If you’re tired of following the traditional Olympics, tune into this year’s Oppression™ Olympics. During this event, participants compete to see who’s the most oppressed by the cis-patriarchal power structures that dominate society.
While every participant gets a trophy, the winner of the Oppression™ Olympics gets to publicly complain about their marginalization. The other participants will be barred from expressing their grievances without suffering from public backlash.
To qualify, groups had to submit an application to the Oppression™ experts— a panel of Global Studies professors at Reed College— which identifies structural sources of oppression.
Some groups saw their application dismissed right away. The Fappa Fappa Bama Fraternity tried to argue that St. Lawrence’s student newspaper had systematically marginalized them through baseless satirical articles, but their application was immediately thrown out. A compelling HisCampus article deriding the decision did not succeed in getting the beloved frat admitted into the games.
The Oppression™ Experts selected the following six candidates:
- An (unarmed) African-American male from Sacramento, Calif.
- An unemployed, white coal miner from McDowell, W. VA.
- A transgender woman from Mobile, Ala.
- A severely aesthetically challenged female from Los Angeles, Calif.
- A bearded man named Mohammed from Palestine
- A cognitively-disabled man from Boise, Idaho
The games were broken into four events, in which three candidates were randomly selected to compete. The winner of each event was determined by who fared the worst in the event’s scenario.
Event 1: Traffic Stops
During the event, participants had to drive 10 mph over the speed limit past a police officer. The white coal miner finished in third place, since he was pulled over and received only a warning. The cognitively-disabled man finished in second place because he was arrested for driving illegally (he was ineligible for a license).
First place went to the unarmed African American man because the police officer shot him eight times.
Event 2: Airplane Security
In the second event, participants had to purchase plane tickets and attempt to fly home. Third place went to the severely aesthetically challenged female because she successfully accomplished the task without a hitch. The Palestinian man named Mohammed missed his flight because he was detained for “random” questioning at the airport, thereby resulting in a second place finish.
The first place prize surprisingly went to the unemployed coal miner because he could not afford his plane ticket.
Event 3: Job Interview
In this event, the participants had to apply to a random job and, if selected, attend an interview. The transgender woman finished in third place because she was invited to interview and eventually received a job offer. Second place went to the aesthetically challenged woman because, although she received an invitation to interview, the hiring manager never followed up after seeing her in person.
The African-American man won the event in convincing fashion when the hiring manager deleted his application immediately upon seeing a non-white-sounding name.
Event 4: Slurs During Discussions (in a liberal arts classroom)
In this event, each participant sat in on a different class discussion where a student used a bigoted term to describe the participant. The student who was able to use the term with the least amount of social backlash resulted in that respective participant winning first place.
The African-American man finished third because when the bigoted student used the “n-word” to describe him, the student was immediately kicked out of the class. The cognitively-disabled participant finished second because his bigoted student was strongly admonished for saying “retarded.” The first place spot went to the unemployed coal miner because no one even batted an eye when the man was described as “white trash.”
After the events concluded, the Oppression™ Experts met to decide upon the overall winner. However, an angry mob had formed before the Oppression™ Experts could announce their decision.
The transgender participant complained that the competition was pointless unless a “Use Your Own Bathroom” event was added. Hearing this, the unemployed coal miner demanded that an “Ability to Afford College” event be added to the itinerary.
Some members of the angry mob were furious at the lack of diversity reflected in the participants. “I am a one-armed transgender Somali refugee: where is my representation? Why is my experience being ignored?” questioned one of the critics.
Another person complained that Event 4 was flawed: “Sure, you can call people white trash without getting in trouble, but the ‘n-word’ is more destructive and powerful. Poor white people can deal with being likened to garbage on the basis of their skin color and socioeconomic standing.”
Other critics noted that the Oppression™ Olympics failed to account for instances of marginalization, ranging from gendered differences in sexual assault statistics to the racially biased mass incarceration problem. Everyone started yelling at each other and trying to find differences in their genuinely unfair treatments.
