Intersectionality, As Explained By A Tipsy Person

One of the things that's both wonderful and frustrating about the social justice blogosphere is the frequency of teacup shitstorms. Whenever we call each other out on something (like calling Scott Adams “idiotic”), it spirals into a dust devil of righteous fury. It's great to have a movement that encourages internal debate – despite the antis' desire to construe us as a monolithic entity, no one is harder on a feminist than a fellow feminist – but too often the semantic back-and-forth risks obscuring the real issues at hand.

Back when the Andrea Wallace Asians-in-our-libraries-getting-Asian-all-over-America debacle happened (remember that?), Racialicious kicked off another intramovement blame-a-thon with a post about white female privilege. White feminists bumrushed to respond that “white female privilege” is not a thing, and AJ meant “female white privilege” which really is just white privilege and why is she being so meeeeeeean?

Semantic dickering is the tragic flaw of the third-wave feminist movement. Of course “white female privilege” is a thing. Check out these great posts at the always-challenging Womanist Musings if you're not convinced. It's white privilege as experienced by women (in Andrea Wallace's case, by a cis able-bodied woman), which is different from white privilege as experienced by men. If this is hard to grasp, try flipping it: compare white female oppression with black female oppression. Qualitatively different, right? It's called intersectionality. Maybe you've heard of it.

I was in the pub the other night with a dear friend (in this story, he was “the absolute brick”), and we got talking, as is our wont, about social justice. I started blithering on about intersectionality, and brick asked me to explain the concept. Under the influence of Strauss, wine, and beer, I think I did rather a good job, and, sober though I currently am, I will endeavor to reproduce something of my explanation here.

The example I used was homophobia. (Please don't think I'm trying to equate gay oppression with black oppression. LGB folks do that a lot, sometimes in service of a useful analogy, more often in a false equivalency that helps no one. I'm simply using an example from my own experience.) In some circumstances, e.g. when fighting unjust legislation, we can reasonably lump all homophobia together; but in other conversations we recognize that a gay man experiences oppression differently than a gay woman.

Gay men are “disgusting”; their sexuality is a threat – see some of the worst arguments against allowing openly gay people to serve in the US military. Gay women are “hot”; their sexuality is a joke – witness Tyler, the Creator's super-mature response to Sara Quin's impassioned plea for a forthright rejection of the homophobia and misogyny in his lyrics.

To make sense of these different attitudes, we have to look at the dimension of male supremacy. If only male sexuality is seen as legitimate, then of course gay men are threatening and gay women aren't real. (As to those outside the binary, it's easiest to pretend they don't exist.) Now, in order to fully map each individual's experience of privilege and oppression, we have to layer in every other strand in the kyriarchy, plotting their positions on the axes of cissexism, ableism, racism, classism, and so on.

Obviously, we don't map out each individual's experience of the kyriarchy in this way, because we'd never get anything done (we wouldn't even have time for semantic dickering). The point is to recognize the complexity of the kyriarchy and to remember that every time we talk about misogyny or racism we are artificially isolating one axis of oppression. The point is to fight the bullshit generalizations of the kyriarchy and to affirm the uniqueness of every individual's experience.

We're not playing Who's More Oppressed, people. We're engaging with a vast and many-headed hydra of injustice, and if we want to defeat it we have to attack all the heads at the same time.

“Perhaps unsurprisingly, LGB people considered LGB portrayal in broadcast media to be important”

I love the BBC. Sometimes, when I survey the UK TV listings and find only gardening and cookery shows on primetime, or when everything on iPlayer makes me want to cry with boredom, or when University Challenge is canceled so the Ryder Cup highlights can be shown, I forget that.

But the Beeb really is a terrific institution. If you can look past the endless anodyne costume dramas and the gigantic embarrassment that is BBC Three, there’s an awful lot to like. These are the people that bring us news coverage of a neutrality envied the world over, web content unmatched by other traditional broadcasters, and a wealth of radio talent to cater to all tastes (my personal favorite being Mark Kermode, whose show I’ll be seeing live in London this week).

One of the best things about the BBC, however, is its willingness to regulate itself. It has its own governing body in the form of BBC Trust, which tries to make sure (in its own words) that “the BBC has the right standards and that its programmes live up to those standards”. If there are investigations going on into BBC content, you can bet your boots it will be reported impartially on the BBC news website.

Auntie, bless her wee cotton socks, has a whole list of editorial guidelines, covering not only the expected areas of accuracy, impartiality, and privacy, but also things like “War, Terror & Emergencies” or “Interacting with our Audiences”. On top of this, when criticized she conducts research into the relevant area with a view to changing her conduct.

I refer specifically, of course, to Stonewall’s Unseen on Screen report (which can be found here) about gay people on youth TV, and the BBC’s response to its finding that “BBC1 transmitted just 44 seconds of positive and realistic [LGB] portrayal out of a total 39 hours and 30 minutes of programming.” Auntie conducted a survey and a public consultation, in which I quite happily took part.

Now the BBC has published the results, in a report entitled Portrayal of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual People on the BBC (which you can read here). It makes for pretty interesting reading, even if some of the findings are on a par with investigations into the Pope’s preferred brand of Christianity for duh-factor (I love the dry “Perhaps unsurprisingly” in the quote I’ve pulled for my title).

My two favorite factoids are:

(i) “LGB people were also particularly conscious that there should be more portrayal of other groups, such as disabled and black and minority ethnic audiences, as well as their own.” (p11)

(ii) “More heterosexual women thought the portrayal of LGB people to be important than did heterosexual men.” (p13)

That first one makes sense, since often queer people tend to be more aware of things like majority privilege and the representation of minority groups in the media – I know I mentioned other minority groups in my answer to the survey, including trans people, who are almost completely ignored by both the BBC report and of course Stonewall generally.

The second ties into a phenomenon I find fascinating: that of straight women who are major queer allies. I don’t know why straight women should be more interested in queer people than straight men, but the facts here seem to bear out the presentation in a lot of fiction of straight women with gay male best friends, à la Will & Grace, Sex & the City, and so on.

A lot of people have a lot of opinions about this trend, so I won’t add mine. I’ll just point out that I, as a gay woman with a lot of straight male friends, rarely if ever see a representation of a life like mine in film or TV.

Of course, one rarely sees gay women represented on TV at all, particularly on the BBC – as most people questioned for the report seem to agree. It’s very heartening to see dear old Auntie taking notice of this problem and looking toward doing something about it, starting with hotly anticipated new drama Lip Service. Maybe we’ll finally see some realistic and relatable lesbian representation on the BBC.

– Though, on a second look, I find that Lip Service will be on BBC Three. Maybe next year, eh, Auntie?