GENDER IDENTITY

Intersection Between Gender And Other Social And Cultural

Identities
MADE BY: JULIAN AND MENDOZA
 INTERSECTIONALITY IS…?

• Intersectionality is a theory that was

developed by Kimberlé Crenshaw,
Professor of Law at UCLA and Columbia
Law School. Crenshaw is a leading
authority in the area of Civil Rights,
Black feminist legal theory, critical race
theory, and race, racism and the law.
 INTERSECTIONALITY IS…?

• Intersectionality is the interconnected nature of social

categorizations such as race, class, gender identity, sexual
identity, and disability as they apply to a given individual or
group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent
systems of discrimination or disadvantage.
 INTERSECTIONALITY IS…?

• Intersectionality’s roots are Black feminism and the lived

experience of Black women’s oppression. It is also an
expansion and evolution of concepts put forth in critical race
theory, work that Crenshaw also pioneered.
 INTERSECTIONALITY IS…?

• Critical race theory (CRT), the view that the law

and legal institutions are inherently racist and
that race itself, instead of being biologically
grounded and natural, is a socially constructed
concept that is used by white people to further
their economic and political interests at the
expense of people of color.
 INTERSECTIONALITY IS…?

• According to CRT, racial inequality and inequity emerges

from the social, economic, and legal differences that white
people create between “races” to maintain elite white interests
in labor markets and politics, giving rise to poverty and
criminality in many minority communities.
 DEGRAFFENREID VS. GENERAL MOTORS

• DeGraffenreid v. General Motors was a 1976 case in which five black

women sued General Motors for a seniority policy that they argued
targeted black women exclusively.
• Simply put, GM did not hire black women before 1964. This meant
that when seniority-based layoffs arrived during an early 1970s
recession, all the black women hired after 1964 were subsequently laid
off.
 DEGRAFFENREID VS. GENERAL MOTORS

• While it is obvious on paper that a policy like that didn’t fall under just
gender or just race discrimination but both, the court decided that efforts
to bind together both racial discrimination and sex discrimination claims
— rather than sue based on each separately —would be unworkable.
• In May 1976, Judge Harris Wangelin ruled against the plaintiffs in the
case, writing in part that “black women” could not be considered a
separate, protected class within the law, or else it would risk opening a
“Pandora’s box” of minorities who would demand to be heard in the law:
 INTERSECTING IDENTITIES

Intersecting identities is the concept that an

individual’s identity consists of multiple,
intersecting factors, including but not limited to
gender identity, gender expression, race,
ethnicity, class (past and present), religious
beliefs, sexual identity and sexual expression.
 INTERSECTING IDENTITIES

• These intersecting factors are what make us multi-layered

individuals, as one aspect of our identities influences the other
aspects of our identities to paint the full picture of who we
are.
• In this concept there is an emphasis on identity being fluid
and shifting throughout one's life.
 THERE IS A DIFFERENCE

• Intersecting identities is similar in many of its ideas to intersectionality. It has led

to many people, especially white people who have identities that converge and
intersect with oppression or marginalization, to use the terms intersectionality and
intersecting identities interchangeably.
• The problem is these two concepts, while similar in some respects, are not the same.
• The concepts of intersectionality and intersecting identities differ due to the amount
of power, privilege, societal hierarchy, and systemic oppression at play.
 THE DIFFERENCE: AN EXAMPLE
• A white cisgender lesbian from an upper middle-class background who is currently
living an upper middle-class lifestyle has dealt with a completely different set of
systemic oppressors and hate than a Black cisgender lesbian from a lower
socioeconomic status who is currently living a middle-class existence.
• While they both share some similar aspects of their identities societally, systemically,
and historically their oppression and the hate they face are supremely different.
 THE DIFFERENCE: AN EXAMPLE

• Their experiences navigating the world personally and professionally;

the way they are viewed by employers and the public at-large; the ways
their ancestors are viewed and talked about in historical accounts; the
way the legal system supports or doesn’t support the needs and rights of
their intersecting communities; their access to education and
advancement; all of these things and many more play out in very
different ways for a white cis lesbian and a Black cis lesbian.
 THE DIFFERENCE: AN EXAMPLE

• If the experiences of the two people mentioned above are that vastly different
due to systemic, historic, and societal oppression how do you think it is to be
a Latinx femme from a Catholic upbringing navigating our society? Or an
Asian trans male with a physical disability? Both individuals have a litany of
oppressive hurdles to grapple with since their race and the other aspects of
their identities that make them who they are being historically and
systemically used against them to make their lives and existences that much
more difficult and dangerous.
 THEY AIN’T THE SAME

• Intersectionality addresses how the intersection of a person's identities is

culturally and systemically weaponized to oppress them on multiple fronts and
is directly connected to generational trauma.
• Intersecting identities are often confused with intersectionality by those who
have one or more "acceptable"/"presentable" identities that allow them the
privilege and space to not have to face the same levels of systemic oppression
and hate as others deemed lower in the social caste system.
 THEY AIN’T THE SAME

• The conversation about these differences has been coming to the forefront
over the past few years as more and more white folx with intersecting
identities equate their experiences and struggles to be akin to persons of
color/culture who are affected by the oppressive states associated with
intersectionality. This is when we find ourselves playing the “Oppression
Olympics.”
 OPPRESSION OLYMPICS

