I'm not sure what you're getting at or what exactly you're asking.

If it helps, I tend to think of intersectionality as ecological niches rather than rungs or steps in a ladder.

You have overlap where discriminatory pressure may be applied, but you also have "safe zones" where you are not discriminated against for that characteristic. I'm specifically talking about by law, by religion, by restrictions of access to things like education or financial institutions, etc..

I'm not talking about how individual people feel about you or how you might feel bad about yourself or pressured to be a certain way because of certain schema or tropes. Those are how YOU and others participate in the system of dominance hierarchy we were all born to. Those are real. They matter. They have a huge effect on all of us.

But they are not bias or discrimination by some kind of mandate by a power holding institution or structure.

Semantics?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Consider this. If you think being depressed and suicidal because women won't date you and that means you're a simp amongst your peers is discrimination....on the same level as, say, a law requiring you to undergo chemical castration if you don't have a certain IQ because the state desires and values smarter citizens, this plans to create them....

then you're giving away your agency to address your depression and save your own life.

There are things that hurt people that they can't do anything about...by law. By design.

There are things that you have the power to change and help yourself because the only thing holding you back is abstract concepts you've bought into. But there's nothing stopping you from not investing in them anymore. Because those things are not caused by systemic and historical discrimination or oppression.