Is Intersectionality a Religion?

Intersectionality has evolved into a quasi-religious ideology that is spreading rapidly on college campuses and beyond, characterized by dogmatic thinking, a strong in-group and out-group mentality, and a tendency to demonize those who disagree with it

Questions to inspire discussion 

• What is intersectionality?

  —Intersectionality is a framework that examines how multiple marginalized identities intersect and create hierarchies of oppression. It was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw to address the unique discrimination faced by black women. Intersectionality has evolved into a quasi-religious ideology that is spreading rapidly on college campuses and beyond.

• Is intersectionality a religion?

  —Intersectionality shares similarities with religious ideologies, such as a strong moral element, in-group and out-group dynamics, and a desire for control, meaning-making, and community. While it may not be a religion in the classical sense, it has become a secular substitute for religion with its own mythological constructs and structures.

• What are the problems with intersectionality?

  —Intersectionality lacks objectivity, assuming all knowledge comes from a perspective, leaving no space for an objective reality or better and worse ways of accessing it. It also undermines scientific universality by claiming that knowledge is relative and dependent on individual perspectives, rather than being objective and universally applicable.

• How does intersectionality affect society?

  —Intersectionality has become a pervasive ideology that infiltrates various industries and institutions, fueled by a paralyzing fear of being labeled racist or bigoted. It has also created a culture of moral policing and offense-taking on behalf of others, leading to a stifling of open discussion and debate.

• How can we address intersectionality?

  —Intersectionality should be treated like any other religion in a secular society, with no special treatment or assumption of truth based on conviction alone. We should advocate for liberal values and the scientific method, arguing that open dialogue, debate, and the falsification of ideas are essential to progress.

Key Insights 

Critique of Intersectionality's Impact and Consequences

• 🚫 The nucleus of the problem of post-modernism on college campuses lies in gender studies, which is metastasizing throughout universities.
• 🙅‍♂️ The defense mechanisms against criticizing intersectionality are intense, including the "offended card", which silences people from speaking up about the issue.
• 🚨 The ideology of intersectionality is "extraordinarily dangerous" because it allows people to create their own credentials and participate in conversations at the "adult table" without being challenged.
• 🚫 There will never be a great defender of intersectionality because its values are not rationally driven, are almost completely arbitrary, and are completely made up.
• ⬆️ The attempt to create equality by inverting the "pyramid of oppression" often results in a new pyramid with a different group on top, creating a new "priest caste".
• 🚫 The mechanism that allows intersectionality to infiltrate various industries is the fear of being labeled racist, sexist, etc., which overrides rational thinking and creates a paralyzing phobia of being considered bigoted.

• 🤯 The concept of intersectionality is compared to phrenology, a fake science that examines skull shapes, in that both have points of contact with reality but build an unfalsifiable architecture around them.
• 📚 Intersectionality has evolved into a postmodern rooted scholarship that has created a scriptural canon of literature, essentially becoming a new ideology that indoctrinates people into its ideas.
• 💡 Intersectionality is a religion that involves deconstructing established values and norms, including things like "hegemonic masculinity", to pick them apart and bring them down.
• 💡 The opposite of hate is social justice, and the goal of achieving a perfectly non-discriminatory and non-oppressive world can be seen as a form of salvation.

Comparison to Other Ideologies and Religions

• 🤔 I seriously think that the atheism movement was a huge hotbed of becoming a woke religion.
• 🚫 They're excommunicating people, driving purity, judging and burning apostates, which is what's happening in the intersectionality movement.
• 💡 The author argues that far-left ideologues and religious fundamentalists are "really kind of the same thing" in that they prioritize their identity or connection to their beliefs over the liberal process of discussion and debate.
• 🚨 People who've lost religion are looking for it in intersectionality, and it's becoming a movement that's spreading and becoming more normalized.

Psychological and Social Dynamics of Intersectionality

• 🤔 "Science proceeds upon the assumption that it doesn't matter who does the experiment the same results gonna happen reality proceeds according to reality not according to who's engaging with reality."
• 💥 Becoming "woke" is similar to a religious conversion experience, where individuals become emotionally zealous, outspoken, and activist-minded, often for a limited time, similar to the honeymoon phase of falling in love.
• ✨ Elevation is the opposite feeling of disgust, characterized by a sense of moral cleanliness and guilt absolution, which can be a powerful motivator for people's actions.

Characteristics of Intersectionality as a Belief System

• 🚫 They tend to demonize the out-group, especially heretics or blasphemers or anybody who goes too far outside of them, that's dogmatic often structure of belief that threatens it.
• 👥 Intersectionality shares common features with ideologies, including a strong in-group and out-group mentality, and a moral element that divides people into "with us" or "against us" categories.

