Intersectionality

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Intersectionality (of English intersection "intersection, intersection ") describes the overlap and simultaneity of different discrimination categories towards a person.

definition

When it comes to intersectionality, forms of discrimination such as racism , anti-Semitism , sexism , anti-feminism , homophobia , transphobia , disability / (dis-) or ableism , age discrimination or classism do not appear in isolation from one another, but are considered in their interdependencies and intersections . They not only add up in one person, but also lead to independent experiences of discrimination. For example, a disabled homeless person may not only be calledHomeless person and being discriminated against as a walking handicapped person , but he can also experience being discriminated against as a handicapped homeless person d. In other words, he may experience forms of discrimination that neither a non-disabled homeless person nor a (walking) disabled person with a permanent residence could experience. The focus is therefore on the interrelationships between the categories of discrimination.

The current (2020) interest in knowledge in intersectionality research is the emergence of individual multiple identities and the (power) dynamics that result from the interaction of different forms of discrimination.

Development of the intersectionality theory

History in the USA

Am I not a woman and a sister? , "Am I not a wife and sister?"

Towards the end of the 1960s, the so-called "re-visionist feminist theory" was advocated more vehemently in the USA in the context of a feminist movement of black women. The special situation of black women was hardly noticed due to racial discrimination. In the 1980s and 1990s, the connection of the three major forms of oppression "race, class and gender " (ethnic, class-specific and gender group membership) was discussed in the triple oppression theory.

At the end of the 1980s, the American lawyer Kimberlé Crenshaw used the term "intersectionality" (or "intersectional analysis" ) for the first time . In doing so, Crenshaw claimed that US corporate hiring policies benefited either black men or white women. Black women, on the other hand, for whom the mechanisms of discrimination based on their skin color and gender intersect, would not have had the opportunity to sue for a job until then. Crenshaw primarily refers to the US case law in the case of DeGraffenreid v. General Motors . Here, in the 1970s, a court judged the fact that General Motors had dismissed almost all black women workers as part of a mass layoff as neither racial nor gender-specific discrimination and justified this with the fact that black male workers were just as unaffected by the dismissal as white workers Workers.

Iris Marion Young and Martha Minow are also pioneers of North American intersectionality research . In their analyzes, they show that group-related identity politics provided important impulses for overcoming social discrimination against marginalized groups, but the fading out of differences within the groups led to the black consciousness movement in the USA being one-sided by black men, while the women's movement by white Bourgeois women would dominate. Here as there, the specific life situations and discrimination experiences of black women remained hidden. Intersectionality research assumes more than ten different forms of discrimination in a person.

History in Germany

The first criticism of the one-dimensionality of the feminist movement came in the 1930s. Sun pointed Clara Zetkin , a representative of the communist women's movement on the fundamental issues of gender and class back. At the same time, she criticized the fact that the women's movement at the time only responded to the interests of bourgeois women. However, an actual liberation of all women can only take place when class slavery is abolished.

Another example is the intervention of women with disabilities during the debates about Section 218 of the Criminal Code in the 1970s and 1980s. While the majority of feminists understood by “my body is mine” that they finally wanted to decide for themselves whether they could abort an unborn child, women with disabilities identified themselves under this slogan in other respects. Much less frequent topics, such as the widespread practice of sterilizing disabled girls and young women, as was possible until the 1990 Care Act without the real consent of those affected, or the problem of health risks for women from impoverished countries when trying out new contraceptive methods became much rarer scandalized or fought. In 2007, the legal scholar Julia Zinsmeister examined the legal treatment of intersectional discrimination in Germany for the first time using the example of this and other current specific experiences of discrimination of women with disabilities.

The black and Jewish German women's movement can be described as intersectional even before the term "intersectionality" even existed. Racism, anti-Semitism, class relations and gender relations (sexism) were brought together in the Federal Republic of Germany as early as the 1980s.

Further steps towards an intersectional analysis were provided by post-structuralist approaches and queer theory , both of which have been part of feminist theory since the 1990s. Even in the 21st century, consideration of intersectional mechanisms of action is not yet a matter of course. So was z. B. the close entanglement that racism has with sexism was first discussed in 2001 at the world conference against racism in Durban .

In the process of discrimination there could be an interaction of lines of difference and thus an intersectional identity . In this process-oriented approach, discrimination is understood as a “product of the social construction of identity that is in a social, historical, political and cultural context”.

