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What is oppression? The five faces of oppression Good point. Now …
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For what it’s worth, I don’t like Bitch Lab, I don’t read her, I don’t think she’s very bright, and I think the main thing she piggybacked on recently was a comment thread to a post she didn’t author. Nice appropriation, that.
So: Don’t like Bitch Lab? Join the club, and don’t read her. Read the women she rips off instead. They’re better.
So: Don’t like Bitch Lab? Join the club, and don’t read her. Read the women she rips off instead. They’re better.
03-08-2006
Just go ahead and bitch
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[...] First, over at Bitch | Lab, Marilyn Frye’s essay Oppression. Definitely worth reading from start to finish; if you don’t pursue anything else on this list of links, let this amazing essay be the one thing you read. [...]
An essay on oppression by Marilyn Frye…
In the spirit of Blog Against Sexism day, here is a link to an interesting essay by Marilyn Frye from The Politics of Reality that has been archived at Bitch | Lab. An excerpt:
It is now possible to grasp one of the reasons why oppression can be hard …
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Interesting and sharp analysis on many levels.
And to be honest, I have come to accommodate the likelihood of my continual oppression (blocking of my potential) by maximising the pleasure quotient in my day to day experiences. That is why, for now, I have decided to focus on my kickboxing. This is not to pass a grading and thereby to prove anything to myself or others. Rather, I have decide to focus on it for it purely pleasureful aspects — the enlivenment of sparring, the feel of efficient and spontaneous movement, the development of athleticism, and other similar features of this sport.
I really have returned to a perspective of life for life’s sake. If I get a job and am successful, that is great. If I succeed in my doctorate and make a splash — that is certainly wonderful. But life is not about waiting on any patriarch for approval; it musn’t be a constant dash to pass the road blocks before they are put in place again for some naughty turn of expression, for some subtle sign of insubordination, and suchlike. Life it too short — and there is always someone willing to roadblock you (patriarchal women).
So, I have turned my emphasis in life towards the pleasure quotient. I will take huge bites of pleasure from things. That will be the true expression of my spiritual size.
There is too much which is narrow and petty in this world for me to risk opting for any other approach.
“o, I have turned my emphasis in life towards the pleasure quotient. I will take huge bites of pleasure from things. That will be the true expression of my spiritual size.”
Heh. I can’t help but think of your discussion of going shoe shopping with your friend. :)
But, yeah, I’ve always liked the metaphor Frye uses, the Birdcage. It has it’s drawbacks, like all of our attempts to symbolize something so complex. And, even though it’s dated, some of the stuff is timeless. Even today, you still hear women talk about how men will publicly tell them “Smile. Don’t look so grumpy,” as if it’s their right to insist that we look chipper and happy. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen this come up in conversations with young women and in my reading of blog discussions in the comments section.
As for ‘life for life’s sake’, you got me thinking about this. I was trying to think of a time where I ever had big dreams for myself. E.g., I can’t remember thinking I’d “make a splash” with my diss. Maybe this was because I’d always conceived of them as things that no one read and that opps for such things were, quite simply, so rare that it was pointless to even imagine such a thing.
With the business, it’s just one of those ‘please let us survive without ending up in a shelter or being evicted.’ As you know, we’d had hopes early on of making a decent living from the skills I’d developed, but certain fruithats are actively seeking to prevent me from doing that.
There’s nothing like experiencing the revenge of a petty bourgeois capitalist owner who, as my attorney said, is really worried that I’m better than him.
I still find it really weird that I can’t think of when I’ve thought of having dreams of achieving something ‘big’ as you describe. I wonder if that’s a structural thing in terms of social location in the class system? A personality thing? It doesn’t stop me from working hard at whatever I do. I just happen not to link working hard with anything other than the pleasure of creating things I’m proud of.
Oh, I think I can link that directly to socialization in the weird school I attended where learning was learning in and of itself and not for a grade.
[...] First, over at Bitch | Lab, Marilyn Frye’s essay Oppression. Definitely worth reading from start to finish; if you don’t pursue anything else on this list of links, let this amazing essay be the one thing you read. [...]
Hey B
I guess I still have hold of that modernist notion of transgression as a method which deserves to have its effect. Rightfully so. I’ve encountered so much ignorance and callowness because of being a colonial by birth, that I have learned to thrive on opposition. And when one feels a sense of opposition — ‘pression — one also dreams of what it will look like to throw off that oppression with a cataclysmic heave.
That said, I don’t relate to the capitalist ideology of accumulation, just as you don’t. I guess that makes things difficult in term of ‘making a splash’.
And on shoe shopping — definitely not a pleasurable experience. Quite perplexing and confusing, really. And goddam did I do a lot of walking. I suppose it would be more pleasurable if there were shoes that actually could fit my size of foot. I have a borderlijne adult/child size foot - and most manufacturers do not make anything that is small enough for me.
An essay on oppression by Marilyn Frye…
In the spirit of Blog Against Sexism day, here is a link to an interesting essay by Marilyn Frye from The Politics of Reality that has been archived at Bitch | Lab. An excerpt:
It is now possible to grasp one of the reasons why oppression can be hard …
Wow! We read and post the same stuff:
http://oregonstate.edu/~stolle.....i rd-cage/
@ Eric
Tres kewl. Will you stop calling the sexpos Libertarian fems now?! :)
@bitchlab
Sure, as long as you never ever call me “the dude” again :)
I did find it pretty funny when you said something like “the Stoller this” or “your Stoller says that.” I was pretty proud of myself for writing that paper. It was my first lengthy philosophy paper. I come from the public relations world and now I’m in higher ed admin so this was really new to me…
I still struggle with the fact that I really believe that porn helps to create/brainwash men who are part of the problem. (note: my perspective comes from my straight white guy view) I come from white conservative middle america. The porn watchers that I knew in college were guys who thought of women as things to fuck. Nothing more. I don’t know how to separate the good stuff from the bad…???
I’ve had several talks with a sexpos friend of mine. It’s like the damned double bind that Frye refers to imho. Porn gives some folks an outlet, a way to feel good, a way to escape oppression. Then on the other hand, it creates folks who take it, twist it, and viola, additional fodder for the patriarchy. I just want to be able to go and talk to a group of men and not have them vomit sexism all over me.