Intersectionality is when different parts of who you are come together to shape your life experiences.
Imagine you have a toy box full of blocks, each block is like a part of who you are, like being a girl, or having brown skin, or living in a big city. Now, if you stack two blocks on top of each other, that’s like having two parts of your identity working together. But when you have three or four blocks stacked up, like being a girl with brown skin who loves to draw and lives in a big city, those parts all work together to make your life unique.
How it feels in real life
Think about playing a game where sometimes the rules are easier for some kids and harder for others. If you’re a boy, maybe you get picked first for teams more often than if you’re a girl. But if you’re also very quiet, maybe people don’t notice you as much, even if you’re good at the game. That’s intersectionality, being affected by more than one thing at once.
It's like wearing different kinds of shoes: sometimes they all help you run faster, and sometimes they make it harder to walk.
Examples
- A girl who is both Black and disabled faces challenges that a boy who is only Black might not.
- A woman working in tech might face different problems than a man in the same field.
- A person with both a mental illness and a low income has more struggles to deal with.
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See also
- What is diversity?
- How Does Gender perception | Tara Downey | TEDxYouth@SHC Work?
- How Does Asking the Office for Women how they define 'woman Work?
- How Do I Know If I Am A Woman?
- How Does Outsiders & Outcasts (For Those That Don't Belong) Work?