Intersectionality

Are women all the same? Are men all the same? Are Chinese all the same? Are Deaf people all the same? 

The answer is intersectionality. It means each person is born with different traits and grew up with different experiences, some bad and some good leading to differing identities in each individual. What counts is oppression against these differing identities. 

Intersectionality was initially meant for women who experience discrimination based on both colour and gender simultaneously. Kimberle Crenshaw, a legal scholar, saw it and coined the term in 1989. She realised that anyone would treat these issues separately. 

There was a case: 

There was a group of African American women who sued a company for racial and gender discrimination. However, the courts found that women in general were not discriminated against when it came to jobs as secretaries in the company. Therefore, the court dismissed their suit relating to discrimination based on gender. The company also employed African American factory workers and the courts found that this disproved racial discrimination. So the court saw race and gender as two separate issues and therefore dismissed the suit. 

What is the problem? The court failed to consider that the majority of secretaries were white women, and factory workers were all men. The women of colour were not seen to be doubly discriminated against and should be treated as a facing a separate category of oppression.

Every woman is different, not only based on race and gender, but also different for their culture, ability, age, education, class, language and others. 

Each of them has different privileges, for example, one may not be able to speak English fluently but is considered very attractive and another one speaks English fluently but is considered less attractive. 

Both of them experience different forms of oppression, the first woman may not be able to get a good job because of her language barrier or being always laughed for speaking improper English. 

Another woman may have never been invited to any occasions because friends are afraid of embarrassment of having her around.  Different oppression happens to different people based on what they have or do not have. 

Looks harsh to you? Well that means oppression happens. Oppression is always happening without us realising it. 

Here is an easy example of intersectionality: 

If a person was oppressed for his/her only one difference (i.e. gender), only one kind of oppression happens, then the intersectionality does not happen. 

If a person was oppressed for his/her many differences (i.e. gender, sexual orientation, disability, colour), more than one kind of oppression overlaps, then intersectionality happens. 

Intersectionality allows us to analyse the overlapped oppressions together and identify how interlocking system of power impact those who are most marginalised in mainstream society. 

So, if there is no discrimination, then oppression will not happen. Hence the term intersectionality would never come to exist. 

Now, the term expanded to other interplay between any kinds of discrimination, whether it is based on gender, race, age, class, socioeconomic status, physical or mental ability, gender or sexual identity, religion and ethnicity. 

Often, there are a lot of people out there lacking understanding about people and making false assumptions, i.e. men are chauvinistic,  women are weak, Malays are laid back, Indians are alcoholic, Chinese are selfish, Deaf people are dumb, and so on. 

Stereotyping happens - discrimination happens - oppression happens

That is how society sees people based on attitude, action and behaviour that one from the groups performed. For example, once a deaf person stole flowerhorn fish, which was reported in the newspapers and people who read the article made a very quick assumption that other deaf people will do the same thing.  Or once a deaf person passed SPM with flying colours, the Department of Education assumed that the education policy they implemented worked successfully and they expected more deaf students would pass SPM.  

This is a dangerous assumption. It could ruin a lot of people based on one person’s performance. 

Intersectionality teaches us to see people differently as they experience different oppressions. We need to see them based on their individual personality and do not make general assumption about others who fall in the same group with them. 

Each of us needs to be reminded constantly that each individual is different and should not be labelled blindly based on other individual’s personality.  We need to listen to different people and think on how we could make diversity happens without discrimination. 

Written for a talk on 9 April 2019