Marginalised Groups Quotes

Yes, Marcos is gay. Marcos is gay in San Francisco, black in South Africa, an Asian in Europe, a Chicano in San Ysidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, a Mayan Indian in the streets of San Cristobal, a Jew in Germany, a Gypsy in Poland, a Mohawk in Quebec, a pacifist in Bosnia, a single woman on the Metro at 10pm, a peasant without land, a gang member in the slums, an unemployed worker, an unhappy student and, of course, a Zapatista in the mountains. Marcos is all the exploited, marginalised, oppressed minorities resisting and saying `Enough'. He is every minority who is now beginning to speak and every majority that must shut up and listen. He is every untolerated group searching for a way to speak. Everything that makes power and the good consciences of those in power uncomfortable -- this is Marcos.

I am a writer who happens to love women. I am not a lesbian who happens to write.

The homeless people’s suffering belongs to amusement of our political order under a game over the right of marginalised group being transformed into citizens for merely punishment and humiliation. The Public Space Protection Orders is a penalty over one’s condition suffering – it is a fine over the disempowered for being disempowered. This act allows power to fragment the homeless into sub-humans punishable for the state of utter misery.

What they get wrong is precisely this false belief that online prejudice is easily compartmentalized or categorized into, say, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, or ableism when really it flows freely between these various bigotries.

Only those who have been on the receiving end of poverty, unemployment, homelessess, mental illness, domestic violence, racism, sexism or ageism can fully identify with others' reactions to those distressing experiences. Only those who have been members of marginalised minority can fully appreciate how that feels. [p50]

Maybe you'll express an opinion on a political issue and it will get noticed by that wrong person. Maybe you'll wake up to find that a company you once bought shoes from online was careless with security, and now your personal information is in the hands of anyone who bothers to look. Maybe someone who has a grudge against you is relentless enough to post and promote bogus information about you online—stuff that can never be erases. Maybe you're a member of a demographic that is constantly targeted—you're a woman, you're black, you're trans, or any combination of these or other marginalised groups—and someone who wants to get people like you off "their" internet decides to take it upon them to make your life hell. Online abuses target countless people every year for any number of arbitrary reasons.

Sometimes, sexual violence is a ‘cultural problem’ (but only when this culture is non white). Sometimes, it is a product of male anatomy (but only when this anatomy is assigned to a trans woman or a man of colour). Sexual violence is never the violence of heteropatriarchy or globalising racial capital. Instead, representatives of patriarchy, capitalism and colonialism weaponise the idea of ‘women’s safety’ against marginalised and hyper-exploited groups.

What counts as religious or secular in any given context is a function of different configurations of power. The question then becomes why such essentialist constructions are so common. I argue that, in what are called "Western" societies, the attempt to create a transhistorical and transcultural concept of religion that is essentially prone to violence is one of the foundational legitimating myths of the liberal nation-state. The myth of religious violence helps to construct and marginalise a religious other, prone to fanaticism, to contrast with the rational, peace-keeping, secular subject. This myth can and is used in domestic politics to legitimate the marginalisation of certain types of practices and groups labeled religious, while underwriting the nation-state's monopoly on its citizens' willingness to sacrifice and kill. In foreign policy, the myth of religious violence serves to cast nonsecular social orders, especially Muslim societies, in the role of the villain. THEY have not yet learned to remove the dangerous influence of religion from political life. THEIR violence is therefore irrational and fanatical. OUR violence, being secular, is rational, peace making, and sometimes regrettably necessary to contain their violence. We find ourselves obliged to bomb them into liberal democracy.

The individual citizen had no chance to voice his protest or his opinion, not even his fear. He could only leave the country - and so people did. Those who used 'I' instead of 'we' in their language had to escape. It was this fatal difference in grammar that divided them from the rest of their compatriots. As a consequence of this 'us', no civic society developed. The little there was, in the form of small, isolated, and marginalised groups, was soon swallowed up by the national homogenisation that did not permit any differences, any individualism. As under communism, individualism was punished - individuals speaking out against the war, or against nationalism, were singled out as 'traitors'. How does a person who is a product of a totalitarian society learn responsibility, individuality, initiative? by saying 'no'. But this begins with saying 'I', thinking 'I' and doing 'I' - in public as well as in private. Individuality, the first-person singular, always existed under communism, it was just exiled from public and political life and exercised in private. Thus the terrible hypocrisy with which we learned to live in order to survive is having its backlash now: it is very difficult to connect the private and public 'I'; to start believing that an individual opinion, initiative, or vote could make a difference. There is still too big a danger that the citizen will withdraw into an anonymous, safe 'us'.

