Intersectional Feminism: What is it? | FACTUAL FEMINIST

If you have wondered why there are so many millennials on campus telling people to check their privilege, demanding trigger warnings, calling people out for micro aggressions, and retreating to safe spaces, the Factual Feminist has the answer: Intersectional feminism.

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Partial transcript
Intersectional feminism. It’s all the rage on campus and on social media, but what is it? And is its new popularity a welcome development? Coming up next on the Factual Feminist.

Suddenly intersectionality is on the boards. News stories are turning up everywhere. Intersectional theory was first developed in the 1970s and 1980s by a group of African American feminist scholars and activists. They accused the women’s movement of neglecting black women and of misunderstanding oppression. Pathologies like and racism and sexism, they said, are not separate systems—they connect and overlap—and create a complex arrangement of advantages and burdens. White women, for example, are penalized for their gender—but privileged by their race. Black men, suffer from their race, but garner advantage from their gender. Black women—are in double-jeopardy—they are disadvantaged by both race and gender.

Patricia Hill Collins, professor at the University of Maryland and former president of the American Sociological Association, is one of the chief architects of intersectionality theory. The textbook she co-authored describes the United States as a “matrix of oppression.” Beneath a veneer of freedom and opportunity, there lies a rigid system of privilege and domination. Now most Americans don’t see it, but Collins and her co-author alert students to the fact that the true nature of their society has been hidden from them. “Dominant forms of knowledge have been constructed largely from the experiences of the most powerful.” The text promises to introduce students to deeper “subordinated truths” by avoiding what it calls “Western” and “masculine” styles of thinking which could obscure these truths.

According to the theory, those who are most oppressed have access to deeper, more authentic knowledge about life and society. In short: members of privileged groups (especially white males) should not only check their privilege, but listen to those they have oppressed—because those groups possess a superior understanding of the world.

Initially, the primary focus of intersectional feminism was on black women. But the number of victims quickly multiplied. This graphic from a popular Women’s Studies textbook includes 14 or 15 marginalized identities.

The Factual Feminist is concerned. Now there are social scientists who use a sensible, non-politicized version of intersectionality to understand complex social identities—I have no quarrel with them. But what concerns me is how intersectional feminism is taught and practiced on the college campus. I have many objections—I will limit myself to three.  

Problem 1: It’s a Conspiracy theory: If intersectionality theory were merely a reminder to be sensitive to different kinds of social advantages and disadvantages, that would be fine. But it is much more than that. It is an all-encompassing theory of human reality-- constructed to be immune to criticism. If you question it, that only proves you don’t understand it—or are just part of the problem it seeks to correct.

That is why articles by skeptics almost never appear in textbooks like these. And certain groups—men, for example—are sinners who are marked with a capital P. If they dare to question the theory they will be told to check their privilege. Their job is to atone for their unearned advantages and learn from those they have oppressed. Some men are really taking this to heart. Consider this tweet:

@arthur_affect--As a dude who cares about feminism sometimes I want to join all men arm-in-arm & then run off a cliff and drag the whole gender into the sea

Intersectional Feminism: What is it?

Photo credits:
Reuters
Festival Latinidades

#aei #news #politics #government #education #feminism #feminist #politics

[quigglyz]

"If you question it, that only proves you don't understand it." Perfect.

[dtbristol]

Responding to a liberal article I questioned the idea that a Trump protester was arrested because she was a woman. I rightly pointed out that women are arrested less often and serve significantly lighter sentences for the same crimes. This was evidence that this woman was not arrested because she was a woman, but despite it. This is the quote from her " Nice mansplaining there, bro. Women should get less prison time because society is already stacked against us. Try sitting down and being quiet and listening to a woman, rather than disagreeing with her." So, unequal treatment is OK, and when a woman speaks I should shut up. How does this foster equality again?

[nm]

Wow! How did you make a whole video with animations without a $200k kickstarter campaign? And how did you get this comment section on the bottom of the video? Amazing!

[gogzy]

126 dislikes, it amazes me these third wave feminists are able to click dislike while using both hands to put fingers in ears.

[ErChannelNotFound]

Based Mom at it again. Feminist be ragin'.

[Artbug]

What? Who is this genius I just stumbled upon??? <SUBSCRIBED>

[jarediscool]

I am a victim of diarrhea. I demand that everyone take laxatives and eat as much chipotle as possible so that we can all be even.

[kiwibadboy]

This woman is an absolute gift, she's too good honestly. I wish women like her were more prominent than idiots like Anita Sarkesian and Clementine Ford.

