How (Not) to Misapply the Concept of Intersectionality

As best I can figure, the reason people end up misapplying the concept of intersectionality is because the end up absorbing a decontextualized version of it as just... the abstract concept of combinations of identities. If that's all it were, then frankly it would be kind of pointless—so generic as to be politically insignificant and unremarkable. By contrast, if you actually understand its original context, then you can understand that intersectionality is shorthand for a particular counterargument, and in order to really grasp that counterargument, you have to understand what kind of argument it's responding to in the first place. 

Crossposted to Pillowfort.

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