american women's oppression

Women's oppression in the United States is no less oppressive than other parts of the world. Dowry murder in India and female infanticide in China is no more or less oppressive than the epidemic rates of rape, abuse, forced prostitution, murder, and sexual objectification of women in America. When we see that women's oppression is linked to the oppression of all women of the world, we can see that we have far more in common with the rest of the world's women than we are led to believe.

separatism

Separatism is a legitimate political choice. It can be an act which refuses participation in oppressive structures. Men refusing to go to war in Vietnam is one example of political separatism. A woman leaving her abusive husband is another political survival strategy. To withdraw from a system or a particular situation is to refuse to act according to its rules. It is a political act since a system can't function without participants.

Participation in oppressive structures is a choice. We are told we are pure victims, agentless with little choice to change. It's not entirely true. We can change. We can leave, pack our bags and create new systems based in true equality. Change does not have to be a slow process. Revolution can happen overnight if we so desired.

We are agents of our actions but we are not the creators of the circumstances we face under oppression.

melissa ferrick. i don't want you to change.

collective guilt

Collective guilt isn’t a fruitful means of change.  It may alleviate our pain as victims and oppressors; it may help us cope, but it leads us into a hole of destitution and shame.... To charge someone guilty in a court of law is to strip one of their resources, strip them of their livelihood.  Collective guilt creates a space of violence, of hatred, of oppression and invisibility. Oppression does not defeat oppression.  However, we will never get anywhere if we don't enact collective responsibility to those who batter us...

We must also end this cruelty towards those who are perceived as other (as woman); stop blaming them and recognize that there is another way instead of pain and shame. 

If Steubenville has taught us anything, it is that we treat responsibility as if it were absolute criminality… as the devil itself.  No one wishes to discuss it except when it is the "victim" being blamed; no one wishes to touch it; no one wishes to think of the "perpetrator" as anything but noble…

criminality is tainted, dirty; it’s the black man himself.  And to treat a white man as a black man (that is throwing him in prison – in the gates of hell and oppression) is a sin.  It is a sin to treat white males as if they were criminals… like a woman, like a black, like a queer or whore.