The hardest thing I have EVER had to teach is the concept of institutionalized oppression.
People, regardless of intersecting identities, level of eduction, political affiliation, whatever, ALWAYS fail to understand how a system of oppression can exercise oppressive force through bodies without their consent.
People always think that oppression must be actualized BY individuals, and not THROUGH them as part of the system, which allows them to assume they aren't part of the problem. That's bullshit: we're all part of the problem.
Now, I'm not saying we're part of the problem in the same way: systems exercise oppression through different bodies in different ways. Hence, it is the case that all men are trash; some men are aware of the way they have become trash and take steps to prevent being more like trash.
THEY'RE STILL TRASH AND NEED CONSTANT ATTENTION TO KEEP THEIR TRASH NATURE FROM SURFACING.
Same thing with any member of a privileged group. Unless they're active in combatting the ways the system exercises power through them, they're still complicit in the maintenance and perpetuation of that system.
This was a thing I had to explain to my class as well as my department.
Most of them didn't get it.
