[scotty79]

Dividing oppressed and oppressors neatly along some superficial trait is great for making politics. Especially when historical correlations were strong. But you often have to bend backwards to explain the complexities of reality where sometimes women oppress women and men who oppress women at the same time oppress men even more.

[hk__2]

> But you often have to bend backwards to explain the complexities of reality where sometimes women oppress women and men who oppress women at the same time oppress men even more.

Not really, in all systems of dominance you have oppressed who embrace the cause of the oppressors, often not consciously. There are a lot of women who defend patriarchy, even if as a whole this is detrimental to them (and pretty much everyone). See also Black people who endorse racist theories about White dominance, etc.

[scotty79]

And that lets you dismiss them somehow so they don't cloud your clean theory of oppression based on single superficial trait?

So you once again can clearly proclaim that gingers are always oppressors and non-gingers are always oppressed?

There are women doing better than vast majority of men. Sweeping them under the rug as some loonies that love being oppressed is not really smart.

This kind of thinking leads to Asians to be no longer classified as a minority for some purposes despite being a minority just because they are doing better than whites.

I don't deny correlations, especially historical correlations. But nowadays fixating on gender or skin color is about as helpful as considering spherical cow in a vacuum.

Let's take African Americans for example. Nobody denies that their current woes have historical root causes in their skin color in times of legal racism in USA. But nowadays the bulk of their problems stems from the fact that they are poor in the society that's ruthless against poor. Why not address that instead? Why not take better care of the poor? Why not work on how to provide the poor with safety, healthcare and education and a path to wealth? How does fixating on skin pigmentation helps with any of that?

Sure, the history of African Americans is a great example that you can forcibly make a group of people poor for stupid reasons and they stay poor. But this should just be used as example that being poor is not always the fault of the poor person. This should breed compassion towards all poor. Instead it's used to revitalize racism and conflicts along racial lines when you focus on for what stupid reasons the group was made and kept poor.

Seeing the world as divided into oppressors, oppressed and allies is terribly counterproductive. Humans are just humans, when they are in positions of power, in the absence of proper controls they will exploit and oppress others for their own benefit regardless of their gender or skin color. Trying to forcibly find method to madness based of superficial traits brings you away from this reality.