The Human Suit is Itchy

Then you did not read the original black womens theory of intersectionality and do not believe in it! Because not acknowledging all parts of an identity is not applyying it correctly. There is in fact huge contradiction to using that theory and then leaving out a pice of someones intersection.

All idenities intersect here!

One of the very few Black women's studies books is entitled All the Women Are White; All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us are Brave. I have chosen this title as a point of departure in my efforts to develop a Black feminist criticism because it sets forth a problematic consequence of the tendency to treat race and gender as mutually exclusive categories of experience and analysis.' In this talk, I want to examine how this tendency is perpetuated by a single-axis framework that is dominant in antidiscrimination law and that is also reflected in feminist theory and antiracist politics.

This is fully free to read online, published in 1989 in the University of Chicago Legal Forum, and cited at least 53,395 times according to Google.

You might wonder, does the seminal paper about intersectionality talk about men as a point of intersection?

The point is that Black women can experience discrimination in any number of ways and that the contradiction arises from our assumptions that their claims of exclusion must be unidirectional. Consider an analogy to traffic in an intersection, coming and going in all four directions. Discrimination, like traffic through an intersection, may flow in one direction, and it may flow in another. If an accident happens in an intersection, it can be caused by cars traveling from any number of directions and, sometimes, from all of them. Similarly, if a Black woman is harmed because she is in the intersection, her injury could result from sex discrimination or race discrimination.

Judicial decisions which premise intersectional relief on a showing that Black women are specifically recognized as a class are analogous to a doctor's decision at the scene of an accident to treat an accident victim only if the injury is recognized by medical insurance. Similarly, providing legal relief only when Black women show that their claims are based on race or on sex is analogous to calling an ambulance for the victim only after the driver responsible for the injuries is identified. But it is not always easy to reconstruct an accident: Sometimes the skid marks and the injuries simply indicate that they occurred simultaneously, frustrating efforts to determine which driver caused the harm. In these cases the tendency seems to be that no driver is held responsible, no treatment is administered, and the involved parties simply get back in their cars and zoom away.

To bring this back to a non-metaphorical level, I am suggesting that Black women can experience discrimination in ways that are both similar to and different from those experienced by white women and Black men. Black women sometimes experience discrimination in ways similar to white women's experiences; sometimes they share very similar experiences with Black men. Yet often they experience double-discrimination-the combined effects of practices which discriminate on the basis of race, and on the basis of sex. And sometimes, they experience discrimination as Black women-not the sum of race and sex discrimination, but as Black women.

And the answer is yes, of fucking course it does, because people experience both having racial and gender identities and discrimination can happen on the basis of such identities, and people can get hit in the intersection in more than one way at the same time, that's literally the whole fucking point of the essay.

It's also free to sign up for Jstor and read her other article, Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color, published in the Stanford Law Review in 1991.

For the low low price of $zero dollars and reading 30 and 59 pages respectively, people could stop themselves from being embarrassingly wrong on the internet.

In the USA, Black men have an easier time being seen as authority figures than Black women, but are also more likely to be seen as a physical threat. Is this better or worse? Wrong question.

What are the stereotypes against Asian men and Asian women in the USA? They're DIFFERENT.

"What are you doing for Christmas?"

"Oh, I don't celebrate Christmas."

"Oh, OK. Do you have any holidays coming up?"

Not a problem. You recognized that your experiences are not universal and responded positively.

"What are you doing for Christmas?"

"Oh, I don't celebrate Christmas."

"What? Everybody does. It's not a religious holiday, it's just..."

This person is being rude, whether they realize it or not, and should stop acting that way.

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/05/22/2026-10321/vaccines-and-related-biological-products-advisory-committee-notice-of-meeting-establishment-of-a

This is the link to the meeting notice. Meeting will be held June 18th, with public comments received up until June 17.

Yes, please do comment, especially if you are a US citizen. Make your comment specific, rather than just "Do it." If there's a reason flu shots are personally important to you, talk about it, otherwise, mention the scientific details.

