Intersectionality is Currently Unavailable — Was It Ever?
Let me say this as loud as I can for the people in the back: BIPOC need spaces free from white people. Point black. Period.
I’ve sat through this entire pandemic listening to the news with varying degrees of incredulity and horror. The optimism that I held so dearly during the short months of quarantined social distancing and now into the days of vaccination is waning, thin and feeble.
My ethics, like so many others, have solidified and shifted into something resembling exclusive rather than inclusive.
I don’t feel the need to defend my hardened sense of being and equity. A series of unfortunate events is the understatement of a decade and justifies for itself the change of heart that my community seems to have now.
As of 2021, I’ve set the intention and am building the discipline for an ethical, sustainable, responsible future. It seems that when you get down to it, even these ideas are not free from the inequity of our society.
Intersectional environmentalism is written as necessary and yet it remains unachievable within our current societal climate. Fashion and beauty, industries built on the backs of women and color and benefit white society, are consistently evaluated through the white gaze. Brands, especially, are offered preferential exposure and opportunities when it comes to whiteness through “Girl Boss Feminism.” All of these are damaging to the Black & Brown Girl psyche and we’re tired.
There are calls for essentialism and minimalism and allyship and justice. Like the lifestyle changes we make as individuals have any bearing on our volatile human response to fear, anger, frustration, and shame.
I hate the lack of implementation. I hate that we have remained loyal to the same people who have made life so much more difficult. I despise the lack of action — true & responsive action that will help heal humanity as a whole. I hate that we have succumbed to an idea of reality over what actually is, our escapism is at an all-time high.
In the words of Tamela Gordon in her article “Breaking Up with Intersectional Feminism,” she is “convinced that we need to divest from white feminism and invest in Black and Brown women” — I agree!
My aversion to the intersectional feminist movement comes from the fact that I’m tired. I’m exhausted all of the time, and I’m especially exhausted around white people. You can still love white people and be exhausted by them, I’ve decided. (I decided with the help of my therapist, actually.)
The paradox of tolerance states in its most basic form that “we must be intolerant of intolerance” and that whenever we are purely tolerant, we merely open ourselves up to be destroyed by the intolerant.
I’m tired of being destroyed. I’m tired of the looming threat of destruction, oppression, and minimization.
This last year has illuminated that to be tolerant in excess is to be intolerant of your values. I am focusing on my healing, on my dharma, on rebuilding my lineage that threatens to be eradicated by whiteness and its creations. It is difficult, almost impossible, to do so in spaces with white people.
I am a Filipina-Hawaiian-American woman who is tired. I am better when I focus on my healing and when I center and consume the creations of other Black, Indigenous, Women of Color. I now put an emphasis on an exclusionary being, with room for inclusion from my white loved ones dependent upon my own energy levels.
This is where 2020 brought me. Maybe this is where it’s brought you, too.
