Week 5 - Intersections

Urgency of Intersectionality (TED talk)

  • Black women who experience police violence are more likely to be unknown and go unrecognized

  • We are using a “trickle-down” approach to social justice

  • Emma DeGraffenreid

    • the employer hired women and the employer hired African American men

    • women did secretarial work and AA men did hard labor

    • she, as an AA women was not hired and the court dismissed her case

    • framing problem: being a black women is an independent identity from being a women and being black

  • #sayhername

    • a movement to bring black women into the conversation about police violence

Intersectionality

  • Social identity: a culturally available and socially constructed category of people in which we place ourselves or are placed by others

    • Gender inflects our other social categories just as our other social categories inflect gender

  • Privilege: unearned social and economic advantage based on our location in a social hierarchy

  • Gender Strategy: finding a way of doing gender that works or us as unique individuals who are also shaped by other parts of our identity and the material realities of our lives

    • ex: being more hyperfeminine in order to compensate for something else (being black or disabled), embracing masculinity as a women to overcome some of the ideas about women

  • Gender Binary

    • mythical inhabitants of the gender binary are implicitly white, Christian, middle or upper class, able bodied, and heterosexual

    • the gender binary normalizes one kind of man and one kind of woman - this erases all others

    • gender is not an isolated social fact about us, but instead intersects with our other identities

How other identities intersect with gender rules

  • Socioeconomic class

    • Breadwinner and homemaker strategy

      • follows gender expectation, unattainable for many, creates dependency, damaging to mental health

    • Co-breadwinner strategy

      • more money, outsource homemaking work, woman is not following gendered norms, 

    • relates to gender

      • more money = greater ability to perform gender, who works is related to gender norms, social class can provide an account to gender

  • Race

    • whiteness is often the default beauty standard

      • black femininity vs white femininity 

        • white beauty standards: colorism, “natural hair’ 

    • Racial ideas of gender uphold white supremacy

    • historically racial stereotypes changed according to how useful they were in policing non-white individuals

    • gender strategies based on race

    • What are marked and unmarked categories?

  • Sexuality

    • Heteronormativity

      • assumption that everyone is straight

    • Gaydar: do we actually detect another person’s attraction to a specific gender or are we looking for something else?

      • identifying gender expression and if it aligns with gender identity

    • Prejudice is not just based on sexual orientation but on gender performance

    • homonormativity

      • the ways in ways queer people express themselves in a “straight” or gender aligning way as a means to be read as queer and thus protect them

    • queer spaces are often very white and queer people of color are often on the outside

  • Immigration

    • xenophobia: institutional and individual bias against people considered foreign

    • married immigrants might change their gender roles (breadwinner/homemaker) to align with what america perceives as the norm in order to try to not stand out more than they already do

    • the area that people move to they might be bending or breaking gender norms that they don’t even know

  • Ability

    • masculinity and self-sufficiency

      • men are expected to be strong and dependable and might overcompensate in other ways

    • femininity and beauty standards

      • women who are disabled might be seen as less attractive and sexual which makes them devalued

  • Age

    • men and women age in a socially different ways and at different rates

      • men are still considered attractive as they age in ways that women are no

      • the value of men increases as they age, the value of women decreases as they age

    • ageism

      • discrimination based on age

      • can go in either direction (people can be too young to understand/be capable and people can be too old to understand/be capable) in different circumstances

Key Terms

asexual: A term used to describe a sexual orientation for people who experience little to no sexual attraction. This term is sometimes shortened to ace.

aromantic: A term used to describe a person who experiences little to no romantic attraction. This term is sometimes shortened to aro.

heterosexism: A bias that assumes all people are heterosexual (at least until proven otherwise) and that it is more desirable to be heterosexual.

monosexual: A term used to describe a person who is sexually attracted to only one sex/gender.

binegativity: A social stigma directed at bisexual people that can come from heterosexual people as well as those who identify as lesbian or gay.

coming out: A process by which LGBTQ+ individuals accept, appreciate, and inform themselves and others about their LGBTQ+ identity.

internalized heterosexism: See internalized homonegativity.

internalized homonegativity: The internalization of negativity about one's identity as LGBQ+. See also internalized heterosexism.

sexual configurations theory (SCT): The idea that sexuality is multi-faceted, socially situated, and dynamic and can be best understood along a variety of dimensions.

sexual fluidity: The idea that sexual orientation can be fluid and changeable over time.