Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[GlyphGryph]

Sweetie, I had my house burned down because I'm of the wrong ethnicity. Don't talk to me about privilege.

Do you honestly, seriously believe that this means that you do NOT have privilege? Do you actually understand what privilege is? This is not an argument. This is yet another excuse.

So, yes, I will talk to you about privilege, because you obviously do not understand it. Prejudice? Sure, maybe you understand prejudice, personally. Most people are quite capable of understanding prejudice, insofar as it effects them personally. This seldom leads to an understanding of privilege, or even of prejudice in general. Do you think gay people are any less prejudiced than the population as a whole, thanks to the oppression they've received? If so, you'd be surprised. What of those with dark skin, or Asian ancestry? They've undoubtedly experienced discrimination an prejudice, but this is no indicator that they understand it, or that they realize what privileges they maintain. It's actually surprisingly common for those who have experienced prejudice to carve out an exception for themselves as to whether or not they "deserve it", without recognizing, acknowledging, or remedying the prejudice they exhibit against others.

If anything, hostility of this sort begets hostility. Those who are ostracized are often desperate to ostracize others so as to build themselves up, or they see their status, meager as it is, as threatened by another group who may be more marginalized. It's ugly, but understandable, as a defense mechanism. But it is not understanding, and rarely leads to understanding in and of itself.

So, since you still don't seem to understand, I'm going to repeat this:
This is not a contest. Your suffering does alleviate the suffering of others. Your problems do not render the problems of others unimportant. We are not limited to solving one problem at a time, or accepting small wrongs because greater wrongs exist.

Your privilege remains unaffected by the hardships you have experienced, or the discrimination or bigotry you've faced, unless those hardships specifically strip you of said privileges. Denying this, trying to always cast yourself as the victim, isn't helping you or your argument. This thread is not about your baggage, and no one is buying your attempts to trivialize the problems faced by others.

[DJ]

Well, no, I guess I don't understand what is privilege. Please elaborate. And can you do it without a pile of personal attacks, please?

[Willfor]

Every single aspect of your own interactions with society encapsule a single set of privileges that you either have or do not have. Being part of the dominant ethnicity, being part of the dominant sexuality, being part of the dominant gender, identifying with your birth sex, being born into a sex that people recognize in a legal sense, identifying with the gender role being placed upon you by society, having money and class status, being native to a developed country, being neurotypical, the list can go on forever.

None of these are bad, but being in any of these categories means that you will have to use extra mental effort to try to empathize with people who may not have any of these privileges at all.

[Vector]

Privilege, in a social justice sense, generally means "a reward given by society for reasons outside of moral behavior."  So, people who are not having their houses burned down and the like for reasons of ethnicity would be privileged along the ethnicity axis.  People can be privileged in some zones and not privileged in others.

I say "reasons outside of moral behavior" because we're basically talking about a societal tendency to unleash retribution on folks for the sin of being disabled, or of a particular ethnicity, or gay, or female.  It has nothing to do with how you act and the choices you've made--the things you can control.  Instead, people judge you based on what you are.

I imagine you could see how being a gay person of your ethnicity would probably be worse off than being straight.  So if you're straight, we'd say you have "heterosexual privilege," but that's not to say that you aren't suffering.

This may sound kind of odd and confusing, but it's to deal with so-called "intersectionality."  Previously in feminism and other movements, folks looked only at the dimension of interest and assumed all other privileges were intact--so feminists only really talked about upper-middle-class white straight cis-gendered women, and the GLBT movement mostly talked about upper-middle-class white cis-gendered gay men, and Marxists talked about a working class that was, you know, poor white cis-gendered straight dudes.  Back then we just talked about men vs. women, straight vs. gay, and upper vs. working class.  Because folks realized that the intersection of these various identities was not just experiencing other oppression, but being ignored by various movements in an oppressive way (trans and butch women being excluded from feminist gatherings, etc.--it really goes on and on like that), we coined the term "privilege" to help us discuss the phenomenon.

