Evolving Women in Media

Recently I had come across a blog written by Daniel Rossbach discussing the women if the Soul Calibur franchise. Rossbach took issue with the franchise’s depiction of women and addressed the disconcerting issues regarding the creators increasing inclination of designing their women in scantily and impractical clothes and whether this trend is systematically degrading to women. I’m going to say that, yes; Rossbach has a point of the franchise’s poor depiction of women. At first I thought it was an isolated incident, a situation that was completely unique to the Soul Calibur franchise. I was going to argue against this by comparing the female protagonists of the Final Fantasy franchise. But after some deliberation, media using scantily clad women and accentuating their bodies to promote sex appeal is becoming a frequent occurrence.

I’m not a fan of Soul Calibur and so I’m not familiar with its inner workings, however, from the pictures I was provided in the blog I saw female characters wear heavily stylized clothing and armor that borders on impracticality and is basically fanservice. I want to oppose this trend by comparing this with the Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts franchise by Square Enix. These are Square Enix five most well-known and popular female characters: Aerith Gainsborough, Tifa Lockhart, Yuna, Claire “Lightning” Farron, and Aqua. All five were designed by game developer and concept artist Tetsuyo Nomura. Nomura expressly stated that whenever he designs characters, he always has something their outfit or appearance to serve some sort of purpose or meaning.

In Final Fantasy VII, Aerith’s design is suppose to invoke innocence and pacifism due to her work as a flower girl, her role as the White Mage in the game’s roster, and her spiritual connection to the planet. Tifa, however, is much more athletic and fights with her fists.
Yes her original outfit is arguably skimpy, but it’s to highlight her speed and agility within the game; she gets better in the sequel Advent Children.

Yuna of Final Fantasy X was designed as a white mage with a religious aspect in mind, Nomura wanted her to wear something that would flow, especially when she performs a ritual called ‘the Sending’.

                                               

When Yuna reappears in the sequel, Final Fantasy X-2, her appearance has drastically changed. However, this is to highlight her character development from a timid messianic figure of a stagnating world to confidant woman of a new age and the world she now lives in thanks to the events of the previous game. Yuna has lost her magic powers, so she compensates by learning how to fight through weapons and martial arts.

Lightning of Final Fantasy XIII used to be a soldier. Her game had two sequels, both of which she gains a new set of armor. Yes, her outfits seem skimpy, but considering she was a capable soldier granted powers from the universe’s equivalent to gods, we can bypass that. Also she was design as a “female-Cloud” referring to Cloud Strife of Final Fantasy VII fame whose personality boiled down to brooding.
Aqua is character from the Kingdom Hearts franchise or more specifically Birth By Sleep. She was designed as a mage in mind due to fighting style stongly rooted in magic. 

At one point, the creators thought her model was too revealing as evidenced by her backside. They remedied it by covering it.

Also, like Yuna, she was designed to flow so her movement would be graceful as well gymnastically. Aqua also has a set of armor which she, along with her fellow keyblade wielders, use whenever they travel and for extreme circumstances like fighting concentrated darkness.

While all of the female characters here do wear skimpy clothes and have some sex appeal, they’re never to the extreme compared to the ones I saw in Soul Caliber. The designs never draw attention to the chest, the worst any of them could be would just baring their midriff or having short skirts. But again, they’re all designed with speed and grace in mind, and armor is offered in the games mechanics, but only to improve the characters stats and does not appear on the character model. However, they’re all strong characters, each having a unique personality. In fact, I found a blog devoted to showing how video games changed a person’s life, with one author sharing her idolization of Yuna and how the character helped her out of an abusive marriage. Link here.

