I respectfully disagree. Race and gender discrimination play out differently, they are different things. While there might be similarities, there is just a fundamental difference in how these forms of discrimination work.

For instance, most large cultural groups still in existence today have some element of patriarchy, this extends globally across racial and ethnic lines, in different ways but still patriarchical. If we take marriage for instance, in a traditional Westernised church wedding, the bride wears white to symbolise purity, the bride is handed off to the groom by her father, etc. I’m sure we can all see the patriarchical values on display here, where women are viewed as under the control of men.

Now if we look at another cultural practice with regards to marriage, and I’ll be using a practice I’m familiar with in South Africa practiced by quite a few different cultural groups here, the practice of lobola. In this practice, the family of the groom, offers a gift to the family of the bride before the marriage. In the past this was usually cattle, but these days it’s usually a monetary gift. Traditionally this practice is a very formal one with strict rules, negotiations and dignity and respect between the two prospective families. Though many view the practice as a way to unite the two families and not as a payment for the bride, and in modern times, even to fund the wedding or help the prospective bride and groom start their lives, it’s not hard to see how this could be expoilted or viewed in a patriarchical way, viewing women as a possession to be bought and haggled over. Hell, my phone’s autocorrect even suggested the word “buyer” instead of family at times.

Where I’m going with this is, is that many will be able to see the influence of patriarchy in someone else’s culture, while being blind to the patriarchy in their own culture, which leads to gender and racial discrimination manifesting themselves in different ways. If we go back to my example, many white people in South Africa or white foreigners, even people who consider themselves to be socially progressive and feminist, would be the first to call out the patriarchical practices of black South Africans, while engaging in their own culture’s patriarchical practices with no self awareness. For example, I remember reading a story about a white American woman who wanted to marry a Xhosa man, who was appalled by the their traditional practices in this regard, and didn’t want to wear their traditional dress or participate in a Xhosa wedding. What she wanted instead? A traditional Western marriage where she wore a white dress with her father walking her down the aisle, with bridesmaids and all. I’m sure we can all see the irony here.

In general, this is why I disagree with the idea that discrimination along the lines of race, gender, and sexual orientation are the same. I often hear or read about egalitarian liberals in the West saying “how can black people be homophobic/transphobic, they have the experience of being discriminated against for being a minority, how can they do the same thing to another group of people”, which is just a shortsighted and narrow way of looking at it, and also shows how racial discrimination is not the same as discrimination along the lines of sexual orientation. The “oppressor/oppressed” dynamic is just different. People across different cultures are probably homophobic for very similar reasons, the human condition, with all its flaws and ugliness included, is universal to a certain extent after all. Just because one group has experienced discrimination in the past, that does not mean that people who are a part of that cultural group or identity immune from discriminating against others in future. One can also simultaneously be a victim of one form of discrimination while engaging in discrimination against another group of people. One example that instantly comes to mind today would be LGBT people supporting Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people.