You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Actual intersectionality’ tag.

   Intersectionality is one of the positive additions that heralds from Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw. Her concept of intersectionality is as follows – “The main argument of this black feminist paper is that the experience of being a black woman cannot be understood in terms of being black and of being a woman considered independently, but must include the interactions between the two, which frequently reinforce each other.”  Elegant isn’t it?  Simply – one must consider the many axis of challenges and oppression that people face and how they interact with each other.

   Intersectionality changes though once run through the mill of gender ideology.  Intersectionality magically becomes synonymous with being inclusive which is distinctly not what the term means.  I cringe when someone says that they are an ‘intersectional feminist’ because inevitably it means that they have gone down the rabbit-hole of regressive politics and now somehow believe that men should be centred in feminism because those men who choose to enact female sex stereotypes suddenly become the most oppressed people in society.

   That friends, is grade ‘A’ bullshit.  Feminism is necessarily an exclusive category, and it is reserved for those occupying the females sex class.  One cannot refuse to be in said sex class, nor can others somehow magically identify into it.  Patriarchy, whether you believe it exists or not, defines men and women into correspondingly dominant and subservient roles in society based on the immutable factor of which sex class you happen to be born into.

   The embrace of this bastardized intersectionality leads to a great deal of confusion, as Andrew Sullivan illustrates in this excerpt.

But now I’m confused, and I don’t think I’m alone. Slowly but surely, the term “sex” has slowly drifted in meaning and become muddled with gender. And that has major consequences for what homosexuality actually is, consequences that are only beginning to be properly understood. Take the Equality Act, the bill proposed by the biggest LGBTQ lobby group, the Human Rights Campaign, backed by every single Democratic presidential candidate, and passed by the House last May. Its core idea is to enhance the legal meaning of the word “sex” so it becomes “sex (including sexual orientation and gender identity).”

The Act provides four different ways to understand the word “sex,” only one of which has any reference to biology. Sex means first “a sex stereotype”; secondly “pregnancy, childbirth, or a related condition”; thirdly “sexual orientation or gender identity”; and last “sex characteristics, including intersex traits.” Yes, at the end, we have “sex characteristics” in there — i.e., biological males and females — qualified, as it should be, by the intersex condition. But it’s still vague. “Sex characteristics” can mean biologically male or female, but can also mean secondary sex characteristics, like chest hair, or breasts, which can be the effect of hormone therapy. So in fact, the Act never refers to men and women as almost every human being who has ever existed on Earth understands those terms.

The definition of “gender identity” in the Equality Act is “the gender-related identity, appearance, mannerisms, or other gender-related characteristics of the individual’s designated sex at birth.” Notice that this views “sex” as merely “designated” at birth. It seems to have no deeper meaning than a provisional social label attached by others. (That’s why the current trans-friendly terms for babies are not “male” and “female,” but “AMAB” — assigned male at birth — or “AFAB” — assigned female at birth.) It is as if we have redefined all of humanity around the tiny minority that is trans or intersex, so that the exception no longer proves the rule, but completely redefines it.

For a glimpse of what this means in practice, here’s a Canadian website, Sex-Ed School, relying on the resources of The Sex Information and Education Council of Canada. In this clip from their web series, the sex educators ask the elementary-school kids if “everyone born with a vulva is a girl.” Most of the kids say yes. But they’re wrong. The correct answer is that “our genitals don’t determine our gender and people born with vulvas can be boys.” Gender, the young kids are told, is “how you feel on the inside about whether you’re a boy or a girl, a man or a woman, if you’re nonbinary, feel like neither or both. People can also be fluid, feel more like female, more like a male based on the day or time. It’s all individual.” This is being taught to school kids ages 9 through 12 as fact by people who say they are sex researchers and educators.

And notice how “boy” and “girl” are in the very same category with the very same status as “fluid” and “nonbinary”. In the sex-ed course, the first lesson is not on the differences between men and women and how they make babies, as one might naïvely imagine. No, it’s on consent, not sex, and then there are episodes for gender and orientation, but still no lesson on sex itself, on the natural reproductive differences between boys and girls, which is how humans exist at all. The dolls they use for reference are sex-free, Ginger and Blue. The teacher tells us that one of them uses “they” as a pronoun. One lesson has the kids attaching toy versions of penises, vulvas, boobs, balls, which the kids assign at random. The teachers almost never say “boys” and “girls,” it’s always “people.” So some people have breasts and some people have penises.

In these lesson plans, here’s the definition of homosexuality: “a person’s sexual identity in relation to the gender to which they are attracted.” Homosexuality is thereby redefined as homogenderism. It’s no longer about attraction to the same sex, but to the same gender. I’m no longer homosexual; I’m homogender. But what if the whole point of my being gay is that I’ve always been physically attracted to men? And by men, I mean people with XY chromosomes, formed by natural testosterone, with male genitals, which is what almost every American outside these ideological bubbles means by “men.” I do not mean people with XX chromosomes, formed by estrogen, with female genitals, who have subsequently used testosterone to masculinize their female body — even though I would treat them with the respect and dignity they deserve in every context.”

   How can we fight against sexism if we cannot define what a woman is, or what sex is?  Reasonable people have to stand up against gender ideology, as it serves only to erode the rights, boundaries, and spaces of women.

    Oh my goodness, an actual intersectional analysis of oppression.  Thank you Shanita Hubbbard.  I would recommend reading the entire article as this pull quote merely sets the stage for a vivid example of multiple axis of oppression that black women face growing up in our white patriarchal society.


“There’s an intersection in almost every hood that teaches young girls lessons about power, racism and sexism. In the projects, where I grew up, I had to pass it almost every day to get home from school.

This intersection is where some of the guys from the neighborhood would stand around, play music, trash-talk about which artist should hold the title of greatest rapper, and then, suddenly, turn into dangerous predators when young girls walked by. This is where young girls like me learned to shrink into ourselves and remain silent.

On this intersection, like so many others in the world, your body and sense of safety were both up for grabs. On a good day, if you and a girlfriend remained silent, walking past the group of “corner dudes,” who were all about 15 years your senior and screaming about what they would do to your 12-year-old body, would be a short-lived experience.

On other days, especially if you were walking alone, things would escalate quickly. One of the men would grab your butt and you would pretend you didn’t feel it. Fighting back would make things worse: If you resisted, they would scream at you, curse at you and, in one particular case, attempt to follow you home until you ran inside a store and waited them out. But cross this intersection enough times and such things start to feel normal.”

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