The Oxford Dictionary defines intersectionality as “the interconnected nature of social categorisations such as race, class, and gender, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage”. Intersectionality is the acknowledgment that everyone has their own unique experiences of discrimination and oppression and we must consider everything and anything that can marginalise people – gender, race, class, sexual orientation, physical ability, etc. First coined by Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw back in 1989, intersectionality was added to the Oxford Dictionary in 2015 with its importance increasingly being recognised in the world of women’s rights.
The word Intersectionality and the concept of it is extremely new to me. When I learnt the definition of it, I was wondering if it is actually a new concept or if the world just realized that we have been all playing these roles for the longest time. After a little bit of pondering I started to chart a map for myself. I locate myself as a South Asian, Indian American, a multilingual 42-year-old brown-skinned Hindu woman from a patriarchal culture married to an equally brown Indian man, both of us immigrants, born in a middle-class blue-collared family, a mother, a sister, a daughter in law, and a complex trauma survivor. In addition to this, I also locate myself privileged. I am well educated and married to a man who is loving, supportive, and earns enough that I don’t have to work; furthermore, I locate myself as a homemaker, lawyer, trauma educator, peer supporter, and trauma recovery coach.
Picture credit iwda.org.au
After acknowledging how I locate myself, the next question I asked myself is how this has manifested in my life. If I had been living in India, would I be asking this question, or am I asking this question to myself because I reside in the US? To the latter question, I would answer yes. In a world where a lot of us are judged on how we look, it is very important to me that I start to feel comfortable in my own skin.
Growing up in a society that values male children more than female children, I was taught very early on in my childhood that I was privileged, and that my father didn’t distinguish between a male and a female. I believe this is why I had a fawning response growing up. My father put constant pressure on me to always be the best; however, it was his own need to prove that his daughters are the best. He strived to prove that although he didn’t have sons, he had raised excellent offspring who were brilliant in every which way. Being born in a patriarchal society, a majority of Indian women have always been foreshadowed by the men in their life, and I was no exception. As a child growing up in a violent household where the man was dominant, my responses were mostly flight or freeze. As a teenager subjected to objectification and who was always taught that men need only one thing from a woman, I was always on guard but assault happened anyway. My gender is my dominant dimension which has changed how I operated back in India. The gender dimension factor of intersectionality manifested quite early on in my life due to the fact that I was a female child. In a culture where women are taught to be submissive no matter their education, I have always been stuck in the fight-or-flight responses throughout my life. Had I not been a woman, I would still have to be responsible for the family but the expectations would be a little less. There would have been pressure to study as a boy but I would have not been exposed to the patriarchal society’s injustices. But that’s another story and since I cannot see the world in that dimension I cannot address the unknown or the what if’s.
Picture credit www.cultureamp.com
As a brown-skinned Indian immigrant in the United States, I am privileged. I realize that I am in a very comfortable position because of the income our household makes. However, in recent times, I have been judged for my accent and now I realize that I might have been hired in my first job due to the fact that I was a brown-skinned Indian. The stereotype thinking that Indians care only about money and will work crazy hours no matter what job probably is the root cause for this. A brown skin woman sitting at the front desk in an immigration firm says it all. No matter what qualifications I had, it didn’t matter for this job. I was paid a low salary but since it was my first job, I took it up anyway. I didn’t last long in that job because my mind and my body were in the fight and flight response the whole time I was working there. Being a mother and having to take care of a child and a home, as well as being a dutiful daughter-in-law, that Indian woman identity comes into the forefront again and again.
The more I delve into how our identity is defined by how we look, our skin color, our speech, and our culture, the more I am fascinated by the world we live in. Treating trauma cannot be possible unless we look into an individual’s intersectionality. Though the trauma experiences of an individual are unique, the factors of why that trauma has manifested are collective.
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Shravani is a complex trauma survivor and is a Certified Trauma Recovery Coach. She is a Daily Support Call Leader for CPTSD Foundation. She is a group facilitator for PostPartum Support International and Parent Helping Parents. She is a mom of two teenage boys and loves gardening, reading and nature photography.
