The New York Times recently reported that “over the past four years, at least 10 people in South Texas have been victims of murder, attempted murder, kidnapping or rape” at the hands of United States Border Patrol agents. The agents — including one man who went on a 12-day killing spree targeting sex workers — are described to have “suddenly and violently snapped.”

This stands in stark contrast to President Trump’s repeated racist attempts to paint immigrants from Mexico as “killers and rapists.” Indeed the subtext of the Times‘ writing is that it’s not those who cross the border who should be feared, but those tasked with enforcing inhumane immigration policies against them.

The Times also suggests the possibility that “the very nature of Border Patrol agents’ work—dealing with vulnerable, powerless people, often alone on the nation’s little-traveled frontiers,” contributes to their ability to get away with their crimes, as well their inclination to commit them in the first place. After all, many of these attacks occurred prior to Trump’s reign of terror — including under President Obama — which suggests that the way the United States approaches border control has long been deeply racist and dehumanizing.

We also know that law enforcement officers across the United States are trained to treat people inhumanely, especially Black and brown people, and this reality has also led to a well-documented epidemic of mass incarceration and violence, including sexual violence. In fact, the New York Times also reported this month that women working in the Federal Bureau of Prisons face a near constant threat of assault and harassment, often from their own co-workers.

This portrait of Border Agents could also be applied to the ever-expansive pool of mass shooters, who are also often described as having mysteriously “snapped,” although it’s well-documented that they are largely straight men — typically white — and almost always have a history of violence against women. Not so mysterious.

Every day, men throughout society are encouraged to dominate “vulnerable, powerless people,” including those traversing well-traveled areas, and they know that they are very likely to get away with their aggression — or even be rewarded for it. This is not coincidence. It’s due in part to patriarchy, a social system that not only values men over women, but the behaviors which we describe as “masculine” over those which we call “feminine.” It is — as race theory scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw emphasizes — inherently linked to white supremacy, capitalism, and other social systems rooted in ideals of dominance.

The very nature of Border Patrol agents’ work contributes to their ability to get away with their crimes, as well their inclination to commit them in the first place.
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And yet, none of the news reports above mentioned include the word patriarchy, sexism, misogyny, or any other reference to historically entrenched gendered oppression. Despite the array of blockbuster reports over the past two years unveiling sexual violence in various American institutions, we — especially men in power —  still seem far more comfortable discussing how the specific “nature” of certain environments lend themselves to rape than we are acknowledging that the very structuring of our society is the reason that these types of environments exist in the first place.

In Vivek Shraya’s new memoir, I’m Afraid of Men, the writer and artist never shies away from that bigger picture, beginning with a painstaking account of a day in her life as a trans South Asian woman living in Canada. We follow her as she faces a near constant barrage of sexism, misogyny, transphobia, and literal threats of violence as she walks out of her apartment, logs onto the Internet, does her job, and simply survives the day. Shreya underlines the ways in which the fear of men has been reinforced and affirmed throughout her life, from childhood onward.

In the Times article “Hazing, Humiliation, Terror: Working While Female in Federal Prison,” a prison employee named Jessica recounts something similar in relation to her working conditions:

Every single day something happened, whether it was an inmate jerking off to you, whether it was an inmate pushing you, whether it was a staff member harassing you through email, on a phone, following you to your car.

Both of these accounts echo the report on Border Patrol as well, in which one of the survivors, M.G., describes the moment when she, her daughter, and another woman from the same town in Honduras were first detained by the agent who would go on to attack them all:

“When I saw him, I said, ‘Thank God,’” M.G. said.

But they slowly began to worry as they sat on metal benches in the back of the truck. M.G. thought there was something strange about the way the man was breathing. At first, she tried not to show her fear to the girls.

“I pretended,” she said. “I tried to be strong.”

The acceptance of hypermasculine brooding, anger, and intimidation in our society means people become accustomed to, adept at, suppressing their legitimate fears in order to appease those in power. Not just in prison or while risking their lives to cross into a new country, but as Shraya writes, the fear of men “governs” the choices she must make “from the beginning of my day to the end,” from the way an email is written to deciding what to wear out the door. (Particularly as a trans woman of color).

None of the news reports mentioned include the word patriarchy, sexism, misogyny, or any other reference to historically entrenched gendered oppression.
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Ultimately, M.G. dragged herself out of the brush where she was left for dead and was able to alert another Border Patrol agent passing through. It seems to take such death-defying acts of heroism, or painfully-researched exposes in mainstream media, to even get us to face this violence. Yet, even then, there’s an avoidance of the deeper pattern.

The naming of patriarchy is largely discouraged by those in power because of patriarchy. As bell hooks has written:

Patriarchy is the single most life-threatening social disease assaulting the male body and spirit in our nation. Yet most men do not use the word ‘patriarchy’ in everyday life. Most men never think about patriarchy—what it means, how it is created and sustained.

To name patriarchy is to name the existence of historic gendered oppression, which is to name the existence of systemic bias against what we call femininity. And that is, in turn, an attack on the legitimacy of masculinity, the gender and sex binary, and how we are fundamentally taught to conceptualize power. In other words, naming patriarchy risks dismantling it.

