You said, “a good understanding of intersectionality might thus help improve the effectiveness of the community overall”. But I am left wondering if a “good understanding” of intersectionality is even possible, since the term seems vague and poorly-defined.
Does/should “intersectionality” refer specifically to the idea that different people encounter different overlapping types of discrimination? Or does “intersectionality” merely mean that sometimes different issues overlap, in general, and it’s nice to consider that? If it’s a specific social-justice idea about overlapping oppression, maybe that’s relevant to making the EA community diverse and welcoming, but it wouldn’t be relevant to the calculations about what cause areas are most effective (like your animal welfare example). On the other hand, if it just refers to the general idea that sometimes things overlap, I’m not sure we need a special word for that phenomenon, or why this basic fact needs to be called a “Theory”.
Where is the argument that intersectionality (either as it applies to social justice issues, or in the general overlapping case) is actually a significant concern? There’s no attempt to quantify how much the “whole is greater than the sum of the parts”. If the whole is just 1% greater than the sum of the parts, maybe it’s no big deal and can be safely ignored when making rough estimates. (ie, if we magically overcame all sexism to eliminate anti-women bias, and also all racism to overcome anti-minority bias, how much anti-minority-women bias would be left? Maybe “intersectional” anti-minority-women bias is 50% or more of the problem, but maybe it’s very small relative to the first-order problems of “non-intersectional” racism and sexism. I’ve never seen anyone try to explore whether “intersectionality” is a huge deal or just a minor epicycle in the social-justice universe.)
Finally, to be honest, when I’ve heard people using the term “intersectional”, they’ve often used it like this:
“We all face different problems, and those might appear to be separate political issues (disability rights, gay rights, labor activism, etc). But actually, although none of us face EVERY form of oppression, all of us face several forms. Collectively, we should realize that we’re all in this together—we form a natural alliance of the collective oppressed versus the collective oppressors. Therefore, it’s naïve to have a non-political non-partisan movement (like your cute little disability-rights lobbying group) independent from the totalizing political crusade of mainstream social-justice leftism. Instead, we should all band together as part of an “intersectional struggle”—everyone support social-justice politics, then social justice politics will win, and then our political alliance will help disband ALL the forms of oppression. The point is, it’s better to join together in one big social-justice political alliance, and everyone take the party line on all important issues, rather than wasting our time on lots of little independent non-political efforts that don’t support each other.”
I recognize that’s a long paragraph, but that’s honestly the main context in which I’ve heard people use “intersectional”. The political logic is reasonable enough, I suppose, if a bit cynical and realpolitik. But I think that joining a grand political alliance would be exactly the wrong thing for effective altruism at this time—the “neutrality” of EA (both politically and in the sense of “cause neutrality”) is IMO one of effective altruism’s greatest virtues, which helps it attract smart people, focus clearly on what’s true & important, make progress in areas that other groups can’t, etc. So, even if the idea of “things sometimes overlap” turns out to need a technical term, I’d personally be very hesitant to use the word “intersectionality”, until I could be convinced that the association between “intersectionality” and ”...therefore we should join a totalizing political crusade” was just a quirk of my own experience and not an association that any other people share.
First thing is that, if intersectionality seems vague or poorly defined, then that’s likely a fault of my writing rather than the idea. To clarify—“intersectionality” is the idea that different individuals encounter overlapping types of disadvantage, and that these disadvantages combine in ways cannot be easily explained by looking at either kind of disadvantage in isolation. This means that finding solutions to issues at the intersection of several axes of disadvantage often requires explicitly considering how these considerations interact.
Its (potential) relevance to EA comes from the fact that a lot of EA cause areas deal with multiple axes of disadvantage in tandem; the use of ‘intersectionality’ could help to bring conceptual clarity to these discussions. To return to the animal welfare example, evelyciara has highlighted that there have been several recent posts about non-human animals being neglected on several axes simultaneously. Given the multiple disadvantages faced by future animals, intersectionality predicts that we will need to come up with novel solutions to protect them. Just trying to do (a) protect the long-term future, and (b) promote animal welfare is unlikely to achieve this goal. Guy Raveh highlights a similar example below in global health. I think the language of intersectionality is a neat way to explain what’s going on here, and why we might need to bring a fresh approach to these issues.
