ajax18 wrote: ↑Thu May 19, 2022 3:55 pm
Res Ipsa wrote: ↑Thu May 19, 2022 3:12 pm
Ajax, what’s your understanding of “intersectional” and why do you claim its part of a hierarchy?
It's from Ben Shapiro's podcast. I think he means how many ways in which you're a minority and therefore the victim of prejudice and discrimination. So race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. So being black would you put you up their on the hierarchy, but being a black woman would raise you even higher, and to get even more privilege or special treatment because of the history of the country and past discrimination, being homosexual would elevate you even higher still.
I think the OJ Simpson case was interesting in determining which minority status is higher on the intersectional hierarchy of legal and political power. On the one hand Nichole Brown Simpson was female and usually females are favored by the court, especially in domestic and family law cases. But being female was no match for OJ Simpson being black and ultimately that card proved to be far more powerful and higher up the intersectional hierarchy totem pole than the gender card.
I'll be perfectly honest here, Ajax. When you first posted "intersectional hierarchy," my first reaction was hysterical laughter -- not at you, but at the absolute absurdity of the term itself. Unless you actually spent time reading about intersectionality the way it is actually used in discussions among people on the left, you could not understand how absurd the term is. That you got it from Shapiro makes 100% sense. I'll bet it was coined by him or one of his fellow hucksters who make bank pissing you off by lying about what folks on the left actually believe.
Have you ever read something Kevin says or some material he posts and thought "That's complete BS! That's a lie. That's not what conservatives believe at all!"
Well, that's Ben Shapiro. Only orders of magnitude beyond Kevin and he gets paid big bucks for doing it. Ben Shapiro makes his money lying to you about the left.
Now, before you get to the whatabout response: yes, absolutely. In elections they have a very polite term for this: "defining" your opponent. In this context, "defining" means creating a straw man." And I doubt that you could find an election in where a candidate's campaign never creates a straw man of the opponent.
So, if you want to be an educated citizen voter, you can't rely on what a candidate says. You've got to check what the candidate actually says and does.
That's what Ben Shapiro does, only his straw man is so bad it barely resembles anything in reality.
So, people aren't intersectional. Intersectionality is a critical part of understand "privilege" -- not the cartoon version Ben Shapiro and his comrades have taught you -- but the way the term is used by the people who use it as an aid to understanding the world. "Privilege" simply refers to the fact that different groups of people (and groups can be based on anything people have in common) experience the world in different ways. And because of that, members of one group can be simply blind to the existence of problems encountered by the others). Here's an easy example. When I go out on a walk, I never have to give a second's thought to crossing the street at an intersection. I just look both ways (or wait for the light to change), look for cars, and cross. I don't have to even think about what I'm doing.
But if I'm in a wheelchair, the experience of crossing the street is very different -- the most critical issue being curb cuts. Someone using a wheelchair to get around has to contend with all kinds of problems and obstacles that I never have to spend one second thinking about. Our experience of traveling outside on city streets is very different. And, unless someone called it to my attention, I would never see that the problem even exists.
That's privilege -- not having to think about or cope with problems that people in different groups have to think about or deal with. That's it.
Now, people don't just belong to a single group. I may belong to dozens of different groups, each of which may have or lack some kind of privilege vis a vis another group. That's intersectionality. A race-based privilege doesn't mean that privilege affects all black people the same way. Or all white people. Or all native people. A white person born in poverty can still be privileged in racial terms, but non-privileged in socio economic terms. In fact, when conservative misuse the concept of privilege, the thing they are often overlooking is intersectionality.
So, there is no intersectional hierarchy of people. Everybody belongs to different groups that potentially involve privilege (or lack of). People are considered "better" or "worse" because they belong to more groups or certain groups. That's the cartoon part. Diversity in government or in business has its own advantages. But that doesn't make a black person "superior" to a white person, a "black woman" superior to a "black man" or a "gay black woman" superior to a "straight black woman." The advantage of diversity, especially in a government, is have a broader range of experience brought to the table and having a government that is more representative of the citizenry. But that has noting to do with one person being "better" than another.
That's the lie that Ben Shapiro et al is telling you. There is no intersectional hierarchy.
The left does not believe that black politicians are less likely to be corrupt than white politicians, that women politicians are less like to be corrupt than men politicians, or that gay politicians are more corrupt than straight politicians. So, as a person on the left, there is nothing more important about Ms. Brown's corruption than that of any other politician. But by lying about Ms. Brown about being at the top of an "intersectional hierarchy," here's what Ben Shapiro is doing: he's claiming that it's somehow worse when a black person is corrupt than when a white person is corrupt, and that it's worse when a woman is corrupt than when a man is corrupt, and that worst of all is **gasp** when a BLACK WOMAN is corrupt.
And that's racist as hell.
