Dr. Sara DiazWGST 202: Gender, Difference, and PowerGonzaga University

Social Location

Free Write

• What is your social location?• What privileges do you have?• What kinds of things might you feel entitled to

based on those privileges?• What oppressions do you experience?• How might you have internalized those

oppressions?• How do you RESIST your privileges and oppressions?• How do you avoid the “path of least resistance?”

Levels of Intersection

•Micro-level: Individual or personal•Meso-level: group, community, or

local, institutional•Macro-level: national, institutional •Global-level

Social Location

• Social location places us in a particular relationship to others, to the dominant culture in the United States, and to the rest of the world. It determines the kinds of power and privilege we have access to and can exercise, as well as situations in which we have less power and privilege. (Kirk & Okazawa-Rey, p. 113)

• Multiple, contradictory, and paradoxical.• Meso and Macro• “historically shared, group-based experience” (Collins in

K & OR, p. 114)

OPPRESSION, PRIVILEGE, RESISTANCE

Forms of Oppression

•Aware/blatant •Aware/covert•Unaware/unintentional •Unaware/self-righteous

Multi-layeredness of Oppression

•Myth: Oppression occurs between individuals• Institutional: discriminatory practices• Judicial system, education system,

housing, etc.• Refers both to the laws as well as the

interpersonal practices • Ideological

Internalized Oppression

• Attitudes and behavior of some oppressed people that reflect the negative, harmful, stereotypical beliefs of the dominant group directed at them.

• self-hatred or simply self-doubt, often subconscious• Identification with the dominant group

Internalized Dominance

• Dorothy Alison says “Entitlement … is a matter of feeling like we, not they.” (p. 124)

• Gwyn & Okazawa-Rey: The inability of a group or individual to see the systematic attitudes and actions of prejudice, superiority, and self-righteousness of one group (a non-target group) in relation to another (a target group) as a member of the non-target group.

Reminder - Privilege

The social positioning of one group over another group that leads to

unearned systematic advantage for those who are privileged and

unwarranted systematic disadvantage for those who are subordinate.

Frederica Daly

• How does Frederica Daly frame the social location of Native women in the US?• How has the legacy of colonization shaped

Native American’s social location?•What kinds of privileges do non-native

people have relative to Native Americans?