"Intersectionality"

[beyondtheclouds]

Life is unfair. There's many factors that affect the difficulty of your life. Society likes to focus on a select few: race, gender, sexuality, and class. This is because they're the most visible, and of course because of identity politics. But I believe it's so much more complex, there are infinite factors of subjective importance. I'll list a few:

• Looks
• Intelligence
• Household structure (e.g. single-parent household)
• Neuroticism
• Parenting
• The schools you went to
• NT or ND
• Genetic predispositions

In addition, each factor is of varying importance to each person. Some people don't care about wealth, and in select environments being a bit autistic might benefit you. Because this, I don't agree with immediately labelling a "marginalised" person as unfortunate, or a "well-off" person as privileged. It's true that it's a richer person has an easier, more enjoyable life on average, but it's quite reductive to immediately assume that, and much of these assumptions stem from jealousy.

This realisation has made me quite grateful. I don't come from a "privileged" background but life has treated me quite favourably in many ways.

 

[harbringer883]

I think you forgot race.

 

[Sweetpeaa]

About looks....

Remember the story of Jeremy Meeks. That should tell you everything you want to know. Being super great looking is a cheat code.

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

Since you mention intersectionality, I want to point something out

The notion of intersectionality is that people are not defined by a single variable, and that any given person is shaped by many factors at once.
Now take this idea and add more variables. The more variables you add, the less explaining is provided by any single group category. Continue adding variables and any "group" ceases to explain a thing. What you're left with is a specific individual with a specific combination of traits, circumstances, and choices that no category encompasses.
In other words, if you take intersectionality to its logical conclusion... you get individualism (as opposed to collectivism).

So everybody who stops at a handful of categories like race, gender, class, doesn't understand intersectionality in the first place. If the point of intersectionality is that people can't be reduced to one category, the consistent conclusion is that they can't be reduced to a bundle of categories either. The endpoint of intersectionality is dealing with individuals.

 

[We Are The Witches]

Yeah, everyone knows this, it's a mix of a lot of factors, and how those do in a particular environment.

"Looks" plays an immense role in general (also due to the "halo-effect"), and is applied to many situations (friendships, relationships, employment, treatment by others, specially when young, etc), which in place triggers the (more favourable) path of them in life, e.g: someone being mistreated their whole life will probably reshape their personality in a more "crude" way than someone who is pampered by those surrounding them.

All of this is obvious, but being handsome and rich, while it doesn't automatically give you success in life (because it's not a videogame), is better in nearly all cases than the opposite.

Well, maybe if you were mistreated your whole life while in near poverty and with shit parents & looks (and so, most assuming the worst from you for no reason), you would have another perspective. And you would, clearly by observing causality and how this world works.

 

[rel=alternate]

Because this, I don't agree with immediately labelling a "marginalised" person as unfortunate, or a "well-off" person as privileged.

I am going to guess you are on the younger side, because this seems pretty obvious to me.

Privilege is a buzzword used by people who like to dwell in their own misery and do nothing but envy others and what they have or have accomplished.

Everyone has their own challenges, personality and ambitions to varying degrees. Realizing what you're good and bad at, and finding an anchor to get motivation around is key to success, not matter your lot in life. There are every kind of successful and happy people around to prove it.

 

[Atticus Carpenter]

Recently i've had to start studying equality law and the many multiple types of discrimination someone can suffer.
Intersectional discrimination is defined as the discrimination someone can suffer due to the confluence or interaction of multiple characteristics that can affect their circumstances. In this case, you can have a woman that is a migrant, a dyke and a muslim and there you have 4 characteristics that can affect the specific type of discrimination that she can suffer. Not to be confused by Multiple discrimination which is the discrimination in which multiple circumstances compound to aggravate the discrimination.

In other words, if you take intersectionality to its logical conclusion... you get individualism

It boils down to this. To who can be more special by virtue of being the biggest victim

 

[Nick Wilde]

Intersectionality is a bourgeois parlour trick, designed to displace and neutralise the threat of serious Marxist social analysis. It takes the principles, and applies them to everything superficial and immutable, instead of the institutions, structures and material factors that really do drive inequality. It has done this remarkably effectively, so much so that most people conflate it directly with the liberal nonsense that falls under this umbrella.

Basically they wanted Marxism but Marxism you can still claim to follow as an affluent PMC liberal, without being a massive hypocrite arguing against your own interests. It's Marxism from a corporate HR perspective, you could say. In that way, it manifests as a way for the wealthy upper classes to do as they please, and make decisions with catastrophic influences on wider society in the name of profit, while still white-washing their intentions as noble and progressive.

It has been the most subversive and damaging ideological innovation of the last century if you ask me.