Estranging intersectionality: A call for context-sensitive applications of intersectionality for non-capitalist and non-democratic regimes

Abstract

Intersectionality has become a central concept in feminist theories and movements worldwide. Coined initially to understand how Black American women were rendered invisible in U.S. American anti-discrimination law around 1990, it has since traveled to both political activism and social scientific research worldwide. In this paper, we argue that there are challenges in transferring the concept from its origins in a late-20th-century liberal democratic and capitalist society to a different historical and socio-political context. We employ the epistemological operation of “strangification” to reflect on the potential and limitations of applying intersectionality to understand mechanisms of overlapping oppressions in the authoritarian socialist one-party regime of the German Democratic Republic (GDR; 1949–1990). We ask what needs to be considered when “estranging” intersectionality from its context of origin and applying it in a context-sensitive manner to the GDR. Drawing on an empirical analysis of biographical interviews with individuals from different social backgrounds, including lesbian, migrant, and Jewish communities, and on a theoretical examination of the preconditions of the concept, we theorize that “politically conformist behavior” with the Socialist Unity Party was the central principle determining relations of inequality and oppression in the GDR. We present this article as a call for a context-sensitive use of intersectionality, highlighting the need to examine its original assumptions and to consider whether the categories and overarching principles of social organization suggested by theorists of intersectionality require adaptation; without such reflection, uncritical application risks overlooking key dimensions of oppression or obscuring the complexity of intersecting power structures.

The concept of intersectionality is a central concept in feminist debates, movements, and research in the social sciences as well as in the theory of psychology. The term was coined in 1989 by U.S. legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw to point out that U.S. anti-discrimination laws recognized discrimination based on sex/gender or race, but not on the intersection of both. The notion thus originates from a societal context marked by capitalism in terms of economic relations and liberal democracy with regard to political regulation. In terms of scholarly orientation, it is situated in legal studies. Within this context, it has a broader genealogy, though, that has been recognized in intersectionality research. For example, in 1851, Sojourner Truth held a speech at a women’s convention in Ohio, challenging whether or not she was a woman, which ignited a far-reaching debate, the extent of which would be unforeseeable. Her critique encompassed both white women, addressing their racism, and Black ¹ men, addressing their sexism towards Black women. It was not until nearly 150 years later, at the end of the 20th century, that this form of multiple discrimination received a name.

Since its inception, the notion has gained increasing popularity across many disciplines worldwide. However, there is still no universal definition of intersectionality, nor is there consensus on whether it should be regarded as a theory, a concept, or an analytic tool. Some scholars have raised concerns about intersectionality, arguing that it has become a popular buzzword lacking in precision and rigor (see Rutherford & Davidson, 2019, p. 7). Others see this vagueness as the driving force behind its widespread adoption and efficacy as a framework in feminist scholarship (K. Davis, 2008). Current scholarly discussions of intersectionality raise methodological and theoretical questions: Does intersectionality retain relevance beyond its original social context(s)? Does intersectionality offer a definable tool or a structured methodology applicable within the social sciences? Is it possible to separate the notion of intersectionality from its political point of inception and driving force?

In this paper, we depart from the feminist epistemological call to regard knowledge as situated (e.g., Haraway, 1988). We urge psychologists who employ the notion of intersectionality in their research to attend not only to the context of origin in which intersectionality was coined but also to the contexts in which it is taken up and further developed. As the notion traveled to other countries, many of which had their own historical genealogies of what may be deemed as intersectional thought or political practice, it was adapted by scholars from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds and within different sociopolitical, political, and historical contexts. For example, in Germany, it encountered a post-national socialist society that, after German reunification in 1990, ¹ was marked by a capitalist economic organization and a democratic political system with a relatively strong social welfare system. Thus, the axes of difference that scholars tackled were not primarily race and gender, as they were in the United States. Instead, intersectionality in German-speaking countries also has roots in debates around female perpetrators during National Socialism. Besides, the strong Marxist roots of theorizing in German-speaking social sciences are evident in concepts of intersectionality that emphasize capitalism as an overarching principle for organizing oppression along the axes of heteronormativisms, racisms, classisms, and bodyisms (e.g., Winker & Degele, 2009). However, the Federal Republic of Germany, in which German-speaking scholars have engaged with issues of intersectionality, has a divided history. Between 1949 and 1990, it was split into two countries, the socio-economic and political organization of which could hardly be more different: the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), a capitalist and democratic society, and the German Democratic Republic (GDR), which was an authoritarian socialist one-party regime, referred to in German contemporary historical research as the Socialist Unity Party (SED) dictatorship (e.g., Kowalczuk, 2015).

It is this context that we encountered challenges in applying intersectionality in our own research. Motivated by the aim of realizing an intersectional analysis, first author, Charlotta Sippel sought to comprehend the diverse manifestations of oppression experienced by politically repressed individuals in the former GDR (1949–1990), interviewed as part of a the research project “Theory, Practice, and Consequences of Operational Psychology” (PI: Martin Wieser) on the history of operational psychology. ² Charlotta’s original intention was to examine biographical narratives through an intersectional lens, given that interviewees hailed from diverse social backgrounds, including lesbian, migrant, and Jewish communities. However, it quickly became evident that this undertaking was more challenging than initially anticipated. The difficulty lay not least in the class dimension. Intersectionality, as it emerged in democratic and capitalist societies, presupposes a capitalist organization of labor, property, and social inequality and often treats “class” as a central axis of oppression (e.g., Winker & Degele, 2009). In the GDR, however, class was officially abolished as a social and political category: The state defined itself as a classless workers’ and peasants’ state, and social stratification was discursively concealed rather than openly negotiated. This created a conceptual mismatch. Intersectional class categories could not simply be transposed to a socialist context in which inequality operated through different mechanisms, was articulated differently, and was often denied at the level of political discourse. To understand how power, discrimination, and privilege were organized and experienced by our interviewees, we therefore needed to adapt—and partly rethink—the concept of intersectionality. Given these challenges, should we argue that employing the notion of intersectionality to understand the specificity and interlocking of different forms of oppression in a society so different from the United States in terms of economic and political organization should be discouraged at all? We do not. Instead, eventually, we opted to turn adversity into an opportunity. Relying on the epistemological operation of “strangification” (German: “Verfremdung”) that was initially coined in the philosophy of science of Constructive Realism (e.g., Wallner & Klünger, 2016), we explore the theoretical question of how a concept such as intersectionality can be effectively applied to a society so distinct from its original context—politically, juridically, socially, and economically. We also use it to gain insights into our own situatedness. Strangification, within Constructive Realism, is a strategy to reflect on the conditions of one’s own scientific actions. Such strangification can be achieved, for instance, by placing one’s own theories or scientific statements into a different scientific context and paying attention to the points where they do not work or make sense. Starting from this non-functionality, one can then draw conclusions about one’s own context and the conditions of one’s own scientific actions. From a cultural psychological perspective, Slunecko (2002) has articulated the relevance of strangification for psychology and argued that it helps psychologists gain insight into their own presuppositions and context through engagement with the (cultural) “other.”

