Privilege and Oppression

Many of my peers have discussed how certain groups will likely be impacted and oppressed by the changes proposed to "Obama-era" health care.  These changes have largely been proposed by the current Trump administration and like minded individuals within positions of power. While this is obviously a significant concern, I wanted to focus on something slightly more specific --  birth control access and affordability. The Trump administration has propped to, "expand the rights of employers to deny women insurance coverage for contraception," for multiple reasons. This bill demonstrates blatant oppression to some, as well as the clear privilege that certain groups possess and abuse in our society.

The main group I want to focus on here is the oppressed. By definition, oppression is, "prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or control". We have expanded even further on that idea with the discussions in class about oppression, and with our recent topic of intersectionality. The most obviously oppressed group here are women. This proposal targets a specific gender based on a matter they cannot control. This targets and oppresses women financially/economically, socially, and sexually. While there is intersectionality rooted very deeply into this, I am going to focus on how each individual category is oppressed. Women would be economically oppressed by this because they would have to be paying for their own birth control, and if they choose not to do so they risk things such as STIs and pregnancy which can be extremely pricy for obvious reasons. Women who come from lower income backgrounds are even more oppressed because they are likely not able to afford the steep prices of effective birth control methods without insurance. These can lead to social oppression. An example of this may be a young woman getting pregnant at 17 because she could not afford birth control, and now her being socially shunned by her friends/family because she got pregnant at 17. This leads to my third major oppression group -- sexuality. With this proposal it makes it seem as if women are expected not to be sexual beings on their own terms, and if they want to be sexual in a safe and protected way they have to pay hundreds of dollars for it. This proposal almost seems as if it encourages unsafe sex or abstinence, but not much in between. Combine all these factors (and more) and intersectionality comes into play. With all of these oppressions coming together, it is easy to see how some groups could be extremely heavily impacted. According to the article, "more than 55 million women have access to birth control without co-payments because of the contraceptive coverage mandate, according to a study commissioned by the Obama administration. Under the new regulations, hundreds of thousands of women could lose those benefits". That is no small number of women, and includes women from thousands of different lifestyles and backgrounds. This proposal is a textbook definition of oppression.

As for privilege, this shows how those in power choose to use their power. Trump himself is a rich, white, old man who happens to be the president of the United States. While I would like to keep explicit political beliefs to a minimum, it is clear that Trump & his administration have privilege in many areas and uses it to oppress others. This is evident in many of the proposals that have been made in recent time, and by statements made by the president and his administration. The privilege here includes the power of presidency (not much more to explain there). It also includes the privilege of being a white, rich, male. This relates to the reading in forbidden, in which Rhine was treated better than others solely because he was passing for white and had a large amount of money. The difference? That book was BASED IN THE 19TH CENTURY. It is now almost 2018, and yet we continue to see these same common themes occur timelessly. While we have continuously taken strides as a society, it is situations like this that force us to re-evaluate where our ideas and beliefs actually are as a society, and what we can do to further progress towards equity for all.

People are now trying to take stands against this proposal, but some continue to back it. Let me know how you guys feel about it (even if you have a different opinion from mine). Here are the articles I used;

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/06/us/politics/trump-contraception-birth-control.html
http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/06/news/economy/trump-birth-control/index.html
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/oppression