Intersectionality Has Hit The Stop Sign

The favorite theory over how all oppression stems from the same source is having trouble these days

Intersectionality is a favorite term among various forms of leftist activists. The overly simplified version of this is that all forms of “oppression” intersect in such a way that they’re all highly related.

Basically, it’s a way for activists to be able to maintain relevance regardless of the issue of the day. Feminists can jump on the Black Lives Matter bandwagon and still convince donors they’re fighting for the same cause. Things like that.

However, intersectionality is running smack dab into a wall right about now.

There’s absolutely no doubt that by now you’ve heard of the controversy about transwomen in women’s sports. If you haven’t, buckle up.

See, there have been a number of people who were born men and competed in sports where they were less than spectacular. Some of these people ranked really low and weren’t likely to accomplish much of anything in their athletic careers. Then they announced they identified as female, went through a few hoops, and started competing in women’s sports.

Where many of them excelled.

Needless to say, some women are less than enthused with having to share the field with people who were born men. They consider it an affront to feminism to have men competing against them.

On the flip side, transwomen argue that they’re actually women and deserve to compete in women’s sports.

That intersection in intersectionality is getting awfully crowded, ain’t it?

Of course, this becomes an impossible choice worthy of Soloman himself. Just who do you choose to oppress with your decision. If you ban transwomen from competing, you’re oppressing LGBT athletes. If you allow them to continue competing, you’re oppressing women athletes.

And let’s be clear, there are solid arguments on either side, too, which is what makes this almost comical.

First, let’s get into the transwomen thing. I have no problem with treating transwomen as women. I do think we need to establish a point in which one can be considered a woman for all intents and purposes, mostly because otherwise, some burly biker dude with a full beard could claim he’s a woman whenever convenient.

But I have no problem accepting that someone who actually does identify as a woman should be thought of as female. There’s actually one study that shows the brains of trans-people more closely resemble the brains of the gender they identify as, rather than their birth gender. That suggests there’s really something going on here.

Beyond that, though, I have no issue with the idea of treating transwomen as women, which means opening things up to them that are generally for women. Especially if we’ve established a point where they can truly be considered women objectively and represent no greater threat to women than any other woman, as a general rule.

Yeah, that’s a lot easier to write than it is to implement.

But let’s now get into the flip side of this, and that’s the issue women are running into.

In the NCAA, a man can’t just decide he’s a woman and flip over to women’s sports. That’s not how it works. They have to sit out a year and receive hormone treatment that suppresses their testosterone production. This, in theory, levels the playing field.

The problem is, it really doesn’t. These are people who were born male and generally trained for years and years with a normal testosterone level, building muscle and increasing bone density. A single year with a lower dose of testosterone isn’t going to reverse all of that.

At the end of that year, these athletes take the field with every advantage one could possibly think of.

It’s akin to a girl starting steroids about the time puberty starts and continuing on for years until they reach high school or college, then knocking off for a year while still engaging in intense training so as to maintain as much of that muscular advantage as possible.

We’re not talking about a fair fight here.

And the problem for the intersectionality crowd here is that now they have to pick a winner. No matter who wins, though, someone else loses and not because of the inherent tyranny of straight white men. Oh no, this is all on the intersectionality crowd.

See, white men know that there’s absolutely no winning in this one. Sure, we’ll offer our opinions. Hell, there are probably white men who will be part of this decision.

Yet whoever decides can point to intersectional activists’ own words to defend their position. They’re not being oppressive, they’re trying to be inclusive according to all these activists.

And no matter what happens, intersectional activists will be battling one another on this for ages.

The funny thing? I suspect the pro-trans crowd will win out, thus alienating a lot of women. This may be a serious blow to feminism as a movement by dividing it and sending many feminists away.

And this is why intersectionality has always been stupid. The idea that all forms of “oppression” somehow intersect so they all have common cause has always been stupid, in part because everything is more complicated than that.

The truth is that addressing any oppression in the United States—and I hate that term being applied only because what happens here is often relatively minor compared to what happens in so many other places—needs to be done on a much smaller level. Address the issue as the issue. If police in Minneapolis are using excessive force, then address that problem directly. Then move onto the next issue.

At that point, you can suss out the issue and discuss it more in-depth and maybe find solutions.

But intersectionality is nothing more than a smokescreen. It’s a way for activists to make every issue about themselves. It allows the grifters to pretend that George Floyd’s death was about them and not any issues with the local police department. The problem is, their grifters are so damn good at convincing people they’re sincere that no one calls them on it.

Now, though, this is an issue that I don’t think the grifters can actually win, and it’s going to be glorious to watch the in-fighting.