What the oppressed know of the oppressor

There seems to be a common argument, that I have seen repeated often in the feminist blogging world (no links, because there have been so many different people using this argument, and also because I can't remember off the top of my head which specific posts have included it), that runs roughly as follows:

"The oppressed knows the oppressor better than the oppressor knows himself; she must know all about the oppressor because that is the only way to survive the oppression".

I have seen this stated as being lifted from Hegel (on which claim I cannot comment, not having read any Hegel). I have also seen it rephrased slightly as "the oppressed know all about the oppressors' desires and wants" which has a slight bit more depth of analysis to it.

To this argument, I say BULLSHIT!

For starters, it seems to be used most often in feminist spaces to silence male commenters who bring inconvenient perspectives into a debate, and it genuinely is silencing because it says specifically, "We don't need to listen to you, because we know it better than you do anyway". The usual argument that "99% of the world is for your voice, this space is for our voices" that is normally a valid way to say STFU to interlopers who want ot make the discussion, yet again, "all about teh menz", is not valid here, because here it is implied that there is no need to listen to the other voices anywhere, because it says "you have nothing you can possibly bring to the table".

I want to be absolutely clear here: if I felt that the statement were actually true, then I would have no problem with it; I would be willing to sit back and listen and learn as all these non-males explained all about what being male really is, and then I would be able to see my existence in a completely new light and say, "Yes, that is so true! Thank you for lifting the veil from my eyes!" Instead, so often when feminists write about what it is like to be male, I feel like I'm looking through a pair of spectacles of a way-too-high prescription: instead of everything becoming clearer and snapping into much sharper focus, instead everything is made more blurry and unrecognisable, and trying to look and make out anything familiar just makes the eyes water from the strain that they are put under.

As a man listening to women talk about what it's like to be a man, it is self-evident that actually, no, women do not have a better understanding of maleness and masculinity than men do. It's just a myth. Froth, @ Frothing at the Brain, wrote a piece called It Doesn't Look Like That From Here, which captures the essence of this:

If a person discusses gender roles with any great frequency, they are likely to discover that both men and women feel as though they have drawn the short straw.

...

The only way to know what it feels like to live in the other sex is to ask the other sex, and believe them when they answer. When they say that they are trapped with the kids and the cleaning, believe them. When they say they are trapped with the career and the wage, believe them. Nobody is winning.

...

Nobody wins, except whichever group we’re not in, who have everything so much better than us, and are so unaware of it, and so ungrateful.

They think that about us, too.

This doesn't tell the whole story, but it certainly gives a very good idea of why there might be a lot of resentment about the claim to know already what it's like for men.

So, what then do the oppressed know of the oppressors, if anything?

The answer that I wish to develop I find expressed quite effectively in a passage from Kate Orman's novel, Doctor Who: The Year of Intelligent Tigers. Here are some extracts from a synopsis of the novel (link contains spoilers, obviously, for anyone who might want to read it later):

The tigers are apparently taking hostages, all of them music teachers, and although the Doctor tries to lead a party to rescue them he is forced to retreat, with a few casualties, when the tigers threaten Karl’s life.

Big [tigers' leader] claims that the tigers only want to learn the human concept of music, and allows the Doctor to see Karl. The Doctor is enraged to see his friend half-starved, traumatised and suffering from exposure.

The passage that I recall (sadly, I don't appear to have kept my copy of the novel) involves a conversation between the Doctor and Karl after the Doctor has negotiated Karl's release by the tigers, and relates to a discussion on what to do next. It goes something like this:

Karl: I understand them. I've lived amongst them.
Doctor: No. You lived amongst them as a prisoner, you only understand them as enemies, not as people.

In more general terms, the oppressed only understand the oppressors in the specific role as oppressors.

When this is turned back to the specific question of feminism, and of patriarchal oppression, this means again that women as the oppressed class do not "understand men", but only have an understanding of the oppressor-role in which men are presented to them. The alienation caused by the oppressive system means that neither side can fully understand the other, because crucial elements are hidden.

When the argument is presented that "she must know all about the oppressor because that is the only way to survive the oppression", what we see that she must understand is instead all the ways in which the oppressor interacts with her; but not the ways in which the oppressor interacts with the world, and not the ways in which the oppressor interacts with others of the oppressor class, except inasmuch as those interactions are directly understood to have consequences for the oppressed. She most certainly does not understand these interactions in terms of the consequences they have for members of the oppressor class.

In the web of interactions that construct the Patriarchal system, there are very few winners. While men are undoubtedly the working force by which oppression is maintained (and therefore the term "oppressor class" does apply accurately to men), it is not the case that most men win out of this relationship. It is a less-than-zero-sum game, and only a relatively small elite wins anything from this. This fact, that men do not win but instead are also oppressed (by one another), is why women as the oppressed class do not purely by virtue of their oppressed status, know about men's experiences or men's lives. They do not understand the male oppressor; they do not even necessarily understand why men fulfil the oppressor role. I believe that understanding of this can be achieved, and may well be more readily accessible to women than to men. This is because, once the illusion is pierced of men as the "winners", perhaps the experience of being the oppressed class can shed light on the ways in which men are oppressed themselves. But for many men, that illusion is too difficult to pierce in the first place; or else, the understanding that the oppression experienced is not from the "other", but from the "like" is harder to achieve. Thus, we see the flawedd and self-defeating "Men's Rights Activists" who, rather than destroy the oppressive system, seek to more rigidly enforce it, trying to take power back from those who are still powerless (or, at least, less powerful than themselves).