                                                                                                                                                                
On the topic of increasing sex appeal in the entertainment industry, what brought me to admit this awful truth was recalling a conversation I was having with some friends and their mother a few weeks ago. What the conversation was about I don’t remember but what I do remember is that at some we got on the topic of Miley Cyrus and having to explain her recent controversy to my mother. For the record, what Miley Cyrus is doing is distasteful me.  
 But to my surprise, my friends and their mom commended Cyrus and her new image. They assert Cyrus is smart and everything she is doing is calculated in order to ensure a memorable adult career, citing various artists doing something outlandish in order to be memorable.   
 Naming Madonna and her spiral cone brassiere, Britney Spears shaving her head, or Michael Jackson. Cyrus claimed in an interview that there is a method to her madness: “I feel like I’m one of the biggest feminists in the world because I tell women to not be scared of anything.” She elaborated over why her image now involves her being scantily clad: “Guys get to show their t---ies on the beach, why can’t we?” she said. (Link)

She’s attacking the double standard over men being able to go around topless, however, Debate.org has a nice forum on the topic of topless women and whether it is social acceptable. Some say yes to women being topless advocate that it is time for the right to be topless like men and breasts are just pieces of one’s anatomy. Others that say no state that breasts and a man’s chest are two different beasts, breasts being the most sexualized aspect of a woman’s body and the opportunities for a man to commit sexual harassment.

Jennifer Lawrence, Oscar winning actress and star of the Hunger Games franchise calls out Cyrus’ act and the whole system that supports it as ‘disgusting’: "It's a part of the entertainment industry that sells ––sex sells. And for some disgusting reason, young sex sells even more," she said. (Link).  Cyrus, however, just rebukes Lawrence and calls her a hypocrite, citing Lawrence’s role as shape-shifter Mystique in the Xmen movies, which require her to be naked and covered in make-up. Lawrence has a point nonetheless, establishing throughout her career that she would never alter her body or participate in activities that seem degrading to her just to get attention whereas Cyrus’ act is calculated vulgarity to pander and appeal to the masses to get her fame.   
 Jennifer Lawrence is natural, Miley Cyrus is artificial.

 I think the problem people have with Miley Cyrus and her imitaters is that they’re using their bodies to pander and degrade themselves into something disgusting. As opposed to people like Jennnifer Lawrence and Emma Watson, who have sex appeal but do so in a dignified fashion. And it's not just that, they're also charming, talented, good natured, caring, and intelligent; admirable traits that more than compensate for their looks. Just as the female protagonists of Square Enix games do have sex appeal, they’re just never designed that way to the point they’re a caricature. Miley Cyrus attacking Lawrence’s role as Mystique may have some justification, but her actions are telling about society's attitude towards sex if she equates an adult career to this. 

Also her point is rendered moot because the character of Mystique is shown to be extremely comfortable with her body, and half the time she uses sex as a weapon against men. Her allure is because of that, and the fact that she can kick ass and take names doesn’t hurt either.  
 We enjoy women like Jennifer Lawrence, Emma Watson, Yuna, Tifa, Aerith, Aqua, and Lightning because they’re strong, charming people, and they have dignity. 

Doctor Who and the Unconscious

            With Freud’s theory of the Unconscious, I am now going discuss to the symbolic application of the Unconscious through the British sci-fi series Doctor Who. Before we begin, I’m going to give a brief recap and definition of Freud’s theory of the Unconscious. The majority of one’s personality is composed of the Unconscious; it is the reservoir of unwanted thoughts, memories, and desires. The Id, the primitive, self-gratifying aspect of one’s personality, is the source of these undesirable thoughts and behaviors. They are managed by the Superego, the moral center, and also partially responsible for the Unconscious as it dictates the Id on what is socially and morally acceptable and represses the needs of the Id into the Unconscious. The Ego is the mediator between the two personalities as it works to balance the needs of the Id and the demands of the Superego.

            Now how does this correlate with Doctor Who? For the point of this discussion, I’m going to focus on Series five of the new series. During Matt Smith’s era, the (Eleventh) Doctor and his Companions Amy Pond and Rory Williams come together to form a Freudian trio as their roles are defined by one of the three personalities.

