Oppression

Oppression is the ongoing, unfair exercise of power that holds a group of people down. It works through systems rather than individual prejudice alone: laws, institutions, social norms, and daily interactions that treat a group as lesser. For LGBTQ+ people this has included criminalizing same-sex intimacy, denying marriage and family rights, workplace and housing discrimination, and violence. Advocates stress that oppression is structural, meaning it is built into how institutions operate, which is why personal kindness alone does not undo it. Understanding oppression this way is central to civil rights and liberation movements, which aim to change the systems that produce inequality rather than only individual attitudes.