"I'm White and I'm Gay" - Hierarchy of Oppression and Multiplicity

Okay, carrying on this theme a bit more...in previous blogs I unpacked the notion of privilege, with the question "when am I White?" and then explored racialised versus ethno/cultural identity.

Now I know some of you were thinking, "Well yes, I am white, but I'm also gay or working class or poor etc., therefore I know what oppression is". This is true. Whiteness is not the only piece of your identity.

Yes, you have privilege in your 'whiteness' but you also experience and understand oppression in your sexual identity, or class identity or gender identity. So the question I ask is why is it important to refer to other oppressions when focusing on race? If we were talking about, and focusing on, homophobia vs. heterosexual and the conversation was discussing 'straightness', should I be bringing up my gender and racial oppression? Does my racial marginalisation mean that I understand how other oppressions work AND my privilege in those areas?

Have you ever noticed that just because someone has experiences of marginality or is an activist and fights for social change in one area (such as gender equity), it does not mean that they will be an ally and support in other areas of social change (i.e. anti-racism or anti-homophobia)?

Or worse still, it becomes a competition to rate the suffering...my oppression is greater than yours!

This is what has been labeled the hierarchy of oppressions, and fostering it is one of the ways 'dominant cultures' stay dominant. You might want to refer to it as the divide and conquer rule - because pitting groups against each other is a very effective way to prevent them from banding together to address the real issues.

It shows up all the time, and it's very complex. For example the gay man that understands and fights against the privileges of heterosexism and yet struggles with seeing his privilege as a man and does not support female colleagues, or even see the issues they raise. Or the straight woman who sees and recognises the ways in which she is challenged as a woman, but does not see the heterosexual bias and privilege she has.

One of the challenging pieces of our work in social change is that in our passion for OUR cause, we often compete against other causes - which have importance and validity, and need our support. While we have marginality in our lives, we also have privilege and power, and part of the challenge is understanding our story and our identity in relation to all these causes and the power we have, to use consciously to create change.

We need to ask ourselves, why are we doing this work and what does it mean for us? What brought us to this work? More often than not, we are drawn to this work because of our stories, and more often than not these stories include marginality and exclusion, which forms a big piece of who we are and how we identify ourselves.

Yet to really be effective and do this work, we have to be fully present and authentic about our WHOLE identity; not just the marginalised pieces, but also the privileged ones.

We are not just what we see in ourselves, but also how others see us.

When we are marginalised we learn very quickly how others see us and what that means - and who we are is threatened, because the message of the dominant is "be like us". In fighting for and holding onto these marginalised identities they often become our main identity. However, it is those identities that aren't threatened, but that are celebrated and dominant, that we must also look at and claim with full awareness of what it means to have that identity.

We are always BOTH AND, the multiplicity of all the identities that make us up.

It is in the owning of this multiplicity, and not just our marginalised, but also our dominant voices and the impact of those experiences that will help us to ensure conscious use of power.