In an essay for The Atlantic last year, Vann R. Newkirk II addressed the backlash against the increased use of “white supremacy” in the Trump era, responding to critics who argue that its usage has become overly broad. Newkirk clarified that this systemic “definition of white supremacy has long animated black activism,” including the work of Martin Luther King Jr., and efforts to reduce its scope have always been directly linked to the ever-expansive project of sweeping racism under the rug:   

The repackaging of Jim Crow into a “race neutral” set of policies didn’t just arise as a wink-and-a-nod deal in southern political backrooms a few years near the end of the civil-rights movement, but was a half-century-long project forged by thousands of lawyers and mainstream political leaders that costs millions of dollars, and was played out in every arena across the country from the Supreme Court to town hall meetings.

When we do tend to hear patriarchy these days it’s often in the form of the limiting phrase “the patriarchy” and it is similarly marginalized to “backrooms” where a certain group of powerful men apparently decide the fates of women. Indeed, some of the rebuttals to the existence of “the patriarchy” come down to the argument: but women are in those rooms too!

This diminishment and dismissal of the dominator culture in which we are swimming, happens in tandem with the avoidance of white supremacy and the fact that this society was in fact built upon white patriarchal violence. Despite the popularity of “intersectionality” as a buzzword—and the subsequent backlash to its use—we don’t often describe in detail the various systems of dominance, including capitalism and imperialism, which overlap to compound oppression.

Keeping these systems in obscurity serves a status quo in which indigenous women living in poverty, while carrying the generational trauma of genocide—on land targeted for environmental destruction—are still the most likely to be raped and assaulted (and usually by white men).

Extreme situations, like the dehumanization happening at our southern border or within our prison system, must be challenged, but isolating hypermasculine violence to particular conditions, independent of history, has also long been a tactic for avoiding cultural change. Or for dismissing unsavory problems as situational.

We’ve seen that in the way many have attempted to reduce Tarana Burke’s #MeToo movement to a white Hollywood issue. Or in the way people like Trump blame terrorism on Muslims, or dismiss the epidemic of rape in the military by suggesting that it’s unavoidable in those conditions, asking incredulously, “What did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together?.”  

The irony is that these attempts at narrowing the conversation always end up doing the opposite: If the situation is to blame, why are there so many different situations producing similar results? Why is it a given that men will attack women when in isolation? Why do we simply accept the terror of masculinity as a fact of life?

Connecting this all to patriarchy means a commitment to describing how aggression, violence, and dominance are normalized all around us. It requires our constant effort to link the idealization of masculinity to that of things like whiteness, thinness, ability, wealth, Christianity, cisnormativity, and the destruction of our environment. It demands a more complicated story.

Despite the popularity of “intersectionality” as a buzzword, we don’t often describe the various systems of dominance, including capitalism and imperialism, which overlap to compound oppression.
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At the end of I’m Afraid of Men, Shraya laments that “any ambiguity or nonconformity, especially in relation to gender, conjures terror. This is precisely why men are afraid of me. Why women are afraid of me too.”

What she yearns for is a world free of gendered expectations altogether, one in which we follow trans and gender-nonconforming people of color toward our “sublime” possibilities. Words alone do not ensure that safer, physical reality — a society without borders or prisons or hierarchies — but naming systems does force certain realities into the light. And perhaps dares us to look for a path.

In a culture steeped in male violence against women, whether it’s physical assault or online harassment,  the concept of violent female revenge can sound exhilarating. Given the high rates of women murdered by male partners, and the simultaneously low rates of male rapists given jail time, it’s hard to not fantasize about a vigilante giving these men their comeuppance, or at least, a female figure that invokes the same fear in cis men that women face daily.

Feminists have been grappling with the complexities of these fantasies for decades. On one hand, it’s clear that more real-world violence is not the answer to a culture already poisoned by it, regardless of justification. But also, can we at least imagine unbridled revenge?!

The existence of, and potential for radical female violence is one of the many difficult subjects psychotherapist, author, and longtime feminist Phyllis Chesler tackles in her latest book, A Politically Incorrect Feminist: Creating a Movement with Bitches, Lunatics, Dykes, Prodigies, Warriors, and Wonder Women, The book itself traces Chesler’s journey from her Orthodox Jewish childhood in Brooklyn up until the present day, primarily focusing on her experiences during the heyday of the second-wave feminist movement. While it’s clear her writings come from a place of passion and respect, Chesler doesn’t shy away from giving a realistic picture of the movement’s in-fighting and the topics that caused derision between women vying for justice.

One of the most fascinating subjects in Chesler’s book is the movement’s division over the overtly violent rhetoric of Valerie Solanas, the woman who penned the infamous SCUM Manifesto and later attempted to murder Andy Warhol. In later years, a similar division would spring up surrounding the trial of serial killer Aileen Wuornos, a woman plunged into sex work as a teen, who later murdered seven men. Her first victim, Richard Mallory, was a convicted rapist Wuornos claimed she murdered in self-defense. Her narrative around the other victims shifted throughout the trial, regardless, the story of a serially abused sex worker reaping revenge on a violent man both enlivened and divided the feminist community.

