Arguments about injustice rarely stay focused on the system. They tend to slide away, towards comparison of those who have endured more, who are more marginalized, and whose pain should carry greater weight.
Arguments about injustice rarely stay focused on the system. They tend to slide away, towards comparison of those who have endured more, who are more marginalized, and whose pain should carry greater weight.
In contemporary social discourse about inequality, suffering is now treated as something to be compared rather than understood. Experiences of harm are weighed against one another, ranking legitimacy for pain and suffering, and recognition is being treated as something to be earned. A clear illustration of this dynamic appears in pop culture, for example, in the Netflix series Ginny and Georgia. A conflict between two mixed-race characters, Ginny and Hunter, escalates into a debate over whose identity entails greater suffering: “You are closer to white than I’ll ever be. Your favourite food is cheeseburgers, and I know more Mandarin than you do. You’re barely even Asian!” Ginny argues that Hunter’s mixed Asian-Caucasian identity positions him closer to Whiteness, therefore denying him the same racial oppression she experiences. Hunter insults Ginny’s Blackness by pointing out that she’s mixed Caucasian as well. They play a game called “Oppression Olympics”, but in the end, neither of them wins.
The term “Oppression Olympics” was first introduced by activist and writer Elizabeth “Betita” Martinez (1993), who used it to criticize the growing tendency among marginalized groups to compete over who is more oppressed. In particular, she does not describe them as an official movement or ideology, but as a social dynamic. This social dynamic transforms oppression from a shared structural problem into a competitive ranking system. At its core, it views suffering as something to be measured and compared, to win that shiny “gold medal” to prove that “I am the most oppressed”. It creates division, resentment, and reinforces the same hierarchy that the oppressed fight to overturn. Importantly, the “Oppression Olympics” do not deny the reality of oppression, nor do they suggest that all suffering is equal. It creates the comparison of suffering as a moral hierarchy instead.
However, why exactly do the “Oppression Olympics” start? Humans naturally compare experiences to make sense of their own suffering (Kedia et al., 2014). When their pain gets ignored, minimized, or invalidated, comparison becomes a way to seek recognition from others. A sense of scarcity also comes into play when social attention, institutional support, and moral legitimacy feel limited (Wang & Jiao, 2023). This scarcity makes only some types of suffering be acknowledged, urging people to prove their pain is worth noticing too. Thus, comparison turns into a type of competition. When suffering becomes something that must be proven, the focus shifts away from the system that causes oppression and towards individual identity. Marginalized groups begin fighting sideways instead of upwards. The question in people’s minds is no longer “Why are we being harmed by this system?” but “Who has it worse?”
“In this reframing, the issue is no longer structural inequality, but an alleged hierarchy of identities, where moral authority is said to depend on how marginalized one claims to be.”
Oppression Olympics begin to resemble a talent show about people’s sufferings. Participants are not competing for liberation, but for recognition, even though the prize at stake is being in the spotlight. They want acknowledgement from the audience to prove their suffering counts most. In this talent show, suffering is performed, narrated, and compared as groups audition their experiences to prove that they deserve the highest moral standing. However, who is the one having control over this competition? This power lies in the hands of the Supremacy, the top of the power structure that has always been given the privilege in our society. Supremacy doesn’t enter the contest. Instead, it is the judge, the one deciding whose suffering is worthy. While marginalized groups are encouraged to compare and contest their pain, the hierarchy that demands this proof remains untouched.
The Supremacy can remain untouched as a result of wrongly directed attention. This social hierarchy did not rely only on dominance, but was also sustained through fragmentation. The longer it takes for marginalized groups to form a coalition, the stronger the hierarchy gets. Originally, marginalized groups stood next to each other, demanded equal rights and equal opportunities for all. The people used to recognize that their sufferings stem from unequal opportunities, corrupted justice systems, and many other cruel policies made by the Supremacy. In those times, the Supremacy had to fight and try to crush the revolt and keep its power. But now, being distracted by attention from others, marginalized groups don’t confront policing systems, labor exploitation, or legislative discrimination anymore. Now, in this environment and in the midst of these fights, the Supremacy simply does not need to defend itself. It endures. It lets the lateral conflicts absorb all of the pressure that could have been directed upwards. By focusing on interpersonal competition rather than systematic power, this narrative leaves existing hierarchies untouched.
