Oppression Olympics

Competitive type of victim mentality

Part of a series on

Discrimination

Forms

* Institutional
* Reverse
* Structural
* Statistical
* Systemic
* Taste-based

Attributes

* Age
* Caste
* Class
* Disability
* Economic
* Genetic
* Hair texture
* Height
* Language
* Dialect
* Looks
* Mental disorder
* Nationality or citizenship
* Race / Ethnicity
* Reverse
* Skin color
* Scientific racism
* Rank
* Sex
* Reverse
* Sexual orientation
* Species
* Size
* Viewpoint

Social

* Arophobia
* Anti-albinism
* Acephobia
* Adultism
* Anti-altruistic
* Anti-autism
* Anti-homelessness
* Anti-drug addicts
* Anti-intellectualism
* Anti-intersex
* Anti-left handedness
* Anti-Masonry
* Aporophobia
* Audism
* Biphobia
* Clannism
* Elitism
* Endophobia
* Ephebiphobia
* Health
* mental
* in poverty
* Fatphobia
* Gayphobia
* Gerontophobia
* Heterosexism
* HIV/AIDS stigma
* Hypergamy
* Homophobia
* In-group
* Leprosy stigma
* Lesbophobia
* Against men
* Misandry
* Misogyny
* Misogynoir
* Nepotism
* Outgroup
* Perpetual foreigner
* Pregnancy
* Sectarianism
* Supremacism
* Aryanism
* Black
* Hutu
* Chauvinism
* Han
* Female
* Human
* Nordicism
* Male
* Ultranationalism
* White
* Transphobia
* Non-binary
* Transmisogyny
* Trans men
* Vegaphobia
* Xenophilia
* Xenophobia

Religious

* Religious exemption
* Persecution of non-believers
* Atheism
* Blasphemy law
* Religious censorship
* In Islam
* Apostasy
* Religious police
* Jizya
* Religious persecution
* In China
* Exclusivism

* Baháʼí Faith
* Buddhism
* Christianity
* Persecution
* Catholicism
* Eastern Orthodoxy
* Coptic Christianity
* Jehovah's Witnesses
* LDS or Mormon
* Protestantism
* Tewahedo Orthodoxy
* post–Cold War era
* Falun Gong
* Hinduism
* Persecution
* Untouchability
* Islam
* Persecution
* Ahmadiyya
* Shi'ism
* Sufism
* Sunnism
* minority Muslim
* Judaism
* Persecution
* Neopaganism
* Rastafari
* Serers
* Sikhism
* Yazidism
* Zoroastrianism

Race or ethnicity

* Afghan
* Pashtun
* Hazara
* African
* Fulani
* Igbo
* Serers
* Albanian
* Arab
* Armenian
* Asian
* France
* South Africa
* United States
* Assyrian
* Austrian
* Azerbaijani
* Black people
* African American
* China
* South Africa
* Bengali
* Catalan
* Chechen
* Chinese
* Han people
* Colombian
* Croat
* Dutch
* English
* Estonian
* Filipino
* French
* Finnish
* Georgian
* German
* Greek
* Haitian
* Hungarian
* Indian
* Indonesian
* Indigenous people
* Australia
* Canada
* United States
* Iranian
* Irish
* Israeli
* Italian
* Japanese
* Jewish
* Eliminationist
* New
* Religious
* Anti-Yiddish
* Zionist
* Khmer
* Korean
* Kurdish
* Lithuanian
* Malay
* Māori
* Mexican
* Middle Eastern
* Mongolian
* Montenegrin
* Nigerian
* Pakistani
* Palestinian
* Pashtun
* Polish
* Portuguese
* Quebec
* Romani
* Romanian
* Russian
* Scottish
* Serb
* Slavic
* Somali
* Spanish
* Taiwanese
* Tatar
* Thai
* Tibetan
* Turkish
* Ukrainian
* Uyghur
* Venezuelan
* Vietnamese
* Welsh
* White people

