Shiva Ayyadurai Quotes

If there was an Oppression Olympics, I would win the gold medal. I'm Palestinian, Muslim, I'm female, I'm disabled, and I live in New Jersey.

In practice, intersectionality functions as kind of caste system, in which people are judged according to how much their particular caste has suffered throughout history.

As to whether Marcos is gay: Marcos is gay in San Francisco, black in South Africa, an Asian in Europe, a Chicano in San Ysidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, a Mayan Indian in the streets of San Cristobal, a Jew in Germany, a Gypsy in Poland, a Mohawk in Quebec, a pacifist in Bosnia, a single woman on the Metro at 10pm, a peasant without land, a gang member in the slums, an unemployed worker, an unhappy student and, of course, a Zapatista in the mountains.

As someone who is both an ethnic minority and openly gay, I often talk about how simply being who I am has given me a double awareness of the vulnerability that some Americans may be facing.

I'm not a fan of identity politics.

The caste systems of sex and race are interdependent and can only be uprooted together.

We will live with racism for ever. But senses of self, senses of belonging, senses of us and of others? Those are up for grabs.

I value what I learned from being cast in the margins and what that felt like.

As a black woman of trans experience, my position in this society leaves me really no choice but to stand for the intersectional identities I hold.

As a gay person, I'm used to speaking on gay issues. As a black person, I'm used to speaking on black issues.

Only a straight white person would have no concept of what visibility is. They've never contended with anything but visibility.

I don't want to be 'de-ethnicised.' I hate it when people say, 'Oh I don't even think of you as a woman,' or, 'I don't even think of you as a black woman.' Well what do you think of me as then? A loaf of bread?

Because I was assigned female at birth and I am light-skinned, white, I think people hear my message more than they hear it from someone who was assigned male at birth and is a person of colour.

The demand for racial (and sexual) justice gets reduced to politics of identity - and excoriating the so-called perpetrators of the identity politics.

The black woman had had to struggle against being a person of great strength.

I'M HOPELESS, because I've lived long enough to expect things like this to continue to happen. I'm not surprised and at some point my little children are going to inherit the weight of being a minority and all that it entails.

A black man - I say a black man, we got no corner on the market, but every day in some form or fashion you got to prove you're a man. But you want to keep the life-and-death situations down. I can get beat. But there's getting beat and there's getting stomped.

I'm not a member of a minority but I can empathize with what's going on.

Class, race, sexuality, gender and all other categories by which we categorize and dismiss each other need to be excavated from the inside.

I was the first South Asian female to do comedy videos on YouTube. But at the same time, all races face their barriers, and I've learned through YouTube, if it's not race, it will be sexism, if it's not sexism, it will be homophobia. It will always be something, and all voices should be heard.

Multiculturalism isn't about culture, it's about power.

There had always been black people in and out of our house, and from the outset I had been taught that for them life was defined by struggle and filled with injustice.

I'm the result of upbringing, class, race, gender, social prejudices, and economics. So I'm a victim again. A result.

We have two evils to fight, capitalism and racism. We must destroy both racism and capitalism.

Jews, black people - any people who are hated or who have suffered, either as individuals or as a people - use humour. It is a survival skill.