The Ugly Truth about Oppression: Misused and Taken for Granted
In today’s society, the ways in which people understand what it means to be oppressed and essentially, who is being oppressed, is drastically mis-conceptualized. People of all races, economic class statuses, ages, etc., often claim that they are or have been oppressed at some moment in their life. Marilyn Frye gives a perfect example of this when she describes how one might feel when having to follow the rules of the road. When on the road and one has to drive their vehicle on a specific side of the road, one is likely to feel frustrated when there is traffic. The rules of the road are put in place for our own safety, but sometimes we become upset and annoyed with having to be restricted to certain laws when driving. However, just because one feels suffering at particular moments as these, it does not mean that an individual is oppressed. Not all suffering is equivalent to being oppressed.
What then does it truly mean to be oppressed? How do we recognize the systems of oppression and who is targeted?
The key to realizing and understanding oppression is to observe actions, events, and societal systems and analyze them through a macroscopic lens,in other words, we must start from the bottom-up in order to get a whole picture of an oppressed group of individuals. Frye begins with the root word of oppress, which is the word press; press as to be reduced and caught between forces that disable mobility. Further, she describes how being oppressed is when one has limited and forced options where neither option serves to the benefit of the one being oppressed, this is called a double-bind. With the double-bind, one must simply always deal with options that continue to put the oppressed between these restricting forces and the oppressed essentially must deal with choosing the better bad. Being in such a position for prolonged periods, possibly a lifetime, puts the oppressed in a hole that one can never be dug out of no matter how much digging is done, it is a never-ending hole.
A perfect example that Frye uses is the bind of women’s sexual activity and non-activity in the United States. When a woman presents herself as sexually open, she is judged based on labels and criticism, such as being called a ‘slut’ and being seen as sexually available, men claiming she “wanted it” because of how she dresses and displays her sexual availability. Whereas a woman who presents herself as sexually restrained, is also judged and criticized based o complete opposite criteria, she is often called a tease to men and is often pressured by men to loosen up and enjoy it. She is often questioned of her sexual preference and open for rape because men presume that she must want it because she has never had it. In either scenario, the woman is at a loss, she is put down, degraded, criticized most often by men. In either situation the woman cannot simply be who she is without remarks and judgement of others who think they know what is best for the her. The woman has to live in a world of restrictions and forces opposing each other, she is confined by these forces.
Oppression is not simply a brief moment of suffering, it is much more complex than the term “suffering.” It happens overtime and accumulates to several moments that make one feel they do not belong, that they are different and nothing about them will ever be satisfactory to the oppressor. Talynn Kel explains her experiences in which she came to the realization that she was a member of an oppressed group. She did not realize it over a single moment, but rather multiple moments of similar experience that over time made sense to her that it wasn’t simply her who was the problem, it was the label that she was given, the group that she was associated with, being a black woman in a system where white supremacy exists, the system was the core problem of her oppression, her biological sex assignment and the color of her skin was what defined her experiences and life in the United States.
Many people seem to not understand this notion of what it truly means to be oppressed, they misuse the word to a point where the meaning of being oppressed is no longer significant to those who actually are oppressed. Several members of oppressed groups do not even realize that they are a member of the oppressed because the meaning is often taken for granted. Dina Leygerman writes to women who feel that they are a “second class citizen” and do not feel to support women in their oppression. Leygerman explains all the ways in which women in the United States are oppressed and how they’ve overcome certain obstacles, but even through those obstacles, the system of oppression still restricts women from mobility, from the equality of men, from being a first class citizen rather than a second class citizen, as women are classified. Women are still oppressed even through our fights for equality in legislation such as being able to vote, in the economy such as the gender wage gap, in society such as being sexualized, in relationships such as domestic violence. The systems of oppression are still happening because the meaning and significance of oppression has been covered up as an illusion, to manipulate the oppressed into thinking that they are closer to equality when they are truly not. This is what is means to misuse, mis-conceptualize, and take for granted what it means to be oppressed.
