What is intersectionality?
Intersectionality is the interconnected and indivisible nature of social identities such as ethnicity, affectional identity, gender, disAbility, (and many more). These intersections of identity and lived experience create overlapping and interdependent systems of marginalization, discrimination, disadvantage, as well as privilege and hidden biases.
Why Intersectionality?
Although we seek to work with clients and students who are diverse in their gender and affectional identities, if we ignore their other marginalized and privileged identities, as well as their lived experiences, we are missing important pieces of the whole person.
#Askmeaboutmyintersections
We are bringing awareness to intersectionality in order to expand our multicultural competence as an organization, and to help our members with developing their awareness of attitudes and beliefs, knowledge, skills, and action that will improve the cultural competence and quality of counseling with our clients and students. Our campaign will be formally released at the ACA conference in 2020, but look for our teasers and conversations coming out before then!
More on Intersectionality
Intersectionality IS “… a way of understanding and analyzing the complexity in the world, in people, and in human experiences. The events and conditions of social and political life and the self can seldom be understood as shaped by one factor. They are generally shaped by many factors in diverse and mutually influencing ways. When it comes to social inequality, people’s lives and the organization of power in a given society are better understood as being shaped not by a single axis of social division, be it race or gender or class, but by many axes that work together and influence each other.” Collins & Bilge, 2016, p. 2
“… the complex, cumulative way in which the effects of multiple forms of discrimination (such as racism, sexism, and classism) combine, overlap, or intersect especially in the experiences of marginalized individuals or groups...” Merriam Webster, 2019
“...a lens through which you can see where power comes and collides, where it interlocks and intersects. It’s not simply that there’s a race problem here, a gender problem here, and a class or LBGTQ problem there. Many times that framework erases what happens to people who are subject to all of these things.” Crenshaw, 2017, https://www.law.columbia.edu/pt-br/news/2017/06/kimberle-crenshaw-intersectionality
#askmeaboutmyintersections
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