Intersectionality

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While intersectionality can be harmful for vegan outreach, it is entirely possible to find middle ground with other social movements.

Intersectionality

The term intersectionality was coined in 1989 by law professor Kimblerlé Crenshaw, and is the belief system that various social categorizations intersect and overlap to form interdependent spheres of oppression or discrimination. Intersectionalists posit that all supposed evils of the world (sexism, racism, homophobia etc.) interconnect through what is known as the matrix of domination. Due to interconnecting nature of all forms of oppression, intersectionalists assert that none of these issues can be solved individually.

Intersecting Axes of Privilege, Domination, and Oppression

There are a number of social categorizations that allot certain 'advantages' & 'disadvantages':

  • Sex & Gender
  • Race
  • Sexual orientation
  • Socioeconomic status
  • Religion
  • Body type
  • Educational background
  • Language status

While the theory began as an exploration of the oppression of women of color within society, today the analysis is potentially applied to all social categories (including social identities). This is an application that has been publicly criticized by Kimberlé Crenshaw herself. Crenshaw claims that intersectionality is not about identity, rather it is about how systemic structures in society make social identities the consequences of vulnerability.[1]

Historical Context/Significance

The women’s movement of the 19th and early 20th centuries focused on both women's legal rights (such as the right to vote) and touched on several areas of women's experience—including family, sexuality, and work. [2]However, mainstream feminists were heavily criticized for ignoring the plight of black women and other marginalized groups, and naively lumping the experience of all women with that of middle/upper-income white women.


Intersectional Veganism

Some vegans add speciesism as an axis of oppression, and assert that because speciesism is eternally bound to all other forms of oppression, vegans must effectively advocate to end all forms of discrimination simultaneously. Intersectional veganism is the belief that the subjugation of animals is inextricably linked to the subjugation of other humans, and that one cannot be solved without advocating for the other.

Intersectional veganism means that we do not just seek to end animal agriculture as it takes the lives of billions of animals every year. It means that we also seek to advocate for farm workers that grow our plant-based foods in conditions that are horrendous and anything but “cruelty free”. It means that environmental and food injustice related to animal agriculture is accounted for and actively sought to be dismantled. [3]

Criticism

Alienating to non-intersectionalists

Intersectionalists are typically criticized for "extorting" the support of other activists under threats of accusation and shaming tactics. See the practical problems with intersectionalists' #Focus on subjective narratives. Although in theory intersectionality is a helpful tool for being sensitive to the unique challenges people may face in going (and staying) vegan, intersectionality in "practice", which commands activists to advocate against multiple issues can be quite alienating for potential recruits, and can hinder our outreach. While being cognizant of the way in which animal agriculture disproportionately affects different populations can be an affective way to convince our audience of the severity of animal agriculture, mixing and mashing different social causes into one only muddles the philosophical integrity of veganism, and impedes our ability to incite any social or legal change. Adding an ever-growing list of social demands until people sign-on to our movement is completely unrealistic, and intersectional campaigns tend to attract a much smaller base of support, funds, and resources than single-issue campaigns do. [4].

Oppression Olympics

Unnatural Vegan detailing how intersectionality (applied prescriptively) divide people and amount to oppression olympics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdPxaYmT6QI

Intersectionality is a theory that speaks both prescriptively and descriptively as a toolkit for social analysis. Applied descriptively, it explains how various social categorizations intersect and overlap, but prescriptively, it requires that activists seek to dismantle all "oppressions" simultaneously. Since there will never be unanimous agreement on which people are more or less 'privileged' or 'disadvantaged,' activists must continually compete on which social issues must be addressed by the group as a whole, which ultimately surmounts to oppression olympics. Given any particular campaign's limited amount of funds and resources, and a potentially unlimited number of oppression axes, intersectionalists are reduced to competing with each other on whose oppression is more authentic, and therefore must be effectively advocated against.

Focus on subjective narratives

Because intersectionality relies so heavily on personal subjective experience, there exists no standard of evidence to validate claims of oppression. Any person can claim an axis of discrimination, and anyone who challenges said claim is dismissed as a racist, sexist, misogynist, transphobe or otherwise "part of the problem." Such a belief system, which relies solely on personal subjective experiences to validate claims of oppression, demands that those who fall outside of the disadvantaged categories to "shut up" and listen to the alleged victims, which fosters cult-mentality. Since victims are not required to provide objective evidence, any person who claims to be oppressed is beyond reproach.

Middle Ground

That being said, vegans shouldn’t dismiss or shrink other social movements, because they may too be addressing prevalent issues of our time. It is entirely possible to respect and even support other social causes without harming our own activism. While campaigning for animal rights causes, vegans should recognize the legitimacy of other movements and take great care not to contribute to the problems that they are avidly advocating against. Vegans can acknowledge and support the severity of world hunger, sexual assault, and racism without letting those issues obfuscate the direction of our own campaign toward reducing animal suffering.

Alternative perspectives

Intersectionality & Intersectional Veganism Made Simple, ModVegan [5]