Intersectionality

Olde Town Augusta

Unique Pink House on 4th Street

Child Support Office on Bay Street

This is a picture of a unique pink house in Olde Town Augusta and a picture of the child support office on Bay Street also in Olde Town Augusta. Both of these edifices represent intersectionality, because they are highly unique, provocative and judged.

Intersectionality is based on judgement and how people are seen in one another’s eyes. There are many facets of identity for each individual in society such as ability, family, age, class, sex, race, religion, major, career but a lot of the time, people are only seen through one of these facets. For instance, if a woman does not get a job because the person hiring is racist and sees that she is black, the interviewer may not see anything about the woman other than the fact that she is black. The interviewer looks past that the woman has graduated with a Biology major, volunteers at the local animal shelter, is a wonderful daughter, and many other qualifying facets of her identity. Christine Ngo from the TedX video felt judged about a comment her friend made after they played soccer together. He said something like, “When we are on the soccer field, I think of you as another soccer player, but when we are hanging out, I think of you as a woman.” Ngo knew that what he said was with good intent, but he still struck her as a complexity of intersectionality.

When people look at the pink house in Olde Town, do they think that a girly woman lives there or a fruity man? Is the person that owns that house judged for having a pink house? Is that the only way they are judged? When people drive past the child support office and see a bunch of men standing outside, do they think that they are a bunch of deadbeat dads? Can these men be judged differently because they are standing in front of the child support office? Can we, in society, look past the initial judgement and see many facets of someone’s identity instead of one? Skip to “Social Construction of Gender.”