Imagining Intersectionality
Preached 1/31/2021 at SouthWest UU in N. Royalton OH
By Rev. Meg Mathieson
Intersectionality. We all know what an intersection is, a place where two roads meet. Take the word “intersection” and turn it into a descriptor, intersectionality points to the places where our identities intersect, as our friend Darius has explained.
The theme this month is “Imagination” and today we are looking at imagining intersectionality. So let’s start by looking at our own identities. And let’s start on the outside and work our way in. So starting with your appearance, your clothing, your hair, what do other people tend to assume about your gender?
I’ve been reading the book “Caste” by Isabel Wilkerson, and I’ll be talking about this more next month, but she argues that we live in a caste system, quite similar to the caste system in India.
One of the similarities that our culture has with the Indian caste system is that there are classes of people, top-down. And we know this, with the higher education and wealthier people at the top. We know that our society places certain genders, certain races, and certain identities above others.
So we have these social classes, with, let’s say men at the top and women at the bottom. But we know it’s really more complicated than that. Even within this top space for men, there’s a ranking. Are you a tall man or a short man? Are you a highly educated man? Are you a wealthy man? Are you a feminine man, a black man… these are things that can pull you lower in the ranks. You know this already. The body that you are in impacts where you are in our social hierarchy.
So let’s imagine these intersections like measuring sticks. For instance, if you are a man, you get to be towards the top of the class hierarchy, or in a higher caste. At the top of the measuring stick.
But there are many measuring sticks and it is very complicated. Because maybe you are a man, let’s say, but on the race measuring stick you are not white. Maybe you are Latino. So that race measuring stick intersects with the gender measuring stick and you are living with, here’s where it gets complex, not just both of those identities, but a multiplication or an exponent of those identities.
I have to apologise if I am using my math terms wrong, thank goodness I wasn’t hired for my math skills! But the point is that when people find themselves in low-caste intersections, the issues do not just add up.
If I am gay and a woman, I don’t then just have the issues of being a woman plus the issues of being gay. They don’t add together and they don’t multiply together, but they become exponential.
Being a woman in a non-feminist country comes with its own issues and problems. Being gay in a country that is not kind to or tolerant of gay people has its own set of problems. When you are both, you not only have the combination of both sets of problems, but you also have a whole new, wildly complex bunch of problems. This is true for all identities. So that it’s important to realize that for instance black men have certain issues in our country. Poor black men have exponentially more complex issues and poor gay black men have exponentially more than that. Not just the number of issues, but the complexity of the issues increase.
It’s the same with privilege. I have never experienced transphobia because I am cisgender. That’s privilege. I have never experienced racism because I am white. That’s also privilege. Those two intersect and at the intersection of my privilege is all the ways that my life is easier because of the privileges that our society gives me. There’s no reason to feel guilty about the privilege that we have, but it is important to note that all of these things together, they are very complicated!
Why are we talking about this on a Sunday morning? What does intersectionality have to do with spirituality? I’m glad you asked! Because it nourishes us spiritually to exercise our compassion. Studies have shown that compassion is like a muscle that must be exercised or it will atrophy. With the theme of imagination, let’s do some compassion exercises by imagining intersectionality.
First, let’s begin by going back to looking at ourselves. Can you see points of intersection in your own privilege? Let’s close our eyes or just soften our gaze as we begin a quiet, focused, internal inquiry.
Do you have an education? Do you come from a middle class background? Are you white? Are you male?
Do people tend to assume positive things about you based on your appearance? Do people tend to assume that you are trustworthy? Intelligent? Kind?
What if you lost these privileges?
Can you imagine walking into a public space, maybe the grocery store, as a young black man in a hoodie? How do people treat you? How do strangers look at you?
Imagine being in the body of a very large black man. People have to look up to meet your eye. How do they treat you? What is the tone of their voice when they speak to you?
Imagine you are a very small, very old woman. You are walking home alone at night. How do people look at you? How are you treated? How do you feel in that small body?
Imagine that your car has broken down on the side of the road and you don’t have your phone. You are trying to wave down passing traffic. How does this feel in the body of a very small very old woman? How does this feel in the body of a very large black man? What if your gender was indeterminable to people? How do they look at you? Does anyone stop their car to help you? Do you feel grateful? Do you feel scared of them?
Now allow yourself to tap into your innate compassion. Let the warm feeling of compassion flow through the chakras of your body, especially feeling it as a light in your sacral chakra and your heart chakra. Cultivate compassion, exercise your compassion muscle. Feel it physically in your body.
And now extend this physical feeling of compassion outward from your body as if it were a tangible, physical thing, let it extend outward from your chest, from your heart, to the world around you. Imagine a deep purple bubble of compassion around you, and in your mind’s eye, see it getting larger and larger, as it encompasses everyone in your neighborhood, your town, the state of Ohio, the United States, eventually the planet.
We live in different situations, in different societies, and in very different bodies and minds, but we are one. Feel the oneness of compassion and love in your purple bubble. Feel its nurturing and equalizing force as every human and every creature is touched by the compassion that is flowing from you.
Let’s stay here for a moment. Breathing compassion in and out. Recognizing that although we believe that all people should be treated equally, we are not, we are not all treated equally. But we deserve to be. We all deserve happiness, love, and compassion. Because of our inherent worth and dignity.
Now, begin to soften and shrink your purple bubble back into yourself. Bring it back smaller and smaller until it is surrounding your heart. Envision your physical heart, bathed in compassion and love. Leave the bubble right there. May it exist there during the week as you go about your day. You can extend this compassion to others at any time, but for now, keep feeding compassion to yourself. Let it feed you, let it inform you.
Slowly begin to come back to the here and now, wiggling fingers and toes to ground yourself in your body once again.
