{"id":3281,"date":"2007-03-28T15:13:42","date_gmt":"2007-03-28T22:13:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2007\/03\/28\/oppression-is-a-system-of-domination-and-control-response-to-hugh-of-feminist-critics\/"},"modified":"2007-03-28T15:13:42","modified_gmt":"2007-03-28T22:13:42","slug":"oppression-is-a-system-of-domination-and-control-response-to-hugh-of-feminist-critics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=3281","title":{"rendered":"Oppression is a System of Domination and Control: Response To Hugh Of "Feminist Critics""},"content":{"rendered":"

At the blog “Feminist Critics,”<\/a> Hugh — whose view, if I’ve understood it correctly, is that both women and men are oppressed by the gender system, but women are oppressed more — writes:<\/p>\n

This post shows that some of the objections to the notion of the oppression of men also serve as objections to various examples of what feminists consider to be oppression of women. My Double Standard Detector is going off. Either feminists should admit that men are oppressed, or they should relinquish some of their claims of the oppression of women. What feminists can\u2019t do (rationally at least) is employ a broad conceptualization of oppression in characterizing harms towards women, while simultaneously constricting that conceptualization of oppression to exclude harms towards men.<\/p>\n

Are women actually oppressed? Are men? I don\u2019t know, and the answer depends on how we conceptualize \u201coppression.\u201d Yet however we conceptualize it, we need to use the same standard for both sexes, rather than switching standards whenever it is politically convenient.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I agree that inappropriate double-standards should be avoided. However, I think that Hugh’s argument is based on his misunderstanding of how feminist theorists talk about “oppression.” (Hugh is by no means alone in this; feminists often discuss concepts like “oppression” in sloppy and imprecise ways, too. I certainly have. Most of us aren’t academic theorists, after all.) ((I want to add this disclaimer: My thoughts on \u201coppression\u201d are actively in development. Therefore, my views stated today may well be inconsistent with views I\u2019ve stated in the past, or the views I state an hour from now.))<\/p>\n

Hugh writes:<\/p>\n

\n

I only bring up the term \u201coppression\u201d because feminists use it to characterize harms to women, but not harms to men.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Note that Hugh consistently talks about “oppression” as if it’s another word for “harm.” But I don’t think that’s how feminist theorists use the word. Marilyn Frye, in her essay “Oppression,”<\/a> writes:<\/p>\n

When the stresses and frustrations of being a man are cited as evidence that oppressors are oppressed by their oppressing, the word “oppression” is being stretched to meaninglessness; it is treated as though its scope includes any and all human experience of limitation or suffering, no matter the cause, degree or consequence. Once such usage has been put over on us, then if ever we deny that any person or group is oppressed, we seem to imply that we think they never suffer and have no feelings. […] But this is nonsense. Human beings can be miserable without being oppressed, and it is perfectly consistent to deny that a person or group is oppressed without denying that they have feelings or that they suffer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Frye could not have more clearly stated that suffering (which, as Frye uses it, is quite similar to how Hugh uses “harms”) in and of itself is not oppression. Similarly, in his book The Gender Knot<\/em> (pdf link<\/a>), Allan Johnson writes:<\/p>\n

…If we say a group can oppress or persecute itself we turn the concept of social oppression into a mere synonym for socially caused suffering, which it isn’t.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My point isn’t that I agree with every aspect of Johnson or Frye’s discussion, but that they clearly argue that oppression is something significantly different from suffering (and also, I think it’s reasonable to infer, different from harms). If I’m correct about that, then Hugh’s argument seems inapplicable to what these feminist theorists are really arguing.<\/p>\n

If I say \u201cboth this glass eye and this hammer are hard surfaces, but the ocean is not,\u201d it doesn\u2019t make sense to respond that I\u2019m using a double-standard, merely because the marble, the hammer, and the ocean are all blue. Yes, they are all blue; but since \u201ccolor\u201d isn\u2019t the metric I\u2019m using to make distinctions, the accusation of a double-standard merely shows that my critic has failed to comprehend my argument.<\/p>\n

