Frye

In her article, Frye makes a distinction between oppression and feelings of misery. Oppression differs from misery because it is a set of barriers or obstacles that are systematically related to each other without a positive outcome. Misery, on the other hand, is only temporary and offers a positive outcome in the end. For instance, if a wealthy person is injured in a skiing accident, they will experience temporary misery due to the pain of the broken limbs. Yet, they will end up in a superb hospital with excellent care and in a few weeks, they will no longer suffer. Frye relates temporary misery to a bird cage with a single bar. If the bird wants to escape, it may be inconvenienced to fly around that bar, but it can still get out. Oppression, on the other hand, is a bird cage with a continuous series of bars, systematically placed to prevent the bird from escaping. No matter how hard the bird tries, it cannot escape.

In class, we used the example of wearing glasses to demonstrate the difference between oppression and temporary inconvenience. If Celia decided that she were only going to give As to the people in the class with glasses, there would be ways around that oppression. You could talk to the dean, drop the class, transfer to another college, etc. However, if the fact that only people with glasses got As was a universal standard, there would be no way for those without glasses to do well in college. This situation has no positive outcome for non-glasses wearers, because they cannot escape the cycle.

I really enjoyed this article by Frye, because I thought she did a really job of pin-pointing what constitutes oppression.