Given the cartoonish conflations often made between feminism and man-hating, some feminist leaders, Betty Friedan in particular, did not support the notion of aligning with either Solanas or Wuornos, particularly because neither IDed as feminist themselves. Their anger was, let’s say, bad for the brand. However, Chesler and many others, felt empathy towards both women, kept an open dialogue with Solanas and later wrote the forward to a collection of Wuornos’ letters.

In conjunction with the release of her new book, I was lucky enough to interview her about how the feminist movement has evolved, why arguing is crucial to a movement, and the allure of violent female vigilantes.

Isaac: Do you think the internet has created greater understanding between feminists with different ideologies and priorities?

Chesler: I think if feminists of my generation had understood that people with ideas are always fighting with each other, and taking ideas very seriously, it would’ve helped. If you look at military history, you’ll quickly see that in every movement there was a falling out of line. What I never liked was incivility, or never speaking to someone again because you disagree on one issue. The ideological demand for saluting to one flag fully with your whole heart is somewhat totalitarian. We’re all going to have different priorities. Intersectionality is not new. We didn’t have a word for it at that point, we just understood that everything was related and that each woman chose her priorities.

I was thinking about how people talk about intersectionality like it’s a new issue. Looking at the history of feminism, the issue of intersectionality was always there.

Totally, but Kimberle Crenshaw had to coin the phrase for it to really enter the conversation on a mainstream level. Sometimes I’ll hear people condemn feminists for openly disagreeing, but I think disagreeing is fine, if only the women of my generation understood that. Sexism is like racism and homophobia, you have to actively try to unlearn it. Even if you’re a woman, you have to unlearn your own bias against women. We didn’t want to understand the “Mean Girl” stuff when I was younger, which is why I wrote about it in Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman.

There were many feminists at the beginning, I was one of them, who said “we have to praise and uplift women because we’ve been kept down for so long.” But since there are so many differences between individual women, there will always be fighting. I think your generation is much more accepting of that truth. But my generation felt like our hearts would break if other women betrayed us right after we found the language for sexism.

Since there are so many differences between individual women, there will always be fighting.
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I was really fascinated with Betty Friedan’s desire to keep Valerie Solanas out of the movement because of her violent radical rhetoric. Would you consider Friedan’s concern an issue of respectability politics?

Betty wanted the feminist movement to stay above reproach, to have an impeccable image. Valerie was a legitimate lunatic. She was brilliant, the SCUM Manifesto is brilliant, but she was serious—she wasn’t kidding. So, Betty was horrified by it, she was afraid people would start believing the feminist movement was full of lesbians who wanted to kill men. But Valerie stirred our imagination because she was so out there, she was our outlaw. She wasn’t actually a feminist herself, she thought that NOW was a lady’s luncheon. In a sense she was right, because we weren’t breaking up buildings or rioting at NOW, but we also passed some important legislation.

I was also fascinated to read that a similar dynamic played out later with Aileen Wuornos, that feminists were divided about whether to support her trial.

Wuornos had a worse childhood, she had one of the worst childhoods I’ve heard about. Valerie, like Wuornos later, thought feminist interests were a form of social climbing, that feminists wanted to get famous off of her. I got involved in Wuornos’ case because I wanted to expand the Battered Woman Syndrome defense to apply to sex workers. I believed that she killed the first man out of self-defense. She inspired an opera, two plays, books, a movie. I wrote an op-ed about her because while she wasn’t the first serial killer, she felt different, women tend to kill husbands or children and we don’t hear about it as often. This was about killing a series of strange men, white men, adult men, that was never heard of. I wanted to check her out, I had to move a lot of pieces to get her to call me from jail. I called her and I said “Lee I’m from a feminist government from the future and we need you” and she was on board.

Lee wanted to sell her story and make money, she was a capitalist, and I was an abolitionist. I had nothing but compassion for her. It’s interesting that women, feminists, lesbians, were thrilled by this notion of an action hero. There was this sense that she died for our sins, that we secretly wanted to reap the same violent revenge on men but never would.

Totally. I think there’s a natural fascination with the idea of female vengeance. I’m curious, with your experience writing about mental health and violence, do you have any theories on why there aren’t more female serial killers of Lee’s caliber?

When women kill in self-defense in a marriage or partnership, they go to jail. No one is visiting them, no one is marrying them like male serial killers. This is a very powerful punishment. Oftentimes women who are traumatized and abused as children who may be violent take it out on other women or children. But they’re statistically less likely to go up against men violently, and if they do it’s just one, usually a partner.

Women often turn violence against ourselves, women who have been incest victims are often angrier at the mothers who couldn’t save them than they are at the father who raped them. They feel the mother who looked the other way, because she needed the support of the father. Women are very tightly controlled, we get treated as lesser early in life, and then we become surveilled and manipulated by the sexual harassment that is completely normalized everywhere.

When women kill in self-defense in a marriage or partnership, they go to jail. No one is visiting them, no one is marrying them like male serial killers.
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We’re still fighting for a lot of rights that you were fighting for in the 1970s. What is one thing you’re surprised we’re still fighting for?

