Understanding
Externalised Oppression &
Intersecting Identities
Olivier Cormier-Otaño and Chris Kell
Summer School August 2012
Addressing Identities
• A
age
• D
disabilities
• D
desirability/physical attractiveness
• R
religion
• E
ethnicity
• S
socioeconomic status
• S
sexual orientation
• I
intimate relationship
• N
nationality
• G
gender
Rank, Privilege, Power
A/ Definitions
• 1Rank refers to the power we have relative to
one another in relationship, groups, community
and the world.
• 2Some kinds of rank are earned, while others
are acquired through birth or by membership in a
particular race, class, gender, etc
• 3Privilege refers to the benefits
advantages that come from one’s rank
and
Rank, Privilege, Power
B/ Effects
• 1You can’t hide your rank. Others identify you
with your rank because of your signals and
communication style. Other people react to you
as though you are aware of the rank
communicated by your signals
• 2Each of us has an inner sense of our own
rank that is determined by a variety of factors
• 3Most of us are more aware of the areas in
which we feel we lack rank and less aware of the
areas where we are full of rank
Rank, Privilege, Power
C/ Four Types of rank
• 1Social such as race, gender, age, class, religion, sexual
orientation, nationality, education, (dis)abilities, language
etc..
• 2Contextual rank: the place of work, faith group or
social context. An executive person has rank in his/her
company but maybe less in his sports team or at home. Our
contextual rank is fluid because we go from one context to
another
• 3Spiritual rank comes from being connected with
something divine or transcendent that keeps you centred
even in the midst of conflict. Or from a sense of great
conviction, being in a culture that supports spiritual
experiences etc…
• 4Psychological rank is acquired through life experience,
self-awareness, positive parenting, surviving suffering,
receiving love and positive feedback, feeling integrated,
confronting fears.
Insider -Outsider
‘To be in the margin is to be part of the whole but outside the
main body… Living as we did –on the edge- we developed a
particular way of seeing reality. We looked both from the
outside in and from the inside out. We focused our attention
on the centre as well as on the margin. This mode of seeing
reminded us of the existence of a whole universe, a main
body made up of both margin and centre. Our survival
depended on an ongoing public awareness of the
separation between margin and centre and an ongoing
private acknowledgment that we were a necessary vital
part of that whole. This sense of wholeness, impressed upon
our consciousness by the structure of our daily lives, provided
us an oppositional world view – a mode of seeing unknown to
most of our oppressors, that sustained us, aided us in our
struggle to transcend poverty and despair, strengthened our
send of self and solidarity’.
bell hooks Feminist Theory from Margin to Centre 1984
Insider -Outsider
‘As
a 49 year old black, lesbian feminist socialist mother of 2
including a boy and a member of an interracial couple, I
usually find myself part of some group defined as other,
deviant, inferior or just plain wrong. I find I am constantly
being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and
present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the
other parts of self. But this is a destructive and fragmenting
way to live. My fullest concentration of energy is available to
me only when I integrate all the parts of who I am, openly,
allowing power from particular sources of my living to flow
back and forth freely through all my different selves, without
the restrictions of externally imposed definition. Only then can
I bring myself and my energies as a whole to the service of
those struggles which I embrace as part of my living.
Audre Lorde Sister Outsider 1984
Insider -Outsider
‘We exist on multiple levels and such multiple identities allow for
us to have multiple sites of oppression. However oppression
itself serves a purpose in terms of power. Even outside the
aggressive acts that both individuals and states perpetrate,
there are the small everyday actions that multiply to form a
layer of weight upon the lives of those caught in the margins,
whose lives and identities exist outside of the mode of white
heteronormativity. This is where the idea of intersectionality is
useful.
Roshan das Nair and Sonya Thomas
Intersectionality, Sexuality and Psychological Therapies
2012
Intersectionality
• The term Intersectionality was first coined in 1989 (in
sociological and political studies by African American
feminist scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw) but the foray in
psychology or therapy is much more recent - mid
2000’s.
•
•
•
•
Phoenix in 2006 defines intersectionality as aiming to
i- make multiple identities visible
ii- which are relevant in everyday life
iii- this does not happen in a power vacuum
Intersectionality
Elizabeth Cole (2009) provides a framework
on how to apply intersectionality in therapy:
when consider a social category or group
• Who is included within this category?
• What role does inequality play?
• Where are there similarities?
Intersectionality
• Multiple identities can also be conflicting identities.
• We acknowledge that disadvantages and advantages are
subjectivities (rather than objectivities)
• Black (disadvantaged) middle class (advantaged)
or
• White (advantaged) women (disadvantaged)
• One person’s identity may have rank and privilege while
another identity may not. This approach also illustrates the
intersections of privilege and oppression.
Intersectionality
• Intersectionality challenges stereotypes and the complacency
of accepting categories as predetermined, static and objective
truths.
•
A mosaic approach would see three or four identities in ‘A
Black Disabled Gay Man’. It can be argued within the
intersectionality frame of work that this is one identity with
complex internal and external dynamics.
• How do we address multi-faceted issues without fractioning
them into its constituent components (Mc Call 2005).
Good Practice
• Examine your assumptions about what
constitute culture
• Clients cultural/sexual values and identities
cannot necessarily be easily read
• Understand the impact of metaminorities
• Try to dissagregate sex, gender and sexuality.
There is no one single mapping
• GSD are not one group with very similar
experiences
• Support the client’s sexual and relational
choices
Good Practice
• Let the client tell you which identity has the
foreground
or
background
in
different
situations
• Be curious about diversity of experience and
opinion within communities and between them
• White models of psychological health do not
apply to all GSD BME clients (i.e. coming out)
• The issue of interaction between sexuality and
race may not be the client’s presenting issue,
check its relevance tentatively
Good Practice
• Riggs and das Nair recommend that
therapists add to the complexity of the
LGB client rather than take away.