THE DEFINING CHARACTERISTICS OF OPPRESSION

Systems of oppression (e.g., racism, sexism, classism, ableism, ageism, and heterosexism) share common elements (Pharr, 1988; Tinney, 1983; Young, 2000). Young (2000) delineated five characteristics, or what she called the five faces of oppression: exploitation, powerlessness, systemic violence, cultural imperialism, and marginalization. Pharr (1988) noted that across all forms of oppression, inequities in institutional and economic power and threats of individual and institutional violence function to enforce behavioral norms established by the dominant group. Members of subordinate social groups are rendered invisible, defined as “Other,” stereotyped, blamed for their own victimization, and they internalize society’s negative attitudes and stereotypes (i.e., internalized oppression) (Pharr, 1988).

EXPLOITATION

Exploitation refers to structural relationships of power and inequality that enable some people to profit from the labor of others, transferring the fruits of one social group’s labor to another social group (Young, 2000). Although GLBT people pay into the Social Security system, should they die, their same-sex partners are denied survivor and spousal benefits, regardless of the longevity of their relationship, costing GLBT seniors in same-sex relationships approximately $124 million a year. Unlike married heterosexual couples, who can roll over their deceased partner’s 401(k) benefits into a tax-exempt individual retirement account, surviving partners of same-sex couples pay a 20% federal withholding tax on any 401(k) distribution left to them by their partner, denying them hundreds of thousands of dollars in retirement wealth (Cahill, South, & Spade, 2000).

POWERLESSNESS

Powerlessness refers to people’s lack of decision-making power in the workplace or other institutions, their exposure to disrespectful treatment because of their subordinate status in the social hierarchy, and their diminished opportunities to develop talents and skills (Young, 2000). Various studies indicate that between 16% and 30% of gay men and lesbians report experiences of work-related discrimination (Badgett, 2001). People in same-sex relationships may face diminished prospects for career advancement in occupations that require socialization with colleagues, or they may avoid or leave occupations where discrimination is likely or where passing is more difficult (Badgett, 2001). Transgender people report high rates of unemployment, underemployment, and involuntary job terminations and reassignments (Frye, 2000; Gagne & Tewksbury, 1998; Lombardi & van Servellen, 2000).

Multiple forms of oppression interact to limit people’s life chances. GLBT people vary in both the powerlessness and the opportunities they experience as a result of their membership in other social groups. Because of the exorbitant expense of genital reassignment surgery, that opportunity is available primarily to middle- and upper-class transgender people (Bornstein, 1994). Domestic partnership benefits help only same-sex couples who are privileged enough to receive employee benefits such as health insurance (Bernstein, 2001). GLBT people who desire children find that adoption, second-parent adoption, surrogacy arrangements, alternative insemination, and other reproductive technologies are prohibitively expensive, beyond the means of those who are less economically privileged (Boggis, 2001).

The intersection of racism, sexism, and heterosexism means that ethnic minority lesbians live in “triple jeopardy” because they are members of three oppressed social groups (Greene & Boyd-Franklin, 1996). In a multisite longitudinal study of cardiovascular risk factors in black and white adults (Krieger & Sidney, 1997), one-third of the women of color and more than half (56%) of the white women who had at least one same-sex sexual partner reported experiences with sexual orientation discrimination; nearly all (85%) of the black women also reported racial discrimination; and 89% of the women in the study reported gender-based discrimination. Box 3.1 describes how multiple structural oppressions influenced the private and the public sectors’ responses to AIDS.

SYSTEMATIC VIOLENCE

Systematic violence, directed at members of subordinate groups simply because of their group membership (Young, 2000), is exemplified by the prevalence of verbal abuse and physical assaults against GLBT people (Berrill, 1990). When same-sex couples violate what Tinney (1983) called the socially created “defined public space” (p. 6), for example, by holding hands while walking down the street, thereby refusing to restrict themselves to gay bars or pride festivals, they are often threatened with serious harm, physically attacked, and accused of being “too blatant.” The omnipresent threat of harm keeps many same-sex couples from venturing beyond the socially ordained public space. Transgender people are at heightened risk for victimization, including harassment, sexual assault, and physical violence (Gagne & Tewksbury, 1998; Gainor, 2000; Sember, Lawrence, & Xavier, 2000).

