I remember the first words of the TA from my first Women’s Studies class in college. “There is no hierarchy in oppression,” she exclaimed. She then went on to explain what she meant by hierarchy. She also stated that she wasn’t going to allow discussion in her classroom that perpetuated the believe that oppression is hierarchical. Well i, like so many others, have grown tired of this hierarchical approach to oppression that keeps coming back in the blogosphere. Whether its the arguement that gender trumps race or race is trumping gender or race trumps sexuality, its unnecessary.

There was recently a discussion which stemmed from some White feminist bloggers arguing that racism is taken far more seriously than sexism. I won’t link to the discussion, cuz i just don’t feel the need to add more traffic to the site. Besides, that particular post or the blogger and commenters behind it are not the point. The issue is the ranking of oppression, which only serves to segregate and marginalize people and movements.

The day i read the offending post, irony decided to land in my lap. I was digging through my stacks of yet-filed papers looking for something completely unrelated. When all of a sudden, a copy of an essay from Barbara Smith literally lands in my lap. I posted the essay up at Ally Work.

Barbara Smith has long been one of my favorite social critics. When talking about the interconnectedness of identity and oppression, she states, “These identities are inseperable in part because they are omnipresent elements of individual biography. More subtly, they cannot be seperated because they interact in ways that are mutually transformative: so, for example, the meaning and experience of gender are different for a black middle-class woman and a white working-class woman.”

This is a major problem that i have with people claiming a hierarchy. Those that make such claims take the stance that their experience is The Experience - all that they have known in their life as oppression is the apex of oppression and therefore must be taken as the most atrocious form of oppression. Don’t get me wrong, this idea makes sense in a way. After all, as Smith go on to explain, all that we know and are in life is narrated by our past experiences. Essentially, we are a collection of our experiences. And to simply look at one’s own life without attempting to feel compassion or empathy beyond the confines of that narrative experience, would lead one to believe that what they know as the most horrible experience is the most horrible experience that anyone can feel. And for that persyn (and those who share similar life experiences), it is the most horrible thing. I’m not here to discredit that claim. I don’t wish to discredit or marginalize one’s life experiences. All i’m asking is that others do the same.

For oppression to end, we need to understand that our issues are important, but our experiences are not everyone’s experiences. We must actively engage in empathy and compassion and open our hearts, minds, and ears to the experiences of others. To do so will not only help us to build alliances, but it will also help us to understand the context of our experiences. And to understand the context of larger groupings of experiences is to gain insight into strategies for justice.

It should come as no surprise that claims that gender trumps race usually come from those whose experiences do not include racial oppression. Its yet another form of privilege to state that someone, in this case a womyn of color, must ignore her experiences of racism for the “greater good” of gender liberation. A womyn of color cannot extract her racialized life experiences from her gendered life experiences. She cannot be a womyn one moment and a persyn of color the next. She is experience manifest.

The same is true if you talk of two groupings of White wimmin. A White womyn who has been able-bodied her entire life experiences life differently than a womyn who has lived life with a disability. For example, the able-bodied womyn may come home from a Take Back the Night Rally greatly energized by the experience, while the disabled womyn may come home feeling hurt and angry because no one cared to mention that they’d be climbing up steps to the Capitol building for the final speeches - so she was unable to attend and ended up going home early. Are we to expect that she will ignore that last experience and focus on how great it felt to be in a large group of wimmin who were standing together in solidarity? Because one should be asking “solidarity with whom”?

I cannot expect everyone to understand everyone else’s experiences all the time, but what i can expect for us not to assume that we have the right to assert our experience as authoritative. If a womyn of color states that her gender does not shadow her race, White folks should listen instead of dig your feet in for the defense. If a Queer persyn of color states that their race does not shadow their sexuality or gender identity, the Hetero/cis-gendered folks should listen. This, of course, goes for ability, class, immigration status, age, and other pieces of our multitudinous identities and experiences.

I am sick of people using their privilege to put their oppression on a pedestal. Its counterproductive, self-centered, short-sighted, and I, for one, just won’t be having it. If you can’t, for one moment, believe that the world doesn’t revolve around you, then i’m not sure you’ll ever be able to learn anything. So from now on i’m adapting the policy of that Women’s Studies TA.