This has been pissing me off for a while now and people only seem to be doing it more often. So I've got to bring it up.
People, particularly "Let's Save the World!" Tumblr teens, have been focusing way too hard on who has it worse off in life.
For example, I had a looooooong fight with a good friend of mine over whether or not transgender people were more oppressed than anyone else or not. I said that the point wasn't whether they were more oppressed, but how we could fix it. But people don't like to hear that. They like to hear that they're winning. If they're oppressed, they'd damn well better be the most goddamn oppressed people on Earth.
I'm not saying that oppression isn't a problem. It is. It's just a problem for everyone. There's not a person on Earth who doesn't have something that is oppressed against. Every white straight male living in a first-world country still has something that could be considered "oppressed" against (most of the time, especially in first-world countries, it's depression. That's some science shit right there. More work, more opportunities, more stress, more depression in first-world countries. More clinically diagnosed cases, at least. The moooooore you knoooooooow!). In other words, saying "I'm poorer than you" to a person who barely scrapes by every year isn't going to make them go "Oh, you're right! I shouldn't be feeling pain at all. I should just be happy that I'm not as poor as you! Oh, thank God you came along. I was so confused! Do you have any spare cha-- Oh wait. Sorry." It'll make them be like "What a fucking asshole" and probably steal from you later on, and you deserve it, you selfish fuck.
People do this a lot with mental disorders, and I think that's why they're fucking oppressed in the first place. Which makes me laugh. Because irony. Think about it: why does depression get such a bad rap (probably the most common mental disorder, besides anxiety)? Because a lot of people think that people with depression are "whiny." I'm not saying that's true, by the way. I'm just saying that a lot of people who don't "support" depression think that. Why do they think people with depression are whiny? Because a lot of times, the loudest people in the group (i.e., the people who speak the most about depression and mental disorders) make it seem like the worst thing you could ever have. While that's probably true, there are a lot of things that are the worst thing you could ever have. That sounds like it's an oxymoron, but it's not. Everyone has different fears. Everyone is weak to different things. And, more importantly, everyone's brain works differently and everyone has different coping mechanisms which work better or worse depending on the person. So someone could have depression, have it be fairly manageable, but run into money problems and think "Oh my God this is the worst thing that has ever happened to me." Which is completely understandable. But then someone with depression could say "No, depression is the worst. You're making it seem so small and insignificant. You're being oppressive."
Do you see what I mean? Everyone is way too oversensitive. Instead of focusing on being fucking winners in this pissing contest of "Who's More Oppressed?" (this is a game that mostly Americans only like to play, by the way. Go foreigners!) how about we play a nice round of "How Do We Help the People Who Need It?" We don't need to do a goddamn math formula to figure out human sorrow. We just help who we can and realize that everyone has issues that they're dealing with. You're not worse off or better off than anyone else, most of the time. But, more importantly, that doesn't fucking matter. Whether or not the guy who lives in a mansion and has ten cars is better off economically than you doesn't fucking matter if his wife dies and he needs therapy to get over it.
Everyone has the right to their feelings. Stop saying that they don't.