Intersectionality attempts to link the openings between the several axes through which an individual may experience oppression. Crenshaw explains intersectionality as a way to observe the numerous self-categories through which women—especially Black women and women of color—experience violence and oppression, ways that cannot simply be explained by their gender or their race (Crenshaw). Crenshaw uses an intersectional lens to analyze violence against women and how women form against it and disputes that this lens is predominantly important when analyzing violence against women because “the violence that many women experience is often shaped by other dimensions of their identities, such as race and class” (Crenshaw). She directly criticizes…
As we have learned throughout the course, intersectionality affects our experiences within our social category. Intersectionality can either give us privilege or reduce privilege depending on which categories we fall into. Each individual’s personal experience in a situation will differ due to intersectionality. In Heather Kuttai’s “Maternity Rolls”, we see how her experience with disability is shaped by her gender, and vice-versa.…
Black feminism, a term not recognized by many, is a form of feminism that fights to include African-American women in the conversation of women equality and explain how our race, gender, class and other identity markers shapes our experience with societal institutions. Patricia Collins, an African-American woman who encourages intersectionality, discusses suppression of black feminism, and believes social change can only occur through uniting women, and men, of all walks of life to work towards one common goal. We will examine two pieces of literature and put it into conversation with Collins perspective of symbolic and institutional dimensions of oppression. Hip Hop, a genre of music with the stigma of being a male dominated industry that…
(Dastagir, 2016) Intersectionality aims to answer these questions and statement…
In “Mapping the Margins,” Crenshaw provides insight into the intersecting identities and experiences of marginal women—namely women of colour, poor women, immigrant women, and undocumented women, among others—stressing the reciprocal ways in which these social positions interact with and shape one another. Although not explicitly stated, these concepts of intersectionality are also well-suited to map identities of power, particularly to help understand and abolish the power and authority assumed by white women through our whiteness. It is only in an examination of these multiple, contextual, and dynamic points of intersection that the complete realities of social hierarchy may be observed and…
Intersectionality is an integral factor in explaining the varying experiences of differing individuals. It primarily “emphasizes that each person belongs to multiple social groups, based on categories such as ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and social class,” (Matlin, 2012). This indicates that experiences of a white lesbian may differ from the experience of a lesbian of African American decent and so forth. Matlin (2012) states intersectionality declares that one cannot simply combine the experiences of two individuals to match that of someone with both of their identities. For instance, the experience of a white straight women cannot be combined with the experience of a black gay male in order to equate the experience of a black lesbian.…
Intersectionality is the multiple factors, which complement and compound each other to successfully suppress. Karen McCormack examines the intersectionality embedded within the term “welfare mother” in Stratified Reproduction and Poor Women’s Resistance. This simple two word term, is full of preconceived notions and intersectionality.…
Intersectionality is “the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage” (Dictionary.com). Throughout this course so far, we’ve read various essays from a number of authors, each offering different viewpoints of intersectionality experienced by various groups of people and using that in order to get their points across. Of course, you cannot have an analytical discussion without having relevant evidence to back up your arguments. In order for their essays to be considered reliable, they had to obtain their information from heterogeneous sources, which built up their arguments and furthered their points. I’ve chosen a few…
Recently released film Pariah (2011) delves into the journey of exploring sexuality. From intimacy, sexual identity, sensuality, and sexual behavior this biopic shares a coming of age stories of self-discovery and human connection. Written and directed by Dee Rees, Pariah is a 2011 American art drama film. In 2011 it premiered at Sundance Film Festival and was awarded the Excellence in Cinematography Award. These works not only give Blacks who are living outside of the heterosexual normative a form of self-representation in cinema, but it provides a refreshing consideration of the multiple forms of oppression (race, class, gender, and sexuality) that Black homosexuals face outside of the traditional one-dimensional lens of being just homosexual.…
Prior to starting Social Inequalities in January, intersectionality was a term that I did not even know existed. I had never taken a sociology course before, and I honestly did not have much interest in learning about it. Throughout the course though, my eyes were opened to so many of the inequalities in our society, and also, the oppression that comes along with being different in any way from the majority. As I started to discover so many things about oppression, privilege and discrimination, I also began to understand how many different things can make up one single person. Often, when we look at a stranger, we see one particular characteristic, such as race, and define them based on that.…
Intersectionality is recognizing the different aspects of a human being. It is not just your gender, but your race and your social class. Our gender is not just one lone aspect about us a humans, but it intersects other ways in which we identify. In the reading “Why Race, Class, and Gender Still Matter” it talks about the importance of understanding how big a part intersectionality plays in our lives, and it isn’t about focusing on one social aspect of one another, but all of them together. It talks about changing our perception of white experiences.…
Research Proposal 1. Kimberle Crenshaw’s article “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color” is an essay that exposes the reality of being a colored woman today. It compares the unfair treatment of colored women to the treatment of white women in various scenarios. Colored women not only face discrimination due to sexism but they also experience racism. Facing both make it a hard intersection for many colored women.…
The American professor and critical theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the word intersectionality as a term to use for many types of discrimination. She offered a definition to gender oppression, inequality in work places and society in the lives of black women; particularly in the US, a defined word that many can identify and relate to in the world today. To explain how she defined such multi categorized pattern of bias activity she used the idea of a traffic intersection. “an analogy to traffic in an intersection, coming and going in all four directions. Discrimination, like traffic through an intersection, may flow in one direction, and it may flow in another (…)…
The Civil Rights Movement is a Major Impact on Social Movements Social movements occur throughout time. They challenge the process using a form of collective and political action that consists of a general goal of change. The Civil Rights Movement was a major social movement that’s main goal was to expose and change the racial injustices that occurred in America. This social movement was a driving force in many social movements that demanded change for other social injustices. However, these social movements must observe the overlapping features of race and ethnicity in order to include everyone in the identity group.…
Intersectionality can be used as an analytical tool to reveal how, “conditions of social and political life and the self can seldom be understood as shaped by one factor.” (Bilge, S and Hill Collins, P.) These factors may be as such; age, gender, sexuality and class. Intersectionality can also help to understand the inequality and injustice which happens to certain groups who are, “shaped by many factors in diverse and mutually influencing ways.” (Bilge, S and Hill Collins, P.)…