How To Write Intersectionality
As we grow as a society, more aware of the privileges and disenfranchised identity factors, it can seem as if hierarchy is a simple pyramid, but this is a gross oversimplification.
In reality, different minority statuses often stack on top of each other, creating unique presentations for how someone interprets and is subjected to discrimination.
So how can you write a black female character? Or a disabled gay man? Well, I can show you!
Recognize Mitigating and Aggravating Circumstances
If society treats differences like a crime, we can evaluate them like crimes too!
For example, disenfranchised groups include people with disabilities, those of minority races in the wider community, indigenous heritage, economically disadvantaged, people learning the language of the wider group, religious minorities, immigrants, and the elderly (just some)
These can be considered 'aggravating factors'. They increase the severity of the perceived crime.
Black women are more likely than black men or white women to receive harassment and they are subjected to a different type of discrimination because they receive both sexism and racism - often intertwined. An example of this is the stereotype of the 'Strong Black Woman'. Women are often parentified, made to be seen as more mature than their male counterparts, even as children. This has led to pernicious dynamics such as the breadwinning, super wife and mother and the bumbling oaf of a husband who is basically a burden. This dynamic is normalized because women are always meant to be mature and orderly while men are allowed more leeway in terms of immaturity and letting other people do the work.
Black people are also stereotyped as strong, more resilient, due to the equally pernicious idea that what doesn't kill you, i.e racism and discrimination, makes one stronger. This is not true at all. Racism breaks down people, makes them depressed, anxious, and often needing outside help. By giving black people, the 'positive' stereotype of being independent and strong, it creates a stigma around receiving mental treatment.
With black women, these two stereotypes coincide to create the 'Strong Black Woman' archetype, a woman who can do everything, handle it all on her own no matter what obstacles she gets, doesn't need any support system whatsoever, and implicitly shames other women who need other people.
However, there are also mitigating circumstances, factors that decrease the severity of the perceived crime of existing as a minority. This is often in the form of coinciding privilege.
For example!
A black woman may be more likely, inherently to receive discrimination compared to white women and black men but a black woman who is in the upper middle class is more likely to be treated with less open hostility than a lower class, impoverished black woman.
This is because there is a privilege in having more money. It makes one more independent, more able to combat discrimination vocally because they have more options than a lower-class person.
In a real-life example, say that these two black women are working in an office. Their voices are constantly undermined, dismissed as being 'too angry', 'too emotional about the topic', or even 'disrupting the workplace' because of their inherent 'lack of innocence' as jezebels. The richer black woman has more of an option to leave the job, make more vocally forward demands, because even if she is fired, she has more of a support system of upper-class friends to help her, more opportunities to find a job, and a chance that her boss may try to appeal to her wealthy connections.
An impoverished black woman doesn't have this privilege. After all, this may be her one chance at having a job. If she leaves, she can't exactly rely on her also impoverished friends. So, this woman may be forced to stick her head in the sand, be 'respectable' to keep the job.
Other mitigating factors include:
Being conventionally attractive
Being white
Having a disability that doesn't impact ones' responsiveness, appearance, intelligence, or ability to have a job.
Conventional gender presentation
Having a support system
Higher education
Being a man
Being a 'natural-born' citizen
Being heterosexual
Having the majority religion
Presenting your identity - either intentionally or just by pure personality - in a more socially acceptable way. Such as having relaxed hair as a black person, having a more well-known and understood condition such as depression vs D.I.D, or not wearing religious garb
This creates a complex interweb of privileges and disadvantages. For example, I am a white woman - inherently both privileged and discriminated against, but I am also queer, fat, in poverty, and rural-born. I have the privilege of blending into general society, but I don't have that many opportunities to live a more open, secure, expressive life.
Being A Traitor - Dividing Lines
Racial-Gender dynamics are the most common dividing line - especially for black people.
For example, imagine a situation where you are a complete outsider party, and at your college, a white woman accuses her black boyfriend of abusing her.
There will likely be two very opposing sides to this argument. There will be white feminists who defend the white woman with the knowledge that women are subjected to domestic abuse, often silently and without societal support.
There will also be black men who defend the boyfriend and claim that the accusations are false with the knowledge that white women have been accusing black men with false records of abuse for decades as a way of ruining the man's reputation and getting society against him.
If you are a black woman and you side with the feminists in this debate, you will most likely be called a 'race-traitor'. If you side with the black men in this debate, you will be 'rejecting sisterhood'.
This is to illustrate the fact that mainstream parties often represent non-intersectional spaces for people which forces people who share multiple marginalized identities to 'pick a side'.
The disabled community is often represented by heterosexual, white men. The black community is often represented and spoken by black men. The feminist community is often spoken by white women. The queer community is often represented by white, gay men.
(A show that recommend for seeing how abuse intersects with homophobia, racism, sexism, and economic class is 'I May Destroy You' which features a majority black cast as they deal with personal and societal issue surrounding trauma)
This means that people who do straddle the line may feel pressure from both sides, or more sides, to align themselves with one part of their complex identity.
A mixed-race, black-white, individual may feel like they have to 'act black' to belong. 'Too black' for white people and 'too white' for black people.
A disabled lady may feel stripped of their sexual identity, reduced to a body of suffering instead of a lady that can feel and make pleasure.
A fat, gay man may feel pressure to be conventionally attractive in a heterosexual world as the only people that get represented are muscular, tall, and made to appeal to women.
A second-generation immigrant may feel pressure from their assimilated and heritage culture to either be 100% assimilated or 100% attached to their home country.
There are so many ways that people can interact with their identity. No one experiences, like, sexism on Wednesdays, homophobia on weekends, racism on Tuesdays, and ageism on Friday. People experience them at the same time, all at once.