Against this backdrop, we ask: What are the potentials and limitations of intersectionality for analyzing overlapping oppressions in a non-democratic and non-capitalist society, specifically the socialist dictatorship of the GDR? What can the operation of strangification reveal about the notion of intersectionality itself and its diverse contexts of origin and application?

We aim to initiate a theoretical discussion of a context-sensitive application of intersectionality that helps psychologists connect micro-level research on the feelings, thoughts, and actions of individuals and groups with macro-level questions about the social structures and the structural organization of society.

Therefore, in the theoretical section of our paper, we first provide a rough overview of the historical evolution of the notion of “intersectionality” in the United States, where the term was initially coined. We then focus on the genealogy of the concept in our own context of academic socialization in Western German-speaking countries and offer a brief overview of how the notion was taken up in psychology. Next, we analyze the situatedness of the concept of intersectionality in light of the cautions raised about its translation into Western German countries. We argue that these challenges are even more pronounced when applying the notion of intersectionality to the GDR, which was marked by close geographical proximity to and a shared history with the Federal Republic of Germany yet differed markedly in terms of economic and political organization. Importantly, we do not strive for comparisons across different systems and historical contexts and their social systems, nor do we aim to propose a more “fitting” concept of intersectionality for empirical data analysis. Instead, we turn frictions between our empirical data and the concept of intersectionality into a looking glass to provide insights about the notion’s conditions and context. To address challenges in translating intersectionality into other socio-historical contexts, we propose that psychologists can draw inspiration from a theory of intersectionality that not only systematizes various social categories (racisms, classisms, heteronormativisms, and bodyisms) on different levels (micro, macro, and symbolic representations) but also attends to the overarching principle of the structural organization of a given society (see Winker & Degele, 2009), and that allows to connect micro-level and macro-level considerations of intersectionality.

In the more empirical chapters of our article, we present insights from Charlotta Sippel’s empirical analysis of applying intersectionality to the GDR context. These empirical insights are exemplary and serve to demonstrate that the systematic of oppression and inequality in the socialist dictatorship of the GDR differs profusely from the context of liberal capitalist democracy in which intersectionality was developed: In the GDR, typical of a dictatorship, the primary criterion for inclusion or exclusion was “politically conformist behavior” towards the SED. Constitutive of politically conformist behavior is the visibility of individuals, their (oppositional) actions, and the visibility and invisibility of their social identity, another dimension we saw in the interview material. Thus, using empirical examples, we examine how “politically conformist behavior” as an overarching principle of societal organization intersected with key axes of inequality identified in our material: race, gender, sexual orientation, and religion.

We want to acknowledge that the increasing presence of intersectional perspectives in the “privileged sites of knowledge production in the global North” (Mauer & Leinius, 2021, p. 44) has led to growing criticism of the depoliticization of intersectionality (cf. Castro Varela & Dhawan, 2005; Collins, 1990). As the concept of intersectionality is rooted in the experiences and struggles of those who are victimized within the patriarchal, racist, and capitalist social order, Black scholar-activists and scholar-activists of color have been on the forefront of arguing that intersectional approaches must include socially transformative practices and not be reduced to an elitist theoretical concept exchanged in academia (cf. Castro Varela & Dhawan, 2005; Collins, 1990, 2019; Crenshaw, 1989, 1991). Countering intersectional discrimination means realizing a privilege-conscious way of life, because intersectionality is a way of seeing, thinking, and acting (Crenshaw, 1989). In our own work, we also reflect on what it means and what impact it has to apply the concept of intersectionality in our academic research, considering our own intersectionally situated perspectives. We all identify as white, cis-female, with varying degrees of able-bodiedness or physical vulnerability. Two of us are first-generation academics; some of us identify as care workers and/or parents; and we all hold EU passports and grew up in liberal democracies. We were all academically socialized in both the German-speaking countries and the Americas (North or South America) and are primarily familiar with feminist theorizing and activism in these contexts, including the hierarchies and frictions between them. We do not speak as activists for intersectionality in this paper—although some of us are politically organized in various contexts, we all work in critical participatory action research projects, and we understand ourselves as intersectional feminists, also struggling for recognition and equality within academia. We do not want to disguise our interests or privileges deriving from our social positionality and from using concepts developed in the midst of social and political struggle. Grounded in feminism, our theoretical and academic work feeds back into our political and activist work and vice versa. Historically constructed structures also create ambivalence and contradiction for us. We must reflect these ambivalences and the theories, epistemologies, and practices that derive from them. In this article, we are first and foremost academics, seeking to explore the concept of intersectionality on a theoretical level. We raise questions around the contextuality of the concept of intersectionality and its use to understand political regimes and their psychological effects. We use intersectionality as a historiographical tool to analyze how intersecting forms of repression were experienced in the GDR. Thereby, we aim to invite readers to further think with us about the method of “estranging” intersectionality and about the possibilities of applying it in a context-sensitive manner. While we cannot change past conditions of oppression, we aim to critique these conditions and highlight cross-system continuities.

Intersectionality: From Traveling Concept to a Context-Sensitive Approach

In the following chapters, we first delineate the inception and precursors of intersectionality as a theoretical tool in both the United States and West Germany. Based not least on differences in these genealogies, we then explore the challenges of transposing a concept coined within a specific context (the United States) to another (the Federal Republic of Germany). This sets the stage for us to even further complicate these issues by asking how intersectionality can be employed for a social context that was, on the one hand, geographically close to and shared a history with the FRG but that, on the other hand, differed radically in terms of social, political, and economic organization: the German Democratic Republic GDR (1949–1990). In our endeavor to understand the experiences of individuals who had been (politically) persecuted in the GDR, the issue of connecting the micro-level analysis of biographical oral history interviews with macro-level dynamics became particularly pertinent. In the analysis of the interviews, “political conformity” emerged as a central theme in the experience of oppression. How do we deal with this from an intersectional perspective? Do we regard political conformity as a category of inequality and/or as a category that denotes group membership or group identity? Given that this category emerged in all interviews and considering the way the GDR was organized politically and economically, can it even be regarded as a social category, or do we need a different framework to understand its significance and its role in the structural organization of society?