Seeing the coverage on Fox News and the rise in donations to the Republican party, Charles Koch decided to organize and fund next year’s Oppression™ Olympics. “We really need to create a hierarchy of marginalization in order to fight inequality,” he explained to a reporter while counting stacks of hundred dollar bills. “People need to look past their similarities and focus on their differences.”
satire- the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people’s stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.
Daniel, oh Daniel… the humor of this piece is lost on me. I get that Kappa hurt your feelings and now you understand what it means to be marginalized but I’m having trouble finding the funny in this piece. Maybe your intellectual capacity is above mine but where did the humor start? Was it when you when you suggested that “aesthetic challenges” are equal to the plight of people of color? Was it when police brutality finally became an advantage: “First place went to the unarmed African American man because the police officer shot him eight times.” Or maybe it was this: “Charles Koch decided to organize and fund next year’s Oppression™ Olympics. “We really need to create a hierarchy of marginalization in order to fight inequality,” he explained to a reporter while counting stacks of hundred dollar bills. “People need to look past their similarities and focus on their differences.” We all know that the point of intersectionality is to rank oppression. Or maybe what really happened is that you never tried to empathize with people unlike yourself or expand your worldview.
Jokes aside, I would suggest you begin to consider how it might feel to be someone else reading any number of your pieces (Aziz Ansari is not Harvey Weinstein). Do you think equality is stupid? Is there a vice in intersectionality I’m missing? What did you hope to achieve with this? What are you trying to say?
In closing, I’d like to tell you what I understood your message to be in the hopes you’ll consider deleting this article. This article said: “I don’t care about your pain. I don’t care about your safety. I think that equality is a joke and that this generation is coddled. No one matters unless I say so.”
hope this didn’t hurt your feelings snowflake xoxo
My biggest problem with this piece is your idea of what intersectionality is.
To some, intersectionality may be the act of looking past similarities to focus on differences, as your Charles Koch notes at the end of your piece. This seems to be a very anti-Affirmative Action perspective. To those of us at SLU who have actually taken the time to enroll in literally any introductory-level Gender or Sociology class, and actually care about combatting (or at least spreading awareness of) systems of oppression on campus/in America/on a global scale, it is understood as something very different — perhaps even the opposite of what you’ve depicted in your op-ed.
Patricia Hill Collins is known for coining the matrix of domination, a paradigm which explains that issues of oppression dealing with race, class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc. are all interconnected even if their classification says otherwise. The matrix of domination serves as a kind of framework for how oppression and privilege function on different levels of society. Kimberlé Crenshaw expands on Collins’s matrix of domination in her definition of intersectionality, which looks at systems of oppression and privilege on a more downsized, individual scale. Intersectionality is used more often to understand someone’s specific social location within multiple systems of oppression. Your unemployed white coal miner experiences oppression differently than your one-armed trans Somali refugee — super edgy, by the way.
When people use intersectional approaches to define themselves (a middle-class lesbian Latina or a white single mother of three), they are not putting forth their RSVP for the Oppression Olympics. A middle-class lesbian Latina is not saying “I have it worse” to a straight, working-class Latina; she is saying “I experience oppression differently than you, but the fact still stands that we are both experiencing oppression and both of our experiences are valid.” Intersectionality is a platform meant to foster dialogue and change, not a ranking system.
I’m a white dude too. I understand that if we haven’t experienced the oppression others have faced, it’s hard to gauge its impact or what it looks like, or even if it exists at all. Here is the article I read way back in my first year that really got me thinking about intersectionality and my position in things. I hope it might give you a better understanding of what intersectionality really is, and what it’s not.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J155v07n04_06
“Triple Jeopardy and Beyond: Multiple Minority Stress and Resiliance Among Black Lesbians” by Lisa Bowleg, PhD., and colleagues.
My biggest problem with this piece is your idea of what intersectionality is.