One is obliged to undertake the struggle, but not to complete it. You do it for your lifetime, and then the other generations come and pick it up. That is, if feminist knowledge hasn’t been systematically disappeared—which it has. Sadly, I think that our inability to stop pornography, torture pornography, has increased the normalization of it. That may make me a feminist of the unfun kind, I like fun, and I have fun. But I think not pushing for greater regulation of the content of porn was a loss and it was a very divided issue because feminists feared censorship and feared an alliance with right-wing forces that were also against pornography. But in my opinion, that was a loss on my watch. I wish we could have stopped the sex slavery of children and women featured in certain venues of porn, on our watch that traffic has proliferated and been normalized.

What is one thing you’ve seen progress the most?

I think progress has been made with LGBTQ rights. I always thought being gay was like being an artist, very bohemian. There’s a huge improvement in lesbian custody battles and gay male custody battles.

I would love to be able to say there’s been a proliferation of women’s thinking and artistry, quantum leaps. And yet it’s also been disappeared in my own life time, some of the most radical voices from the late 60s and early 1970s stopped being taught by the 1980s. When I ask younger women about Mary Wollstonecraft, Joan Stewart Mill, Matilda Gage, if you don’t start with that you’ve got nothing. There’s a couple of major historians of women’s—Mary Beard, Eleanor Flexner, when I discovered them I was so excited. We didn’t read Sojourner Truth, we read African-American men, we read maybe Virginia Woolf and George Elliott.

Not all changes are made by going on the street, that’s an important expression, it’s theater. Real change can be made that way, a lot of change is made in boring meetings and courthouses.

Looping back to the gendered culture of violence, and its effects on mental health, do you think the conversation about mental health has evolved and moved in the direction you were hoping?

We’ve moved away from institutionalizing people, but now we leaving them on the streets homeless. So, two extremes, both bad. I don’t know if my pioneering work that made a difference in the beginning is still being taught in medical school. Do battered women now understand that they’re battered? Yes. Is it understood that abuse causes PTSD symptoms? Yes. Do we have good services for rape victims and battered women? No. We pioneered the conversation about rape, there are rape kits now. The conversation about rape is more understanding and pro-woman, but rape victims are still seen as a drag. There’s this attitude of: “other people have dealt with this, why don’t you be quiet.”

We now understand a lot more about Trauma and Recovery—coincidentally the title of an excellent book I reviewed in The New York Times. The author, Judith Lewis Herman, dignified women’s mental illness by beginning the book with the combat veterans who were WWI shell shocked, and linking their manifestations of PTSD to incest and rape victims. Our work collectively began to give more dignity to women who have anxiety, insomnia, flashbacks, who are self-destructive. The same destroy their own cases in court because they can’t trust themselves. Is there more sympathy and understanding? Yes. Is there enough? No. I think one important progress is there are more memoirs by young women writing about their mental health experiences and their eating disorders, which are often intimately connected to sexual abuse. There are now feminist therapists, there are lesbian feminist therapists, there are lesbian therapists of color. It’s a good thing, but it’s still not enough.

Why Your Criticisms Of Intersectionality And Identity Politics Sound Ridiculous

Why do so many frame demands for accountability and sociopolitical inclusion as ‘divisive?’

“Demilitarize the Police, Black Lives Matter” (Photo credit: Johnny Silvercloud)

I remember the first time I was called a nigger.

I was in the 4th grade. I remember being in a classroom, joking with a friend (a white girl) and calling her a nincompoop. She looked to me, her smile melting into a look of contempt, and replied, “You’re wrong…you’re the nigger.”

She had obviously misheard me, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was that I wasn’t quite sure what she was talking about yet I understood, on a visceral level, the underlying message and how it made me feel: small, ugly…less than.

Since that unwitting attempt to “put me in my place,” I’ve endured countless scenarios — sometimes casual, sometimes hostile — that made me feel one or more of those things throughout my life, a consequence of navigating a white-dominated society with an anti-black value system woven into the tapestry of its white-oriented culture.

The thing is, I’m not just Black: I’m also an atheist. While far more benign compared to anti-blackness, being an atheist tacks on a more uncommon layer of prejudice that I contend with given our Christian hegemonic society, even within the Black community.

While far more benign compared to anti-blackness, being an atheist tacks on a more uncommon layer of prejudice that I contend with given our Christian hegemonic society, even within the Black community.

Since most are reared in a social environment that constantly encourages and reinforces some type of religious or theistic belief, many view these normative ideas as being identical to truth. This view results in thinking something traumatic must have happened to those who reject these normative beliefs, or that they must hate god (which is misotheism, not atheism), or that there must be something wrong with them mentally — because, somehow, we’ve been conditioned to believe that no sane individual would reject the idea of an invisible yet omnipresent supernatural being we’ve never seen and are only familiar with through primitive stories and hearsay.

But I’m not just an atheist. I must deal with a wide range of animus, fear, bias, ignorance, microaggressions, alienation, and erasure reserved not just for atheists, and not just for Blacks, but for the intersection of blackness and atheism.

I’ll always be an outspoken atheist as well as unapologetically Black (that is, I despise respectability politics, readily speak to the real-lived texture of Black life, and choose to not diminish issues disproportionately impacting Black America). Those who suggest I ignore either of these essential pieces of my being, depending on which space I occupy, are really asking me to deny who I am for their comfort and their allegiance to social norms declaring those aspects of my identity matter less.

