[Addendum: Excuse the earlier misspelling in the title – sometimes my penchant for neologisms wreak havoc when I go to use actual words – bona fide or bonafide got messed up because of my more usual play on words that I use in a feminist context: ‘bonerfied’. Anyhow, it is fixed.]

These days, for a variety of reasons – the internet probably being the most important factor – people all over the world are self-absorbed and desperate to be special. The easiest way to be special, aside from making it big as a talentless social media spectacle (aka ‘an influencer’) is to claim some kind of oppressed status.

These days, the oppressed are legion. Off the top of my head, the most popular oppressed groups, according to my online and real-world travels in the past few years, include: bisexuals, the trans-identified, Russians, the ‘queer’, members of the major religions, wealthy men, violent black men, violent refugee men, liberal white men, unattractive and socially inept men who can’t score women whom they think they deserve, vegans, fat people, those who were bullied at school during childhood, mothers, and neuro-atypical people. And I’m probably missing some. There are so many, really. All of these people are now ‘oppressed’, and many will even try to reinforce it by inventing words ending in ‘phobic’ or ‘hate’ and hurling them at non-group members to silence legitimate critique (aka ‘free speech’).

But rest assured, there is one key method to easily determine whether you belong to an honest to goodness oppressed group.

Ask yourself the following question. And be truthful when giving your answer.

Do members of your own group try to silence you, deny the claims you make, avoid you, cosy up to and benefit from actual oppressors, and tend to overtly hurt your cause more than your actual or traditional oppressors do?

Or, to put it succinctly:

Does the majority of your group FAIL to support you?

If the answer to this question is ‘yes’, then you actually do belong to a CURRENTLY oppressed group. Very few loud and complaining groups can truthfully answer yes to this. Some of the loudest and whiniest groups do, in fact, have great solidarity and are actually quite politcally and socially powerful. They are not oppressed. Some of them may have been truly oppressed in the past, but no longer qualify as such. Some of these groups have never been oppressed, but are probably feeling left out in today’s sociopolitical climate that is one part oppression olympics, one part narcissism, and one part lack of personal responsibility and critical thinking skills. And many of these groups have even become well-funded and socially powerful oppressors of other groups. Those old clichés about history repeating itself and power corrupting are 100% true. I’m not sure there has ever been a revolution or movement where the underclass hasn’t gone on to do nasty things once they have taken their freedom. I’d argue that every single movement that has gone on to achieve freedom has had male members, with male leaders, and most importantly, tons of female slaves doing the grunt work and not quite reaping the benefits of power and freedom afterwords. Only male-dominated movements have ever succeeded, and they have all gone on to become corrupt. Would an all female movement fall into the same trap? Hard to imagine, but then again, I predict we’ll never see an all-female, full-on revolution, nevermind one that is successful.

The conclusion I’m reaching here is that females are arguably the only truly oppressed group in the world today, with lesbian separatists and non-man-fuckers (i.e., asexuals and political lesbian separatists) on the very bottom. We know they are the only oppressed group because, unlike with all the groups listed above, the women who fight for real female liberation – instead of smaller points such as equal pay or abortion or more ‘palatable’ prostitution legislation, and that don’t actually free women from their subjugation to men – are in the minority and they are opposed most directly by fellow females who are too scared of men to stand up and speak their truth and risk poverty and violent retaliation. Until the majority of women can band together and agree to fight for actual liberation from men, instead of devoting all energy to winning token crumbs that make servitude more bearable, then oppressed status remains firmly in place. Meanwhile, there are very cohesive, faux-oppressed groups making waves and showing us what solidarity can do when you can agree on a message.

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