ID: Is this a pigeon meme where the person is tagged "cis society", the butterfly in their hand is tagged "trans people having a backbone about anything at all", and they are asking "is this destroying my free speech?"
this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2025
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Paulo Friere coined the phrase "to the oppressor, equality feels like oppression." But at some point in the last 10 or 20 years, "oppressor" has changed to "privileged," and while I understand the sentiment I'm afraid it leads to some misconceptions about privilege and oppression. Friere carefully constructed a long and detailed basis for his statement, carefully explaining the dynamics of oppressor/oppressed dynamics, but he was speaking pretty specifically about peasants in neo colonies in the global south, like Brazil.
I think you will definitely find many people of privilege among the oppressor class(es), and privilege functions within society to justify different kinds of oppression. But you'll also find people of privilege set against injustice in every way they possibly can. Because of the way privilege is bestowed upon some people but not others, contrary to how oppression is more like an organized effort by some political interest, be it national, economic, etc., to keep many people poor and wretched so that only the few can prosper. The privilege, IMO is a function of the oppression. I guess I think privilege is a personal thing whereas oppression is a much wider problem, as many individuals come together in order to dominate an other. The social factors that might drive this are all too abundant.
I see the "privilege" quote everywhere, but I never see the "oppressor" quote brought up, even though I'm pretty sure its the source. It gives me sort of an icky feeling too, like it may be saying something much different than the original. Our ruling classes love to tweak little details like this, and really its usually to claim the work of some oppressed workers as their own.
But in order for change to occur, privileged people would have to come over to, and fight for, the side of change. This would not affect their status as privileged, but it would affect whether or not they were an oppressor.
Edit: further down I discover it isn't an exact quote with one word changed, the phrasing Friere uses is much different even if the meaning is the same or at least very similar. Kind of undermines my premise here but these are still worthy topics of discussion. But I'll try to be less of a goober about it
I can't find a source indicating he said that phrase. Where did you get the information from? The one I always hear is "When you're accustomed to privilege", etc. In that form, it would be better phrased as "equality can feel like oppression", because obviously not everyone who benefits from the privilege agrees it's right.
Its from pedagogy of the oppressed
But even when the contradiction is resolved authentically by a new situation established by the liberated laborers, the former oppressors do not feel liberated. On the contrary, they genuinely consider themselves to be oppressed. Conditioned by the experience of oppressing others, any situation other than their former seems to them like oppression. Formerly, they could eat, dress, wear shoes, be educated, travel, and hear Beethoven; while millions did not eat, had no clothes or shoes, neither studied nor traveled, much less listened to Beethoven. Any restriction on this way of life, in the name of the rights of the community, appears to the former oppressors as a profound violation of their individual rights—although they had no respect for the millions who suffered and died of hunger, pain, sorrow, and despair. For the oppressors, “human beings” refers only to themselves; other people are “things.” For the oppressors, there exists only one right: their right to live in peace, over against the right, not always even recognized, but simply conceded, of the oppressed to survival. And they make this concession only because the existence of the oppressed is necessary to their own existence.
Keep in mind, this comes after a long section explaining that "it is the historic mission of the oppressed to restore the humanity of the oppressors," so he's not just chastising people for being bad here, he's explaining (in part) why the oppressor can never free the oppressed; the oppressed liberates them both and creates a new kind of person.
Sorry for my paraphrase, I haven't read it for a little over a year, although I think about it a lot
(I made an edit where I fixed a typo that like completely changed the meaning in the last paragraph)
do you ever read something and think "man.. the author of this would totally rock the world of Greek philosophy back in the day"
All the time. Friere's analysis, a Marxist analysis, when done correctly, and Friere was a master, takes into consideration not just a philosophical field of objects, forms or essences, but Marxism is a comprehensive theory of change and of relationships between two opposing forces, by putting human activity at the center of his analysis.
