Transcript

KYM OLIVER:

So for me, intersectionality is just a phrase that describes something that has existed for time immemorial, right? The idea of being a person existing in a world that has lots of different isms. And so, as a Black person, especially if we think about why Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the phrase-- not that she created the framework in terms of how we understand it but coined the phrase intersectionality to describe how I exist in the world. So I exist as a woman, or I’m perceived at least as a woman based on my gender representation. I’m visibly darker-skinned than who exists in the world minority place I exist in. So I’m Black, I’m racialized as Black, I use a mobility aid, so I’m disabled by the society I exist in.

Then if we even look at the things that we cannot see, and we think about class and we think about sexuality and we think about religion and how those things affect the way that I move through the world, affect the way people perceive me, affect the way I interact with systems, the way I interact with education, the way I interact with whatever, that it describes that experience.