“A WOC doesn’t face racism and sexism separately. The sexism she faces is often racialized and the racism she faces is often sexualized”

- @audrelordt

honestly you guys need to stop misapplying intersectional theory. since you base your ideas on identity politics you seem to think that each “identity” holds the same weight, but in reality our lives are determined by race, class, and gender (and also ability and nationality). but these things don’t have equal predictive effects on people’s lives. you guys seem to think that if a working-class person of color is also “neurotypical” and able-bodied and cishet that the count of “privileges” to “disprivileges” makes them “less oppressed” than a white person who is not-cis, not-straight, and not-neurotypical at the same time, but that’s absolutely not how oppression works. trying to quantify oppression “levels” means you’ve already lost. even then, we have to understand this through historical transformations and labor relations under capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy. 

wrt to the working-class cishet poc, their cishet status doesn’t really grant them grand material benefits at the end of the day. they’re still oppressed by the state and denied access to material goods. like, cathy cohen talked about this in her pivotal essay in which she criticized queer theory for this exact dichotomy (queer vs cishet) in her essay “punks, bulldaggers, and welfare queens”. 

whereas even if a white person is a woman and also lgbt, their race is a huge shield against certain forms of material violence that cishet men of color face despite being cishet or male. 

oppression is continuous and sustained and it’s determined by labor relations/class relations. if there is no class or race in your analysis then it is faulty. 

we have to analyze these things through a materialist lens. so for example, a white lgbt woman may be oppressed because she is denied access to material goods either because she’s a woman (so being denied employment bc she doesn’t wear makeup, for instance) or because she’s lgbt (so being denied housing, for instance). but is she susceptible to sustained poverty, or environmental/biological racism, or urban racism, or biometric surveillance, or state violence? probably not. class has to factor into this. 

a working class cishet poc who may appear neurotypical and able-bodied (i say appear bc it’s necessary to chart the physical and mental effects of poverty onto a person and that doesn’t become immediately apparent) is not less oppressed or more privileged because they have “three” or “four” privileges (cis, het, able-bodied, neurotypical). let’s say they live in flint, michigan. they are targeted by an onslaught of environmental racism that has trickled down into the very cells of their body. so in addition to living in abject poverty, which the state ignores and even exacerbates, the environmental racism that characterized the flint water crisis affects them physically and psychologically on a daily basis. this prevents them from working, from providing for their children, from saving and investing. they have low assets and disposable income. their income probably decreases because of outrageous healthcare costs and their difficulty working due to health problems. 

their supposed “neurotypical” status or their cishet status neither shield them from this violence nor gain them any benefits. on the contrary, a white lgbt woman living in a middle-class town may have “fewer” privileged identities (if you’re using the identity politics privilege chart) but her life isn’t impacted by environmental racism or police brutality or class violence, and so she can navigate her material reality with far greater ease. of course she can still be exposed to the violence of misogyny and homophobia, but that violence is quite unlikely to come from that working-class cishet poc in flint, michigan. 

we can an apply a similar analysis to the dakota access pipeline and how that is an example of the settler colonial state oppressing indigenous people. it doesn’t matter if the indigenous person in question is straight or not - their people are universally targeted by environmental racism and state violence. 

so when like you guys call cishet poc “heteronormative” or cishet moc “patriarchal” it makes no sense bc they aren’t oppressing you and if they are enacting homophobic or patriarchal violence it’s probably and primarily against women or LGBT people in THEIR community, not against white women or white LGBT people. 

sure they can be homophobic or misogynistic. but if we’re going to analyze something such as “straight” privilege or “male” privilege in their context, we’d have to compare it against lgbt poc and women of color, not against the lgbt community or women at large. and that’s when you see like cishet moc being privileged against lgbt woc. 

oppression is not a simplistic algebra equation. it’s not like “okay, i have three privileges, and you have four, so your privileges cancel out your oppression”. it’s a complicated, interconnected matrix, primarily determined by race and class (and gender).  

I feel like this post is doing itself a disservice by ignoring the institutionalized and personal violence LGBT people face?

To say that the primary concern those people have is class or income-based seems extremely disingenuous. And of course it doesn’t come close to scratching the surface of what POC face, and especially not queer POC or WOC but like. Yo trans people just get murdered every day, regardless of race. We get raped and have very little recourse. And most of this IS class-based. Of course it is. Ultimately most things come back to class right? But like. I think this post severely overestimates how easy it is for a trans woman to get a job? Unless she stays completely in the closet. And, again, much harder for trans WOC.

And this isn’t me trying to dispute the core thesis of this post. I think it’s pretty spot-on. But acting like sexuality and non-cis gender identities only impact people by whether or not they can get a job feels wrong. Queer people experience violence every day and I am super uncomfortable with dismissing that when talking about intersectionality.

Op is a bi WOC, so I’m sure she has the perspective to know which impacts one’s life more.

