha 'young' is a privileged category

 

[DotCommunist]

LOL @ 'unattractive' on the oppression wheel

you cannot understand what my people experience

 

[BigTom]

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

hyberbole to an extent but if you watch conversations online between proponents of intersectionalism (not authorities necessarily) it sometimes descends into a game of who is more oppressed which becomes counting up different types of oppression (black and woman vs poor) without any reference to the real world.

 

[DotCommunist]

then theres the whole progressive stack thing...

 

[TruXta]

hyberbole to an extent but if you watch conversations online between proponents of intersectionalism (not authorities necessarily) it sometimes descends into a game of who is more oppressed which becomes counting up different types of oppression (black and woman vs poor) without any reference to the real world.

Cheers.

then theres the whole progressive stack thing...

You know a bit too much about this, young man.

 

[JimW]

thread needs more wheeeeeel of OPPRESSION!
...

We've moved on to the far superior ball of confusion:

Edited for embed fuck-up

 

[BigTom]

then theres the whole progressive stack thing...

Yes! This is an example of what I'm talking about in action, in this case generally with specific references to visible oppressions (race, gender, physical disability, age maybe?) being privileged* over others (class, mental health) and also an abacus type arrangement in deciding order of speakers based on number of oppressions.

*Time to check your oppression privilege!

 

[love detective]

hyberbole to an extent but if you watch conversations online between proponents of intersectionalism (not authorities necessarily) it sometimes descends into a game of who is more oppressed

Which is odd as despite their theoretical dedication to what the wheel of oppression tells us, the usual argument from someone like Laurie Penny who is:-

White, European in Origin, Heterosexual, Able Bodied, Credentialed, Highly Literate (stop laughing at the back), Young, Attractive, Upper Middle Class, Anglophone, Light Skinned, Gentile and Dertile

...is that she is apparently more oppressed than all us old unattractive uncredentialed working class folk

 

[cesare]

I think LP describes herself as queer rather than het.

 

[Delroy Booth]

Spin spin spin the wheel of oppression
See how fast the bastard turns!

 

[ViolentPanda]

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.

What yer basic class politics says - people can be oppressed on any number of levels, for any number of reasons. Tackle the class issue, and most of the other issues dissolve or become solveable.

What intersectional politics says - people can be oppressed on any number of levels, for any number of reasons. The more oppressions you suffer, the more oppressed you are, and the higher you score. Working class black lesbians will always score higher on the hierarchy of oppression than a working class white hetero even if they're not actually oppressed. As someone said, political Top Trumps.

 

[JHE]

Dertile

What's that?

 

[JimW]

I have to say I'd never have minded about me life of poverty and precariousness if i was just not so damn plug ugly. Class and attractiveness really can be placed with identical prominence on the one wheel.

 

[TruXta]

What yer basic class politics says - people can be oppressed on any number of levels, for any number of reasons. Tackle the class issue, and most of the other issues dissolve or become solveable.

What intersectional politics says - people can be oppressed on any number of levels, for any number of reasons. The more oppressions you suffer, the more oppressed you are, and the higher you score. Working class black lesbians will always score higher on the hierarchy of oppression than a working class white hetero even if they're not actually oppressed. As someone said, political Top Trumps.

But it's about structural oppression isn't it? It's not about individuals, but social groupings.

 

[love detective]

What's that?

Helps to clean the bog - posh people pronounce it differently to the rest of us

 

[ViolentPanda]

I find it amusing that the Kill Men slogan is justified because apparently people who say ACAB don't really believe it. I always thought that for many, ACAB was a statement of truth learnt from experience.

(I don't use it because I don't believe it BTW.)

You may or may not have noticed that many of those who purport to support the slogan are part of a social class whose relations with coppers are somewhat less fraught than those who originated the ACAB slogan.

 

[JimW]

What's that?

It's what dergrout goes round.

 

[ViolentPanda]

But it's about structural oppression isn't it? It's not about individuals, but social groupings.

It's supposed to be about social groupings.
Most of the debate tends to be predicated on analysing the multiple oppressedness of individuals, though, and in fact, if you take intersectionality at its acolytes' word, it can only really ever be about the multiple oppressedness of the individual. While you can have over-arching social groupings, individuals tend to differ. Perhaps their differences are small, but it's still going to be the case that person A and person B don't have identical intersections of identity, and therefore only constitute part of a very broad "social grouping". This is why the identity-based social groupings that function best/get better results are more usually those that focus on a single shared identity facet - concentrating on "listen to us because we're black/queer/female" works better than "listen to us because we're the victims of multiple oppressions, even if we don't actually suffer those oppressions".

 

[BigTom]

But it's about structural oppression isn't it? It's not about individuals, but social groupings.

It's highly individualised - this is why in order to make things right we must check our privilege - it's about the individual becoming a better person, an ultimate individualised, liberal viewpoint of the world: if only we were all better people the world would be a wonderful place - nothing about how structures affect individuals and work to create the bad people we are, how/why elites reproduce themselves and corrupt structures cannot be reformed from within because of that, nothing about why capital finds it useful to create and use the oppressions to maximise profits.
Remember, structures aren't the problem, It's individuals that are the problem. Some intersectionalists also have structural criticisms (kill all men and die cis scum are expressions of the structural criticisms) but it's not inherent within the idea of intersectionalism, and I don't think intersectionalism lends itself to structural criticism, so focused it is on the identities of individuals as perceived by themselves and not on the reasons why those identities exist/how the power relationships that surround them are/have been created

 

[TruXta]

It's highly individualised - this is why in order to make things right we must check our privilege - it's about the individual becoming a better person, an ultimate individualised, liberal viewpoint of the world: if only we were all better people the world would be a wonderful place - nothing about how structures affect individuals and work to create the bad people we are, how/why elites reproduce themselves and corrupt structures cannot be reformed from within because of that, nothing about why capital finds it useful to create and use the oppressions to maximise profits.
Remember, structures aren't the problem, It's individuals that are the problem. Some intersectionalists also have structural criticisms (kill all men and die cis scum are expressions of the structural criticisms) but it's not inherent within the idea of intersectionalism, and I don't think intersectionalism lends itself to structural criticism, so focused it is on the identities of individuals as perceived by themselves and not on the reasons why those identities exist/how the power relationships that surround them are/have been created

Hmmm. That might well be true WRT the durrent twittering discourse around intersectionalism, but the little I read about it (had to for my masters) about 10 years ago was quite clear IIRC that identites are structurally determined. Anyway, it matters little.

 

[caleb]

They make a lot of noise about it being about "structural oppression" and then agonise over the minutiae of individual actions in small activist groups. Makes sense.

 

[Das Uberdog]

they sort of accept it as written on the one hand yet design their own system of campaigning and behaviour which totally and utterly ignores that

 

[Wilf]

you cannot understand what my people experience

A makeover is the new social mobility.

 

[DotCommunist]

A makeover is the new social mobility.

I was born a nottie and will not die a hottie- your attempts at cultural assimilation are offensive. Immediate twitter self crit session or you are out of the stack foerever

 

[J Ed]

Hmmm. That might well be true WRT the durrent twittering discourse around intersectionalism, but the little I read about it (had to for my masters) about 10 years ago was quite clear IIRC that identites are structurally determined. Anyway, it matters little.

As with many things, the rhetoric and reality are necessarily completely at odds with each other

 

[Wilf]

I was born a nottie and will not die a hottie- your attempts at cultural assimilation are offensive. Immediate twitter self crit session or you are out of the stack foerever

There's only me bad back keeping me in the class struggle. Our banners will blaze with the slogan Marry, Snog, Avoid!