Don’t play coy. Intersectionality is a framework for dismantling the status quo. From wikipedia:
> Crenshaw used intersectionality to display the disadvantages caused by intersecting systems creating structural, political, and representational aspects of violence against minorities in the workplace and society.[15] Crenshaw explained the dynamics that using gender, race, and other forms of power in politics and academics plays a big role in intersectionality.
It’s not just the idea that multiple identities can be at play at once. It’s a tool in the postmodern toolbox.
Nobody even needed intersectionality to explain the idea that humans can’t be reduced to a single identity (that’s just common sense) until 3rd wave feminists convinced us as much in the first place.
Lots of businesses have a front of the house (customer-facing roles) and a back of the house (warehouse, etc.). In the South, many businesses only hired white people in the front of the house, and only hired men in the back. You argue that it's "just common sense," but it was widely accepted that these practices were neither neither racist nor sexist because the business does hire some women (in the front) and some black guys (in the back). But if you were a black woman, you were shit out of luck.
It might be obvious now, but it took intersectional thought for people to begin to acknowledge these less overt forms of discrimination.
> It might be obvious now, but it took intersectional thought for people to begin to acknowledge these less overt forms of discrimination.
It really didn't. I was raised in conservative evangelicalism and was never exposed to "intersectional" thought, but it was obvious to me that someone in multiple disadvantaged categories had it worse than someone who was only in one of them.
It was also obvious to me that any hiring system which a priori debarred a given category of people at the start was discriminatory.
Intersectional thought undoubtedly has helped some people figure these things out, but it really isn't necessary to understand these problematic behaviors and situations.
> Crenshaw used intersectionality to display the disadvantages caused by intersecting systems creating structural, political, and representational aspects of violence against minorities in the workplace and society.[15] Crenshaw explained the dynamics that using gender, race, and other forms of power in politics and academics plays a big role in intersectionality.
It’s not just the idea that multiple identities can be at play at once. It’s a tool in the postmodern toolbox.
Nobody even needed intersectionality to explain the idea that humans can’t be reduced to a single identity (that’s just common sense) until 3rd wave feminists convinced us as much in the first place.