Second verse, same as the worst: Random Political Thoughts

James Lindsay @conceptualjames

Let's have a short thread about intersectionality, coming together, and tearing apart.

What's the purpose of intersectionality? It's to bring a particular coalition together, obviously, AND to prevent any other coalition against it from being able to form.

The easier purpose of intersectionality (roughly: dividing people into their many socially relevant identity categories and making them aware of their relative social positions due to occupying them) is to band together all of the "oppressed" groups under one banner.

All of the groups that are "other," minoritized (as they say) racial, sexual, ability, weight, national origin, religion, gender, etc. groups plus women are "other." They're "oppressed" by "systemic power dynamics" and must band together in "solidarity."

My colleagues and I know something about this intersectional call to solidarity. We had an academic paper accepted by a feminist social work journal, titled "Our Struggle is My Struggle." It was a rewrite of Hitler's Mein Kampf, where he calls for solidarity in his Nazi movement.

So first the purpose of intersectionality is to bind "systemically oppressed" "others" together in "solidarity" in their shared sense of societal grievance, just like the kind of thing that Hitler spoke to. That's not my interpretation. They chose to accept it themselves.

The second purpose of intersectionality is less obvious and more important. It's to prevent the ability for other coalitions to form that disagree with the intersectional radical agenda. Cross-racial, cross-religious, cross-gender/sex, etc., relationships are strained.

A great example of this is the insanely vigorous #StruggleSession @twrocklage is being subjected to literally for having a black friend outside of the divisive terms his intersectional colleagues want to impose on their relationship.

The message of these struggle sessions is clear: you're not allowed to have cross-racial friends anymore; just cross-racial political alliances for, and only for, radical and critical intersectional politics. Same goes for other cross-identity relationships.

(You'll notice, btw, that it also applies to not-cross-identity relationships, which are just groups of [dominant group] that didn't do the work of inclusion. And what if they do? Well, now they have a cross-identity situation that only intersectionality can define. Neat trap.)

This is intentional. If all relationships across race, sex, gender, ability status, etc., are always rendered divisive on the terms intersectionality sets, then they cannot form the kinds of social and professional bonds needed to push back in an organized way.

Let me make that point clear for the people in the back: the bigger point of intersectionality is to make it so that no one except intersectional critical theorists can get along with one another, so effective political pushback is impossible. Divide and conquer on steroids.

There's an easy answer to this, though, of course. Reject it. Make friends across lines that intersectionality tries to tell us are "enemy lines." Refuse to poison those relationships with divisive identity politics. Expect mistakes and forgive them. Be friends.

Intersectionality, a Great Deceiver, constantly talks about the need to form authentic cross-racial/identity relationships and then twists the terms of "authenticity" to its own. Of course, those terms render all such relationships fragile and inauthentic, and that's the point.

You can defeat that nasty mess by actually just forming authentic relationships (cross-identity and otherwise) on your own terms that you and those other people set for yourselves, i.e. the REAL definition of an authentic relationship. Set aside differences and bond.