A Brief Overview of Intersectionality in the United States and (West) Germany

The term intersectionality was coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in the late 1980s, with a specific focus on anti-discrimination laws in the United States and the anti-racist and feminist movements of that time. The phenomena of overlapping forms of oppression were already described in the context of anti-slavery and global Black feminist liberation movements (Beal, 1969; Hull et al., 1982). Already in the 19th century, Truth (2022/1851) referred to the multiple oppressions Black women suffered in the context of slavery and to their exclusion from liberal-democratic norms and structures, e.g., not possessing voting rights until 1920, 50 years after they had been granted to Black men. In the 20th century, Black activists referred to Sojourner Truth in their own analyses of the intersection of different categories of discrimination and oppression, such as the Combahee River Collective:

We are a collective of Black feminists who have been meeting together since 1974. During that time, we have been involved in the process of defining and clarifying our politics, while at the same time doing political work within our own group and in coalition with other progressive organizations and movements. The most general statement of our politics at the present time would be that we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives. (Combahee River Collective, 1982/1977, p. 210)

In this quote, the term “interlocking” is used to describe how multiple systems of oppression (racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class) form a synthesis and, as such, shape the living conditions and the political activism of Black women. Hooks (1981), in Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, also highlighted the impact of intersecting oppressions since slavery on the devaluation of Black femininity. She critiqued the sexism of both white and Black men, historically and in contemporary society, and analyzed the gendered division of labor and its effect on Black families. A. Davis (1983) examined the intersections of the Black civil rights struggle and the white women’s movement, arguing that class and racism prevented the latter from addressing Black women’s needs. Also, Hill Collins (2023) frames intersectionality as a tool of critical theory, connecting analysis and social action, and rethinks intersecting categories, like race and gender, as resistant knowledge projects by oppressed groups.

In the German-speaking context, early feminist discourse focused on the intersection of gender and class, with proletarian women in the 1920s criticizing the bourgeois women’s movement for neglecting their concerns and highlighting its one-dimensionality (Dierckx, 2018). By the late 20th century, feminist theorists such as Frigga Haug, Gudrun Axeli Knapp, Regina Becker-Schmidt, and Maria Mies expanded these critiques by attending to the interrelation of capitalism, patriarchy, and colonialism. In the 1970s, the “cripple movement” founded by disabled activists brought attention to the stigma and discrimination faced by disabled individuals (Boll et al., 1985; Marzell, 2020). By the 1980s, migrant, Black, and Jewish women in Germany criticized the feminist movement for failing to address inequalities such as legal status and cultural diversity, as seen in works like Farbe bekennen (Oguntoye et al., 1986). A pivotal debate arose in post-National Socialist Germany in the 1980s surrounding “women’s co-perpetration” (“weibliche Mittäterschaft”), a term coined by Christina Thürmer-Rohr (see Thürmer-Rohr, 2010). This highlighted the oversight of feminist historical scholarship, which had portrayed women solely as victims of National Socialism while ignoring their roles as Nazi perpetrators or bystanders. This debate underscored the intersection of oppression and privilege among women, reflecting complex dynamics of persecution and complicity (Thürmer-Rohr, 2010).

Intersectionality and Epistemic Critique in Psychology

Intersectionality has increasingly shaped psychological theory and research, though its influence has been neither linear nor uncontested. Historically, early critical interventions—such as Guthrie’s (1976) Even the Rat Was White—exposed scientific racism and highlighted the marginalization of Black psychologists within the discipline (Rutherford & Davidson, 2019). Feminist psychologists in the 1990s extended this critique by arguing that mainstream “psychology of women” had centered white, middle-class experiences and largely ignored the interlocking roles of race, class, and sexuality. Today, intersectionality is widely regarded as both an ethical framework for studying marginalized experiences and an epistemological lens for interrogating psychology’s complicity in producing and maintaining oppression. Much of this critique targets psychology’s longstanding adherence to (post-)positivist ideals—objectivity, generalizability, and value-neutrality—that conflict with intersectionality’s feminist epistemological foundations, which emphasize positionality, situated knowledge (Haraway, 1988), and the inseparability of research from power relations (Bowleg, 2008; Cole, 2008, 2009; Warner et al., 2023). As Bowleg (2008) argued, additive quantitative models fail to capture the intertwined nature of oppression, leading to conceptual distortions such as “Black + Lesbian + Woman ≠ Black Lesbian Woman.” In line with this critique, Sabik and Versey (2022) note that psychological research still disproportionately emphasizes individual experiences of discrimination while neglecting the structural forces that produce inequality. They propose four strategies for a critical-intersectional psychology: analyzing root causes of inequality, critically reflecting on language and framing, examining representation in samples, and interrogating institutional power within academia.

One of the few explicitly psychological concepts rooted in intersectionality is “intersectional invisibility,” introduced by Purdie-Vaughns and Eibach (2008). Building on Crenshaw’s (1989) analysis of Black women’s erasure, they argue that androcentrism, ethnocentrism, and heterocentrism shape social prototypes of marginalized groups in ways that render individuals with multiple minoritized identities “non-prototypical.” As they write:

Because people with multiple subordinate identities (e.g., African-American woman) do not usually fit the prototypes of their respective subordinate groups (e.g., African-Americans, women), they will experience what we have termed “intersectional invisibility.” (Purdie-Vaughns & Eibach, 2008, p. 3)

Their model predicts a double effect: On one hand, prototypical group members (e.g., Black men, gay men) face more direct prejudice (supported by research on racial phenotypically bias: Maddox, 2004; and on sexuality-based prejudice: Kite & Whitley, 1996). On the other hand, non-prototypical members (e.g., Black women) experience erasure—struggles for recognition, representation, and having their voices understood (Purdie-Vaughns & Eibach, 2008, p. 9). This helps explain why Black women’s contributions to civil rights and feminist movements have historically been sidelined (p. 8). Following this, Remedios and Snyder (2018) have shown that intersectional invisibility produces psychosocial burdens—chronic vigilance, stress, and insufficient access to culturally and intersectionally attuned therapeutic support—because many psychological models assume monolithic identities and fail to address multiply marginalized experiences.

For psychology, Cole’s (2009) work offers an influential framework for operationalizing intersectionality. In Intersectionality and Research in Psychology, she proposes three guiding questions: 1) Who is included in this category? – addressing intragroup diversity and marginalized identities. 2) What role does inequality play? – examining structural power dynamics shaping privilege and oppression. 3) Where are the commonalities? – identifying shared experiences to foster solidarity and coalition building. Cole emphasizes that psychologists need interdisciplinary grounding in history, political science, and sociology to address intersecting inequalities adequately. However, most psychologists are not trained to connect micro-level psychological processes with macro-level political and economic structures—a limitation that complicates intersectional research in psychology.

Recent scholarship also highlights epistemic marginalization within psychology itself: Intersectional research remains underrepresented in leading journals, receives less funding, and is sometimes dismissed as overly “normative,” disproportionately affecting scholars from marginalized groups (Cole, 2020; Settles et al., 2020; Warner et al., 2023). This ongoing exclusion threatens the transformative potential of intersectionality and underscores the need for structural changes in editorial practices, funding, and disciplinary boundaries (Moradi & Grzanka, 2017; Sabik & Versey, 2022; Warner et al., 2023).

Translating Intersectionality: Potential, Challenges, and Pitfalls

Over the last 30 years, intersectionality has become part of the academic discourse and a paradigm for gender studies worldwide. However, what intersectionality is (a theory, a perspective, a method, or an ethical stance) or does (explain overlapping forms of discrimination, structural inequality, social positionalities, or processes) is still heatedly debated. With Diaz et al. (2013), we argue that questions of intersectionality are inextricably specific to the contexts in which they emerge. Social theories and their terminologies are inherently situated within the very conditions they aim to comprehend. Even the various notions employed across different strands of intersectionality, such as “oppression,” “discrimination,” “inequality,” “axes of social difference,” “marginalization,” or “exploitation,” all have distinct theoretical and political implications for understanding societal dynamics and individual experiences. They all carry remnants of their original context and must be chosen in accordance with their contextual characteristics.

