Intersectionality

What does Holla Forums think of intersectionality?

Is the theory an accurate way of depicting social hierarchy?

Is the theory useful for achieving positive social change?

Why has the theory gained so much traction in the Western left?

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=a4mjw2cVaDY
racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/mcintosh.pdf
bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/843165bf-1e69-3dec-873e-973fc8e604a5
cidadeinseguranca.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/deleuze_control.pdf
subtropics.english.ufl.edu/index.php/2017/06/12/notes-ascendancy-identity-politics-literary-writing/
libcom.org/library/i-am-woman-human-marxist-feminist-critique-intersectionality-theory-eve-mitchell
theoutline.com/post/2156/mic-com-and-the-cynicism-of-modern-media
versobooks.com/blogs/2970-not-us-me
marxist.com/marxism-vs-intersectionality.htm
youtube.com/watch?v=IvqBJYmpQrY
youtube.com/watch?v=HX2z2u3Uar8
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

bourgy trash

It’s ok, but I feel like it gives every component “spoke” on the wheel equal weight, which is an assumption I’d disagree with. Like if u look it has European ethnicity vs black/ethnic. But where are Asians on that? Where do they fit on that? Is their perceived oppression the same as a black persons?
I think think the fundamental flaw of interseftionality theory is that 1) it starts on the flawed assumption that all these identities carry equal weight in regard to oppression 2) that class is an identity and not a material condition (evidenced by that fact that people habitually misperceive their class) and 3) that some forms of identity based oppressions don’t beget/negate others. As an example, the type of racism a rich black person may be subjected to is very mild as compared to that of a poor black. Thus the major component of oppression in this case isn’t race, but class

I mean that fucking pic OP has fertility as an identity. How often do you walk up to an infertile person and slander them? How often are women who have miscarriages lynched? In some parts of the world, maybe. But to pretend it hold as much weight as being poor, that’s just disingenuous.

I think it's also pretty telling that "wealthism" is on the chart but capitalism is not.

I mostly agree with you but as I understand it this type of scenario is specifically what intersectionality tries to explain - the rich black is less oppressed than the poor black because their class intersects their race

Trash. Bastardization of foucault theories

Lol I didn’t even notice that. Wtf is “wealthism”
I mean this is a separate can of worms but it drives me nuts when I talk to people who identify as conservatives, who lambast the greed and excess of the rich, and identify their disportionate control of the govt, but who support capitalism, a system that REWARDS them for that very greed, that fosters it. Cognitive dissonance 101
/rant

No, it’s based on historical circumstances and vo-do instead of curet material reality. If a man’s father was a Porky, but he’s a prol then he’s a prol, end of discussion.

Am I reading it wrong or is this graphic suggesting that being old and unattractive makes you more oppressed than being black or Jewish? Did an incel make this?

So then the issue with this theory is it fails to account for the power class has here, so much so that it alleviates other oppressions. The inverse, a poor white person doesn’t necessarily experience the same allieviation of oppression, which indicates that class has a much stronger ability to alter your status
Though perhaps I am misinterpreting the graphic, is there some sort of vertical scale

bad meme

So you mean that it treats the oppression from all 'types' as equal magnitude? I'd agree with that.

This looks like exactly what Holla Forums gets painted as, a silly victimhood club obsessed over (with no sense of irony) installing a hierarchy of who is the most oppressed and therefore most worthy. As a neutral observer it seems really pointless to focus on this stuff.

You are obviously right about a lot of these being false flags to cover the effect of class though.

On a side note, wtf is "educationalism"… Surely thats in the camp with "anti-fucking retardism"

youtube.com/watch?v=a4mjw2cVaDY
racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/mcintosh.pdf

What we know as 'intersectionality' originates with for profit diversity consultants like Peggy McIntosh rather than with the radical left. It is an essentially managerial, reformist ideology with normative implications, ie. 'progress' means ever greater institutionalisation and categorisation. Pop 'Intersectionality' can be traced to developments in management that have been taking place since the 60s. The new age-y human potential movement set the bases for much of modern american managerial culture, with its obsession with encounter groups and 'expressing your true self'. This is because the Post-Fordist workplace demands total involvement, the destruction of all barriers between public and private selves. Beneath the discourse of liberation lurk new mechanisms of control. Everyday life is all the more subject to psychiatric micromanagement. The individual only exists insofar as it is institutionalised, it is only 'included' insofar as it is excluded. Marketing yourself is a full time job.

Post War american culture is essentially an uneasy compromise between the military industrial technostate and the utopian aspirations of the counterculture. Look beyond the thin veneer of progressive humanitarianism and you will glimpse the true warlike, machine nature of the system, just waiting to be mobilised for fascism and total annihilation.

Note: I am an US citizen from a middle class Latin American family, throughout my life, I've drifted between the 'outside' and 'inside' of American society. The 'inside', facilitated by digital media, insists in absorbing everything, it's getting harder and harder to be a detached observer. I have relatives who voted for Trump, as well as others who have gone full tumblr. There's something really eerie about America in 2017, an absurd shadow haunted edifice that could crumble any moment now.

bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/843165bf-1e69-3dec-873e-973fc8e604a5



cidadeinseguranca.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/deleuze_control.pdf

subtropics.english.ufl.edu/index.php/2017/06/12/notes-ascendancy-identity-politics-literary-writing/

V impressive post. Came from pol but pleased to see stuff like that written.

