Generational and Ancestral Healing in Community: Urban Atabex Herstory

When we take the time to face internalized oppression, anything we want becomes possible. Urban Atabex Organizing and Healing in Community Network invites organizers and agents of change to be in community, to heal from internalized oppression, and to create another world that we know is possible, for ourselves, family, community, and the world. Through community healing circles and liberation workshops, this work is dedicated to ending violence against women of color and fighting to end the triple threat of patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism. The emotional release model is a framework and set of practices for self-healing from internalized oppression and liberation, by centering indigenous earth-based spirituality, Paulo Freire’s methodology, and spirit guided energy work. This orientation to healing creates transformative possibilities and opportunities for intentional community care. Over the past ten years, the workshops and trainings have expanded the collective to include men of color, queer and trans people, and people of European descent in the fight for our liberation. This work has created the possibility of peace and justice in our lifetime.

How Stigma Gets Under the Skin: Internalized Oppression and Dual Minority Stress Among Black Sexual Minorities

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the links between oppressive social conditions and psychological well-being among Black sexual minorities. In particular, we examine the nature and process by which members of marginalized groups may come to internalize the negative messages about their non-dominant social identity (i.e., internalized oppression). Given that Black sexual minorities are simultaneously subjugated to systems of oppression based on their race and their sexuality, they will experience what we have termed “dual minority stress”. By examining the narratives of 15 Black sexual minorities, we provide empirical support for the dual minority stress model and shed light on the characteristics of internalized oppression and the social conditions by which oppression is internalized. Specifically, our findings point to three important manifestations of internalized oppression: psychological maladjustment, acting-out mechanisms, and identity disintegration. We also identify three mechanisms by which oppression becomes internalized: notions of prototypicality, socio-political invisibility, and the absence of counterspaces. Overall, our findings highlight unique psychological experiences that exist where multiple subordinate-group identities interact and note the important links between social context and the self.

Radical Empathy

Renowned political scientist Terri E. Givens calls for 'radical empathy' in bridging racial divides to understand the origins of our biases, including internalized oppression. Deftly weaving together her own experiences with the political, she offers practical steps to call out racism and bring about radical social change.

Penelope’s Subordinated Agency

This chapter offers a longer reading of Penelope alone to examine the ways in which her own agency is curbed by the expectations of social roles and varying levels of internalized oppression. It considers how the Homeric depiction of Penelope may be understood as relying on and re-enforcing psychologically damaging discourse about women. Even though Penelope is easily the most complex woman depicted in Homeric poetry, readings that emphasize her complexity tend to overlook the way her “behavior is imposed on her by her impossible role as faithful wife of a man who is absent.” The chapter then argues that Penelope's characterization is limited to traditional roles and hemmed in by cultural discourse about the weakness of the female body. In addition, Penelope's suffering is instrumentalized: the emotional cost of Odysseus's absence increases the value of his homecoming and delimits idealized behavior for a woman separated from her husband.