Day One: Intersectionality and Reselling
As a way to introduce the themes of the immersion, we had a conversation discussion intersectionality in secondhand. Watch or read (using the transcript below) our conversation or check out this article on the Wheel of Priviledge.
Share your positionality and how you experience reselling/secondhand economies from an intersectional framework. What role does the technology you use (from platforms to digital services you use in reselling) play in this context?
Video Transcript
Sara: Hi, I'm Sara here. And here's Zarya, who's going to introduce themselves.
Zarya: Hi. Yes, I'm Zarya. I'm helping with this reselling immersion.
Sara: What we're going to do is just talk about intersectionality as a framework and how this applies to our experiences in the space of secondhand reselling.
At a very high level, intersectionality is kind of this idea that, based on the capitalist and classist, then patriarchal white supremacist world that we live in, there are different elements of people's, I wouldn't say identities, but the way that people are read socially that place them in these intersectional matrices of oppression. So, based on, for example, how people are perceived as being racialized or gendered, we experience power and oppression from power differently.
This wheel, I think, is an interesting visualization. One thing that I don't like about this is that it does look like they could all be separate, you know, like that they're all separate categories. The leading understanding of intersectionality acknowledges that all of these things are interrelated. So, it's not like, it's not a mathematical model of how oppressed you are.
So, some of these things are here, like sexuality, gender, body size, skin color, neurodiversity, mental health, physical ability, religion, wealth, age, education, housing, transportation, political affiliation, marriage, citizenship, employment, language and communication, nationality. A lot of this is contextual. Zarya, what are your thoughts on this?
Zarya: Yeah. I mean, like you said, I feel like it's a very common interpretation that I have seen people think about it in this more mathematical perspective, kind of like building your levels of oppression. But, all of the different experiences are intersecting in a lot of really different contexts, and that leads to such a large variety of ways of interacting with community, with society, with the economy, like all of these different elements, all the different types of intersections and how they might influence someone's individual and larger experiences.
Sara: So, there's also something else here which is like this idea of power. Like, it's unclear exactly what power is. You know, sometimes conceptualizing power is difficult, but in some sense, the degree to which people closer to this concept of power can exert violence or control over other people.
So, speaking about reselling, there's different ways, for example, that this aspect of intersectionality might affect us. And what we were going to talk about specifically is about clothing and how clothing is related to intersectionality and how reselling and secondhand is part of this.
For example, when it comes to reselling, for me, the reason that I started reselling was that I needed money. And this is related to class, very likely. There are some people who start reselling more because they have too much stuff and they want to get rid of it, and then maybe they see a business opportunity.
The other thing was that, I think there was obviously an aspect for me of gender too, which was, I think, people who are gendered as women tend to be socialized to care about the way they dress in, like, feminine ways. And there's a weird association between consumerism and clothing, fast fashion, and femininity. I was already going to thrift stores a lot to look at clothing, and that was probably from a gendered perspective. I saw reselling also as something that many other people who were cis-identifying women also did.
I think a little bit of neurodiversity there. I have a feeling that a lot of people who go thrifting, at least compulsively, have some sort of obsession with clothing. And I don't know if that's just neurodiversity or if capitalism and consumerism are somehow the opposite.
What is your relationship to thrifting or your thoughts on reselling?
Zarya: Yeah. Historically, my relationship to clothing in general has been very distant and has felt like a very restricted interaction. Just because I was very early in my understanding of my own gender. And as someone who's socialized as a woman, as you mentioned, the way that you physically present the clothing that you wear is such an important part of that.
So, I remember always feeling like I was playing like I was a doll playing dress-up. And I did not enjoy any part of it until I started thrifting, which kind of opened up the ability to explore different relationships with clothing through or genders through clothing, in a way that was also affordable and more accessible and not as restrictive.
I think thrifting became a really important part of just me exploring myself from an individual style standpoint as well as a gender and sexuality standpoint. And since then, I have thrifted through several different types of presentations.
Sara: Okay, that's really interesting. I like the thing that you say that you've thrifted through several types of presentations because, to me, when I moved to the States, which was like eight years ago, I kind of purposefully tried to learn how to look more like people here.
And when I say that, it's like, probably I was trying to identify some sort of way of presenting myself, as like almost kind of like integrating myself into, I would say now I'm thinking, a white, cisgender version of my previous self. A cis-hetero-ization of myself. Before I traveled here, I used to be way less like this looking or cis-presenting. So, to some degree, I was also interested in using thrift stores as ways of kind of playing the role of, okay, and it did make it.
To some degree, I think it made it easier for me to navigate the world as an immigrant by appearing more like a normative person, by using the clothes used by people who were previously trying to be normative. So, it's kind of like a weird reflection also, of how people can also try to navigate that intersectional wheel of power unwillingly, trying to approach power or at least aspire to approach power through fashion.
Did you dress for the job that you want? There's an aspiration through clothing as well. And I think thrifting kind of lives in that, although there's obviously a part that's more liberatory and fun. The next thing, do you remember, was the relationship to platforms. Right.
I think intersectionality and platforms, I'm very familiar with Poshmark and I think we're going to talk about that in more detail at some point. But Poshmark has this very white, cis-esthetic, feminine, heteronormative esthetic. It was very, very white.
Recently, they started trying to introduce more diverse imagery, but it's still kind of very millennial posh, Bauhaus esthetic a little bit. A lot of people in the resale community also appear a bit like that. Maybe that's because that's the type of clothes that most sell. I don't know if it's harder for you as a reseller to try to sell clothes that are more diverse, and you have to follow the fashion trends and all that stuff.
Have you ever shopped on Depop?
Zarya: I have, yeah, yeah. And on Depop and on Instagram. We have sellers on Instagram as well. Something about shopping in an online setting, it's also really interesting connecting it to the embodied aspects of thrifting.
And then there's also this gender aspect that I've always found really cool. Not just online. I think this is like an in-person, just reselling thing in general. But people who are going through gender transition resell a lot of the clothing that they no longer align with.
Sara: You don't really find out very much about the history of other people's clothing. Do you think some platforms might try to do that differently, try to prioritize storytelling? What do you think that could look like?
Zarya: Yeah, I mean, I've definitely seen this more so on Instagram and reselling, which is, I see a lot more, expensive apps or like, you can do a lot more in terms of presenting yourself and your brand and interacting with potential buyers on Instagram. So, yeah, there's a lot of ability to just go on the Instagram story and explain, like, this is why I'm reselling these things in these ways, being able to DM people and talk through things.
Sara: But I think you're right. That format, not just Instagram, but the video real-time format where people are holding the clothes and talking about it, emphasizing different aspects, is very different than scrolling through a grid and being like, okay, this looks good.What would it look like if platforms moved more towards the video format and what could happen with that? Alright, I think we should just leave it at this.