The Oppression Olympics emerge in conversations about intersectionality. In the beginning, intersectionality was developed to be an analytical framework explaining overlapping identities (Bauer et al., 2021). It explained how race, gender, class, sexuality, and disability all interact and create a unique experience of discrimination and privilege for every person. This was meant to add complexity to our individuality. Over time, however, intersectionality has been misused as a competitive framework instead of an explanatory one (Soken-Huberty, 2024). Identities slowly become weapons instead of helping us understand different forms of oppression that other people might suffer from. It got to the point where people claim that the more marginalized you are, the more moral authority people assume you have, which means they would find your opinions more important, thus the more power you hold. The shift from analysis to competition creates an opportunity that is easily exploited by reactionary commentators. Right-wing influencers like Ben Shapiro capitalize on the Oppression Olympics as evidence that contemporary politics rewards victimhood: “a form of identity politics in which the value of your opinion depends on how many victim groups you belong to” (Airey, 2018). In this reframing, the issue is no longer structural inequality, but an alleged hierarchy of identities, where moral authority is said to depend on how marginalized one claims to be. However, right-wing influencers’ views are rarely concerned with fairness or solidarity. Instead, they recenter straight, white, cisgender men in a radicalized way, as the overlooked victims of modern society, portraying anti-racist and feminist discourse as oppressive rather than corrective (Lilly et al., 2025). These changes in political viewpoints seem to align with the rise of other marginalized groups’ movements, such as #MeToo (2017) or #BLM (2020), making cis-white men feel way more threatened about their social status. And the consequence of this political phenomenon is that young men in Europe have identified more with the “radical right” political parties, as these parties used gender, race, and class to shape their ideologies (Guildea, 2025). The result is reversed: marginalized groups are depicted as oppressors, dominant groups emerge as unjustly silenced, and their power is reaffirmed rather than challenged.
“In these moments, pain is not an invitation for empathy anymore. It is a weapon.”
The Oppression Olympics also creates a hostile environment for people who want to share their pain. This is how we arrive at moments like “So you think you had a bad day? Imagine how much worse it would be for me, an Asian international student, queer, non-cis, with depression, living in a whole new continent, and with student debt. Your life is so much better than mine, so you do not deserve the right to complain.” In these moments, pain is not an invitation for empathy anymore. It is a weapon.
To understand the Oppression Olympics further, people need to understand which part of their identity is being picked apart and compared to others’. Some parts of identity are flexible, and some parts are not. You might identify as a gamer as a child, then grow out of it. These are permeable identities; they can shift over time, and you have control over them (Armenta et al., 2017). The other type of identity is non-permeable, which you have no control over. These identities are race, sex, gender, sexuality, or disability. The Oppression Olympics turns unchosen traits into moral gatekeeping tools. People are judged, excluded, or silenced specifically based on traits that they did not choose. Participation becomes less about justice and more about who is allowed to speak, feel, or be heard. Does this same structure sound weirdly familiar to another structure that we are so familiar with? A system where only Caucasian people’s opinions mattered, the same structure where only cishet people are being heard? The Oppression Olympics have now created a system identical to one that it claims to oppose.
We have to move beyond the Oppression Olympics together, and we can start by acknowledging the root cause: real pain and invisibility. People compare against each other because they want recognition, safety, and to be taken seriously. The people fought for equal rights and equal opportunities, and we should not let ourselves get distracted by this limelight. We have to remember that competition offers only temporary validation and destroys connection in the process. One person’s pain doesn’t invalidate another’s. Solidarity doesn’t require sameness. Oppression is structural, not a contest to be won. Marginalized groups can only be treated equally when we drag down the power hierarchy that has been limiting our opportunities and rights to survive. And liberation from this structure will not come from keeping score, but by refusing to let our suffering turn to us against our own. Because the walls built between the oppressed do not weaken the hierarchy of power. They protect it. Like Ginny and Hunter, everyone loses in the Oppression Olympics except for the system that benefits from our division.
References
– Airey, J. (2018, June 19). Ben Shapiro: What is intersectionality? The Daily Wire. https://www.dailywire.com/news/ben-shapiro-what-intersectionality-jacob….
