Intersectionality: A Theory of Nothing.
The Intersectionality argument proceeds with the claim that every one has a unique experience of oppression. The operative word is “unique”. For that matter, as the theory goes, all forms of marginalization are valid, and must be tackled equally.
Hence, Intersectionality is a very weird concept. By its own definition is the claim to the Equality of Victimhood. Put another way, it is a theory about the Equality of Oppression. It insists that all marginalization are first and foremost, valid, and that they are all equal, i.e. one is not worse than the other. More, that one victim of oppression is not worse of than the other.
Here, the key word is “oppression” as an agent, or the said hand of action. Intersectionality achieves the fundamental transference of accusation leveled by victims against the real, flesh and blood of an oppressor to a new inchoate, abstract concept called “Oppression.”
This way “Intersectionality” removes the axis of domination from the oppressor, while still keeping one end on the victims, and directs the actions of the oppressor which ever way so long as it no longer points back to the real, fresh and blood oppressor. By this logic, Intersectionality proceeds like this: Even the Oppressor has a unique experience of his own oppression. In fact, by marginalizing others, he marginalizes himself.
It’s like a thief. By stealing others’ belongings he hurts his community and then himself. It’s like a slave owner—by enslaving others against their will, he hurts himself. It’s like racism—that racists too suffer!
Is it true that people may have unique experiences of the same oppression dished out by an oppressor? Yes. That is if we maintain the axis of domination on the same oppressor. By switching to the terminology of Oppression, which Intersectionality dictates, it is no longer necessary to maintain the axis between the victim and the oppressor, but between the victim and a certain kind of “Oppression”.
This way, anyone becomes a victim and anyone can be the oppressor. Furthermore, it is also possible that no one is the oppressor. In other words, oppression no longer needs an oppressor agent! Which is weird, since we can no longer accuse the former, identifiable, flesh and blood oppressor.
Is it also true that all forms of experiencing oppression are valid, and even equal? Absolutely not! An enslaver does not experience Chattel Slavery in the same way that the enslaved does, or does he? Certainly one cannot argue that an enslaver’s unique experience of his mayhem is equal in suffering to that of the enslaved. Or is it?
Intersectionality, then, as a theory has moved quickly from framing unique, often disparate, mixed, experiences of individuals living disparate lives as social events, without stating the fundamental thread of connection necessary to establishing a theory between these victims and their Oppressor, except only to point to a certain form of Oppression—that operative word again—as the commonality.
Therefore, within this Intersectionality framework, the contradiction of framing disparate individual experiences as a social event is hidden from scrutiny. Still, the fact that Intersectionality is not a valid Sociological Theory cannot be shrouded in mysticism. That is, the fact of its internal inconsistency, although western sociologists would like us to believe otherwise, can no longer be overlooked.
More important is what it has made weird: How Intersectionality has managed to reformulate the Matrix of Oppression and Domination, and has successfully—through some propaganda and Double Think—moved the Axis of Anti-Black Oppression away from the racist, colonialist, terrorist to everything, and anybody else.
And thus, Intersectionality has successfully dislocated the axis of oppression (from victim-oppressor to victim-oppression) in such a way that it now rotates about a flexible fulcrum, and can be pointed towards any target at will—even at the victims of the said oppression. This is the masterful, magical achievement of the theory of Intersectionality—a theory of nothing; another theory of whiteness.
Weird concept indeed. Weird concept, no matter. Theories of this type, if theories they are, serve the purpose of both Saviour and Colonizer. One can only save when one has power to enforce Salvation. Even salvation is obtained only by force – no way around it. Recall an ancient book still claims that “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force”?
Intersectionality is a weird theory as its adherents, some among the colonized and terrorized (the very victims) still feel the need to reach out to the colonizer and the terrorist for that very salvation. Double Think, you say – holding onto very disparate ideas as if they are both true at once.