'Intersectionaity' - gibberish or not?

RayM wrote: »

Hate it when people (especially academics) lack intellectual curiosity to such an extent that they automatically dismiss stuff they don't understand as 'gibberish'.

Nobody lacks intellectual curiosity here. We're asking questions of an ideology that can't define its terms, compensate for class and leaves out major forms of privilege. Like yank supremicism.

Austria! wrote: »

Maybe we're not quite getting each other or something. I said lesbian women of colour are more discriminated against than straight white males and you don't seem to agree with that, and have asked for data, which is amazing if you mean it.

So, answer yes or no please,

Do you believe black people are more discriminated than white people?

The black American is far more privileged than the white Albanian.

Do you believe women face more sexism than men?

On average maybe but rich women are more privileged than working class men. A female graduate of Oxford trumps a worker.

Do you believe that gay people face more discrimination than white people?

Than white people?

If you answered yes more than once, do you believe that this discrimination disappears if you possess more than one of the categories?

It's the sins of omission that really destroy this theory. No yank privilege. No political privilege. No top 1% privilege. Obama or Condi Rice (black,female) can end up more discriminated against than my Albanian pig farmer. (White, hetro, male).

Do you believe that studies on discrimination that are conducted in the United States are trustworthy?

Since this isn't the United States who cares? If the yanks want to categorise yank whites as privileged compared to black yanks that's fine. It's when they accuse non-American "whites" of privilege that the fix is in. In 2050 will we accept that most of America is less privileged than Albania or Poland?

Do you believe studies on discrimination in the US can tell us anything about discrimination in other western countries?

Not a thing. Take whites and blacks. In the US black people are poorer because of history. In Ireland because recent immigrants tend not to be as rich as the established groups ( itself averaged out and class rarely gets a mention in American leftism). What could white privilege tell us about Northern Ireland or Scottish nationalism? What about the northern English dislike of metropolitan elites in the UK, where's the White privilege there? The north is whiter than London. So is Scotland.

This adoption of American ideologies wholesale by non-Americans is, funnily enough, closer to their theory of "white supremacy" being unconscious and invisible to the privileged and imposed on the non-privileged. Yank supremicism doesn't see Hollywood domination as anything but natural, and apparently neither do non-Yanks especially the most colonised by America – Western Europe .

So while we "whites" watch Euro-Americans (and others) in our screen all the time we are told by their leftists that what we are seeing is ourselves. There's too many whites in Hollywood, feel guilty. Not there's too much American hegemony, feel oppressed. Irish people don't even watch Irish well reviewed films – song of the sea was trounced by minions. And we don't see ourselves on American TV, we're Irish not American white. When we actually turn up, as in the Simpsons episode it's not pretty. I'd prefer to be an Indian watching Apu.

However this contract doesn't work in reverse. The well received ITV show broadchurch was translated into American English from English English even though all the original actors were white.

You can apply yank privilege all around - black America is richer than most of Europe, all American culture is more dominant than the (ill defined) white culture of Europe. America has reserve currency privilege. And controls the IMF, which you might recall came into the actual country you actually live in not that long ago, rather than the America you think you live in.

American sociology doesn't address this particular privilege. I can't think why.