Friere was on some shit the Greeks didn't even have. Socrates Dialogues are "dialectical" but just surface level. The closest thing that existed in their time is Hermetic mysticism, a monist tradition from ancient Egypt that influenced the Islamic golden Age, Alchemy, Isaac Newton, Spinoza and Hegel, where the theories got their final polish before Marx quite literally flipped the table on it, transforming it from a mystical idealist philosophy, into a new materialist philosophy of change and revolution.
Ah, okay, so it's the same general idea, but not expressed with those exact words.
Yeah its funny though I thought it was more or less a direct quote, so thanks for calling it out. It is different enough to make me reconsider some of what I said
I think that privileged works better. It feels like oppressor implies an active role, while privileged is passive. To be harmful, those of the privileged group need to do nothing but exist. Whereas members of an oppressor class would need to enforce the oppression.
Since MLK saw the moderate liberal as a bigger obstacle than the Klansman, I think privileged is the ticket.
It also makes sense as an ally has to take an active role to be an ally, not just passively not participate.
It's such a funny thing. The other user asked if it was a direct quote from Friere, and I was so sure that it was. But when I went looking for the exact quote I found the part of the book where it was from, it is definitely not an exact quote. Friere's formulation is much better, but it is definitely not a direct quote that changes one word.
These ideas I try to bring up I think are worth discussing! But I undermined my own premise which isn't a great way to start a good faith discussion.
I'm still not crazy about the " privilege " formulation demonstrated in the meme and elsewhere, and I still believe Pedagogy of the Oppressed served as inspiration for the "privilege" quote, but its much harder to make a criticism of it. Like you said there's sort of interesting ways that "privilege" informs the formula vs "oppressor". Some of my discomfort with "priveledge" as the subject may be that I'm just not as knowledgeable about it, having never, for example, read a book about it, and being a person of relative privilege myself, have to work hard to make sure that my understanding goes deeper than just intellectual.
The way it is phrased, "to the privileged, equality feels like oppression" is a little open ended to interpretation for my liking, but maybe that's what makes it an interesting topic for discussion. For as much as the word privilege has entered our vernacular, especially when discussing oppression and oppressive dynamics, it isn't clear what it means. I have theories but unless i describe them, they arent self apparent. I think right wingers are able to stir up a lot of confusion among people in the middle, who are likely victims of a dozen different kinds of oppression themselves, by highlighting the shortcomings in corporate liberal "identity politics", such as DEI as we experience now. While diversity, equity and inclusion are fine and important ideals for a society to strive for, the corporate face of it never sat right with me. And now the only semblances of workplace protections for people who are the subject and victims of institutional racism, has been pushed out of the airlock along with the safety of millions of others
I've needed to have this kind of backbone for 20 years now. I am at the point where it hurts to stand, but I have to.
Don't be hard on yourself, we each carry our own baggage and trauma and it can be hard to find confidence and a voice through all that shit. But learning to set boundaries (which is basically what this is) is such a powerful tool for self defence, and a way to try and reduce opportunity to be constantly retraumatised, we could all benefit from doing it more!
I posted this on another thread here, a week and a half ago it was, and I just wanted to post it here once more. To reiterate though, this is not a 'praise me' or 'look at me being a great parent' post, this is the bare minimum to be even just an ally. That said I hope it helps some people here, because we are out there, allies, friends, fellow 2SLGBTQIA+. Reach out, ask for help, be brutally honest if you're having suicidal thoughts or suicidal ideation.
One of my kids came out as gay, and was immediately bullied by both staff and students (they were in trade school). I did the usual furious parent stuff, but also added a piece of flair every day to tell the world I was bi, and wore a bow in my hair. They came to me a few days later and came out as non-binary, and asked for help getting clothes to match who they were.
It wasn’t the threats I made to the teacher, it wasn’t the death stares I gave their classmates, it was seeing someone they trusted showing them not everyone is straight that did it. I am so very proud of them.
I didn’t do anything spectacular, I don’t want praise, I just want to tell everyone I meet that tiny actions like that ripple out.
What does it mean by having a back bone?
Standing up for yourself. Not backing down easily. Most recently there was a post about trans people coming to protests armed to defend themselves from maga people. Thats the sort of thing this post is about.