Current theoretical debates in Germany

There is much discussion among humanities scholars studying the subject about the number of categories to consider. Cornelia Klinger starts out from the three categories of “race”, class and gender, as these constitute “the basic pattern of socio-politically relevant inequality”, because “work, specifically physical work, constituted its reason for existence and pivotal point”. Christopher Sweetapple, Heinz-Jürgen Voss and Salih Alexander Wolter also argue in this way in their publications that focus on intersectionality. Nina Degele and Gabriele Winker, on the other hand, added the body category in a publication from 2007. "Because both age and physical condition, health and attractiveness" have become more and more important and decided about the distribution of resources. Helma Lutz and Norbert Wenning, on the other hand, asserted 14 categories of difference: These are gender, sexuality, race / skin color, ethnicity, nationality / state, culture, class, health, age, sedentariness / origin, property, geographical location (west / rest) , Religion (religious / secular), level of social development (modern / traditional). In 2011 Andre Gamerschlag included the category of species in his intersectional philosophies with the inclusion of intersectional studies in the field of human-animal studies . Judith Butler criticizes that the categorizations of a subject could never be complete: “[a] uch theories of feminist identity that elaborate a series of predicates such as color, sexuality, ethnicity, class and health always put an embarrassed 'etc.' to the end of their list (...) but they never succeed in being complete. "

In the General Equal Treatment Act (AGG), which came into force in Germany in 2006, Section 4 included a regulation on discrimination on the basis of several grounds. The Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency commissioned two expertises that were supposed to provide information on the manifestations, modes of action and their legal assessment according to the AGG.

criticism

Criticism is often leveled at the essentialization of groups by means of fixed, general and hierarchically ordered categories of oppression. The publicist Bari Weiss thinks that the concept of intersectionality in practice mostly amounts to a kind of caste system in which people are judged according to how much suffering their caste has experienced in history. The concept tends towards a Manichaean worldview: It forces a dichotomous distinction between victims and perpetrators. A multiple victim role would be tantamount to canonization ( sainthood ), but there should not be an oppressor and an oppressed in one person in this concept; it often forces people to hide part of their identity when they are seen in a contradicting role in the hierarchy of discrimination.

The educational scientist Jürgen Budde also criticizes the fact that the categories of oppression are often added up to the greatest possible disadvantage. In the case of social structure analyzes, one can concentrate on a few categories and on the aspects of structural or institutional violence. When analyzing constructions of differences in the course of biographical processes, however, one cannot firmly define the categories in advance. Budde states that the concept of intersectionality lacks a sharpened concept of power on the micro level. In order to be able to analyze how power relations affect the formation of identities, power does not have to be presented as bound to a powerful agent, but rather coming from every direction. Social positioning at all levels of intersectionality is established through both domination practices and discourses, but whether identities are formed at the interfaces is questionable.

In particular, the further development of the concept of intersectionality into a process-oriented interdependence approach is already facing considerable problems during the research process. It starts with the design of standardized survey instruments, e.g. B. for questions like "male / female?" It also remains questionable how the results of this approach can be used in practice outside of biography work , since all politically set categories that are listed in the AGG would have to be modified in order to do justice to the complexity of realities and the resulting mechanisms of discrimination.

