Oppression

Guide to oppressions & intersections in SF
Basics: Classism Racism Nationalism, colonialism, xenophobia Religious intolerance Antisemitism Sexism Homophobia & heterosexism Size & beauty standards Disability & ableism Ageism
Manifestations: Institutionalized, systemic, structural Unconscious Conscious Internalized Power relations
Responses: Activism: Antiracism, feminism, etc. Consciousness-raising Redress & affirmative action Diversity & representation
SFnal treatments: Race and feminist SF Race-and-gender stereotypes in SF
See also: Women of color in SF Queer women in SF Women Make SF
About the GOI

Oppression is the means by which a class of people keeps another susceptible to exploitation.

In a system of oppression, the dominant class are the oppressors, and the victims are the oppressed. Individuals can often belong to more than one class, because there are multiple, intersecting systems of oppression.

Methods of oppression are extraordinarily varied. They range from terrorism, slavery and rape, along with other acts of violence, to more subtle means such as systematic devaluation, denial of education and mystifications.

Feminism and Oppression

Here is Christine Delphy on oppression:

Feminism is above all a social movement. Like all revolutionary movements, its very existence implies two fundamental presumptions. First, that the situation of women is cause for revolt. This is a platitude, but this platitude entails a corollary, a second presumption, which is much less frequently admitted. People do not revolt against what is natural, therefore inevitable; or inevitable, therefore natural. Since what is resistible is not inevitable; what is not inevitable could be otherwise - it is arbitrary, therefore social. The logical and necessary implication of women's revolt, like all revolts, is that the situation can be changed. If not, why revolt? Belief in the possibility of change implies belief in the social origins of the situation.

The renewal of feminism coincided with the use of the term 'oppression'. Ideology (that is, common-sense, conventional wisdom) does not speak of 'women's oppression' but of 'the feminine condition'. The latter relates to a naturalistic explanation, to a belief in the existence of a physical constraint. This puts exterior reality out of reach and beyond modification by human action. The term oppression, on the other hand, refers to something arbitrary, to a political explanation and a political situation. Oppression and social oppression are therefore synonyms; or, rather, social oppression is a pleonasm. The notion of a political (that is a social) cause is integral to the concept of oppression.

The term oppression is therefore the base, the point of departure, of any feminist research, as of any feminist approach. Its use radically modifies the basic principles, not only of sociology, but of all the social sciences. It nullifies any 'scientific' approach which speaks of women in one way or another, at one level or another, but which does not include the concept of oppression. A feminist study is a study whose objective is to explain the situation of women. When this situation is defined as a situation of oppression, theoretical premises which do not include this concept, i.e. which exclude it, can be used only at the risk of incoherence. Having a feminist approach is thus not just a matter of applying the unchanged premises of the established sciences to the study of women, with good political intent. It is useless for feminists to try to develop such studies when their premises are nullified in each particular discipline.

Ideological expressions

Every axis of oppression requires its own justification, which specifies why a certain class of people "deserves" to be exploited. (People are divided into classes through discrimination.)

These justifications become the ideological expressions of oppression. They perpetuate oppression, but they are not its fundamental cause.

For various examples of ideology derived from oppression, see:

• Sexism
• Racism
• Classism
• etc.

References

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