Understanding Intersectionality
The concept of Intersectionality was introduced by Kimberle Crenshaw in an article in 1989. It refers to the overlapping or intersecting social identities and related systems of oppression, domination, or discrimination. It is simply the idea that multiple identities intersect to create a whole that is different from the component identities. These identities that can intersect include gender, race, social class, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, religion, age, mental disability, physical disability, mental illness, and physical illness as well as other forms of identity.
Intersectionality is essential to our understanding of gender and sexual diversity because gender and sexuality is impacted by other social categories. Not just in some cases, but in all cases. It helps us study of how our social categories intersect and how these intersections impact experiences, structures of power and oppression. It examines how social categories such as gender, race, and ethnicity overlap and shape our experiences, our life outcomes, and our views of the world.
Terminology
Before we attempt to understand how intersectionality operates, let’s look at some key terms:
- Sex refers to the categories into which humans and most other living beings are divided on the basis of their reproductive functions. It goes beyond the binary — including within its fold male, female and intersex. It is also, in many ways, a social construct — because it is defined by what humankind has associated with the ideas of male, female, and intersex.
- Gender is a social construct. It refers to the internal perception of one’s gender, and to how an individual labels themselves depending on how much they align or don’t align with what they understand their options for gender are. Common gender identity labels include man, woman, gender queer and trans among others.
- Sexual orientation is a term used to denote the type of sexual, romantic, emotional or spiritual attraction that one has, as their capacity to feel for others. It is generally labeled as the gender relationship between the person and the people they are attracted to.
Understanding Intersectionality
The CRIAW / ICREF’s Intersectionality Wheel is perhaps the most interesting graphic description of how intersectionality operates.
The innermost circle comprises unique circumstances of privilege and power that come with one’s personal, unique identity: for instance, what family you belong to, what opportunities you’ve had, what you’ve done with these opportunities and what exposures you’ve been privy to.
This is then compounded by a second layer, which comprises personal identity aspects: these things are a mix of identity factors that can change (age, education, occupation, social status, religion etc.) and those that cannot change (skin colour, indigeneity, caste, work history). In combination with unique circumstances of power, privilege and identity, your personal identity factors can create a very unique experience for you — one that’s anywhere between marginally and markedly different from those of others.
Next, we have types of discrimination that impact your identity: such as racism, ableism, ageism, discrimination, heterosexism, sexism, among others. Merely possessing a certain identity is all it takes to determine whether one falls at the receiving end of discriminatory treatment. The basis for discrimination is often a combination of historical practices of discrimination, radicalized perspectives, ignorance, demonization and fear psychosis around certain identities.
The final layer comprises structures that either augment, or keep existing discrimination alive: economy, globalization, war, education systems, politics and such.
When these factors interact, we find ourselves in a place where our personal identities (with or without unique privileges, powers and identities) interact with social forces that operate certain kinds of discrimination, which are propped by social structures that keep this discrimination alive.
Why does Intersectionality matter?
Intersectionality is essential to our understanding of gender and sexual diversity, both of which are certainly impacted by other social identities. In order to create diverse and inclusive spaces, be it at work or in public spaces, we should be open minded enough to be willing to think about difference, power and oppression in increasingly complex ways. It gives us ways to understand conceptually how multiple identities intersect, and produce understandings of difference that impact our lives.
If we have intersectionality driving our perceptions, policies and legislations, we will be able to see that multiple oppressions lead to “circumstances” that affect the choice-consequence axis. Let’s look at this through the example of the experiences of a woman from a marginalized background. Let us say that she is from a community that has faced historical — years and years — of oppression and marginalisation, and that has been placed vulnerable at the bottom of the hierarchical ladders of society.
If feminism was not intersectional and looked at her from a choice-consequence dimension, it would view her as one identifying as a Woman; as one who is vulnerable to violence; as one who is, well, like other women. Intersectional feminism, however, would see her differently. Vulnerable as a woman, disenfranchised as a person belonging to a marginalized background, isolated and oppressed in society and therefore, even more vulnerable than most other women. There are numbers, facts, stories and truths to back this correct understanding, too. There is enough and more in the form of evidence to show you exactly how women from marginalized backgrounds are exploited, oppressed, discriminated against, isolated and vulnerable to violence.
In a nutshell, not only are they dominated over by men in the power relations of a patriarchal social order, but are also fighting against a toxic hegemonic pillar of power in the form of caste, and coping with the poverty that comes in with a progressively divisive class system. This establishes the circumstance.
