#intersectionality

[originalleftist]

There is certainly some truth to this- in a system like America's, without a strong social safety net, and with the cost of housing and health care being what the are, even people who most would consider fairly well-off are often only one catastrophe away from poor, or even destitution. Which means labels like "poor" or "lower class" and "middle class" can be somewhat misleading.

At the same time, a "middle class" person is likely more comfortable and secure than a "poor" person, and is likely not going to have all the same concerns as a poor person.

In terms of who you try to include in your coalition, politically it is always going to be advantageous to have a big tent, to draw in as much support as possible for your position or interests, whatever those may be. This is true by the way regardless of whether you are in a democratic or authoritarian system, and whether you pursue your goals by violent or non-violent means (one of non-violence's main strengths is that it often attracts a bigger tent). Ignoring this in favour of niche movements and ideological purity is an enormous mistake that the Left frequently makes, and has damaged its effectiveness as a political force going all the way back to its emergence in Revolutionary France.

But there does come a point where if you expand your coalition by trying to appeal to too many peoples' interests, your risk watering down your message and goals too much, or even betraying parts of your coalition to appeal to others. And if a political movement or organization finds itself having to choose between the interests of its "middle class" supporters and those of its "lower class" supporters, the incentive will often be to favour the "middle class," as they have more resources and influence to offer.

This is a problem for the "lower class," especially as their needs are often the most urgent and pressing.

And of course, there are other factors that influence how secure or vulnerable one is in our society, including but not limited to age, race, disability (physical or mental) or lack thereof, gender/gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, race, ethnicity, nationality, citizenship status, and (in more authoritarian countries especially) connections with/loyalty to the governing party or lack thereof. And while it is true that oligarchs often use racism, sexism, queer phobia etc. as a way to divide the working class and keep them from uniting around shared economic interests, these issues also have real effects that cannot be ignored. It is a common mistake of parts of the Left to minimize or dismiss other forms of privilege and discrimination and treat economic class conflict as the only "real" issue.

But getting back to the point about the working class including the middle class- yes, to a point, but not everyone who works or is vulnerable will have the same interests- and not everyone who works (even discounting being a corporate executive or political leader as "work" for the purposes of this discussion) is necessarily middle or lower class.

Since you specifically used Hollywood actors as an example, I'll note that there are quite a few actors or other entertainers who do work, often very hard (acting is a profession notorious for its long hours), but who's wealth runs into the hundreds of millions if not billions. Most actors are not rich, of course- many actors are dirt poor. But some are very rich. Maybe not "control a government" money, but certainly what most would consider "rich" rather than "working class," despite the fact that they are working. And many of them do hold considerable political influence too- Johnny Depp for example is friends with the ruler of Saudi Arabia, while George Clooney was an influential voice behind ousting Biden as Democratic nominee last year.

And yet even celebrity wealth (up to a certain point) can prove surprisingly transitory.

As an example (since I followed the case quite closely), according to networthanalysis.com, actor Amber Heard had a "net worth" of 12 million dollars in 2021, with her highest earning year 2019, when she made $3 million- certainly not "middle class," easily enough to be considered "rich" by any normal standard, probably just edging into the infamous "1%" (in the US the cutoff is currently between $11.6 and $13.7 million, per Forbes). Yet due to costs of litigation against her and loss of work due to negative PR, she lost basically all of that- had the full 10 million dollar judgement against her stood she would have been utterly ruined, with a debt of $6 million dollars. And even when that was reduced to a $1 million settlement on appeal, by 2024 her "net worth" was estimated at $500,000. Since that would include the value of her home, it is quite possible that she was/is "cash poor." Which means she's potentially one house fire or uninsured medical crisis away from being lower "middle" or even "lower" class. Even $12 million was not enough to grant her immunity, nor to be secure from being erased by, essentially, one big thing in her life going wrong

So is Amber Heard rich or working class or neither or both? She certainly was rich by most peoples' definitions (probably "middle class" now)- but not "upper class" if you define that by political power or immunity.

Also, of course, where one draws the lines between these categories will change based on inflation/cost of living. And how vulnerable you are will change based on how good your country's social safety net is, how politically stable it is, etc.

Do I have a point with all this?

Mostly just that this shit is way, way more complicated than most people realize, and that trying to divide people into two or three simple, fixed categories is mostly impossible and often actively harmful.

