As industrialization grew, so did the work force, employing women in a way they hadn’t previously been. While women now composed a large portion of the work force, they were not able to vote or hold public office, preventing them from shaping policy or having the power to change the conditions of their labor. As women moved from what had been traditionally been gendered domestic labor into the industrial labor force, they were suddenly confronted with the disparities they had with men in the workforce. Especially as women took over men’s roles during the war, it was no longer possible to ignore that women were more than capable of being the equals of men. Women had previously been told that they didn’t have the disposition to make them capable of voting, but here they were proving they were the equals of men. If they were out performing the same roles as men, why did they not then have the same rights. Why did they not have equity in working conditions, pay, or upward mobility. Why did they not have the ability to shape the policy that shaped their life through their right to vote.

Labor rights are also issues of gender justice because because so frequently barriers for women’s progress are put forth. Ensuring equal pay is only a small part of it. Biased hiring and promotion practices frequently keep women form jobs or promotion. Access to childcare or paid maternity leave can hinder women’s ability to work as we still live in a world where childcare is most frequently delegated to women. Without ensuring that women have the same opportunities for success within the workplace we cannot say that we support women. Until we work to right these systemic oppressions in the workplace we will still be holding women back.

These issues continue to play out today in biased hiring criteria and practices. Equal pay is something we are working on, but as women continually are passed over for promotions we are regardless denying them the same earning potential. The pandemic has also made more evident the role of childcare in women’s labor rights. With responsibilities frequently falling to women to care for their children at home, mother’s were the ones struggling to maintain their ability to work. Frequently forced to choose between their jobs and the well-being of their children and family, a duty that is rarely faced by men.

Something a lot of these topics have brought up for me is where did all of this start? How did the patriarchal system develop and how did we become so entrenched in it. In my mind I have always linked it to religion and property, though religion most likely served to reinforce a system that was already in place. But surely the development of property and our need to provide a clear chain of inheritance set in motion many of the problems we see today. Is there any point in analyzing its origins, or are we so far beyond them that they are irrelevant.

After reading “How to Think Like an Activist” by Wendy Syfret and watching “United in Anger” I would define activism as active participation in furthering a political or humanitarian cause or bringing attention to causes or injustices. I don’t believe that activism always has clear objectives. For instance, the example that was given of the “unsuccessful” Occupy Wall Street protest is an example of activism that perhaps did not have clear goals but served to bring attention to income inequality and corporate money’s corrupting role in politics.
“United in Anger” chronicles the Act Up movement’s fight to promote government action and awareness towards the then developing AIDS crisis. The movement largely sought to reform access to treatment and expedite drug approval processes, seeking transparency on all fronts. Their achievements in the face of an ever shifting adversary, as those involved in the fight fell victim to the disease, were astounding. They were able to collect and organize information to disperse to the community to spread knowledge, likely saving lives in the process, at a time when no one else was attempting to do anything to stem the crisis. These efforts rolled into them using various means to bring attention to the crisis, cleverly harnessing the media at that time to further their cause. These acts ranged from sit-ins, to marches, to infiltrating news broadcasts, and demonstrations against the Catholic Church. Largely they sought government involvement in addressing the crisis, one in providing access to proper care across all demographics afflicted, and two in gaining expanded access to drug trials of possibly life saving drugs. They not only demanded action, but also provided a wealth of knowledge and feedback from the community to government agencies that aided in fighting the disease. But each step forward seemed to provide new obstacles for them to tackle, but they persevered and found new ways to engage the public. In ’92 they carried out what I’ve always found to be their most viscerally moving act, the Ashes Action. It had taken Reagan seven years to publicly acknowledge the epidemic and two years into Bush’s presidency not much had improved. Taking death to the White House’s doorstep, throwing the ashes of their loved ones on the White House lawn, showing what the government’s negligence had wrought, I can’t even put into words really the power in using their mourning as protest. I think their greatest achievement was getting people to see the humanity of those dying from and affected by AIDS.
I feel my own involvement with activism has been limited. I think participating in the Black Lives Matter marches in 2020 may have been the first time I actively engaged in activism outside of donations, petitions, or ensuring I vote in midterm or local elections that influence policy. I’ve recently started my training to become a crisis counselor for the Trevor Project. I’m not sure if that strictly qualifies as activism, but for me it’s important to help an organization that advocates for LGBTQ+ youth. Within that there is definitely a fight to provide safe spaces and advocacy for those who fall all across the gender spectrum.

