10. Intersectionality

A way of understanding and analyzing the complexity in the world, specifically in human experience

• Social and political factors (race, class, gender), and unique combinations of discrimination and privilege

Understanding connection between social structures and identities

• Key critique:

  • Single axis frameworks tend to be geared toward the dominant category

    • e.g. women → white women, Black → black men

  • The interconnections with oppressive systems go under-examined and unchallenged

Crenshaw on intersectionality

• Black women experience discrimination in ways that are both similar and different from those experienced by white women

Systemic oppression: Sometimes double

• Double discrimination:

  • Discrimination on the basis of race and sex - and as black women

  • Simultaneous impact on race and gender- as a black woman in the job market

• (negative) Social dynamics that come together → Sexism, ageism, etc.

  Intersectionality reflects a tradition of black women’s social justice praxis (theory and action)

With its popularization in 2010s, intersectionality encountered cooptation, reactionary opposition, depoliticization

• Researchers attempted to quantify oppressions to analyze it

• conservatives think intersectionality is about instilling hierarchies

• marketers promote feminism and anti-racism to sell rebellion

Standpoint, knowledge production & objectivity

because sociology’s first practitioners are men, the ideas and concerns are reflected those of men

• It fails to adequately investigate certain areas of women’s lives

  • childcare, unpaid domestic labour, harassment

Black feminism provides a multifaceted critique

• issue with dominant groups as it limits knowledge of the systems

Themes of black feminist thought:

• work, family, sexual politics, motherhood, activism

• these pertain distinctly to the lived experience of black women, (oppressions)

Black feminism’ emphasis on “standpoint”

• reveals more about black womens everyday lives

Provides a counter-hegemonic epistemology

• “problematizing” the everyday world helps us investigate the power relations that operate underneath the surface

• challenging the domination itself

Black Feminism as an active response to oppression

→ theoretical and political analysis in concrete lived experience

Collins approach to “standpoint epistemology” is multidimensional

• critical of “colour blind” approaches to the issue of racism, equality

• doesnt just add race to feminism but emphasizes the interlocking nature of statuses

  • Theorizes “matrix of domination”

  • the idea that ones position in society is made up of multiple standpoints rather than just one → “intersectional perspective”

Incorporating social justice to advance social change

• Textual analysis disproves false interpretations

  • e.g. the oppressed do not possess a fixed or essential identity

  • an individual may be an oppressor and a member of an oppressed group, or at the same time oppressor and oppressed

• A matrix of domination contains few pure victims or oppressors

The depoliticization of intersectionality looks like:

** serve to eliminate intersectionality function as a tool for political change

• Diversity management - in university admins and corporate PR teams

• radical politics using diversity tools for institutional gain

Republicans and “woke”

• pretending to care can also protect power

Thinking intersectionally about sociology

• Researchers must use intersectionality in favour of developing approaches to research that is truly collaborative and use counter-hegemonic knowledge

Key point → Intersectional feminism is a radical challenge

• to dominate previously unquestioned ways of knowing

Use intersectionality and collaboration to reflect epistemic gaps within specific research → within the positions we occupy