Daniel Wolf Mattas.

Oppression is not so much something we “qualify” for as it is the unfair system of allocation of power within which we all live, and my questions were intended to illustrate your position within them. Though it is, as you note, very important to eschew the ‘I’m more oppressed than you are’ game, it’s still very valuable to recognize the many areas in which we hwp (hetero white people - a new club that I, as a non-penis-possessor, can be a part of) enjoy unearned privilege, because it gives us the broadest possible perspective from which to understand other people’s positions.

For me, a white, able-bodied, old-enough-but-not-too-old, educated, heterosexual, mortgage-holding, slender, fertile, coupled, English-speaking, Christian, attractive, tall woman with ‘good’ hair, it’s not easy to ’see’ through the eyes of people whose lives are daily marked by discrimination. (I could make a list of the ways in which my life is daily marked by privilege, but it would be a very long list and anyhow Peggy McIntosh did a very thorough job of that already.)

There are three openings in my “shields” of privilege that allow me to glimpse the experiences of those whose identity is located in a position less privileged than mine; sexism (obviously), motherhood (I will explain), and seventh grade at a small junior high school in southern Oregon (surprisingly enough):

Sexism: Tomorrow I will ask all my men students to stand, and then I will ask them what they do, on a daily basis, to avoid being sexually assaulted. There will be some shuffling and perhaps some nervous laughter, and I will allow the silence to hang for a moment before I ask them to sit and the women to stand, and I will ask them what they do, on a daily basis, to avoid being sexually assaulted.

I don’t try to write their responses on the board anymore, because I can’t write that fast.

Motherhood: This past summer, a colleague and I presented a new theory of the systematic oppression of mothers at our professional organization’s national conference. We draw a variety of parallels between the experiences of mothers and the experiences of other recognized systems of oppression; briefly, mothers earn a good deal less, on average, than non-mother women (while fathers earn more than non-father men!), mothers are subject to discrimination only when we reveal our status as mothers, participation in work assumes a lack of mothering responsibilities and is constructed around the life situations of men and non-mother women, barriers to mothers’ equal access to education exist at the institutional level, mothers experience the stress of “shifting” between work and family communities, and so on.

While being a woman and being a mother are definitely salient aspects of my identity, and aspects by which I am oppressed, I must also acknowledge that my membership in neither category has created nearly as much capacity for empathy as the seventh grade.

For reasons much too tedious to enumerate, in the seventh grade I was uncool. No, I was not just uncool, but I was downright unpopular. I was as excluded from the in-group as it was possible to be and still be white and heterosexual. As trite as I acknowledge this sounds, it is the only experience based on which I can claim to even begin to recognize how it feels to be a member of a marginalized group. It’s shitty!

It sounds like you, too, know what exclusion feels like. The funny thing is that our feelings of being an outsider are pretty much context-dependent (a professional environment, in your case, or a time and place, in mine). It’s difficult to imagine what it must be like to not be able to escape the feeling of being an outsider in the world.

That said, I’ll clarify what I was getting at with my questions to you:

Women’s earnings - when factors such as hours worked and education level are controlled for - are 58 to 87% of men’s earnings, depending on race.

Non-heterosexual people are subject to being legally fired if their sexual identity becomes known.

People of color routinely find that apartments which were formerly available become suddenly unavailable when they arrive and prospective landlords discover that they are of color.

Disabled individuals live in a world in which their physical surroundings and activities are structured in such a way that they are denied access and/or cannot participate.

Marginalized groups are disproportionately unrepresented in radio, television, and print media. When they are present, they are often tokenized and/or depicted in stereotyped ways.

At the national level, women constitute only 15% of those in congress.

State policies overtly define ‘family’ in ways that exclude non-married/non-heterosexual families.

People of color, particularly poor black men, are vastly disproportionately represented in correctional facilities.

The bottom line for me is a personal commitment to understanding the experiences of marginalized groups (to the extent of my capacity to do so) - and acknowledging them when I can’t understand them - while recognizing that my attempts to do so are severely hampered by my embodiment of privilege (which, in its turn, greatly enhances my daily life). **sigh**

How can a graduate program grant conditional admittance to people based on their identity? I’ve heard of programs that grant conditional admittance based on grade point average, gre scores, etc. What did that process look like?

It definitely sucks to be excluded because of identity…

How are you censored in class? I am genuinely curious. Is it because your classmate and professors do not make you comfortable? That can definitely be a form of censorship…

Who in the heck is saying that Jesus was a democrat? That happens in your class?

Whoa. I have never said that conservatism is incompatible with student affairs. I feel that racist, homophobes, etc. should not be in positions of power where they can harm the dignity of students that they work with. There is a huge difference as I have never said that conservatism = racism (or insert another form of oppression here).

I appreciate that you answered Michele’s comment.

I think you and I both qualify as heterosexual white men who have a lot of institutional privilege and that we can both work to end oppressions.