I think the best way of thinking about \u201coppression\u201d is that the word refers to systems of determining who gets to comprise the dominant or controlling class, not to specific instances of harm. ((Although I didn’t reread any works by Catharine MacKinnon while writing this post, I want to point out that this post — and, indeed, any feminist discussion of oppression and dominance — doubtless owes a great debt to MacKinnon’s work.)) Specific harms are not oppression in and of themselves; they are part of systems of oppression. (Since the same harms can be simultaneously part <\/em>of the system, and results <\/em>of the system, the system of oppression is a vicious cycle).<\/p>\n

In this view, someone who says \u201cX is an example of the oppression of cartoonists\u201d is mistaken. X might be a result <\/i>of the oppression of cartoonists, but X is not oppression.<\/p>\n

Hugh writes:<\/p>\n

\n

One example is the argument that men cannot be oppressed by themselves. Yet there are many examples of women harming women (e.g. female genital mutilation) that are considered by feminists to be oppression. If women can oppress women on the dimension of gender, then men can oppress men.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The gender system is perpetuated by both women and men, and both women and men suffer under it. However, that doesn\u2019t mean that the relationship of women oppressing women within the system is identical to that of men oppressing men within the system. ((I don’t think Hugh disagrees with me on this specific point.))<\/p>\n

When women perpetuate the system of oppressing women, such as in FGM, the conflict (if there is any conflict at all) is not over which woman gets to dominate the society. Neither <\/i>woman will get to dominate the society; the gender system guarantees that virtually all members of the dominating class will be men.<\/p>\n

In contrast, most examples of men contributing to the oppression of other men are instances of men attempting to become dominant, or to ensure that other men don\u2019t become dominant. To quote from Adam Jones’ essay “Gendercide and Genocide”<\/a>:<\/p>\n

…In gendercides against men… the wider collectivity is “culled” and “sifted” to isolate a minority considered threatening, according to the blanket application of diverse variables (usually gender and age). Furthermore, the “challenge” and “threat” to “the dominant group” captures something of the competitive and belligerent character of intra-male politics, the principal challenge of which has always been to suppress perceived male rivals or competitors.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What makes the gender system one of oppression of women is that, even though both women and men act in ways that perpetuate the system, the system\u2019s effect is that the dominating class will be nearly all male. ((To be clear, I am claiming that the members of the dominating or controlling class will be nearly all male; I am not claiming that all or most men get to be members of that class.))<\/p>\n

Note as well that viewing oppression as a system of dominance does not make any claim about who is hurt more, or who suffers more. Suffering and harm are among the results of oppression, but they are not the metrics by which oppression is measured.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s unsatisfying about my own analysis, so far, is that a definition of oppression must refer not only to dominance, but also to injustice. Otherwise, we\u2019d have to conclude that even holding an election — which is, after all, a means of determining who will be in a controlling class — is perpetuating a system of oppression.<\/p>\n

We can, however, incorporate the concept of injustice into a conception of oppression as a system of dominance. For instance, swiping aspects of Caroline New\u2019s definition of oppression (pdf link<\/a>) (which I quoted in an earlier post<\/a>) and combining it with the view that oppression is about systems of dominance and control, I came up with this definition of oppression:<\/p>\n

Oppression is a system whereby a group \u201cX\u201d is systematically mistreated in comparison to non-Xs in a given social context, and in which members of group \u201cX\u201d are effectively prevented from joining the dominating or controlling class of society in significant numbers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As I think I’ve demonstrated, it is possible to create a feminist definition of “oppression” which does not rely either on double-standards or on denying that men experience harm and suffering as a result of the gender system.<\/p>\n

(This post is a cleaned-up version of a comment I left on Hugh’s post; Hugh has since replied to me there<\/a>. There’s also a related post by Hugh here<\/a>, which I responded to in Hugh’s comments here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

(I’ve decided not to make the comments for this post “Feminist only.” However, I will be moderating closely whenever I’m online. Rudeness will not be tolerated, personal attacks will not be tolerated, and snide implications that feminists are man-hating bigots — even when delivered in “civil” language — will not be tolerated.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the blog “Feminist Critics,” Hugh — whose view, if I’ve understood it correctly, is that both women and men are oppressed by the gender system, but women are oppressed more — writes: This post shows that some of the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feminism-sexism-etc","category-sexism-hurts-men"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3281\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}