I don’t think animal welfare is the only cause area where intersectionality could bring conceptual clarity and improve our thinking. For example, engaging with how best to advance the welfare of digital people might benefit from an intersectional framing. It seems plausible that digital societies might end up with similar social ills—status games, inequality, ‘poverty’, etc—that we currently suffer. However, it’s unlikely that standard EA development strategy (read: health interventions) would be at all useful in dealing with these issues. Again, that’s because this is an intersectional issue, with multiple disadvantages (digital, poor) combining to create novel problems. If you agree with me that this seems obvious, then I think our disagreement has more to do with the use of the particular term ‘intersectionality’. This brings me to my next point.
Even if intersectionality comes with intellectual baggage, I don’t think we should shy away from using the term if it improves clarity. EAs already use terms that come with significant ideological baggage, because they’re useful and help to express important ideas. The term ‘nonhuman animals’ is a good example here—EAs use it to indicate that the moral distinction between the two is illusory. But this term (and much of the language around veganism) is morally charged, indicating a set of beliefs is perceived by many outside of EA as an indictment of meat-eaters. Alternatively, EAs on the forum often discuss political liberalism or cosmopolitanism, and many leading EAs explicitly identify as neoliberals. All three terms are highly politically charged, identifying a fuzzily defined set of policy stances that are controversial on both sides of the political spectrum. Nonetheless, in all of the cases I’ve just outlined, we use these ideas because they’re a helpful way of concisely explaining our ideas. I don’t think intersectionality is different in any unique way from the terms I’ve just described. I now think that this comment is right, inasmuch as it’s worth starting a new language game given the baggage that comes with the term.
I think this covers most of your comments, but please let me know if there’s anything I can clarify. I expect our crux of disagreement is on how useful it is to introduce a politically charged term like intersectionality into EA discourse, and I’m happy to engage more on that topic.
There’s no attempt to quantify how much the “whole is greater than the sum of the parts”. If the whole is just 1% greater than the sum of the parts, maybe it’s no big deal and can be safely ignored when making rough estimates. (ie, if we magically overcame all sexism to eliminate anti-women bias, and also all racism to overcome anti-minority bias, how much anti-minority-women bias would be left? Maybe “intersectional” anti-minority-women bias is 50% or more of the problem, but maybe it’s very small relative to the first-order problems of “non-intersectional” racism and sexism. I’ve never seen anyone try to explore whether “intersectionality” is a huge deal or just a minor epicycle in the social-justice universe.)
this might be a nitpick, and i generally agree with your comment, but i think that question—whether there’d be any anti-minority-women bias left after eliminating anti-women and anti-minority bias—isn’t really the right thing to ask. if the old view was that anti-minority-women bias is anti-minority bias plus anti-women bias, the intersectional view would be closer to multiplying the two factors. in that case, anti-minority-women bias would still go to zero if the other two were eliminated. it might be better to ask something like, “how much total anti-minority-women bias is there at various levels of anti-minority and anti-women bias?”
You said, “a good understanding of intersectionality might thus help improve the effectiveness of the community overall”. But I am left wondering if a “good understanding” of intersectionality is even possible, since the term seems vague and poorly-defined.
Does/should “intersectionality” refer specifically to the idea that different people encounter different overlapping types of discrimination? Or does “intersectionality” merely mean that sometimes different issues overlap, in general, and it’s nice to consider that? If it’s a specific social-justice idea about overlapping oppression, maybe that’s relevant to making the EA community diverse and welcoming, but it wouldn’t be relevant to the calculations about what cause areas are most effective (like your animal welfare example). On the other hand, if it just refers to the general idea that sometimes things overlap, I’m not sure we need a special word for that phenomenon, or why this basic fact needs to be called a “Theory”.
Where is the argument that intersectionality (either as it applies to social justice issues, or in the general overlapping case) is actually a significant concern? There’s no attempt to quantify how much the “whole is greater than the sum of the parts”. If the whole is just 1% greater than the sum of the parts, maybe it’s no big deal and can be safely ignored when making rough estimates. (ie, if we magically overcame all sexism to eliminate anti-women bias, and also all racism to overcome anti-minority bias, how much anti-minority-women bias would be left? Maybe “intersectional” anti-minority-women bias is 50% or more of the problem, but maybe it’s very small relative to the first-order problems of “non-intersectional” racism and sexism. I’ve never seen anyone try to explore whether “intersectionality” is a huge deal or just a minor epicycle in the social-justice universe.)
