Privilege and oppression

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Revision as of 12:38, 4 September 2022 by Robert Brockway (talk | contribs)
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According to intersectional feminist ideology, privilege and oppression go hand in hand and are two sides of the same coin.[1][2][3][4] According to socwomen.org (Sociologists for Women in Society), disability is a social construct, and everydayfeminism.org also says disabled people are "oppressed." Disabled people are indeed disadvantaged. However, the reason for this is not able-bodied people oppressing the disabled, but because of unfortunate biological truths that give disabled people their disadvantage. No amount of changing of societal attitudes is going to change the fact that running is only possible with feet that work, if you need a wheelchair to move, you can't run. Disabled people have to be treated kindly and helped, not because they're "oppressed" by able-bodied people but because treating them the same would make their lives totally not worth living.

Thus one people having a disadvantage does not mean that it was caused by someone else oppressing that person. Privilege and oppression are therefore not two sides of the same coin.

This may still explain why advocating for men's issues is often seen as misogyny. Since intersectional feminists believe that every person's disadvantages that are not said person's own faults are caused by the oppression by others (and not by things like nature), it would logically follow that if someone says that men face systemic disadvantages, they are blaming women for those disadvantages and that every woman is at fault. In reality, people who are not facing a certain disadvantage can dedicate their time and effort to mitigate that, thus being "privileged," so to say, without actually oppressing anybody (but instead helping those less fortunate).

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