Analysis Of Iris Young's Five Faces Of Oppression

Given the definition of oppression as a system of interrelated barriers and forces which “mold”, “immobilize”, and “reduce” a certain group of people, and affect their subordination to another group (Frye 4), Frye lists out five premises in order to be considered oppressed. First of all, the group of people must be restricted. In other words, there must be limitations or barriers on them. For example, women make 78 cents for every dollar earned by men (Kessler 1). Second, “those restrictions surely cause harm, which must outweigh any potential benefits oppressed groups experience as a result of those same restrictions” (Gillingham 1). For

explicitly explains that there are five specific factors of oppression that affect many people in their day to day lives. Those five faces are exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence. Exploitation is the act towards the usage of labor of a specific social group to benefit another group. Marginalization is commonly the exclusion of people of a third world such as racially marked groups, unemployed, disabled, elderly, etc. Powerlessness is the concept how people of power often profit from the labor of others. Cultural imperialism is the idea of a dominant group becoming a norm of society thus making non-dominant groups behaviors as

Oppression is the “systematically related pressures” that set barriers for certain people (Frye 7). It is the exploitation and the marginalization of subordinate groups. According to Iris Young 's "Five Faces of Oppression", oppression is also the disdain and powerlessness of these groups. Cultural imperialism creates stereotypes for these people and makes them the "other" for straying from the cultural norm. To less “dominant” and oppressed groups, violence is somehow socially permitted against them because they are the deviants of society (Young 53). In our society, the stigma of disability has been socially constructed and

In "Oppression" by Marilyn Frye, Frye discussed how a bird cage symbolizes the systematic oppression of women. Frye explains that if you look at a single wire in a bird cage you cannot understand why the bird, is unable to simply fly around the wire and be free. But, when you step back and look at the cage as a whole system of interlocking wires you realize that the bird has no chance of escaping because of all the barriers put in their way (Frye). This is exactly the same case for women. When somebody tries to see the oppression of women. they look only at one problem women face, refusing to step back and see there is no one cause for their oppression. If instead they looked at all the barriers women face at once, they would finally see that women have no way of escaping oppression without continuous efforts of every person involved in the oppression, including the woman being oppressed and the sexist men doing the oppressing.

Black people face oppression in the form of incarceration, homelessness, poverty, joblessness, police brutality, institutionalization, violence, domestic abuse, sexual assault, and bulling. Hispanic population and other minorities seem to face the same type of discrimination. For instance, the capitalist society creates the conditions in which oppressed people harm other oppressed people. An impoverished man is placed in a position to take out his aggression on his impoverished wife and children; a working-class Black woman to heap abuse on a homeless queer

Before the second segment begins, where a modern case study is applied to Marilyn Frye’s theory of oppression; it seems necessary to briefly mention a few ways that Frye believes that oppression can be surfaced unknowingly between men and women. The first example touches on the simple actions that men do for women such as opening a door, “The arresting of vision at a microscopic level yields such common confusion as that about the male door-opening ritual. This ritual, which is remarkably widespread across classes and races, puzzles many people, some of whom do and some of whom do not find it offensive. Look at the scene of the two people approaching a door. The male steps slightly ahead and opens the door. The male holds the door open while the female glides through. Then the male goes through. The door closes after them” (12). This particular quote receives a lot of backlash, as many people feel that this act is simply a helpful gesture between a man and a woman. This type of gesture is often times defined as chivalry. Frye argues that these “chivalrous” gestures are condoned oppressive behaviors, “The gallant gestures have no practical meaning. Their meaning is symbolic. The door-opening and similar services provided are services which really are needed by people who are for one reason or another incapacitated – unwell, burdened with parcels, etc. So the message is that women are incapable. The detachment of the acts from the concrete realities of what women need and do

In this course we learned about many different types of oppression, from the time America was first “discovered” and the discoverers began oppressing the Indians, to slavery, to the oppression of the mentally handicapped, all the way to more “modern” times in schools were students are being oppressed.

