What is are the accepted forms of intersectionality? Because I see that word here but then you turn around and as predominantly white american women with 1st world problems try and tell others they have no right to complain because either this isnt the space despite the claims of Intersectionality when convenient, or you dont they dont have it as bad, despite in the oppression olympics not only wouldn’t 99% of people here not medal, they wouldn’t even qualify for the finals.

I guess my question is what is the totem poll of discrimination, prejudice, and oppression, and what’s the cut off point for this blog. Who qualifies for your intersectionality?

————-

Mod response: We’ve talked in the past about what our intersectionalities are, though they’re different for each mod.

I have white, class, and able-bodied privilege, and some thin privilege. I have other privileges that relate to where I was born geographically, and to whom I was born. Though I’m not disprivileged along certain axes, I can still state truths like intersectional discrimination (along two or more axes) usually magnifies the effect of both discriminatory states (making them worse). I don’t need to be disprivileged along other axes to make that observation.

Maybe you’re suggesting that activists who are disprivileged along multiple axes might have unique perspectives? If so, I completely agree, and there are a lot of amazing bloggers out there who speak from a multiple-disprivileged place, or who are allies to fat people and make observations about fat discrimination through a different disprivileged lens. I suggest shorm, nudiemuse, fatadditives (just off the top of my head), but there are oodles of others (best thing to do is go on an activist’s blog and check out who they follow, or who reblogs their stuff).

I’m not sure what you mean about other people “not having the right to complain”. Yes, the mods here are white, I’m fairly well-off (can’t say for the other mods) and our privilege in some areas is going to skew our perspectives. We’re aware of that, which is a big reason why this blog is largely based on submissions, contributions from others. It’s still probably going to skew white and better-off and young because that’s the main demographic of Tumblr (the last I checked).

But people from other disprivileged profiles absolutely have the “right to complain.” Not only that, but I encourage it! Fuck arbitrary power structures meant to vaunt an arbitrary historical elite and keep you down. Of course, I approach my activism along a different angle than many social justice activists do – I don’t believe money is inherently evil and I do believe that free exchange is the best environment for opportunities and true equity – but there are structures that enrich some at the expense of others, and that’s fucking wrong.

We like talking about social justice, and the difference between how some activists approach it, on this blog. But this blog is about thin privilege, in particular. And while we acknowledge that sexism has bad effects on all women, we observe that the intersection of sexism and sizism magnifies the effects of sexism for fat women and men. We also aren’t interested in having the conversation about thin privilege derailed by wrong-headed arguments that it doesn’t exist (it does, read the blog), or it’s simply a subset of some other form of discrimination (it isn’t, read the blog). That’s when we step in and say, “Hold the phone. While these are problems, they’re not a part of the conversation, and you’re making false equivalencies that ignore realities about the discrimination fat people face.” We don’t say, “You have no right to complain,” or that “You have no problems."

Does that clarify things?

-ArteToLife