In the same article that I referred to in my last post, Adams makes a great point about gender oppression and racial oppression.
This won’t be an long post, but more of a small reflection.
Gender oppression
I would consider myself a feminist. The term is loaded, I know. Recently I have been discussing with a friend about the history and assumptions that burden the word ‘Feminist’ and I think it deserves a separate blog post soon.
I would describe gender oppression as the systemic and consistent subordination and oppression of one gender by another – of the female gender by the male gender, for example, but also of the fluid gender individuals by the concrete gender normative individuals.
As a female-identifying individual, I have lived most of my teenage and all of my adult life painfully aware of the reality of gender oppression.
However, awareness of gender oppression and male privilege did not make me automatically aware of racial oppression and my white privilege.
Racial oppression
In this famous article, McIntosh realises that Black women rightfully consider White women the oppressor, be said White woman a feminist or patriarchy-friendly.
Just because I call myself a feminist and believe in the fight for women’s rights, it does not mean that I have been fighting for all women‘s rights. This was a painful realisation. As a community, as a movement, feminism must do so much better. We must fight for, and together with, our Black sisters. We must exploit our white privilege for the cause and create an intersectional movement.
Awareness of gender oppression does not automatically make me aware of all other kinds of oppression, but it gives me the potential to fight.