Because of this, those that utilize this form of oppression are able to take advantage of individuals and isolate them in society. For example, “racialize groups in the United States, especially Blacks and Latinos, are oppressed through capitalist superexploitation resulting from a segmented labor market that tends to reserve skilled, high-paying, unionized jobs for whites.” (pg. 51) It is here where we see the injustice of exploitation by the ability of one group to “transfer energies to another, and therefore enabling social institutions to help few accumulate while constraining many more.” (pg. 53) As the amount of people that are constrained continues to increase, exploitation begins to take the form of marginalization.

In our Society, we deal with many form of oppression in our daily lives. Unfortunately, different groups of people are more oppressed than others. Oppression is the unjust treatment of a group of people. I believe, our government is a major culprit as they are responsible for oppressing most of society. This involves many groups, such as single mothers, the working class, African Americans, gays and lesbians. In my paper, my personal views will be addressed incorporating ideas from several readings pertaining to different forms of oppression. A summarization of each article will be provided as well.

The oppressor is dominant, powerful, and unified. The oppressor is disadvantaged, weak, and divided. Often times in the healthcare system, the oppressor appears to be the for-profit corporations, investors, and government to name a few. Similarly on the other end of the spectrum, the oppressed are regularly identified as the poor, minorities, and those that are underprivileged. Sadly, these descriptors are typically accurate in the United States and the world abroad. Freire identifies characteristics of the oppressor as selfish, manipulative of others, abusive of power, and fails to recognize others as humans. He describes characteristics of the oppressed as denying the self, prevented from being authentic, and as being exploited and manipulated without realization (Butts & Rich,

In any case, individuals within society become oppressed as higher-ranked groups control their lower class counterparts. The five characteristics that pertain to human oppression become defined in Plumwood’s essay as: radical exclusion, homogenization, denial, incorporation, and instrumentalism. Radical exclusion refers to the separating of men as the “One” and women as the “Other.” Furthermore, this term means that the qualities of women become

When working to determine the causes of oppression, one must first establish a definition of the word. Oppression can be perceived as being a broad, which can lead to disempowerment of the term. For the purposes of this paper, oppression is defined through the lens of both institutional and internalized oppression. Institutional oppression is define as the occurrence of established laws, customs, and practices systematically reflecting and producing inequities based on one’s membership in targeted social identity groups (Cheney, 2012). In regards to institutional oppression, oppressive consequences such as classism, prejudice and discrimination are typically attributed to institutional laws, customs, or practices. Internalized oppression is internalized oppression is the

Women face two key forms of oppression in this world, powerlessness and exploitation. These two forms fall into Iris M. Young’s ideas of oppression in her article “Five Faces of Oppression”. The definition of cultural imperialism and exploitation used in this essay are taken from Young’s essay. Cultural imperialism is where the dominant customs and morals of a society are rendered as the norm and those who are not in the norm are considered others. Exploitation is a form of oppression where a class structure is present and this class structure includes a dominant group of people who are in power of a subordinate group. Two authors, John Stuart Mill and Simone de Beauvoir, talk about how the oppression of women is not due to nature. It is rather, in Mill’s view, due to a premodern law of force which divides men and women between the strong and the weak. Beauvoir sees this oppression of women as a result from socialization, which conformed women to become immanent. Both these authors have reasonable arguments and have a similar understanding that the inferiority of women is not from the simple nature of being women. Other factors come into play when understanding why women are oppressed, and both authors recognize the fact that society and old habits must change for the equality of women and men to become a reality.

“Five Faces of Oppression” by Iris M. Young tries to create an idea that we can critique the reality and stages of oppression of different groups. She argues that oppression is structural in the sense that injustices arise from systematic everyday activities, and not from policies or how people act. Since oppression is systematically reproduced and thus ingrained into culture, politics and economics, therefore it cannot be simply removed from our society. She separates the condition of oppression into five different forms: exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence. Young states that exploitation is where oppression occurs in the transfer of one social group’s products of labor to benefit the wealthier class. She also argues that women are also exploited to through this from of

One major link includes the fight between an oppressed group and their persecutors. Whether it’s the proletariat and the bourgeois in “The Communist Manifesto,” or the inequality of genders in “The Second Sex,” or the flight of the African Americans in the “Letter from Birmingham Jail”. In all of these texts we are shown how easy it is for one group to abuse their power and create unfair rules and regulations only imposed on the more inferior members of society. Each group of oppressor thrives off of alienating, and subjugating their inferiors.