I believe it is important to recognize patriarchy as a system in order to properly funny understand and address its root causes. To place an individual or a group as the sole cause of patriarchal oppression is to limit ourselves in also making them the key to the solution. But these individuals were not created in a vacuum, they are a product of society, just as we all are. If we are all products of the same society, then we all participate in the same system that has wrought these individuals we deem to be the cause of all evil. But as Johnson illustrates, that thinking is paradoxical. Some people may benefit from the system more than others, or participate in it to some greater degree, but the system could not survive if we did not all in some way support its existence.

We are all shaped by the society in which we exist, we shape our identities around its edicts and are reflections of it. But societies are made of a collective of individuals, and thus the individual also shapes society. In this it is important to recognize patriarchy as a societal system to recognize our ability to change it. Some of us passively participate in the system, which in turn does nothing to change it. If we examine the ways in which we passively are participating it, we can then actively work to promote change in those same situations.

I think Johnson does a great job of demonstrating the ways in which it his harmful to misattribute blame within the system. While some people may be the main beneficiaries of the system, they may be as passive in their participation in it as those that are oppressed. Are they more to blame than anyone else? In misplacing our blame we are alleviating ourselves of responsibility. This may feel good, as none of us want to feel that we are taking part in our own oppression or the oppression of others. If we deny that we take any part in these systems we are blinding ourselves to the ways in which we can affect change. In a way we are actually denying ourselves power and strength. The greatest benefit would come from us all actively working towards change and taking responsibility to shape the society in which we live. While no individual is the cause, individuals can maybe be the solution.

I believe that the structures of our culture, the ideals we hold of what is “true”, “right”, or “normal” are largely what shapes our personal thought. We measure ourselves and others against these ideals, the ways in which we conform or don’t, shaping our identities and opinions. Thus these cultural structures have conditioned our interpersonal behaviors, conditioned us whether through our perceived status or privilege or unconscious bias. We then shape our institutions to reflect and uphold the ideals of our society, and by proxy ourselves. As institutions are the governing rules by which we live by, there is in some way the greatest opportunity to effect systemic change at this level, hoping it will trickle down to interpersonal and personal levels and then become established upon a cultural or structural level, but I think our struggles with civil rights have shown how long and fraught this road can be.

I found this weeks three readings interesting for the ways in which they highlighted how I interact with my privilege and oppression and the way those two things intersect. While I’m aware that I carry a lot of privilege as an able-bodied white male with a fair amount of class privilege as well, I rarely consider the ways in which I am privileged unless I am confronted with them. For instance as a former dancer, I have had to use a wheelchair as I recuperated from an injury. Immediately I was aware of the ways in which cities, public transportation, commercial and residential real estate are not made for the physically challenged. I never have to consider my physically ability in considering where I live. Misty Copeland helped me recognize the tremendous amount of privilege I have as white ballet dancer. The most obvious, and what I feel Misty has been instrumental in drawing attention to, is representation. I have never had took look hard to find myself represented at all levels of the ballet world. That said, my gender was also always represented in all levels of the ballet world, as there is definitely a disproportionate number of men represented in post-ballet careers from teaching to artistic directorship, with many companies only recently making an effort to diversify those positions. I transitioned into video production after I retired from ballet, which was also a male dominated space, for which my gender was definitely a considerable benefit to me. Across all of this, I have had the benefit of my class privilege. From allowing my family to afford my ballet training from a young age, to having the safety net of their support as I start my career in what is not a very high paying profession, and as I transitioned into a new career and was alleviate of some of the burden of worrying about how I would provide for myself, allowing me to take a chance and make some missteps as I approached a new career. I would say that has been a privilege I have been confronted with a lot in these past few years, career transitioning, making it through the pandemic, and now entering into school, while I have fully supported myself since the age of 19, just having that safety net, knowing help was there if I needed it, has allowed me to pursue avenues and take chances that I might otherwise have not been able to.

