The Sierra Club (and Two PC-Left Principles)

This happened with all sorts of lefty groups.

The (ridiculous) principle that helps rationalize (in the bad dumb sense) this: "intersectionality."

Or, rather, what we might call strong intersectionality.

The idea started with Kimberle Crenshaw (or one of those people). Originally, the point was: in some circumstances, different varieties of discrimination can interact to create a kind of discrimination that's greater than the sum of its parts. E.g. black women might suffer a kind of discrimination that can't just be decomposed into anti-black discrimination and anti-female discrimination. I read the paper, but it wasn't very good, and I don't remember whether her argument even works.

But this idea got blown up into the absurd idea I'm calling "strong intersectionality."

It goes like this:

It's impossible to mitigate one type of discrimination (oh...sry..."oppression"...) without addressing all types.

That, of course, is ridiculous.

It would mean that the Civil War did nothing to mitigate racist discrimination because it didn't address discrimination against women or homosexuals.

Just dumb.

Anyway, this provides the kind of thin justification the PC left thrives on. And it's used to turn organizations that address one issue the lefties like (in this case: environmentalism) into full-spectrum Woketarian train wrecks.

The dumb justification isn't even relevant in that case because environmentalism isn't aimed at opposing a kind of discrimination (though the left does some contortions to try to make it seem like it is in some cases).

LOL there's another one that's not quite so apt but I just thought it up and then forgot it while I was typing out the tirade above...