#Sociology #Cult #DEI #Woke #Intersectionality

XMentions: @HPluckrose @peterboghossian @ConceptualJames @elonmusk

Clips

• 00:00 💡 Three liberal atheists discuss intersectionality as a potential religion, analyzing its origins and principles in understanding overlapping identities and hierarchies of oppression.
  • Three liberal atheists discuss intersectionality as a religion, hosted by conservative groups on campus.
  • Dr. Peter Boghossian, Helen Pluckrose, and Dr. James Lindsay, experts in philosophy, humanities, and physics, discuss intersectionality as a potential religion.
  • Intersectionality, coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, examines how multiple marginalized identities intersect and create hierarchies of oppression, encompassing race, gender, sexuality, disability, and class.
  • Intersectionality involves analyzing overlapping identity groups, such as people of color, women, and the disabled, to understand the smaller segments where these identities intersect.
  • Intersectionality is illustrated through a metaphor of intersecting roads, where individuals can face multiple forms of discrimination, such as gender and race, simultaneously.
  • Intersectionality originated from Kimberlé Crenshaw's work addressing the unique discrimination faced by black women, who were stereotyped as aggressive and sexually aggressive, and were thus excluded from jobs, while black men were not subject to the same stereotype.
• 10:39 💡 Intersectionality shares structural similarities with religion, including moral elements, in-group dynamics, and a desire for control and meaning-making, leading to a lack of objectivity and a dismissive attitude towards outside critics.
  • Religions are meaning-making structures that act as communities organized around moral principles derived from scripture or doctrine, often featuring a mythological or poetic framework that distinguishes them from other ideological mechanisms.
  • Religions and ideologies like intersectionality share similar structures, such as demonizing out-groups and heretics, to provide order, control, and a sense of community and meaning.
  • Intersectionality shares common features with religion, including a strong moral element, in-group and out-group dynamics, and a desire for control, meaning-making, and community.
  • Intersectionality creates an "island epistemology" where its own means of producing knowledge become unfalsifiable, dismissing outside critics as colluding with evil or seeking patriarchal approval.
  • According to standpoint epistemology, individuals with multiple marginalized identities have more unique perspectives and therefore more valid opinions, while those with privilege, like white men, have limited objectivity and should listen to marginalized voices.
  • Intersectionality lacks objectivity, assuming all knowledge comes from a perspective, leaving no space for an objective reality or better and worse ways of accessing it.
• 22:37 💡 Intersectionality undermines scientific universality and shares parallels with religion, using similar mechanisms to maintain beliefs and zealotry, and is incompatible with liberalism.
  • Throwing sodium in water causes an exothermic reaction, regardless of the person's race or gender.
  • Intersectionality undermines scientific universality by claiming that knowledge is relative and dependent on individual perspectives, rather than being objective and universally applicable.
  • Intersectionality shares parallels with religion, using concepts like "privilege" as a form of "original sin" and "wokeness" as a conversion experience, with similar mechanisms for maintaining beliefs and zealotry.
  • Moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt's research on feelings of disgust and elevation suggests that the pursuit of moral purity can evoke a feeling of uplift or "wokeness" that absolves guilt.
  • Intersectionality shares parallels with religious fundamentalism, threatening moral identity and triggering defensive reactions when its beliefs are challenged, similar to how religious communities respond to perceived threats to their moral values and sense of purpose.
  • Intersectionality is not compatible with liberalism, as it demands unquestioning belief and silences dissent, whereas liberalism encourages listening, considering, and testing ideas through open discussion and debate.
• 34:04 🚨 Intersectionality has evolved from a legitimate critique into a quasi-religious ideology that prioritizes identity-based equality over evidence-based reasoning and universal liberalism.
  • Intersectionality is likened to a fake science, such as phrenology, where a self-referential body of literature is built around a kernel of truth, but ultimately becomes untethered to reality and unfalsifiable.
  • Intersectionality, which originated as a legitimate critique of loopholes in discrimination law, has evolved into a postmodern, critical theory-based ideology that has become a kind of scripture, driving a wing of university architecture and indoctrinating people into its ideas.
  • Intersectionality proponents use "Trojan horse terms" by redefining existing words with new, technical meanings that restrict speech and enforce their ideology, making them sound appealing while hiding their true intentions.
  • Intersectionality, rooted in critical theory and post-modernism, has evolved into a quasi-religious ideology that permeates academia and mainstream liberalism, promoting a moral zeitgeist that prioritizes identity-based equality over evidence-based reasoning.
  • Intersectionality has devolved into identity politics, prioritizing group interests and perceptions over universal liberalism, and has lost individuality and shared humanity in the process.
  • Intersectionality is a framework that seeks to deconstruct societal norms and values by identifying and problematizing the dominant "hegemonic" structures, effectively functioning as a religion.