Being a Black atheist within white-centered atheist spaces that satiate the concerns and interests of white atheists really helped me realize the importance of the questions, “Who’s being left out — and why?” Thinking deeply about this also helped shape my appreciation of the ways I hold many social advantages as an able-bodied, cisgender, heterosexual male in a society that confers a surplus of meaning to those occupying these identities while delegitimizing the humanity of those who do not.

So, for me, the reason why intersectionality is vital is apparent: it’s both a metaphor and frame of understanding that acknowledges multiple “avenues” of prejudice and marginalization exist, and that these “avenues” intersect. Intersectionality reminds us to consider how we are all impacted differently due to the complex, intersecting nature of social power dynamics.

Intersectionality reminds us to consider how we are all impacted differently due to the complex, intersecting nature of social power dynamics.

Still, there remain many who disparage or otherwise question the need for intersectionality. This usually happens for three reasons.

1. Naysayers don’t understand identity or its impact on our shared social reality

There are many assumptions we take for granted when it comes to identity and the patterned social arrangements of society. Before speaking further about the significance of an intersectional analysis, it’s necessary to unpack some fundamentals of what identity does and does not entail.

Identities are systematized descriptors that reference objective and causally relevant characteristics of a shared reality.

Identities are based on specific cultural contexts, social histories, and lived experiences.

Identities are the conditional products of social interaction and social institutions, subject to occupying particular locations within time, social space, and historical communities.

Identities are not an attempt to reduce an entire group to an essential, coherent monolith. To share an identity with others is to share in only one facet of a multifaceted reality. There is no contradiction between identifying with specific social groups and being a complex, unique individual.

When discussing common identity — separate from individual identity — we’re describing what’s imposed on us by an established history of social standards, stratification, controlling images, and stereotypes.

To affirm that we have an identity, or to state that we’re a part of a particular identity group, is to simply agree that we have a location in social space informed by the interlocking social structures we inhabit.

It’s necessary to increase awareness regarding the ways in which this complicated social reality impacts people differently if we want to build a society where the most vulnerable among us are recognized and listened to in hopes of alleviating (and ultimately, eliminating) their vulnerable status.

Thank God For Identity Politics

This is why Kimberlé Crenshaw, scholar and civil rights activist who coined the term intersectionality, once described intersectionality as being “an analytic sensibility” and “a way of thinking about identity and its relationship to power.” She’s also articulated how intersectionality helps us increase attentiveness to identity-based “blind spots” when it comes to aspects of unequal social power dynamics we don’t ourselves experience.

2. Naysayers associate intersectionality with their favorite bogey monster: “identity politics”

The phrase “identity politics” is merely a pejorative blanket term that invokes a variety of ambiguous, cherry-picked ideas of political failings.

Declaring something is “identity politics” is often a measure taken to trivialize identity-based issues that make many members of dominant social groups uncomfortable (e.g., Black Lives Matter critiquing anti-black racism, feminists critiquing sexism, LGBTQ activists critiquing cis-heteronormativity, etc.).

‘Identity politics’ is used as an expression to identify political deviance — to describe political actions defying imbalanced political structures we’ve been conditioned to accept.

Basically, “identity politics” is used as an expression to identify political deviance — to describe political actions defying imbalanced political structures we’ve been conditioned to accept.

What’s ironic is politics are unavoidably connected to identity for everyone. Who and what we are is rooted in our identities. Identities are forged by socio-historical context, and they directly impact interpellation (the means by which we encounter our culture’s values and internalize them) as well as our lived experiences. Experiences correlate with identity to provide both an epistemic and a political basis for interpreting the world we exist in.

Consider white-centeredness, a deeply-rooted cultural feature of this nation. The term “white-centeredness” describes the centrality of white representation that permeates every facet of dominant culture. This representation upholds as “normal” the ubiquity of language, ideas, values, social mores, and worldviews established by the white perspective.

White-centeredness standardizes whiteness. This standardization saturates what we refer to as the “status quo.” The maintenance of this social order is white identity politics, as engaging in political activities to preserve these ideas and structures demands prioritizing the collective interests of white America.

White identity politics go ‘undetected,’ as we’re socialized to regard the sustaining of dominant culture as ‘what is expected’ or ‘the way things ought to be.’

The thing is, nobody distinguishes political motivations, political judgments, or political maneuvering that enshrines white-centeredness as being white identity politics. Instead, white identity politics go “undetected,” as we’re socialized to regard the sustaining of dominant culture as “what is expected” or “the way things ought to be.”

Dr. Zuleyka Zevallos, a sociologist with Swinburne University, echoes this sentiment, stating:

If the phrase has any value at all — and it really doesn’t — “identity politics” calls attention to the ways that people from majority groups, especially White people, do not “see” how their identities are governed by politics.

This is how Whiteness works: White culture is embedded into all fields of public life, from education, to the media, to science, to religion and beyond. White culture is constructed as the norm, so it becomes the taken-for-granted ideal with which other cultures are judged against by White people.

Hence, White people do not recognise how their race shapes their understanding of politics, and their relationships with minority groups.

It shouldn’t be surprising that those who occupy positions of social dominance seek to discredit identity politics wielded by those with restricted social power.

They’ll refer to it as “divisive” or “tribalism,” neglecting the fact that the political activism they belittle is in response to pre-existing social divisions situating certain social groups (tribes) with greater sociopolitical power at the expense of subordinating other social groups.

