Intersectional Trauma Theory: A Conceptual Leap for Seeing and Articulating Black Lesbian Masculinities

In 2010, the role of public health called to action research priorities to include causal pathways for mental illness and chronic disease within vulnerable populations of race, culture, and language. The field of mental health and health psychology has described trauma as being caused by natural events, accidents, catastrophes, or intentional acts perpetrated by others, but trauma-informed guidelines neglect to discuss intersectionality. Intersectionality is the awareness that gender, race, class, sexual orientation, religion, and disability simultaneously affect the perceptions, experiences, and opportunities of marginalized groups. Researchers have found that the psychological effects of discrimination against marginalized groups is an insidious trauma that has neurobiological consequences equivalent to an overwhelmed, allostatic load, and compromised nervous system, which renders traumatic life experiences and syndromic effects. Black masculine lesbians are working overtime against the forces that push them way beyond the margins of race, sex, sexual orientation, gender, and socioeconomic status, and they are looking for a location where they can truly belong. The significance of this dissertation was to respond to the call of public health by investigating a causal pathway of chronic disease and mental illness amongst Black masculine lesbians. This dissertation utilized intersectionality as a frame to make a conceptual leap to bridge intersectionality, trauma, and trauma-informed care within a world of ideas, which has yet to be done. Such an act shapes intersectional trauma into a conceptualized notion on how to see, articulate, and shift intersectional trauma in a culturally diverse and cognitive-behavioral way. Therefore enhancing the metaphor about intersectionality as a transformative message on how to turn shit into fertilizer.