CULTURAL IMPERIALISM

Cultural imperialism (Young, 2000), or what Tinney (1983) called collective oppression, is the process by which the dominant group renders invisible the history of subordinate groups, universalizes its own experiences and worldview as the norm against which all others should be judged, and stereotypes and defines as deviant or “Other” the subordinate groups. Institutions practice cultural imperialism through a conspiracy to silence, the denial of culture (Tinney, 1983), the distortion of events, and the presentation of false information (Pharr, 1988). Particularly in the educational sector, societal institutions go to great lengths to enforce the conspiracy to silence and the denial of culture, evident in the absence of GLBT issues from health education, social studies, and other curricula; the lack of openly GLBT role models; bitter battles over GLBT-affirmative student organizations; and policies and norms against GLBT student visibility at school events (Button, Rienzo, & Wald, 2000; Friend, 1993). The Salt Lake City School Board, in 1996, initiated a nearly five-year-long controversy, which cost the district $250,000, when it banned all noncurricular clubs in order to block the East High Gay/Straight Alliance without violating the federal Equal Access Act (Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, 2000). North Carolina passed legislation in 1996 that bans schools from teaching about homosexuality in a positive manner (Button et al., 2000). During the mid-1990s, nearly a hundred high school libraries in the Greater St. Louis, Missouri, area refused to display Becoming Visible, a book about gay and lesbian history, after receiving a complimentary copy from the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network in celebration of Gay and Lesbian History Month (Little, 1995).

The Public Broadcasting System (PBS) has, on several occasions, refused to air gay and lesbian content, such as Out at Work, a documentary about workplace discrimination, and many local affiliates declined to show Marlon Riggs’s Tongues Untied, an award-winning film about black gay men, and It’s Elementary: Talking About Gay Issues in School, another award-winning documentary (Gross, 2001).

The conspiracy to silence is also evidenced by policies barring the use of federal funds to produce sexually explicit, culturally sensitive HIV-prevention materials targeting men who have sex with men (Patton, 1996; Vaid, 1995). In 1987, when 73% of all Americans diagnosed with AIDS were men who reported same-sex sexual experiences, disproportionately men of color (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1987), Congress passed the Helms Amendment, which continues to prohibit federal funding of HIV-prevention materials that “promote” or “encourage” same-sex sexual behaviors (Bailey, 1995), a vague standard that is subject to personal prejudices. Conservative legislators quickly used this new law to harass AIDS services organizations by demanding multiple audits (Patton, 1996). Nearly a decade into the epidemic, in 1992, the AIDS Action Council reported that no federal dollars were funding HIV-prevention education aimed at gay, lesbian, and bisexual people (Vaid, 1995). More recently, the Bush administration announced another round of audits to ensure that federally funded HIV-prevention materials do not encourage sexual activity or incorporate “obscene content” (Osborne, 2001), a move criticized by AIDS activists and service organizations for undermining effective prevention messages and diverting valuable agency time from prevention activities.

MARGINALIZATION

Marginalization—what Young (2000) referred to as “perhaps the most dangerous form of oppression” (p. 41)—is the exclusion of particular people from full citizenship, their expulsion from useful participation in social life, and their disrespectful and demeaning treatment by societal institutions and services. Pharr (1988) and Tinney (1983) called this the lack of prior claim to rights and privileges. Branded as morally weak, emotionally unstable, and therefore as national security risks, gay men and lesbians, until 1974, were systematically excluded from federal civil service employment, a practice that set an unfortunate standard for private employers (D’Emilio & Freedman, 1988). Until 1990, gay men and lesbians were barred as visitors and immigrants to the United States (Rubenstein, 1990). Not until 1995 did sexual orientation cease to be a factor in the issuance of government security clearances (Kameny, 2000). Currently, discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender-variant expression in employment, housing, public accommodations, and access to credit is perfectly legal in most states (Bennett, 2002). As recently as June 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Boy Scouts of America could legally exclude gay men from serving as scoutmasters (Boy Scouts of America et al. v. Dale, 2000).

