“On Psychological Oppression” by Sandra Bartky

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Introduction

Biographical information of Sandra Bartky:
- She is a professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
- In 1997, she received an honorary degree, Doctor of Humanities from New England College.
Her article, “On Psychological Oppression”.

On psychological oppression

Bartky quotes Fanon and says that colonialism had psychological effects on the colonized (mainly the blacks).
Despite being white, Bartky complains of being psychologically alienated.
The psychological effects of sexist oppression resemble those of racism and colonialism.
Oppress is to weigh down or exercise harsh dominion over people economically, politically and psychologically.
Psychological oppression is to have a harsh dominion exercised over your self-esteem and make the victims their own oppressors.
It makes work of oppressors easy by breaking spirits of the dominated by rendering them incapable of understanding the nature of those agencies responsible for their subjugation.
The economically and politically oppressed are themselves psychologically oppressive.
The experiences of oppression falls into three categories:
- Stereotyping;
- Cultural domination;
- Sexual objectification.
Black men and women of all races have been victims of sexual stereotyping.
White women have also been seen as incapable and incompetent.
Female stereotypes threaten the autonomy of women both by their existence and by their content.
Women are now learning to identify and struggle against the forces that have laid the psychic burdens upon them.
Women had also become victims of cultural domination, under male manifested supremacy.
The women of color face male dominance and racism.
Women of all races and ethnicities are subject to stereotyping, cultural depreciation and sexual objectification.
Many oppressed persons come to regard themselves as uniquely unable to satisfy normal criteria of psychological health or moral adequacy.
Bartky argues that women ought not to look ‘pretty and attractive’ for the sake of mere men but for the sake of beauty.
Much has been written about alienation, but Marx’s theory of alienation speaks most compellingly about feminist political theory.
All modes of oppression serve to maintain a vast system of privileges including those of race, sex and class.
Class oppression encourages those who are higher in hierarchies of race or gender to cling to a false sense of superiority.
All forms oppression support each other and it’s difficult for any form of oppression to disappear entirely unless the system of oppression as a whole is overthrown.