"Five Faces of Oppression"

     In the article, "Five Faces of Oppression" by Iris Marion Young, she summarizes the five faces of oppression which are exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence. Exploitation means to take advantage of, marginalization means to relegate to the fringes, out of the mainstream; make seem unimportant, and powerlessness means without power or authority. Cultural imperialism means the imposition of a foreign viewpoint or civilization on people and violence means the exercise or an instance of physical force, usually effecting or intended to affect injuries or destruction. I don’t hold any of the five faces of oppression but I know what it feels like, exploitation and powerlessness mainly. For example, I sometimes feel exploitation or being taken advantage of by people that I know in my school and sometimes even by friends. Sometimes when I decide to go out with my friends they always ask me for money and I feel like they’re taking advantage of the fact that I let them borrow money and I feel like they think of me as a token instead of as a friend. Also, in school sometimes people in my class ask me to help them with an assignment or doing a project together. But, those people think that I’ll always do everything for them and that I can’t stand up for myself and I feel like I’m not important unless it’s for doing something for someone else. Sometimes I feel like I’m powerlessness compared to others because they may have a higher label and that they think that they’re better than me. Like for a project in my school we sometimes get labels based on are jobs such as the facilitator and the recorder. Just because I may be the recorder doesn’t me that I can’t give some ideas for the project, they only see me as the recorder someone that can only write down their thoughts when I have my own thoughts but I can’t share them because they have a higher label. I can overcome these oppressions by defensing myself and standing up for myself as a person who has feelings that shouldn’t be taking advantage of for any reason.