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comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  2449 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What happened when Walmart left

    "intersectionality"

I've been trying to get a handle on this one. It started showing up on my facebook via my brother's incessant sharing of Progressive/Liberal/Academia/Left Theological memes.

My question is: "How is this different from ye old solidarity?"

The answer I've arrived at thus far is that identity politics shattered solidarity by focusing on individualism, and inter-sectionalism is the result of trying to band-aid it back together with an intellectual bent.

Haven't gotten farther than that, though.





kleinbl00  ·  2449 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I got into a fight with my roommate over GamerGate. He watches a lot of Prager Institute videos. As well as videos of ISIS blowing shit up. His cousin was one of the guys dragged through the streets of Fallujah.

My other roommate once hung his head and sighed that he didn't want to burn his shoes because he liked them.

To no one's surprise, we had a discussion about intersectionality.

Argument in the affirmative: "Intersectionality" is the concept that the social experience of a person who is a member of more than one disadvantaged group is different than the social experience of a person who is a member of a single disadvantaged group and that the social experiences of all people should be accounted for based on their individual experiences. For example, the challenges faced by a black jew are different than the challenges faced by blacks and the challenges faced by jews. The challenges faced by a gay asian are different than the challenges faced by gays and the challenges faced by asians.

Argument in the negative: academic considerations aside, "intersectionality" is largely used in practice for woker than thou one-upmanship. A transgender woman of color comes to the poker game with more purity points than a transgender white woman, for example.

The author of this article professes to be "a QTPOC (queer, trans person of color)" and writes that "I have sought out QTPOC-only spaces to heal, find others like me, and celebrate our differences." Now - speaking as a white male, I have to get Google out in order to determine the difference between "queer" and "trans." Google is not helpful. It gives me tables. But simply asking the question gives me woker-than-thou combat:

    Germaine Greer—feminist, academic and no stranger to controversy—has angered transgender activists and found herself the subject of an online petition following comments she made during a BBC interview that “post-operative transgender men are not women.”

We work with a lady who does gender stuff. My wife strives to be not only open, but welcoming to the LGBTQ community, and we run all our copy through friends in that community in order to ensure that everyone feels included. Nonetheless, it took me aback when I saw the acronym "LGBTQIAPK!" where the "!" apparently stands for two-spirit, which back when we were studying Native Americans in the '80s, was called berdache, which was celebrated, which was something held up as why Navajos had their shit together better than white people, but now apparently gets you in more trouble than if you call Navajos Navajos instead of Dine because we've gotten to the point where in order to have authority within the ever-more-fractious gender minority community, it's not enough to be gay, or lesbian, or LGBTQ. You are now LGBTQIAPK!-friendly or you're the enemy.

    LGBTQIAPK- the version of a body who has gone through tumblr and after the qiapk its just fake

Thanks, UrbanDictionary.

The problem, as I see it, is that the academics are 100% right but their viewpoint is rarely expressed in the howling echo chamber of minority politics. There are far more people with passion than knowledge in some spheres. Thus, you are far more likely to encounter woker-than-thou than you are "respect the intersectionality of disadvantage" which, now that I typed it out, is not the way to interact with the people you have to persuade to respect the intersectionality of disadvantage.

I put a social worker through grad school. Her professor of woker-than-thou ("Poverty & Inequality") was taught by a gay Indian man who was also a follower of Osho. And, of course, his intersectionality was gay, person of color, member of a repressed minority sect. Except fuckin' Osho was Rajneesh who may or may not have authorized the largest bioterror attack in the United States in order to take over the county council of Bumblefuck, Oregon.

And I'm sorry, but you had my sympathy up until you decided that your status as a member of an apocalyptic cult whose founder had dozens of Rolls Royces allowed you to double down on wokeness and this was fuckin' 1997 and that's why everyone who isn't knee-deep in AntiFa bullshit gets triggered by the word "intersectionality" because if conversation is a poker game, "intersectionality" is pushing all your chips into the pot so that you can bluff your opponent into folding.

user-inactivated  ·  2449 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Stuff like this making the rounds says to me that the backlash is well underway.

kleinbl00  ·  2449 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I love this on many levels:

1) "marxism.com"

2) erudite, well-reasoned, well cited arguments that Fleisch Kinkaids about 15 points above Tumblr's reading ability

3) An easy 3000 words of rhetorical armor that still falls to "check your privilege"

The radical left is in deep hysteria at the moment. It ebbs and flows and was almost this crazy in 2004. But I think you're right - we've got this, after all, even if it spawns shit like this.

user-inactivated  ·  2449 days ago  ·  link  ·  

As with most of what's wrong with the Left, blame the hippies.

user-inactivated  ·  2449 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Damn Boomers! First they ruin our leftists, then they ruin our jobs!

\s

I think I remember you posting that a while back. I know that article has made its way into my mental list of "ways to start an argument with family", at any rate.