            Part of the Doctor’s character as an alien Time Lord is his ability to regenerate into a new body and personality whenever he is close to death. His last incarnation, the Tenth Doctor, was extremely cerebral and morally righteous (Superego). The Eleventh Doctor, while no doubt heroic and noble when the situation calls for it, is normally portrayed as whimsical and having a childlike enthusiasm in behavior and pursuit; he behaves like he has ADD (Id).  
He first meets Amy Pond when she was seven years old and he had just regenerated. His first impression to the little girl (as well as the audience) is asking for an apple, the scene that followed is a lengthy montage of little Amy trying to figure which foods would satisfy the post-regenerative Doctor after an apple, bacon, baked beans, and bread and butter failed to gratify.

            The Eleventh Doctor is also depicted as extremely impulsive. His thought processes run five hundred miles a minute and it usually functions like a grab bag. Whatever thought pops into his head, he will act on it. 


For example, in Series five episode two “The Beast Below” provided the dilemma of either lobotomizing a star whale, the last of its kind, in order to allow a spaceship colony of the U.K. to thrive, or letting the colony fall in order to save the whale; the Doctor chose the first option only to be intervened by Amy which I’ll get to later. Other quirks include the Doctor seemingly having ADD, going to and picking up objects that catches his interest like hats and fezzes, and displays an intense lack of patience. Shows no qualms about kissing members of either sex, and is generally unpredictable.

                                                      Rory, however, represents the Superego of the trio. Rory is a nurse, Amy’s husband and childhood friend. When they both meet is unclear, however, it’s possible Amy met Rory shortly after her first encounter with Doctor at age seven and to the audience, he is the second major character to be introduced in Series five. 

Rory fits as the Superego because he’s the one who frequently calls out the Doctor for his recklessness and moments of moral weakness. He often acts as the straight and practical man to his wife and the Doctor’s antic while also acting as the moral center for everyone around him as he fears for their safety. As he said in Series Six episode eleven “The God Complex”: “Whenever the Doctor gets chummy with someone, I feel the urge to contact their next of kin.”

            Amy, of course, acts as the Ego of the trio and also represents the self and the Unconscious. Amy, by her role as the Doctor’s companion, serves as the mediator to meet his needs while heeding the demands of her husband, or some other moral voice. Going back to “The Beast Below”, the Doctor is about to lobotomize the star whale until Amy realizes something new about the whale’s nature. Over the course of the episode, the characters presumed the whale to be a vicious beast and that humanity had ‘caught’ the whale in order to escape a dying Earth. In reality, the whale came to help of its own accord and Amy realized that the best solution was to simply release the whale of its shackles and let it pilot the space colony freely. Amy saved the day by assessing the situation and was able to meet the Doctor’s needs without going to extremes.

            Amy’s role as the Ego is defined through her relationships with Rory and the Doctor. Amy met the Doctor when she was seven years old, symbolically representing how the Id personality is dominant at childhood. Once the Doctor disappeared from her life at that point, adults she shared her story to believed she’s only making it up; the Doctor is only her imaginary friend. Because of this, adults (i.e. society) try to discourage and repress Amy’s memories of the “Raggedy Doctor” by sending her to therapy and meeting four psychiatrists (to which she regressed to even more primitive behavior when she reveals that she bit psychiatrists who told her the Doctor isn’t real). 
                This represents how society represses an individual’s thoughts and behaviors it finds undesirable or reprehensible. When the Doctor disappeared, Amy meets Rory, the Superego, like how a child develops one between ages five and ten, after the phallic stage.

            At various points throughout Amy’s tenure, her behavior tends to fluctuate depending on whose company she’s with. Her relationship to the Doctor varies between a father/daughter and a brother/sister like one. When she’s alone with him and the two are left to their own devices, she regresses to a childlike state in which she acts immaturely and prone to impulsive behavior. For example, she worked as a kissagram when she was a teenager, she ran away with the Doctor on night before her wedding, but and even better one is when she tried to seduce the Doctor (which also creates implications of an Electra complex). “The God Complex” reveals Amy’s dependence to the Doctor as her personal symbol of faith, a mythical hero who has come to save a scared little girl. With the presence of Rory, Amy acts a bit more maturely and taking on more adult responsibilities. In fact, part of Amy’s arc is her growth and development of becoming less of the flighty, scared little girl dependent on the Doctor she was to a compassionate, independent, and devoted wife. 

