These days, I see a toxic mentality spreading around the internet. Much like the fat acceptance movement, it enforces the wrong attitudes towards life. One of my favorite YouTubers, "ShoeOnHead," coined this term "the oppression Olympics," and rightly so. The goal of the oppression Olympics is to earn oppression points based on how "oppressed" you are based on a variety of factors, and the reward for all these points is... well... nothing really.
Are you a minority? A race other than white? Part of the LGBTQ+ community? A woman? Do you identify as an attack helicopter? Well, then you sir/ma'am/otherkin are oppressed! It doesn't matter about your own personal experiences because you are automatically oppressed by the "patriarchy." Looking at statistics, it is questionable whether some or all of these groups are actually oppressed, but, hey, isn't great to be oppressed?
Let me tell you what's wrong with this attitude. Say we line up everyone in a class. All the white boys in one line and everyone else in another line. We tell the white boys that they are privileged in society and everyone else that they are oppressed and already at a disadvantage. They will probably never do as well as their white male counterparts because they are inherently disadvantaged.
It doesn't take a genius to understand what's so incredibly wrong with this mentality. You're literally telling everyone who isn't a white male that they are disadvantaged and oppressed in society, and discouraging them from achieving anything. If these "oppressed" kids hear this, do you think they'll have any will to work hard and succeed in life? What's the point of studying, going to college, getting a job and succeeding in life if they've been told that they're inherently disadvantaged?
If someone had gone up to me when I was a little brown kid and said I was oppressed because I was a minority and a woman and that no matter how hard I tried I would never be seen as equal to white people, I would have been so discouraged and disheartened. How can you tell that to anyone? What kind of attitude is this towards life?
Now, are there minorities/sexual orientations/genders/races that are oppressed? Maybe. But, instead of having the attitude that you're so oppressed that no matter what you do society will hold you down, why not have an "I can do whatever I set my mind to and if someone gets in my way, then screw them" strategy? Positive outlooks are key in life, and enforcing the idea that everyone is oppressed in some way and should just accept that things are out of their control is bogus.
In psychology, this is called external and internal locus of control. People who think life is in the internal locus of control think that their choices and their decisions control their life, and that they can change and are fluid. People who think life is in the external locus of control think that life is out of their hands and is controlled by another force, whether it be god, the universe, or society.
These people believe that even if they changed their decisions and attitudes, life would still be out of their hands. Research has shown that specifically in education and school, people who believe intelligence is in their internal locus of control perform significantly better than people who believe intelligence is in their external locus of control. This is because of the fact that people with the internal locus of control mindset are more motivated to study harder after a bad grade rather than blame it on external factors.
People who believe that they are incredibly oppressed and, no matter what, society will always hold them down, believe that their life is in the external locus of control. This attitude leads to people failing and giving up because they think that no matter what they do, they'll fail regardless. Clearly, it's better to have an internal locus of control attitude, because it enforces hard work and motivation.
Life sucks sometimes, and it can be really easy to look at external factors and blame them. How many times have you gotten a bad grade and blamed the teacher's grading style, when really it was because you barely put enough effort into it? Or you didn't get that job you applied for so the manager must be sexist? Similarly, think twice before blaming "white men" or society for all your problems and look to yourself instead.
