What is Intersectionality?
"Intersectionality is simply about how certain aspects of who you are will increase your access to the good things or your exposure to the bad things in life. Like many other social-justice ideas, it stands because it resonates with people’s lives, but because it resonates with people’s lives, it’s under attack. There’s nothing new about defenders of the status quo criticizing those who are demanding that injustices be addressed. It’s all a crisis over a sense that things might actually have to change for equality to be real." - Kimberlé Crenshaw
Intersectionality in an 2SLGBTQ+ Context
"LGBTQ individuals may experience multiple forms of marginalization or disadvantage at the same time. For example, an individual’s experience may be shaped at the same time by their sexual orientation, racialization, gender, disability and income (e.g. a bisexual South Asian woman may have an anxiety disorder and be living in poverty).
Intersectionality refers to an approach by which intersecting experiences of marginalization and the needs of the whole person are considered.
There are multiple ways that intersectionality impacts the mental health of LGBTQ people. For example, LGBTQ people may experience other forms of marginalization – such as racism, sexism, poverty or other factors – alongside homophobia or transphobia that negatively impact on mental health. Additionally, an individual with a mental health condition who is also an LGBTQ person may face added challenges in accessing mental health services that are appropriate and inclusive and may face discrimination on the basis of both disability and sexual orientation." - Ontario Canadian Mental Health Association
Abolition. Feminism. Now by 
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ISBN: 9781642593785Publication Date: 2022An urgent, vital contribution to the indivisible projects abolition and feminism, from leading scholar-activists Angela Y. Davis, Gina Dent, Erica Meiners, and Beth E. Richie.
Angry Queer Somali Boy by - This link opens in a new window
ISBN: 9780889776593Publication Date: 2019Writing from a homeless shelter in downtown Toronto, Mohamed "Mo" Ali chronicles how he ended up there in this powerful and often irreverent memoir of exile, addiction, and racism. Interwoven with world history and sociopolitical commentary on Somalia, Canada, and Europe, the story of this gay Muslim immigrant is told with tenderness in a refreshing and welcome new voice.
As We Have Always Done by - This link opens in a new window
ISBN: 9781517903862Publication Date: 2017-10-17In As We Have Always Done, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson locates Indigenous political resurgence as a practice rooted in uniquely Indigenous theorizing, writing, organizing, and thinking. Indigenous resistance is a radical rejection of contemporary colonialism focused around the refusal of the dispossession of both Indigenous bodies and land. Simpson makes clear that its goal can no longer be cultural resurgence as a mechanism for inclusion in a multicultural mosaic. Instead, she calls for unapologetic, place-based Indigenous alternatives to the destructive logics of the settler colonial state, including heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalist exploitation.
Care Work by - This link opens in a new window
ISBN: 9781551527383Publication Date: 2018-10-30Finalist, Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction In their new, long-awaited collection of essays, Lambda Literary Award-winning writer and longtime disability justice activist and performance artist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha explores the politics and realities of disability justice, a movement that centres the lives and leadership of sick and disabled queer, trans, Black, and brown people, with knowledge and gifts for all. Leah writes passionately and personally about creating spaces by and for sick and disabled queer people of colour, and creative "collective access" -- access not as a chore but as a collective responsibility and pleasure -- in our communities and political movements. Bringing their survival skills and knowledge from years of cultural and activist work, Piepzna-Samarasinha explores everything from the economics of queer femme emotional labour, to suicide in queer and trans communities, to the nitty-gritty of touring as a sick and disabled queer artist of colour. Care Work is a mapping of access as radical love, a celebration of the work that sick and disabled queer/people of colour are doing to find each other and to build power and community, and a toolkit for everyone who wants to build radically resilient, sustainable communities of liberation where no one is left behind. Powerful and passionate, Care Work is a crucial and necessary call to arms.
Feminist, Queer, Crip by - This link opens in a new window
ISBN: 9780253009418Publication Date: 2013-05-16In Feminist, Queer, Crip Alison Kafer imagines a different future for disability and disabled bodies. Challenging the ways in which ideas about the future and time have been deployed in the service of compulsory able-bodiedness and able-mindedness, Kafer rejects the idea of disability as a pre-determined limit. She juxtaposes theories, movements, and identities such as environmental justice, reproductive justice, cyborg theory, transgender politics, and disability that are typically discussed in isolation and envisions new possibilities for crip futures and feminist/queer/crip alliances.
Gender Identity, Sexuality and Autism by - This link opens in a new window
ISBN: 9781785927546Publication Date: 2019-01-21Bringing together a collection of narratives from those who are on the autism spectrum whilst also identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and/or asexual (LGBTQIA), this book explores the intersection of the two spectrums as well as the diverse experiences that come with it.
Japanese LGBT Diasporas by - This link opens in a new window
ISBN: 9783030310295Publication Date: 2019-11-07With little existing scholarship on LGBT diaspora from Asia, this groundbreaking book examines the intersectionality of migration, sexuality, and gender, as well as race and ethnicity, through an analysis of the transnational experiences of Japanese LGBT diasporas in the USA, Canada and Australia.
