This week the HBS co-hosts take a deep dive into a true classic of feminist philosophy: Marilyn Frye’s 1983 article “Oppression.”

Frye wrote at a time when the word “oppression” was being used so broadly it risked losing all meaning. Her response was: okay, if we’re going to use this word, let’s be clear about what we’re talking about. And what she gives us is one of the most vivid and durable accounts of structural injustice we have. Her famous birdcage example says it all: look at a single wire and the problem seems trivial; look at the whole structure and you see how the bird is kept trapped.

We unpack Frye’s understanding of oppression and argue about some of Frye’s more infamous examples, such as her claim that men holding doors open for women is sexist. Is she really correct that oppression can occur in the absence of the intent to oppress? Or do people have to know what they’re doing to commit oppression, or uphold the patriarchy?

We also tackle academic philosophy’s tendency to want to clarify and draw clear lines around messy, difficult, urgent phenomena. Frye is seeking to delineate what constitutes oppression: but is that a helpful conceptual project in today’s world? Or should we be focused instead on how to get out of the cage? We worry that, given Frye’s analysis of oppression as an interlocking series of double binds, there seems to be no way out. Depressingly, if she’s right, we might still have agency, but we might always remain pressed down.

Some of us are more cynical, some of us are more hopeful, but at the end of the day, we agree: Frye set the baseline for discussion in an enduring (if a bit dated!) way for feminists and feminist theory alike.

This week’s jukebox picks:

• From Jen: “Do or Die” by Ani DiFranco
• From Leigh: “A Change is Gonna Come” by Sam Cooke
• From Bob: “Mississippi Goddam” by Nina Simone

In this episode, we discuss the following thinkers, ideas, texts, etc.:

• Marilyn Frye, “Oppression” in The Politics of Reality (Crossing Press, 1983)
• Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon (Vintage, 1977)
• Michel Foucault
• Third-wave feminism
• Ludwig Wittgenstein
• Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (full text, open access)
• “Chad”
• Men’s rights movement
• Charles Mills, The Racial Contract (Cornell University Press, 1997)
• Social Norms
• Liberal feminism
• Women and Credit Cards
• Redlining