{"id":37667,"date":"2017-03-13T03:00:02","date_gmt":"2017-03-13T07:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=37667"},"modified":"2019-09-02T11:02:06","modified_gmt":"2019-09-02T15:02:06","slug":"intersectionality-as-an-orwellian-smelly-little-orthodoxy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/03\/13\/intersectionality-as-an-orwellian-smelly-little-orthodoxy\/","title":{"rendered":"“Intersectionality” as an Orwellian “smelly little orthodoxy”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andrew Sullivan<\/a> is still disturbed by the Middlebury College incident in Vermont, calling it “the latest in the assault on liberal democracy”:<\/p>\n

But what grabbed me was the deeply disturbing 40-minute video of the event, posted on YouTube. It brings the incident to life in a way words cannot. At around the 19-minute mark, the students explained why they shut down the talk, and it helped clarify for me what exactly the meaning of \u201cintersectionality\u201d is.<\/p>\n

\u201cIntersectionality\u201d is the latest academic craze sweeping the American academy. On the surface, it\u2019s a recent neo-Marxist theory that argues that social oppression does not simply apply to single categories of identity \u2014 such as race, gender, sexual orientation, class, etc. \u2014 but to all of them in an interlocking system of hierarchy and power. At least, that\u2019s my best attempt to define it briefly. But watching that video helps show how an otherwise challenging social theory can often operate in practice.<\/p>\n

It is operating, in Orwell\u2019s words, as a \u201csmelly little orthodoxy,\u201d and it manifests itself, it seems to me, almost as a religion. It posits a classic orthodoxy through which all of human experience is explained \u2014 and through which all speech must be filtered. Its version of original sin is the power of some identity groups over others. To overcome this sin, you need first to confess, i.e., \u201ccheck your privilege,\u201d and subsequently live your life and order your thoughts in a way that keeps this sin at bay. The sin goes so deep into your psyche, especially if you are white or male or straight, that a profound conversion is required.<\/p>\n

Like the Puritanism once familiar in New England, intersectionality controls language and the very terms of discourse. It enforces manners. It has an idea of virtue \u2014 and is obsessed with upholding it. The saints are the most oppressed who nonetheless resist. The sinners are categorized in various ascending categories of demographic damnation, like something out of Dante. The only thing this religion lacks, of course, is salvation. Life is simply an interlocking drama of oppression and power and resistance, ending only in death. It\u2019s Marx without the final total liberation.<\/p>\n

It operates as a religion in one other critical dimension: If you happen to see the world in a different way, if you\u2019re a liberal or libertarian or even, gasp, a conservative, if you believe that a university is a place where any idea, however loathsome, can be debated and refuted, you are not just wrong, you are immoral. If you think that arguments and ideas can have a life independent of \u201cwhite supremacy,\u201d you are complicit in evil. And you are not just complicit, your heresy is a direct threat to others, and therefore needs to be extinguished. You can\u2019t reason with heresy. You have to ban it. It will contaminate others\u2019 souls, and wound them irreparably.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andrew Sullivan is still disturbed by the Middlebury College incident in Vermont, calling it “the latest in the assault on liberal democracy”: But what grabbed me was the deeply disturbing 40-minute video of the event, posted on YouTube. It brings the incident to life in a way words cannot. At around the 19-minute mark, the […]<\/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],"tags":[459,354,1307,1020,720,764],"class_list":["post-37667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-censorship","tag-georgeorwell","tag-intersectionality","tag-progressives","tag-protest","tag-university"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9Nx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37667","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=37667"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50773,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37667\/revisions\/50773"}],"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=37667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}