Especially the translation of the concept of intersectionality from the U.S. legal context into the German-speaking academic field has attracted much interest and critical scrutiny (see Hess et al., 2011; Knapp, 2013; Knapp et al., 2007; Soiland, 2012; Winker, 2012; Zander, 2017). As already briefly addressed above, the notion of intersectionality derives from anti-discrimination discourse in the United States (see Soiland, 2012, p. 5; Zander, 2017) and is rooted in feminist, anti-racist, and anti-colonial struggles to acknowledge differences between women. In her seminal essay, Crenshaw (1989) critiqued the “single-axis framework” of U.S. anti-discrimination laws, which allowed claims to be based only on race or gender, failing to address the intersecting discrimination faced by Black women. She observed that their complaints were often dismissed because neither gender-based nor race-based laws applied to their experiences. Crenshaw demonstrated how the axes of gender and race intersect, creating unique forms of disadvantage and oppression. Her work focused on recognizing social heterogeneity within anti-discrimination legislation to avoid one-dimensional views of oppression (see Zander, 2017).

Especially in Western German-speaking countries, the translation of “race” presents challenges (Klinger & Knapp, 2007). In the United States and the United Kingdom, “race” is both an administrative and affirmative category in anti-racist struggles, while the German term “Rasse” connotes biological differences and is associated with National Socialism’s racial policies and the Holocaust. Lutz (2009), for example, critically observes that the Holocaust, rooted in antisemitism, represents the worst-case example of racism’s effects in Germany and Austria, thereby making invisible and unspeakable the role of Germany and Austria in the colonization and the daily racism experienced by non-white identified persons in those countries. Moreover, as Mendel and Messerschmidt (2017) note, there are key differences in what stereotypes and forms of discrimination racism and antisemitism in German-speaking countries assume: racism emphasizes inferiority, while antisemitism assumes Jewish superiority, associating Jews with wealth, education, and power, unlike racism’s focus on primitiveness and lack of intelligence.

In anti-Semitic thought, the phantasmatic figure of the Jew occupies neither the place of the We nor that of the Other, but is regarded as an ominous, intangible enemy of every order, as an “enemy of the world” and not as a “normal” nation, race or religion. (Messerschmidt, 2017, p. 3)

Klinger and Knapp (2007) argue that, for an intersectional analysis in the Western European context, “Rasse” must be replaced by “Ethnizität” (ethnicity) because of the historical importance of ethno-nationalism, which has driven structural and group inequality in European countries. However, this approach has been harshly critiqued by others, as a method of again “un-naming” racism as a social practice by theorizing a concept like intersectionality (e.g., Rodríguez, 2011). It becomes evident, thus, that the historical context and the specific organization of society complicate the acknowledgment of racism as a structural element of German-speaking societies.

Within the German-speaking intellectual tradition, rooted in Marxist social theory, intersectionality has been critically examined for its ability to explain structural inequality (Soiland, 2012; Zander, 2017). Critics like Soiland (2012) and Zander (2017) argue that, while intersectionality highlights the intersecting vulnerabilities of marginalized groups, it offers limited insight into macro-level mechanisms of social segregation and the functioning of societal institutions (Klinger, 2012; Soiland, 2012). They state that intersectionality approaches are overly individualistic, reflecting the U.S. context, where capitalism is less restrained by the state than in many Western European countries, where state-organized social welfare systems are in place. Additionally, they argue that there is a need to question how intersectionality is applied—whether it examines intersecting social identities or broader mechanisms of power, segregation, and structural organization in society. This is particularly salient in light of the prevalent concept of “working classness” or “classism” (Klassismus), which attributes values and abilities to socio-economic status. Zander (2017) argues that, within intersectionality, classism has shifted from describing societal relations to becoming an identity category, narrowing the socio-structural analysis of inequality to discrimination theory. Social positions deriving from structurally organized inequality are therein reframed as inherent group characteristics, reducing societal analysis to identity politics (Klinger & Knapp, 2007). Structural effects are thus depicted as personal identity traits that apply to both marginalized and privileged groups. As should be evident by now, intersectional analysis cannot easily be “translated” because its conceptualization and application are historically and socio-politically specific and context sensitive.

Estranging Intersectionality: A Perspective for Understanding the Intersectional Workings of Authoritarian Socialism in the GDR

As shown, there are cautions about the use of intersectional analysis in Western European contexts, especially in German-speaking countries, despite structural similarities between Western European states and the United States, such as capitalist economies, democratic systems, and a strong rule of law. However, these conditions differ significantly from the political and economic context of the GDR, the context of our biographical interviews. Despite the GDR’s geographic proximity to and shared history with the FRG, it maintained a planned, state-directed economy. It lacked a rule of law under the centralized SED. Crenshaw’s (1989) framework of intersectionality relies on legal equality, emphasizing equal treatment before the law and the ability to challenge discrimination in court, grounded in the principle of the rule of law. This reliance on legal enforcement and the notion of “discrimination” makes the direct application of intersectionality to the authoritarian socialist regime of the GDR challenging. The SED invoked the ideals of a classless society and constructed the GDR as an anti-fascist state in contrast to “the West” (Einax, 2008). Social equality and justice were to replace centuries of capitalist-bourgeois exploitation and oppression; in other words, in the GDR, equality was understood primarily in an economic, not a political, sense (Huinink & Mayer, 1995). The absence of anti-discrimination laws and an independent judiciary made it impossible to assert “discrimination,” as the judiciary operated under the directives of the ruling party (SED).

These differences, even in the notion and practice of equality or in the sheer existence of anti-discrimination law, have prompted us to employ an intersectional perspective that situates the categories used within a broader analysis of the social organization of society. We follow Winker and Degele (2009) and adopt an intersectional perspective rooted in a broader structural analysis of society. By drawing on their empirical study on unemployment in present Germany, Winker and Degele identify capitalism, driven by profit maximization and sustaining a specific social division of labor, as the fundamental political-economic framework, reproducing intersecting social inequalities across three levels: structural/institutional (macro/meso), symbolic representation, and subjectivities (micro). Structurally, profit maximization exploits certain groups, such as underpaid female migrants in care work or unpaid housewives in the male breadwinner model. Symbolically, these inequalities are ideologically secured by normative discourses and by naturalizing systems like racism and the gendered division of labor. On the micro level, structural inequalities are reproduced through subjective and performative identity constructions, which rely on processes of othering (Winker, 2012, pp. 16–17). Winker and Degele (2009) emphasize that, e.g., gender inequality is not merely a by-product of capitalism but a mechanism capitalism uses to secure profit maximization by structuring inequalities along specific lines. Capitalism perpetuates itself by enabling certain structural power relations to become particularly relevant for its reproduction. The authors identify four structural relations of social inequality based on key categories of inequality that facilitate this process. These relations are formulated in the plural to emphasize that they are not monolithic but encompass varying forms, expressions, and social categories: (1) classisms: relations based on origin, education, and profession that maintain income and wealth differences; (2) heteronormativisms: relations that uphold and legitimize heterosexuality and binary gender norms; (3) racisms: relations based on power asymmetries between socially constructed groups and legitimized through naturalistic ideologies; (4) bodyisms: relations based on physical features such as age, fitness, and attractiveness, legitimizing inequalities through the construction of bodies as cultural products.

