Oppression is Additive [Except it's not; see comments]

[marydell]

UPDATE: comments on this thread point out that my analogy isn't very good - please read them!

--------------------------

White people can suffer from a variety of kinds of oppression and injustice. I have seen this pointed out a lot recently.

Poverty
Disability and discrimination because of same
Sexual violence
Domestic violence
GLBT phobia & discrimination
Sexism

Being white doesn't, as one person put it "protect against" any of these things.

NEITHER DOES BEING ANY OTHER COLOR.

Women of color suffer from all of the same crap that white women do, plus racism.
GLBT people of color suffer from all of the same crap that GLBT white people do, plus racism.
Disabled people of color suffer from all of the same crap that disabled white people do, plus racism.
Etc.

Oppression is additive.

Comments

[evilrooster.livejournal.com]

Well, it can be multiplicative. If you're feeling bruised from a bad time on one front, getting it from another side as well can hit extra hard.

For instance: although it's not racism, my foreignness to the local culture can leave me unready to deal with my rather clueless colleague's unconscious sexism.

(skipping any tempting a witticism about preservatives or emulsifiers.)

that calculus doesn't work, btw

[stoneself.livejournal.com]

as a matter of clarity.

GLBT people of color suffer from all of the same crap that GLBT white people do, plus racism.

white gay man's oppression + straight asian man's oppression =/= gay asian man's oppression.

i tell this to you as a queer asian man.

the queer safe spaces are not safe spaces for me as a poc.
the poc safe spaces are not safe spaces for me as a queer.

when i go to either kind of safe space i divvy myself up and put me in two little boxes - the poc box and the queer box. in poc spaces i let the poc me out, and in queer spaces i let the queer me out. and i rarely let the queer me out in poc safe spaces, and i rarely let the poc me out in queer safe spaces.

Women of color suffer from all of the same crap that white women do, plus racism.

i can't find the comment in my journal atm, but poc women i know have made the parallel comment about sexism + racism =/= poc women's oppression.

* * *

i get what you're trying to say, and in many ways it's true.

but what's also true is that where it's not true turns out to be very important.

the simple way you've stated it leads to a simple kind of thinking that turns out to be rather harmful to people living with two kinds of oppression.

Re: that calculus doesn't work, btw

[kazaera.livejournal.com]

Would like to agree with this very much.

-isms can interact in very weird ways. As an asexual woman, I get to worry about things that neither asexual men nor sexual women have to worry about (although lesbian women get to worry about similar stuff). A friend of mine who is disabled and poor gets hit with a whole range of suck unique to her situation. I imagine if she were a PoC she would get hit with even MORE of it, and not the kind of crap a nondisabled middle-class PoC would; suck is apparently tailormade to a person's situation instead of factory-produced. There have actually been times when several of my -isms somehow worked in tandem to make a situation better for me than it would have been otherwise in a very weird way, but this is RARE and doesn't mean they cancelled each other out. Having my classmates treat me as some kind of alien mascot instead of bullying me may have been better for me as a kid. This doesn't mean it was okay.

The function that maps a person's characteristics to how they are oppressed works in very weird ways, and it is not a homomorphism:
f(a+b)=/=f(a)+f(b).

Re: that calculus doesn't work, btw

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Thank you. This was partly inspired by your post about safe spaces, actually, and by the experiences of a queer black friend of mine after Prop 8's passage. Also by my son, who is disabled and asian, although so young that he hasn't started to consciously experience discrimination.

I'm sorry for oversimplifying. Is it multiplicative, as Abi says, or is math just a bad analogy?

Re: that calculus doesn't work, btw

[nextian.livejournal.com]

I find math to be a bad analogy because then you get people saying "well, what is the calculation? How do you decide who, in a given situation, is most oppressed, so you can cater to them the most?" and then your head explodes and smoke comes out your ears.

Maybe it's a Venn diagram.

Re: that calculus doesn't work, btw

[stoneself.livejournal.com]

definitely not a venn diagram.

Re: that calculus doesn't work, btw

[nextian.livejournal.com]

I was thinking, like, spiralsheep's multidimensional hoops of flame. But I take your point.

Re: that calculus doesn't work, btw

[stoneself.livejournal.com]

in a sense all analogies are bad. they don't match up with the real world. multiplicative is better, but still has problems.

i guess the best thing is pointing out that where the important failings of the analogy are.

the basic idea of what you are saying is true.

but that analogy leads to bad consequences when certain obvious natural extensions/conclusions are made. these bad consequences are not obvious. the bad consequences are greatly mitigated by pointing out the weaknesses of the analogies.