They’ll go to great lengths to invalidate missions for increased social and political power by those from marginalized social groups — communities systematically disenfranchised in ways that restrict access to resources, rights, or opportunities made fully available to other social groups.

In other words, the term “identity politics” is typically employed as a linguistic Trojan horse to stigmatize campaigns for civil rights.

The term ‘identity politics’ is typically employed as a linguistic Trojan horse to stigmatize campaigns for civil rights.

In 1977, a Black feminist lesbian organization known as the Combahee River Collective issued a statement that may be considered the historical genesis of explicit identity politics. In it, the group expresses the relevance of identity to politics and how shared aspects of identity produces solidarity when confronting unique forms of oppression that target specific identities. The group was formed after issues related to their particular life circumstances were continually disregarded due to pervasive heterosexism, erasure within the white-dominated women’s movement, and erasure within the male-dominated Black liberation movement.

For marginalized social groups, what is perceived as explicit identity politics is a challenge to status quo, and used as a means of seeking increased sociopolitical power currently not being distributed in an equal or just manner. This form of political engagement — which emphasizes issues and perspectives relevant to shared aspects of an identity — serves to address social ills that disproportionately impact the lives of marginalized social groups in clear and specific ways.

A laser focus on matters related to our own social positions breeds insularity and complacency, obstructing our emotional and intellectual connection to disparate social realities we don’t experience. This is why we need intersectionality — to challenge and expand that narrowed focus.

We need intersectionality to challenge and expand that narrowed focus.

Speaking to how intersectionality forces us to move beyond more simplistic notions of complex social matters, Zevallos says:

Intersectionality is not about “identity politics,” a term used to denigrate minorities’ contributions to activism, academia and other public discussions. Intersectionality is a framework used to illustrate how systems of discrimination are interconnected.

Black women struggled against industrial relations law as they experience co-occurring incidents of racism and sexism in the workplace. The law puts Black women into a tricky position by forcing them to focus workplace complaints in either the area of race discrimination or gender discrimination.

Professor Crenshaw’s use of intersectionality shines a light on how existing processes act as if individuals belong to discrete groups, when, in fact, Black women face multiple inequalities at the same time. Over the decades, theorists, including Professor Crenshaw, have further developed intersectionality to show how other relations of power structure inequality.

For example, a Black woman activist at a Black Lives Matter protest unfortunately could not expect the police to protect her safety, as we have seen all over the world — while a White woman activist at a Women’s March protest can expect the police to provide a peaceful environment for her to march across the city. Race offers a buffer for one gender group (White women), but not another (Black women); hence, interconnections of race, gender and other forms of disadvantage require concurrent attention.

3. Naysayers don’t want seismic social change

Many people simply don’t want radical social progress, or significant societal changes that would create a more inclusive social order, as this requires casting asunder oppressive ideas and systems codified into the status quo that dominant social groups benefit from.

When you’re socially and politically exempt from systemic inequality, it isn’t unusual to focus on matters that relate more to your vantage point, and to greet treating matters that decenter your purview with indifference, defensiveness, bewilderment, or hostility.

Editor at Large of The Establishment Ijeoma Oluo, who spoke to this tendency in her article Thank God For Identity Politics, describes those who take issue with intersectionality as “people who are threatened because they see intersectionality as something that is forcing them to change, to see themselves as something other than the aggrieved party.”

This brings to mind the recent “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville. No, it wasn’t a “We Hate Intersectionality” protest, but it damn sure was a flagrant display of white folks espousing exclusionary beliefs (e.g., chanting “You will not replace us,” parading KKK and neo-Nazi symbols) and expressing dissatisfaction with steps toward social progress: removing monuments commemorating white supremacy.

Despite being white and existing within a white-dominated society steeped in a white-centered culture, both the protestors and their sympathizers are unable to see themselves as anything other than “victims” of a changing world gradually eroding their hegemonic status.

Despite being white and existing within a white-dominated society steeped in a white-centered culture, both the protestors and their sympathizers are unable to see themselves as anything other than “victims” of a changing world gradually eroding their hegemonic status.

This imagined distress of the privileged is encapsulated by the popular quote, “When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.”

We Need Accountability

I asked Oluo about her opinion regarding the criticism that intersectionality creates a “hierarchy of suffering,” to which she responded:

I think that it is the lack of intersectionality that creates a hierarchy of suffering. Intersectionality does just the opposite: it adjusts to the nuances of individual situations, and holds us all accountable to each other.

This. Right. Here.

Intersectionality demands accountability. Those occupying dominant social positions tend to be less accustomed to taking responsibility for attitudes or behaviors that adversely affect non-dominant group members.

‘Special Snowflake’ My Ass: Why Identity Labels Matter

This is something I’m intimately familiar with when it comes to Black men who embrace shallow “Black first” ideas of wokeness that’s hip to the antiblackness ever-present within our white supremacist society while also reproducing ideologies that overlook or co-sign misogynoir and heterosexism. This is why Oluo affirms, “You cannot only pick up the parts of revolution that free you and then fight against those working to free themselves and still call yourself a revolutionary.”

