some people on this site very genuinely do not understand what systematic oppression is so i’m gonna break it down a little
i’m a lesbian. lesbians are systematically oppressed – we learn at a young age what being gay is and that it’s wrong, we learn from a young age that being a lesbian is undesirable, we see our rights being publicly debated on television, we see women like us being murdered on the news
that’s what systematic means. it means that society – all the way up to the government level – is actively hurting us and working against us. this goes hand in hand with things like mictoagressions (men telling me they love lesbians because they love lesbian porn) and outright homophobic abuse (my mother calling me slurs)
systematic oppression means oppression that is done as a part of a larger system. things like the AIDS crisis, marriage inequality, murder, and homelessness are all examples of the way the system is actively rigged against all LGBT people. and the thing about systematic oppression is that it isn’t misunderstanding – it’s deliberate. reagan deliberately let thousands of men and women die of AIDS because they were gay or transgender.
that all being said – you know what else i am? i’m also a redhead.
redheads are a statistical minority. i don’t see a lot of natural redheads on tv. shows like South Park take cheap potshots at redheads all the time. i was bullied viciously as a young girl for my red hair.
it hurt a lot. i felt pretty alienated by my hair color as a kid and it really impacted my self-esteem in a big way.
the difference between my painful experiences as a lesbian and my painful experiences as a redhead is that one of them is due to systematic oppression and the other is not.
being a redhead is something i can’t help. it really hurt my feelings to be made fun of and be the butt of jokes for years. but…. that’s a speck of dust in my life compared to the sheer trauma i’ve endured as a lesbian.
that’s because oppression against redheads doesn’t exist. it’s not really oppression – it’s not systematic. there aren’t redheads dying in droves while the government condones it. i don’t have to fight for my right to exist as a redhead. just because people don’t have a good opinion of my haircolor and maybe didn’t understand that parroting South Park humor at me was insensitive doesn’t mean that i was being oppressed.
there are facets of our personalities that we can’t help that people are not always going to be nice about. and that’s not fair, and it’s insensitive, and it’s often painful. it can even become as severe as outright abuse.
that being said… systematic oppression has always been and always be an entirely different beast than non-systematic mictoagressions. and having experienced both i can promise you the impact is worlds different.
i know your experiences are difficult and hurt. but never assume for a second you understand systematic oppression or what it is if you haven’t experienced it first hand as a marginalized person. don’t compare things that aren’t systematic oppression to systematic oppression.
it isn’t the same. it can’t be the same. it never will be.
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