like why is it valid to be upset about one form of oppression but things that are blatantly offensive to another community they’re just being sensitive?
The moment where you start to wonder why it even is called “marginalized”, because it being the statistical margin makes no sense due to 98% of people on this planet actually being marginalized in some way.
And then you wonder if it might actually come from the margins of the text, and you start to research and find you are right.
And now I like it so much more. Because it makes so much sense as a word in that context. It is an existence that is written in the margins of texts. (Originated with social science noting how with people with several cultural identities often the cultural identity outside of the main one would often get erased in how they were addressed. From what I can find at least.)
Intersectionality as a concept has some shortcomings, one of which is how people use it to play oppression olympics.
A new view of oppression is needed. One that allows people to connect through shared forces of injustice and fight them jointly as a community, rather than wallowing alone and separated.
American individualism is really at fault here, leading people to focus on what makes them different and special rather than leaning in to what makes us similar.
This isolation makes it easier for systems of oppression to divide us and conquer.
So look around at other marginalized groups, notice what you both experience, and join them in their fight.
I think a lot of people underestimate how important it is that marginalized and exploited people are given credibility. There’s lots of ways to do this, but one important way is helping them reach a position where they can speak out as experts on their fields.
Basically, a lot of people view marginalized and oppressed people as naive, incompetent, and childlike, and this impression does a lot of harm.
If somebody who considers themself an activist isn’t working to give marginalized/oppressed people credibility and challenge these kinds of infantilizing assumptions, they’re being negligent in their work.
One of the most relatable traits to me within Erik from Phantom of the Opera is the fact that he so desperately wants a normal life, and that circumstances of when and where he was born and what he was born as denied him any sort of normality. That’s the root of his misery and insanity. It’s not Christine, it’s wanting to be normal so badly but society won’t let him; he doesn’t even know how to try to be normal by the time the reader meets him.
I’m no Erik ofc, but as a marginalized person, there is that reactionary thought of just wanting to be “normal”, but we can’t participate in “normality” due to circumstances out of our control, and how that horrible dialectic fuels mental illness and maladaptive behavior sometimes.
My main reservation around the independent Wales movement is that the movement as a whole fails to reckon with:
- Under the stewardship of England, Wales and Welsh people have been willing, often gleeful implements of colonialism and imperialism
- Much of Welsh culture as it stands has been lost, and what remains is influenced by a lot, a LOT of immigration and emigration
- There have been people of colour in Wales since fucking forever
While it is true that our language was stripped from us, our history remains marginalised or outright purged/ignored from the history books while simultaneously being fetishised internationally, that we remain in a purely extractive form of economic subjugation under England, and that both international and national perceptions of Welsh people are often either marginalising or dehumanising, it is also important to acknowledge that (even excluding the explicit settling of English people on Welsh land at waived tariff for colonial purposes) the majority of Welsh people today are immigrants, that Welsh people and Welsh culture have been shaped by non-White hands, and that Welsh people themselves, going back to before the 1200s, have done their own colonialism or been used for that purpose by the English.
Wales as it stands today cannot look to the future without accepting this.
You cannot start to talk of and build a Wales that is independent of England without first approaching and exposing colonialist thought and attitudes that come as part and parcel of nationalism. Any movement that fails to recognise and suppress such tendencies will inevitably crash out into another brand of fascism.
The progressive movement brands itself as forward-thinking, but in reality it is regressive. It claims to defend marginalized groups while boxing them into victimhood and dependency. Anyone who refuses to conform to its narrative is discarded or attacked, proving that its inclusivity is conditional and its tolerance selective. In practice, it marginalizes those it pretends to protect. They create the problem, then offer themselves as the solution. The focus is not on people but on power.
Mao’s revolutionary movement used a similar approach. It claimed to liberate peasants and workers while in practice forcing them into rigid roles of dependency and obedience to the Party. Those who deviated from the Party’s narrative were denounced, “struggled,” or erased, even if they came from the very groups the movement claimed to uplift. Mao’s government thrived on creating social crises, then positioning itself as the only solution.