Manifestations

* Algorithmic bias
* Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric
* SPLC-designated list of anti-LGBTQ hate groups
* Blood libel
* Bullying
* Cancel culture
* Capital punishment for homosexuality
* Carnism
* Compulsory sterilization
* Corrective rape
* Counter-jihad
* Cultural genocide
* Defamation
* Democide
* Dog whistle
* Domicide
* Economic
* Education
* Academic
* In curricula
* Sexism
* Eliminationism
* Eliminationist antisemitism
* Employment
* Enemy of the people
* Environmental racism
* Ethnic cleansing
* Ethnic conflict
* Ethnic hatred
* Ethnic joke
* Ethnocide
* Excellence
* Gender-based dress codes
* Cosmetics policy
* High heel policy
* Forced conversion
* Freak show
* Gay bashing
* Gendercide
* Transgender genocide
* Genital modification and mutilation
* Circumcision
* Female genital mutilation
* Intersex medical interventions
* Genocide
* examples
* Glass ceiling
* Hate crime
* Disability hate crime
* Violence against LGBTQ people
* Violence against transgender people
* Hate group
* Hate speech
* Institutional discrimination
* Institutional racism
* Homeless dumping
* Housing
* Hypergamy
* Age disparity
* Indian rolling
* International inequality
* Kill Haole Day
* Lavender scare
* LGBTQ+
* grooming conspiracy theory
* Linguicide
* Lynching
* Media bias
* Minority stress
* Moral exclusion
* Mortgage
* Native American mascots
* Braves
* Blackhawks
* Chiefs
* Occupational
* Apartheid
* Inequality
* Injustice
* Segregation
* Opposition to immigration
* Paper genocide
* Persecution
* Pogrom
* Political
* Political repression
* Ideological repression
* Purge
* Racialization
* Religious persecution
* Religious terrorism
* Religious violence
* Religious war
* Scapegoating
* Selective enforcement
* Selective prosecution
* Sentencing disparity
* Sexual harassment
* Sex-selective abortion
* Slut-shaming
* Structural abuse
* Structural discrimination
* Structural evil
* Structural inequality
* Structural violence
* Untermensch
* Trans bashing
* Victimisation
* Violence against women
* White flight
* White genocide conspiracy theory
* Wife selling
* Witch hunt

Policies

* Algorithmic wage discrimination
* Age of candidacy
* Apartheid
* in South Africa
* in Israel
* Blood purity
* Blood quantum
* Breadwinner model
* Conscription and sexism
* Disabilities
* Catholic
* Jewish
* Disparate impact
* Fagging
* Gender pay gap
* Gender roles
* Protecting Women's Private Spaces Act
* Gerontocracy
* Gerrymandering
* Ghetto benches
* Internment
* Jewish quota
* Opposition to LGBTQ rights
* MSM blood donation restrictions
* No kid zone
* Numerus clausus (as religious or racial quota)
* One-drop rule
* Racial quota
* Racial steering
* Redlining
* Same-sex marriage (laws and issues prohibiting)
* Segregation
* age
* racial
* Jim Crow laws
* Nuremberg Laws
* Segregation academy
* religious
* sexual
* in Islam
* Social exclusion
* Sodomy law
* State atheism
* State religion
* Ugly law
* Voter suppression
* White Australia policy

Countermeasures

* Affirmative action
* Anti-discrimination law
* Anti-racism
* Audit study
* Autism rights movement
* Gender-blind
* Blind audition
* Constitutional colorblindness
* Cross-sex friendship
* Cultural assimilation
* Cultural pluralism
* Diversity, equity, and inclusion
* Diversity training
* Empowerment
* Fat acceptance movement
* Feminism
* Fighting Discrimination
* Golden Rule
* Hate speech laws by country
* Human rights
* Intersex human rights
* Korenizatsiia
* LGBTQ rights
* Mad pride
* Music in the movement against apartheid
* Racial integration
* Reappropriation
* Rock Against Sexism
* Self-determination
* Social integration
* Stop Murder Music
* Toleration
* Transgender rights movement
* Universal suffrage
* Women's rights

