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Comment by kodah | Hacker News Reader

I think they're just saying this occurrence isn't unique and it doesn't look like they approve of it. Many of us identify with our own struggles in deep ways. If you create an opportunity for people to organize around those struggles then people will, because as was said, there is power there. That power is in representation. The problem is generally in the silo'ing of representation. This is, imo, what things like intersectionality begin to address.

We have an entire country now that was founded based on legitimate religious persecution that devolved in the ~200 years since it's founding to go on to oppress others. We can and should do better.

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Ok, and my point is that doing the exact same thing as those people did in the past isn't doing better. You don't fix oppression by moving that oppression to a new group.

Simply pointing out that victimhood has always existed serves no purpose at all in response to my original comment.

"This is, imo, what things like intersectionality begin to address."

How? All intersectionality does is create a competition for the most oppressed. You will never be enough of a victim. Nothing good comes of a society that focuses specifically on how oppressed they are and vies for the most oppressed group or person.

"We have an entire country now that was founded based on legitimate religious persecution"

Name a country where this hasn't happened. There are many where this is still happening and to a further extent than anything in the US.

Ironically, you're right in weird roundabout way that I do not think you fully comprehend. EVERYONE has been a victim of some sort so it's irrelevant and we shouldn't spend one iota more of our short lives trying to discern who the highest victims of our society are. What a waste and it does nothing to improve the supposed oppressed.

Your description of intersectionality is the exact opposite of what it is. It's entire purpose is to show everyone that playing the operation Olympics is a pointless game that no one wins. It's too show that everyone's struggles don't fit into neat little boxes that define them, and show that social problems are multidimensional that don't have simple solutions, and shows that a lot of DEI initiatives are superficial, and likely won't make any real difference.

"everyone that playing the operation Olympics is a pointless game that no one wins"

Except reality has proven you wrong. We've never lived in a time where people are more well fed, have more personal belongings, longer life spans etc.

It is in fact, objectively, not a pointless game.

"operation Olympics" is pretty clearly an autocorrect typo of "oppression Olympics", which makes this response kind of a non-sequitor.

Intersectionality? The ideology famous for having a victim heirarchy so you have an ideological rating of how much of a victim someone is?

Could you link me to the source that describes intersectionality in a way even remotely approximating that? Or where this "victim hierarchy" is detailed? I'd love to calculate my victim score™.

https://medium.com/@burntoakboy/the-hierarchy-of-victimhood-....

What’s missing here is a notion of intersectionality, which explicitly is about how people are not just a singular identity, but an “intersection” of many - some of which may confer privilege, some of which may be discriminated against.

Ignoring this body of work makes the linked article a straw man argument with some cherry picked examples that don’t even make a point (why am I supposed to care that AOC tweets about some people at the exclusion of others?)

You missed the forest for the trees, friend.

There’s not much of a forest there, as far as I can tell. Unless you want to actually make a point?

AOC isnt exactly a shining light of intersectionalism. In fact, she kind of prides herself in tribalism. Consider this tweet: https://mobile.twitter.com/aoc/status/1103163478024601601 Rather than trying to share ground with others she's being reminded that she regularly drowns out other people's voices. She went on to do exactly that after this.

If your point is that not all leftists are intersectionalists and not all people who use intersectionalist words actually have the values, then I'd respond with, "duh".

Intersectionality isn't about telling one person's story or exemplifying one person's pain. It's about showing that these things are interconnected and effect people differently, and ways in which you probably wouldn't expect. It does the absolute opposite of a hierarchy.

Well thats just it. If you're a Muslim female your score is higher than a Muslim male. If you're a gay trans disabled Muslim you're higher than the Muslim woman. Thats how you figure out your victim score(tm).

(I could care less about AOC. She was like 1% of content of the article I posted.)

You keep insisting there's a score or hierarchy, but I've yet to see an example of what that looks like. To me, and clearly others in this thread, the point is that there is no victim hierarchy. Nobody's victimhood, trauma, problems, whatever are any more important than anyone else's.

ctrl+f "intersect"

> 0 results

So to answer my question, no you can't provide a source.

Even if it hadn't been the case that the article you linked failed to mention the topic actually under discussion even a single time, a random right wing ("brexiter") blogger is not a "source" for corroborating claims that intersectional egalitarians have a clear "victim heirarchy".

(And to be explicit, identity politics and intersectionality aren't the same thing, despite the right's habit of using them as meaningless scare words)

Ye gods, not a dreaded right winger! Didn't we throw all those people in camps?

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