Intersectionality is no longer about recognising the compound effect of being part of multiple oppressed groups. It is now about the idea that all people from marginalised groups belong to one homogenous block with shared political views and interests.

Thus, by the end of AD 32, Jesus’ teaching, his miracles, his emphasis on the poor, the marginalised and the unclean and his almost total disrespect for religious leaders had resulted in distrust and even animosity. But although various groups had been moved to violence against him, there was no intentional coherent strategy to remove him. He was not seen as that much of a danger. Then, in the early spring of AD 33, he did something that changed things entirely, something really annoying: he raised a man from the dead.

a series of well-founded critiques were marshalled from within the new left, prompted partly by the experiences of women in activist groups, who found their voices continued to be marginalised even in allegedly radical organisations. More hierarchical organisational forms, such as parties or traditional union organisations, continued to entrench the predominant patriarchal and sexist social relations prevalent in broader society. Considerable experimentation was therefore conducted to produce new organisational forms that could work against this social repression. This included the use of consensus decision-making and horizontal debating structures that would later come to worldwide fame with the Occupy Wall Street movement.35

The ethics of Islam enjoin all believers, individually or through institutions such as the Ismaili Imamat, to assist the poor, the isolated, and the marginalised to improve their current circumstances and future prospects. Through the Imamat, I have tried to respond to this responsibility by creating a group of private, non-denominational agencies the Aga Khan Development Network – to respond to the needs and potential of people living in some of the poorest parts of the world, irrespective of their gender, ethnicity, or religion.” His Highness Prince Karim Aga Khan, World Mountain Forum UNESCO, Paris, France – June 5, 2000

It is always offensive when victim status is claimed by the very people who are actively advocating for legal limitations on the human rights of a marginalised and vulnerable group within their community. But the vileness of this tactic goes through the roof when they do so by co-opting the vernacular of the very group they are so proud to hate and oppress, legally or otherwise. How can 'all lives' possibly 'matter' in a world where people just keep doing this kind of horrific shit?

You're either an oppressed left winger or an oppressed right winger. Excluding right wing people from marginalised groups is not helpful for the oppressed. It shows that the social justice warrior movement is not truly concerned with improving conditions for marginalised people.

When you're a socially ostracized white male you're not really recognised as marginalised,' he replies. 'It's easy to lash out at people who get all the glory and hype for being marginalised.

Singing changes your brain. It reduces cortisol and increases the release of endorphins and oxytocin. Some people have to take drugs to do that. Why not just have a bit of a singalong? Singing in groups is even better. Scientists, not musicians, have found that our heart rates sync up when we sing together. You don’t even have to be any good. Don’t believe me? I refer you to the University of Sheffield’s memorable 2005 paper: ‘Effects of group singing and performance for marginalised and middle-class singers.

Marginalised masculinities describes a group of men who are marginalised and excluded from all the benefits of male privilege because of race or class. For example, although working-class men may embody a kind of toughness and stoicism that is prized, they do not benefit as greatly from that privilege as those in the middle and upper classes do. ... 'working-class men are the male equivalent of the "dumb blond" - endowed with physical virtues but problematized by intellectual shortcomings'.

If I tell you stories of my experiences in newsrooms and dealing with editors and publishers, for example, having a (older, male) publisher say to me, ‘I think you need to stop writing so much about domestic violence; our audience are professional working women, it’s not really relevant to them,’ this tells you a lot more than a list of statistics about perceptions of domestic violence among male publishers. This is particularly true for women from oppressed groups. They break the silence of oppression by speaking about their lives and force change just by this powerful act. The more honest women are about their experiences the more they challenge the norms that have been reinforced by the silencing of marginalised voices. It is even more important to hear about experiences that are shocking to men or other women outside the writer’s demographic. That it is shocking is proof of the silence imposed upon women previously unable to speak. By sharing personal information and stories about their lives, women are able to express the truth of female experience and explain the forces that silence women or cause them to fear for their safety, whether it be personal, professional, financial or sexual. Those forces are often unrecognised because they have been normalised. Memoir exposes them from the side of the oppressed rather than reinforcing them from the side of the oppressors. One of the ways oppression works is by silencing. Speaking about personal experiences of oppression is therefore a revolutionary political act.

Wer der Norm entspricht, kann dem Irrturm erliegen, dass es sie nicht gibt. Wer der Mehrheit ähnelt, kann dem Irrturm erliegen, dass die Ebenbildlichkeit mit der die Norm setzenden Mehrheit keine Rolle spielt. Wer der Norm entspricht, dem oder der fällt oft nicht auf, wie sie anderer ausgrenzt oder degradiert. Wer der Norm entspricht, kann sich oft ihre Wirkung nicht vorstellen, weil die eigene Akzeptanz als selbstverständlich angenommen wird.