The idea of destroying the public private barrier is one of the most troubling. Social media (especially work linked ones) plays a huge part in this. The range of acceptable activities and pastimes is totally limited by whats acceptable to a future employer, and people adjust their views and behaviour in advance and in anticipation of this from an early age.

Google and Facebook are by far the biggest single problem we have today. Old left/right fights and arguing about race must take a backseat to this

Female incels probably.

libcom.org/library/i-am-woman-human-marxist-feminist-critique-intersectionality-theory-eve-mitchell

libcom.org/library/i-am-woman-human-marxist-feminist-critique-intersectionality-theory-eve-mitchell

libcom.org/library/i-am-woman-human-marxist-feminist-critique-intersectionality-theory-eve-mitchell

Petty squabbles over idpol are no threat to the system. It is extremely resilient. If the much hated EU can handle the enormous pressure of Brexit and the migrant crisis, the capitalist patriotard America is secure.

Much of what we think of as 'politics' is in fact just a product of the machine. The identity politics wave of the early 2010s was an unintended consequence of the content farm and its engagement maximisation imperatives. Social media engineers have built pavlovian feedback mechanisms, algorithms designed to forcefeed you triggering content about the outgroup.

theoutline.com/post/2156/mic-com-and-the-cynicism-of-modern-media

versobooks.com/blogs/2970-not-us-me

The real economic base of the system simply isn't there anymore. The stock market does not reflect the state of the economy, it's all about speculation, centred on the high tech so called New Economy, AKA the greatest con job in human history. Uber, Tesla and Amazon make no profits, in fact, they are loosing billions while threatening the very fabric of society. Investors are betting on future monopoly status and the massive profits this implies, but what if this fails to materialise? In 2008, we were 2 weeks away from food shortages and empty supermarket shelves. The crisis never ended, it has been put on hold for the moment, but it is still there, as real as it ever was.

Who paints us as that? Because reddit socialists, as an example, lambast us for not taking into account these other oppressions. We are hated for it.
Most of it comes from Holla Forums being Holla Forums and confusing us for pro-gun militant liberals, which we are certainly not.

marxist.com/marxism-vs-intersectionality.htm

Just posted this in the brocialist thread

BAN INCOMING IN

stoner science fictions

reads like Holla Forums fear on

don't care, but i agree economicism is dum. i suggest reading althusser, For Marx and States And Ideological State Apparatuses are easy to read texts that touch on how there's more than your monthly wage determining your future.

whoops, the correct title is Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.

We're not a hivemind; I think kill it with fire.
No, because among many other things it paints me, a car-less NEET cishet bloodbouth literally a white male as being overall better-off than a gay guy, asian woman, or otherkin even if they have a job and a car, because it tends to vastly overrate the unfair advantages in life I admittedly do seem to have for being hwite/male/heterosex, in some cases claiming crap that in my experience does is demonstrably untrue in my case or the cases of people I know personally. Its proponents are pretty much the death knell of any political movement they manage to parasitize, because they think somebody being called a name at work or some poor bastard in the movement making a mildly-risque joke is more important to the point of exclusivity to triage than their boss fucking all of them out of their 40 hours a week every week regardless of their gender, race, religion or sexual orientation, or than helping the homeless or saving the spotted owl or whatever the movement was about before the idpolyps infested it.
No. It's the opposite of that.
Because divide-and-rule is profitable for Porky, and Porky can fund it enough to force it as one would a meem/manufacture support for with bots and Langleyfags online, media asspuppets shitting propaganda all over TV/radio/magazines/newspapers/movies/[other boomer-era media the internet is putting out of its misery], and agents provacateur in meatspace.

And the infiltration begins, slowly but surely

this also

but we really WUZ disciplined. I don't deny the positive benefits of the domestication process,in fact this process was in great part a product of the struggles of the 60s and near collapse of the 60s and 70s. We also have to keep in mind how these unresolved contradictions have carried over to our late capitalist reality. New forms of power have emerged from the ashes of the old disciplinary structures.

youtube.com/watch?v=IvqBJYmpQrY

as long as we can post that details the actual marxist view of liberal identitarianism, we should be fine

This one is better.

Yeah, tio much calibrating. That can be solved with more theory…

A broadly interesting idea that people are too stupid to use effectively (because it will always become a "contest") that should therefore quietly be shunted into the back of the library with the old copies of Hansard.

Also there are persistent problems with labelling and delineating boundaries.

I'm not really sure how it gives each one equal weight. Actually, the thing that stands out most to me is how Disability is the poor cousin of Gender, Race and Sexuality in terms of mainstream considerations. Wealth (not class) basically drops completely off the scale, as do appearance, quality of English speaking (except as intersecting with race), etc.

this may just be because disability is the only one i'm actually prepared to consider when constructing hypothetical utopias, because it tends to brush closer to a solvable technocratic social-policy (i.e. healthcare and welfare) question than a social issue question, and my own disproportionate interest clashes with the alternative popular view.

