{"id":24421,"date":"2014-02-24T11:56:32","date_gmt":"2014-02-24T16:56:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=24421"},"modified":"2019-09-02T11:02:19","modified_gmt":"2019-09-02T15:02:19","slug":"qotd-privilege-intersectionality-and-feminism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/02\/24\/qotd-privilege-intersectionality-and-feminism\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Privilege, intersectionality and feminism"},"content":{"rendered":"

While working-class left-wing political activism was always about fighting the powerful, treating people how you would wish to be treated and believing that we\u2019re all basically the same, modern, non-working-class left-wing politics is about\u2026 other stuff. Class guilt, sexual kinks, personal prejudice and repressed lust for power. The trade union movement gave us brother Bill Morris and Mrs Desai; the diversity movement has given us a rainbow coalition of cranks and charlatans. Which has, in turn, has given us intersectionality.<\/p>\n

Intersectionality may well sound like some unfortunate bowel complaint resulting in copious use of a colostomy bag, and indeed it does contain a large amount of ordure. Wikipedia defines it as \u2018the study of intersections between different disenfranchised groups or groups of minorities; specifically, the study of the interactions of multiple systems of oppression or discrimination\u2019, which seems rather mature and dignified. In reality, it seeks to make a manifesto out of the nastiest bits of Mean Girls<\/em>, wherein non-white feminists especially are encouraged to bypass the obvious task of tackling the patriarchy\u2019s power in favour of bitching about white women\u2019s perceived privilege in terms of hair texture and body shape. Think of all those episodes of Jerry Springer<\/em> where two women who look like Victoria\u2019s Secret models \u2014 one black, one white \u2014 bitch-fight over a man who resembles a Jerusalem artichoke, sitting smugly in the middle, and you have the end result of intersectionality made all too foul flesh. It may have been intended as a way for disabled women of colour to address such allegedly white-ableist-feminist-specific issues as equal pay, but it\u2019s ended up as a screaming, squawking, grievance-hawking shambles.<\/p>\n

The supreme irony of intersectionality is that it both barracks \u2018traditional\u2019 feminists for ignoring the issues of differently abled and differently ethnic women while at the same time telling them they have no right to discuss them because they don\u2019t understand them \u2014 a veritable Pushmi-Pullyu of a political movement. Entering the crazy world of intersectionality is quite like being locked in a hall of mirrors with a borderline personality disorder coach party. \u2018Stop looking at me funny! Why are you ignoring me? Go away, I hate you! Come back, how dare you reject me!\u2019 It\u2019s politics, Jim, but certainly not as my dear old dad knew it.<\/p>\n

Julie Burchill, “Don\u2019t you dare tell me to check my privilege: Today\u2019s left is a competition in shouting one another down”, The Spectator<\/em><\/a>, 2014-02-22<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While working-class left-wing political activism was always about fighting the powerful, treating people how you would wish to be treated and believing that we\u2019re all basically the same, modern, non-working-class left-wing politics is about\u2026 other stuff. Class guilt, sexual kinks, personal prejudice and repressed lust for power. The trade union movement gave us brother Bill […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,41],"tags":[987,1307,351,912,303,907,43],"class_list":["post-24421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-quotations","tag-feminism","tag-intersectionality","tag-politicalcorrectness","tag-privilege","tag-sexism","tag-snobbery","tag-women"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6lT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24421"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50774,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24421\/revisions\/50774"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}