Navigating the Intersections - the need for self-compassion
Lived Experience Advisor, Antonia Aluko, makes a powerful case for greater self-compassion in this insightful exploration of navigating her own intersectional experience.
Navigating my Blackness as a Queer person, navigating my queerness as an Autistic person and navigating all my intersections as Black Autistic Queer woman will forever be a voyage along an endless sea, looking for safe places to disembark. I have sailed through the choppy waters of racism and homophobia, steered along the narrow passages of misogynoir and just over a year ago, I entered new waters, that of ableism, and how my Autistic selfhood has impacted my understanding of the complexities of being a Black Queer woman.
At the end of my undergraduate degree, I was introduced to intersectional theory during a seminar and have reflected deeply on Crenshaw’s car analogy since then. She describes an intersectional experience as akin to standing in a busy crossroads and being hit by multiple cars from every direction at once [1]. Crenshaw uses the car analogy to describe how systems of oppression are like cars driving along a road, but sometimes I don’t view it as concrete as that (pun intended). The oppressions and experiences I have are not immutable separate entities meeting at a singular point of crossroads but a blending of unfixed variables into a new form. For the way I view and define my queerness is always changing. The way I view my womanhood is shaped by more than my sex. How can my experiences be shaped by fixed terms when I, myself, am not fixed but floating through an unending stream of oppression, trying to keep myself steady amongst the fluidity of the waves?
“The oppressions and experiences I have are not immutable separate entities...
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I see my identity and navigation through it, rather, as an open water of multiplying disenfranchisements. Different waters, I must steer through in order to find the safety of land. The one thing Crenshaw and I’s conception of intersectionality has in common is this sense of movement. That no matter where I am positioned, whether that is an intersection or in the middle of an ocean, I cannot stop the waves, or cars approaching me in every direction, from every facet of my life and the society that I exist within.
Equally, each domain has a potential for danger and harm: crossing the road is safe, unless there is a vehicle approaching at high speed and water can be life giving and calming until the water is too deep to tread. In each case, the propensity for danger is clear and means that I have so often tried to shy or hide away parts of myself for an easier journey, a simpler way to exist and float along my stream of consciousness.
“Despite the bleakness, there is hope.”
Zooming out from this abstract discussion, it is meaningful to summarise what I mean by all of this. Being comfortable and content is not a linear journey. It doesn’t necessarily have a beginning and an end point. This, compounded by the experience of marginalisation can be an extremely isolating time, and if you consider communication differences between Neurotypical and Neurodivergent folk, the potential for misunderstanding feels inevitable. Despite the bleakness, there is hope. There are communities and people like you who have navigated their way through, who have undertaken their odyssey in their stride. As alone as we may feel, drifting in open water, we are not truly alone. Beyond understanding, it is self-compassion that has allowed me to continue existing and finding my way and it is self-compassion that I advocate for.
In the simplest terms: this stuff takes its toll. It’s heavy and tiring but we don’t need to make it more painful for ourselves – society does that enough. Thinking about Milton[2], maybe double empathy isn’t enough, perhaps we need to consider the need for greater empathy for the self and be more inwardly compassionate.
“In understanding my Neurodivergence, I can better understand my Blackness and Queerness.”
In understanding my Neurodivergence, I can better understand my Blackness and Queerness. But it goes further than understanding. I can empathise with the person I was who struggled to embrace my sexuality in Black spaces, who felt ashamed of her Blackness in Queer spaces, who ignored her sensory discomforts to be liked, and who is learning how some Autistic spaces are incredibly White and heteronormative. I can now empathise and use that to fuel further self-compassion because my journey doesn’t end here. I will forever be navigating. Instead of self-judgement, now, I do it with hope.
References
[1] Crenshaw, K. (1998) ‘Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics’ in Feminism & Politics, ed. by A. Phillips, Oxford University Press: Oxford, p.314-343.
[2] Milton, D. E. (2012). On the ontological status of autism: The ‘double empathy problem’. Disability & society, 27(6), 883-887.
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