What Happens at the (Expletive Deleted) Intersection

  I’m a word-nerd, and a science geek. I also am a fan of comedy. Add all that together, and I was doomed to be a fan of science fiction that’s comedic (the ‘word-nerd’ part will be back in a minute). I loved Galaxy Quest, and, more recently, Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel. I loved the comic moments in Star Trek and always thought Star Wars could’ve done better in that area. So I quickly became a fan, a few years back, of a quirky science fiction TV show called Eureka. What was great about that show was not the science, but the humor. The basic premise was this: a US Marshall gets stranded after his car breaks down in a small Oregon town, which turns out to be a community hiding a top-secret facility where the best scientists in the world are allowed to do their work, as long as they also work for the DOD.  Because of this Marshall's skill at solving two mysteries while he's there, the managers of the community convince the government to "promote" him out of his US Marshall's job and into being their town Sheriff. So, a man of average intelligence (as we find out in one episode - of 111) is in charge of enforcing the law in a community filled with the highest IQs in the world.

That leaves a lot of room for humor, which they pull off in every episode, to the delight of fans.  A Particular schtick that the writers regularly use on this show is that when the IQ types are discussing the failure of some experiment and the problem created, and letting out a string of quantum-enveloped thingamajig terminology, someone, seeing the blank look on the sheriff’s face, will say, for instance, “an ice ray of death.” And he will say, “why don’t you just say​ ‘ice ray of death’?” It comes off much better with the skilled actors in the show (Colin Ferguson, who plays Sheriff Carter, is a master of these moments, and much more). 

This particular schtick is relevant to us, today, in our normal lives in an important way, and the problem created has come more and more to my attention lately. In an effort to make language more specific, we have not only sacrificed clarity, but damaged our collective cognitive function. Those were big words I just used, meaning (with - I hope - at least some clarity) we try to have a specific word for everything, and in the process have become less and less able to communicate with any expectation of shared meaning or understanding. 

There are several examples of this, the most recent of which (and the one which got me thinking) is the word “intersectional.” This word started with a really good idea. (see article link at the end). In a 2016 TED talk, (just two years ago) a woman examined a case where a court had declined to find on a case of combined racial and sexual discrimination, saying (unfortunately, correctly) that they were not allowed by the existing law to consider them as combined influences. The speaker asked the audience

to imagine this situation as an intersection of roads where two lines of traffic come together. It was a great idea, the colliding lines of racism and sexism, like vehicles colliding at an intersection, creating damage exponentially greater than any one vehicle alone. It was a really good idea, because it allowed those without direct experience to imagine (inadequately to the actual experience) what happens when layers of prejudice are piled on a single person. It was a useful idea for persuading the legal system about the necessity to examine multiple prejudices combined. A useful idea - and soon co-opted.

A while back, I ran into a friend at a local store, who introduced me to another friend of hers, visiting from out of town. On hearing (from my friend) about just some of the elements of my life, this visitor gushed to me “your life is so intersectional!” 

I was taken aback - this woman’s connotations of the term were positive, it was a compliment to her. I thought perhaps I’d misunderstood the term, as I understood it the way Crenshaw (the TED talk presenter) had voiced it. So, I looked up a bunch of references to intersectionality, examinations of the term, explanations and critiques. (Amazing how many there have been in just two years), and here’s the conclusion I came to: the exact conclusion in the piece I’ve linked at the end of this post. That is, people taking on this word have tried to expand its meaning and have in the process actually muddied meaning to the point of it becoming a hard impenetrable clay. It means different things to different people, the end result being no one hearing it can be sure what the speaker means when they say it. 

This brings to mind a particular conference I had with a professor as an undergraduate. It should be no surprise to anyone who’s read …. oh, pretty much anything I’ve written… that I’m a wee bit of a science geek. I was in an undergraduate class in Microbiology with a professor who became one of my mentors and friends (and, later, when I was teaching, a colleague). We had as assigned reading a portion of a classic microbiology text that dealt with Koch’s Postulates, and which was written in entirely incomprehensible blather. I went to the professor’s office to try to get clarity. Like any good teacher (and he was very good) he wanted me to find the answer for myself, and sent me off with a couple of resources I could begin with to get to understanding. I read them, and five or six others I found myself, and went back to his office a couple of days later with a definition I’d written out in a couple of sentences of what the Postulates meant. He beamed and nodded. I looked at him, down at the copious notes in my lap, and at the text sitting between us on the table. My professor, Dr. Parson, waited. 

“So it’s really just about something the organism produces itself rather than a microbe that can be cultured or produced in a lab?” He nodded again. I looked down again, up again: “Why don’t they just say that?” 

He laughed loud and long, and we got into a long discussion of specialized terminology, how linguistics look at them, how scientists look at them, and what they do to create a sense of mysticism that blurs or actually hides the fundamental meaning from most people. 

My point is that complex ideas do not and SHOULD NOT attempt to have simple or single words to express them - they should require a complex mix of words and phrases, descriptors and qualifiers to bring them into full understanding. Science needs all the words it can get. Racism needs all the words it can get. Philosophy needs all the words it can get. Diplomacy needs all the words it can get. Sexism needs all the words it can get. We should not -- I am begging the world and readers and academics (particularly) not to-- reduce ideas. We should instead take time and effort and force of will to weave clear, fundamental words into a sharp understanding of their wonderful complexity.

Speak truth to me all you want, but don’t think it’s truth when you try to make complex concepts simple. Struggle with words and ideas, talk and talk and talk until you have clarity, no matter how many words it takes, and don’t -- DO NOT -- try to cover beautifully complicated concepts by using a single popular, vague, or trendy word. When you do that, what happens at that intersection is that two lanes don’t just collide, a bomb is also dropped on top of them. No, my life is NOT intersectional - it is (as is any one person’s life) too complex and rich to be reduced to a single word. 

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ENDNOTE:  I completely agree that intersectional resistance is essential. I'm just not sure - no, I'm fully convinced - that not everyone means the same thing when they say that.

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Article referenced in post:

Intersectional - what?