#1. What does Frye mean by “oppression” and how is it different than being miserable or frustrated? What does Lorde’s essay tell us about oppression? How do you relate to these pieces, if at all? Can you think of examples or experiences that connect to Frye and/or Lorde’s arguments.
What Frye means by “oppression” and how it is different than being miserable or frustrated is that oppression leads to toxic outcomes will be that if the individual tries to escape or detach themselves from the situation. Frye states that it in a way oppression is a chain of hatred the behavior continues to occur if it is not stopped “We hear that oppressing is oppressive to those who oppress as well as to those they oppress.” That the individuals are in these certain situations in which they will be exposing themselves to harmful outcomes. Frye says “The mundane experience of the oppressed people is the double bind-situations in which options are reduced to a very few, and all of them exposed one to penalty, censure, or deprivation.” Being oppressed is like wearing a smiling mask to hide the fact of these individuals are being oppressed since if one might find out that they are oppressed it could lead to death or rape.
Oppression is much different to being miserable or frustrated because the individual can choose to change their mindset into something much more positive and there will be no backlash if they show how they truly feel. Out of the whole reading by Frye is oppression is like a cage in a way Frye was able to describe such a multifaceted word in a poetic and simple manner. It hinders these individuals and it’s like their wings are clipped, they are alive however they not living freely.
I might be wrong but I am not so sure so I will just mention how I related to Frye’s reading. In the part where she mentions how a man is opening the door in order to receive the women’s package even though she is fully able to open the door herself and receive the package herself, that is one way of oppression. Im 19 years old and I still live with my parents, my mother gives me my privacy because she has enough trust in me that if a problem arose I would alert her. On the other hand I feel like my father is in a way “machista”. My parents are both from Oaxaca, Mexico born and raised so the culture of machismo has been a topic for the longest and continuous to be. My mother is infuriated by machismo and my father is somewhat “machista”. My father would open any type of mail I received, even though it was my mail. I felt overlooked and kind of disrespected because just like my mom raised me, being strict but also giving me space. By him doing that it threw me off. I confronted him and told him that if it had my name on the correspondence, then it wasn’t his to touch. I have a younger teen brother so he is just paying attention to our every move and facial expressions, he will obviously pick everything that he senses. Teaching the young that it does not matter if someone is a little or a lot older than they are, they should not be allowing any type of toxic situations, but sometimes it is inevitable.
Lordes reading “There Is No Hierarchy of Oppression” demonstrates that she too has an interpretation of oppression. It would signify since she is black and a member of the LGBTQ community if she is attacked for being either then that means it is an attack on being both Black and lesbian. She also mentions that certain problems in society connect to racism as well, “I have learned that sexism and heterosexism both arise from the same source as racism.”
I think both Frye and Lorde advocate for a stronger unity of those who are and aren’t oppressed, to form an ally because at the end of the day, the more people are educated on social and humane topics the better the community will be because of how much more of an understanding place it will be.
Violence against women in Colombia fueled by machismo culture and ‘institutional weakness’
In the article I have just linked it is just one out of many reports of one type of oppressor.