Edit: Corrected some omissions/typos.

leftism would be a lot more efficient if people realized this: the working class and the lower class is not the same thing.

as a child, my family was middle class. dad made $100,000 nzd per year. we moved and bought a new house without renting at any point, simply so we would be in a convenient place closer to dads workplace. dad bought a $10,000 dollar motorbike just because he wanted to. we were well off and if we had better budgeting skills our family could save a million bucks by the time my parents retired.

we lost everything.

middle class people still need unions. they still need to deal with abusive bosses. they can still lose all that financial security just by divorcing the worker of the family or making a bad decision.

now im lower class, as are both my parents.

upper class people dont work. they are ceos, upper millionares, and billionares. people work for them and they dont answer to anyone. there is a huge difference between a very well paid worker (hollywood actors for instance) and a ceo who never has to negotiate his pay with a superior.

dont get it mixed up. an upper middle class person is not the same as the billionare who can buy his way into a goverment or fund a goverment to change the way the law works.

just because someone is well off does not mean you have no shared experiences. they may or may not be out of touch, but you should organize with those who also answer to a boss.

[hyacinthsgrimoire]

[xkittzkornerx]

I love how people like JK Rowling swear that us folks of the Alphabet Mafia™ persuasion are overly sensitive sissies but the moment she hears a basic rundown of what being asexual means, she has to whine on Twitter about a community that has done absolutely nothing to anyone.

It’s also very funny to me that she considers herself a feminist when she is so incredibly nasty towards everyone she thinks is too different. That’s not what feminism is. If she were a real feminist she’d acknowledge intersections and how society hurts different types of women in different ways. If she actually gave a shit about women’s liberation, she would care about all women, and she’d shut her swollen jowls long enough to learn the very real violence that women on the asexual spectrum face.

It’s not that hard to guess how a woman who experiences little to no sexual attraction might be treated in a society that allows men to treat us like inanimate sex toys with zero disregard for our personal sense of safety and dignity. Now, kids, let’s put our brains together and think real hard about what often happens to women when we reject men.

[liminalweirdo]

"Later, I would remember 2022 as the summer when people stopped caring. The Washington Post interviewed Americans taking flight while knowingly Covid positive, and CDC research later showed that 81 percent of airplane bathroom wastewater samples had Omicron RNA. Friends who were very careful about Covid in 2020 and 2021 now posted photos on social media of themselves traveling or crowded inside public spaces. Unmasked. As if they couldn't be reinfected, couldn't get long Covid. Did it only ever matter to protect themselves? . . . I grieve all that has been taken from me: the enjoyment of my body, the friends of decades who have disappeared, my health, the chance to watch K experience a normal childhood. And I grieve for my family. Our lives are filled with indignity after indignity. . . . For the first time in in my life, I am terrified of the future. I fear that if my husband ever becomes ill, i won't be able to care for him as he has so selflessly cared for me. I fear my life will be cut short by years or decades by Covid's lingering effects — heart attacks, strokes, dementia that sicentists warn about due to damage to our brains, diabetes possibility lurking behind my new blood sugar imbalance. I fear for my body while alive, and I wonder how much more suffering I will be forced to withstand. . . . This is not a feel-good story, not a tale of triumphing over adversity. In 2020, we heard that the pandemic's silver lining would be all the inequalities it had highlighted; at the dawn of 2024, it's clear that those inequalities are just as entrenches, or worse, than before. What long-haulers are now living through, social justice and disability-rights activists reminds us, is the American landscape as it has always been."

[crazycatsiren]

Happy Disability Pride Month to my fellow disabled people of color!

[carapaced]

how did we lose the plot so hard with feminism and activism like seriously… are we forgetting that being kind and loving to the men and boys in your life, teaching them as kids if you are a parent to be kind respectful humans, and showing them how to be emotionally vulnerable and making a society in which it is safe to do so was like…. A huge part of feminism, dismantling patriarchal values, and creating a generation of loving men who are held accountable for their actions?

Why is it “kill all men yes even the trans ones and if you say otherwise you’re an MRA” and not “let’s maybe create a world that encourages good men.” Did we forget that feminism was supposed to be good for everyone and that the patriarchy harms men and boys as well?

Like maybe we should care about male loneliness and the male suicide rate BECAUSE MAYBE WED HAVE LESS SOCIETAL PROBLEMS if 100% of the population wasn’t traumatized by gendered expectations and not being taught decent communication skills/how to be emotionally vulnerable. And definitely we would if fucking redpill echo chambers weren’t the places most willing to accept and nurture (groom into hateful ideology) young men.

The problem has never been men, cis or trans, being uniquely capable of evil the problem has always been the fact that cishet patriarchal culture encourages and rewards shitty behavior that makes everyone involved bitter and miserable and calls it masculinity.

[guardianspirits13]

Decided to redraw my Candle Girls from last holiday season, and a new friend of theirs that someone suggested I include- Kwanzaa!

Once again, happy candle month to all who celebrate!

