“intersectionality” is not
the sprinkling of
my people
into your analysis
it swallows you
like water folding over rock
and those pretty smooth pebbles you like to collect?
those are all pieces of my life
–
i have a growing inability to take people who throw around the word “intersectionality” seriously. it is becoming a problem: we’ll be in a meeting and the future of feminism, disability rights or what have you will pop up and soon someone is dropping the word intersectionality and looking at me as a woman of color for back up
but, you do not know what intersectionality is. intersectionality is something so expansive so broad so deeply rooted in my existence that i cannot sum it up into a single word and then toss it around like a ball.
“intersectionality” is not simply the meeting place of single issue politics. it is something where pieces of our experiences are so intertwined and so entangled together that they cannot be pulled apart into strands.
the way you treat intersectionality is like asking me to look up in the sky and pinpoint where the clouds begin and end.
–
had this in the drafts folder and posted it after reading my friend mia’s blog post titled: “intersectionality is a big fancy word for my life”. go read.
I think that’s why, after I encountered a call for writing about that word, I fumbled around with the usual ways of writing about it (because isn’t everyone else always more right than I am?) and then went with my original gut feeling of being very disturbed that anyone could expect me to set aside a special time to write about this thing when the thing it’s meant to point at is by necessity all I ever write about. Plus a big heaping dose of “aaaaaaargh” in that I am often treated as “stupid” and “out of touch” and as if I am somehow unaware of the idea that the word is supposed to point to, just because receptive language trouble (among other things) prevents me from easily figuring out the meaning of whatever the trendy words used by a group of people.
Posted by Amanda on February 25th, 2010.