Essay on Why Race, Class and Gender Still Matter

The 'holy trinity' of social analysis is named as such because of its importance in the historical field. It is impossible to conduct a complete social analysis without acknowledging all three categories of class, race, and gender. However, as with all historical scholarship, the field must develop, and social analysis naturally becomes more nuanced and intricate as our understanding of these concepts evolves. The way we view these three categories has developed in the last few decades and we now have a very different understanding of them as a means of social analysis. The 'holy trinity' encourages historians to look at history through an intersectional lens and consider how these categories work with each other to shape society in the past. One cannot study gender history without considering class and race, and vice-versa. However, we must not get stuck in this 'holy trinity' and think that is all we need to consider to make our studies intersectional. There are areas within these categories that require more nuanced analysis and additional categories that scholarship would also benefit from considering, including but not limited to, sexuality, disability, religion, and age. Though these are all essential to the formation of society and people's identities, this essay will focus on how social analysis should use this 'holy trinity' but not be limited by it, focusing on the study of gender, sexuality, and disability to expand how we see historical scholarship today.

In her article, Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis, Joan Scott explored this 'holy trinity' as a way of 'understanding that inequalities of power are organized along at least three axes'. These three categories are essential to understanding the contributing factors to one's oppression or privilege. However, it is clear that there are at least' three, but this is not necessarily a limited set of categories. These three are influential in terms of both oppression and privilege in most, if not all societies, past and present. They intersect and each person will experience the relationship between these categories and society's views of them. For example, a black, middle-class woman will have different experiences and society will treat her differently to a white, working-class man. It is not about competition or oppression, however, and we must not fall into that trap. In social analysis, it is just important to see the differences and how these can either be lessened or dealt with in a way that recognizes differences and accommodates them. In this way, therefore it is so important to make sure that we include the impacts of sexuality, disability, religion, and other categories. The way that society functions as a whole and how individuals interact is impacted by all these factors and not one alone. The idea of the 'holy trinity' is incredibly useful as a starting point for intersectionality in social analysis, but that is exactly what it should be; a starting point to use to extend our analysis beyond the core three categories.

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In terms of using gender in social analysis, historians have been doing this for years. However, their approach has changed over time, beginning with the opportunity to finally include women in mainstream history, to a more complex discussion of gender and social constructions of gender in the past. The idea that gender history is typically 'just women's history' is a common opinion, or at least has been in the historical field. There is an expectation that when we discuss gender in history, the focus is mainly on women and typically 'female' activities of housework or motherhood. There is a space for that in historical research, however, looking beyond the female experience, gender as a method of social and historical analysis can include ideas about masculinity, femininity, androgyny, the transgender experience, intersex experiences, and all of these and more about race, class, sexuality, disability, etc. Gender history has developed in recent years, and since Joan Scott's article in 1986, there has been a move to understand gender history as a form of analysis of other histories, not just as a category in and of itself. There is a difference between studying the history of women and studying the effects of gender as a construct in the past and how it impacted the way people thought or acted. In this way, applying gender to social analysis must be done in a way that recognizes our current knowledge and ideas of gender and sex as concepts, while not applying those to the past in a way that reduces ideas to labels that can be applied to any time or place as 'gender is, and must be perceived as, context-specific and context-dependent' (Gisela Bock, Women's history and gender history: aspects of an international debate). As historians, we must not apply these current labels to the past, but instead work within how individuals and groups in the past expressed themselves and understood themselves. As Scott explains, it is important to consider 'not only the relationship between male and female experience in the past but also the connection between history and current historical practice' (Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis). Gender is a category that is historically contingent and the way we view the concept of gender relies on the time and place where we look. This is also arguably true for concepts like sexuality and disability that have had their definitions shaped over time to become what we see today. The importance of including these nuances in gender history is the next step in the progression from the ideas about women's history vs. gender history. Instead of moving from purely the history of women to the study of the relationship between men and women, historical analysis needs to move towards analyzing gender as a concept about the societies being studied. It is important to the study of history to analyze these complexities and to give space to the inclusion of other methods of social analysis through the use of other categories and building on the foundation of this 'holy trinity'. So, though gender, as part of this 'holy trinity' is still just as important, if not more as it becomes more complex and nuanced, it has changed over time. The way we studied gender in the past is not the same way we study it now and that surely means that, as historians, we can make room for other categories such as sexuality and disability in historical and social analysis. Exploring gender as a complex concept regarding the past is an essential part of social and historical analysis as gender forms an integral part of the social framework of past and present societies. Just as with both class and race, it is impossible to analyze society without each of these things. In those terms, yes, the 'holy trinity' of social analysis is still with race, class, and gender, though it must be acknowledged that these concepts can no longer be used in isolation.

Although there has been a particular focus on gender, class, and race also provide an essential role in social analysis. The way we view society must be done in conjunction with how those societies approach race and class as concepts. They both play an important role in how individuals interact with each other and society and they remain pillars of social and historical analysis. As with most of these categories, the basis of the social analysis lies within how race shapes and is shaped by relationships, rather than focusing on race itself. It is not what we do to explain race throughout history, but rather understanding and explaining the existence of race itself in the past as an ideology that has been formed. The way that we as historians and as a society view race is essential to social analysis as connections can still be made to understand how race as an ideology influences aspects of society. There is no real argument against why this is still important. Racism and racial prejudice are still rampant in the 21st Century and we must work to unravel the ideology that is not 'genetically programmed' but in fact 'must arise historically' (Barbara Field, Slavery, Race, and Ideology in the United States of America).