[imawitchywitch]

Buying copies of banned books is awesome, but I also want to put this out there. If anyone is in college and/or has access to peer reviewed academic journals PLEASE do the following:

Buy USB drives

Download as many articles from academic journals in the coming months as you can about topics under attack, such as gender variance, DEI, critical race theory, racism, reproductive rights, climate change, and so on. Maybe pick one or two journals and topics to focus on per month! (There may be pay walls or limits on how many you can freely download)

Keep them organized on your USB’s by topic or journal

We don’t really know what will happen, what will get erased or censored from the web, but they’re already taking websites down related to DEI and reproductive rights. We need to work together to save the research and literature that we have!

[discoursedamaged]

and it is similarly bizarre to try and separate trans men's experiences into a trans part and a man part. That's not how people experience the world. There's not a trans part that gets sexually assaulted and a man part that gets refused an abortion, there's one undivided person experiencing both. To ask trans men to defer to some baseline trans-exclusionary concept of manhood in interpreting their experience as trans men is just cruel. They should get to speak as full people.

[smilepilled]

if your (trans-)feminism inherently excludes any minority group on the basis that one of their immutable traits makes them inherently evil, you are not a transfeminist. you are LARPing as one, but you aren't doing jack shit that has to do with feminism.

this includes trans people, nonbinary individuals, trans guys and transmascs, trans gals and transfems, intersex people (with or without any trans identity), gnc individuals, black trans people, brown trans people, asian trans people, indigenous trans people— and any combination of these.

if you exclude any group of people from your transfeminism or activism, you are not an activist. you are trying to seem like a good person while clinging desperately to your own hateful, putrid ideals. get better and over yourself

[titantornado]

Thinking about the time a british radfem transmasc told me to stop talking about transmasc problems because their own personal life hadn’t been that bad. Which like, congratulations!! Good for you!!! I’m SO glad you got lucky and can’t relate!!

But also, if you’re a paperwhite queer person growing up in one of the most comfortable nations in the world, please don’t tell a latino queer person that you know what their life looks like based on shared queerness alone. YOU DON’T KNOW, YOU CAN’T.

White queers don’t know what it’s like to be the only racially intersectional person in a “queer/progressive/lefty” friend group. To be the only person of a diff race in the room, and also the only socially excluded person in the room, and wondering if it’s possible that your best friends, who seem idealistic on the surface, may secretly or subconsciously be racist. When they’re planning shit right in front of you and inviting everyone BUT you. Not letting you in on ANYTHING and not even hiding it. Being unwilling to have your back when you express discomfort just because they don’t want a target on theirs. When they’re allowing, enabling, or even encouraging one guy who harrasses ONLY you, then defending him and backing each other up and spitting you out of the group when you take issue.

It’s just wild to me. And I’m jincho! I’m a pale latino, I’ve not seen half of the shit that brown latinos or afro-latinos do. So anyway, don’t let me catch you scolding racially intersectional trans people for advocating for themselves or I’m taking off my earrings and we’re sorting this out in the parking lot

[sunbeamedskies]

You are not inherently an antisemite for criticizing Netanyahu or actions of the Israeli government.

You ARE inherently an antisemite if you excuse/justify/celebrate when random Israeli civilians are murdered.

Israel contains half the world’s Jews- you can’t celebrate half the world’s Jewish population dying without being an antisemite.

Watch how some so-called “activists” react to the antisemitic DC murders. If you don’t hear Jews crying out about what happened, you either follow no Jews or only tokens.

[slicedcheesegremlin]

Suddenly being hit with a massive wave of hate against trans men for some reason. I'm MtF, but if you hate trans men or have some bad take about them then just block me right now. idc how many followers i lose over this, it's awful as fuck. i'm literally dating one and he's nothing like anything u ppl are saying

[ftmtftm]

Radical Feminist theory has no home in Intersectional theory. Radical Feminism is practically innately antithetical to Intersectional Feminism. The ideas and criticism that would create the framework of Intersectional Feminism pre-Kimberlé Crenshaw came to be as a near direct result of questioning Radical Feminist practices and ideology.

Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Angela Y. Davis, Judith Butler, Leslie Feinberg, all wrote/have written in ways that challenge and defy the core principles of Radical Feminist dogma. Kimberlé Crenshaw created terminology, Intersectionality, that ended up enveloping it all. People like Patricia Hill Collins, Mikki Kendall, Roxane Gay, Kate Bornstein, Leah Thomas, and Emi Koyama continue to write in ways that challenge Radical Feminist ideology - half the time purely by the nature of their framework.

You don't need Radical Feminism. Radical Feminism is not your friend. It will never be your friend. There is better Feminism out there - I promise you.

[vagathathegreat]

Always remember who started to fight back first. Intersectionalty is so important!