We’ve all been socialized within a profoundly oppressive culture wherein widely accepted social mores cater to dominant social groups, whether based on gender, class, race, sexuality, ability, religion, or a combination of these and more. The exercise of intersectionality intervenes on the everyday assumptions, expectations, and interests we uncritically accept that routinely eclipse the concerns of marginalized communities.

Writer, educator, and social activist Sikivu Hutchinson explains it this way:

Intersectionality is the human condition. It addresses the multiple positions of privilege and disadvantage that human beings occupy and experience in a global context shaped by white supremacy, capitalism, neoliberalism, patriarchy, heterosexism, ableism, segregation and state violence.

Intersectionality upends the single variable politics of being “left” or “right.” It speaks to the very nature of positionality in a world in which it’s impossible to stake a claim on a solitary fixed identity that isn’t informed by one’s relationship to social, political and economic structures of power, authority and control that are themselves rooted in specific histories.

As Oluo puts it, intersectionality requires folks to “set aside their egos and realize that we can always do better, and should always strive to do better, if we really want to be better.”

For the sake of realizing a society more inclusive of the disadvantaged and the underrepresented so that increased access to well-being and autonomy is possible, it’s vital we take advantage of an analytical tool that deliberately seeks out those who exist on the margins.

And that tool is intersectionality.

This article originally appeared on the author’s Medium account. Republished here with permission.

]]> https://theestablishment.co/how-to-throw-shade-while-still-being-intersectional-d528d1c03b58-2/ Mon, 02 Jan 2017 17:49:14 +0000 https://theestablishment.co/?p=5916 Read more]]>

You’ll live through the call-outs, but don’t come back and haunt me if you don’t.

Everyone knows that comments sections on popular websites are like stepping into a virtual version of the Ancient Roman Colosseum. Many of us avoid them. Others pull up popcorn and watch in silence. The bravest gladiators duke it out as if their next meal depends on it.

Lurking in these battlegrounds is part of my job. I’ve moderated the comments sections for a few companies, so I’m paid to witness the havoc. I’m thrown into the arena to block trolls, answer questions, and respond to misinformed, yet highly opinionated folks.

By far the most interesting comments sections are the ones in feminist/social justice spaces. Because there are so many strains of feminism, and often, varying opinions on what feminism is, the battles in these spaces are intense. I’m hired for these jobs because I have a background in social media, a broad understanding of social justice topics, and an ability to keep my cool when responding to mean-spirited comments.

But what my employers don’t know is that I am also shady AF. So is my feminism.

I stay classy when I’m running social media accounts, but in my mind I’m throwing major shade.

Think feminism and throwing shade don’t go together? Well, my revolutionary, way-paving ancestors within the African diaspora have handed down a legacy of shade.

What my employers don’t know is that I am also shady AF. So is my feminism.
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Back when Europeans were out colonizing and being shitty, black slaves in Brazil were plotting on the low (even back then they knew that the best shade is low-key and unexpected). Masking their preparation as dance, these slaves trained one another to attack their masters. They used this “martial dance” called Capoeira to fight and escape to freedom.

Rebel slaves in Central America were even shadier. Garifuna slaves created a dance called “Wanaragua” or “Jankunu,” where they put on white masks, resembling their British masters, and dance around to mock them. Some sources say they were making fun of their masters’ lack of rhythm.

Then, there is the trickster figure in African American literature who shows up to pull a fast one on the slave owners and oppressors to make them look like fools.

This shade-throwing legacy continues in the witty conversations on Black Twitter with hashtags like #RapAlbumsThatCausedSlavery, to make fun of the white tears surrounding the N-word; #StayMadAbby, to tease Abigail Fisher, a white woman who cried all the way to the Supreme Court because she assumed black students took her spot at the University of Texas; and #CNNHeadlines, to call attention to the racist reporting on police brutality cases from major media outlets.

All these practices of past and present shade were and are used to fight back against oppressors, contest systems of oppression, make fun of white tears, demand inclusivity, and uplift people of color all at the same time.

This is exactly what I try to do with my feminism. But, sometimes I screw up.

When I’m in the comments section, sometimes I catch myself thinking some pretty “unfeminist” things (I’d never actually post them, because I love my job). But the fact that I have these thoughts mean they might slip out of my mouth in a live, offline situation.

Intersectionality should never be sacrificed for an attempt at throwing shade.
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Feminists can be as shady as we want to be. However, intersectional feminists also have a responsibility to include people of various identities and experiences in our feminism, and to challenge oppressive systems in our society. Intersectionality should never be sacrificed for an attempt at throwing shade.

But it is possible to do both. Here’s how:

1. Avoid assuming someone’s gender

Suppose you’re in a heated debate with someone online, and they say something completely ridiculous. At this point, you’re over the conversation. You roll your eyes, type, “Girl, bye,” and enter in a sassy gif that reflects your annoyed sentiment — because boss shade throwers keep the perfect gifs on deck.

Then they respond with, “Actually, I’m not a girl.” Damn. . . You lost the battle, Fam.

Not only did your shadiness fall flat, but you also made a harmful error. You saw a profile picture or a name and guessed someone’s gender. Major no-no! People can tell you their own genders. You don’t get to decide for them.