– Armenta, B. M., Stroebe, K., Scheibe, S., Van Yperen, N. W., Stegeman, A., & Postmes, T. (2017). Permeability of group boundaries. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 43(3), 418–433. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167216688202
– Angela Y. Davis & Elizabeth Martínez – Center for Cultural Studies. (1993). https://culturalstudies.ucsc.edu/inscriptions/volume-7/angela-y-davis-elizabeth-martinez/
– Bauer, G. R., Churchill, S. M., Mahendran, M., Walwyn, C., Lizotte, D., & Villa-Rueda, A. A. (2021). Intersectionality in quantitative research: A systematic review of its emergence and applications of theory and methods. SSM – Population Health, 14, 100798. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmph.2021.100798
– Guildea, A. (2025). White masculinity and the radical right in Europe: an intersectional analytical framework. Frontiers in Sociology, 10, 1611191. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2025.1611191
– Kedia, G., Mussweiler, T., & Linden, D. E. (2014). Brain mechanisms of social comparison and their influence on the reward system. Neuroreport, 25(16), 1255–1265. https://doi.org/10.1097/wnr.0000000000000255
– Lilly, K. J., Kimberley, C., Bertenshaw, Z., Bahamondes, J., Sibley, C. G., & Osborne, D. (2025). Rise of the alt‐White? Examining the prevalence of perceived racial and gender discrimination among White men from 2014 to 2023. British Journal of Social Psychology, 64(4), e70010. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.70010
– Sinha, S. (2022). Ethnicity and identity politics. In Elsevier eBooks (pp. 689–699). https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-12-820195-4.00251-x
– Soken-Huberty, E. (2024, August 28). Intersectionality 101: Definition, facts, and Examples. Human Rights Careers. https://www.humanrightscareers.com/issues/intersectionality-101-definition-facts-and-examples/#:~:text=One%20common%20misconception%20about%20intersectionality,
don’t%20have%20as%20many.
– The Leftist Cooks. (2023, August 20). Spider-Verse, identity politics, leftist infighting, and the Oppression Olympics [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WcBJNHcrHs
– Wang, X., & Jiao, L. (2023). A sense of scarcity enhances the Above-Average effect in social comparison. Behavioral Sciences, 13(10), 826. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs13100826
In contemporary social discourse about inequality, suffering is now treated as something to be compared rather than understood. Experiences of harm are weighed against one another, ranking legitimacy for pain and suffering, and recognition is being treated as something to be earned. A clear illustration of this dynamic appears in pop culture, for example, in the Netflix series Ginny and Georgia. A conflict between two mixed-race characters, Ginny and Hunter, escalates into a debate over whose identity entails greater suffering: “You are closer to white than I’ll ever be. Your favourite food is cheeseburgers, and I know more Mandarin than you do. You’re barely even Asian!” Ginny argues that Hunter’s mixed Asian-Caucasian identity positions him closer to Whiteness, therefore denying him the same racial oppression she experiences. Hunter insults Ginny’s Blackness by pointing out that she’s mixed Caucasian as well. They play a game called “Oppression Olympics”, but in the end, neither of them wins.
The term “Oppression Olympics” was first introduced by activist and writer Elizabeth “Betita” Martinez (1993), who used it to criticize the growing tendency among marginalized groups to compete over who is more oppressed. In particular, she does not describe them as an official movement or ideology, but as a social dynamic. This social dynamic transforms oppression from a shared structural problem into a competitive ranking system. At its core, it views suffering as something to be measured and compared, to win that shiny “gold medal” to prove that “I am the most oppressed”. It creates division, resentment, and reinforces the same hierarchy that the oppressed fight to overturn. Importantly, the “Oppression Olympics” do not deny the reality of oppression, nor do they suggest that all suffering is equal. It creates the comparison of suffering as a moral hierarchy instead.
However, why exactly do the “Oppression Olympics” start? Humans naturally compare experiences to make sense of their own suffering (Kedia et al., 2014). When their pain gets ignored, minimized, or invalidated, comparison becomes a way to seek recognition from others. A sense of scarcity also comes into play when social attention, institutional support, and moral legitimacy feel limited (Wang & Jiao, 2023). This scarcity makes only some types of suffering be acknowledged, urging people to prove their pain is worth noticing too. Thus, comparison turns into a type of competition. When suffering becomes something that must be proven, the focus shifts away from the system that causes oppression and towards individual identity. Marginalized groups begin fighting sideways instead of upwards. The question in people’s minds is no longer “Why are we being harmed by this system?” but “Who has it worse?”
“In this reframing, the issue is no longer structural inequality, but an alleged hierarchy of identities, where moral authority is said to depend on how marginalized one claims to be.”
Oppression Olympics begin to resemble a talent show about people’s sufferings. Participants are not competing for liberation, but for recognition, even though the prize at stake is being in the spotlight. They want acknowledgement from the audience to prove their suffering counts most. In this talent show, suffering is performed, narrated, and compared as groups audition their experiences to prove that they deserve the highest moral standing. However, who is the one having control over this competition? This power lies in the hands of the Supremacy, the top of the power structure that has always been given the privilege in our society. Supremacy doesn’t enter the contest. Instead, it is the judge, the one deciding whose suffering is worthy. While marginalized groups are encouraged to compare and contest their pain, the hierarchy that demands this proof remains untouched.