To some, intersectionality may be the act of looking past similarities to focus on differences, as your Charles Koch notes at the end of your piece. This seems to be a very anti-Affirmative Action perspective. To those of us at SLU who have actually taken the time to enroll in literally any introductory-level Gender or Sociology class, and actually care about combatting (or at least spreading awareness of) systems of oppression on campus/in America/on a global scale, it is understood as something very different — perhaps even the opposite of what you’ve depicted in your op-ed.
Patricia Hill Collins is known for coining the matrix of domination, a paradigm which explains that issues of oppression dealing with race, class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc. are all interconnected even if their classification says otherwise. The matrix of domination serves as a kind of framework for how oppression and privilege function on different levels of society. Kimberlé Crenshaw expands on Collins’s matrix of domination in her definition of intersectionality, which looks at systems of oppression and privilege on a more downsized, individual scale. Intersectionality is used more often to understand someone’s specific social location within multiple systems of oppression. Your unemployed white coal miner experiences oppression differently than your one-armed trans Somali refugee — super edgy, by the way.
When people use intersectional approaches to define themselves (a middle-class lesbian Latina or a white single mother of three), they are not putting forth their RSVP for the Oppression Olympics. A middle-class lesbian Latina is not saying “I have it worse” to a straight, working-class Latina; she is saying “I experience oppression differently than you, but the fact still stands that we are both experiencing oppression and both of our experiences are valid.” Intersectionality is a platform meant to foster dialogue and change, not a ranking system.
I’m a white dude too. I understand that if we haven’t experienced the oppression others have faced, it’s hard to gauge its impact or what it looks like, or even if it exists at all. Here is the article I read way back in my first year that really got me thinking about intersectionality and my position in things. I hope it might give you a better understanding of what intersectionality really is, and what it’s not.
(Well, my comment got flagged as spam when I first posted it with a link to the article, so I guess I’ll just give you the title. It’s “Triple Jeopardy and Beyond: Multiple Minority Stress and Resilience Among Black Lesbians” by Lisa Bowleg, PhD, and colleagues.)
My biggest problem with this piece is your idea of what intersectionality is. To some, intersectionality may be the act of looking past similarities to focus on differences, as your Charles Koch notes at the end of your piece. This seems to be a very anti-Affirmative Action perspective. To those of us at SLU who have actually taken the time to enroll in literally any introductory-level Gender or Sociology class, and actually care about combatting (or at least spreading awareness of) systems of oppression on campus/in America/on a global scale, it is understood as something very different — perhaps even the opposite of what you’ve depicted in your op-ed. Patricia Hill Collins is known for coining the matrix of domination, a paradigm which explains that issues of oppression dealing with race, class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc. are all interconnected even if their classification says otherwise. The matrix of domination serves as a kind of framework for how oppression and privilege function on different levels of society. Kimberlé Crenshaw expands on Collins’s matrix of domination in her definition of intersectionality, which looks at systems of oppression and privilege on a more downsized, individual scale. Intersectionality is used more often to understand someone’s specific social location within multiple systems of oppression. Your unemployed white coal miner experiences oppression differently than your one-armed trans Somali refugee — super edgy, by the way. When people use intersectional approaches to define themselves (a middle-class lesbian Latina or a white single mother of three), they are not putting forth their RSVP for the Oppression Olympics. A middle-class lesbian Latina is not saying “I have it worse” to a straight, working-class Latina; she is saying “I experience oppression differently than you, but the fact still stands that we are both experiencing oppression and both of our experiences are valid.” Intersectionality is a platform meant to foster dialogue and change, not a ranking system. I’m a white dude too. I understand that if we haven’t experienced the oppression others have faced, it’s hard to gauge its impact or what it looks like, or even if it exists at all. Here is the article I read way back in my first year that really got me thinking about intersectionality and my position in things. I hope it might give you a better understanding of what intersectionality really is, and what it’s not.
(Well, my comment got flagged as spam when I first posted it with a link to the article, so I guess I’ll just give you the title. It’s “Triple Jeopardy and Beyond: Multiple Minority Stress and Resilience Among Black Lesbians” by Lisa Bowleg, PhD, and colleagues. My second comment got flagged too. Maybe it’s becsause my comment is too long?)