social justice = › the full participation and inclusion of all people in society, together with...

Theoretical Perspectives

For Social Justice

Refresher: What is Social Justice?

SOCIAL JUSTICE =

› The full participation and inclusion of all people in society, together with the promotion and protection of their legal, civil, and human rights.

Refresher: What is Social Justice?

THE AIM/GOAL OF SOCIAL JUSTICE =

› To achieve a just and equitable society where all share in the prosperity of that society.

› Pursued by individuals and groups through collaborative social action.

Refresher: What is meant by Theory?

THEORY =

› The analysis of a set of facts in their relation to one another.

› Abstract, rational thought.

Epistemology

EPISTEMOLOGY =

› The study of how we know or gain knowledge (how we know what we know).

› Example: Feminist epistemology refers to the way feminists as a whole have constructed alternative forms of knowledge and self-expression.

The Theories = The Lenses

Anti-Racist Theory

Queer Theory

Feminist Theory

Intersectionality

The Theories = The Lenses

Anti-Racist Theory

Queer Theory

Feminist Theory

Intersectionality

What is racism?

Describe how race/ethnicity/ heritage and culture has

impacted your life.

Anti-Racist Theory

RACISM =

1. A belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human beings determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own “race” is superior and has the right to rule others.

2. A policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such a doctrine; discrimination.

3. Hatred or intolerance of another race or other races.

Anti-Racist Theory

ANTI-RACISM =

› Includes beliefs, actions, movements, and policies adopted or developed to oppose racism.

› The concept of anti-racism is based in theory and practice on action.

Anti-Racist Theory

ANTI-RACISM =

› In general, anti-racism is intended to promote an egalitarian society in which people do not face discrimination on the basis of their race/ethnicity, however defined.

What are some traits/

characteristics of being anti-

racist?

Anti-Racist Theory

ANTI-RACIST THEORY/ CRITICAL RACE THEORY =

› Anti-racist Theory analyzes/critiques racism and how it operates, and this theory provides a basis for taking action to eliminate racism.

Anti-Racist Theory

ANTI-RACIST THEORY: THE UNDERSTANDINGS =

› Understanding race and racism is rooted in understanding the experience of racialized people.

› This does not mean looking at difference or "the other," which often happens in a multicultural approach where we celebrate difference with song, dance, and food.

Anti-Racist Theory

ANTI-RACIST THEORY: THE UNDERSTANDINGS =

› Understanding racism involves becoming aware of how "race" and racism affects the lived experience of people of colour and Aboriginal people, as well as becoming aware of how white people participate, often unknowingly, in racism.

Anti-Racist Theory

ANTI-RACIST THEORY: THE ACTIVE PROCESS =

› Anti-racism is the active process of identifying, challenging, and changing the values, structures, and behaviors that perpetuate systemic racism.

Anti-Racist Theory

ANTI-RACIST THEORY: “BIRTHDAY” =

› Emerged in a response to feminist and civil rights movements around 1960s-1970s.

Anti-Racist Theory

ANTI-RACIST THEORY: ITS CRITIQUE =

› It critiques traditional feminists who constructed "race" as one category, assumed women's experiences were universal, ignored the individual experiences of women, and did not look at the interconnection of racism and sexism.

Anti-Racist Theory

ANTI-RACIST THEORY: THE CHALLENGE =

› For anti-racist feminists/activists the starting point was challenging racism instead of challenging patriarchy.

Anti-Racist Theory

A FEW KEY THEORISTS =

› bell hooks › Sherene Razack › Himani Bannerji

In your own words, describe Anti-racist Theory.

Activity:Integrated Prom+ Street Calculus

Assignment:Anti-Racism

Readings

VIDEO CLIPS

News https://

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWhPigzv2Vc

The Prom! https://

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDla-r2uj7U

The Theories = The Lenses

Anti-Racist Theory

Queer Theory

Feminist Theory

Intersectionality

What does queer mean?

Queer Theory

WHAT IS QUEER? =

› Think of queer as an umbrella term.

› It includes anyone who: a) wants to identify as queer and b) who feels somehow outside of the societal

norms in regards to gender, sexuality or/and even politics.

Queer Theory

WHAT IS QUEER? =

› This, therefore, could include/queer is: the straight ally who marches during

pride the conservative lesbian the trans person who highly values

queer theory concepts and would rather not identify with any particular label

Queer Theory

QUEER INLCUDES/IS =

› the gender fluid bisexual › the gender fluid heterosexual › the questioning LGBTQIA (Lesbian, gay,

bisexual, transgender, questioning, intersex, and asexual+) person

› the person who just doesn’t feel like they quite fit in to societal norms and wants to bond with a community over that

Queer Theory

QUEER THEORY: “DATE OF BIRTH” =

› A brand-new branch of study or theoretical speculation; it has only been named as an area since about 1991.