• “OppressionOlympics” is a term used when two or more groups compete to

prove themselves more oppressed than each other.
• Competing in the “Oppression Olympics” attaches something like a moral
dimension to oppression, in which the most oppressed are worthier.
• People who participate in “Oppression Olympics” tend to ignore the fact that it's
possible for multiple groups to be oppressed, and necessary to address all those
problems, without choosing a single group to get all the anti-oppression activism.
 OPPRESSION OLYMPICS

• The “Oppression Olympics” also tend to ignore intersectionality,

except where the existence of multiple degrees of oppression
can help an individual participant "win". This is where
confusing intersectionality with intersecting identities can be
oppressive and potentially dangerous.
 OPPRESSION OLYMPICS: HOW THIS PLAYS
OUT

• When white people mistake their intersecting identities for intersectionality, they are
consciously or unconsciously engaging in oppressing persons of color/culture and
perpetuating white supremacy.
• If you identify as white and you are fighting to prove that you, as a member of the
dominant race and dominant culture in a society built for you, by you, are “winning” at
the “Oppression Olympics” over someone who does not have the rights, privilege,
societal acceptance and safeties you possess (even if it’s in varying degrees) then you
are adding to the societal oppression of that person.
 OPPRESSION OLYMPICS: HOW THIS PLAYS
OUT

• This does not mean that your pain, trauma, and struggles do not have weight or
are invalid. This is to say that others also have pain, trauma, and struggles with
the added hurdle of having myelinated skin.
• Your whiteness allows you the to seek and receive support for your mental and
emotional well-being and recovery with way less societal stigma than that of a
person of color/culture.
• Your whiteness allows for you to expect others to give you the benefit of the
doubt due to any oppression you have faced.
 OPPRESSION OLYMPICS: HOW THIS PLAYS
OUT

• Persons of color/culture do not have and are rarely afforded the

same space for support and understanding that white people who
have faced even a modicum of oppression receive. This is evident
on all levels: societally, personally and professionally.
 TURNING KNOWLEDGE INTO ACTION

In our workplaces we need to constantly evaluate how intersectionality is or is not

being considered in:
• Our disciplinary policies. If your organization and/or department is still engaging
in disciplining Black women who work for you in disproportionate ways due to
your perception that they “aren’t professional” while allowing white employees to
regularly say and do discriminatory things to others with very few repercussions,
then you are contributing to oppressing your employees based on their identities
and deeming other identities as more worthy of “wiggle room.”
 TURNING KNOWLEDGE INTO ACTION

• Our approaches to hiring and recruiting. If your organization hasn’t evaluated

your hiring and recruiting strategies in the last 12 months (or ever) then you are
likely hiring persons of culture/color and folx from other marginalized groups based
on tokenism and singular identities that you’ve deemed as either worthy or that will
fulfill a spoken/unspoken quota. This means you are ignoring everything someone
could bring to your department and organization and setting new hires of
color/culture for failure and doing your organization and the communities it serves a
disservice by not engaging with anything other than a singular identity.
 TURNING KNOWLEDGE INTO ACTION

• Our approaches to retention and succession planning. If employees of color/culture

are not offered opportunities for promotions, opportunities to cross-train and acquire
new skills, or even supported in furthering their personal and professional growth with
the same level of support white employees who have similar intersections receive then
you likely have difficulties retaining persons of color/culture. And if you factor in
“disciplinary issues” for your employees of color/culture but never consider the same
for your white employees with similar intersections when making promotion-related
and opportunity-related decisions then you are weaponizing someone’s identities to be
used against them.
 TURNING KNOWLEDGE INTO ACTION

• The people we place in positions of power. If the people in your organization or

department who have the power to make decisions that impact staffing, retention,
policy, and the way you support the communities you serve are not culturally
competent, empathic, emotionally intelligent, and open to understanding how
intersectionality can be weaponized to harm others then your organization or
department will continue facing hurdles of exclusion and a lack of diversity and
equity that will impact who wants to work with and for your organization and how
the public eventually perceives your organization.
 THIS AIN’T JUST ABOUT YOUR EMPLOYER…

• Understanding intersectionality is more than a workplace exercise. In our personal lives,

through our individual lifelong growth and learning, we need to constantly evaluate how
intersectionality is or is not being considered in every aspect of our interpersonal
relationships and interpersonal communications.
• We all need to understand that if we are in positions of power in any way, shape, or
form, that our personal biases and conscious and unconscious perpetuation of racist,
sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, transphobic, and/or ableist oppression is being
weaponized to harm those who get harmed by society through their identities unless we
check ourselves.
 THIS AIN’T JUST ABOUT YOUR EMPLOYER…

• If we are not working on being actively anti-racist, feminist, emotionally intelligent,

empathetic, culturally competent, and allowing ourselves to be open to learning and
atoning for our actions and words that have harmed others who have more hurdles to face
than ourselves, then we are contributing to problems, not solutions.
• If you are white and still feel the need to prove that you have been oppressed just as much
as a person of color/culture whose identities intersect with other forms of oppression, then
you are a part of the problem and likely harming people based on their intersectionality on
a regular basis. Your biases are showing.
 THIS AIN’T JUST ABOUT YOUR EMPLOYER…

• We all need to change our mindsets not only around how we view
our identities but the identities of others too. We need to not view
oppression as a competition, but as societal and cultural hurdles that
impact so many of us in disproportionate ways.