As for oppression, I would say that my sexual orientation is the most identifiable source for me. Growing up as a young gay man, I rarely saw myself represented in the media, if at all. As gays did gain representation, we were frequently depicted as the funny friend, prohibited from having a full complex personality, or being the main character. If there ever was a story centered on us, it is frequently depicting some trauma of our existence, from being disowned by our families, to facing bullying and hate crimes, to the loss of a generation of gay men to the AIDS crisis. The message has been repeated over and over again that life as a gay man is a life of suffering. While I understand that maybe the goals of these depictions are to humanize us and allow people to empathize with us, I think we might benefit more from depictions of us living full complete lives. I think we would benefit both from within and without our community. To not have our traumas compounded and reinforced, and to allow people to view us as whole, because to view us only through our trauma somewhat allows us to inhabit a place that is less than for those who don’t have the opportunity to see the other side of it. I try to be selective in choosing health care providers to have someone who is knowledgeable about my community. Even still I have had doctors on two occasions suggest that a cold or infection may actually be an indication that I had contracted HIV, despite the fact that as a white gay man on PrEP (preventative HIV medication) I am actually very unlikely to do so compared with other demographics, but still that stigma continues. I cannot donate blood or sperm, a sanction which carries with it the implication that I am somehow tainted. I was with my husband for twelve years, though it was seven years into our relationship that we were even allowed to legally get married in Florida where we lived at the time. Who I love and the ways in which I am able to express that have been, and continue to be, up for debate. I have been called a faggot enough times in my life to fear public displays of affection with my partner. That same fear comes into account when considering late night subway rides home, or the bars that I frequent, the neighborhoods and cities in which I live, and the places I feel comfortable traveling. I am fortunate in my adult life to have only faced slurs and verbal abuse and never have that escalate to physical attacks, though some of my friends have not been so lucky. I have created a very sheltered life for myself. Most of my friends are gay, I live in a gay neighborhood, on rare occasion do I go to a non-gay gar, I travel to gay friendly destinations. Do I have to limit the scope of my life in this way? No. But I do so to feel comfortable and safe and to live my life in a way where I do not have to give consideration to or regulate my gayness.

Within my oppression I still carry a tremendous amount of privilege. As a white male I am still the most represented member of the LGBTQ+ community, depicted far more than my lesbian/bi/trans/non-binary POC counterparts. And that representation absolutely lends me greater acceptance. Even though I may feel marginalized in my medical care, the truth is that as a white male of my economic class I have greater access to health care. That despite black and latino men being more likely to contract HIV, and black women making up 60% of new infections, preventative treatments were first marketed and made easily available to me. And while fear of violence shapes much of how I approach daily life, again as a white male I am far less likely to face that, with trans POC women facing the greatest threat of physical violence. 

I think this weeks readings have allowed me to see a more nuanced definition of oppression and privilege. I think reading “Oppression”, where she speaks about how we internalize many of the restrictions and limitations we live with and how “one is marked for application of oppressive pressures by one’s membership in some group or category” particularly expanded my definition of oppression. The subtle and insidious ways in which that can exhibit itself, and how while there are intersections, it is still the categorization of being within a certain group that defines one’s oppression, not one’s personal circumstance. I also feel that this definition works in reverse when attributing the benefits of privilege. I appreciated the distinctions of earned strength and unearned power, how some privileges are inherently damaging and serve to dominate, while others are just expectations of society that should be afforded to all.