This change is marked and cemented in Series seven when Amy overcomes her dependence to the Doctor and makes the decision to follow Rory and live out their lives in the past, and thus, exit from the show.

            However, going back to the story in Series five. The main threat of Series five revolved around cracks appearing in the skin of the universe: “two parts of space and time that should never have touched,” the Doctor said. Some cracks are benign, for example, an alien used one as a means of travel; a short cut to get from one planet to our planet. Some are much more malign, in which if a person got too close to one, they would be absorbed in the crack and disappear from the face of the universe, going on as if he/she never existed. Time would rearrange itself as if the person never lived, close friends and relatives would forget; the person would be completely Ret Gone from history. Time itself is becoming increasingly unstable thanks to the cracks. This is where Amy symbolically serves as the Unconscious.

            Unwanted thoughts, desires, and memories are never forgotten, just dormant in the Unconscious mind. Throughout the series, Amy reveals that she has memories and ideas of what things were rather than what they are, in the form of Freudian slips. For starters, in her first appearance she was able to call a pond a duck pond despite its lack of ducks; she was able to recall her parents despite living in an empty house; and she remembered the soldiers protecting her before they too were absorbed by the cracks. At first it was chalked up to Amy’s experiences time traveling giving her a causality proof memory, however, Rory too was absorbed and disappeared from her memory. Nevertheless, Amy’s memories of Rory weren’t destroyed; they just became dormant. For example, in Series five episode ten “Vincent and the Doctor”, in which the Doctor and Amy were helping Vincent van Gogh, Vincent was able to sense Amy’s grief over losing Rory and that grief manifested in her crying despite her not knowing why, another Freudian slip.

            It was established in Amy’s first appearance that she grew up with a crack in her bedroom and that was what contributed to her causality proof memory. The penultimate episode of Series five involved a trap made up of Amy’s childhood memories, such as Roman soldiers, Pandora’s box (her favorite story), and a Centurion soldier with Rory’s likeness and soul; all the information provided by the cracks of time via her Unconscious.

In order to close the cracks of time and restore the universe, the Doctor must sacrifice himself. He’s slowly being erased from history, however, to his surprise he finds his history going in reverse, Amy can’t see him but he can still interact with her, talk to her. This allows the Doctor to see a potential backdoor in his sacrifice. In Series five episode five “Flesh and Stone”, Amy is possessed by the episode’s monster and to prevent it from killing her, she must close her eyes. In this episode the Doctor lost his signature jacket, but in one scene he suddenly reappears with a new one. In a bit of clever foreshadowing, the Doctor with a jacket is the future Doctor, the one that’s disappearing, and he appears before Amy to remind her: “remember what I told you when you were seven…you have to remember.”
The meaning of this exchange was unclear until the end when the Doctor is slowly disappearing. The Doctor’s last stop was Amy’s childhood, the moment he disappeared. He finds little girl asleep in the garden, awaiting for his return, and tucks her back into bed but not without sharing one last bedtime story before he confronts his fate. A fairy tale about a mad man and his brand new, ancient, blue phone box. The Doctor is taking a huge gamble, but hopefully it will pay off.

In the last episode, the climax of Series five, once again Amy and her causality proof memory and Unconscious saves the day. The universe is reset, Rory is normal again and he and Amy are about to be married. However, during the reception, Amy sees several signifiers that signify the Doctor but like Rory, she’s crying and she doesn’t know why. But then she remembers. She remembers the fairy tale he told her in her sleep, her Unconscious, and like the cracks creating a scenario using bits from her childhood to trap the Doctor, that information was enough for reality to resurrect him.

