Real Oppression Is The Kind You Can't Escape

We hear a lot about privilege and oppression these days, but how many people are really oppressed? If your boss mistreats you because he's a racist, a sexist or a homophobe, you can always get another job. Not all bosses are like that and if you make an effort, you can eventually find somewhere to work that isn't so unpleasant.

How about if you're a really short man? What if you're 5' 2" tall? Girls like taller men, so you're at an extreme disadvantage while dating. What if you're a really tall woman, like 6' 3"? Guys like shorter girls. Wherever you go, you can't get away from your height, it follows you relentlessly.

What if you have an IQ of 80 or less or a severe learning disability? Where do you go to get a college degree? Nowhere, that's where. Your mental acuity goes where you go. You can't escape it.

The people of East Germany couldn't go somewhere less oppressive, either. Guard towers, barbed wire, walls and machine guns made sure of that. Even the people of Cuba were less oppressed than the East Germans. There was no escape from their fate.

What if our standard classifications of the population are all wrong? What if skin color, sex and sexual orientation are two or three orders of magnitude less important than things like health, attractiveness, intelligence and a strong will?

Maybe we're discussing the wrong things.

At work, there's a fellow who's blind. He works on a computer most of the day. My team had to make sure our sites were accessible to him, so we tried out a screen reader. Good God, what a chore to use! Talk about oppressive! You had to keep a map of each site in your head, like a decision tree as you tabbed through the thing. No matter where the guy goes, too, he's still blind.