Intersectionality Flashcards
What is the idea behind intersectionality?
In what wave did they become more important?
Women are not homogeneous
- Women are not the same
- The first and second waves feminism were too much based on homogenous ideals (all women are the same).
Multiple Marginalization
- Laws and programs were not taking into account this marginalization.
Specifically to African American women, they were not getting the gender based nor the African American scholarships.
- The personal is political and the political is personal.
Excessive number of strip searches of black women by US customs agents upon reentry across the border.
Strategic Intersectionality
- The coin can be flipped
- Make use of their intersections in the way that can pay off.
- Use their disadvantages in order to gain power.
- African American Women in politics are used by those that have had power for long time in order to move those people.
- VP of US Kamala Harris
- Quotas
Definition of intersectionality
Consists of an assemblage of ideas and practices that maintain that gender, race, class, sexuality, age, ethnicity, ability, and similar phenomena cannot be analytically understood in isolation from one another; instead, these constructs signal an intersecting constellation of power relationships that produce unequal material realities and distinctive social experiences for individuals and groups positioned within them.
Intersectionality: a conceptual framework
System of power + relationship with knowledge
- System of power cannot be understood in isolation form one another.
- Knowledge cannot be separated from the power relations in which it participates and which shapes it.
Emphasis on relationally highlights the ways race, gender, class, and other systems of power are constituted and maintained through relational processes.
The significance of boundaries
An awareness of the analytic significance of boundaries underscores intersectionality.
Sectional Knowledge Projects
claims about the multifaceted nature of intersecting social phenomena, for example, individual and group identities, and social issues as constructed at the intersection of multiple agendas.
Concern with complexity
Scholars suggest that using intersectionality as an analytical strategy compels us to grapple with the complexity of the world
Influence of intersectional knowledge projects
1st: intersectional knowledge projects not only call into question single sets of dichotomous concepts but also offer an analysis for how all these sets or systems of dichotomous thinking intersect to produce a culturally specific context of meaning making characterized by unique social phenomena and unequal material circumstances.
2nd: Catalyze new questions and areas of investigation within existing academic disciplines, especially in fields that focus on the interconnectedness of the academy and some aspect of the general public
- Intersectionality’s unique and novel analysis of power and inequality.
- Account for social experiences located outside and between social boundaries; these include those marginal experiences that might otherwise “fall through the cracks”
3rd: Efficacy in encouraging existing fields to rethink their main assumptions and paradigms.
There are traditional norms that need to be seen through different lenses.
How did intersectionality start? Who was the minority that put it in the front page?
African American women origin stories of intersectionality connected to feminist politics of the 1960s and 1970s.
- As a collectivity they were able to first hand experiment different types of treatments and inequalities.
- African American women experienced racism at the hands of white women who advocated for an idea of a universal sisterhood yet failed to acknowledge the white, middle-class biases implicit in their model, thereby excluding the experiences and concerns of women of color.
- African American women to call for new approaches to analyses of oppression and social inequality
How did feminism change due to intersectionality? What was the novel discussion?
1) In pushing for general laws and regulations.
2) Focusing in the differences existent between women.
Relationship between knowledge production and political possibilities, give an example
There is a strong relationship between knowledge production and political possibilities.
Example:
Although African American women played an essential role, feminism was still portrait as white.
The dominant power in this case were the white women.
What are the implications of having intersectionality so closely associated with gender? (two specific consequences)
(1) intersectionality becomes synonymous with or a derivative of feminist theory
- Defining intersectionality as a feminist theory, other sites of intersectional knowledge production are at risk of getting overlooked.
(2) Our ability to recognize other intellectual traditions that exhibit key features of intersectional thought is limited.
- Blind us to other avenues of knowledge production in that knowledge simply gets recycled through the disciplines.
- Intersectionality can be reduced to one variation of feminist theory or practice, thus subordinating intersectionality to feminist agendas.
- In the case of intersectional knowledge projects’ association with gender scholarship, we see the more politically powerful category of gender serving as the master category.
Standard definition of politics
Processes, philosophies, behaviors, and systems of organization that relate to state governance
Expansive understanding of politics
Negotiations of a pluralist world, people of different views, interests, and backgrounds interacting in order to accomplish some task (Greek politikos)
- Not only state power but power in general
- Collins’s understanding of black sexual politics (racism, sexism, heterosexism)