Preached 1/31/2021 at SouthWest UU in N. Royalton OH
By Rev. Meg Mathieson
Intersectionality. We all know what an intersection is, a place where two roads meet. Take the word “intersection” and turn it into a descriptor, intersectionality points to the places where our identities intersect, as our friend Darius has explained.
The theme this month is “Imagination” and today we are looking at imagining intersectionality. So let’s start by looking at our own identities. And let’s start on the outside and work our way in. So starting with your appearance, your clothing, your hair, what do other people tend to assume about your gender?
I’ve been reading the book “Caste” by Isabel Wilkerson, and I’ll be talking about this more next month, but she argues that we live in a caste system, quite similar to the caste system in India.
One of the similarities that our culture has with the Indian caste system is that there are classes of people, top-down. And we know this, with the higher education and wealthier people at the top. We know that our society places certain genders, certain races, and certain identities above others.
So we have these social classes, with, let’s say men at the top and women at the bottom. But we know it’s really more complicated than that. Even within this top space for men, there’s a ranking. Are you a tall man or a short man? Are you a highly educated man? Are you a wealthy man? Are you a feminine man, a black man… these are things that can pull you lower in the ranks. You know this already. The body that you are in impacts where you are in our social hierarchy.
So let’s imagine these intersections like measuring sticks. For instance, if you are a man, you get to be towards the top of the class hierarchy, or in a higher caste. At the top of the measuring stick.
But there are many measuring sticks and it is very complicated. Because maybe you are a man, let’s say, but on the race measuring stick you are not white. Maybe you are Latino. So that race measuring stick intersects with the gender measuring stick and you are living with, here’s where it gets complex, not just both of those identities, but a multiplication or an exponent of those identities.
I have to apologise if I am using my math terms wrong, thank goodness I wasn’t hired for my math skills! But the point is that when people find themselves in low-caste intersections, the issues do not just add up.
If I am gay and a woman, I don’t then just have the issues of being a woman plus the issues of being gay. They don’t add together and they don’t multiply together, but they become exponential.
Being a woman in a non-feminist country comes with its own issues and problems. Being gay in a country that is not kind to or tolerant of gay people has its own set of problems. When you are both, you not only have the combination of both sets of problems, but you also have a whole new, wildly complex bunch of problems. This is true for all identities. So that it’s important to realize that for instance black men have certain issues in our country. Poor black men have exponentially more complex issues and poor gay black men have exponentially more than that. Not just the number of issues, but the complexity of the issues increase.
It’s the same with privilege. I have never experienced transphobia because I am cisgender. That’s privilege. I have never experienced racism because I am white. That’s also privilege. Those two intersect and at the intersection of my privilege is all the ways that my life is easier because of the privileges that our society gives me. There’s no reason to feel guilty about the privilege that we have, but it is important to note that all of these things together, they are very complicated!
Why are we talking about this on a Sunday morning? What does intersectionality have to do with spirituality? I’m glad you asked! Because it nourishes us spiritually to exercise our compassion. Studies have shown that compassion is like a muscle that must be exercised or it will atrophy. With the theme of imagination, let’s do some compassion exercises by imagining intersectionality.
First, let’s begin by going back to looking at ourselves. Can you see points of intersection in your own privilege? Let’s close our eyes or just soften our gaze as we begin a quiet, focused, internal inquiry.
Do you have an education? Do you come from a middle class background? Are you white? Are you male?
Do people tend to assume positive things about you based on your appearance? Do people tend to assume that you are trustworthy? Intelligent? Kind?
What if you lost these privileges?
Can you imagine walking into a public space, maybe the grocery store, as a young black man in a hoodie? How do people treat you? How do strangers look at you?
Imagine being in the body of a very large black man. People have to look up to meet your eye. How do they treat you? What is the tone of their voice when they speak to you?
Imagine you are a very small, very old woman. You are walking home alone at night. How do people look at you? How are you treated? How do you feel in that small body?
Imagine that your car has broken down on the side of the road and you don’t have your phone. You are trying to wave down passing traffic. How does this feel in the body of a very small very old woman? How does this feel in the body of a very large black man? What if your gender was indeterminable to people? How do they look at you? Does anyone stop their car to help you? Do you feel grateful? Do you feel scared of them?
Now allow yourself to tap into your innate compassion. Let the warm feeling of compassion flow through the chakras of your body, especially feeling it as a light in your sacral chakra and your heart chakra. Cultivate compassion, exercise your compassion muscle. Feel it physically in your body.
And now extend this physical feeling of compassion outward from your body as if it were a tangible, physical thing, let it extend outward from your chest, from your heart, to the world around you. Imagine a deep purple bubble of compassion around you, and in your mind’s eye, see it getting larger and larger, as it encompasses everyone in your neighborhood, your town, the state of Ohio, the United States, eventually the planet.
We live in different situations, in different societies, and in very different bodies and minds, but we are one. Feel the oneness of compassion and love in your purple bubble. Feel its nurturing and equalizing force as every human and every creature is touched by the compassion that is flowing from you.
Let’s stay here for a moment. Breathing compassion in and out. Recognizing that although we believe that all people should be treated equally, we are not, we are not all treated equally. But we deserve to be. We all deserve happiness, love, and compassion. Because of our inherent worth and dignity.
Now, begin to soften and shrink your purple bubble back into yourself. Bring it back smaller and smaller until it is surrounding your heart. Envision your physical heart, bathed in compassion and love. Leave the bubble right there. May it exist there during the week as you go about your day. You can extend this compassion to others at any time, but for now, keep feeding compassion to yourself. Let it feed you, let it inform you.
Slowly begin to come back to the here and now, wiggling fingers and toes to ground yourself in your body once again.