Nobody can be defined by one identity. Nobody is just their race or ethnicity. Nobody is just their sex or gender. Nobody is just their religion or their nationality. We are all multifaceted human beings with a web of identities. Each identity providing some filter through which you view the world, and through which the world views you. Intersectionality is like a Venn diagram with a multitude of circles, becoming more complex as you add identities. In the middle of that diagram is you. Intersectionality is used to describe this combination of identities.
Intersectionality doesn’t just describe your unique multi-identify view of the world, it also explores the complex reality of advantage and disadvantage. You may have identities that are empowered and others that are oppressed.
Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term in 1989 and describes it as “a lens, a prism, for seeing the way in which various forms of inequality often operate together and exacerbate each other. We tend to talk about race inequality as separate from inequality based on gender, class, sexuality, or immigrant status. What’s often missing is how some people are subject to all of these, and the experience is not just the sum of its parts.”
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