Feminism, Masculism, Gender Egalitarian — united against Kyriarchy instead of Oppression Olympics

In a series of feminist reading that I suppose my very un-feminist environment pushes me to I just found the Blog „No, Seriously, What About Teh Menz?“, which looks at gender issues with a focus on male disadvantages, something they call masculism. At the same time, they have a strong commitment to feminism and what they call „Gender Equality“ as the intersection of the two. What seems to be a trend among blogs that presuppose a lot of shared knowledge, they have an introductory section called „101“, which used to be the FAQ in the old days.

I highly recommend that FAQ for a brief and broad entry into how modern feminism (including masculism) should be understood. And want to quote the section on the „Kyriarchy or the Oppression Olympics“ here, which explains how to work together from different angles, instead of against each other:

What the actual fuck is a kyriarchy or the Oppression Olympics?

A kyriarchy is basically the term for everyone oppressing everyone else. For instance, a rich black person may be privileged on the axis of class, but unprivileged on the axis of race; a poor white person is the converse. The privilege and lack of privilege both show up in different circumstances: a black person is more likely to be pulled over and searched for drugs by police; the poor person may be unable to get health insurance. There are many ways in which a person can be privileged or unprivileged– everything from religion to weight.

The way multiple oppressions interact is called intersectionality. For instance, a poor black person is likely to have a different experience than a rich black person or a poor white person, simply because he is both poor and black. Saying that one oppression is worse than another (“yeah, sure, you’re black, but I’m poor! That’s way worse!”) is called the Oppression Olympics, and it is not productive. The point is not to tote up ways in which each oppression sucks and then give a medal to the poor black mentally ill physically disabled lesbian undocumented immigrant Muslim with a weight problem and autism. The point is to get people to stop oppressing other people.

For more about the kyriarchy, read this post.

Nothing to add, except: I think the world is moving forward after all.

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Datum: Samstag, 2. Juli 2011 19:21
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    […] which so often finds the typical „but I am disadvantaged in this other area“ response (see my comment on Oppression Olympics if you haven’t already). We need to find a way to answer sentiments like increasing numbers of […]