(Source: the two weeks I spent "helping out" at a local farm in eighth grade as part of the school's "learn about jobs" program. I'm grateful for it, because it cured me forever of any romanticism about farming or the countryside.)

A bunch of tribes were farming the land and some built huge cities before European Contact, which involved intricate irrigation systems. All of which involved "trespassing" on the land.

We can acknowledge that Natives have a lot of valuable knowledge about being responsible stewards of the lands without devolving into Magical Wood Elves territory.

People who lived in the area for centuries had a better idea of which foodways would work long-term. This information is relevant and grew out of experience. But most indigenous populations managed the land intensively even when they weren't farming.

Don’t overlook paternity leave because it’s a hugely important feminist issue

Celebrating fatherhood with official paternity leave policies challenges traditional gender roles and empowers parents in the workplace. It’s one of those rare issues where men’s rights activists and feminists can find common ground with a mutually beneficial cause. It even has an impact on LGBTQ equality.

- It’s important for LGBT+ parents who don’t fit the cis-hetero mold of one mother and one father.

- It’s an important feminist issue for reducing the second shift: when only one parent gets adequate parental leave, it’s only natural for a pattern to develop that the only parent who got adequate parental leave takes on the lion’s share of childcare. However, if both parents get adequate parental leave, then it’s more likely for a pattern to develop of sharing childcare duties. This is obviously massively important for reducing how much women’s careers are affected by having children.

- If the mother has post-partum health issues (anything from recovering from a C-section or other physical traumas, to post-partum depression and/or anxiety) it’s incredibly unfair to expect her partner to just go back to work immediately instead of allowing her partner to stay home and help with childcare duties. When someone is recovering from having a baby, it can be really important for their partner to stay home to help care for them and the baby.

However, one important point I haven’t seen brought up in why equal paid parental is so important for social equality is how important it is for reducing hiring discrimination.

By that I mean, when a country has *only* guaranteed maternity leave, but either no paternity leave (or really short paternity leave of a few weeks like the U.K. has), this is only going to raise the risk of hiring discrimination against women.

So if a company is choosing between two candidates for a position: one is a young woman and the other is a young man, if the country this company is in has a maternity leave policy of several months or more, but paternity leave is either just a few weeks (or completely non-existent), the company will look at the woman as riskier and less reliable to hire than the man.

So equal paid parental leave leads to more equality in the job market, because it means companies are less likely to see women as riskier and less reliable to hire. If everyone, not just women, has the same length of parental leave, everyone runs the same risk of needing to go on leave for the same amount of time.

*As of the moment you first read this poll. Unless you already have specific winning lottery numbers memorized you aren’t going back with that knowledge. You can remember the majority of the information from your prior life, but it won’t cause traumatic/PTSD effects - it’ll feel like you’re remembering someone else’s story in great detail. Unless you do something to change it specifically, all world events will remain the same including major economic events, wars/famine/pandemics, etc.

The 2000 US Presidential election comes to mind, but I don't think I could do it unless I also had those winning lottery numbers or some other significant source of money. I could promote earlier and more dramatic uptake of renewable energy, but I don't currently know enough about how to manufacture solar panels cheaply, or make a lithium hydride battery that isn't an explosion looking for a place to happen.

the way you frame your conversations is important! People with dementia are often, particularly at the earlier stages, very much aware that their memory is getting worse. This can make them very anxious, which isn't fun for anyone, least of all them. One of the most common things that people say to people with dementia is "do you remember ___?" as a way to try and prompt their memory. This feels helpful, but it's not. Because hey, in all likelihood, that person does not remember ___, and being confronted with this fact is not going to make them feel great. Remember that they literally have a degenerative brain disease; they're not going to suddenly regain their memories because you tested them. Instead, try talking about your own memories. Tell them what you remember. Tell it like a story. If they remember, then they can join in. If not, then hey, it's a nice story.