The way that we understand sexuality today is based on a long history of queer people and mostly recent scholarship. The move towards understanding and studying queer theory and studying sexuality in more depth has only really emerged in the last few decades. This may be a 'new' category of social analysis in comparison to the 'holy trinity', however, it is still important in understanding the past and society. Queer people have always existed, but the labels and identities they adopted have shifted over time and they have, more often than not, gone without these labels. Whether it is to escape persecution, or because there were no labels that aptly covered their identity, queer people have gone under the radar in historical research as there are no clear-cut ways of categorizing them as 'queer'. Therefore, it is essential that when analyzing the past, we consider sexuality as a way of understanding individuals and groups when it may not be explicitly 'queer'. Many historians may not view sexuality as an 'essential' form of social analysis however sexuality is an essential part of society as a whole. Whether it is about sex or queerness, society has always found an interest in sexuality and it would be a mistake to ignore that. How sexuality shaped the lives of individuals in the past can tell us a lot about what society saw as important or valuable. For example, one of the ways we can see what people were doing sexually, was how they wrote about what they should not be doing. In that, we know that to stop people from doing these things, they likely had to have been doing them in the first place. This is where church and government documents come in particularly useful, which is not an expected place to look for histories of sex and sexuality. An excellent example of this is Henry VIII's Act Against Buggery (1534) which can tell us a lot about what people were doing as they were being warned against it. Documents like these also give us the ability to read into how society viewed these relations, though by society, that nearly always means upper-class people in power who could control narratives and publish these ideas. This is where it is important to acknowledge how these categories intersect. As with most historical research, our knowledge is dependent on the few documents we have available, meaning that our information is often drawn from only literate individuals, and the working class is often excluded from the narrative. The history of sexuality is about queerness as much as it is about sex itself and understanding the roots of homophobia, sexual liberation, and queerness as a concept is needed in current historical scholarship.

The way society has come to understand disability is something that has developed over many years. Disabled people have experienced years of oppression and mistreatment by society and understanding the formation of that and how it developed is essential to historical scholarship today. The way we are beginning to view the past and analyze society, it is becoming increasingly obvious that everything intersects. For example, there is no way we can study the history of disability without considering how gender intersects, likewise for race and class. Though the 'holy trinity' of social analysis may be the first method we jump to, it is important to consider how other factors interact with these and how the development of the way disabled people exist in society is impacted by their race, class, gender, sexuality, or other factors. People are not viewed with one identity in isolation, they are taken in as an entire person, with a multitude of aspects of their identity. This can be done and is most commonly done regarding race, class, and gender, but incorporating someone's disability into their identity is essential, for example, when looking at workplaces or earning a living in general, someone's ability to work in certain fields is almost entirely dependent on what abilities or disabilities they have, both mentally and physically. Yes, the 'holy trinity' remains important to social analysis, but as historians, we must branch out and understand how more things interact to create the conditions of society in the past that people existed in.

The concept of disability may seem well understood and obvious to us now, making it seem somewhat useless to use as a category of analysis, however, like many other categories mentioned here, the concept of disability is changeable. The nature of the category of 'disabled' is inherently a political one; as a category, it is 'contested and debated' (Alison Kafer, Feminist Queer Crip, 2013) and is not a consistent, defined category that can be applied to moments in history in the same way each time. It cannot even be applied to different places in the same way in the same period. The concept of disability has developed over time and the way we use it as a form of analysis now would wildly differ from the past, even by a few decades the way we view disability has changed. Before the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the categories of disability were limited to a few options: 'the deaf, the blind, the orthopedically impaired, and the mentally retarded' (Mary Jo. Deegan, Women and disability: The double handicap, 2018.). Since then, the definition of disability has become more nuanced as our understanding of disability has improved. The way we view disability is constantly changing but it is still important to challenge the normative ideas of how we view disability. Queer theory and 'crip theory' both intend to 'challenge compulsory normativity' (Joshua Reno, et al 'Toward a Critical and Comparative Anthropology of Disability') which is essential to the progression of social analysis. The inclusion of disability in the social analysis allows us to explore the roots of ablism as well as create a more whole picture of what being disabled means. The way that being disabled intersects with other aspects of society must not be ignored and is just as important of a basis of social analysis as the other methods.

To conclude, while the concept of the 'holy trinity' being race, class, and gender is a good basis for social analysis, there needs to be an acknowledgment that these do not exist in a vacuum. The influence of sexuality and disability is significant and should not be ignored. The interaction between these categories is essential to understanding society throughout history and can give real insight into current society. The use of gender in social analysis must be understood in a way that acknowledges the complexities of gender as well as how gender and identity can help us understand the past in a more nuanced way. The way we view sexuality is also important in how we can gain a full understanding of individuals' experiences and how they interact with society. The study of disability is similar in this way, in understanding how society made it difficult or impossible to live authentically in the past as many individuals' livelihoods were contingent on society's implementation of what was considered 'normal'. Although race, class, and gender are fundamental to social analysis, the development of historical scholarship must allow more room for complex identities and ideas.