Related topics

* Allophilia
* Amatonormativity
* Bias
* Capital punishment for homosexuality
* Cisnormativity
* Civil liberties
* Criminalization of homosexuality
* Dehumanization
* Diseases of despair
* Ethnic penalty
* Figleaf
* Heteronormativity
* Historical eugenics
* Internalized oppression
* Intersectionality
* Masculism
* Oikophobia
* Oppression
* Police brutality
* Polyculturalism
* Power distance
* Prejudice
* Prisoner abuse
* Racial bias in criminal news in the United States
* Racism by country
* Racial color blindness
* Religious intolerance
* Second-generation gender bias
* Snobbery
* Social equity
* Social exclusion
* Social model of disability
* Social privilege
* Christian
* male
* white
* Social stigma
* Speciesism
* Stereotype
* The talk

* v
* t
* e

Oppression Olympics is a critical term for a type of perceived victim mentality that views marginalization as a competition to determine the relative weight of the overall oppression of individuals or groups, often by comparing race, gender, religion, sexuality, socioeconomic status or disabilities, in order to determine who is the worst off and most oppressed. This characterization often arises within debates about the ideological values of identity politics, intersectionality, and social privilege.[1][2][3]

The term arose among some feminist scholars in the 1990s and is used to criticize the view of marginalization as a basis for competition rather than cooperation. The first potential recorded use of the term as a way to theorize comparing oppression was by Chicana feminist Elizabeth Martínez in a conversation with Angela Davis at the University of California, San Diego in 1993. Martínez stated: "The general idea is no competition of hierarchies should prevail. No 'Oppression Olympics'!"[4]

## Dynamics

[edit]

The Oppression Olympics have been described as a contest within a group to "assert who is more authentic, more oppressed, and thus more correct".[1][2] This may be on the basis of one's class, race, gender, disability (mental or physical), sexuality, among other stated or ascribed identities.[1][2]

A person's stated or ascribed identity "become[s] fetishised" within the group and judged in preconceived essentialist terms.[1] There is a dynamic "of agreeing with the most marginalized in the room".[1]

According to Stoyan Francis, "The gold medal of the Oppression Olympics is seen as the commanding spot for demanding change, for visibility and allocation of resources".[3]

## Usage

[edit]

The term is coined after the Olympic Games and their focus on medals and other competitive achievements. Elizabeth Martínez, in a conversation with Angela Davis on May 12, 1993, responded to a question about coalition building as follows: "There are various forms of working together. A coalition is one, a network is another, an alliance is yet another. ... But the general idea is no competition of hierarchies should prevail. No Oppression Olympics!"[4] Davis supported Martínez's characterization and stated, "As Betita has pointed out, we need to be more flexible in our thinking about various ways of working together across differences."[4]

Martínez would later write more extensively about the "Oppression Olympics" in her 1998 monograph De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century. In a foreword for the book, Angela Davis writes that Martínez evoked "a term that will be recognized by many who have heard her speak" and states that Martínez "urges us not to engage in 'Oppression Olympics' [or create] a futile hierarchy of suffering, but, rather, to harness our rage at persisting injustices in order to strengthen our opposition to an increasingly complex system of domination, which weaves together racism, patriarchy, homophobia, and global capitalist exploitation".[5]

In his book The Holocaust in American Life (1999), historian Peter Novick derived a related term, "Victimization Olympics", to describe how persecuted groups have "competed" to portray themselves as the most grievously oppressed, with Holocaust victims "intent on permanent possession of the gold medal".[6] To illustrate the competition, Novick quotes an excerpt from an essay published by African-American author James Baldwin in 1967:

> One does not wish...to be told by an American Jew that his suffering is as great as the American Negro's suffering. It isn't, and one knows that it isn't from the very tone in which he assures you that it is.... For it is not here, and not now, that the Jew is being slaughtered, and he is never despised, here, as the Negro is, because he is an American. The Jewish travail occurred across the sea and America rescued him from the house of bondage. But America is the house of bondage for the Negro, and no country can rescue him.[7]

## Criticism

[edit]

The dynamics of the Oppression Olympics have been criticized as being "intellectually lazy, lacking political depth", and "leads towards tokenization".[1] These dynamics surrounding identity politics have been criticized within anarchist thought for their social hierarchy building, as anarchism is fundamentally against notions of hierarchy.[1]