Marvellous Grounds by - This link opens in a new window
ISBN: 9781771133647Publication Date: 2018-10-19Toronto has long been a place that people of colour move to in order to join queer of colour communities. Yet the city's rich history of activism by queer and trans people who are Black, Indigenous, or of colour (QTBIPOC) remains largely unwritten and unarchived. While QTBIPOC have a long and visible presence in the city, they always appear as newcomers in queer urban maps and archives in which white queers appear as the only historical subjects imaginable. The first collection of its kind to feature the art, activism, and writings of QTBIPOC in Toronto, Marvellous Groundstells the stories that have shaped Toronto's landscape but are frequently forgotten or erased. Responding to an unmistakable desire in QTBIPOC communities for history and lineage, this rich volume allows us to imagine new ancestors and new futures.- Marvellous Grounds by
- This link opens in a new window
ISBN: 9781771133647Publication Date: 2018-10-19Toronto has long been a place that people of colour move to in order to join queer of colour communities. Yet the city's rich history of activism by queer and trans people who are Black, Indigenous, or of colour (QTBIPOC) remains largely unwritten and unarchived. While QTBIPOC have a long and visible presence in the city, they always appear as newcomers in queer urban maps and archives in which white queers appear as the only historical subjects imaginable. The first collection of its kind to feature the art, activism, and writings of QTBIPOC in Toronto, Marvellous Grounds tells the stories that have shaped Toronto's landscape but are frequently forgotten or erased. Responding to an unmistakable desire in QTBIPOC communities for history and lineage, this rich volume allows us to imagine new ancestors and new futures. 
Queering Urban Justice : Queer of Colour Formations in Toronto by - This link opens in a new window
ISBN: 9781487522858Queering Urban Justice foregrounds visions of urban justice that are critical of racial and colonial capitalism, and asks: What would it mean to map space in ways that address very real histories of displacement and erasure? What would it mean to regard Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (QTBIPOC) as geographic subjects who model different ways of inhabiting and sharing space? The volume describes city spaces as sites where bodies are exhaustively documented while others barely register as subjects. The editors and contributors interrogate the forces that have allowed QTBIPOC to be imagined as absent from the very spaces they have long invested in. From the violent displacement of poor, disabled, racialized, and sexualized bodies from Toronto’s gay village, to the erasure of queer racialized bodies in the academy, Queering Urban Justice offers new directions to all who are interested in acting on the intersections of social, racial, economic, urban, migrant, and disability justice.
Queer People of Color: Connected but not Comfortable by - This link opens in a new window
ISBN: 9781626377158Publication Date: 2018-09-06As individuals who historically have faced multiple forms of oppression, queer people of color often find themselves struggling to “fit in.” What impact does this have on their sociopolitical involvement within their communities of color? Within the queer community? And to what effect? Based on one of the largest surveys to date of African American, Latina/o, Asian American, and Pacific Islander American LGB people, this book offers a unique angle through which to examine belonging, and its converse, within marginalized communities.
Queer People of Color in Higher Education by - This link opens in a new window
ISBN: 9781681238814Publication Date: 2017-09-01Queer People of Color in Higher Education (QPOC) is a comprehensive work discussing the lived experiences of queer people of color on college campuses. This book will create conversations and provide resources to best support students, faculty, and staff of color who are people of color and identify as LGBTQ. QPOC in Higher Education is a must-read for anyone who wants to transform their society, campus, or community into places that fully value the complex and beautiful intersections that our diverse communities come from. This book takes diversity to a deeper level and speaks from a social justice philosophy of looking big pictures at our systems and cultures instead of simply at our oppressed groups as the problems.
Restoried Selves by - This link opens in a new window
ISBN: 9781560234623Publication Date: 2003-11-04Restoried Selves: Autobiographies of Queer Asian / Pacific American Activists presents the first-person accounts of 20 activists--life stories that work against common stereotypes, shattering misconceptions and dispelling misinformation. These autobiographies challenge familial and cultural expectations and values that have traditionally forced queer Asian / Pacific Americans into silent shame because of their sexual orientation and/or ethnicity. Authors share not only their experiences growing up but also how those experiences led them to become social activists, speaking out against oppression.
United Queerdom by - This link opens in a new window
ISBN: 9781786998767Publication Date: 2020-06-18Throughout the 1970s the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) initiated an anarchic campaign that permanently changed the face of Britain. Inspired by the Stonewall uprisings in the US, the GLF demanded a 'Absolute Freedom For All' worldwide. Yet half a century on, injustice is rife and LGBT+ inequality remains. Complete LGBT+ liberation means housing rights, universal healthcare, economic freedom and so much more. Although many people believe queers are now free and should behave, assimilate and become palatable - Dan Glass shows that the fight is far from over.United Queerdom evocatively captures over five decades of LGBT+ culture and protest from the GLF to 2020s. Showing how central protest is to queer history and identity this book uncovers the back-breaking hard work as well as the glamorous and raucous stories of those who rebelled against injustice and became founders in the story of queer liberation.
We Do This 'Til We Free Us by ISBN: 9781642595253“Organizing is both science and art. It is thinking through a vision, a strategy, and then figuring out who your targets are, always being concerned about power, always being concerned about how you’re going to actually build power in order to be able to push your issues, in order to be able to get the target to actually move in the way that you want to.”
What if social transformation and liberation isn’t about waiting for someone else to come along and save us? What if ordinary people have the power to collectively free ourselves? In this timely collection of essays and interviews, Mariame Kaba reflects on the deep work of abolition and transformative political struggle.
With a foreword by Naomi Murakawa and chapters on seeking justice beyond the punishment system, transforming how we deal with harm and accountability, and finding hope in collective struggle for abolition, Kaba’s work is deeply rooted in the relentless belief that we can fundamentally change the world. As Kaba writes, “Nothing that we do that is worthwhile is done alone.”
Young, Disabled and LGBT+ by - This link opens in a new window
ISBN: 9780429584046Publication Date: 2020-01-24Young, Disabled and LGBT+ brings together the work of an international team interested in exploring the intersection of sexuality, gender identity, and disability in the lives of young people and aims to further develop this area as a distinct area of study. This volume features original research and writing into lives that are often misunderstood, marginalised and under-represented in research. It is framed with artwork, poetry and writing from young disabled LGBT+ people, and centralises the voices and lives of young disabled LGBT+ people throughout.
