Collective rights and women: ‘The cold game of equality staring’

The author argues that the daily realities of oppressed groups can only be acknowledged at the expense of dominant groups. Unlikely to confront their own domination, dominant groups merely deny that such realities exist. Rights rhetoric, emphasizing as it does individual freedom and autonomy, is one mechanism that helps to sustain denial and to mask the patterns and consequences of domination. In order to work for a more just world, we need to ground any discussion about rights in concrete social realities of oppressed groups and use with caution any rhetoric about justice that does not begin with them.