don't correct them if they say something wrong. Their version of reality is not going to be the same as yours. That's just a given. My grandma is often convinced that she's just on a very long holiday in a nice hotel, and that her dad is waiting outside in the car. I'm not going to tell her "uh, actually, you're in a care home and your dad died 50 years ago," because who's that going to help? Quite literally no-one. It'll just confuse her more, and she's already confused enough. Even if the person is saying something that's making them anxious - a common one is believing that people are stealing from them, or that someone is being unkind to them - then it's easier to try and distract them by trying to talk about something that you know makes them happy, rather than to outright tell them that they're wrong. Being consistently told that they're wrong can make them react defensively; they're not children, and they (usually) know it. It's just easier not to get into a confrontation.

get used to repetition. Don't get frustrated when you have the same conversation 25 times in two minutes. It's going to happen. For them, it's the first time you've had that conversation; they won't understand why you're angry at them for asking a question. It's completely normal to feel frustrated, but the onus is on you not to make it their problem. My grandma's short term memory is, charitably, about 3 seconds long. A conversation with her at this point is like rehearsing for a play; I know her lines, and I know mine. That's just how it is. She gets just as much joy out of telling me that she likes my cardigan for the 86th time as she did the first time she said it. People with dementia are not able to retain the information or the memory of that previous conversation; reminding them that you've already answered their question is just going to confuse and upset them.

don't take things personally. They might say things that are unkind. They might say completely inappropriate things. Again: their brain is deteriorating. It is a medical condition. They're not becoming bad people, or showing their 'true selves' to be evil and rage-fuelled. It's a combination of the fact that they're living in a perpetual state of confusion, which can lead to frustration and anger, and the fact that their ability to process and respond to information is affected by the dementia itself. If they say something cruel to you, you just have to take it on the chin and recognise it as a symptom of a disease that they're not able to control. Step out of the room for a moment if it gets too much. I've been fortunate in that my grandma has never experienced this symptom, but it's very common, and it's no reflection of you, or them.

don't treat them like children. My grandmother is 92 years old and she will look at you like you're the bane of her life if you try and tell her what to do, or use baby talk. Keep your sentences short and clear to avoid confusion, but don't ask them if they need you to clean their wittle fingies.

try and avoid open-ended questions, especially ones that involve memory recall, like "what did you do on the weekend?". My grandma was an absolute queen at making shit up when people asked her that, because she couldn't remember a damn thing, and she never liked to admit that she couldn't remember, because it made her stressed and anxious. "I picked up leaves" was her personal favourite, for some reason. I used to just tell her about my weekend instead, and sometimes she would joyfully tell me (completely falsely) that she also went to the shops, and that was much less stressful for her; she wasn't actively trying to come up with an answer to cover for her own lack of memory, and instead felt like she was part of the conversation on her own, equal terms.

most importantly: don't try and pull them back to reality. The best way I've learnt to communicate with anyone with dementia is to enter theirs instead. Sometimes, this is referred to as 'validation therapy'. It's about acknowledging that the reality of someone with dementia is as real to them as your reality is to you, and you're not going to be able to 'reorient' them to your version of reality, because they don't have the short term memory or ability to retain information that would enable that. Put simply: if my grandma asks when my uncle is going to come home, I gain nothing from (correctly) informing her that he's dead. This just upsets her, because every time she hears it, she's receiving the news of his death for the first time. That sends her into a spiral of grief and anxiety that remains even after the memory of his death has vanished again. Instead, I just tell her that he'll be home after lunch. She nods, accepts it, and we're both happy. My uncle is still dead, but in her world, he's going to come home soon. It's a way of having empathy for the person with dementia, and acknowledging that your reality, or objective 'truth', is not more important than their wellbeing.

Agree that yes, it's time to go out. Take them for a walk, with the person physically walking if they can. Walk around inside the building, or maybe outside. Talk about something unrelated to the errand that concerns them, like maybe stuff you're seeing as you walk. Walk until the person starts to get physically tired.