009 Othering and Intersectionality
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Callie and Nichole discuss the importance of inclusiveness, and learning to understand and accept the concept of privileges.
In This Episode
In our journey to be become better vegans (and better humans) we are trying to be more aware of othering, making sure we welcome people of all different backgrounds. While it is basic human nature to want to categorize each other, this can sometimes lead to oppression; as compassionate activists we need to be aware of this.
We also discuss intersectionality and how understanding privileges, especially which privileges we ourselves have, will help unite activists in deconstructing all the systems of oppression.
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I don’t think othering is ‘just how our brain works’. It is in our culture, not in our nature. I think it is important to learn how we used to structure in history and how it still influences us today.
Thank you for the podcast!
Our brains are programmed to categorize people and to sort them into “my tribe” or “not my tribe.” Babies do it as they learn which faces are important (aka, people who give them food and safety), and which aren’t. A lot of the prejudices we have today is from people in power exploiting this inclination and using it to divide us. The human brain is only meant to have a social circle of 150 people; we get empathy-fatigue, we get protective of our own and of resources, we get overstimulated and overwhelmed. These are all important things to understand.
So, I agree with you that it is important to understand where these things come from and part of this is understanding that this is an inherent thing our brain will try to do and that we must always push against it, and see how that has been used to create the structures we have today.