cartoon: women's clothing and feminism

[Squinch]

17. A better question would be do people have to verbalize that they are oppressed to be oppressed:

And the answer to that is no.

Though these women SAY they are not oppressed, how do they actually feel and what would they say if there were no possibility of reprisals?

Jaycee Dugard and Elizabeth Smart, when they were first approached by law enforcement, defended their kidnappers, but I think we could pretty safely say both were oppressed during their imprisonments.

For others, they have never experienced life without oppression and don't know what that means. That they do not wish for what they never had does not exclude the fact that they are oppressed. It could even be seen as further evidence of the oppression they have experienced. Upon manumission, some percentage of slaves opted to continue to serve the people who had owned them. They knew no other life. And yet, I don't think any of us would say their enslavement was not oppression.

I find the musings that oppression can't really happen to non-European women to be disturbing.