Sometimes, I have what I call marginalization imposter syndrome. Then I ask myself these questions:
Am I queer enough, though I am in a straight-passing relationship and have been so for several years?
Am I disabled enough, though I do not need walking aids yet?
Am I chronically ill enough, those I have long periods in which I am rather well?
Personally, as someone who is in several marginalized communities (Jewish, Trans, Queer, Autistic, etc.), the fact that being a Gemini has cause me more personally directed grief than the others on a consistent basis is WILD! Like, I’ve never had someone decide not to have a second date because I’m autistic or because I’m queer or because I’m Jewish, but it has happened because I’m a Gemini. I’ve had many people decide to avoid me like the plague, tell partners of mine to break up with me, bully me, and generally treat me like dirt because I’m a GEMINI!! Saw someone call astrology star-racism and honestly? Kinda goes into that territory a lot.
Sometimes the need to become fully invisible comes from a deep seated pain. A need to be seen that is not being fulfilled. Sometimes the hurt is so bright that to touch it burns and no words are capable of to conveying this. The pain is in silence and the need for annihilation is magnified in that silencing.
i’m tired of being blamed for being exploited by other people.
like when i was trafficked - the reason that shit is so common and widespread - despite the way the public acts like it’s a big deal and they super duper hate it and give so many huge big shits about this crime of exploitation - and the reason traffickers know they can get away with it is because they specifically target people who they know no one gives a shit about. they know that if we tried to get anyone to help us, we’d find out that human trafficking is not really that big of a deal after all.
at first i was very careful about what i said to people because i was afraid they’d call the cops and make everything far worse. as it turns out, i could have walked through any government agency or any service nonprofit full of mandated reporters saying “hi, i am a trafficking victim, hello? can someone help me please?” and no one would even look up from their paperwork. they’d hate me just for creating the expectation that they should give a shit.
people only care about hypothetical victims. the sort of perfect victims that they want to save, that they’d be seen as heroes for saving.
not people like us. and by “like us” i mean real human beings who cannot or will not harden ourselves to better tolerate the conditions of this fucked up society.
and since there is no legit treatment for the deep psychic pain that comes from seeing all this heinous shit that happens around us and to us day after day - we use drugs.
they hate us for not adjusting to the horrors.
that is why we are “marginalized.” we are banished. and to deprive human beings of social connection is violence. it’s like taking a fish out of water and leaving it to suffocate in the air. when we deprived of belonging, the same is going on for us, but it happens so much slower. the torment can last for decades.
that is what really causes “mental illness.” it’s not some “chemical imbalance” or “malfunction” in our brains. it’s severe prolonged alienation. when we are harmed in the most fucked up ways imaginable, the people around us act like everything is normal. they want us to believe that everything is normal. that we are in the wrong for feeling hurt when they hurt us. that is where trauma comes from.
we are blamed for having been vulnerable in the first place. the real crime is to reveal vulnerability to a society that values competition as a virtue, and instills a “duty to exploit.” there are no rewards for those who pass up an opportunity to take advantage of another’s vulnerability.
and when people are marginalized in the way that people who use drugs are marginalized, they feel powerless, hopeless, that there is nothing better on the horizon. we see the way the “respectable upstanding community members” live, the way they treat one another like shit, step on toes, backstab, lie, manipulate - anything it takes to get ahead, no matter how it may hurt anyone else - we see them rewarded for this, again and again. that’s all we ever see and that is all we know. and so we treat our own the same way.
but the thing is, the impact of all that duplicitous behavior doesn’t hit those more powerful and privileged MFers the same way. they are cushioned by their relative “respectability.”
for us though, it is pretty devastating. and there will be no one to feel sorry for us or make us whole again. because we can’t be “made whole” with anything that can be bought or sold. material security can make things easier for us, of course, but the entire reason for our suffering in the first place is that we can’t or won’t harden - even in a comfy house with a nice car and adorable shoes, we will still have to see and know everything we know, and we will still feel the pain of believing there is nothing we can do, or nothing we should do - there will always be this void, gnawing at us, no matter how hard we try to fulfill the obligations that are supposed to make us deserving of a place of respect in this society.
