Quick key terms phl367 oppression

Bird cage metaphor (frye)

• illustrates the systemic and structural nature of oppression

• compares the oppressed individual to a bird trapped in a cage.

• oppression is understood as an "enclosing structure of forces and barriers" that tends to immobilize and reduce a group.

• If one takes a microscopic view, looking at any single constraint (like a rule, practice, or discriminatory act—one wire of the cage) in isolation, it may seem harmless, accidental, or negligible.

  ○ However, a macroscopic view reveals that the wires are systematically related in a network of forces, and it is this structure that restricts freedom and renders the person helpless.

Double bind metaphor (frye)

The double bind describes the impossible situation created by the bars of the cage.

• In this situation, the options available to members of the oppressed group all expose them to "penalty, censure, or deprivation".

  • For example, if a woman is harassed, remaining silent can be seen as giving consent, but protesting risks being branded as overly emotional, aggressive, or "difficult".

• The options, though seemingly choices, are engineered to produce a subordinating outcome no matter what the individual does.

•  This constant dilemma forces the oppressed person to act consistently against their interests, leading to a form of damaged agency.

Intensification thesis (khader)

• supposes that gender oppression subjects all women to qualitatively similar harms, and that race and class oppression serve only to "increase the severity" or "intensify the effects" of those harms.

• It doesn’t look at:

  • Harms whose essential characters would fundamentally change if either the racist or sexist qualities were extracted.

    • Khader exemplifies this with transnational commercial surrogacy (TCS), where the practice reinforces the specific stereotype that women of color lack an interest in noncommodified affective relations.

  • The interests of women from different classes or races are "not always aligned," and that interventions intended to help one group may entrench the oppression of another.

  • Multiple oppressions do not necessarily make individuals "uniformly worse off."

    • Race, class, or cultural background can sometimes "mitigate negative welfare effects".

    • Khader notes that the poor Indian surrogate's motivation is often economically rational (one pregnancy equals five years of income), which means the autonomy harm is mitigated in this specific respect compared to privileged Northern surrogates driven by emotional volatility.

Intersectional analysis (khader)

Contrasted to the intensification thesis, this analysis offers a complete and nuanced understanding of how multiple oppressions operate, especially by moving beyond "additive" models of identity.

• This approach recognizes that oppressions co-constitute one another. This means they reveal "qualitatively distinct and irreducibly intersectional harms" that traditional monofocal analyses miss.

• The short-term interests of all women are not always aligned.

  • This insight is vital for moral and political assessment, as interventions designed to benefit privileged women might actually entrench the oppression of marginalized women (e.g., transferring feminized labor onto women of color).

• Individuals facing multiple oppressions are not uniformly worse off in every respect, thereby questioning "facile rankings of oppressions".

Khader’s definition of oppression compared to Frye’s

• Frye sees oppression as a restriction of freedom which leads to immobilization and reduction of a group of people

• Khader argues against the view that oppression is wrong just because it reduces freedom, rather she argues that oppression should be understood as an affront to equality

  • When you link oppression to freedom, you choose between two outcomes:

    • You deny social structures can hurt people

    • You claim that almost all socialization is oppressive, since it limits options

      • This makes it seem like both oppressed and privileged people are harmed in the same way

  • Additionally, many cases of oppression do not reduce freedom

    • Sometimes oppression can shape peoples wants rather than thwart them

  • Affront to equality:

    • The characteristic wrong is "being subordinated because one is a member of a group".

Young’s forms of oppression (and examples)

Reminder: Oppression happens to groups, not individuals

Marginalization:

• Indian act regulated who was and wasn't an "Indian" (creating the non-status Indian)

  • Expelled a whole category of people from useful participation in  normal life, aligns with denial of legal/community rights suffered by non-status Indians

Powerlessness: Colonial process allowed settler governments to define Indigenous citizenship

• Indian act controlled every part of Indian life, showing how Indians lack the authority to make decisions that could affect their life due to being subject to external control

Cultural Imperialism: Regulatory systems replaced traditional indigenous ways of identification

• External descriptor became Indian, reduced hundreds of diverse people/nations into one common racialized identity

  • Render's an indigenous group's own perspective invisible while stereotyping them as the "other"

Violence: Daily knowledge shared by all group members that they are subject to violence due to their group identity

• Colonialization generated unimaginable amounts of violence against Native women.

Frye on male oppression (and hooks on male oppression as a comparison

Frye argues that men aren't oppressed even though they are victims of sex roles

• The oppression of women is a structural constraint, men may suffer emotional pain but their pain isn't part of a network of structural barriers

• Suffering and oppression are different, and male's restraint and suffering are part of a structure of oppressive privileges toward women

Hooks agrees that men benefit from the patriarchy, but are also hurt by rigid sex roles

• Non-privileged men suffer due to the intersection of sexism with other oppressions (race/class), and how anti-oppression movements sometimes ignore this complexity.

• bell hooks makes the distinction that not all men benefit equally from sexism

  • Poor men are socialized to expect power, but they often are denied that power which leads to frustration

    • A poor man might abuse a women because he is exercising the only form of domination allowed for him

• Hooks argues that feminism should acknowledge male pain but not excuse oppression

Blood Quantum (Lawrence)

A system used by colonial governments, particularly the U.S., to define Indigenous identity based on the degree of an individual's "Indian blood," often measured in fractions.

Intersectionality (simple definition, crenshaw)

A theoretical framework for understanding how different aspects of a person's identity (e.g., race, gender, class) combine to create unique and overlapping systems of discrimination and privilege.

Political intersectionality (crenshaw)

The way in which the political agendas of different social movements (e.g., feminism and antiracism) can conflict, marginalizing those who are members of both groups.

• Crenshaw argues that the failure of feminism to interrogate race, and antiracism to interrogate patriarchy, means that one analysis often implicitly "denies the validity of the other," creating a political dilemma for women of color who must choose between movements that deny a fundamental dimension of their subordination.

Structural Intersectionality (crenshaw)

○ Structural Intersectionality: This dimension focuses on the qualitatively different reality of experience resulting from intersecting forms of domination.

• Ex: battered immigrant women of color are constrained by poverty, language barriers, and dependency on their husbands for legal status.

• This means that intervention strategies designed for women who do not share these vulnerabilities "will be of limited help" to women of color, as the convergence of race, class, and gender creates unique obstacles.

Representational Intersectionality (crenshaw)

The cultural construction of women of color through the intersection of racist and sexist narratives, and how critiques of these representations often fail to address their unique position