There are several other shows, movies, and books where a Freudian trio could be applied, but I doubt any of them could perfectly apply the idea of the Unconscious in which a Freudian trio is not only used, but also childhood, memories, ideas, and wishes make up the plot as well as Doctor Who.  

Freud's The Unconscious

Freud did not invent the idea of a conscious and unconscious mind; he merely popularized it. He likened his theory of the unconscious to that of an iceberg, the conscious mind being the miniscule, exposed half, the tip of it. Whereas the unconscious mind is made up of the massive submerged half. The unconscious mind contains all of our biologically based instincts Eros and Thanatos, our primal urges for sex and aggression respectively. These instincts and primitive impulses our repressed, however, Freud believed that these impulses are always dormant.

by Joël, Evelyñ, François

The unconscious is composed of three structural elements within the mind: the id, ego, and superego. The id is the equivalent to the devil one’s shoulder, representing the instinctual primitive impulses and instant gratification. It is characterized as disregardful to external forces such as time and reality; it has no care for the needs of others, only its own satisfaction. The id is most dominant during childhood, specifically from birth. Children have raw senses and at that age, the pleasure principle is bliss for them; the id wants whatever feels good at the time. When a child is hungry, the id wants food, and then the child cries. Whatever the child needs are at the time, it will cry, whether it’ll be needing a change, in pain, hot, cold, or neglected, it will cry until its needs are met.

In the next few years, when the child is around three or four, the second part of their personality will once they’ve interacted with the world long enough: the ego. Then, when they turn five and reached the end of the phallic stage of their development, they would have begun developing the superego personality. The superego is the conscience, the angel on one’s shoulder, the moral center to counteract the id and keep it in check.

However, the superego is also social acquired, given that it takes a few before a child can understand social conventions and morality. Because of this, the previously unacceptable and immoral behaviors that used to be exhibited by the id are now repressed; it’s one of the most fundamental defense mechanisms in regulating behaviors it deems reprehensible. Unacceptable thoughts, emotions, and memories are never destroyed; they are only repressed and stored in the unconscious. Because of this, these unacceptable thoughts and emotions of symbolic significance occasionally resurface via slip of the tongue or the ‘Freudian slip’.

The ego serves as the mediator between the superego and the id, and is considered the strongest personality in a healthy person. It assesses the situation of satisfying the needs of the id and not upsetting the superego, however, it must also ensure that it maintains balance between the two personalities lest one dominates the other. If the id becomes too strong, the person would lead an impulsive life of self-gratification, or if the superego were dominant, the person would be unbending, judgmental, and driven by rigid morals.

Ways of Seeing

John Berger’s documentary Ways of Seeing raises questions regarding Western cultural aesthetics and whether they have a hidden, or specifically, ideologies in visual images. Seeing is the habit of convention. Perspective makes the eye the center of the world. However, can the eye be wrong?

Part one discusses the invention of the camera and how this simple device has revolutionized the world. Beforehand, people from all walks of life would travel; take pilgrimages to journey to churches and temples just to witness the magnificent holy relics and art they housed. The revolutionary novelty behind cameras came from their ability to commodify space and time. Images were now transmittable; they could be reproduced and copied. This new technology, however, with ability to copy images, has sparked a new trend in which an image’s market value is based on its authenticity.

  Later, Berger discusses the idea that an image can be a source of information. Berger found that an image could be interpretive.

Nice picture of Daughter helping Father.

An image’s meaning could be manipulated if one changed or cast aside certain elements (i.e. cropping) for it to restate a new meaning. 

Chaos

Nevertheless, even if an image remains unaltered, to be a source of information it must hold its own against other streams of information. It can have its own character. Images can relate to other’s experiences and their interpretation might be dissimilar.

