Often times people are taken back when oppression is brought up because of the weight that comes with the topic but more specifically with gender oppression. It is often believed that oppression only exists in one category at a time for example there is a oppressor and the one being oppressed. When discussing oppression the oppressor commonly rejects that the ones being oppressed are the only ones being harmed by claiming they are oppressed as well. This is illustrated in the quote by Frye in The Politics of Reality (1986) “The statement that women are oppressed is frequently met with the claim that men are oppressed too.” Quotes like these causes a lot of upset because these oppressors fail to realize their own privilege; however, the statement is rarely met with anger about the failure to realize intersectionality or of how different intersections impact women. White women who are fighting for women's rights sometimes become synonymous with the oppressors they are fighting by failing to realize their own privilege and how intersectionality plays a part in their movement.
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Frye’s The Politics of Reality (1986) illustrates this issue clearly by failing to focus on the importance of intersectionality in oppression but instead focusing on discussing how men are not oppressed. This problem often occurs a lot in early feminist writings, as they try and discuss these issues without truly realizing how intersectionality plays a part in oppression. Instead a lot of feminist writers try and discuss how oppression affects women as a whole, which is very problematic. The failure to discuss how intersectionality is very problematic because it silences the voices of specifically but not limited to women of color and trans people. Intersectionality is how the different social categories intersect together to give varying levels of oppression, this is imperative to discuss because finding out different experiences of oppression especially those who are the most oppressed will allow the gathering of the best possible information as well as potentially giving birth to better ways to stop oppression for all people not just silencing others. Trying to essentialize what it is like to be women is close to impossible anyways because trying to describe any social group is innately oppressive because it reinstates the structure that the …show more content…
The problems of white women is not the same as the problems of women of color because they have that other social group interacting creating another level of oppression. In the work the author discusses breifly sexually objectification between men and women as if the way that sexual objectification occurs is the same for every women regardless of race, class or any other social category. Women of color experience sexual objectification different that white women. For example some races and trans women are fetishized. This gives a slight glimpse into the many ways intersectionality impacts oppression as a whole. Frye gives some talk to this specific example by discussing how women are always in the wrong no matter if they act on their sexuality or do not. They continue to discuss the implications of this will giving a nod to there being some differences in sexuality as well as other factors but that in itself is not enough. It is important to specifically discuss how some categories have more privilege in some areas than others don’t. As well as discuss these groups that have a
Frye’s The Politics of Reality (1986) illustrates this issue clearly by failing to focus on the importance of intersectionality in oppression but instead focusing on discussing how men are not oppressed. This problem often occurs a lot in early feminist writings, as they try and discuss these issues without truly realizing how intersectionality plays a part in oppression. Instead a lot of feminist writers try and discuss how oppression affects women as a whole, which is very problematic. The failure to discuss how intersectionality is very problematic because it silences the voices of specifically but not limited to women of color and trans people. Intersectionality is how the different social categories intersect together to give varying levels of oppression, this is imperative to discuss because finding out different experiences of oppression especially those who are the most oppressed will allow the gathering of the best possible information as well as potentially giving birth to better ways to stop oppression for all people not just silencing others. Trying to essentialize what it is like to be women is close to impossible anyways because trying to describe any social group is innately oppressive because it reinstates the structure that the …show more content…
The problems of white women is not the same as the problems of women of color because they have that other social group interacting creating another level of oppression. In the work the author discusses breifly sexually objectification between men and women as if the way that sexual objectification occurs is the same for every women regardless of race, class or any other social category. Women of color experience sexual objectification different that white women. For example some races and trans women are fetishized. This gives a slight glimpse into the many ways intersectionality impacts oppression as a whole. Frye gives some talk to this specific example by discussing how women are always in the wrong no matter if they act on their sexuality or do not. They continue to discuss the implications of this will giving a nod to there being some differences in sexuality as well as other factors but that in itself is not enough. It is important to specifically discuss how some categories have more privilege in some areas than others don’t. As well as discuss these groups that have a