Context.
This was written as an academic reflection for a survey course on LGBTQ+ studies in Spring 2024. Both the course and the material in this reflection are very personal, however, so I chose to categorize themβand future reflections for this courseβin this folder.
Content Warnings.
Discussions of racism and zionism.
Intersectionality is something I distinctly recognize knowing for a specific amount of time now: since tenth grade, so for about four years now. I learned about it at my literature class for the nearby high school, C.K. McClatchy: arguably a famous high school, but also arguably one with dismal respect for the people who this very topic regards. This felt especially apparent when the place where I learned this was a single-semester course which was exclusive to those who had been accepted into the Humanities and International Sciences program from the mouth of a white gay man. This was the third of the three classes I was required to take for this program, and it was my first semester enrolled in it. I remember feeling alone for multiple reasons: but the most relevant was that the way intersectionality was taught and used in the classroom felt shallow. The way intersectionality was used in the program felt shallow.
Intersectionality is a very strange topic for me to critically study now because it has been with me since my childhood. I remember, at thirteen and fourteen years old, applying for both the arts and later the humanities program at C.K. McClatchy wielding the parts of me that were Asian and transgender like a weapon instead of a flaw, because I both knew I should be proud of this and already knew that people did this to apply for college resumes. I was weaponizing what I already knew: C.K. McClatchy had a deep-rooted problem of racism and discrimination (my freshman year literally began with an assembly and apology from the principal about a racist post from a student (link); this pattern persisted while I attended) and I was desperate enough to enroll that I presented as a diversity hire. Here were several framesβseveral roadsβin which I was a part of; is that not what people wanted?
And, well, sure. They wanted the frames, but they did not want to look any further past them. After I was accepted, it felt wrong to pinhole myself as those frames; when I was in that literature class, the critical lens I used for both the works we read (Asian and Middle Eastern works) and the lens I used towards my own intersectionality when required to mention it seemed clouded. I remember a Jewish student being asked on his opinions of the Zionist characters in The Chosen because he was one of or the only Jewish student in the class. I remember when I walked into the classroom and could count the number of Southeast Asian and Black students in the class on two hands. I could count the number of LGBTQ+ students on one. The number of people who found themselves between both roadsβwell, as far as I knew in that class, it was just me. And no one else could see the exact lens I had that I never pointed out of how strange it felt to hear how my teacherβs husbandβa non-heterosexual, Southeast Asian manβtalked about; no one else could understand the poem I wrote for an assignment about this very experience because the very concept of intersectionality had never been wielded in that class right.
The point I think I have been trying to make from this reflection is that intersectionality is a complicated βprismβ for me. By the time I started writing this reflection, I had already completed all the works for the second week, so I cannot really say I did this only beginning the reading. But this anecdote lingered with me when I first glanced the module, so I chose for it to comprise the majority of this reflection. It shows why intersectionality has always been complicated for me as well as it has also always concerned me, for lack of a better word. I was introduced to it in a classroom that abandoned and bastardized it; I was introduced to it as a child in a classroom that stripped its nuance. It is different to now learn about intersectionality from someone who is conscious of this nuance; it is different to relearn intersectionality from people who see it for all the traits and unmentioned consequences of existing on a lower degree of privilege, for more than a point in diversity. It is cathartic to be able to criticize and disagree with parts of the essays on intersectionality, such as the hierarchical systems used to name the levels of privilege (even if, by a human lens, this is necessary to discuss it). And it is freeing to, for once, be able to learn about intersectionality, even through the most triggering effects of it, in a way that seems to understand meβone of those very people who endures too many accident-prone roads.