My budding awareness of intersectionality
Apr. 14th, 2015 01:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
justalurkr...consisted of visualizing the "Old Boy" comfort zone. The Old Boy is an able-bodied cis-heterosexual white Anglo-Saxon Protestant cis-male who is likely well educated and who has never wondered where his next 50 meals are coming from, let alone dinner tonight.
Until Affirmative Action legislation backed up Civil Rights laws, the Old Boy comfort zone with respect to those with whom he did business consisted of...other Old Boys. All Affirmative Action did was say if a not!Old Boy was equally qualified on paper, they had to be hired/promoted/admitted to uni/whatever was the preference for Old Boyishness.
So Old Boys hemmed, hawed and expanded their comfort zone...by one. Recalling that this is my perception, if a person can meet all of the criteria for Old Boy except one and one is willing to play that one missed target down, that person can orbit the Old Boy network.
I came to this understanding when I realized I had more in common with a (fill in all criteria except "white" here) man than I did with most of the women in my office, and it was because we'd both missed being an Old Boy by one. If I didn't act too girly and he didn't act too Black, we were as close to the club as any non-Old Boy was ever going to get. For those who missed Old Boy by more than one: no, we're neither of us all the way in the club. It's hard to explain, but it's true.
Aside: I suspect the ideal Old Boy is also lawfully wed to a woman, but that doesn't apply to me as I fit the mold of "not too girly" by having a career instead of a family. Not sure how it works for single men, but I suspect they're suspected of missing the "heterosexual" target if they're unwed and not catting around or (eyeroll) both. Also, non-Protestant Christians and Jews will have to help me out here: has "Protestant" finally become Judeo-Christian, or are we still being weird about that?
On one hand, I want cookies and lollipops for being intersectionally aware before I even knew what intersectionality was, because I figured missing Old Boy by more than one really sucked.
On the other hand, I've never been very sure what to do with that awareness. Checking my privilege, I've got all of them but one -- a situation most White Feminists find themselves in. All that "other stuff" is literally not our struggle and from one point of view can have a negative impact on opposing sexism by (1) spreading the focus ("you can't solve all the world's problems at once!") and (2) being pretty damned patronizing to not!White Feminists ("your cultural norm is unacceptably sexist! I must rip the veil from your face!")
As a matter of strategy, though, it's tough to expect all the women to stand (or whatever they're physically up to) shoulder to shoulder against sexism when sexism may not even be some women's biggest problem.
Until Affirmative Action legislation backed up Civil Rights laws, the Old Boy comfort zone with respect to those with whom he did business consisted of...other Old Boys. All Affirmative Action did was say if a not!Old Boy was equally qualified on paper, they had to be hired/promoted/admitted to uni/whatever was the preference for Old Boyishness.
So Old Boys hemmed, hawed and expanded their comfort zone...by one. Recalling that this is my perception, if a person can meet all of the criteria for Old Boy except one and one is willing to play that one missed target down, that person can orbit the Old Boy network.
I came to this understanding when I realized I had more in common with a (fill in all criteria except "white" here) man than I did with most of the women in my office, and it was because we'd both missed being an Old Boy by one. If I didn't act too girly and he didn't act too Black, we were as close to the club as any non-Old Boy was ever going to get. For those who missed Old Boy by more than one: no, we're neither of us all the way in the club. It's hard to explain, but it's true.
Aside: I suspect the ideal Old Boy is also lawfully wed to a woman, but that doesn't apply to me as I fit the mold of "not too girly" by having a career instead of a family. Not sure how it works for single men, but I suspect they're suspected of missing the "heterosexual" target if they're unwed and not catting around or (eyeroll) both. Also, non-Protestant Christians and Jews will have to help me out here: has "Protestant" finally become Judeo-Christian, or are we still being weird about that?
On one hand, I want cookies and lollipops for being intersectionally aware before I even knew what intersectionality was, because I figured missing Old Boy by more than one really sucked.
On the other hand, I've never been very sure what to do with that awareness. Checking my privilege, I've got all of them but one -- a situation most White Feminists find themselves in. All that "other stuff" is literally not our struggle and from one point of view can have a negative impact on opposing sexism by (1) spreading the focus ("you can't solve all the world's problems at once!") and (2) being pretty damned patronizing to not!White Feminists ("your cultural norm is unacceptably sexist! I must rip the veil from your face!")
As a matter of strategy, though, it's tough to expect all the women to stand (or whatever they're physically up to) shoulder to shoulder against sexism when sexism may not even be some women's biggest problem.