Part two examines women, nudity, and the roles they both serve in art and imagery. People have become increasingly self-conscious about their bodies, most especially women. Centuries of being the subject of idealized feminine beauty have taken their toll on the female self-esteem. Women are painted nude, but they are not ‘naked’. Berger describes nakedness and nudity as two distinct beasts. Nakedness is simply the state of undress, Nudity, however, is a state of dress. Nudity must be seen as objective, appealing to the male sexuality, while women’s are unimportant, or as Berger states, “To plead an appetite, not to have any of their own.”

The ideal feminine beauty is the eye of the beholder, however, women themselves have trouble identifying with painted women. Berger interviewed a group of women and a couple of them expressed dissatisfaction with how the gender has been portrayed in art. Women were painted to satisfy the male appetite, and women have trouble identifying with painted women because their bodies were painted with exaggerated features to conform to the ideal female form. However, the women being interviewed expressed no discontent towards photographs. Photographs are able to capture women as they are, no exaggeration, just realism, which makes it easier for them to identify with than they would with a painting. 

Which sadly, in hindsight, the sentiment was said in the 70s and is rendered moot in the advent of Photoshop and eating disorders.

Before-After 

Part three expands on the idea that images can be sources of information and their value. Art’s market value is based both on their authenticity and uniqueness. They’re materialistic objects that reflect highly of their owners. As art evolved over the years with increasing emphasis on the real (the idea of real being something you can see and touch), their owners thought of the idea of art reflecting what is real about them. Images portraits were commissioned with the expressed purpose of making a statement about their subjects, specifically flaunting statements about their social status. 

I'm not compensating for anyhing.

Some portraits would feature ideas and icons from classical mythology, specialized knowledge only the privileged minority knew; portraits would be painted with oil paint, a medium favored to celebrate private possessions and elegance. However, Berger pointed out that some images can contradict their source material, using Mary of Magdalene as an example. Mary of Magdalene was a biblical figure and a prostitute, believed to have slept or at least, been associated with Jesus before his crucifixion. However, the portraits Berger used portrayed Mary in a positive light, as a figure of beauty and eligibility rather than an object of scorn. Berger surmised that the reason behind the oil painting portraits is that people, in essence, are narcissists. 

I love me.

We desire assurance of our own worth and identity that we use luxurious things to vindicate it. Which is why we use oil paint, until photography rolled around and became a better medium convey wealth.

Part four centers on human narcissism and the impact it’s had on the twentieth century. Grace, elegance, and authority were old ideas that were to be desired in the old days, until the idea of glamour appeared. Glamour is the quality of attractiveness and excitability that makes certain people or things seem more special and appealing. It’s an idea that expanded when people commissioned glamorous portraits of themselves, and it seems to have gained momentum in the advent of commercialized media and publicity by feeding off a steady diet of our social envy, because without it, it wouldn’t exist.

The media and publicity use images to promote an item and entice you with promises that your life will be grander if you buy and accept this product. It both promises and threatens. They play to our fears of becoming a faceless being, someone who is undesirable, and we’re threatened by that.  
 We’ve come to accept the pictures and imagination publicity conjures up, in the hope that as we consumes their products, we would one day experience the things they’ve promised. I’ve been guilty of this myself as I’ve bought things and tried things in the past that I thought would improve my life somehow, or at least entertain me a bit, but sadly, none of that has happened. I still feel empty, and there’s a hole in my wallet.
Nonetheless, Berger notes that we have reject reality; we have found it unrecognizable. Instead, it seems we’ve accepted the new reality conjured up by consumption and publicity, and for this reason, we are all mad.     

Help! Help! I'm Being Repressed!

            Over the years, our idea of an oppressive society has evolved to be some sort of 1984 Big Brother totalitarian state. 

But I digress when society actually forgoes something that loud in favor of subtlety. An oppressive society does not need to look like a totalitarian state in order to oppress its people. An oppressive society can systematically oppress its people using a system known as the four I’s of oppression; Ideological, Institutional, Interpersonal, and Internal.