Academic Ange-Marie Hancock has criticized the energy spent upon the Oppression Olympics within progressive circles as being an impediment to wider collective action in furthering social change.[8] She opines that "Thanks to the Oppression Olympics and the political complexity facing the twenty-first century, standing in solidarity for wide social transformation is increasingly difficult to begin and challenging to pursue."[8]

### Scholarly work

[edit]

In her article "Dialogical Epistemology—An Intersectional Resistance to the 'Oppression Olympics'",[9] Nira Yuval-Davis addresses the issue of Oppression Olympics and argues that categorical intersectionality provides an enhancement to this problem.[vague]

In her work Solidarity Politics for Millennials: A Guide to Ending the Oppression Olympics,[10] Ange-Marie Hancock argues that the core causes for Oppression Olympics are the desire to one-up other victims, and blindness to the plights and disadvantages of other groups.

Research in identity studies has termed this (inter-group) competitive victimhood.[11][12]

## Further reading

[edit]

* Gashaw, Amen (October 24, 2021). "In the Oppression Olympics, Don't Go for the Gold". Harvard Political Review.

## See also

[edit]

* Fallacy of relative privation
* Identity politics
* Intersectionality
* Kyriarchy
* Matrix of domination
* Person of color
* Progressive stack
* Triple oppression
* Victim blaming
* Victim mentality
* Woke

## References

[edit]

1. ^ a b c d e f g Daring, C. B.; Rogue, J.; Shannon, Deric; Volcano, Abbey, eds. (2013). Queering Anarchism: Addressing and Undressing Power and Desire. AK Press. ISBN 978-1-84935-121-8.
2. ^ a b c Dhamoon, Rita Kaur (March 2011). "Considerations on Mainstream Intersectionality". Political Research Quarterly. 64 (1): 230–243\. doi:10.1177/1065912910379227. JSTOR 41058336. S2CID 144053022.
3. ^ a b Francis, Stoyan (January 28, 2016). "Oppression Olympics: The Dark Side of the Rainbow". Between the Lines. Retrieved July 4, 2022.
4. ^ a b c Martínez, Elizabeth; Davis, Angela Y. (1994). "Coalition Building Among People of Color". Inscriptions. 7: 42–53. Retrieved July 4, 2022.
5. ^ Davis, Angela Y. (1998). De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century. South End Press. p. x. ISBN 978-0-89608-583-1.
6. ^ Novick, Peter (1999). The Holocaust in American Life. Houghton Mifflin. p. 195\. ISBN 0395840090.
7. ^ Baldwin, James (April 9, 1967). "Negroes Are Anti-Semitic Because They're Anti-White". The New York Times.
8. ^ a b Hancock, Ange-Marie (2011). Solidarity Politics for Millennials: A Guide to Ending the Oppression Olympics. The Politics of Intersectionality. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 82\. doi:10.1057/9780230120136. ISBN 978-0-230-12013-6.
9. ^ Yuval-Davis, Nira (February 2012). "Dialogical Epistemology—An Intersectional Resistance to the "Oppression Olympics"". Gender & Society. 26 (1): 46–54\. doi:10.1177/0891243211427701. JSTOR 23212239. S2CID 144091155.
10. ^ Hancock, Ange-Marie (2011). Solidarity Politics for Millennials: A Guide to Ending the Oppression Olympics. The Politics of Intersectionality. Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1057/9780230120136. ISBN 978-0-230-12013-6.
11. ^ Young, Isaac F.; Sullivan, Daniel (October 2016). "Competitive victimhood: a review of the theoretical and empirical literature" (PDF). Current Opinion in Psychology. 11: 30–34\. doi:10.1016/j.copsyc.2016.04.004. S2CID 147750879. Retrieved July 4, 2022.
12. ^ Recchia, Holly E.; Wainryb, Cecilia (2011). "Youths Making Sense of Political Conflict: Considering Protective and Maladaptive Possibilities" (PDF). Human Development. 54 (1): 49–59\. doi:10.1159/000325371. JSTOR 26764989. S2CID 11194102. Archived from the original (PDF) on July 1, 2017. Retrieved July 4, 2022.

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