because the human part of us won’t go away. it’s that fish, suffocating on the shore, fighting to breathe. the fish isn’t gonna be able to breathe any better with a new car or cute shoes. the fish needs water or it will continued to suffer until it dies.
and for us, it is social connection. that’s what we are deprived of. humans are social animals. our species has only survived as long as we have through interdependence - as in, “to each according to their need, from each according to their ability” - genuine bonds of trust and care for the safety and well-being of our fellow humans.
this shit we’ve got going on here - it’s anti-human. we were never meant to live like this. it only feels like a burden to care about others because we are forced to keep plugging along, doing the shit we have to do for our own survival. and all those things we gotta do are things that uphold and maintain the anti-human system. we are told that we cannot do anything about the other shit, it’s not our problem, we need to focus on our own survival. and that’s why it feels so overwhelming and burdensome to care about other people’s struggles. that’s why we are supposed to believe that self-care means "accepting the things we cannot change.”
they are telling us to purge ourselves of our remaining humanness. stop caring. because caring - it’s not really just some warm fuzzy feeling or the pain of putting ourselves in others’ shoes - it’s meant to drive us to act. and that’s why it hurts. we feel the drive but can’t act. we are convinced that we can’t, that there’s nothing we can do.
social connection - deep genuine bonds with other humans - are as essential to our survival as food, water, and air. we are starving, and the pain of empathy is hunger pangs that we are being told to just ignore.
the only thing that will make it not hurt so bad is solidarity. to learn how to trust and be trusted. to realize the power that comes from knowing that we have people, we belong, and our people have got our back no matter what, and we got theirs too. that it’s never a burden to look out for one another. it is what we do. it is why we are here and it is as good for us as it is for whichever one of us is in need. we all have needs, and we will all need a bit more at times. and we all have the capacity to meet those needs for one another. we do not lose anything by doing that for one another. it is our purpose. it’s the reason we are alive. it’s the reason we want to be alive.
when we are isolated, it is a lot more devastating to be betrayed or exploited, but when you’ve got a community of people who not only care, but will also catch you when you fall - it doesn’t hurt so bad. you can move forward. shit happens, but it ain’t a big deal because you never have to go through any of it alone.
that’s it.
Alright, let me start off, where I left off yesterday: there is more than one system of oppression in our current world, and if you do not realize this, while doing activism for one group or another, you are doign yourself and your work a great disservice.
While I - an anarcho communist - am very stern in my personal believe that all other systems off oppression serve the overall system of capitalism, this cannot be used to deny the harm that all those different systems of oppression do.
You can be oppressed because of a lot of things. There are quite a lot of axes of oppression after all.
Just to name a few:
Think of it like this (and yes, pretty much all of it is a spectrum):
And this is a core issue I come across when talking to some activists - especially those who are bigoted towards other groups.
I will once more name the white cis radfem as an example, who will go: “How dare trans women to claim we are privileged?! We are SOOOO OPPRESSED.”
And mind you, yes, women as a whole are oppressed. But also, white cis women (especially the sort active in radfem spaces - which tends to be also fairly academic and middle class) are often fairly privileged compared to a lot of other people, including other women.
However, the thing that so few people tend to want to understand is, that privilege will also very much be dependend on the circumstance.
A couple of days ago tried to explain it on this: On a lot of oppression metrics white single women and Black single men rank fairly similarly. They on average will earn about the same, will on average be about as likely to experience poverty, and certain forms of violence.
But now, if a white woman and a Black man of similar economic background have an argument and police is called, I think we all know who will be the privileged person in that situation.
Meanwhile, if a white woman is interacting with a Black man who might be part of some sort of fraternity while he is with his male pals, roles are reversed.
And this kinda relates to a lot of people who fall into a multitude of marginalized groups. You will be marginalized in a lot of situations - but that does not mean that there will not be some situations in which you will actually be the one to hold privilege. Even someone with several marginalizations can find themselves in a situation where they are privileged in comparison towards someone else.
Like, I am trans, queer, afab, poor, and disabled. But I am very much aware that in comparison to many non-white friends of mine I am quite certainly privileged on most days and in most situations, because I am living in a western, majority white country in which horrible racism is going around. And especially in my city - probably the most “academia” city in Germany - open transphobia is in comparison a whole lot rarer than racism.