Queer Theory

QUEER THEORY’S LGBT + FEMINIST ROOTS =

› It grew out of gay/lesbian (LGBT) studies a discipline which itself is very new, existing in any kind of organized form only since about the mid-1980s.

› Gay/lesbian studies, in turn, grew out of feminist studies and feminist theory.

Queer Theory

QUEER THEORY: FEMINIST CHALLENGES =

› Builds both upon feminist challenges to the idea that gender is part of the essential self.

› Gender, according to feminist theorists, is an unequally created social construct which is shaped by other factors such as "race", class, heterosexism etc..

Queer Theory

QUEER THEORY: LGBTQI EXAMINATIONS =

› Also builds upon gay/lesbian studies' close examination of the socially constructed nature of sexual acts and identities, that is, if challenges the social constructs which define the idea of sexuality as an act and as an identity.

Queer Theory

QUEER THEORY: “NORMAL” VS. “DEVIANT” =

› Whereas gay/lesbian studies focused its inquiries into "natural" and "unnatural" behavior with respect to homosexual behavior, Queer Theory expands its focus to encompass any kind of sexual activity or identity that falls into normative and/or deviant categories.

Queer Theory

QUEER THEORY: MISMATCHES =

› Focuses on mismatches between sex, gender, and desire.

› It has been associated most prominently with lesbian and gay subjects, but analytic framework also includes such topics as cross-dressing, intersexism, gender ambiguity and gender-corrective surgery.

Queer Theory

WHAT IS QUEER THEORY: DEBUNKING =

› Queer Theory's debunking of stable sexes, genders, and sexualities develops out of the specifically lesbian and gay reworking of the figuring of identity as a constellation of multiple and unstable positions.

Queer Theory

QUEER THEORY, in other words =

› Looks at anything that falls into normal and/or deviant categories specifically sexual activities and identities and how they function in the world and how they are socially constructed and labeled as normal or deviant.

Queer Theory

A FEW QUEER THEORISTS =

› Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick› Judith Butler› Gloria Anzaldúa

In your own words, describe Queer Theory.

Activity: Queer Theory

Flashcards

Assignment:Queer Theory

Readings

The Theories = The Lenses

Anti-Racist Theory

Queer Theory

Feminist Theory

Intersectionality

Feminist Theory

FEMINISM =

› The belief in and the movement for the social, political, and economic equality of all men and women (of all human beings).

› The movement for social, political and economic change, and access to information to achieve these goals.

Feminist Theory

FEMINISTS =

› Each and every politically and socially conscious women, man or another gender who works for equality within or outside the movement, writes about feminism, or calls herself, himself, their self a feminist in the name of furthering equality.

Feminist Theory

TYPES OF FEMINISM

› Liberal feminism› Cultural feminism› Eco feminism› Anti-racist

feminism› Marxist feminism› Socialist feminism

› Maternal feminism

› Postcolonial feminism

› Radical feminism› Psychoanalytic

feminism› Conservative

feminism› Etc.

Feminist Theory

FEMINIST THEORY =

› One of the major contemporary critical theories, which analyzes the status of women and men in society with the purpose of using that knowledge to better women’s (and men’s + others) lives.

Feminist Theory

FEMINIST THEORY: THE EMERGENCE =

› Roots in Canada go back to the early to mid-1800s (suffragette movement).

› Roots in the USA go back to Sojourner Truth (abolitionist, women’s right activist) in the 1850s.

› The ideas behind Feminism began in the Western Europe in the 1400s.

Feminist Theory

FEMINIST THEORISTS =

› Question the differences between women, including how class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, ability, and age intersect with gender = intersectionality (more about this later).

Feminist Theory

FEMINIST THEORISTS =

› Focus on situated knowledge = is knowledge specific to a particular situation; coined by feminist theorist Donna Haraway.

Feminist Theory

SITUATED KNOWLEDGE(S) =

› As asserted by Sandra Harding, the term "offers a more adequate, richer, better account of a world, in order to live in it well and in critical, reflexive relation to our own as well as others' practices of domination and the unequal parts of privilege and oppression that makes up all positions."

Feminist Theory

SITUATED KNOWLEDGE(S) =

› Situated knowledges is the idea that there is no one truth out there to be uncovered and, as a result, all knowledge is partial and linked to the contexts in which it is created.

