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The original term comes from the activist playbook deployed at Occupy protests and designed by intersectional academics. The idea being that the more oppressed someone is (the more oppressed group markers they possess), the earlier their voices should be heard. There's plenty of video and articles that describe the process and show it operating at the time.
The second life of the term is as a description of the underlying philosophy of intersectionality by its opponents, who critique it for essentially creating a privilege hierarchy in the name of abolishing privilege hierarchies.
Like "woke" and basically any other descriptor for the ideological cluster intersectional feminism belongs to, it originated as a self descriptor and was discarded as soon at the opposition freezed it as a label (to borrow Alinsky's phrasing). This is of course a typical post-structuralist tactic, much like the redefinition of racism and other forms of linguistical warfare that attempt to manipulate the enemy's frame of understanding of the world by manipulating the language the enemy uses to describe the world.
Now if we turn to this term as analysis and descriptor of progressive ideology, I think it's fairly accurate. It predicted the formation of such internal interest groups as "BIPOC" and, ostracism of gay men and Jews as well as the underlying justification for all these. When you see Black feminists say that black men are the white people of black people, they are appealing to intersectional ideology and enacting the behavior described by this label.
But it predicted justification, not what would have to be justified.
So long as progressives truly believe in intersectionality, the progressive stack model will be accurate. Because the process it is named after was specifically created to manifest intersectional ideology into the world.
The question is then whether they actually believe in intersectionality and are moved by its ideological precepts, or are merely political agents using the ideology to organize and justify preexisting political interest regardless of contradiction. And it is my strong belief that almost every single political movement that has ever existed is the latter, and not the former.
If alliance with autists is politically advantageous, they are oppressed neurodivergents. If war with autists is preferable, they are incel nerdbro oppressors.
Well, I guess I learn something every day. I'll concede that actual protestors were using this actual term to describe their procedure.
I don't think we disagree that it was useless, even then, for an outsider. There was a post a while back about--I think it was "the cool kids don't have to ask." They've read the room and have a feel for the consensus. Then and only then can they refer to the stack.
Why? It's a very good descriptor of what their philsophy is about, especially for an outsider following more classical ideas of equality, and wondering why certain demands are being made of him.
We've been through this dance of pretending a term applied to this ideology is somehow not useful so many times, from Cultural Marxism, through Political Correctness, SJW, Woke, CRT, and now apparently Progressive Stack, regardless of whether the term was an ingroup, or outgroup designation, or how many citations you can pull to support it, that the only conclusion can be that the actual objection is there being a term at all. If you disagree Please Just Fucking Tell Me What Term I Am Allowed to Use for the Sweeping Social and Political Changes You Demand.
An outsider can not and could not have walked up and said “here, I am higher on this stack than you, so let me speak.” Progressives settled on a consensus for that stack before ever showing up to a protest. The OP’s approach wants to change that consensus, and it’s not going to work.
Well, I'm not sure about it being "useless", I did hear of a few successful attempts at fending off entryism by utilizing the stack, though you're probably right that adding new entries to it as an outsider is going to be too obvious, and won't work.
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