Quick to Judge: Oppression Makes us Cynical

I showed my friend a feminism-related message from a guy. She looked at it with a metaphorically raised eyebrow, sceptical that a boy could show meaningful levels of unproblematicness, then finally conceding "this guy seems good." I considered rolling my eyes at her unwarranted cynicism, before realising that I myself have the same reaction on a daily basis; I find it difficult to assume men will be good allies or educated feminists until I have proof beyond reasonable doubt. I had a moment of crisis, "Does this automatic anti-man attitude make us awful people? Jaded cynics at the ripe age of 17?" After a few seconds of deep thought, the answer became apparent: Not at all.

Oppressed people are constantly criticised for their "unhelpful" attitudes towards power majorities - feelings of anger, frustration and cynicism are always dismissed by privileged groups when dealing with activism. However those feelings are extremely valid for a number of reasons.

Firstly, we have to revisit our old friend "systemic oppression". For a thorough greeting, click here. But for a quick reacquaintance, we mostly have to understand that if society is a woven blanket, oppression is the thread that weaves the whole way through. A man raping a woman as an isolated incident is a tragic reflection of one man's immorality. A worldwide pandemic of sexual abuse committed predominantly by men is a signifier of the age-old social mentality that women's bodies are men's property; weak and devoid of autonomy. Oppression isn't individual acts of violence or discrimination, its an enormous invisible machine that works to empower those with privilege, and exploit those without.

Once we accept this, it is only a small jump to realise that whether or not we ourselves as lone actors discriminate against other people, our mere existence implicitly aids oppression. Everyday, I walk into a classroom taught by a white teacher where I am one of the only white girls. Even though I do not make racist comments or jump around yelling "all lives matter!", the fact remains that when multiple people put up their hand to answer a question, it is far more likely that the white teacher will pick me. Although I actively try to aid anti-racism movements, I still hand in assignments with my white name on it, knowing that since my essay says "Blount" instead of "Ling", I might sneak an extra mark. I'm not a bad person, but I do walk and talk and breathe oppression, simply because that is the world we live in.

So when I'm listening to a podcast where a woman who went to a newly desegregated school in 1960's America talks about how she hates white people, I can understand that. Her daughter explains how she grew up watching her mother roll her eyes at white people on the street, discourage her from dating white guys, and just avoid white people altogether because she cynically assumes they're all racist. What we need to realise is that "white people" in this context aren't the individual people with backgrounds and personalities, but rather representative of the wider system that ruined this woman's life while making their own better.

Above all, it is normal to react to oppression. You can't expect millions of people over generations to stay perpetually silent when mistreated; it's human nature to fight back. When we're talking about entire genders, cultures, and communities of people, it is impossible to characterise each individual person as broken and beat to the point where they cannot resist. Feelings of anger and cynicism are not only warranted, they are necessary for sparking revolutions and instigating change, for want of better cliché.

Automatically reverting to "negative" feelings towards your oppressor isn't exactly a horrible, "negative" act. You can remain full of positive energy whilst simultaneously acknowledging that we live in a society which is geared towards enforcing a strict hierarchy. It is reasonable for a woman's jerk reaction to be wary and cynical of men, since the overwhelming social conditioning demands that they will invariably exploit her, even without realising it. Perhaps being an educated feminist exacerbates this cynicism, making it a daily occurrence as we leave Plato's Cave and start seeing oppression everywhere we go. But shaming anger and scepticism for being "mean" is pretty counterproductive to the larger picture of slowly whittling away at an oppressive society.

Comment below xx

Hannah

Internalised Oppression: Why are Women Sexist?

Sometimes, women can be just as sexist as men, and sometimes, People of Colour can be just as racist as white people. And although their words may say the same thing and have the same impact, sexism from women or homophobia from queer people comes from a very different place than their male or straight counterparts. It's called internalised oppression, and its where minority groups like women, People of Colour, queer or transgender people come to accept and live out the inaccurate myths and stereotypes applied to their group.

When a woman shames another girl for wearing too much makeup and looking like a "dumb bitch", she has internalised the constant social messages perpetuated by several millennia of patriarchal society that says women who value their appearances are superficial, one dimensional and stupid.

When a black police officer treats a black criminal with unnecessary violence, they have internalised the white supremacist attitude that black people are inherently dangerous and violent, and that their lives are worth less.

Although this sounds like an extreme and fictional case of brainwashing, it is actually extremely normal and likely that our brains work this way. Conformity has been proved time and time again to be an incredibly powerful influence on human behaviour. The famous Sherif conformity experiment in 1935 and Asch experiment in 1951 both drew conclusions that people will shift their actions and responses to agree with the majority, despite knowing that majority are wrong. Psychological studies on internalisation weigh in on the "nurture over nature" theory, but even without the fancy jargon like "sociological influences on the superego", we can see in our everyday lives how conformity is commonplace - sometimes necessary - and often we don't even realise we're doing it.