Finally, to be honest, when I’ve heard people using the term “intersectional”, they’ve often used it like this:
I recognize that’s a long paragraph, but that’s honestly the main context in which I’ve heard people use “intersectional”. The political logic is reasonable enough, I suppose, if a bit cynical and realpolitik. But I think that joining a grand political alliance would be exactly the wrong thing for effective altruism at this time—the “neutrality” of EA (both politically and in the sense of “cause neutrality”) is IMO one of effective altruism’s greatest virtues, which helps it attract smart people, focus clearly on what’s true & important, make progress in areas that other groups can’t, etc. So, even if the idea of “things sometimes overlap” turns out to need a technical term, I’d personally be very hesitant to use the word “intersectionality”, until I could be convinced that the association between “intersectionality” and ”...therefore we should join a totalizing political crusade” was just a quirk of my own experience and not an association that any other people share.
Thanks for your message Jackson. A few thoughts:
First thing is that, if intersectionality seems vague or poorly defined, then that’s likely a fault of my writing rather than the idea. To clarify—“intersectionality” is the idea that different individuals encounter overlapping types of disadvantage, and that these disadvantages combine in ways cannot be easily explained by looking at either kind of disadvantage in isolation. This means that finding solutions to issues at the intersection of several axes of disadvantage often requires explicitly considering how these considerations interact.
Its (potential) relevance to EA comes from the fact that a lot of EA cause areas deal with multiple axes of disadvantage in tandem; the use of ‘intersectionality’ could help to bring conceptual clarity to these discussions. To return to the animal welfare example, evelyciara has highlighted that there have been several recent posts about non-human animals being neglected on several axes simultaneously. Given the multiple disadvantages faced by future animals, intersectionality predicts that we will need to come up with novel solutions to protect them. Just trying to do (a) protect the long-term future, and (b) promote animal welfare is unlikely to achieve this goal. Guy Raveh highlights a similar example below in global health. I think the language of intersectionality is a neat way to explain what’s going on here, and why we might need to bring a fresh approach to these issues.
I don’t think animal welfare is the only cause area where intersectionality could bring conceptual clarity and improve our thinking. For example, engaging with how best to advance the welfare of digital people might benefit from an intersectional framing. It seems plausible that digital societies might end up with similar social ills—status games, inequality, ‘poverty’, etc—that we currently suffer. However, it’s unlikely that standard EA development strategy (read: health interventions) would be at all useful in dealing with these issues. Again, that’s because this is an intersectional issue, with multiple disadvantages (digital, poor) combining to create novel problems. If you agree with me that this seems obvious, then I think our disagreement has more to do with the use of the particular term ‘intersectionality’. This brings me to my next point.
Even if intersectionality comes with intellectual baggage, I don’t think we should shy away from using the term if it improves clarity. EAs already use terms that come with significant ideological baggage, because they’re useful and help to express important ideas. The term ‘nonhuman animals’ is a good example here—EAs use it to indicate that the moral distinction between the two is illusory. But this term (and much of the language around veganism) is morally charged, indicating a set of beliefs is perceived by many outside of EA as an indictment of meat-eaters. Alternatively, EAs on the forum often discuss political liberalism or cosmopolitanism, and many leading EAs explicitly identify as neoliberals. All three terms are highly politically charged, identifying a fuzzily defined set of policy stances that are controversial on both sides of the political spectrum. Nonetheless, in all of the cases I’ve just outlined, we use these ideas because they’re a helpful way of concisely explaining our ideas. I don’t think intersectionality is different in any unique way from the terms I’ve just described.I now think that this comment is right, inasmuch as it’s worth starting a new language game given the baggage that comes with the term.I think this covers most of your comments, but please let me know if there’s anything I can clarify. I expect our crux of disagreement is on how useful it is to introduce a politically charged term like intersectionality into EA discourse, and I’m happy to engage more on that topic.
this might be a nitpick, and i generally agree with your comment, but i think that question—whether there’d be any anti-minority-women bias left after eliminating anti-women and anti-minority bias—isn’t really the right thing to ask. if the old view was that anti-minority-women bias is anti-minority bias plus anti-women bias, the intersectional view would be closer to multiplying the two factors. in that case, anti-minority-women bias would still go to zero if the other two were eliminated. it might be better to ask something like, “how much total anti-minority-women bias is there at various levels of anti-minority and anti-women bias?”