Feminist Theory

SITUATED KNOWLEDGE(S) =

› "Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with the absolute truth.“

– Simone de Beauvoir. The Second Sex. Translated by H. M. Parshley. New

York: Vintage Books, 1989, p. 143.

Feminist Theory

There are four main components of feminist theory that attempt to explain the societal differences (inequality) between women , men and other genders:

› Gender Difference› Gender Inequality

› Gender Oppression› Structural Oppression

Feminist Theory

GENDER =

› "Gender" refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for the binary categories of "men" and "women."

Feminist Theory

SEX =

› "Sex" refers to the biological and physiological characteristics that define men and women; more or less our primary sex characteristics (our parts).

Feminist Theory

GENDER VS. SEX =

› "Male" and "female" are sex categories, while "masculine/men" and "feminine/women" are gender categories.

› Aspects of sex will not vary substantially between different human societies, while aspects of gender may vary greatly.

Feminist Theory

OPPRESSION =

› The exercise of authority or power in a burdensome, cruel, or unjust manner

› An act or instance of oppressing› The state of being oppressed

Feminist Theory

Four main components of feminist theory that attempt to explain inequality amongst the genders:

› Gender Difference› Gender Inequality

› Gender Oppression› Structural Oppression

Feminist Theory

› Gender Difference =

› The gender difference perspective examines how women's location in, and experience of, social situations differ from men's.

Feminist Theory

› Gender Difference Examples:

› Cultural feminists look to the different values associated with womanhood and femininity as a reason why men and women experience the social world differently.

Feminist Theory

› Gender Difference Examples:

› Other feminist theorists believe that the different roles assigned to women and men within institutions better explain gender difference, including the sexual division of labor in the household.

Feminist Theory

› Gender Difference Examples:

› Existential and phenomenological feminists focus on how women have been marginalized and defined as the “other” in patriarchal societies; women are thus seen as objects and are denied the opportunity for self-realization.

Feminist Theory

› Gender Inequality =

› Gender-inequality theories recognize that women's location in, and experience of, social situations are not only different but also unequal to men's.

Feminist Theory

› Gender Inequality Examples:

› Liberal feminists argue that women have the same capacity as men for moral reasoning and agency, but that patriarchy, particularly the sexist patterning of the division of labor, has historically denied women the opportunity to express and practice this reasoning.

Feminist Theory

› Gender Inequality Examples:

› Women have been isolated to the private sphere of the household and, thus, left without a voice in the public sphere. Even after women enter the public sphere, they are still expected to manage the private sphere and take care of household duties and child rearing.

Feminist Theory

› Gender Inequality Examples:

› Liberal feminists point out that (traditional) marriage is a site of gender inequality and that women do not benefit from being married as men do. Indeed, many married women have higher levels of stress than unmarried women and married men. According to liberal feminists, the sexual division of labor in both the public and private spheres needs to be altered in order for women to achieve equality.

Feminist Theory

› Gender Oppression

› Theories of gender oppression go further than theories of gender difference and gender inequality by arguing that not only are women constructed as different from or unequal to men, but that they are actively oppressed, subordinated, and, in many situations, abused by men.

Feminist Theory

› Gender Oppression Examples:

› Power is the key variable in the two main theories of gender oppression: psychoanalytic feminism and radical feminism.

Feminist Theory

› Gender Oppression Examples:

› Psychoanalytic feminists attempt to explain power relations between men and women by reformulating Freud's theories of the subconscious and unconscious, human emotions, and childhood development. They feel that conscious calculation cannot fully explain the production and reproduction of patriarchy.

Feminist Theory

› Gender Oppression Examples:

› Radical feminists argue that being a woman is a positive thing in and of itself, but that this is not acknowledged in patriarchal societies where women are oppressed. They identify physical violence as being at the base of patriarchy, but they think that patriarchy can be defeated if women recognize their own value and strength, establish a “sisterhood” of trust with other women, confront oppression critically, and form female separatist networks in the private and public spheres.

Feminist Theory

› Structural Oppression

› Structural oppression theories posit that women's oppression and inequality are a result of capitalism, patriarchy, heterosexism, and racism.

Feminist Theory

› Structural Oppression Examples:

› Socialist feminists agree with Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels that the working class is exploited as a consequence of the capitalist mode of production, but they seek to extend this exploitation not just to class but also to gender.

Feminist Theory

› Structural Oppression Examples:

› Intersectionality theorists seek to explain oppression and inequality across a variety of variables, including class, gender, "race“ /ethnicity, sexual orientation, and age. They make the important insight that not all women experience oppression in the same way. White women and black women, for example, face different forms of discrimination in the workplace. Thus, different groups of women come to view the world through a shared standpoint of "heterogeneous commonality."