And mind you, even if someone is privileged on one axis, they can be oppressed on that axis if they do not fit in certain cultural assumptions. This is probably the most noticable with gender-nonconforming men. But it can also extent to white people who are to clearly going against certain things the imperialist agenda is expecting from them (like at the very least ignoring the genocide happening in Gaza).
Not all axes have the same assumptions attached, mind you. But many of them come with the expectation to fit a certain set of behaviors. While otherwise you will usually not be ass marginalized and discriminated as the person outside of the privileged group, you will most certainly experience some retribution from the system.
Yes, I get that it sounds strange to just speak of a “system”, rather than of people. But here is the thing: humans are pack animals, and originally culture probably evolved as an adaption to give “packs” cohesion. Now we live in this super isolating world, but still within a culture. As much as I understand the love to go and say “people who enforce discrimination by [minor but noticable kinds of microaggressions]”, it is not that simple.
Humans are supposedly quite intelligent apes. But at the same time we are really, really dumb in certain regards. Like even confronted with moutains of evidence of the contrary we will cling to wrong believes, because our brains have evolved to see any evidence as about the same as a physical attack. And our general instincts are to “go with the flow” of the society. No matter what that flow is.
Like, I am sorry. But if you are a cis woman (especially a white cis woman), and consider it as sinister to be called “cis” and “privileged based upon that”, you really clearly do not grasp how much worse others have it.
In the end, the different forms of oppression pretty much are all interlinked either way - with each other, and with capitalism. If you uphold one of them, you are helping to prop up the others as well, even if you are convinced you are doing the opposite. There is a reason why fascists and capitalists (lets face it, the same thing, just on different evolution levels) love to prop up different marginalized groups against each other. They did so, when they gave Black men, but not women the vote. They are doing so, when they use white women (who just happen to be a very good group to target with this) against trans people and also Arab refugees.
But nobody will be free. Not unless we all are free. From the patriarchy, from Imperialism, from racism, from ableism, from queerphobia, from fatphobia, from intersexism, from Capitalism.
Fascists will take down one group after the other. If you are helping them - well, you are helping fascists.
(Comic by the great Adam Ellis)
Living in the world with a marginalized body, whatever form that takes, fucking sucks. Going through the world and interacting with your environment on a daily basis and not a singe part of it is made for you, with you in mind as the primary focus. Store shelving, seating, fucking sidewalks.
You have to cultivate an increased awareness of yourself, how you present to others, how you navigate, where you can even go, where you can shop, what you can buy. The extra energy involved in doing all of that physical and mental labor, experiencing those discomforts, that unpleasantness, those pains, stolen from you by your environment, the design standards of the world constructed around us.
Sulky, Cynical ‘Murderbot’ Is One Of Sci-Fi’s Most Human Characters
There are subtexts to be read into Murderbot — that its experience is a coming-out narrative, that it mirrors the lives of trans people, immigrants, those on the autism spectrum or anyone else who feels the need to hide some essential part of themselves from a population that either threatens or can’t possibly understand them. Or both. And I get all of that because every one of those reads is right.
It’s the wonder of the character — that something so alien can be so human. That everyone who has ever had to hide in a crowded room, avert their eyes from power, cocoon themselves in media for comfort or lie to survive can relate. It’s powerful to see that on the page. It’s moving to ride around in the head of something that is so strong and so vulnerable, so murder-y and so frightened, all at the same time.
I’m not a 19 year old anymore, and honestly have very little patience for black and white thinking now. I think actions and intent matter way more than like… having the correct language to be acceptable to the in group, and honestly, most people treat their politics and their values like a clique that’s only for the people who use the correct words.
It’s a bit insane to me, bc they’ll be hostile to good people bc these good people have somehow bad skills in language, and on the other side, they’ll be cosying up with predators who know what to say and how to say it. I have no patience for it. I simply dgaf. If I see someone participate in that kind of thinking, I assume they’re either young, stupid, or straight up evil. All three are types of people I’d like to stay the hell away from, LOL.
