Episode 3: Intersectionality in Nomadic Humanism
Zona 4, Guatemala City
In this episode, Anya discusses the concept of intersectionality: what it means, how it applies to our lives as humanists, and how it applies to travelers. She also explores privilege, marginalization, and the “intersectional tragedies” that happen between them.
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Podcast Transcript
Anya Overmann:
Hey everyone. This episode was recorded when I was *President of Young Humanists International. We have parted ways since this recording.
This episode also uses language that some listeners may find offensive.
Enjoy the episode.
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Anya Overmann:
Hi. I’m Anya Overmann and I’m your host here on The Nomadic Humanist.
Humanist values of secularism, science, and human rights are inherently communal. The Nomadic Humanist explores how individuals without a single fixed home or community live out humanist values.
Through nomadic humanism, we learn to expand the definition of community, building relationships globally across cultures and digital space, to share this one life we have.
On this episode, I discuss the concept of intersectionality – what it means, how it applies to our lives as humanists, and how it applies to travelers. I’ll also dig into what I call “intersectional tragedies” and how we can work to prevent them.
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Intersectionality is something I’ve talked about to the Los Angeles community of Atheists United (who sponsor this podcast), as well as at the Asian Humanist Conference 2021 and in an article I wrote published on OnlySky. Intersectionality is a vitally important topic to discuss as secular people. It’s also vitally important to discuss as a traveler. Before I get into why it’s so important, let’s get on the same page about what intersectionality is.
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Intersectionality was first coined back in 1989 by Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, a US American lawyer, and civil rights activist. She first used intersectionality to describe how race, class, gender, and other identities “intersect” or overlap.
So, in other words, intersectionality is a description of how each of our identities interact with each other to create our unique experiences.
For example, I am a humanist. I am also white, a woman, a non-monogamist, a queer person, a digital nomad with Missouri origins, a person with mental health issues, and a writer. Each of my identities interacts with the others, coming together to create my own unique identity.
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Now, let’s talk about how intersectionality is used. It’s often used to describe systems of oppression and how different groups of people are affected by those systems.
With intersectionality, we can actually establish a rudimentary scale for measuring the human experience in the context of identities. This scale can help us begin to understand how marginalized or privileged a person is based on systemic factors that are outside of their control. If you want a general idea of where you fall on this spectrum between marginalized and privileged, there are a number of resources out there, some of which are included in the show notes.
I’ve taken some assessments, and I tend to fall in between “somewhat privileged” and “very privileged.”
Privilege – and especially my privilege – is so important to talk about in the context of humanism and travel.
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So let’s talk about it.
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There’s an inherent privilege that comes with the ability to voluntarily travel. And I say “voluntarily” because there are very marginalized people forced into involuntary travel to protect themselves, their families, and their rights. Ukrainian refugees, for example, have been fleeing the war there and forced to run to countries like Poland and Romania, much like corruption and conflict in many Central American nations have forced them to flee north to the US.
Being able to travel voluntarily implies you have the privilege of resources to travel, obviously, but it also implies that you have access to safe living spaces, and the passport strength or visa backing to be able to access the destination.
There’s even more privilege in being able to work within the digital jobs economy. We saw during the pandemic lockdowns just how much privilege is afforded to those working in virtual jobs versus those in jobs that require you to show up in person.
A job that enables you locational freedom is an incredible amount of privilege. A remote job means no expense or time spent on commute, no workplace pressures, and more flexibility in your workday. When you combine locational freedom with financial stability and a strong passport, you get a privilege jackpot [jackpoint noise: ca-ching-a-ling-a-ling] that makes digital nomading easily attainable.
But without any of those privileges, you risk an untenable amount of challenges to the lifestyle.
Can’t work remote? Can’t leave town unless it’s on vacation.
Don’t have enough of a safety net saved up? Have to lay low and save.
Don’t have a passport that allows you to travel to most countries *easily? That’s a limited and possibly expensive nomad experience.
What do I mean by “easily” travel? I define “easily” as being able to travel without a visa to a country for an amount of time. The standard treatment for a US passport in most countries in the world is 90 days on a tourist visa. But that’s not the case for every passport in the world. Being able to travel the world is simply not a universal right afforded to all. Diplomacy is a bitch when it comes to progressing equality for human movement around the world.
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When I travel for Board meetings for Humanists International, I have a very easy time getting there. That’s because we almost exclusively have Board meetings in Europe. I usually never have to apply for a visa anywhere I go. I just book my flights, make sure I have any relevant COVID requirements fulfilled, and that I’m within the 90-day allotment of my visa, and I’m good to go.
But my colleagues from Ghana, Nigeria, Guatemala, and Nepal do not have nearly as easy a time as I do. As residents of their nations, they often must apply for visas – which require fees, sometimes an interview for acceptance, and a long wait. All that, and they aren’t even always accepted for visas. My US passport allows me to bypass any of these requirements. Not because I earned it. Just because I was born into it.