THE F-WORD

Published on Jul 8, 2014

What is Feminism? By Laci Green

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJPT_U97lNs&list=PLTXiNEUzXWKT9xrbU3aUxqYloEL_W-8rr (4:28)

Feminist High School Boys Ask: Are you a feminist?

Published on June 9, 2014

High school boys New York City reflect on their experience taking a feminism class and the impact it made on their lives. They unanimously declare that they are feminists. Are you?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Vh60p4p2QM (6:02)

We should all be feminists: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at TEDxEuston (Watch on own)

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie a renowned Nigerian novelist

Published on Apr 12, 2013

Video: 30:15 minutes https

://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg3umXU_qWc

Feminist Theory

› A FEW KEY THEORISTS =

› Betty Friedan› Gloria Steinem› Naomi Wolf

In your own words, describe Feminist Theory.

Assignment:Feminist Theory

Readings

Assignment/ Activity:A World With

Feminism

The Theories = The Lenses

Anti-Racist Theory

Queer Theory

Feminist Theory

Intersectionality

Intersectionality/ Intersectionality Theory

INTERSECTIONALITY has become one of critical theory’s (feminist, critical race/anti-racist, + queer theory) most generative concepts.

Intersectionality/ Intersectionality Theory

INTERSECTIONALITY is a feminist sociological theory (sociology = the study of human society) first highlighted by Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989 – “birth date”) to explain how racialized oppression and gender oppression interact in Black women’s lives.

Intersectionality

INTERSECTIONALITY DESCRIBES =

› Is a concept often used in critical theories to describe the ways the formation of our social identities are informed by multiple oppressive institutions (i.e. racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, xenophobia, classism, etc.) and are interconnected (“interlocking systems of oppression”) thus cannot be examined separately from one another.

Intersectionality

INTERSECTIONALITY, in other words, can be seen in two ways:

› 1) Look at it from the point of view of the intersections in peoples lives in terms of the different positions they hold in relation to gender, racialization, class and other social categories.

Intersectionality

› 2) Looking at intersections is not so much a question of finding out what inequalities exist and for whom, but to understand the processes involved in creating inequality.

Intersectionality

INTERSECTIONALITY THEORY: THE CENTRAL ISSUE =

› The central issue is the understanding that women (and men) experience oppression in varying configurations and in varying degrees of intensity.

Intersectionality

INTERSECTIONALITY THEORY THE VARIATION EXPLANATION =

› The explanation for that variation is while all women potentially experience oppression on the basis of gender, women are, nevertheless, differentially oppressed by the varied intersections of other arrangements.

Intersectionality

INTERSECTIONALITY THEORY THE ARGUMENT =

› The argument is that it is intersection itself that produces a particular experience of oppression, and one cannot arrive at an adequate explanation by using an additive strategy of gender plus racialization, plus class, plus sexuality, plus etc = no one singular force causes the injustice; they (class, race, gender, etc.)all come into play.

Intersectionality

INEQUALITY functions on three levels:

› Personal/Individual› Groups/Community› Structural = Institutions/Societies

According to Patricia Hill-Collins (1990), at all three levels one must look at all the domination (the matrix of domination) that is occurring.

Intersectionality

FOR EXAMPLE, many black women frequently experience discrimination in employment because they are black women, but courts routinely refuse to recognize this intersection of discrimination – it is a case of what is considered general discrimination, “sex discrimination," or "race discrimination."

Intersectionality

THE SOCIAL HIERARCHY OF BEING

MaleWhite

HeterosexualMiddle-Upper Class

CapitalistYoung-Middle Aged Able-bodied/minded

ChristianEuropean/North American

Intersectionality

Verses all the OTHER social categories:

Female/TransgenderedPeople of Colour

Homosexual/Queer Lower-Working Class

Capitalist or non-capitalistAble bodied/minded or disabled

Non- ChristianNon-European/North American

Etc.

Intersectionality

IMPORTANT UNDERSTANDINGS #1:

› Just because you are a women, or man, or disabled, or a person of colour, does not mean that your experiences of sexism, ableism, or racism are an exact match for experiences of other kinds of oppression (or even exactly like sexism, ableism or racism for someone else, of course).

Intersectionality

IMPORTANT UNDERSTANDINGS #2:

› And it does not mean that you are doubly, triply or quadruply oppressed.

Intersectionality

INTERSECTIONALITY: AN ANALOGY

› Intersectionality is like a multi-lane highway with numerous roads meeting, crossing and merging in chaotic and complicated ways.

Intersectionality

INTERSECTIONALITY: AN ANALOGY

› There are many different types of roads: paved and gravel roads, roads with shoulders and those without and roads with low speed limits, high speed limits and even no speed limits.

