3.1 I am not just one thing

None of us are just one thing. Our identities, relationships and roles intersect to shape how we perceive the world and interact with our environment.

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Transcript: Video 7 Kym Oliver

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.

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Video 7 Kym Oliver

As you heard from Kym Oliver in the video, intersectionality has always existed, though the term itself was first coined in 1989 by Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw. The word is used to describe how racialisation, class, gender and other individual characteristics ‘intersect’ and overlap with one another.

The term is used to highlight that any experience, such as discrimination, would be a different experience for those who identify with different labels – in other words, it would be a different experience for a Black woman, or a white woman. A person from the LGBTQIA+ community will experience the world differently from a heterosexual person. And a trans white person would experience things differently from a trans Black person. Those examples are not even taking into account the many other intersectionalities that affect life experiences like disability, class or age.

Crenshaw’s theory stemmed from her research on discrimination against Black women and described how multiple forms of oppression and social identities overlap to create unique experiences. An intersectional lens recognises that people who experience multiple oppressions will have a greater struggle for equity.