• 45:59 ⚠️ Intersectionality has evolved into a rigid ideology that polices discourse, denies biological differences, and seeks to enforce "equity" through forced equality of outcomes, drawing parallels with religious dogma.
  • Intersectionality has become a rigid, self-referential ideology that punishes dissent and has metastasized from gender studies to other areas of academia, creating a culture of moral policing and offense-taking on behalf of others.
  • Controlling discourse is crucial to shape social reality, as certain ideas or speech can be seen as violent and perpetuate harm, particularly in the context of intersectionality.
  • Intersectionality is likened to a religion where "hate" is the devil, and opposing its narrative is seen as hate-mongering that must be stopped to prevent oppression.
  • The terms "equity" and "equality" are often used interchangeably, but "equity" can also imply forced equality of outcomes, rather than just equal opportunities.
  • Equity, as used in intersectionality, measures equality of outcomes, assuming that any deviation from a 50/50 ratio between men and women in a field, such as software engineering, is proof of sexism.
  • Intersectional feminism and theology share a disturbing parallel with religion in their denial of biological differences, a phenomenon not seen in other fields except perhaps ecology.
• 56:54 ⚠️ Intersectionality is being institutionalized as a dogmatic ideology that's replacing traditional religion, discrediting opposing views, and operating outside of evidence-based reasoning.
  • Intersectionality may not be a religion in the classical sense, but rather a secular substitute for religion, with its own mythological constructs and structures, that people are turning to as a replacement for traditional religious beliefs.
  • Intersectionality is being institutionalized and has become a dogmatic ideology that is driving purity and excommunicating dissenters, regardless of political affiliation.
  • Intersectionality has become a self-validating ideology that discredits opposing views as "privilege-preserving" and "internalized oppression," making it unfalsifiable and impossible to criticize without being accused of reinforcing the very thing being criticized.
  • Intersectionality can be understood and addressed by recognizing its underlying emotional drivers and systems of power, rather than simply dismissing it as inconsistent or hypocritical nonsense.
  • Intersectionality is not a secular ideology because it doesn't operate on a level playing field, instead promoting a model that its proponents are unwilling to defend or prove through legitimate methods.
  • Ideas without evidence to back them up should not be taken seriously and should be dismissed.
• 01:08:39 💡 Intersectionality should be treated like any other religion, subject to scrutiny and debate, and not given special treatment or assumed truth in a secular society that values science, reason, and liberal democracy.
  • Intersectionality should be treated like any other religion in a secular society, with no special treatment or assumption of truth based on conviction alone.
  • The speaker advocates for liberal values and the scientific method, arguing that open dialogue, debate, and the falsification of ideas are essential to progress, and that this process should be trusted and defended against ideologies that prioritize identity and situated knowledge over evidence and reason.
  • We have a proven track record of progress through technological advancements and open communication, and we should continue to stand up for these values without apology or special treatment.
  • Most people value science, reason, and secular liberal democracy, and this majority can push out extremists by demanding evidence and rationality, which intersectionality lacks.
  • The speaker advocates for intellectual diversity and balance in universities, suggesting that students should be exposed to a variety of opinions and ideas, including those from liberals, conservatives, libertarians, and communists.
  • Intersectionality resembles Calvinist theology, aiming to create a utopian society by inverting a pyramid of oppression, but ultimately creating a new hierarchy with a different elite.
• 01:19:55 ⚠️ Intersectionality has evolved into a mainstream ideology with characteristics similar to a secular religion, driving social justice efforts but also silencing dissent and promoting indoctrination.
  • Intersectionality is a form of identity activism that has evolved from postmodernism and critical theory, aiming to address past wrongs and promote social justice, but has become a mainstream ideology that pressures the political left to provide policies and rhetoric that satisfy its demands.
  • Intersectionality can be seen as a moral framework that drives purpose and community, with the goal of achieving a perfectly non-discriminatory and non-oppressive world, akin to a religious concept of salvation.
  • Intersectionality has become a kind of secular religion, with its own canon of scholarly literature and power structures that can silence dissenting voices and make it difficult to have meaningful conversations.
  • Intersectionality is a self-referential system that justifies questionable methods and has become a religion-like ideology that punishes sincere inquiry and promotes indoctrination over dialogue.
  • Intersectionality is not a religion, but it shares similarities with religious ideologies, such as a desire to eradicate evil, a flawed model of the source of inequality, and a reliance on authority figures, which can lead to a form of "biology denialism" and suppression of controversial ideas.
  • Intersectionality has become a pervasive ideology that infiltrates various industries and institutions, fueled by a paralyzing fear of being labeled racist or bigoted, and is driven by a desire for cultural reparations and a perceived need to rectify historical injustices.

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Duration: 1:58:15

WatchUrl: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AvyqUOKhGA

Publication Date: 2024-08-27T16:48:01Z