Intersectionality

INTERSECTIONALITY: AN ANALOGY

› There is no map. The most important feature of these intersections, though, is that they look very different depending on your location (Chris Bell, 2010, P100).

Intersectionality

INTERSECTIONALITY: ANOTHER ANALOGY

› Intersectionality is like traffic in an intersection, coming and going in all four directions.

› Discrimination, like traffic through an intersection, may flow in one direction, and it may flow in another.

Intersectionality

INTERSECTIONALITY: ANOTHER ANALOGY

› If an accident happens in an intersection, it can be caused by cars traveling from any number of directions and, sometimes, from all of them.

Intersectionality

INTERSECTIONALITY: ANOTHER ANALOGY

› Similarly, if a Black woman is harmed because she is in an intersection, her injury could result from sex discrimination or racial discrimination or . . .

Intersectionality

INTERSECTIONALITY: ANOTHER ANALOGY

› But it is not always easy to reconstruct an accident: Sometimes the skid marks and the injuries simply indicate that they occurred simultaneously, frustrating efforts to determine which driver caused the harm (Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, 1989, P149).

Intersectionality

INTERSECTIONALITY ANALOGY EXPLAINED

› Intersectionality helps us to understand how gender, class, racialization, and other factors in our experience fit together.

› It helps us come up with better critical politics that seek the emancipation of all people.

Intersectionality

INTERSECTIONALITY + LIBERATION

› If feminism and other critical theories are to be truly liberatory politics seeking the freedom of all oppressed people, they have to recognize this important insight:

Intersectionality

INTERSECTIONALITY + LIBERATION

› That I am not free while any woman [or man] is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own - that I am not free as long as any oppressed person remains chained.

Intersectionality

INTERSECTIONALITY + FEMINISM: PWF

› Privileged white feminists (PWF) involved in the feminist movements in US and Canada failed to realize this, and instead continually over-generalized their own specific experience as the experience of all women.

Intersectionality

INTERSECTIONALITY + FEMINISM: PWF

› They fell prey to “divide and conquer” strategies that distracted them from realizing what is the real source of their oppression, and how the privileges they are granted in virtue of their racialization, class, heterosexuality and national status, are based on the oppression of other women - not just an élite minority of privileged women.

Intersectionality

INTERSECTIONALITY + FEMINISM: A SHARED OPPRESSOR

› It helps us understand that some problems we share as women and girls, and others we don’t share.

› But what we all share as oppressed people is a common enemy: a shared oppressor.

Intersectionality

INTERSECTIONALITY + FEMINISM: IDENTITY

› Intersectional approaches to feminist theorizing and activism can help us overcome the “Oppression Olympics” problem and the problem of having to focus on one aspect of one’s identity at the expense of ignoring another.

Intersectionality

INTERSECTIONALITY + FEMINISM: WHAT IS SHOWS US

› Intersectionality can help us understand feminism as a much broader project than it has been construed by privileged white feminists in the US and Canada.

Intersectionality

INTERSECTIONALITY + FEMINISM: WHAT IS SHOWS US

› It can show us that as feminists we need to be anti-racists and queer minded, we need to oppose colonialism (starting with internal colonialism in Canada and the US of Aboriginal Peoples), imperialism and corporate globalization, and to defend the rights of workers to determine the conditions of their labour.

Intersectionality

INTERSECTIONALITY + FEMINISM: WHAT WE NEED

› As critical theorists, we need to imagine alternatives to capitalism/consumerism for organizing how we produce/purchase things to meet needs in our society.

Intersectionality

INTERSECTIONALITY + FEMINISM: WHAT WE NEED

› We need to recognize that war and violent domination are the flip side of “business as usual,” and that we will never see true peace until we see justice enacted in our society.

Intersectionality

INTERSECTIONALITY + FEMINISM: WHAT WE NEED

› Intersectionality can show us the connections between the imperialist wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, the war on Indigenous people struggling for self-determination by the Canadian and US state, the war on women, waged here and elsewhere through gendered and racialized violence, poverty, and exploitation.

Intersectionality

INTERSECTIONALITY + FEMINISM: WHAT WE NEED

› And it can help us create critically and social justice based politics that embody our aspirations for a completely different world.

Intersectionality

A FEW KEY THEORISTS =

› Kimberlé Crenshaw› Patricia Hill Collins› Audre Lorde

In your own words, describe Intersectionality.

Assignment/Activty:

An Intersectional Reflection Poem

Assignment:Intersectionality

Readings

Up Next:

Racism + Anti-Racism Social Justice Issues