The extreme marginalization of transgender people is reflected in a recent Kansas Supreme Court decision that denied a transsexual woman’s claim to her deceased husband’s estate by voiding the marriage and ruling that she was still a man for purposes of marriage, even though she had undergone genital reassignment surgery years earlier (Lamoy & Downs, 2002).

Systems of oppression tokenize some members of stigmatized groups and hold them up for others to emulate, increasing the marginalization of other group members (Pharr, 1988). Gamson (2001) argued, for example, that despite the explosion of cultural visibility for GLBT people, daytime talk television normalizes white, middle-class families headed by gay men and lesbians but marginalizes bisexual and transgender people, as well as gay men and lesbians who are less educated, poor or working class, or people of color. Bisexual people are represented as threats to monogamous family relationships, caught in love triangles, sexually voracious, and unable to commit, and transgender people are attacked for confusing or traumatizing their children with their transition (Gamson, 2001).

MARGINALIZATION WITHIN GLBT COMMUNITIES Marginalization also occurs within oppressed groups, rendering women, people of color, and bisexual and transgender people invisible and universalizing the experience of white gay males. Greene (1996) noted, “The very act of defining the experiences of all lesbians and gay men by the characteristics of the most privileged and powerful members of that group is an act of oppression” (p. 62). The devaluation of African American gay men within white-dominated gay communities is well documented (Hemphill, 1991; Icard, 1996). Viewed as inferior members of the gay community, black gay men are denied the psychological benefits of community affiliation (Icard, 1986).

For women and people of color who experience intersecting oppressions, gender, race, and class may be mitigating factors in the process of disclosing sexual orientation (Snider, 1996). Within Euro-American gay and lesbian communities, not coming out is usually viewed as a reflection of internalized homophobia rather than as an exceedingly rational decision in response to multiple vulnerabilities (Snider, 1996). Because family plays such a central role in the lives of many ethnic minority people, providing a protective refuge from racist oppression (Greene & Boyd-Franklin, 1996; Smith, 1997), the fear of familial rejection because of cultural heterosexism is particularly salient for ethnic minority GLBT people (Greene, 1997; Liu & Chan, 1996).

Although bisexuality is now accepted as a valid sexual orientation (Fox, 2000), bisexual people often encounter discomfort, suspicion, devaluation, and antagonism from gay and lesbian people (Ochs & Deihl, 1992; Rust, 1996). Transgender people have long faced discrimination and marginalization within gay and lesbian communities (Bornstein, 1994; Gainor, 2000; Wilchins, 1997). For years, lesbian feminists have debated whether transsexual women are, in fact, women and, if partnered with women, lesbians, and whether they should be allowed in women-only or lesbian-only spaces (Raymond, 1979; Wilchins, 1997). Organizers of the 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation voted to include transgender issues in the goals but to exclude the word transgender from the name of the event (Bornstein, 1994). For years, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) refused to add transgender to the Employment Non-discrimination Act (ENDA) for fear of losing congressional votes.

Gay and lesbian organizations, however, are increasingly expanding the scope of their work to include transgender issues, for example by promoting statutes dealing with inclusive nondiscrimination, hate crimes, and safe schools (Currah & Minter, 2000) and by incorporating bisexual and transgender people in their mission statements (Frye, 2000). In response to persistent advocacy from transgender activists, the HRC voted in August 2004 to support a version of ENDA that includes gender identity and gender expression (HRC, 2004).