Readasaur's Obscure Bookshelf

Sybil borrowed Massacre Princess Catholicon from Sam.

More WoF dragons: NightWing edition this time 🌕🌕🌕

Intersectionality, at it's core, asserts that identities can not be broken into what we see as their individual parts, in particular when discussing the oppression and prejudice a person faces. Identities are more than just the sum of their parts.

The theory was originally laid out by a black woman to explain her own oppression. In short, she claimed that her oppression as a black woman could not be simply explained as black oppression + woman oppression. She also experienced black woman oppression.

Now, the nuances of the situation are much more complex, but this is the very basic idea. You always have to account for a person's identity as a whole, and not just the individual parts.

Black women are not just "black" + "women"

Black men are not just "black" + "men"

Trans women are not just "trans" + "women"

Trans men are not just "trans" + "men"

You always have to consider the identity as a whole, which may mean there are non obvious aspects of the whole identity that are not readily explained by the sum of the individual parts.

That is the basic explanation. Now let's get into one particular application I think is very important, at least on Tumblr, because on tumblr it has become extremely controversial.

A consequence of intersectionality is that specific kinds of oppression cannot be divorced from maleness. A black man's oppression cannot be explained as "black" + "male" oppression. There are aspects of the oppression black men face that cannot be separated from their identity as a whole. Even if you believe "men" suffer no unique oppression, intersectionality means you can't deny the possibility that "black men" suffer oppression that cannot be divorced from them being men.

This application of intersectionality is fundamental and the application of intersectionality to black men has been accepted for basically as long as intersectionality has been around.

A similar application can be made to trans men.

Now if you don't agree with this model, sure. Im not going to say it is fine because I think you are wrong, but no social model is above criticism. What you can't do is claim that intersectionality is anything else. You either accept that aspects of oppression can be tied to maleness, or you do not accept intersectionality. There is no secret third thing. This is a fundamental consequence of intersectionality as a model.

I think it is important to note that intersectionality did not start as queer theory. The roots of the model are in the study of sexism and racism. This is black feminist theory. And to put a point on it, trans feminist theory has no business trying to warp intersectionality to fit preconceived ideas about how queer identities and queer oppression works.

I believe that twisting well established black feminist theory into an unrecognizable form and then stealing the credibility of that well established black feminist theory by labeling your new theory "intersectional" is racist. We do not get to borrow their credibility while spitting on their work.

You can tell because the basics of intersectionality are quite simple. An hour or two of study starting from Wikipedia is good enough to give you a working understanding of the model, and that is if you want to be thorough. That's all it takes for you to get the basics of arguably most important idea in critical race studies, feminism, and queer theory in the past 50 years.

But clearly many people have not done this minimal task and instead have decided to base their understand not on well reviewed sources, but on absorbing the meaning from context and random posts on tumblr. And people on Tumblr lie like mother fuckers. Constantly. Especially when it is self serving. And that's really the trick, these warped and outright incorrect models of intersectionality are really convenient. They play so well into what so many people are mad about, give blanket permission to stop thinking and go with your gut instinct, and they sound like something that might be called intersectionality, so people don't look any closer.

These people also often demand sources for anything that doesn't confirm their preexisting beliefs, as had become common in Tumblr. But not for things that confirm what they believe. That is how you know it's willful ignorance - they know that sources are important in theory, but willfully selectively apply that idea to challenge ideas they don't like and conveniently don't challenge ideas they do like. It's one of the major reasons I rarely bother with sources on here, especially not when it's easy to independently look up. Very few people on here actually care about sources, 99% of the time they just demand a source as a way to call into question ideas they don't like. They are not actually going to study the source and consider the ideas. I rarely talk about obscure cases where a source is not readily avaliable to anyone who wants to look.

So we have deliberate liars coming up with alternative models of intersectionality, and willfully ignorant people following these deliberately self serving models. The part that really gets me is that none of them want to admit they don't believe intersectionality is correct. No model is above criticism, but these people are too big of cowards to actually criticize the model. None of them have the conviction to actually stand behind what they believe, instead choosing to hide behind the credibility of intersectionality, knowing that calling them on their bullshit is difficult because people on Tumblr typically care more about what is popular and self serving than what is true.