Karen Thompson Bird Cage Theory

Oppression is when a group of people whether its ethnicity, gender, or social groups is wrongfully treated and denied rights. People who are oppressed see themselves as unequal to other people who are favored by society. These favored people can include cis gender folks, wealthy groups, religious groups, and males. Additionally, people who face oppression receive negative responses from others which can include violence, prejudice, and even lack of employment and educational opportunities. Legal rights are sometimes broken and forgiven when outside groups attack the oppressed. Therefore, legal rights and injustice are major roles in determining oppression. Thus, this leads to wrongful stereo types about the oppressed groups passed from generations …show more content…
The experiences of Sharon Kowalski and Karen Thompson’s highlights of oppressions has a couple relations to “intersectionality”. Intersectionality is related to Frye’s bird cage theory because Kowalski and Thompson mentions that the intersectionality theory arose to address black feminism and anti-discrimination law (Crenshaw, p. 172). The cage wires on the bird cage can represent all the hardship these oppressed groups have to face. For example, if a transgender Hispanic women goes out in public, the bird cage wires in her cage would be close together because of how much there are. These many wires she has represented the analogy of how many oppressed groups she stands for. Additionally, intersectionality and the bird cage theory both are related to discrimination. The disadvantages other ethnicities, genders, and sexuality groups are tied in with both concepts. According to Crenshaw not only are African American women discriminated against but white women are too. Crenshaw writes, “Intersectionality… has come to the conversation after black feminism and other forms of intersectional work tilled the soil.” (Crenshaw, p. 174-175) This is said to show how hard it is for people to see how the world was like when people didn’t care much to do something about the issue. All in all, the intersectionality connects with Frey’s birdcage theory to show how oppression works within in multiple