I am fortunate in so many ways to be able to live this way, and I won’t pretend like this is something that anyone can do if they just “work hard enough.” You can’t outwork diplomacy or where you are from. Not unless they see you as “special.” Living as a digital nomad is incredibly difficult without a combination of privileges to make it possible. It’s not fair. None of it is fair.
I often feel guilty that I have this privilege and my friends do not. It’s not my fault, and it’s not their fault, and it’s completely unfair. This is what I call an intersectional tragedy.
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Another intersectional tragedy that comes from travel is the misunderstanding of just how broad and complex the spectrum of marginalization and privilege is in the world. In episode 2, I talked about the US Black woman in Bali who wrote an ebook on how to move to Bali during a pandemic, and she was ultimately deported. The tragedy here is that this woman found solace in enjoying some of her privileges free of the burden of such overwhelming marginalization that she experiences in the US, but she failed to understand the privileges she enjoyed as a US citizen in Bali and ended up overstepping legal boundaries that could have been avoided had she fully understood the new intersectional setting she found herself in.
These intersectional tragedies are preventable, but only by those with privilege and power. As someone rated somewhere between “somewhat privileged” and “very privileged,” I feel driven to use the privilege I have to reduce these intersectional tragedies when possible.
One of the easiest ways to do this is through language, and that brings me to why I started calling myself “US American” instead of just “American.”
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Let me ask you a question: How many countries are there in America?
If you’re thinking, “Psh, Anya. It’s obviously one country.” I hate to break it to you, but that’s not correct.
The answer is 35. There are 35 different countries in America. The thing is, “America” is not just the United States. There are many people outside the US who consider themselves Americans. After all, America is two continents of mostly Spanish-speaking nations, some Portuguese, French, Dutch, Haitian creole, Nahuatl, Mayan, and many, many other languages. This is yet another example of intersectionality in real life. The US claims ownership of the identity “American” despite being part of two contiguous continents that call themselves American as well.
Look, I know calling yourself “US American” rather than just “American” may sound kind of weird to you, but think about how weird it would be if Germany claimed the identity “European” and tried to brand solely Germany as “Europe,” and refused to recognize any other European nations as European. Or try this: imagine if China claimed the identity “Asian” but didn’t recognize any other Asian nations as Asian. Yet, on the flip side, many US Americans are completely fine with categorizing anyone in the massive African continent as “African” without recognizing their specific nationality.
Think about how weird it would be if South Africans decided to start calling themselves just “Africans,” and you were supposed to just know they were from specifically South Africa, despite there being 53 other nations in Africa. Pretty pretentious, right?
So this is why I say “US American.” I specify out of respect for the hundreds of millions of other people on these continents that identify as American as well.
I’ve been met with anecdotal criticism before from US Americans who doubt this fact because – you know – they have never heard a Latin American refer to themselves as “American” before, so therefore, it must not be true. But many Latin Americans do identify as American. That’s just what it means to be from the Americas. They are just as much American as I am. Plus, considering the oppressive and controlling history of the US over much of Latin America, the very least we can do as folks from the US is recognize that we are not the only Americans in the world.
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These global intersectional tragedies reflect back on humanist values. Ideally, if humanists ran the world according to humanist values, these tragedies would be greatly diminished. After all, our values hinge on upholding the worth and dignity of every human being, which cannot happen without moving towards equality and away from the potential for intersectional tragedies.
And yet, humanist – and particularly atheist communities – struggle with the same intersectional issues that everyone else does.
While atheist US Americans certainly have many shared experiences, the experience of being – for example – a Black atheist is entirely different than the experience of being a white atheist. White atheists have to navigate a US society biased towards Christians. Black atheists have to navigate that plus multiple constructs of institutional racism – in the justice system, in education, in healthcare, in everyday life, etc.
Then, if we zoom in and focus on the various identities of Black atheists, we see even more divergent experiences. Being a Black atheist man is much different than being a Black atheist woman. Black atheist women have to navigate the same thing as Black atheist men plus constructs of institutional sexism – in the professional world, in healthcare, in the home, in the justice system, etc.
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As Professor Crenshaw has stated, intersectionality was a necessary development to push law and society towards egalitarianism. She observed that US courts viewed race and discrimination as a universal experience among Black people, and gender discrimination as a universal experience among women. She argued that racism is experienced differently for men and women and different minority groups, and Sexism is experienced differently for Black women than for white women. And so on.
Intersectionality provides a basis for understanding the nuance of human experience related to our institutions. When we can recognize the nuanced oppression of systems on various identities, we can better identify how to allocate resources and support to create a more equitable human experience. In other words, it’s a basis for social progress.
As humanists, we want everyone to live a life of dignity in a world where universal human rights are respected, and states uphold secularism. We simply cannot work towards these goals effectively without intersectionality.