That's the premise of internalised oppression. When a little girl grows up constantly hearing people make demeaning comments on what women wear, she will internalise those thoughts and also start believing that girls shouldn't wear short clothes if they want to be respected. Fast forward ten or twenty years, and she will be the one slut shaming, or questioning the validity of her friends' rape claim, since she was wearing a tight bodycon dress at the time.

While some anti-feminist women do understand feminist theory and made a purposeful decision to disagree with it, the vast majority of women who are sexist or anti-feminist act that way because they've spent their entire lives solely being fed messages that degrade, shame and vilify women; understandably discouraging them from wanting to take part in anything that empowers femininity. Oppression perpetuated by an oppressed person is still unacceptable and needs to be called out, but we have to understand that it has very different roots than if it came from a majority group. When men are sexist, they are pushing the power and the privilege that society has systematically allotted them, just for being born with a penis and identifying with masculine gender roles. But when women are sexist, somewhere deep down its coming from a place of self hate, disempowerment, and disillusionment with being a women. Its coming from habitual conformity, where agreeing with sexism is almost a survival thing, to fit into the popular, patriarchal social norms.

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xx Hannah

Language is Powerful

Why are those damn SJW's always nagging about the words we use? I mean honestly, why do they always demand we never say things that are just verbal ticks, like "slut", "n*gga", "that's so gay"? Why do they think they have the right to attack us for the expressions we use, or the jokes we make?

Because language is significant. It has the power to both create and deconstruct oppression, and we need to be conscious of they way we communicate and the subtle effects of our words. That's why.

Firstly let's characterise what I mean by "language". In any discussion about oppressive vocabulary, the argument usually works off an understanding of the mechanisms and impact of language in human society. Without going too meta-postmodern-etymologic-philosophical-theory, we need to consider that society was conceptually built with words; this explains why humans have a more complex social structure than other species who have less sophisticated forms of communication. It is this communication that creates the expectation and mores of modern society (by modern I mean post cave-people era). The vocabulary we use has a specific purpose to communicate meaning with other people, and to create or consolidate social norms which we construct to live communally.

Basically, words have meaning because they are tools of communication, and communication collectively establishes social expectation and norms. So it makes little sense to claim that words are empty, and they only carry the meaning an individual chooses to place in it. The word "slut" is not harmless because you as an individual chose to make it so; it is inherently associated with the patriarchal paradigm of sex because society collectively established this when it chose to use those four letters to communicate disgust at female sexuality.

Alright, so words are largely slave to their connotations regardless of contextual use, but why is it so important to monitor our personal languages?

What we need to achieve is a safe space for oppressed and marginalised people to express their experiences, feelings and perspective on issues that affect them. When people argue that reverse racism/sexism etc. exists because there is no true reason to differentiate between "prejudice" and "oppression", rather than loyally serving the holy English language they are actually denying oppressed people a space to express themselves. If we do not recognise a difference between "discrimination/prejudice" and "oppression/--ism", we block any marginalised person from being able to describe their experiences of disadvantage caused by a power majority. For example, if an African American person was denied a job opportunity because their natural hair was deemed inappropriate for the workplace, they would say they were a victim of racism. However if we established that there is no different connotation between "racism" and "prejudice", a white person who was denied a job based on their race (unlikely) could also say they were oppressed by racism. But this erases the collective experience of black people who exist under and institutionalised expectation that black people are less intelligent and less valuable to the workforce than white people. Both people in this scenario were unfairly treated and discriminated against, but by giving different connotations to be assigned to "discrimination" and "racism", we allow the black person to express their experiences within a wider context of oppression, as opposed to erasing this background by viewing their rejection as being "the same situation" as their white counterpart.

Jokes also need to be monitored, as humour is often used as an excuse for blatant oppressive language. The joke about the Japanese tourist is not funny because it is an example of quality humour, it is funny because we have been conditioned to view Asian stereotypes as ridiculous and laughable. The joke about the woman who can't fix her car isn't funny because of its clever wit, it is funny because we view women as ditsy, dumb, helpless and unskilled at "masculine" activities, and it plays on those assumptions. By telling these jokes, we enforce that process of communication outlined above. If we use language to perpetuate oppressive tropes, even if we don't mean to be offensive, we validate oppression by using our words to communicate the legitimacy of these tropes.

We need to make a space within language for gay people to express their identities without it being associated with something negative ("oh man, that's so gay!"). We need to make a space within language for women to speak about their experiences with sexism. We need to make a space within language for People of Colour to embrace their cultures without it being appropriated and bastardised.

And we need to give that language respect.

xx

Hannah