Argument - Opresssion by Marilyn Frye

I believe that Marilyn Frye was trying to make two main points clear in her article; one of which is that men, in our society, cannot be oppressed as men and that our society is built in such a way that it allows for the active oppression of women.  Frye describes oppression as a system of forces that act together in order to mold, immobilize, and/or reduce in order to restrict or prevent mobility.   She makes it clear that just being exposed to misfortune, pain and suffering does not add up to active oppression.  People who are oppressed are usually placed in a position in which no matter what they do, they can’t “win”.  What I mean by this is that no matter what you do, you are always put into a negative light.  Frye uses the example of women being put into positions where options are made few and all choices come with some level of penalty; this is called a double bind.  One specific example used in the article is the sexuality of women and how it is perceived by the male majority.  If a woman is sexually active then she is looked down upon as a sexual deviant, “loose”, and a whore.  If said woman restrains from being sexually active than she is labeled as a tease or uptight and then pressured into becoming more sexual.  Our society can also instill these ideas into the minds of some women in order to allow them to perceive other women as teases or sluts based on what behaviors the society appoints with these labels.  This is due to ideologies put into place by our society that we are exposed to even before birth.  No matter what the woman does, she will be labeled and associated with some sort of perceived negative trait.  No matter what option is taken she is put down by someone and it is our social and societal structure that allows for this to occur. 

The media, the common social structure, and main stream culture don’t allow for any option the woman may have to be seen as a positive one.  Men do not really have such a limitation in our main stream culture as a male.  Continuing to use sexuality as an example, males are not usually scorned for being overtly sexually active.  They are usually given praise to being either active or being non-active sexually.  The structure of our society allows for the existence of a double standard.  It teaches us to praise males when they perform a certain action and then scorn or punish women for conducting similar behaviors.  Our society is stratified in a way that always puts males above females and for this reason men are not oppressed as men.  The man must be transformed into something else in our society before he can be oppressed.  This would include classifying him as being a person of color, a homosexual, being deformed or overtly feminine.  In these cases the man is oppressed not as a man, but as someone with these other traits.  He may feel misfortune or suffer as a man, but he cannot be actively oppressed as a man in our society; the societal structure does not allow for it.