Why Do We See Our Own Oppression So Vividly but Ignore the Ways We Treat Other Beings?
“Human beings see oppression vividly when they’re the victims. Otherwise they victimize blindly and without a thought.” -Issac Bashevis
In the U.S., there are many forms of (often) interlocking oppressions: racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, anti-semitism, ablism, ageism, etc. But oppression never acts alone. Oppression is always connected to the thing that causes it: power. And as we’ve seen historically, people tend to abuse power when they have it. Power makes people feel superior. It allows a designated set of people to make decisions for others, to make rules others must abide by, rules that don’t always apply to those who create them. Power gives people a sense or superiority, an attitude of exclusivity. And the exact kind of ego inflation needed to rise above rules, standards, and obligations. The most powerful, after all, answer to no one (not always anyway).
Interlocked with the ways domination and subordination function amongst human society is the way humanity regards all other beings that are not human. We as a society, without a doubt, view other animals as our subordinates, our inferiors. This is what makes animal oppression possible. Fundamentally, this dichotomy is what makes all oppression possible. And since oppression always begins with ideas of supremacy, we might reasonably question why it matters to people to be superior at all. Because superiority grants power and power grants the ability to make rules, not to follow them. Power also makes it possible to oppress others and it makes it easier to avoid being oppressed - a classic power struggle.
Today, oppression, which means to press others down, as the Latin origin of the word suggests, occurs when individuals are systematically subjected to degradation, whether that be political, economic, cultural, or social because of the groups they belong to, groups that themselves are constructed to separate the “dominant” from the “subordinate.” As explained by feminist and political theorist, Iris Marion Young, in Justice and the Politics of Difference (1990), oppression has five faces, meaning it shows itself in the following five ways:
Exploitation
Marginalization
Powerlessness
Cultural Imperialism
Violence
While Young defines these faces of oppression in relation to people, they are the same exact ways in which people oppress animals. It is true that we see our own oppression so vividly when we are the victims but overlook entirely the ways in which we as a society victimize and harm almost every other species that we are meant to share this planet with. The ways in which we care about human rights and neglect animal rights is indicative of human supremacy. And it raises the following questions: How does human exploitation differ from animal exploitation? Isn’t all oppression interconnected? And how can we reasonably make distinctions among oppression? How can we argue that enslaving human beings is cruel but enslaving animals is normal? That human murder is wrong and punishable and animal slaughter is normal and justifiable? To argue that animal oppression is somehow different or not as important as human oppression is speciesist and puts into question our beliefs about equal justice.
If we are to reject oppression the way we say we do, we would fundamentally have to agree that all oppression is wrong, despite who the subject of the oppression is: human or non-human.
When we teach that systemically constructed social divisions like sexism, classism, racism, etc. are wrong and we do not include non-humans animals, we fail to fundamentally stand true to the very point we’re trying to make: that all life is to be valued and respected. To oppose inequality would mean to oppose the ideologies of superiority vs. inferiority that enable oppression in the first place. Therefore, if we are to oppose oppression, we need to recognize not just the oppression that we as humans can often face from the groups within our own species that attempt to dominate, but also the oppression that we cause, both to ourselves and to other non-human animals.
It’s significant to add, too, that rejecting animal oppression is just as much a human rights issue as it is an animal rights issue. Or an environmental rights issue. Or even a health issue. All of these things are interconnected because all oppression is interlinked.
To be clear, I don’t think we should rank injustices and decide which we need to be addressing first. We should reject all forms of oppression. To do so without hypocrisy would mean to equally consider the lives of all living beings, both human and non-human animals. We cannot reasonably fight against oppression and ignore entirely all other species to whom we are the OPPRESSORS. The oppressor vs. the oppressor. That, there, is the epitome of hypocrisy.