This methodological framework (Winker & Degele, 2009) analyzes how profit maximization in capitalist democracies is maintained through the four categories across different societal levels. However, for the GDR, the analysis of overarching principles must take into account the different political and economic organization of the GDR. Our biographical accounts can illustrate the significant role of politically conformist behavior in the GDR. As the authoritarian socialist regime evolved, practices of demanding “conformity” and acceptable citizen behavior also evolved, implemented by surveillance practices and the encouragement of reporting others. The Ministry for State Security targeted political non-conformity as a primary threat, making politically conformist behavior essential for sustaining state power, a typical characteristic of authoritarianism. Sometimes people had to bow to state constraints to survive; sometimes they courageously fought the regime and tested the limits of its power. Political non-conformist behavior could encompass various facets, from a non-conformist lifestyle to silent opposition and active dissidence, or “just” being different in terms of one’s identity. It was a constant process of finding compromises and weighing up risks, of exploring and pushing the boundaries of what was possible and feasible. Also, conformist behavior could be used as a strategic means to achieve one’s own goals.

The demand for politically conformist behavior served to organize and control society. We argue that, as an overarching principle, political conformity structured social relations and experiences of discrimination and privileges in the GDR. As we will show, people suffered from various forms of discrimination, such as heterosexism, racism, and anti-Semitism. However, this did not serve the economic purpose of profit maximization in the free market, as the planned economy—at least in theory—aimed to meet the social and economic needs of the population (Roesler, 2002). The SED implemented nation–wide and international social programs to support working-class families in education, aiming to “overcome” class society (Huinink & Mayer, 1995). The living conditions of workers were undoubtedly improving, but the working class never became the “ruling class.” Despite Marxist-Leninist rhetoric, power was concentrated in a political elite (or “nomenklatura”), consisting of party officials, civil servants, and managers holding high positions in the SED and in the state apparatus. This elite enjoyed privileges such as better housing, access to goods and services, and special educational advantages for their children because they were politically completely aligned with the SED’s ideology and political agenda (Huinink & Mayer, 1995; Schneider, 1994). This created a social hierarchy that essentially contradicted the socialist ideal of a classless society, with power and privilege determined by political, rather than economic, relations.

Empirical Considerations: The Lived Reality of Political Persecution in the GDR, Due to Non-Conformist Behavior

As part of Charlotta Sippel’s dissertation, which formed part of a larger research project, Theory, Practice, and Consequences of Operational Psychology between 2020 and 2024, 50 interviews with politically persecuted contemporary witnesses were conducted. To approach the individual life worlds of the interviewees, a biographical approach was chosen—drawing on Gabriele Rosenthal (2014)—as a method of memory work: The contemporary witnesses were invited to recount their life stories and experiences in individual conversations within a safe environment, enabling them to enter a process of reflection on their own biographies.

The decision to use an intersectional approach emerged from early interactions, conversations, and interviews with research partners, because a lack of qualitative studies on the perspectives and experiences of multiply marginalized groups in the GDR became apparent. Including interviewees who had previously been underrepresented—such as Jewish, migrant, non-white, and lesbian women—was a deliberate decision (“theoretical sampling”) that was made as part of the ongoing research process (see Breuer, 2018, p. 156). The first step of the analysis was inductive and grounded in the material. The aim of the second step, however, was to examine the life-history narratives of contemporary witnesses explicitly through an intersectional lens. Building on the intersectionality framework, analytical questions were developed: Which social categorizations shaped the life stories of the interviewees? What influence did these categorizations have in different phases of their biographies? Which biographical experiences were associated with intersectional categorization, and how did the interviewees deal with them? ³

Additionally, archival materials—including state security files, newspaper articles, and photographs—were analyzed using discourse-analytic strategies to identify dominant representations, classificatory logics, and normative assumptions through which subjects were officially framed. Rather than comparing interviews and archives in terms of factual accuracy, the materials were read relationally: survivors’ narratives were juxtaposed with official documents to trace where and how institutional discourses reproduce xenophobic, antisemitic, gendered, or homophobic logics, and how these discourses shape the conditions under which certain lives become intelligible, suspect, or invisible. This comparative reading allowed for the identification of tensions between lived experience and official representation. Methodologically, the study followed a hermeneutics of faith (Josselson, 2004), treating survivors’ narratives as meaningful accounts of lived realities rather than objects of verification. Triangulation thus served not to challenge the credibility of memory, but to expose the power relations embedded in archival knowledge production and to illuminate how experiences emerge at the intersection of personal biography, institutional practices, and historically situated discourses.

Gender, Heteronomativism, “Intersectional Invisibility” and Political (Non-)Conformity in the GDR

Charlotta Sippel conducted 10 interviews with politically active women in the 1980s, members of “Women for Peace” and “Lesbians in the Church,” and women from the independent art and punk scene. These female interviewees (both cis-heterosexual and lesbian women) reported that the male-dominated State Security initially did not take them as women and their political engagement seriously, and assumed that they were “controlled” by men who acted from the background and pulled the strings (see Sippel, 2025).

The [State Security] was always on the lookout for the ringleaders and they assumed for a long time that we were controlled by men [. . .] it took a long time before the Stasi somehow realized that it came from the women themselves [. . .] that was due to the general image of women and especially that of the MfS [Ministry of State Security], of course, which was such a militarily structured men’s club. (Interview AI032021, pos. 45–49, translated by Sippel)

Despite their different social identities regarding their sexuality, both groups were affected by heteronormativisms (Winker & Degele, 2009). Due to their gender, these women were regarded by the MfS officers as not capable of being political, let alone being non-conformist and politically active against the SED. The concept of heteronormativism describes a power system of maintaining traditional gender roles (women = caretaker, private; men = political, public) and heterosexuality as social norms. Interestingly, not conforming to these norms meant being “invisible” to power. The interviewee points out that this (mis)assessment by the MfS was based on patriarchal stereotypes that reduced women to the private sphere, especially the family sphere, and denied them political roles (see Sippel, 2025). This “invisibility” allowed the women to operate under the radar, at least for a while. Thus, at first, their male colleagues faced more severe consequences for the same political actions. Nevertheless, the state of not being recognized or taken seriously produced frustration at being ignored, ridiculed, or devalued. With the concept of “intersectional visibility,” as coined by Purdie-Vaughns and Eibach (2008), we can grasp how forms of discrimination take course in the light of the broader organization of society. Once the women’s activism came to the attention of the MfS, however, the repression they suffered from was characterized by sexist and misogynistic patterns, including statements by MfS employees that were fueled by deeply discriminatory, gender-specific prejudices that systematically devalue women and question their abilities and skills, as one interviewee from Frauen für den Frieden recounts:

There are also statements from the Stasi that they consider women to be less reliable, less talkative, less intelligent, not capable of strategic thinking . . .. so there really were prejudices en más that really came from another time, but they always confirmed themselves in their men’s club. (Interview AI032021, pos. 45–49, translated by Sippel)

In addition to the verbal discrimination along gendered stereotypes by the MfS personnel, another female interviewee reported the use of children as a means of pressure by the State Security (see Sippel, 2025).

