by Guadalupe Lazaro
In this video, Yogesh Tulsi ‘20, the current co-president of The G Spot (the sexuality and gender alliance of Yale-NUS College), shares with us what intersectionality means to him and to The G Spot and how the organisation addresses intersectionality understood as internal diversity through minority representation in their Executive Committee.
In 1989, the feminist, social activist, and theorist Kimberle Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality in an attempt to understand how the complex and interrelated nature of systems of oppression affect some people more than others depending on the multiple disadvantages they face. In other words, people’s social identities are made up of a series of categories and features such as race, ethnicity, gender, and class that tend to overlap in order to construct people’s social experiences. Individuals who face marginalisation through more than one of these features of their identities tend to face more disadvantages than others. For instance, in her article “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex”, Crenshaw argues that Black women face a different and more severe type of marginalisation than Black men or women in general, because they are discriminated due to both their race and gender. The author then argues that we cannot analyse these oppressions separately because they are interrelated and they affect one another.
In order to understand the concept of intersectional oppressions better, consider Crenshaw’s basement analogy. Imagine a basement that contains people with all types of disadvantages. The more disadvantages they experience the lower they are in the stack of people. Those at the bottom of the basement face multiple disadvantages due to different aspects of their identity. For instance, they are discriminated due to their gender, race, ethnicity, and class. Those at the top of the basement face one disadvantage and those located on the first floor face no oppression. Crenshaw argues that in order to understand the experiences of those at the bottom of the basement we need to use an intersectional analytic framework through which we can see how their multiple oppressions interact with, reinforce, and affect one another.
In this video, Yogesh shares with us that The G Spot has to actively think how to engage with intersectional issues because people are generally not aware that individuals can face intersecting oppressions. In order to raise awareness of intersectional issues in the LGBT community The G Spot hosts a series of events, such as dialogues and talks, to explore, for instance, the kinds of issues that LGBT people living with HIV and homeless transgender women face.
Crenshaw also argues that minority groups must be aware of the intersectionality of oppressions of the members of their group and create solutions and agendas that address these interrelated disadvantages. Following up on the previously discussed analogy, this means that those at the top of the basement who are constructing the latch to pass on to the first floor, must take into consideration that there are other members of their group who face several disadvantages and are located at the bottom of the basement and need solutions that address their intersectional oppressions. These solutions cannot be focused on resolving just one of the several disadvantages they face. When leaders of minority groups or organisations recognise the internal diversity present in their groups, they are able to see the multiple, intersecting, and interrelated oppressions that the members of the group experience and therefore craft solutions that address and represent their co-member’s oppressions and needs.
Yogesh explains that one of the ways in which The G Spot recognises internal diversity is by having representatives of minority groups in their Executive Committee who can identify the intersecting oppressions that members of the organisations face. For instance, Yogesh explains that by having trans voices in the Committee, they can better understand how to tackle the oppressions that transgender members of The G Spot face and create agendas that address their intersecting disadvantages.
Thank you Yogesh for taking the time to share with us how The G Spot addresses these issues and for the work you do with The G Spot to raise awareness about gender and sexuality issues on the Yale-NUS campus and in Singapore.
"Intersectionality" is a very commonly used word today specially in classroom settings and social activism, if you wish to know more about this topic and intersectionality understood as "internal diversity" you can refer to Kimberle Crenshaw's article Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics which you may read here.
To learn more about the mission and events of The G Spot you can visit: https://the-gspot.org/