* * *

short answers, i think pointing out the important differences between reality and the analogy improves things.

Re: that calculus doesn't work, btw

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I amended the post and pointed to the comments.

in a sense all analogies are bad.

I suppose all analogies, loaded or not, are about trying to tie something I don't understand to something I do, which doesn't work so well when my understanding is limited by privilege.

The real-world situation I'm trying to understand, so that I can help my son navigate it, is about how racism and ablism interact in his life, and how they will interact going forward, particularly as ablism manifests differently across his birth and adoptive cultures. I don't want him to feel that his birth culture is bad because it might be less accepting of his disability, while forgiving his adoptive culture's racism because he loves his family.

I'm not asking you to tell me how to solve that problem, although I appreciate the insights you share in your journal. :) Just describing the real world problem I hope I can help my son to navigate. (He's very little as yet, but of course it has affected him already; adoption placement decisions tend to be about categories).

Re: that calculus doesn't work, btw

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

I suspect that it may be a bit of both.

Consider, for example, someone living in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. That person may be working class, black, Jamaican. And experience, day after day, different kinds of hell for being all of those things. That hell may be cumulative, it may be separate. That person may also be gay or transgendered and, because of the community s/he lives in forced to keep very quiet about it because (as a couple of people have pointed out above in other contexts) the kind of solidarity that they'd get regarding class, race, or ethnicity would be strikingly absent (to put it most mildly) when it came to sexual orientation or sexual identity.

How much of this would be visible or comprehensible to an outsider who would just see "black person"?

[kouredios.livejournal.com]

I don't know if this is helpful, but the way I often describe it to my students (again, in a very 101-way, because of where they always are) is that everything else being equal, it is better in our society for you if you're white. So if they complain, "I don't have white privilege because I'm poor," I can say, but if you weren't white, it would be even more of a challenge.

I don't think that's exactly an "additive" way of putting it...it's definitely not a perfect math, but maybe it gets across the basic idea you're floating?

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Your analogy has flaws -- I'll let others speak to that -- but I see and agree with your basic point. To reference a semifamous book, not all Black people are men, not all women are White, but some of us are trying to be brave.

In one of the related discussions recently I saw a woman bring up the fear of rape as a reason to be racist against Black men, and I wanted to say to her, "I've been sexually assaulted twice, both by White men I knew, who got away with it because they are wealthy and White and I am not. Whose sexual assault matters more?" The answer, of course, is neither, we both matter, we both had to deal with a society which pays lip service to the idea that rape is bad but lets it be used as a sport and a weapon, but I didn't think I could make that clear, or, well, not sound about as angry as I was. So I didn't say anything to her. (Besides, no one wins the game of Competing Oppressions, so I didn't think it was a good idea to join in one.)

(And now I will stop editing this comment.)

[marydell.livejournal.com]

I saw that discussion, or one very much like it, and yeah. In my thinking I got as far as "but all women are subject to sexual assult" and even that "racism makes black women less likely to get justice." But I see from what you and others say here that a simple "plus" doesn't capture the reality of that.

Thank you for sharing your experience. I'm really, really sorry that happened. *hug*

[lalouve.livejournal.com]

I hesitate to offer this, but I wonder if some of the perception of additive oppression is due to the sameness of the forms the oppression takes?
In the last few months, I have seen arguments used against PoC that I recognise as used against women, and that a friend recognises as used against lesbians. The effect on the oppressed is not the same, nor simply cumulative, but the techniques used by oppressors are sometimes surprisingly similar.

[unhappytriad.livejournal.com]

I think a better analogy might be the "stack of slices of swiss cheese" from a recent thread on Making Light. IOW, the more slices of cheese you have, the more holes (=vulnerabilities) there are, but occasionally all the holes line up and then everything goes straight to Hell.

(FWIW coming from a native denizen of Privilege City.)

[brownbetty]

The story I recently saw that helped me past the idea of additive oppression was one of black transmen, who reported that although when they were living as women they rarely got stopped for driving while black, now that they lived as men, they got it all the time. (I'm sort of scared to google "black transmen" as I suspect it will give me lots of porn... Nope!) Here it is: http://www.colorlines.com/article.php?ID=265&p=1 It gave me an aha! moment.

[kynn.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the good thing is that there's very little porn about transmen, and the bad thing is that transmen aren't considered sexual people.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

That's a really interesting article, thanks.

social ingrouping/outgrouping how i love thee--not.