The only thing that weighed heavily on me were my children—they were still so little, two and four years old. I wasn’t even allowed to have a photo. (Transcript UP042021, pos. 33–34, translated by Sippel)

Children were the most effective means of pressure in their view. The Stasi picked me up from my office in the early afternoon. I was supposed to pick up my daughter from daycare, and I had only one thought: I have to tell someone to pick up this child so they can’t use it to pressure me. (Transcript AI032021, pos. 77, translated by Sippel)

Women experienced this form of oppression more frequently than men. Men were much less likely to be defamed through generic negative attributes such as “bad father.” This is a form of gender-specific and heteronormative defamation that the MfS used to force women to submit to the SED’s requirements of political conformity (“being a good mother”) and give up their political work (see Sippel, 2025).

Another interviewee recounts her time in Hohenschönhausen prison, where she was subjected to sexualized violence:

I was in pre-trial detention, in the Stasi remand center in Hohenschönhausen together with Bärbel Bohley. It was what I would call sexist: I had to undress as a prisoner. There was a woman next to me who said: “Take your clothes off!” But I heard laughter and stamping outside the door. There was a peephole in the door. And there were the male guards crowding around the peephole. I asked the woman to get these men to leave, I didn’t want a peep show. But she refused, and then I had to undress in front of these men. And that . . . well. I thought it was quite horrible. (Transcript UP042021, item 78, translated by Sippel)

The interviewee recounts how she was forced to undress in front of the male guards in the Stasi remand center. What appears, at first glance, as a “routine” security measure was, in fact, a deliberate form of sexualized and gendered state violence aimed at disciplining a politically dissident woman’s body and undermining her dignity. This shows how political repression in the GDR could be interwoven with patriarchal power: women activists were not only criminalized as opponents of the state, but simultaneously exposed to specifically female-coded, sexualized humiliation that targeted them as women and as political subjects.

Our interviewees furthermore recounted many instances of homonegativity, even though in the GDR, the “homosexuality paragraph” was abolished in 1968 with the socialist penal reform, because consensual same-sex relations between adults were no longer defined as socially harmful. From then on, there was no longer any legal reason for the criminal prosecution of homosexual people—although social stigma and unequal age-of-consent rules persisted.

However, the MfS carried out systematic surveillance of people who were considered homosexual and politically active, including the creation of files on personal lives, contact networks, and possible political activities (Bühner, 2018). Their sexual orientation was not necessarily the starting point for political repression but was rather used as a means of discrediting people who were supposedly politically opposed (c.f. Sippel, 2022). The following quote includes a paragraph from the Stasi file ⁴ of the interviewee, which she read to us:

“To summarize, it must be assessed that these facts reinforce my opinion that K. is bisexual with strongly pronounced lesbian tendencies and has great difficulties with contact on a sensual level. It is possible that it is a kind of compensation to express herself in writing [. . .] even people who are literary and orientated towards Western tendencies [describe] these products as partly psychopathic.” That was a dirty word back then, you know, being a lesbian. Yes, because it was disgusting, yes. [. . .] They also wrote that I couldn’t even be disciplined if I was sent to a psychiatric ward. (Interview GS052021, translated by Sippel)

This passage clearly shows that this file aimed to discredit her work as an artist and writer, because of her “Western orientation.” Pathologized homosexuality was used to stigmatize the person who does not act in alignment with the ideology of the authoritarian regime. This was not about sexuality per se, but about power and humiliation through both gender-specific and homonegative defamation (Sippel, 2022). The MfS used information about people’s sexual orientation as a means of exerting pressure to obtain information for their own purposes. Again, the aspect of in/visibility became important: the interviewee had a high visibility in the art scene, and her ability to bring people together made her a threat to the MfS. Otherwise, people with non-heterosexual orientation had the chance to stay “invisible” to the MfS by politically conforming to the state.

Another interviewee expressed how the MfS strategically used his sexual orientation in the interrogation during his pretrial detention:

The first evening I had a Stasi officer in front of me who just shouted, and I put up such an invisible wall. I thought, I can’t take a guy like that seriously. If they’re all like that, I’ll do time on my left cheek, such a redneck. And of course, he realized that relatively quickly. Yes, he kind of shouted “antisocial subject,” “gay pig,” and, and, and . . . but it didn’t hurt me at all. The louder he got, the calmer I became. And then the next day I met the officer for the next few months of interrogations and he was like something out of a model catalogue. Well, he was around 30, slim, tanned, wore a tailored suit, smelled good, didn’t speak Saxon, which many other prisoners spoke and which seemed very ridiculous for a Berliner. Yes, he was very cultured and deliberately chosen for me, he was very similar in character to my boyfriend from West Berlin. Yes, and that was much worse, after three days I had said everything about the escape. What was I supposed to lie about? (Interview MR022021, translated by Sippel)

The interviewee illustrates how the MfS used the well-known “good cop, bad cop” strategy during his interrogation. The first officer, as a “bad cop,” tried to humiliate and weaken the interviewee by using homonegative terms such as “gay pig.” With regard to the “good cop interrogator,” the interviewee’s homosexuality was used strategically by choosing a “particularly handsome” interrogator who was similar to the interviewee’s “boyfriend.” This example shows how the MfS strategically used people’s sexual orientation to manipulate them and gain information (Sippel, 2025). Homosexuality became a central means of exercising power and subjugation over non-heterosexual men and women.

Once women were categorized as “politically oppositional” or “unreliable,” they were at risk of suffering sexist and patriarchal discrimination in the context of their surveillance and persecution by the MfS. Homosexual people were subjected to “homophobic” stigmatization and pathologization of their sexuality through the MfS to put pressure on the individuals as politically undesirable people.

Racism, Antisemitism, and Political (Non-)Conformism in the GDR

In contrast to “the West,” the GDR leadership oriented its foreign policy towards “socialist internationalism” and increased its involvement in the global South (Einax, 2008, p. 164). The training of cadres in political, scientific, and professional terms was an essential aspect of winning over the countries of the global South to the “socialist camp” (Einax, 2008, p. 165). The admission of foreign students, political emigrants, and contract workers to the GDR is to be understood against this historical background of foreign policy development. However, in the interviews with Chilean exiles in the GDR, contradictions between the officially propagated international solidarity of the GDR with Chile and the experiences of racial discrimination were mentioned several times, pointing to a system differentiation between “good foreigner” and “bad foreigner” by the state. In contrast to international students or contract workers, e.g., from Mozambique or Vietnam, Chileans held relatively privileged positions in the GDR: “The solidarity was enormous. People arrived to the GDR and received housing, jobs, and education, training. So, the Chileans, to be honest, we were privileged in this society. [. . .]” (Interviewee HV102021, translated by Sippel).