See also

literature

  • Regina Becker-Schmidt (2007): class, gender, ethnicity, race: logics of setting differences, entanglement of inequality situations and social structuring. In: Gudrun-Axeli Knapp , Wetterer, Angelika (Ed.): Axes of Difference. Social theory and feminist criticism 2. Westfälisches Dampfboot, Münster, pp. 56–83.
  • bell hooks (1996): Longing and Resistance. Culture, ethnicity, gender. Berlin.
  • bell hooks (2000 [1984]): Feminist Theory - From Margin to Center. 2nd Edition. South End Press, Cambridge.
  • Judith Butler (1991): The Discomfort of the Sexes. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-518-12433-1 .
  • Combahee River Collective (1982): A Black Feminist Statement. In: Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, Barbara Smith (Eds.): But Some of Us Are Brave. Black Women's Studies. Old Westbury, pp. 13-22.
  • Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989): Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine. In: The University of Chicago Legal Forum. Pp. 139-167.
  • Kimberlé Crenshaw (1991): Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color. In: Stanford Law Review. Volume 43, No. 6, pp. 1241-1299.
  • Kathy Davis, Helma Lutz : Gender research and biography research. Intersectionality using the example of an extraordinary woman. In: Völter et al. (Ed.): Biography research in discourse. Opladen, Wiesbaden, pp. 228-247.
  • Judy Gummich (2004): Do the anti-discrimination laws protect against multidimensional discrimination? Or: The need to include the excluded. In: Anti-Discrimination Network of the Turkish Federation in Berlin-Brandenburg (Ed.): QUEbERlin. Multiple affiliations as a burden or an opportunity? The faces of being queer and being a migrant / black. Pp. 6-16.
  • Sibylle Hardmeier, Dagmar Vinz (2007): Diversity and Intersectionality - A Critical Appreciation of the Originality and Efficiency of the Two Approaches for Political Science. In: femina politica , “Women - Gender - Diversity. Perspectives on theoretical concepts and their political implementation ”. Vol. 16, 2007, issue 1, pp. 15-25.
  • Elahe Haschemi Yekani, Daniela Hrzán, Jana Husmann-Kastein , Carsten Junker, Karolina Krasuska, Beatrice Michaelis (2008): Where, When and How? Contextualizing intersectionality. In: Dorota Golańska, Aleksandra Rozalska (Eds.): New Subjectivities: Negotiating Citizenship in the Context of Migration and Diversity. Lódź University Press, Lódź 2008, pp. 19–47.
  • Sabine Hess, Nikola Langreiter, Elisabeth Timm (Eds.) (2011): Intersectionality revisited. Empirical, theoretical and methodological explorations. Transcript-Verlag, Bielefeld, ISBN 978-3-8376-1437-4 .
  • Patricia Hill Collins , Margaret Andersen (Eds.): Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology. 1992. 6th edition 2007, ISBN 0-534-52879-1 .
  • Patricia Hill Collins: Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment. 1990. 2nd edition 2000, ISBN 0-415-92484-7 .
  • Cornelia Klinger: Inequality in the relationships between class, race and gender. In: Knapp, Wetterer (Ed.): Axes of Difference. Social theory and feminist criticism 2. Westfälisches Dampfboot, Münster, pp. 14–48.
  • Mitja Sabine Lück, Güler Arapi (2008): "I feel a little bit weird ...". Examples of intersectionality of discrimination. In: Leah Carola Czollek, Heike Weinbach (Ed.): Learning in encounter. Theory and Practice of Social Justice Training. Düsseldorf, pp. 57-60.
  • Helma Lutz, Norbert Wenning (2001): Differences over Difference - Introduction to the Debates . in this. (Ed.): Different different. Difference in educational science. Opladen, pp. 11-24
  • Patricia Purtschert, Katrin Meyer (2010): The power of categories. Critical considerations on intersectionality , in: Feministische Studien 28/1, pp. 130–142.
  • Elisabeth Tuider (2011): "Sitting at a Crossroad" methodically obtain. Intersectionality from the perspective of biography research. In: Manuela Barth / Sabine Hess / Nikola Langreiter / Elisabeth Timm (eds.): Intersectionality revisited: Empirical, theoretical and methodical explorations. transcript-Verlag, pp. 223-250.
  • Christopher Sweetapple, Heinz-Jürgen Voß and Salih Alexander Wolter (2020): Intersectionality: From Anti-Discrimination to a Liberated Society? Butterfly publishing house, Stuttgart. ISBN 3-89657-167-2
  • Heinz-Jürgen Voss and Salih Alexander Wolter (2013): Queer and (anti) capitalism. Butterfly publishing house, Stuttgart. ISBN 3-89657-165-6
  • Katharina Walgenbach, Gabriele Dietze , Lann Hornscheidt , Kerstin Palm (2012): Gender as an interdependent category. New perspectives on intersectionality, diversity and heterogeneity. Opladen, Berlin, London, Toronto: Verlag Barbara Budrich, 2nd A. 2012, ISBN 978-3-86649-496-1 .
  • Gabriele Winker , Nina Degele (2009): Intersectionality. To analyze social inequalities. Bielefeld: transcript, 2nd edition 2010, ISBN 978-3-8376-1149-6
  • Julia Zinsmeister (2007): Multidimensional Discrimination. The right of disabled women to equality and its guarantee through Art. 3 GG and simple law. Baden-Baden.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Anti-Semitism- and racism-critical youth work Amadeu Antonio Foundation