The Supremacy can remain untouched as a result of wrongly directed attention. This social hierarchy did not rely only on dominance, but was also sustained through fragmentation. The longer it takes for marginalized groups to form a coalition, the stronger the hierarchy gets. Originally, marginalized groups stood next to each other, demanded equal rights and equal opportunities for all. The people used to recognize that their sufferings stem from unequal opportunities, corrupted justice systems, and many other cruel policies made by the Supremacy. In those times, the Supremacy had to fight and try to crush the revolt and keep its power. But now, being distracted by attention from others, marginalized groups don’t confront policing systems, labor exploitation, or legislative discrimination anymore. Now, in this environment and in the midst of these fights, the Supremacy simply does not need to defend itself. It endures. It lets the lateral conflicts absorb all of the pressure that could have been directed upwards. By focusing on interpersonal competition rather than systematic power, this narrative leaves existing hierarchies untouched.
The Oppression Olympics emerge in conversations about intersectionality. In the beginning, intersectionality was developed to be an analytical framework explaining overlapping identities (Bauer et al., 2021). It explained how race, gender, class, sexuality, and disability all interact and create a unique experience of discrimination and privilege for every person. This was meant to add complexity to our individuality. Over time, however, intersectionality has been misused as a competitive framework instead of an explanatory one (Soken-Huberty, 2024). Identities slowly become weapons instead of helping us understand different forms of oppression that other people might suffer from. It got to the point where people claim that the more marginalized you are, the more moral authority people assume you have, which means they would find your opinions more important, thus the more power you hold. The shift from analysis to competition creates an opportunity that is easily exploited by reactionary commentators. Right-wing influencers like Ben Shapiro capitalize on the Oppression Olympics as evidence that contemporary politics rewards victimhood: “a form of identity politics in which the value of your opinion depends on how many victim groups you belong to” (Airey, 2018). In this reframing, the issue is no longer structural inequality, but an alleged hierarchy of identities, where moral authority is said to depend on how marginalized one claims to be. However, right-wing influencers’ views are rarely concerned with fairness or solidarity. Instead, they recenter straight, white, cisgender men in a radicalized way, as the overlooked victims of modern society, portraying anti-racist and feminist discourse as oppressive rather than corrective (Lilly et al., 2025). These changes in political viewpoints seem to align with the rise of other marginalized groups’ movements, such as #MeToo (2017) or #BLM (2020), making cis-white men feel way more threatened about their social status. And the consequence of this political phenomenon is that young men in Europe have identified more with the “radical right” political parties, as these parties used gender, race, and class to shape their ideologies (Guildea, 2025). The result is reversed: marginalized groups are depicted as oppressors, dominant groups emerge as unjustly silenced, and their power is reaffirmed rather than challenged.
“In these moments, pain is not an invitation for empathy anymore. It is a weapon.”
The Oppression Olympics also creates a hostile environment for people who want to share their pain. This is how we arrive at moments like “So you think you had a bad day? Imagine how much worse it would be for me, an Asian international student, queer, non-cis, with depression, living in a whole new continent, and with student debt. Your life is so much better than mine, so you do not deserve the right to complain.” In these moments, pain is not an invitation for empathy anymore. It is a weapon.
To understand the Oppression Olympics further, people need to understand which part of their identity is being picked apart and compared to others’. Some parts of identity are flexible, and some parts are not. You might identify as a gamer as a child, then grow out of it. These are permeable identities; they can shift over time, and you have control over them (Armenta et al., 2017). The other type of identity is non-permeable, which you have no control over. These identities are race, sex, gender, sexuality, or disability. The Oppression Olympics turns unchosen traits into moral gatekeeping tools. People are judged, excluded, or silenced specifically based on traits that they did not choose. Participation becomes less about justice and more about who is allowed to speak, feel, or be heard. Does this same structure sound weirdly familiar to another structure that we are so familiar with? A system where only Caucasian people’s opinions mattered, the same structure where only cishet people are being heard? The Oppression Olympics have now created a system identical to one that it claims to oppose.
We have to move beyond the Oppression Olympics together, and we can start by acknowledging the root cause: real pain and invisibility. People compare against each other because they want recognition, safety, and to be taken seriously. The people fought for equal rights and equal opportunities, and we should not let ourselves get distracted by this limelight. We have to remember that competition offers only temporary validation and destroys connection in the process. One person’s pain doesn’t invalidate another’s. Solidarity doesn’t require sameness. Oppression is structural, not a contest to be won. Marginalized groups can only be treated equally when we drag down the power hierarchy that has been limiting our opportunities and rights to survive. And liberation from this structure will not come from keeping score, but by refusing to let our suffering turn to us against our own. Because the walls built between the oppressed do not weaken the hierarchy of power. They protect it. Like Ginny and Hunter, everyone loses in the Oppression Olympics except for the system that benefits from our division.