The interviewees appreciated the solidarity they received in the GDR, from state support in the form of education and housing to sympathy in everyday interactions with their German neighbors. At the same time, they found that solidarity did not exist in a powerless vacuum and that state solidarity, in particular, was tied to context-specific conditions: namely, politically conformist behavior and the recognition of SED policy. Solidarity had its limitations where individuals deviated from the behavior expected of them (see Sippel & Weber, 2024). In such cases, there was a threat of solidarity being withdrawn or the exiles being sent out of the countries:

My father and some of his comrades were for the democratization of socialism and against Stalinism. This meant they had no more place in the GDR and were no longer supported there. So that’s when they decided . . . so within two weeks they had to leave the country and go to Spain, although they didn’t know whether they would find support in Spain. (Interviewee MG022022, translated by Sippel)

The SED’s ignorance of racist attitudes in GDR society created a space of impunity for racist acts of violence (Poutrus, 2005, p. 8). Racist incidents became more frequent, but were taboo in the GDR public sphere, or the blame was placed on foreigners (Poutrus, 2005, p. 12). Black feminist activist Peggy Piesche (2015) writes:

Racism was ideologically considered to have been overcome in the GDR and was seen as systemically irrelevant with moral references to the West. The GDR celebrated its Socialist International Solidarity in ideological battles of the Cold War [. . .] The experiences and realities of life of Black people and lesbians did not fit into the concept. (para. 7)

Thus, foreigners in the GDR were instrumental in staging the GDR as “internationalist” and in “solidarity” with other socialist countries. At the same time, this group was labeled by the SED and the broader population as foreign, thus different, and as either “good” or “bad.” “Good foreigners” were those who conformed to the authoritarian socialist ideology; they politically aligned with the SED. As soon as “foreigners” questioned the state ideology, they were portrayed as a danger to the community and were subjected to surveillance by the MfS. The GDR population was also constantly warned to be “vigilant” against “foreigners,” as they could always be “enemy agents, provocateurs and saboteurs” (Poutrus et al., 2001, p. 330). Political migrants, as well as contract workers or international students, were thus confronted with racist hostility and attacks from the population, due to the structurally racist GDR society. However, also here, similarly to the MfS interrogation practices with politically active women, we see that all politically non-conformist behavior of individuals was subsumed under the heading of “class enemy.” This was also the experience of one of the interviewees from Chile:

They classified me as some kind of “petit bourgeois.” Yes, not working class, as it should be. That’s what it says. [. . .] [After 1989] I only read one file from the Stasi. And whenever I had been abroad, they always knew exactly where I had been, what I was traveling with, when I returned . . . And then there were always operational controls to know where I was at a specific moment . . . (Interviewee HV102021, translated by Sippel)

Obviously, this contradicts the propagated “international solidarity” between the “proletarians of all countries” and the self-image of the GDR as an anti-fascist state. What the interviews illustrate is that in reality, the GDR never detached itself from a racist and ethnocentric nationalism (Poutrus, 2005, p. 120). The distinction between “friend” and “enemy” was officially measured in terms of class, but was “loaded” with ethnocentric or racist content, prevalent in the structures and institutions of the GDR society (Poutrus, 2005, p. 120).

Here, clearly, we can apply the concept of “intersectional invisibility” (Purdie-Vaughns & Eibach, 2008). By biographically exploring different forms of discrimination and tying them to the overarching organizing principle of political conformist behavior, we see how, within one category of inequality, others are at work. This shows us not only how identity categories intersect, but also how different societal levels do so: the structural, the symbolic (here, the ideological discourse), and the subjective/individual.

As already briefly mentioned above, in the GDR, the image of the German Federal Republic was that of a fascist state in opposition to the socialist Eastern European states, aligning with the Soviet victors over the Nazi regime. Many Jewish re-emigrants had chosen the GDR as their home because they hoped for an explicit renunciation of the Nazi system in the socialist part of Germany (Ullrich, 2007, p. 458). However, similarly to the experience of migrants from Chile, Jewish people found themselves between an anti-fascist political culture, providing security after the crimes of the nationalist socialist regime and the Holocaust, and anti-Semitic assaults on a daily basis. In this interview, the ambivalences between propagated anti-fascism and anti-Semitic continuities become apparent (see Sippel, 2023).

Of course . . . Of course, I experienced anti-Semitism in my private life. But everyone knew that anti-Semitism, openly expressed anti-Semitism, was heavily sanctioned. This was even more extreme in the GDR than here in Germany. So, you really would have risked serious punishment in the GDR for making anti-Semitic remarks. And people knew that, and of course that disciplined them in that direction. (Interview GB122020, pos. 936, translated by Sippel)

In the light of anti-fascist propaganda, selected Jewish personalities were “staged” as tokens by the state leadership to demonstrate anti-fascism and the equality of all citizens in the GDR. Nevertheless, anti-Semitic assaults continued, but in a concealed manner, because anti-Semitism was considered to be exclusively a problem of the Federal Republic of Germany (Haury, 2002). Alternatively, anti-Semitic behavior was sanctioned, but unsystematically, to discipline the population.

The experience of this ambivalence between state anti-fascism and structural and cultural anti-Semitism in the post-war GDR was very prevalent. One interviewee recalled how he strategically used his Jewish background and his status as a Persecutee of the Nazi Regime (Verfolgter des Naziregimes, VdN) to test the limits of what he could do and say as an opponent of the SED regime:

I emphasized my Jewish origins and hoped that this would give me a certain degree of protection. I obviously wasn’t wrong, because I wasn’t thrown out of the [University] institute, for example, because I was a recognized persecutee of the Nazi regime and enjoyed, among other things, protection against dismissal. [. . .] So I enjoyed a certain protection, I must say, and I made use of it and was obviously successful. (Interview GB122020, pos. 343, translated by Sippel)

Despite his oppositional actions, the interviewee did succeed in not being dismissed from the institute, due to his status as VdN. He used his Jewish background as a shield to protect himself from possible negative political consequences (see Sippel, 2023). In this passage he talks about how he put pressure on the MfS by referring to the persecution of his ancestors by the National Socialists. His Jewish origins offered him protection; otherwise, he might have experienced harsher repression earlier, or he might even have grown up less privileged, as he was allowed to study and pursue a doctorate, had a good job, and pursued a career, until his political “misconduct.” However, as he continued his dissident activities, he was eventually imprisoned in the GDR for one year for “slandering the state” (Staatsverleumdung).

