I recently read a motto somewhere: “All oppressions are connected”. And it got me thinking, and I realized I have so many things to say on this statement!
So let’s start with what oppression means. It means that people of some group(s) of society suffer more than the people of other group(s), only because of their group-membership. This membership is usually inborn (like gender or nationality), and sometimes voluntary (like religion).
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Oppression is a systemic thing (and it probably helps if you are familiar with the difference between individual level and systemic level, as explained here). It is systemic because if you measure the ‘suffering’ (for example the average income) of all members of the oppressed group, and compute the average, it would be lower than the average of the non-oppressed group(s) — however, some persons of the oppressed group may earn more than persons of the non-oppressed group. But in this case it happens despite the oppression.
As you can see, this is something that can be measured. Indeed, sociologists measure these things for quite a while. Sure, one can question their methods (do they ask the right questions? do they compare the right quantities?) and also their conclusions (one observed effect can be explained by more than one underlying cause usually, and it depends on the scientist in question which to prefer as their favorite explanation). But still, if several perfectly independent research groups get the same results, this may imply that there is indeed something going on. So there are ways to measure oppression: it’s not just me saying that women are oppressed. It’s not about you believing in it or not. It is a well-established scientific fact (I will only give the Wikipedia article as a reference, it redirects you to decent sources).
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However, oppression is rarely discussed outside of the sociology department (and some activist groups). For an average person, who experiences just a small amount of oppression, or no oppression at all, it is easy to miss even that it exists. After all, this is, at least for them, someone else’s problem.
I personally recognized first that women are oppressed, because this is the type of oppression that I have been experiencing all my life. After this recognition, it soon became pretty obvious that there are many other types of oppression. Let me list some here (the list is far from complete): skin-colour/race, nationality, religion, class, sexual orientation, gender identity, body-type, mental health etc.
After I learned that the system can be criticized, there was no way to stop anymore. After criticizing patriarchy (the system that oppresses women), I started to question heteronormativity, capitalism and, recently, mononormativity as well.
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Of course, the extent of any oppression varies with time: the way black people were oppressed in the 19th century US (under slavery) is totally different from how they are oppressed today (due to more-or-less subtle discriminatory policies or police violence). But it varies with geographical place as well: for example today, women in Saudi-Arabia have much less rights than women in Europe (although European women are still oppressed compared to European men).
But let’s just deal with one single place (say Europe) at one single timepoint (now). Even here and now, there are many different types of oppression (see the list above).
It’s important to realize that one person can experience more than one type of oppression. If this is the case, it is called the intersection of oppressions. For example, if someone is both black and disabled, they experience much more disadvantage than an able-bodied black or a disabled white person would.
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Now what’s left is to talk about the interaction of the different types of oppression. Because this indeed leads to the most far reaching realization I have made since I’ve been thinking about this topic.
That all oppressions are connected.
We cannot separate sexism from racism, or from ableism, or from classism. The system we live in oppresses different people along different dimensions in the same time. Since the reason for oppressing the different groups are different in every case, it would seem obvious, for a start at least, to treat these dimensions separately, and fight for example only for gay rights, or only for the working class, or only for women. But that’s a mistake.
That’s a mistake because hetero/cisnormativity and classism and sexism and so on are all features of the same unjust system.
And this is extremely important.
For joining our forces might be our only chance to ever make an actual difference.
The oppressed groups are all powerless on their own.
But if we could finally recognize that we are all oppressed by the same thing (and that only the justifications of our oppressions are different, but not its source), then suddenly we would be the majority!
If people could learn to see their own oppression as I did (almost everyone has at least one, along one of the dimensions), and if it were common knowledge that all oppressions have the same source, then people would find allies everywhere they look.
This could mobilize and unite the whole word against one enemy.
The never ending words. 