[klgaffney.livejournal.com]

i think what's often getting lost here is that most people in the community have experienced some kind or level of suck; often hellish amounts of suck.

what probably needs to happen in so many of these conversations that i'm not seeing are more people using inclusiveness--language that doesn't automatically make every situation "us vs. them" but instead encourages the use of the mutual experiences of suck as a means to connect (y'know when you experienced this? this is like that unto me, etc) which i think would get a MUCH better response and level of understanding, instead of it needing to become a contest and/or used to exclude (you can't possibly understand how this feels!). this works with the assumption of everyone generally being on the same side, and not so much with the idea that folks are being deliberately hateful.

this also tends to avoid the problem in which people's specific brand of suck is being dismissed and deemed unimportant. that sort of thing not only alienates people that would otherwise be of help, it also tends to be a nasty kick to the teeth to those that share categories of suck as well.

Re: social ingrouping/outgrouping how i love thee--not.

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

Yes, this thing. S and I were talking last week about how often this does or doesn't happen--for example, white people coming out as gay and discovering how much oppression sucks, and then becoming allies of other oppressed groups.

Re: social ingrouping/outgrouping how i love thee--not.

[kazaera.livejournal.com]

But sometimes people *do* want to talk about a specific brand of suck, and then people who are *also* oppressed but in a different way will come in and go "yeah, suck is awful, let's talk about how very sucky it is." Which is completely derailing because - to use an analogy I used on my LJ - if my leg is broken, it does not help me for someone to go "oh, yeah, pain sucks. I have a migraine, I totally know what this is like. And why on earth are you using crutches? You don't need those" when I want someone to set my damn leg already.

Also, it denies the fact that in this particular area that we are talking about, I do have privilege, and denying that is denying the reality of what the people are talking about and refusing to face up to that. If I am in a conversation with PoC, it does not *matter* that I am a queer disabled woman. I am still white. I still benefit from white privilege, I still do not have to deal with their specific brand of suck, people will still favour me over the (straight nondisabled) black (man) in various situations because of my skin colour. Therefore, I will shut up and try to listen to his specific experiences which I haven't and will not have to deal with, and try to learn, and try to be more aware of things I am not usually sensitised to. This isn't because I think racism trumps all other -isms; I would get rather angry at him if I were having a conversation about being queer, or being disabled, or being a woman and he went in and trumpeted "But I'm black, so I know what this feels like! I suffer too!" Like having people assume you're a criminal just because of the colour of your skin is comparable to having to make up a word for your sexuality as a teen because nobody is talking about it or allowing it to exist - either way around.

The problem with "let's all gang up on the oppressors" is that in the end there is no one left to gang up on - because we are one another's oppressors.

I do think thinking of mutual experiences of suck can be helpful in these conversations - but not in the minority group, but rather in the *majority* group. If I go "you know, I hate it when guys come into feminist conversations and try to make it all about them, so I'll refrain from adding in My Point Of View over here" or "man, I have no idea what that feels like but I know discrimination can feel awful because of various ableist experiences I've had, I'll drop a sympathetic comment", that is a thousand times more helpful than me going "but I'm a disabled woman! I hurt too!"

[pixelfish.livejournal.com]

I was trying to explain this concept, barring the mathy terms to my dad, because we were arguing about the Lily Ledbetter stuff last year, and he said, "Well, I've seen people promoted above me or get better pay because the boss just liked them better. So race or gender isn't the only indicator what you make." And I tried explaining to him that women and minorities (and women minorities) had to deal with THAT too.

(Also, you'd think having experienced the boss giving other guys more money just because he liked him better that Dad would be all about Equal Pay for Equal Work, but nooooo....)

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

What bothers me is when people start playing more-downtrodden-than-thou and get into oneupmanship games. Privilege and disadvantage can come from a multitude of causes. I've seen a few too many people on the internet recently saying things like, "You have no idea what disadvantage is like because you're white/male/other privileged group." I'm white, middle class, and living in a developed country, and I appreciate that all of those are good things and that my life would likely be worse without them. However, look at this list of white privileges (http://mmcisaac.faculty.asu.edu/emc598ge/Unpacking.html). I lose every single one of those privileges due to my specific disability, and I lose a lot more not even on the list. (I'm not going to start on being a bisexual Jewish woman, which also adds a few layers.) In fact, I'd consider it a privilege to be able to suffer from some of the disadvantages on that list. It assumes a number of things - being able to work, being able to have a social life, being able to have children, being able to leave my own home whenever I want to - which I am barred from because of my disability, and then quite a number of serious privileges such as being able to get enough to eat, being able to wash daily, being able to live independently, being able to choose who sees and touches you when you're naked. And there are people in some countries who'd think I'm spoilt rotten because I have a flat to live in and plentiful access to clean water.