Misgendering someone invalidates the experiences of many people who don’t identify with the gender they were assigned at birth, including agender, intersex, and gender non-binary folks. You may not have done it on purpose, but your misstep echoes the same sentiments that perpetuate violence against people who don’t identify with their gender assigned at birth.

Our language often relies on a dated and oppressive gender binary. As feminist illustrator and vlogger Kat Blaque explains in Buzzfeed’s “Why pronouns matter for Trans People” video, “There are some situations where we really put way too much stock into whether or not somebody is a man or a woman. There’s a lot of situations that we just don’t need to necessarily have gendered language.”

So be careful about using it.

When I’m being petty, and I’m not on the clock, I like to call people ‘sweetheart.’
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If you’ve already made the mistake of misgendering someone, you should probably chill on the shade throwing. Next time, opt for gender-neutral shady nicknames. When I’m being petty (and I’m not on the clock), I like to call people “sweetheart.” It works for all genders — and reads very condescendingly.

2. Take the ableism out of your call-outs

Ableism is often left out of feminist conversations. Simply put, ableism is the oppression of disabled and neurodivergent people (oppression of the latter is often called saneism). It takes many forms and often appears in the language we use.

For example, when you’re debating someone and you say something like, “Are you crazy?” when someone says something you don’t agree with, or if you say something is “stupid” because their opinion is different from your own, that’s ableist.

Ableist language includes words like “dumb,” “idiot,” “stupid,” “crazy,” “retarded,” “insane” and others.

To some folks, this may seem like we are being “too PC,” and that “you can’t say anything nowadays because everyone gets offended.”

But I’m not at all concerned about the feelings of people who don’t check their privilege. My goal here is to avoid oppressive language. There are slurs against people who look like me, and I get upset when I hear them. I know what it feels like to be targeted because I’m not society’s definition of “normal.” Therefore, even on my pettiest of days, I do my best to avoid using these slurs.

3. Bury them with facts

People often say “Kill them with kindness and bury them with a smile.”

That’s cute and all. I get the whole “you win more bees with honey” notion — but screw that noise. Bees sting. So do questions from so-called “innocent” people who say they want to understand, but insist on playing devil’s advocate in asking questions about “reverse racism,” safety in gender-neutral bathrooms, and the necessity of safe spaces.

Then, when we get upset about having to answer these hackneyed questions, they ask why we’re so upset. I’m not here for tone policing — especially when people question the lived experiences of marginalized folks.

So forget the smiles. I say bury them with facts.

Now, I have to admit, I get a slight high from telling people they’re wrong. I don’t do it with malice — mostly because I’m paid not to — but also, slapping cold hard facts in people’s faces can be just as satisfying.

Calmly, I explain that their opinions are just opinions, while certain facts, statistics, and the lived experiences of marginalized groups suggest the very opposite. I link to several credible sources so they can look it up for themselves if they desire. Then (in my head, because I am a professional), I drop in a nail polish emoji.

Forget the smiles. I say bury them with facts.
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If you’re not being paid to keep your cool, pepper some sass between those facts.

Pro tip: You can’t be shady and wrong. Make sure you get your facts straight.

4. Listen and learn about topics you don’t fully understand

I know I just said you can’t be shady and wrong, but at one time or another you’ll accidentally say something offensive. You thought you were being this great feminist hero in your shining armor coming to educate the masses, but instead you said something totally inaccurate that reinforces the toxic ideas about a marginalized group.

Not to worry! If you’re in a comments section or in a social justice space, someone will likely call you out on it. They may clap back with some harsh words, and at the end of them, drop in the frog and tea emojis to make it abundantly clear that you have just been read for filth.

Take that L, sweetheart. Embrace it. Wear it like a scarlet letter.

If Google isn’t part of your squad, you can’t sit with me.
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Your privilege was clearly showing, and you let it get in the way of your ability to listen and understand a topic you didn’t know much about. So if someone claps back at your misinformed statement, listen to them. They might share useful information on how to make your feminism and social justice work more intersectionally.

Also, apologize and thank them for taking the time to educate you. This is not the time to be petty.

Pro tip: Keep your knickers un-bunched. You’ll live through these call outs, I promise (but, like, don’t come back and haunt me if you don’t). What’s most important is that you learn not to make your mistake again, especially if this mistake dehumanized, silenced, gaslighted, and/or echoed some form of violence against marginalized folks.

Of course, if you’re feeling unsafe, get the hell out of there. Self-care in social justice spaces is important. Just be careful with confusing the discomfort of having your privilege called out with a real threat to your well-being. I’ve seen way too many White Feminists misuse the word “attacked.”

Entering intersectional feminist spaces can make us feel a lot of pressure. We have to be careful not to further marginalize people with identities and experiences we don’t fully understand. There’s often a huge learning curve in these environments, and Google becomes our best friend (seriously, if Google isn’t part of your squad, you can’t sit with me). When introduced to the intersectional side to feminism, many of us have to look up words like demisexual and TERF, and we have to rethink the way we use language.

However, we don’t have to lose our shady edge in these spaces. Being a petty, shade–throwing intersectional feminist is about finding that sweet spot where humor and shade meet inclusivity. Sometimes we will mess up, and the call-outs aimed in our direction will make us feel small — smaller than Hillary Clinton’s favorite pair of kitten heels.

But we learn from them, and we come back even shadier and more inclusive.