Disability and Representation

Changing the Cultural Conversation

Why So Many Fail to Understand Systemic Oppression

I was recently in a discussion about the ways in which people of color are disproportionately targeted by the police (think: stop-and-frisk, among other rights violations), disproportionately incarcerated, and disproportionately imprisoned for long stretches. As is often the case in these kinds of discussions, someone came blundering in with a “solution” — the “solution” being that people of color just need to be compliant with police officers and not do anything at all that could possibly be construed as suspicious or alarming. In other words, people of color simply had to act “normal” and all would be well.

I kept reading those words over and over, because I found them so shocking. It wasn’t just that the ideas were wrong — that they evinced an ignorance of racism and an idealized sense of control. It’s that they were based on an outlook that I once believed was grounded in fact: that society is “just” and that all I had to do to be safe was to do everything “right.”

That was a lifetime ago. At some point, I realized that there was no way to do it “right” because, in the eyes of the society in which I live, I am already seen as “wrong.” This assumption of wrongness is why marginalized people get the attention of the police, not to mention other authority figures,  for driving while black, for walking while trans, for standing while disabled. We’re already considered “wrong” in the first place.

Some people’s bodies are themselves considered provoking. Not our intentions. Not our attitudes. Not our actions. OUR BODIES. To understand this very basic fact goes against the whole notion that the society one lives in is just — that the good are rewarded and that the guilty are punished. It’s deeply terrifying to realize how truly irrational people are when it comes to the arbitrary meanings they place on human bodies. It means that entire systems are based on completely arbitrary and irrational standards. It goes against the whole Western notion that humans are rational and enlightened beings.

It’s a very hard thing to wrap your mind around until it comes your way. And even when it does come your way, it’s still something that is difficult to face. This is one of the reasons that even people inside marginalized groups can fail to grasp the systemic injustices directed against their bodies. Or if they do grasp it, they can fail to understand the irrationality of the hatred directed toward other people’s bodies. So you find gay and lesbian people who are racist and transphobic, and you find people of color who are homophobic and ableist, and you find transgender people who are ageist and fatphobic, and you find disabled people who are misogynist and classist. Depending on who you talk to, you’ll find a multitude of permutations of all of these bigotries, including the horrifying specter of internalized hatred against one’s own body.

To realize that these valuations are simply arbitrary — that there is no good reason at all to suspect a body just for being a body — means to recognize that we are all at risk.  Stigma is a moveable feast. It is mercilessly easy to move from a privileged category to a stigmatized category. Just ask anyone who has ever been diagnosed with a disability after living with the privileges of able-bodiedness, or anyone who has ever become fat after being thin, or anyone who has become old after a lifetime of looking youthful. The whole notion that the society is constructed along rational lines comes crashing down. And then you have to reconstruct your sense of how it works, piece by piece.

You’ll find other people who have woken up and found a new way of seeing. But you’ll never really believe again that the world you live in is just.

© 2013 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg

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  1. 9/9/2013 | 4:42 am Permalink

    I’ve actually been thinking about this lately in regards our different standards of behaviour and dress for girls and boys, women and men. Why is it okay for a man to go shirtless at the beach, while mowing his lawn, or at the gym, while it is not for a woman? Why do people still try to shame a woman into covering her baby’s face or going and sitting in a bathroom while breastfeeding? Why are women expected to put on heels, bras, skirts and hose, and make-up to look “professional”?

    And the only answer I’ve got is that women’s bodies have been so sexualised, so objectified, that to dress in exactly the same clothing for the same situation as a man would is provoking. That we even need laws protecting a woman’s right to use her breasts for their intended purpose says something deeply unsettling about our society.

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  2. 9/9/2013 | 8:30 am Permalink

    ABSOLUTELY! You are getting more clear by the post, my dear woman. Bravo!!! This link goes out to the world from me. Thank you!

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  3. 9/9/2013 | 4:14 pm Permalink

    I agree with this so hard.

    I’m trying to think of something else to say, but just THIS to people who say that just because they experience one (or more) oppression, that they can’t possible hold -ist attitudes towards other groups.

    That’s one thing that greatly bothers me about some so-called “radical feminists” as an example-some of whose writings/viewpoints/etc are the most virulently transphobic/classict/racist crap ever.

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  4. 9/11/2013 | 1:48 pm Permalink

    You put this so well—and so succinctly! Thank you.

    I think you highlight the only positive from this realization in your final paragraphs. It is possible for someone to understand, and change their perspective. It may be due to a transformative experience or perhaps through reading, conversation, or working with people who have been forced to learn the absence of justice.

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