I'm not trying to argue that I win the disadvantage game. I'm saying that I'm sick of the way it's turned into a game, a way of scoring points, and there are a lot of very good arguments out there and also a lot of arguments which are completely straying from the original ideas. I am definitely sick of people telling me that I can't talk about a subject unless I've experienced that particular type of oppression personally.

As for oppression being additive or multiplicative, I think the danger there is that you assign a value for x oppression as a whole, instead of seeing each case individually. I suffer various types of oppression due to being queer, Jewish and female. By the mathematical model, these should outweigh the oppression I suffer from being disabled, but in actual fact they're a drop in the ocean by comparison. It's not a fixed thing either. The level of homophobia I experience varies according to whether or not I'm in a same-sex relationship, and whom I'm seeing socially and in other contexts where my sexual orientation may come up. I'm currently socially isolated and in an opposite-sex relationship, so homophobia isn't something I'm running into much at the moment. There will be queer disabled folk out there who don't find that their disability causes much in the way of day-to-day problems, but who are facing homophobia every single day.

There's also disadvantage by proxy/second-hand. My partner's life is disadvantaged due to being my carer, which also makes him covered under the Disability Discrimination Act. Someone in a mixed-race relationship will suddenly become subject to a certain level of racism, especially if they have children. You're dealing with race and disability issues from both sides at once, and right now you're probably carrying the bulk of Charlie's disadvantages for him, something that will change as he grows up, his care needs change, and he starts interacting with the world independently.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't point out that it all adds up. Just don't oversimplify in the process.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

I'm mainly not seeing people saying "you don't understand disadvantage because..." in the conversations I've been reading/having recently, but I've been mainly looking at RaceFail stuff. What I'm seeing is that sometimes in discussions that are specifically about racism, people will bring up other forms of oppression, and sometimes that enhances the conversation and sometimes it takes away from it. When there's an underlying assumption that people of color don't also suffer from other forms of oppression, or when people are uncomfortable with focusing specifically on race, I think it can seriously derail conversation.

What you say about not using a mathematical model makes a lot of sense. Thank you for your insights and for sharing your experiences!

As for Charlie, I don't think of his race as a disadvantage, per se, just like I don't think of my being female as a disadvantage, but that's partly semantics. He is definitely subject to racism already, along with ablism. Mostly because people make negative assumptions about birth parents, and they tailor those assumptions based on the race of the child. So then it's like you've virtuously rescued him from being raised in his birth culture, which is very hard to respond to politely. With his limb difference, we also get the "you're so virtuous" thing, which is soooo not what it's about, and also hard to respond to. Bridging the gap between those assumptions, and our shock and amazement that we've been *given* this perfectly wonderful baby is sort of impossible.

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

I don't think the people behaving like twits are in the majority, but unfortunately they can be very loud and very unpleasant to read, and I encountered some of them early on enough to put me off the whole debate. Also I was rather startled at that Bananagate of yours, when someone had evidently made you feel guilty about a completely understandable mistake. I mean, if you're getting to that level when you've only had your baby a few months, I think that's fantastic. You have a huge amount to learn and much of it isn't stuff that will occur naturally, and you're making the most fantastic effort. You've done far more thinking about disability politics in a few months than my mother has in the twelve years that I've been disabled.

I was using "disadvantage" in a fairly vague term, I'm a bit tired tonight, but you know the sort of thing I mean. I should probably think of a better umbrella term. Any suggestions?

The aassumption of virtue must be irritating indeed. That sort of thing always reminds me of this passage from Persuasion, when Anne is visiting a disabled friend of hers, Mrs Smith, and talking about how the friend's nurse provides great company and conversation.

"To me, who live so much alone, her conversation, I assure you, is a treat."

Anne, far from wishing to cavil at the pleasure, replied, "I can easily believe it. Women of that class have great opportunities, and if they are intelligent may be well worth listening to. Such varieties of human nature as they are in the habit of witnessing! And it is not merely in its follies, that they are well read; for they see it occasionally under every circumstance that can be most interesting or affecting. What instances must pass before them of ardent, disinterested, self-denying attachment, of heroism, fortitude, patience, resignation: of all the conflicts and all the sacrifices that ennoble us most. A sick chamber may often furnish the worth of volumes."

