Agreed in many ways. The heteronormative neurocompliant Abrahamic-religioned self-affluence-seeking cisgendered anti-intellectual abled white patriarch culture is ignorant of trouble and suffering.
This is exacerbated by the fact the religious component of this mix praises and identifies people for their suffering and charity, yet the nature of systematic oppressive heirarchy demands the elimination of personal suffering and emphasizes greed. The only way they can rectify these two conflicting veiws is conceptual erasure of those who actually suffer and help their communities, and what few struggles this power-lowering group does have to be blown out of proportion. This makes them frustratingly resistant to actual dialogue & learning.
However, being subject to any form of actual systemic oppression (especially considering how said oppression will immediately overshadow all of the blown-out-of-proportion slights they experienced before) has a tendency to shatter this paradigm like a strong wind to a house of cards.
The problem, with this, is in the event of newfound oppression, once-oppressors will lash out at at their new oppressors and will only self-reflect after that has turned out to be fruitless. This means oppressed rarely have the opportunity to convert oppressors by oppressing them.
The times it does generally work, however, is when that source of oppression an external third party or self-inflicted.
The key piece here is ‘the self-inflicted’, I suspect, because this is the one part that inherently chips away at the oppressor’s monolith, until eventually it is left a shattered hull of its previous self with a far greater mass of opposition constructed of an alliance of the oppressed. Further, it allows preemptive elimination of other oppressions that would continue to exist otherwise. It further provides a path to turn otherizing by the oppressors into communitizing with the oppressed. Even more convenient, the oppressors provide their own mechanism for this: the earlier mentioned tendency to exacerbate their own struggles.
To put it less academically and more poetically:
When nobles whine, you’ve found their pressure point. Offer the peasents alliance as solution, and and you’ll be able to overthrow the kings.
And to put that less poetically and more pragmatically:
As frustrating as it is, when a privileged complains about their problems that don’t cause additional oppression on their part and mentions how, ‘They understand what the oppressed are going through.’ Instead of expressing insult, emphatically agree. Pull them in, because they are now in a golden position to be converted from ally of oppressor to ally of oppressed. Mention the oppressed have long fought issues like theirs, and offer joining forces. They will feel empowered instead of threatened, and you will have made an ally, and it becomes a mechanism to teach about systematic oppression.
So embrace the ‘minor-oppressed’: the left-handed ones inability to find a good pair of scissors (caused by capitalist obsession with low hanging fruit), the night owls inabilty to go about their daily lives without interruption in their sleep schedule (caused by patriarchy’s obsession with ordered lives and ease for watchful eyes), the renters and the trailer parks high rent (endemic of colonial obsession with land possession over others), those who suffered abusive parents (caused by patriarchy), or school bullies (caused by toxic masculinity), and more. Chip away, highlighting oppressions so the only oppresors who remain cannot hold power, and then tip the scales once and for all.
