Intersectionality

there are many different types of discrimination including things like discrimination based on sex gender culture race and other factors and we can often consider these things in isolation but what happens when someone experiences multiple forms of discrimination at the same time what happens when we have overlapping areas of discrimination well one of the things that can happen is that we can have individuals in our society that have characteristics that can result in them facing discrimination in multiple different areas for example we can have a female who is a african-american origin and who for example practices Buddhist teachings and in a particular society within our country that may cause her to be discriminated against in three different areas so if we were to draw her circles of discrimination what would her overlap look like so she may have one overlap based on her and sex or gender she may have one overlap based on her racial or cultural identification and she may have another circle based on her religious ideas and right in the center we have this level of extreme overlap right at the intersection now why is it important to consider this intersection of these three different areas it's important because at this intersection is multiple different categories of potential discrimination or oppression may compound an interplay in this one individual and really significantly put her at a disadvantage within society and in order to understand the level of disadvantage that she has we really need to understand all three of these factors the theory of intersectionality really states just that it really focuses on the point of which there's multiple different areas of potential discrimination overlap with one another and exist alongside one another and says that we really need to understand when all of these things coexist because if we don't consider all of them at the same time we really don't get to fully understand the situation so in this individual if we just consider the fact that she likes Buddhist teachings in a culture of society that really doesn't appreciate that and we missed the fact that the society also doesn't appreciate the fact that she's female or discriminates against African Americans and we may not fully understand the level of discrimination that she faces and the same situation would result if we only consider fact that she was female and sexist society or that she was African American in a racist society so we really so this theory of intersectionality really asks us to consider all of the different levels of discrimination now while the theory was originally coined in 1989 by Crenshaw as a feminist theory to explain the oppression of women it has since really expanded out and people have been really used it to explain impression and discrimination found in all parts of society you