[AngryForeigner]

This sounds like someone took a personality disorder and turned it into a political ideology. The idea that "Im the only thing that matters, feel sorry for me" is kind of the hallmark of narcissism or certain kinds of bipolar disorder. Constantly reinterpreting reality to be a big evil world where you're never the one who acts badly and people are just against you because they're evil.

[livjackson]

I don't like how this concept, and the whole 'oppression olympics' thing generally, ignores the nuances of what people's real-life experiences are like. You can't just say person A who is white and male and straight has automatically had an easier, more privileged life than person B, who is black, bi and female. You'd have to know all the details of each person's life, relationships, health, genetics, educational and work opportunities, random good luck or misfortune etc.

[Jeremy-qlor]

It's hard not to notice how much more mentally and emotionally balanced this chick is compared to any contemporary feminist. I'm not even talking about the stuff she's saying; I mean just how she carries herself. The SJW ladies seem to have a hard time keeping their composure, like they have a hard time screaming because they are also sobbing, and the male feminists are a cross of rage and shame that keeps them from forming coherent sentences while they try to apologize for everything. The lady in this video just seems like a normal rational person.

[Menmatters]

Intersectionalism sounds like a form of mass hysteria mixed with a genrous helping of narcissism.

[MARCERA]

"Thank you for watching the factual feminist"
Thank you for BEING the factual feminist.

[badlydrawnturtle]

The idea that objectivity is best reached through rational thought is a matter of logic. Taking another route is, by definition, irrational. It scares me when people talk like that, because they are declaring that they reject reason, the only foundation we all share.

[AcanthaDante]

I can't help but think of Lincoln's famous quote, "A house divided against itself cannot stand."

[SubtleStair]

Poe's Law! One cannot effectively satirize what is already pure insanity. If you tried to satirize Intersectional Feminism, you would be praised for understanding it perfectly by Intersectional Feminists.

[TwilightMysts]

Intersectional Feminism: The latest sport in the Oppression Olympics.

[tibschris]

Speaking on behalf of all men (as much as it goes against my beliefs to do so): ignore Arthur Chu.

[Sines]

The constant divisions of groups into ever more oppressed subgroups is a natural outcome of their group-oriented thinking running headfirst into the complexity of individuals.

They can't help but think of people in groups, but there is some part of them that realizes that you can't just group people together as "Black" or "women". But rather than realizing that judging people by these groups is a bad idea, they just keep subdividing into ever more and more narrow groups.

They'd cut out a lot of trouble, and all the bigotry, if they'd just treat people as individuals.

[bricology]

Dear Ms. Factual Feminist: I completely agree with your assessment of both intersectionality theory and the culture war that it stokes. It's very refreshing to hear your well-considered and perfectly sensible views.

I do have to part company with you on one point: at 7:16, you said "Now, there are human rights catastrophes that bear directly on race and gender. Black male incarceration in the United States comes to mind."

Since it's clear that you value rationality, objectivity and evidence, I would point out that the claim that an unjustly disproportionate number of black males are incarcerated in the US is *itself* a conspiracy theory with no factual basis. Anyone who believes in that theory must explain two things:

1. What is the *specific mechanism* that guarantees that all ethnic groups within the US will always commit crimes -- or indeed, do *anything* -- at a rate that correlates precisely with their demographic?

About 62% of all US citizens are Caucasian, 17% are Hispanic/Latino, 13% are black and 5% are Asian. What is the mechanism that ensures that they all do everything (commit crimes, vote Democrat, become dentists, whatever) at those same rates? I have never been able to identify such a mechanism.

2. Why does this mechanism, if it exists, seemingly let Asian-Americans commit crime with impunity?
In other words, if 100 crimes were committed, one *might* expect that 62 of the perpetrators would be white, 17 would be Hispanic/Latino, 13 would be black and 5 would be Asian. But this is far from true. Homicide offenders in the US are 6 times more likely, per capita, to be black than white (and this is from the Justice Department's own statistics, which were compiled and published under the Attorney General Eric Holder, who is black). However, Asian-Americans (NOT including Native-Americans, as they're lumped together in the UCR) make up just 1% of the prison population, rather than the 5% that their demographic would suggest they *should* comprise.

Why this disparity? Is it all part of some white conspiracy to incarcerate Asian-Americans at *lower* rates than their crimes warrant? Or could it be that different ethnic groups in the US tend to engage in different behavior -- such as blacks being 5 times more likely to have children out-of-wedlock than Asian-Americans -- and tend to inculcate different values, such as the strong avoidance of shame that the Asian-American community shares, versus . . . other things that the black community shares? Isn't it possible that the number of the members of *any* ethnic group behind bars in America simply reflects the choices that tend to be made by members of those ethnicities, and those of their parents, peers and others who influence them?

I'd like to hear your views on this.