bemusedlybespectacled:

if your fictional discrimination is predicated on the marginalized community doing something to “deserve” its marginalization, you automatically fail any commentary on, or application of your story to, real-life oppression

“The Xingbarts started a war with us and now we Gurbits all hate them!” FAIL.

“Nurts are a legitimate, powerful threat if they aren’t denied basic rights!” FAIL. 

“In the past, the Snorfals were our oppressors, so now we oppress them!” FAIL.

oppressors will certainly use any means at their disposal  – including logic, science, religion, history, and philosophy – to justify oppression. “women are just physically incapable of learning, that’s why we can’t let them attend university!” “black people are divinely ordained by God to be our slaves!” “the jews control all the banks, that’s why we have to kill them!”

but it’s never real! it’s never actually valid! the whole point of oppression is that it’s completely arbitrary! there is no “reason” no matter how hard you try!

if you try to inject “grey areas” by making your fictional discrimination justified, you have fundamentally failed to understand how it works in real life

of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t have grey areas in your writing. there’s all sorts of actual grey areas in real life you can draw on: intracommunity issues, different ways the oppression is applied to different groups, internalized oppression, different philosophies within the group on the way to combat it

but none of those are “well actually oppression makes sense because reasons!”