            First, Ideological is any oppressive system where a group is motivated by a core set of ideas, values, and beliefs; ideas that said group is superior to another, and therefore, has the right to control. The idea gets elaborated in many ways as Ideological oppression formed the –isms. There are twelve in total such as Sexism, Heterosexism, Cisgenderism, Classism, Racism, Colorism, Ableism, Lookism, Sizeism, Ageism, Nativism, and Colonialism.

            Elaborating on the ideological nature of each idea, sexism is the idea that one gender is superior than the other. Heterosexism is a subcategory and is defined as people having a sexual relationships exclusively with a member of the opposite sex. Cisgenderism is when a person who does not identify with their assigned gender role are then forced to accept it, less they suffer social consequences. 





Classism involves social hierarchy where the wealthy and powerful oppress the poor and insignificant.   



 Racism could easily be described as disliking others of color, however, that’s Colorism. Racsim is simply one racial group being treated differently from another. Ableism is the social pattern of disabled people being treated differently to an unnecessary degree. Lookism is where people whose bodies and faces may be treated differently if they do match the ideal norm. Sizeism is where people whose bodies fit social ideals are treated differently than those who do not. Ageism is when people who have a certain chronological age are treated differently to an unnecessary degree than those who do not. Nativism is the idea of people born in a certain country are treated differently than those who immigrated. And lastly, Colonialism is similar to Nativism, however, the benefits usually go to the group identified as the most powerful, most likely the invading country.

Society likes to believe we're evolved because we're human, and thus different from animals. Humans, however, are a form of animal, and the -isms allows us to intertwine ideas of evolution and natural selection in our society. Humans have an intense desire to know that they are special, that some are superior than others, and the -isms gives us gratification for such a complex.

            Second, Institutional oppression works as an extension of Ideological oppression as it reinforce itself through institutions and systems. This works by having a group or a member of an ideological group work or in control of a major institution of society such as legal systems, police, education, hiring practices, housing, media, and politics. For example, racism might reinforce itself through the police in the form of racial profiling as one out of four African American men are thrown in jail or on probation. The same could be said for outspoken members of the LBGT community being rejected from the US Military with its “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy a few years back. Openly gay soldiers were prohibited from serving their country and thus had to hide their sexuality. Education also serves as a factor. When a child grows up with a higher quality education, the more likely that child will be aware of its environment, and thus, see the strings manipulating it. However, if a child is given a poor education, the more likely it will grow up subservient to society because it's ignorant, it can't think for itself. 

Children of the Westboro Baptist Church are victims of their parents' ideology. Growing up indoctrinated and facing the consequences of their actions.

         Third, Interpersonal oppression is how members of society oppress one another. The most blatant form is how one group, assured of their own superiority, are then individually allowed to personally mistreat, abuse, and inflict harm against a targeted/oppressed group. Prime examples could be hate crimes such as white people inflicting violence onto a group of blacks, straight and/or fundamentalist people against members of the LGBT community, and domestic abuse between a husband and his wife. However, violence is not the only form of Interpersonal oppression, but it can come in the form of passive aggressive conduct such as racist or sexist jokes, perpetuating stereotypes, harassment, threats, minimizing another group’s thinking, etc. Nonetheless, there are instances where members of a dominant group are not consciously aware of their oppressive conduct, which lastly brings us to Internalization.

            Internalization is when society internalizes its oppressive ideology. They’ve come to accept the idea that the oppressed are inferior, the ideology reflected in institutions, the mistreatment given interpersonally from members of the dominant group. They’ve come to internalize the negative messages about themselves. Internalization thus leaves society looking pretty pessimistic as a black person would always expect to be arrested; the rich giving to the rich and none to the poor; a gay couple having their civil rights denied. It leaves one feeling helpless or powerless to change their situation.

            To combat the systems of oppression, one needs to build bridges with members of the oppressed. Stand united and undo the internalized beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors that perpetuate such a state. Treat one another with kindness and respect, learn and share your experiences with others, brighten someone’s day. Tell them it gets better.