You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Oppression’ tag.
Sometimes terms get fuzzy or lose a bit when translated into arguments. Let’s take a look at the term ‘gender’.
I have seen so many people argue that “gender is a social construct, that means you can label yourself as anything you want” and like that is not how social constructs work.
In fact, social constructs are things which require social recognition.
Money for example is a social construct. It has value because we as a society acknowledge that it does. But if you brought some currency over from another country, nobody would know how much it was worth or be able to accept it.
Social constructs require society’s recognition.
Gender is a social construct–it means other people tell you what your gender is, not the other way around. Because gender is an oppressive force, gender is something which is done to you, not something you freely choose for yourself.
Gender is how people decide to treat you based off their perception of your biological sex.
Gender is which color blanket you are put in to after birth, whether people immediately start whispering to you how beautiful you’re going to be when you grow up or how strong you’re going to be.
Gender is the expectations society expects you to meet because of your biological sex–gender is the expectation for female people to wear make up.
Gender is the code of behavior between men and woman–gender is the expectation that women will apologize more than men, act more shy, and generally just allow the man to think he is more important.
Gender is not some fun game to anyone but those who are privileged along this axis of oppression.
Gender is something that is done to you against your will.
Gender is oppression.”
Racism isn’t that easy to define. There are two competing meanings and the new, more specific one, is quite controversial once examined.
The Pedagogy of the Meaning of Racism: Reconciling a Discordant Discourse Carlos Hoyt Jr.
“We do our students (white and not white) a disservice by indoctrinating them into a belief system that charges white people with being de facto racists (by virtue of being the beneficiaries of historic and present institutional race-based oppression) while providing an exemption to black people from being held accountable for racist beliefs (racism) or practices (race-based oppression). One of our basic charges as social workers is to affirm that discrimination and oppression based on the accident of one’s condition (whether the condition is one’s appearance (lookism), physical ability (ableism), sex (sexism), sexual orientation (heterosexism), place of origin (xenophobia/ethnocentrism), or socioeconomic status (classism) are patently and intolerably unjust.
In defining and describing the types of social bias and injustice we confront and aim to dispel, we are obliged to observe nuance when it is relevant to a thorough understanding of a phenomenon under consideration. The minute that one human being is treated unequally by another, without legitimate basis for the unequal treatment, there is injustice, but until the motivation for that unjust treatment is determined to be a belief in the superiority or inferiority of races, the mistreatment cannot reasonably be labeled as racist.
There are, unfortunately, many factors that can derail reason and lead to irrational unjust behavior (personal enmity, fear of the unfamiliar, the perception of threat, social conditioning, any of the isms listed earlier). When the flaw is a belief in race as a legitimate reason to discriminate, it is racism. When racism is enacted to subjugate or disenfranchise others, it is oppression; when the source of the power is systemic, structural, or institutional, it is race-based institutional oppression.”
I highly recommend reading the paper in its entirety as Hoyt Jr lays out the arguments for the redefinition versus the original meaning of racism.
It is nice when basic concepts are illustrated so succinctly.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…