"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."
How power operates in society and how various systems of oppression, such as racism, sexism, and homophobia, intersect to produce and perpetuate hierarchies and inequalities.
Power: The ability to influence, control, and affect the behavior of others.
Oppression: The systematic and institutionalized mistreatment of individuals or groups based on their social identity or membership in marginalized groups.
Intersectionality: The interconnectedness of various forms of oppression, such as race, gender, sexuality, and class.
Heteronormativity: The assumption that heterosexuality is the norm and other sexual orientations are deviant.
Patriarchy: A social system in which men hold power and dominate women.
Homophobia: Prejudice and discrimination against non-heterosexual individuals.
Transphobia: Prejudice and discrimination against individuals whose gender identities do not match their assigned sex at birth.
Cisgender: Individuals whose gender identity aligns with their assigned sex at birth.
Binary gender: The belief that there are only two distinct gender categories: male and female.
Non-binary gender: Individuals who do not identify as exclusively male or female.
Queerness: The rejection of heteronormativity and embracing of non-traditional gender and sexual identities.
Sexual fluidity: The idea that an individual's sexual attraction and identity may shift over time.
Gender expression: The external appearance and behaviors that reflect one's gender identity.
Privilege: Unearned advantages or benefits granted to individuals based on their social identities.
Marginalization: The social and economic exclusion of individuals or groups from mainstream society.
Microaggressions: Subtle, everyday forms of discrimination or exclusion towards marginalized groups.
Safe spaces: A place where individuals can feel free to be themselves without fear of judgment or discrimination.
Allyship: The act of using one's privilege to support and advocate for marginalized communities.
Social justice: The pursuit of equality, fairness, and justice for all individuals regardless of their social identity.
Critical race theory: An interdisciplinary approach to understanding and dismantling racism and white supremacy.
Intersectionality: This theory explores how different forms of oppression intersect, such as those based on race, gender, class, and sexuality.
Patriarchy: Patriarchy refers to a social system in which men hold primary power and women are excluded or marginalized.
Cisnormativity: Cisnormativity is a belief system that assumes cisgender (non-transgender) people are normal and privileged, while transgender people are abnormal and marginalized.
Heteronormativity: Heteronormativity refers to a culture that assumes that heterosexuality (opposite-sex attraction) is the norm and preference, while other forms of sexuality are seen as deviations or perversions.
Homophobia: Homophobia is a term used to describe an irrational fear or hatred of LGBTQ+ people.
Transphobia: Transphobia refers to a form of discrimination against transgender or gender-nonconforming people.
Machismo: Machismo is a set of beliefs and behaviors that associates masculinity with dominance, aggression, and control.
Colonialism: Colonialism refers to the historical process by which European powers imposed their authority over non-European lands and peoples, often through violence, exploitation, and assimilation.
Ableism: Ableism is a form of discrimination against people with disabilities, often based on the presumption of their inferiority or incompetence.
White privilege: White privilege is a term used to describe the unearned advantages that accrue to people who are white or perceived as white in a racially stratified society.
Antisemitism: Antisemitism is a form of prejudice or discrimination against Jewish people and culture.
Islamophobia: Islamophobia refers to a form of racism against Muslims, often based on stereotypes and misconceptions about Islam and its practices.
Ageism: Ageism is a form of prejudice or discrimination against people based on their age, often targeting older adults as being incompetent or burdensome.
Classism: Classism is a form of discrimination based on social or economic class, often perpetuated through systemic barriers and stereotypes.
Racism: Racism refers to a system of power and privilege that allows individuals and groups to assert their dominance over others based on their perceived racial or ethnic identity.
"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."