The origins of the concept of intersectionality were reasonable - to recognize that people do not necessarily belong to a single oppressed group and that their experiences cannot be assumed to be the same as the "mainstream" of that group. Hence, black women have completely different issues of being discriminated against than white women, but mainstream feminism did not take their issues into account.
The problem is that the concept has been twisted into a victimhood Olympics, where people are now competing with each other to be the top victims and therefore most deserving of attention.
This thinking has become so mainstream that in large swaths of the Western world, logic and morality have become nearly meaningless in the face of the intersectional view of the world where your identity as a member of a victim group trumps all else.
All that matters in any conflict - from mere arguments on Twitter to large scale wars - is to understand which side is perceived to be the bigger victim.
The victim always wins in the court of public opinion run by most of the media, academia and diplomats.
Here is my attempt on calculating who is the perceived underdog, and therefore the more righteous, of each side in any conflict. The more you think about it, the more it reflects reality:
Attribute | Victimhood score |
Trans | 8 |
Black | 8 |
Native American or other First People | 7 |
Woman | 6 |
Gay | 6 |
Muslim | 5 |
Arab, other Middle Eastern | 5 |
Hispanic | 4 |
Disabled, pregnant | 4 |
Anti-Zionist Jew | 4 |
Wears hijab | 2 |
Palestinian | 2 |
Asian American | 1 |
White | -1 |
Republican or conservative | -3 |
Christian (white only) | -3 |
Jew | -3 |
Visibly religious Jew | -3 |
Jewish settler | -6 |
Identifies proudly as Zionist | -8 |
Trump supporter | -8 |
White nationalist/neo Nazi | -18 |
Multiple attributes are summed. So for example, a female Muslim Palestinian Arab who wears a hijab has a victimhood score of 6+5+5+2+2, 20 in total, which is quite high. (If she is disabled and lesbian, the score soars to 30, meaning that she almost automatically wins the victimhood sweepstakes against anyone - unless the other person is similar but transsexual instead of lesbian.)
The score depends on how you are perceived. So if you only start identifying as a member of a victim group later in life, as long as no one knows any different, you are in. This also applies to those who are half-or-quarter members of the oppressed group.
There are two classes of people who are the lowest of the low, according to this taxonomy. One is white nationalists who are Christian and support Trump, a score of -30. The other is the proudly Zionist religious Jewish settler, who gathers a score of -20 (-21 if white, -16 if Mizrahi.)
White nationalists are the only people who may be considered more evil than Jewish settlers. In other words, if anyone besides a neo-Nazi kills a Jewish settler, the settler deserved it, in the minds of the people who look at the world this way.
This explains why it is not embarrassing for people to publicly support Rasmea Odeh, the Palestinian who murdered two Jews in Jerusalem. She has a score of at least 13 (I'm not certain if she is Muslim) and the people she killed, a Jewish man and woman, had scores of merely -4 and +2. The act of murder, of lying to American immigration officials, of openly supporting terror - all that doesn't matter because the victimhood score is the only metric that matters to the intersectional crowd.
Anti-Zionist Jews claim victimhood status because they pretend that the entire Jewish establishment is blackballing them, even though somehow they heroically manage to loudly proclaim their positions without any repercussions. Most of them are still white and of course they are still Jews, so their score isn't very high, but high enough to claim moral authority over the Jews who don't hate Israel.
This chart also explains why Jews aren't considered as victims together with the other groups associated with intersectionality. By default, Jews are considered the oppressors (of blacks, Palestinians, Africans and possibly others) so they don't qualify to be considered victims - unless they are attacked by white nationalists, in which case the intersectional community suddenly pretends to care about antisemitism. (Of course, Mizrahi Jews "of color" or Ethiopian Jews can indeed be victims of Ashkenazic "white" Jews, which is reflected in the chart as they can be identified as Middle Eastern or black.)
Lots of questions are answered by this chart. Why is the world more upset over David Duke than Louis Farrakhan? Add up their scores and find out. Who is more disgusting, Bill Cosby or Harvey Weinstein? The chart answers all. Why does no one care about an explicit law against Muslims selling land to Jews? Read the chart. Why did Linda Sarsour, who from my understanding is not particularly devout, decide to wear a hijab? It is because it is an easy way to increase her score. Why were people so upset over Rachael Dolezal? Because she was caught cheating at the only system that matters nowadays.
The chart also indicates the level of outrage to be appropriate in any circumstance. The larger the discrepancy in the scores, the more one should be upset. So when Lebanon decides to put Palestinians in a literal open air prison complete with watchtowers and guards, it is a shame and no one supports it, but no one is really outraged either because the scoring differential between Lebanese Arabs and Palestinian Arabs is so small.
The only time that actual facts matter is when both sides have similar scores. So black on black violence, when the victim is the same gender as the assailant, is a matter for the courts, since the intersectional crowd loses interest when there isn't a clear score discrepancy.
All the time we spend trying to come up with cogent arguments for one side or the other are wasted. Sure, a nominal effort needs to be done so that the victims can claim some moral authority outside of identity, but the arguments do not need to make any sense - they are just something to point to as a counterargument to anyone who disagrees. See, for example, the argument that Palestinians have the legal right to kill Israeli Jews under international law - the argument is absurd and has zero basis in reality, but its existence is the fig leaf necessary to maintain the primacy of the victimhood metrics.
We finally have a mathematical model to determine who is the more righteous party in any conflict. You no longer have to worry about the details of the conflict itself. It is already known which side is presumed correct.
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