"Intersectionality is an analytical framework for understanding how a person's various social and political identities combine to create different modes of discrimination and privilege."
This topic discusses the role of intersectionality in activism and social justice work, highlighting the importance of addressing social inequalities that are intersectional in nature.
Systemic Oppression: Understanding the ways in which various forms of oppression (racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, etc.) are interconnected and mutually reinforcing within society.
Privilege: Examining the ways in which one’s social position can confer certain advantages or disadvantages in relation to others.
Identity: The complex ways in which our individual experiences of race, gender, sexuality, and other factors shape our worldview and intersectional identity.
Social Justice: The pursuit of equality and fairness in all aspects of society, including politics, economics, and culture.
Allyship: Understanding the importance of solidarity across different marginalized groups, and how to be an effective ally to others.
Intersectional Feminism: A specific approach to feminist theory that takes into account the ways in which gender intersects with other forms of identity and experience.
Radical Activism: Social and political activism that seeks to fundamentally change the existing power structures and systems of oppression in society.
Grassroots Organizing: Mobilizing communities and individuals from the ground up to support social and political change.
Anti-Racism: A movement aimed at combating and eradicating racism and the systems of power that uphold it.
Social Identity Theory: A psychological theory that explains how individuals form their social identities based on their interactions with others and society at large.
Race and Gender Intersectionality: It highlights the interconnectedness of race and gender and how both factors interact and affect an individual's experience.
LGBTQ Intersectionality: It examines how sexual orientation, gender identity, race, and other factors intersect and impact an individual's experience in society.
Disability Intersectionality: It looks at how disability, along with other factors such as race and gender, intersects and affects an individual's experience.
Environmental Intersectionality: It examines how environmental issues such as climate change and pollution affect marginalized communities, particularly those who are disproportionately impacted by environmental injustice.
Feminist Intersectionality: It explores how the intersection of gender, race, class, and other factors affects women's experiences and how these intersecting factors impact feminism as a social and political movement.
Anti-Racist Intersectionality: It examines how systemic racism intersects with other forms of oppression and how anti-racist activism can work towards dismantling these systems of oppression.
Immigrant Intersectionality: It focuses on how immigration status intersects with other social identities and how policies and activist efforts impact immigrant communities.
Economic Intersectionality: It examines how economic factors such as poverty and wealth intersect with other forms of oppression and how economic justice activism can work towards creating a more equitable society.
Religion Intersectionality: It explores how religious identities intersect with other social identities and how religious discrimination intersects with other forms of oppression.
Mental Health Intersectionality: It examines how mental health intersects with other identities and experiences and how mental health activism can work towards creating a more supportive and accessible mental health system.
"Examples of these factors include gender, caste, sex, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, religion, disability, weight, and physical appearance."
"These intersecting and overlapping social identities may be both empowering and oppressing."
"Intersectional feminism aims to separate itself from white feminism by acknowledging women's differing experiences and identities."
"The term intersectionality was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989."
"Intersectionality opposes analytical systems that treat each axis of oppression in isolation."
"In this framework, for instance, discrimination against black women cannot be explained as a simple combination of misogyny and racism, but as something more complicated."
"Intersectionality engages in similar themes as triple oppression, which is the oppression associated with being a poor or immigrant woman of color."
"Criticism includes the framework's tendency to reduce individuals to specific demographic factors, and its use as an ideological tool against other feminist theories."
"Critics have characterized the framework as ambiguous and lacking defined goals."
"As it is based in standpoint theory, critics say the focus on subjective experiences can lead to contradictions and the inability to identify common causes of oppression."
"However, little good-quality quantitative research has been done to support or undermine the theory of intersectionality."
"An analysis of academic articles published through December 2019 found that there are no widely adopted quantitative methods to investigate research questions informed by intersectionality."
"The analysis ... provided recommendations on analytic best practices for future research."
"An analysis of academic articles published through May 2020 found that intersectionality is frequently misunderstood when bridging theory into quantitative methodology."
"In 2022, a quantitative approach to intersectionality was proposed based on information theory, specifically synergistic information."
"In this framing, intersectionality is identified with the information about some outcome (e.g. income, etc.) that can only be learned when multiple identities (e.g. race and sex) are known together."
"Intersectionality is identified with the information about some outcome [...] that can [...] not [be] extractable from analysis of the individual identities considered separately."
"Critics [argue] the inability to identify common causes of oppression."
"Intersectionality broadens the scope of the first and second waves of feminism, [...] to include the different experiences of women of color, poor women, immigrant women, and other groups."