And, speaking as a white trans woman, while we do face a high murder rate and that absolutely should not be dismissed, it’s dishonest to ignore that TWOC, and most notably black trans women, face a greatly higher murder rate, around three times higher than white trans women, iirc. It’s not ‘trans people,’ it’s most definitely trans women, and it’s not ‘regardless’ of race.

Black girls deserve to learn free from bias and stereotypes.

Most black girls experience this hatred at schools. And classmates are not the only problem, there is no support from teachers, too. That’s why they get so affected by their school experiences. Black kids deserve to be treated just like everybody else, they want to study, they want to learn something ,too. However due to prejudice they are 5 times more likely to be suspended than their white peers and it can ruin their lives forever.  National Women’s Law Center created this video to change the situation. Join the movement to help black girls feel normal and get the same opportunities everybody else has.

Source

Finally something focusing on black girls!

Enjoy the history

MUST reqd

Whenever a black woman on a TV show is going through anything they make her have natural hair, then when she’s ‘back on her feet’ and feeling better she miraculously has weave

*coughs* SCANDAL

*coughs* True Blood

*coughs* Being Mary Jane

*coughs* How to get away with murder

do men have resting bitch faces as well or do they not have negative characteristics ascribed to them for putting on a neutral rather than a deliriously happy facial expression

Yes, Black men in majority white spaces do. If I don’t smile every single second of the day my coworkers become in intimidated and start asking me what’s wrong, telling me to smile, make jokes about how I’m trying to be a thug/act hard, why am I angry, etc. And it’s not just white men at my job God FORBID I my large Black ass makes a white girl feel threaten because I’m sitting down with a neutral expression.

I’m not trying to take this post away from women and make it about Black men but I want to point out that wether it’s patriarchy or white supremacy; those who feel as if they have power over you HATE to see you not smile. They are so used to people like you smiling to gain their approval that when you don’t there’s a cognitive dissonance that makes them extremely uncomfortable.

That’s why “angry Black women” is a thing. They have to put on a smile for everyone (yes even feminist white women) or we all get uncomfortable.

This is such an amazing response.

Harry Belafonte passing the baton of social activism to Jesse Williams.

 After the BET awards speech, Jesse Williams was criticized by the white media for being “soo angry” and praised by people of color and social activists all over the country.

Williams is the youngest member of the board of directors of the Advancement Project, civil rights and advocacy group. He was also on the front lines during the protest of Michael Brown’s shooting in Ferguson, Missouri. Well, no wonder everyone draws parallels between Williams and Belafonte, who also sits on the Advancement Project board and was close friends with Martin Luther King Jr.

Jesse Williams is a new powerful weapon in our fight for justice and freedom and he won my heart forever. 

#BlackLivesMatter

Look, I think Jesse Williams is great and I think he’s got a whole lot of greatness to share. I have nothing negative to say about him and think he’s going to be a player as a change agent. But where’s the rest of this photo? This isn’t the whole picture and it’s telling when you see the missing piece.  Belefonte is passing the baton to Williams - yes. Lovely. Got it and super happy to see it because Williams is a man of character and depth. Like I said, he could be a real change agent.  BUT!  Let’s take a look at the COMPLETE photo and maybe we’ll see something even GREATER. 

That’s right, friends - Zendaya. SHE’s also carrying the baton. You want change? You want to be heard? You better damned well be passing it forward and you better damned well be inclusive. Read the entire article on Ebony. 

This is kind of what myself and others have made note on when it comes to Black Activism and Movements. How Black women are often erased. I actually made a comment (or post) a few months ago on how activism/being a rebel is seen as a “Man’s thing” that only benefits men”. How MLK and Malcolm X are the faces of Civil Rights.

& like so many people want to ignore the misogyny in the Black community.

Black trans femme writer Venus Selenite calling attention to the murder of Goddess Diamond, a black trans woman in New Orleans, on June 5. I hadn’t heard anything about this until just now. I know we’re all going through a lot after the Pulse shooting, but please don’t forget that black trans feminine people are living through this every single day.

Goddess Diamond’s family has set up a burial assistance fundraiser: https://www.gofundme.com/28b4atw

Here’s a news source from (tw for misgendering in the article): http://www.theneworleansadvocate.com/news/16059243-125/answers-elusive-after-body-found-in-burned-car-in-new-orleans-east

They set her on fire wtf

oh my god

Knowing that trans women of color started the movement in the united states and were literally immediately erased and excluded from what they started is the most deeply jading knowledge.

It is the original sin of the so-called queer community and it damns it from the cradle.

no white gay boy will ever reblog this, watch:

half the comments are “i reblogged this from tyler oakley, take that op!!”

youre literally proving ops point, youre not trying to spread awareness, youre proving you dont give a shit about trans women of colour and its pretty disgusting

but whatever lol as long as you can give that faux support and feel good you proved them ✨wrong✨

The most disrespected person in America is the black woman.

-Malcolm X

Just another example of the Hypersexualization the Black Female body is faced with.

These two women are wearing the exact same outfit, but somehow Rihanna is “basically naked” while Bella Hadid is “Next Level Edgy”.

Women will wear what we want when we want. Your opinion is not needed, nor wanted.