Another interviewee reported that Jewish GDR citizens were denied certain offices or positions because of anti-Semitic stereotypes: “There were anti-Semites who said: [name], What do you want to be? Minister of Finance? That’s not possible. You’re Jewish” (Interviewee EN052021, pos. 783, translated by Sippel). Clearly, this illustrates the deeply rooted anti-Semitic stereotypes in German society, like the “rich” and “capitalist Jew.” It also points to the very tense relationship between the authoritarian socialism of the GDR and religious communities. Jewish people were protected by the state, and were granted privileges in terms of housing or preferential admission to education and training programs, due to their experiences of persecution and genocide. However, at the same time, they were attacked because of the historically prevailing image of Jewish people representing the bourgeoisie. Hence, many of the Jewish community were considered “class enemies” and were pressured to leave their community and join the SED party, referring to the incompatibility of religion and socialism (cf. Interview EN052021; see Sippel, 2023).

Again, the concept of intersectional invisibility provides a useful theoretical framework to understand the complex societal dynamics underlying the experience of discrimination, harm, and privileges. People report that they used their Jewish identity to gain protection and privileges, e.g., a university education. Also, Jewish people were, in some instances, instrumentalized (e.g., in public events) to showcase the GDR as an anti-fascist state. At the same time, Jews were victims of anti-Semitic attacks and threatened to be surveilled by the state security apparatus. This profoundly ambivalent situation is the result of the GDR’s authoritarian socialist regime demanding politically conformist behavior, primarily regarding class consciousness. In this context, Jewish identity was at the same time overexposed and made invisible, and, furthermore, threatened with social exclusion from the German majority society as well as from its own community. The anti-Semitic continuities in German society, in connection with the GDR’s regime of politically conformist behavior, established the ambivalent form of inclusion of Jewish identities in society. This illustrates the complexity and variety of the intersection of structures of discrimination, manifesting in subjective experiences.

Conclusion

Our article has aimed to make intersectionality more applicable to socio-historical contexts beyond liberal capitalist democracies. We wanted to understand which forms of intersectional oppression, discrimination, and unequal treatment are established and experienced in the context of political conditions that demand comprehensive political conformity, such as those in the GDR. At the same time, the epistemological operation of strangification has helped us reflect on the notion’s origin and aspects of the concept that cannot easily be translated into other contexts. Most importantly, researchers interested in intersectionality need to keep in mind that the notion was coined, first, within the political context of liberal democracy, which presupposes a strong rule of law within which discrimination can be legally addressed. Second, it is situated initially within economic relations organized by capitalism and the overarching principle of profit maximization. We have also pointed out that “race” has a different historical genealogy in post-National Socialist contexts, particularly in German-speaking countries. These presuppositions persist in many theorizations and applications of intersectionality in psychology and the social sciences more generally, and they need to be estranged in order to apply the notion to non-democratic and non-capitalist societies.

We believe that our approach has the potential to reveal the complexity and contradictory nature of inequality relations, of the dynamics of disadvantage and oppression, as well as of multiple belongings (Bereswill, 2011, p. 212). By estranging intersectionality, we were able to show what Cole (2009) calls commonalities across difference. All our interviewees reported being subjected to and affected by the demand for politically conforming behavior, cutting across their various social identities. With Cole, as well as with Degele and Winker (2009), we could extend the theoretical lens on intersectionality by means of strangification, and thereby show that certain structural relations and forms of discrimination served to maintain the overarching principle of politically conformist behavior, enabling the authoritarian organization and control of society.

Importantly, we can apply the concept of “intersectional invisibility,” as coined by Purdie-Vaughns and Eibach (2008), to our empirical material. By exploring how social identities and differences are “called upon” by the demand for politically conformist behavior, we see that the visibility and invisibility of identity are at stake. As the interviews have shown, the SED labelled various deviations from their political line as “anti-class activities,” or the person as “class enemy.” Class served, so to speak, as a “master category” in the GDR, obscuring other identities and thereby persistent structural relations, thereby also concealing underlying issues of sexism, racism, and anti-Semitism in society and its institutions. People faced open discrimination, exclusion, and violence by the state due to their belonging to a particular group or following a certain lifestyle; simultaneously, other identity aspects of their lives were discriminated against vicariously.

This article can only be a starting point for understanding the specific mechanisms authoritarian regimes use to establish social order, structure societal relations, and contain social conflict and resistance. While our sample selection employs a strong intersectional lens, our empirical discussion lacks systematic attention to intersectionality. We have paid little attention to intra-categorical relations in identity narratives (see McCall, 2005). Such an analysis could entail, for example, systematically interrogating the intra-categorical interrelation between gender and sexuality which we have only alluded to in our section on “heternormativisms,” or the role of the abled and healthy body in being politically conformist to the SED. The following questions would be worthwhile exploring: Did lesbian women experience a multiplication of oppressive effects based on both gender and sexual orientation? What other social categories or other aspects are essential to understand their experiences? What role does nationality in the GDR context play in relation to race and “culture”? How does white able-bodiedness and “being healthy” feed into the image of being politically conformist, in a work-centered society? Despite these many open questions, we hope that other scholars may take inspiration from the framework of estranging intersectionality we have introduced and take what we have begun here a few steps further.

We view our article as a plea for a context-sensitive application of intersectionality theory in psychology and beyond. This involves examining the presuppositions and assumptions associated with the concept’s original context and addressing the theoretical question of whether the approach requires adapting or extending the categories of inclusion and exclusion in the new context, and/or systematically attending to the overall principles of economic and political organization. An uncritical application in new contexts risks overlooking central dimensions of oppression or obscuring the complexity of oppression matrices. The GDR is history, but we hope our analysis will provide a helpful starting point for considering how this approach can be applied to analyze discrimination and oppression in both liberal democracies and contemporary authoritarian regimes. In Russia, for example, we can observe state-promoted homophobic continuities and how political repression is structurally linked to intersectional discrimination based on sexual orientation, among other factors. Recent developments in the United States, as well as the ongoing restructuring of liberal democracies into authoritarian regimes in Europe, e.g., Hungary, require an approach that is context sensitive and intersectional. Whether scholars are seeking to understand lived realities within a liberal or totalitarian system, or within a capitalist or socialist social order, a nuanced analysis of a given society’s characteristics and structures is essential to do justice to its complex realities.

Interview Sources ⁵

Interview AI032021, Biographical interview with Hannah März, conducted by Charlotta Sippel on March 22, 2021.

Interview AI032021, Biographical interview with Paula Blumenstengel, conducted by Charlotta Sippel on April 13, 2021.

Interview EN052021, Biographical interview with Rachel Ehrenberg, conducted by Charlotta Sippel on May 3, 2021.

Interview GS052021, Biographical interview with Martina Rossman, conducted by Charlotta Sippel on May 25, 2021.

Interview GB122020, Biographical interview with Levi Herzberg, conducted by Charlotta Sippel on December 2, 2020.

Interview HV102021, Biographical interview with Carlos Hernandez, conducted by Charlotta Sippel on October 6, 2021.

Interview MG022022, Biographical interview with Julia Correa, conducted by Charlotta Sippel on February 12, 2022.

Interview MR022022, Biographical interview with Philipp Kurz, conducted by Charlotta Sippel on February 12, 2021.