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PowerPoint #1 - Week #3 - Intersectional Realities

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Brianna Imerti
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9 views

PowerPoint #1 - Week #3 - Intersectional Realities

Uploaded by

Brianna Imerti
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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WGST 3807A

WEEK #3
INTERSECTIONAL REALITIES
Week #3 - Check In

IF YOU ARE STRUGGLING WITH KEEPING


FOCUSED ON YOUR COURSES OR FACING
OTHER CHALLENGES CONNECT WITH
SUPPORT:
• Academic Support:
https://carleton.ca/csas/online-support/
• PMC: https://carleton.ca/pmc/
• Mental Health Support:
https://carleton.ca/health/2020/health-and-
counselling-services-are-open-virtually/
Week #3 - Check-in
TIPS FOR STUDENT ON SUCCEEDING IN
ONLINE COURSES:

• https://students.carleton.ca/2020/03/top-t
en-tips-to-study-online/

• https://goodcolleges.online/study-tips-for-
success/
SOCIO-HISTORICAL CONTEXT

In the Canadian context we need to consider:

• COLONISATION
• DIVERSE RANGE OF OTHERED WOMEN
• AWARENESS of OUR OWN HISTORY
• INTERSECTIONALITY
• PRIVILEGE
Understanding Gendered Violence
When we seek to understand gendered violence we often struggle
to understand the complexity of what occurred between the people
involved and we too often ignore the context in which that violence
occurred. We need to engage with not JUST “what happened” but to
consider how we understand “what happened”. In particular to
consider what we ask about what happened – do we individualise
the issue or do we seek a social basis for the violence?
Understanding Gendered Violence
Socio-cultural understandings of violence tell us what we need to
consider to understand the violence. Are we taught/encouraged to:
– excuse perpetrators? – by rationalising or justifying their behaviour?
– blame victims? – by asking about provoking the violence, asking why
they don’t leave, claiming they are mentally ill?
– Do we understand violence as about individuals or as being based in
social factors such as gendered, racialized, class-based understandings.
We are going to try to understand that the questions we ask and the
conditions that shape violence are constructed. They make sense
because of our socially-constructed understandings.
LIVED EXPERIENCES

• When we base explanations of gendered violence in


individual experiences, or pathologies/psychologies
without considering social and structural oppressions, we
obscure the social dimensions of people’s lived
experiences.
• When we fail to understand that differently located
people have different experiences of gendered violence
(social & structural), we obscure the reality of their lived
experiences.
LIVED EXPERIENCES

Examining social/structural sources of oppression requires


focusing not on specific incidents of violence but rather to
consider the wider social and historical context and how
that context shapes the occurrence of violence. We will
begin with Intersectionality. Hopefully, you had an
opportunity to review the youtube video.
Intersectionality

Intersectionality is the mutually constitutive


relationship among/between identity categories such
as race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, citizenship,
and dis/ability. There is a hierarchy of such categories
which is maintained/reproduced in everyday life, by
our social institutions and social structures - these
structures and institutions are inter-reliant - the
hierarchy in one institution is reinforced in and by the
others.
Interlocking Systems of Oppression

EX., The historical denial of women access to higher


education was not just based in the educational system - but
supported by the religious institutions that argued that
women’s role was in the home and by labour laws that
limited women’s access to jobs, required women to leave
the paid labour force when they married, and in medical
discourse that argues that too much education was bad for
women and that women were intellectually inferior to men.
Interlocking Systems of Oppression

EX., The racism directed at Indigenous women by the courts


was supported by racialized beliefs embedded in religious
doctrines, a eugenicist science/medical theories,
educational systems that devalued female students and
limited their training to ’gender appropriate’ skills, and a
patriarchal belief system that devalues and denies women a
role as community leaders/authorities and that was
imposed on indigenous communities (e.g., treaty
negotiations ONLY included to male community members.
Interlocking Systems of Oppression

Related to the understanding of intersectionality and


interlocking systems of oppression is an understandings that
those who ‘possess’ valued identity characteristics are
rewarded for being ‘of’ those categories. In a society that
claims to be a meritocracy – their advantages are constructed
as being ‘earned’. In a society with rigid social categories such
as a caste system – advantages are constructed as biologically
based or as ’God’ given. Privilege is constructed as right – the
way things should be – which contributes to maintaining the
social hierarchy.
Privilege

“A quality that emanates from identity characteristics


favoured in the dominant social order (e.g., whiteness)
that function as assets granting their holder unearned
benefits (MacIntosh, 1996: n.p.).”
Privilege is, for the most part, taken for granted -
normalised - and unquestioned and unacknowledged by
those with privilege.
Privilege

For all our claims to believe in equity and fairness - when


those who have been/are othered ask for equal access,
equal time, equal voice, equal respect - there IS often
RESISTANCE AND BACKLASH to change -- not just by
individuals but by the structures and systems that support
that advantage.
Privilege

• Backlash takes many forms -from collective/organised


events such as Neo-Nazi hate rallies to individual and
spontaneous actions such as refusing to share
bathroom space with transgendered women.
• Backlash helps to reveal the reality of the unearned
benefits/advantage conferred by privilege - as people
are faced with challenges to their privilege resist
change.
Privilege
• Privilege is complicated because some of our identities
may provide us with advantage and other aspects with
disadvantage - white people have advantage but a white,
disabled, queer woman also experiences disadvantage.
• Privilege and disadvantage are systemic and are harmful
to all of us - because they distort our relationships with
one another and perpetuate harm. They also condition
our understandings and experiences of gendered violence.
Every day intrusions
So far we’ve talked about in abstract ways about the impacts
of power and privilege on gendered violence. Now we are
going to talk about the impact in more concrete ways.
How does the reality of the gender hierarchy impacts on our
lived experiences? We will consider the safety work we do
in our daily lives and how these are grounded in the
hierarchy of privilege and disadvantage.
Safety Work
Bruchert & Law (2018: 96), quoting Vera-Grey, define safety
work as “[t]he unseen and unacknowledged labour
undertaken to avoid, prevent, or manage harassment.”
We will go into break-out groups to discuss safety work.
Your group needs to submit your discussion for grading.
The guidelines for the submission are on BrightSpace.
Safety Work

• Share with each other (a) the sites where you do safety work (make a
group list) , and (b) the strategies and tactics you use before you enter,
when you are in those spaces, and (if applicable) when you leave those
spaces.
• Prepare a summary of your group discussion. We will share this info in
class you can post it in the chat if you wish. But you must submit a copy
to the dropbox on BrightSpace. You have until Friday to do so – this will
allow you to integrate the class discussion if you wish.
• This counts 10% towards your group activity grade so please make sure
to put all your group members names on the summary.
Safety Work
Discussion
Safety Work Submission Guidelines

This is the first of three group submissions. The two best submissions
will be included in your final grade.
The guidelines for submission are on BrightSpace.
Please ensure that you include the names of ALL your group members
in the submission.

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