"Yes," said Mrs Smith more doubtingly, "sometimes it may, though I fear its lessons are not often in the elevated style you describe. Here and there, human nature may be great in times of trial; but generally speaking, it is its weakness and not its strength that appears in a sick chamber: it is selfishness and impatience rather than generosity and fortitude, that one hears of."

Austen isn't running down people who are ill or disabled, she's just saying Stop putting us on some sentimentalised pedestal, remember that we're human, and that being dealt a tough life does not automatically transform you into an angel. I rather like it.

I trust you got through the day of electrodes and such OK? I had a sleep study once, it was horrible when the time came to get the electrodes off my scalp.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

The electrodes came off with more pulling and soaping than I liked to do on Charlie's super-sensitive skin, but his red spots went away again by morning, whew!

As for the banana thing, it wasn't that someone tried to make me feel guilty--it's that I'm building a relationship with his birth parents, and it's hard for them (as for any birth parent, but particularly those in cross-cultural adoptions) to see him losing his birth culture bit by bit. Mainly *I* felt guilty because I've been reading about interracial adoption and Chinese adoption for years, and hadn't taken steps that I think I should have taken.

You've done far more thinking about disability politics in a few months than my mother has in the twelve years that I've been disabled.

Actually I get no credit for that...my much-older sister is disabled (hemiplegia after a stroke), and has been since I was quite young, so I learned from her. Charlie was placed with us partly because we have people on both sides of the family with hand-related disability. Which doesn't make me any kind of expert, but it means I have experts to turn to.

It's tough with parents, isn't it? Mine did well with some aspects of my sister's experience, but needed her to lead them.

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

I thought you said you asked some of your black friends what they'd have thought if you'd made an equivalent blunder, and they said they'd have been down on you like a ton of bricks? Or something along those lines?

Anyway, there'll always be something that you didn't realise till later, and it sounds like you really are making amazing progress in that way, even with the head start.

Speaking of Charlie's skin, have you tried really natural vegetable-based products? In my experience of ultra-fussy skin, mainstream toiletries (and that includes stuff like Lush) are all full of all sorts of irritants. Tthe stuff you can get from the doctor (aqueous cream and the like) may be relatively simple, but it's always based on mineral oil, which doesn't do good things for the skin, so I find that the best you can find is that it doesn't actively cause dermatitis, and quite often dries out the skin. Vegetable oils penetrate the skin and really moisturise it, but mineral oils and glycerine don't, they just sit on the surface and sometimes that can make the problem worse. At the moment I'm using a soap called Oliva which is just saponified olive oil, washing my face using a blend of olive oil and hempseed oil a la the Oil Cleansing Method, and my moisturiser is one I've made myself from those two oils, coconut oil, and cocoa butter. It seems to be the best way to keep my eczema happy, and works far better than the stuff the doctor has prescribed. I've been daring and added the odd drop of essential oil, rose and sandalwood for my current moisturiser for instance, but you'd leave that out for a baby. The Weleda baby range (http://www.weleda.co.uk/categories/name/baby-care) has a good reputation.

It's lovely that you're able to have a relationship with Charlie's birth parents. How are you hoping it'll develop as he gets older?

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Oh, I think I said/my friends said that they would have totally kicked my ass, which is somewhat idiomatic. They would have told me I was being stupid and not to put the kid in that shirt, essentially.

For Charlie's skin we've been using some lanolin-based products and some olive oil, but petroleum products are actually very good, precisely because the molecule is too large to penetrate the skin and isn't something he can become allergic to. A lot of the nicer baby products have some kind of nut or bean in them (I'm personally addicted to shea butter, but have to keep it away from him).

He's gotten a lot better since we took everything with citric acid out of his diet and skin care regimen, so we may have discovered his base allergy, which would make everything much easier. Once we find the ur-allergy we can start trying new things.

[lady-jem.livejournal.com]

This may not be helpful at all, but I just wanted to mention...I've started doing a lot of cosmetic-y skin-hair-care-y things myself, and it's surprisingly easy and one has really good control over the ingredients...I highly recommend Rosemary Gladstar's book "A Family Herbal." I also have some random posts about stuff like that over at my own lj (not to be...er...a "blog-whore" or anything:-), if you wanted to check it out...I just like KNOWING what's in everything, even though I don't have the allergy worries on my plate. (It's WAY cheaper too!!!)

Would you mind if I added you to my friendslist? You just seem like someone whose journal I'd like to keep reading...

peace,
Jem

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Thanks, of course you can add me! And I'll have a look for that Family Herbal book. I may try your "baby butt goo" recipe because Boudreaux's Butt Paste has changed its formulation and now has the forbidden citric acid instead of the apparently-ok boric acid.