Many in our global humanist community – particularly those who insist on limiting themselves to atheism as an identity – make the mistake of focusing disproportionately on secularism while lacking focus on human rights.
But let me ask you this: what good are secular societies that uphold the values of science, reason, freethought, and free speech without a healthy investment in the human rights of the most disadvantaged and oppressed?
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Both the atheist and humanist movements have been historically dominated by folks whose identities intersected to create some of the most significant advantages in the human experience. What I mean is non-disabled, financially stable, white Western heterosexual, cisgender men.
These men have had the privilege of not having to experience sexism, racism, discrimination against their sexual orientation, or their ability. The worst discrimination many of them have had to deal with is against their lack of belief in a god – and you generally can’t recognize an atheist just by looking at them like you can with other identities.
For many of us here, discrimination against our lack of belief in a god is par for the course, but we also have a myriad of other systems of discrimination that we must contend with.
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You may have heard about the American Humanist Association revoking the “Humanist of the Year” award from Richard Dawkins for his history of public statements that, quote, “use the guise of scientific discourse to demean marginalized groups,” unquote. The AHA was referring to numerous tweets and other comments in which Dawkins waded into discussions of transgender identity and race in an insensitive, ignorant, and intentionally provocative manner.
This decision divided the global humanist community. Many people defended Dawkins, saying he was “Just Asking Questions” and that people were trying to “cancel” and censor him. But here’s the thing, despite everything Dawkins has done for the humanist and atheist movements – and I will say, he has done a lot – he, as a white Western heterosexual cisgender able-bodied and more than financially stable man, is incredibly inept at speaking about the human experience with a lens of intersectionality.
He failed, and continues to fail, at engaging in discussion about human rights in good faith. He cried “censorship” not because he was being censored but because his insensitive words were being rightfully criticized by those in the community who have a greater insight into the transgender experience. He cried “cancel culture” rather than taking up the challenge to put on a pair of intersectionality glasses and more closely examine the intersection between the humanist and transgender identities.
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This is not good humanism. And no matter whether you support Dawkins or not, we can all recognize that he made the conversation about transgender identity – an identity which he does not hold – into a thought exercise rather than yielding the lead of the conversation to transgender folks with very real and not the merely theoretical experiences that Dawkins discussed.
I give you this example of a humanist leader lacking tact in human rights to say this:
As we continue to make social progress using intersectionality, more atheist leaders who won the identity lottery – like Richard Dawkins – will say insensitive things and then cry “cancel culture” when their lacking intersectional perspective is criticized.
We have no obligation to continue revering these leaders if they make no effort to take our criticism. Progressive movements are constantly evolving, and sometimes what’s best for the movement is leaving leaders behind who are unwilling to grow with it.
We have an obligation as humanists to make our movement more inclusive, welcoming, and diverse if we genuinely want to grow.
Intersectionality is how we do this.
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So, how can we be more intersectional as humanists and travelers?
At some point, we all have to recognize that winning the identity lottery makes it very difficult to understand what it’s like to not win the identity lottery. And when people don’t feel understood, they feel like there isn’t space for them to be there. The only way to create that space in the humanist movement – or in any context – is by handing the metaphorical microphone to those who do understand… People who hold identities that intersect with humanism and create an experience that’s unlike, say, the Richard Dawkins experience. These intersections lack representation and need more opportunities to have their experiences validated.
We also need to recognize that we, as humanists and other non-religious folks, need to take the lead on discussions around complex human rights issues. Many self-identifying atheists will tell you that this isn’t our responsibility. Those leaders should and will be left behind. They do not have the capacity to carry our movement forward into the future.
Those of us with privilege owe it to humanity to live out our humanist values by working to diminish intersectional tragedies, including those through our travels.
These conversations about identity and privilege are tough and often uncomfortable, but they are necessary for growth. The good news is that it gets easier with practice, and there is no shortage of these conversations to be had!
Receiving feedback from people with less-privileged identities than ourselves just takes compassionate listening.
And each conversation is an opportunity of mutual benefit for both humanist communities and the communities we intersect with.
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My hope is that as we travel globally and grow the humanist movement, we see humanism blossom into a more inclusive and diverse global community by exploring intersectionality.
Carly Turro:
Thank you for listening to The Nomadic Humanist, written and hosted by Anya Overmann.
If you enjoyed the show, make sure to like and subscribe to the podcast. You can follow Anya’s journey around the world by visiting nomadichumanist.com.
The Nomadic Humanist is a production of Atheists United Studios and was produced by Joey Krieger and Evan Clark in sunny Los Angeles, California.
Special thanks to Katie Bolton, Phil Gundry, and Heretic House for donating their time and space to the production of this season.
On behalf of The Nomadic Humanist, I’m Carly Turro. Happy travels!
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Outtake
Anya Overmann:
May I hope is that over– oops. Oooooops.