'they' are not 'invading our schools', it is the school (and the mental institution, prision, the brothel and the barracks) who have invaded everything else. The world of late capitalism is one enormous psychiatric asylum where everyone is at once as a doctor and a patient.

“Intersectional analysis” actually started in the context of legal studies/theory.

There was an actual case of pay discrimination against black women employees. The relevant statutes protected women as a group and blacks as a group. The court found no consistent discrimination against women (white women got raises) and none against blacks (black men worked mostly in the factory, and the pay discrimination was only in the office). So it was thrown out.

So what do you do? Legislate every possible intersection of discrimination, or promote an judicial interpretation that can handle them? And how would that section making process work?

The fordist era was a time of factory workers and mass unions, while the post fordist era saw the decline of traditional union activity and the rise of the HR department. Most leftists are still hopelessly nostalgic for a world that has been rendered obsolete by changing technological and economic conditions. It's about way more than wages or employment, it's about people management, modulation of the subject. management has to internalise all struggles and social contradictions, while most workers are more precarious than ever. Even the most ruthless sillicon valley companies and Military contractors make an effort to appear 'inclusive'.

Capitalists love it, as it not only gives them an easy way to market to younger people who are very socially liberal, but it also allows them to distract people from the widespread exploitation of the vast majority of the people.

For example, the campaign for "more women CEOs" is, as far as the capitalists are concerned, a complete non-issue, as is the altering of university literature courses to include more foreign works. Capitalists don't care, and in fact often actively foster it.

Where do you think all of the gay/trans/feminist marches get their funding from?

intersectionality used to mean the intersection of oppressions, so looking at why a black woman had a specifically unique experience of oppression.

Now it just seems to mean considering many types of oppression as you can.

Both are ok, as long as they are used dialogically.

The ephemeral nature of identity means that identity necessarily resists dialog. The desire for recognition is always at odds with the inability to fully grasp one's own identity.

CORRECTION: It's all about wages and employment. Capitalism has to find a way to keep the hamster wheel spinning (YOU are the hamster). That's when stuff like muh female CEOs comes in. Power needs new hosts in order to perpetuate itself.

Power fears that which refuses to be categorised, because that which refuses to be categorised cannot be recuperated.

Then why are they one of the most over represented group in terms of college education and advanced degrees, incomes, test scores, and underrepresented in crime and jail sentencing?

Intersectionality, as an experience, is pretty irrefutable.

However, I fail to see the relevance of it; "justice" is a reactionary concept, so it's not like we can get any ideas for political action out of it.

Many have noted that this theory proliferates labels and considers equivalent all all forms of what it considers "oppression" and remarked that this is a deficit. I put it to all that this is an intentional feature of intersectionality theory: by using this device, middle class liberal activists who're more concerned with stopping exclamations of rudeness than challenging the current socioeconomic hierarchy can commandeer other groups. Furthermore, there is an a priori assumption that the opprobrium of the masses is always undeserved. If someone in a first world society cannot read, that implies they are so intellectually damaged as to be disabled in other ways or criminally lazy, thus deserving of said opprobrium as social pressure to make them learn such an elementary skill.

spoopy mystical platitudes arent shit you worthless fucknugger

power doesnt fear any identity

The user you're replying to isn't being literal you stupid fuck. Anthropomorphism is one of the most common literary devices, Marx even used it extensively.

SPOOKY MYSTICAL PLATITUDES AREN'T WORTH ANYTHING YOU STUPID FUCK. COMMUNISM ISN'T A FUCKING GHOST, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU????

lmao

youtube.com/watch?v=HX2z2u3Uar8
this. intersectional theory is a result of the upper and middle classes taking over the discourse

vulgar 'Intersectionality' discourse as found in online spaces and corporate environments is all about managing a late capitalist landscape inhabited by atomised units. American society is an ultra sanitised space in which even war is reduced to some sort of RC drone videogame. Liberals have nothing against the form of our society, to them the problem lies in the content (too white too male, etc.). We gotta shift the focus away from 'muh spooky sjws' and on to the general senselessness of existence in the age of total communication. Even right wingers feel compelled to latch on to increasingly contrived labels as a means of reminding themselves they exist. For what is left once you get rid of labels? digital media has made everything social and public, so we are left with little place for convictions or even a coherent sense of self. Your life is a performance before the inverted panopticon in which commodities and institutions serve as props. This is particularly evident in internet spaces, you get the sense people are reading off a script, a narrow series of scripted responses that don't mean anything outside the game's context. Even boomers have learned to spam tumblr buzzwords.

I spent much of my youth online and I was certainly influenced by the ethos of anonymity (You Can Be Whoever you Want to Be). the internet planted in me this vague idea of a different world which makes our current reality feel all the more disappointing.

ur right, power fears non-identity

No, """we""" need do nothing. Intersectionality theory is simply a convenient bludgeon. The drive towards Sanders in the US shows already that those basic human drives for food and shelter are against making themselves felt. Perhaps you should restrict yourself to looking at edgy paintings.