Unrelated, but I've seen this transphobic guy on Instagram who is like 60 and a body builder. He was showing the clips of a disabled trans boy (female to male) who had just undergone top surgery. The boy had some kind of disability because of which he couldn't walk and had speech problems. The old man said that there was no way the boy had asked for it and insisted that he was being forced into it. I checked the posts from the disabled kid and he was far from not being able to decide for himself. He seemed smart enough. The old guy didn't even bother to check and insisted that it was forced.
Unrelated
It actually is very much related, ableism often goes hand in hand with other forms of bigotry (and exists in all spaces in its own right), and we need to stand up to it just as much as the others.
A relevant example is that there is a pretty significant overlap between trans people and autistic people, and so any of us who are both get gaslit and patronised because we couldn't possibly know our gender identity since we're autistic and therefore must be completely lacking in any knowledge or understanding even of ourselves. It's disgusting.
Stripping autonomy from people is evil. I know they infantilize to make us seem like children, but even children deserve more autonomy than these people are willing to allow.
Telling transphobes (and other bigots) to fuck off, making it clear to them that they are not welcome, and that their bigotry isn't a legitimate "opinion" they get to express without consequence.
Not putting up with being shat on. Refusing to be turned into a joke. Having basic self respect
Any minority in the US who can afford it should arm themselves before they start restricting gun ownership
Move to western and northern Europe. It's still not 100% accepting of trans folk, but you won't get sent to the gas chamber.
Yet. Plenty of places are running hard in the wrong direction, even some mostly progressive countries.
Regrettably yes, but nowhere here has gone full fascist, yet.
It's harder than you'd think.
Yeah, people who say "well just leave!" as if it's the easiest and most accessible thing in the world (or as if people are globally welcoming of marginalised people, hint: they aren't) really need to check their privilege..
Ok but there's plenty of people in Europe who are in said marginalised groups who would probably help you.
There are multiple times more total number of stalwart cis allies-of-trans than there are trans total, let's not be confrontational with blanket terms like that. A better description of the enemy would be "conservatives".
EDIT: changed words to remove ambiguity of what there was more of
The term cis society is clearly being used to describe how cisnortmative and transphobic society is. Would you assume someone talking about the patriarchy is referring to every single man?
The definition of cis is just a singular person who identifies with the gender assigned at birth, as they have every right to do in the same vein that they have every right to identify as a different gender if they wanted to.
A more transphobic approach would be to ban use of terms such as cis and trans to eliminate distinctions.
The posters intentions might be clear but their use of language is not, and I think that's important, too.
nOt aLL cIs pEoPlE!!11222
GTFOH
Your identity is used to attack trans people. Ally or no, it is an accurate statement to say "cis society" rather than "conservative". Even if there are "many times more allies than trans people" (something I doubt) not all of those uncomfortable with trans people are conservative.
I don't want you to think I am arguing with you or looking down on you, but you expressed specific doubts and I want us to look at data together and remove those doubts.
According to PewResearch the USA has 1.6% of all adults as trans and/or nonbinary LINK HERE
Other polls appear to place them at or near one of the highest rate in the world, particularly among youths, possibly tied with Brazil, but the USA only ranks #9 for trans inclusivity laws in a 2016 study by UCLA (probably fallen several places since then).
Another PewResearch study LINK HERE shows that 64% of the US public strongly favor protecting trans people from discrimination.
So you have 40 cis trans-allies for every trans person in the USA. In countries like Sweden the trans population might be a lower percentage but trans inclusion is higher so you'll probably have a much higher trans-allies to trans ratio.
So there are many more cis trans-allies than there are trans. You have support and acceptance that I don't think you should shut yourself off from, although it's also good to have a safespace or strong community of people you relate more closely to as well.
From your own source 66% support trans rights, but only 38% believe that it's possible to be trans. That sounds to me like people are over-reporting their support, since Americans fucking love rights in the abstract but don't know what that entails in the concrete.
So, a minority of the population thinks you can even be trans and you want trans people to focus not on that, but on appeasing their allies because there are so many more of us than them. Yeah, fuck that and your cis society centering shit.