Intersectionality 3.6

This lesson on intersectionality just tied up what we learned in unit three, and it solidified the lesson I learned that religion is what people do and who they are. Intersectionality is important to the religious studies because it helps us understand how people and the internal/external situations they are in impact their interactions with religion. I really found Audre Lorde’s paper interesting as she explained how if we don’t acknowledge that there are differences when it comes to feminism, we tend to voluntary make false connections and forget other forms of oppression. Because by ignoring other forms of oppression and the privilege of white women, we are not including women of color and the struggles they are having due to their intersection with race. This leads to exclusion and not deeply understanding what all forms of women are going through if we just focus on sex. The relation this has with religion, is that by ignoring other aspects a person is going through and just focusing on one part of them, we don’t get the full picture of their struggle and how it impacts their relationship with religion. This is due to the fact that we can’t understand religion if we don’t understand race, gender, and sex, and this includes intersectionality because we need to understand how these all intersect.