Intersectionality shuts down constructive debate

The argument

Proponents of this position argue that intersectionality changes what a political conversation is for. In framing human experience through the lens of oppression, it encourages those cast as 'oppressors' to 'check' their privilege, and casts them as immoral and as bigots if they don't. The objection is not to the observation that people occupy different social positions but to the use made of it: once a framework assigns each speaker a standing before they speak, the conversation is being adjudicated rather than had. On this account intersectionality fetishises victimhood, with the most oppressed now holding the most moral authority, and the converse being true of straight cisgendered white men, whose voices are suppressed and who must confess to their privilege. What follows is a change in the criterion of a good argument. In political discourse what is now important is not the content or power of your argument, but characteristics that you did not choose, such as race, sexual orientation and gender identity. Proponents stress the word chosen, since a debate settled by unchosen attributes cannot be won by reasoning, because reasoning is not what is being assessed. This means that the views of 'oppressor' groups are automatically perceived as illegitimate, bigoted and intimately related to the various ways in which they are privileged, which they characterise as undemocratic and illiberal: undemocratic because some citizens' contributions are discounted in advance, and illiberal because the discounting attaches to who they are rather than to what they say. The product is a hierarchy of victimhood, where different groups are in competition with one another for the moral authority and legitimacy to have their opinions heard. This is a total reversal of discrimination rather than an end to it, establishing a new caste system rather than destroying the old one.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Intersectionality does not mean marginalising privilege groups, it only calls for a recognition that people’s experiences are affected by their identity. Its demands are extremely democratic, giving a platform to the perspectives and experiences of others whose voices may not have been heard previously. It may be natural to be defensive when confronting our own privilege, but we need to to overcome discriminatory practices; the fact that people become defensive is evidence of the privilege itself.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The premise describes a practice within some political argument rather than the analytical framework. Intersectionality was set out in legal scholarship as an account of why anti-discrimination law failed claimants facing more than one form of discrimination at once — a descriptive claim about how categories operate, which contains no ranking of moral authority. [Rejecting P2] The counter-argument on record disputes the characterisation, holding that the framework asks for recognition that experience is shaped by identity, not that arguments be assessed by the identity of the speaker. Noting that a perspective has been absent from a discussion is a claim about coverage rather than about the validity of anyone's reasoning. [Rejecting P3] The 'hierarchy of victimhood' is asserted without evidence and does not follow from the premises. That some participants deploy identity to close down disagreement is a fact about those participants, not a property of the analysis, and the same objection could be raised against any framework someone uses badly. [Rejecting C] The caste analogy also fails on its own terms. Caste is hereditary, legally and religiously enforced, and determines occupation, marriage and physical access; nothing described here has any of those features, and the counter's point that discomfort at examining one's own advantages is a poor guide to whether the examination is warranted stands unaddressed.