  2. ↑ a b Eike Marten, Katharina Walgenbach: Intersectional Discrimination . In: Albert Scherr, Aladin El-Mafaalani, Gökçen Yüksel (ed.): Handbook Discrimination . Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2017, p. 158 ( springer.com [PDF]).
  3. ↑ Regina Becker-Schmidt: <<class>>, <<gender>>, <<ethnicity>>, <<race>>: Logics of setting differences, entangling situations of inequality and social structuring. In: Gudrun-Axeli Knapp, Angelika Wetterer (Ed.): Axes of Difference. Social theory and feminist criticism 2. Westfälisches Dampfboot, Münster 2007, pp. 56–83.
  4. ↑ Helma Lutz (Ed.): Focus on intersectionality. Movements and locations of a multi-layered concept. VS Verlag, Wiesbaden 2010.
  5. ^ Bell hooks: Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. 2nd. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1984
  6. ^ Combahee River Collective 1982: A Black Feminist Statement
  7. ↑ bell hooks (1996): Longing and Resistance. Culture, ethnicity, gender
  8. ↑ DeGraffenreid v. General Motos 558 F.2d 480 and 145 (8th Cir. 1977), quoted in Crenshaw, Demarginalizing the Intersections of Race and Sex. In: Weisberg, D. Kelly (Ed.): Feminist Legal Theory, p. 383
  9. ↑ Young, Iris M .: Justice and the Politics of Difference, Princeton, New Jersey 1990; Minow, Martha: Making All the Difference. Inclusion, Exclusion and American Law, Ithaka, New York 1990.
  10. ↑ Cf. Zetkin, Clara: On the history of the proletarian women's movement in Germany. Frankfurt a. M. 1979. p. 148.
  11. ↑ Women with intellectual disabilities are pushed towards sterilization . In: Broadly . October 24, 2017 ( vice.com [accessed February 7, 2018]).
  12. ↑ Zinsmeister, Julia: Multidimensional Discrimination. The right of disabled women to equality and its guarantee through Art. 3 GG and simple law. Baden-Baden, 2007.
  13. ^ Heinz-Jürgen Voss and Salih Alexander Wolter: Queer and (anti) capitalism. Butterfly Verlag, Stuttgart 2013. pp. 17-20
  14. ^ Gudrun-Axeli Knapp: Intersectionality - a new paradigm of feminist research? To the transatlantic journey of << Race, class, gender >>
  15. ↑ Mitja Sabine Lück / Güler Arapi (2008): "I feel a little bit weird ..." - examples of the intersectionality of discrimination
  16. ^ Judy Gummich (2004): Do the anti-discrimination laws protect against multidimensional discrimination? , P. 9.
  17. ↑ Nina Degele and Gabriele Winker (2007): Intersectionality as a multi-level analysis (PDF).
  18. ↑ Cornelia Klinger: Inequality in the relationships between class, race and gender. In: Knapp / Wetterer (Ed.): Axes of the difference. Social theory and feminist criticism 2. Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot, pp. 14–48
  19. ^ Heinz-Jürgen Voss and Salih Alexander Wolter: Queer and (anti) capitalism. Butterfly Verlag, Stuttgart 2013.
  20. ↑ Christopher Sweetapple, Heinz-Jürgen Voss and Salih Alexander Wolter: Intersectionality: From Anti-Discrimination to a Liberated Society? Butterfly Verlag, Stuttgart 2020.
  21. ↑ Nina Degele and Gabriele Winker (2007): Intersectionality as a multi-level analysis (PDF).
  22. ↑ Helma Lutz / Norbert Wenning (2001): Differences over difference - introduction to the debates.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 120 kB) in: dies. (Ed.): Different different. Difference in educational science. Opladen, pp. 11-24. @1@ 2Template: Toter Link / 141.2.38.226  
  23. ^ Andre Gamerschlag: Intersectional Human-Animal Studies. A historical outline of the unity of oppression idea and a plea for intersectional research into human-animal relationships. In: Chimaira AK (ed.): Human-Animal Studies. About the social nature of human-animal relationships. Bielefeld 2011. pp. 151-189.
  24. ^ Judith Butler (1991) The Uneasiness of the Sexes, p. 210.
  25. ↑ Susanne Baer, ​​Melanie Bittner and Anna Lena Göttsche: Multidimensional Discrimination - Terms, Theories and Legal Analysis. Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency, April 16, 2010, accessed on February 7, 2018 .
  26. ↑ Susanne Dern, Lena Inowlocki, Dagmar Oberlies, Julia Bernstein: Multi-Dimensional Discrimination - An Empirical Study on the basis of autobiographical-narrative interviews. on behalf of the Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency by the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences / Esslingen University of Applied Sciences, October 2010, accessed on February 7, 2018 .
  27. ↑ So Bari Weiss with a view to the exclusion of a Zionist from the Dyke March in Chicago : I'm Glad the Dyke March Banned Jewish Stars. In: The New York Times , June 27, 2017.
  28. ↑ Jürgen Budde: The category problem: intersectionality and heterogeneity. In: Elke Kleinau, Barbara Rendtorff (eds.): Difference, diversity and heterogeneity in educational discourses. Opladen 2013 (= series of publications by the Women and Gender Research Section of the German Society for Educational Science (DGfE), vol. 3), pp. 27–46.
  29. ↑ See e.g. B. Katharina Walgenbach: Gender as an interdependent category. In this. u. a. (Ed.): Gender as an interdependent category. Opladen 2007, pp. 23-64.