 Responsibility for a group’s oppression seems to be distinct from responsibility for other immoral acts that individuals perform. One reason is that oppression is a difficult concept for many to grasp, partly because it can take subtle forms, partly because it is in many ways “normalized” such that participants and even victims become oblivious to it, and partly because it is institutionalized and part of the very structure of society, which means that often it is carried out independently of anyone’s harboring any bad attitudes toward persons in subordinate groups (see Maybee 2002, for a clear discussion of this phenomenon). Another reason responsibility for oppression is distinctive is that persons may contribute to a group’s oppression simply by participating in a system of oppression, but not directly harboring sexist (or racist, etc.) intentions or even acting in ways that directly harm others, which are two factors that we ordinarily use to implicate individuals for immoral actions. On the one hand, holding all men responsible for women’s oppression in virtue of men’s (perhaps unwilling) participation in the system seems to be too strong a view, but on the other hand, freeing from responsibility all men on the grounds that they do not harbor ill intentions or cause direct harm to women seems to be too weak, since it seems that someone is responsible for maintaining any system of oppression. Charles Lawrence, a race theorist, notes that “The racist acts of millions of individuals are mutually reinforcing and cumulative because the status quo of institutionalized white supremacy remains long after deliberate racist actions subside” (Lawrence 1993, 61). But even though institutionalization of racism and sexism may seem to free from responsibility individuals who participate in these systems because the systems continue without deliberate racist or sexist acts, it is arguably the case that certain individuals directly help to ensure that the system is maintained through their actions, and it is unclear that negligence, ignorance, or self-deception about the existence of systematic injustice are innocent motives. A group’s oppression is likely to be sustained if no one is held responsible and no subsequent action taken to end it. Rather than invoking either extreme position, most feminists argue that responsibility for sustaining oppression should be determined by factors such as whether ignorance of or failure to attend to systematic oppression is excusable, the nature of the indirect harm caused by mere participation in the system of oppression, and whether a person’s opting out of an oppressive system will have any impact on that system. Another complication in assigning responsibility is that it is often difficult to separate an individual’s own sexist behavior from systematic sexism.