Q Purpose: The purpose of this assignment is for you to critically think about different terms and concepts from each week and to engage in discussion with your peers on an online platform. Knowledge: This assignment is designed to provide for you a better "real world" understanding of the terms, concepts, and theories you will learn about each week. The discussion boards give you space to connect specific terms, concepts, and theories to your experience of the world and engage with others on an online platform. Task: To successfully complete this assignment, you will: 1. Follow the prompt that will be given by Monday of each new week. 2. Respond to the prompt using specific examples from the text, lecture, films, etc. Your responses need to be thought-out and detailed. An ideal response will be 10-15 sentences long. 3. RESPOND to another classmate's post for that week. Your response should also be well thought-out and detailed, a minimum of four sentences long. Replying with comments like "I agree with u," or "thanks for sharing" will not be accepted. 4. Complete both your original post and reply to student by Thursday at Midnight. Criteria for Success: You will be graded using the following criteria: 1. Posts are on time. 2. Your original post is detailed and is using specific examples from the course content, and is a minimum of 10 sentences in length. 3. You provide a detailed reply to another classmate's post. A quality comment that engages the other person and furthers the discussion is required. Background One of the main themes in this class you may have started to cue into is that each one of us has multiple, nuanced personal, social, and cultural identities—and those identities affect how we view the world. These identities we have can be complimentary with one another, they can be in conflict with one another, and whether they are in harmony or conflict is dependent on the context or environment you are in. In addition, where our identities come together, intersections of unique identities can be created. Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989) described identity-related intersectionality as “a framework … to trace the impact of racism, of sexism, other modes of discrimination, where they come together and create sometimes unique circumstances, obstacles, barriers for people who are subject to all of those things” (p. 162). In other words, when two (or more) minority and/or marginalized identities intersect, the experiences of that person will be different from people that have only one or other of those cultural identities. Crenshaw’s work initially looked at the discrimination faced by Black women. Her argument was that Black women faced discrimination and marginalization that was different from what Black men or White women experience. Her choice to examine the experiences of Black women was based on precedence: in 1962, Malcolm X gave a speech where he said: “The most disrespected person in America is the Black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the Black woman. The most neglected person in America is the Black woman” (Parker, 2015, para. 4). In the past 100 years in the United States, two of the biggest social movements have been the fights for gender equality and racial equality. During the women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s, a large rift was created because Women of Color and White Women experienced an ideological divide. The mainstream feminist fight was not willing, at that time, to take into consideration that Women of Color faced unique challenges based upon their race, which affected the challenges they faced as women. These experiences of Women of Color would become what Crenshaw would explain decades later as intersectionality. Crenshaw’s articulation of intersectionality opened up an entire conversation about how the intersections of identity create absolutely unique situations of how people perceive the world. Intersectionality as a framework started to be applied to other cultural intersections, for example if you are female and gay, or female, gay, and black. If you are ethnically Arabic and Christian. If you are White and Muslim. What her research, and the research that was inspired by her work, have uncovered is that we cannot look at one monolithic identity for each person, or group to understand how to interact and communicate with that person. There are certain things I experience as a gay woman that is different from what heterosexual woman or a gay man may experience. I experience the discrimination of both groups, but I also experience the world and am treated in a way that is unique to the intersection of gay and female. For example, as a woman, I experience a frustrating amount of “manslpaining” by male-identified people, when talking about my areas of expertise, including social media, the Internet, and culture. Because I am a woman, I cannot possibly know more about the Internet than the guy who read an article on Reddit about the Internet. In addition, as I disclosed in my last discussion prompt, I have experienced my fair share of individual and systemic homophobia in my almost 40 years on this planet. The homophobia I have experienced is different than the homophobia my gay male friends have experienced. There is less hate directed toward me, it’s more that “I just haven’t found the right man.” My gay male friends have experienced hate and rage in an intensity that is terrifying, because there seems to be a betrayal to their masculinity or manliness (regardless of how “manly” or “masculine” they actually are). What I experience that is unique is more of a betrayal of what my gender roles should be, but because those are becoming more and more flexible, it has become easier to navigate this space between my sexuality and gender. What I do recognize, however, is that this experience is unique to me, because my other identities also influence how this space is experienced. I know that there are many people who have had similar experiences to me, but that does not mean that we experienced them in the same way. Adding to my gender and sexual identity, there is also my ethnicity, which is Caucasian/white. There is my (lack of) religious upbringing and/or identity. There are my demographics, like age and when I was born (People who were born in the 60s are going to have a much different experience of these identities than I do as a person born in the 80s). What this means is that a gay, Christian, 60 year old woman of color is going to have a much different experience of this world than I do as a gay, secular, 39 year old white women does. Change any one of those identities, and it becomes a completely different intersections of experience. Each one of us has these nuanced, changing intersections of identity. This makes us, our friends, our family, our groups have different experiences of the world, which changes how we interact and communicate with one another. You are an individual like no other—just as everyone else in this world is. Understanding how nuanced each of us are is a great step toward Intercultural Communication competence. Prompt This week, your going to look at the unique intersections of your own identities. The first thing you will need to do is to fill out the University of Michigan’s Social Identity Wheel.pdf Actions worksheet. In order to fill this out, you will fill in each box with a 1, 2, 3, etc. depending on which you think of the most, what you think about the least, which you would like to learn more about, etc. After filling out the social identity wheel, look at which of your identities create unique intersections that make you see the world differently. For the discussion post, please post the following: 1. What were the two identities you were examining the intersection of. 2. Talk about some challenges you feel each of those groups alone face. 3. Talk about the unique challenges the intersection of those two identities face. 4. Explain how this affects your view of the world and how you communicate. 5. Both your initial post and your reply are due Thursday by midnight. REMINDER: This could wind up being a highly personal experience for you. Please share only what you feel comfortable sharing.