I think I've identified why I feel so uncomfortable saying that I'm a feminist, why I don't feel right when I talk about how white privilege is so harmful. It presumes that the problem with sexism is sexism, whereas the problem with sexism is oppression.
Racism is not the problem, oppression is the problem.
Sexism is not the problem, oppression is the problem.
Religious discrimination is not the problem, oppression is the problem.
Speciesism is not the problem, oppression is the problem.
For every victory that any particular cause achieves (civil rights, gender equality), another oppressed group loses that much solidarity and momentum, and their plight will become that much more difficult. The only way for the oppressed to unilaterally find justice is for the oppressed to stand against the *concept* of oppression, by understanding why it exists at all--not why it exists on spectra of gender, race, or religion. Until we finally address the root of all discrimination and hate, we'll simply sever the ties between the different groups of oppressed people. Those with less influence will continue to be oppressed, and the formerly oppressed groups will continually fail to recognize that the oppression was not only their own.
Thinking in specifics is wrong. In the long term, it's bad. It undercuts attempts to find pure justice. It dilutes attempts to end oppression for good. It makes it harder for the more oppressed groups to find salvation. It's like trying to hide global warming by genetically engineering crops to withstand higher temperatures, or to cover up the fact that rain forest trees are dying by planting some compensatory conifers in New England. It seems like you're solving the problem, but you're actually facilitating the intensification of the real problem.
Obviously every form of oppression is bad, but to act like the solution will come by fighting against the most salient manners of oppression is naive. This will only make it impossible for the less salient forms of oppression to gain traction. The forms of oppression that are harder to identify, the forms of oppression that don't as instinctively appall the common person, will continue to pervade the cultures of the world.
There should not be a need to justify homosexuality, to justify being black, to justify being Muslim. The only morally acceptable solution to these forms of oppression is one that deals with them all at once. For, although it seems to be obvious that these forms of oppression are all intuitive to argue for, and although there's plenty to say about gender studies and ethnography and theology, and about all that great interesting historical stuff about these things around the world, we can be absolutely sure that we do not know about every form of oppression. When we talk about those causes, we are certain to miss less noticeable forms of oppression. We are bound to overlook other groups because we can only learn, as a society and as participants in social dialogues, about so many ideas at once. There can only be so much that gets face time in the dialogue of today.
What happens to the demographics of people that have more controversial lifestyles and identities? What about the people who do things that are more widely considered gross? What about the people who are simply not as influential or have smaller voices? What about the people who don't have leaders with enough charisma to gain a following, or to convince enough people to rally together for their cause?
To truly end oppression, there real steps must be taken to identify the fundamental issues, to clarify them vigorously, and to educate everybody in the world about them. We must recreate our social, economic, power, and governmental structures in a way that prevents oppression from existing in any form. We must write a new world for ourselves that eliminates all incentives for oppression as a concept, instead of fixing oppression's most topical and most obvious manifestations.
There are other concepts, along with oppression, that need to be visited. But it's not the manifestations of the the concepts that we should address. We should investigate these manifestations of oppression (e.g. in regards to race, religion, sexuality, and gender). Then we really need to
I don't know how the narrative got to the point that it is, but I think it's getting out of control. We're all furiously trying to figure out all these different things, but it only leads to a bunch of disjointed and useless chatter. We're not getting anywhere fast in terms of justice. We need more justice, and we need it faster. We need to take a systematic approach to protect EVERYBODY, not just the people who have the best public speakers and the most touching stories of pathos.
The good news, I suppose, is that we have so many stories, so many accounts, and so many ideas about the various contemporary manifestations of oppression, that we have lots of material to analyze when trying to identify commonalities between different modes of oppression. There's plenty of data and literature to review in a study of how oppression works. But what hasn't yet been brought to the forefront of these dialogues about oppression, and what needs to happen sooner rather than later, is that we must pinpoint exactly what sociological, economic, philosophical, psychological, and biological factors enable the propagation of oppression in its various forms. We then need to imagine and create power structures that consider these factors and block them in a way that prevents oppression from happening in any way whatsoever. We'll know when we've found a solution when oppression ends in all of its forms. And this solution will not be specifically tailored for any of oppression's particular manifestations, but will be general enough to end oppression both salient and subtle.
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