Dancing Around Objectification by Victoria Merlino
This reading was about how two characters of two different stories were perceived differently because of intersectionality. One was a black women and the other was a white woman. They were both performers of some sort and both were idealized and dehumanized in some way. However, race made a huge difference in how people perceived these two artists. The black woman, being black and a woman, had no choice but to be itemized by her audience. However, the white woman was itemized but only for white men. While the white woman had a social class higher than the black men but lower than the white men, the black woman had a social class that was lower than the black men. This shows intersectionality because they are both itemized because they are women, however, since the black woman was black, she was itemized for all audiences.
Intersectionality 101
This reading talks about how the different sections in intersectionality create different perceptions which lead to stereotypes. It also states how these perceptions made by intersectionality led to something as serious as oppression. It was because of intersectionality that people were being discriminated in all sorts of ways. This emphasizes how important and serious intersectionality is and how if not used carefully while analyzing something, it can really affect people in a negative way. The reading also talks about the Standpoint theory which is related to intersectionality in a way because it is the “idea that an individual’s’ perspectives are influenced by their own unique living experiences in social locations and groups”. An example given was that two hispanic women can have the same standpoint in terms of sex and race, however, if one of them is in a higher economic status, their standpoints are not the same. These aspects are all part of intersectionality and when one standpoint is different, it affects the standpoint as a whole.
The Urgency of Intersectionality by Kimberle Crenshaw
Kimberle Crenshaw talks about how intersectionality affects black women. She mainly focuses on intersectional feminism and emphasizes the fact that women are looked down upon. She states, however, that while women are treated in a certain negative way, black women are treated even more negatively. These women were being treated as if they didn’t matter. Some black women who were trying to justify themselves went to court only for the case to be thrown out. Black women were not able to work in plants and there were legal laws in the favor of employers to make it inconsequential. Many black women found it hard to find jobs not only because they are women but because they are black. And Crenshaw really stresses how society needs to be more open minded and throw away this discrimination.
Bechdel Test
The Bechdel test is like a rebellion on how women are portrayed in fiction. It first came out on a comic strip which showed two women talking about the conditions on which they would watch a film. The conditions were that the movie had to have at least two women in it, who are talking to each other, about anything other than a man. This shows how intersectionality affects fiction films because women were portrayed in a way where they spent all their time talking about men when this isn’t true in reality. This whole concept seemed to be implying that intersectionality was, in a way, connected to gender stereotypes.
Response
These pieces were really in depth when explaining what intersectionality is and how to use it to analyze something. This can be connected to texts we’ve read so far because all the texts we’ve read were about how we can use different lenses to analyze something and intersectionality is one of them. After reading these pieces and watching the Ted Talk, I now know how important intersectionality is when analyzing something because race, gender, and other social aspects hugely affect how something is perceived. I never really knew which lenses were the most important. However, now I think the most important lens is intersectionality. This is because there are so many aspects within intersectionality that can be used to analyze something whereas other lenses only contain few to one aspect to focus on.
Questions
Technically, can’t most or all the other lenses be considered in the category of intersectionality?