This chapter offers a twofold response to the first part of this objection concerning the validity and seriousness of harm caused by linguistic expressions of microaggressions. On the basis of this argument, critics have called for a moratorium on microaggression awareness campaigns and trainings, as well as any further discussion of microaggressions, until there is firm research to confirm that microaggressions are indeed damaging to their recipients and can be empirically measured as such (ibid.). Furthermore, even if words could result in real harm, we cannot demonstrate this empirically (at least yet) (Lilienfeld 2017). In broad strokes, critics of MRP advance the following argument: microaggressions are often committed via the expressions of words and because words cannot constitute a real form of violence, microaggressions do not and cannot cause genuine, enduring harm (Lukianoff and Haidt 2015, 2018, 204-205 Pinker 2018 Campbell and Manning 2018). Taken together, the objections call into question whether or not self-proclaimed victims of microaggressions are indeed experiencing any real, substantial harm. This chapter aims to respond to a cluster of objections that have been raised against what has been called the "microaggressions research program" (MRP) (see for example Lilienfeld 2017a, 2017b Haidt 2017 Lukianoff and Haidt 2015, 2018). Concrete examples will be provided to illustrate the intersectional entanglement of different forms of oppression and the importance of speciesism for a fuller intersectional analysis. Finally, Noel and Nibert’s theories will be considered in turn, and then employed as a lens to cast light on many of the ecological and social justice implications of humanity’s continued oppression and exploitation of non-human animals. An extension of Charles Mills’ theory of a “racial contract” (1997) will then be proposed to addresses the phenomenon of species oppression. Using the seminal works of Marilyn Frye (2008), Iris Young (2004), Peggy McIntosh (2008), and Alice Bailey (2009) as a starting point, this paper explores the fundamental concepts of “oppression” and “privilege”. Overturning of oppressive, exploitative, unjust and inequitable systems cannot be achieved if the common materialist assumptions and practices that lay at the roots of speciesism, racism, classism, and sexism (among many other ideological manifestations of social and economic stratification) remain unnamed and unaddressed. Borrowing heavily from Donald Noel’s theory of ethnic stratification (1968) and David Nibert’s theory of oppression (2013, 2002), this paper argues that many of the most pernicious forms of injustice and inequity are deeply rooted in the ever-increasing scope and intensity of humanity’s oppression and domination of non-human animals, a path upon which we embarked some fifteen millennia ago. An ecologically and socially just world will not, indeed cannot be achieved until humanity at lasts acknowledges and breaks free from its own self-inflicted economic, moral and ideological enslavement to the materialist exploitation of other non-human animal species.
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