[Leafsnail]

To be honest "privilege" is becoming something of a silly buzzword in places like Tumblr though, particularly regarding the catchphrase "check your privilege".  There it's basically used as an excuse to dismiss someone's argument without addressing it in any way, rather than in the more specific way it should be.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Saying "check your privilege" like it's an argument is a blatant thought-terminating cliche and makes me lose all interest in continuing to converse with anyone who says it.

It also makes me want to punch them for being a smug fuck, but that's not entirely related.

[Willfor]

Then it's a good thing it's not being used as a silly buzzword here.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Sure, I just thought I'd mention.

[DJ]

What concrete privilege do I have as a man? Because none of things I've seen listed here aligns with my observations of the world around me.

[palsch]

What concrete privilege do I have as a man? Because none of things I've seen listed here aligns with my observations of the world around me.

The analogy in this essay (and I'd recommend the followup posts as well) might help more, but I'll take a shot at it.

Privilege is something you have in comparison to those who don't have it, not something absolute. So your life can suck horribly despite your privilege. It's just that if someone without that privilege was in the same position their life would suck horribly in addition to having to deal with issues you aren't even aware of.

There is an extensive male privilege checklist here. It's OK but doesn't do things the way I would. I prefer pointing out privilege by pointing out it's lack - you point at things women have to worry about or deal by fact of being a woman. Pointing at men and listing their advantages means you have to keep dealing with other exceptions and issues of intersectionality that make things harder to understand.

[GlyphGryph]

But it says lots of good things, for example:

Pointing out that men are privileged in no way denies that bad things happen to men. Being privileged does not mean men are given everything in life for free; being privileged does not mean that men do not work hard, do not suffer. In many cases – from a boy being bullied in school, to a soldier dying in war – the sexist society that maintains male privilege also does great harm to boys and men.

People are aware of your concerns.

It's also important to note, beforehand, I think, that the article is talking about trends and probabilities, not guarantees - the odds tilted in your favour still leaves plenty of examples of things not working out, and people are really bad at statistics so it's often hard to see. This is why privilege is often called "invisible" - it's easy to rationalize away, or ignore, or discount, because exceptions tend to draw more attention than the rule they are being excepted from...

[DJ]

That list has some terribly loaded language. And it implies that some prejudiced behaviour is standard fare when it's actually very rare.

Anyway, as far as statistics are concerned. If statistically significant minority in any observed field is women, doesn't it disqualify the opinion that the field is entirely closed to women? Naturally, there is still the option of it being harder to get into for women because the system is set up against them, but it's not the only possible option. It may also be that less women attempt it, and I believe this to be the case. If this is the reason, then the problem is in lack of self-confidence. Reasons for this can be an interesting debate, but a more important question is how to address the problem. And I think that making videos about how the Universe is conspiring against them is counterproductive to improving these women's self-confidence. Far more would be accomplished with highlighting positive examples to serve as proof that it (whatever it is) can be done. Of course, that wouldn't be as profitable, because fear sells like hot-cakes in the Western society (just look at FOX News).

[Vector]

Part of the problem is that those positive examples are

a. few and far between, thanks to centuries of oppression

b. often quietly forgotten about even when they do exist (see above)

So yes, you're right that saying technical fields in general are "entirely closed to women" is ridiculous, but being in it is still a ridiculous uphill struggle (which is what I think they usually mean when they say the fields are entirely closed--imprecise language, tsk tsk).  I think mentioning the above, and mentioning it loudly, is necessary because many people simply don't know the facts.  It's important in some contexts to say "X woman discovered the universe is mostly hydrogen" AND "we never mention her name in textbooks" because there remains the question--exactly how many of us are still being forgotten about?

(Hell, I don't even remember her name)

Personally, I think we need to build better support systems at the middle school through university levels.  I would also recommend more sensitivity training for grad students in university technical fields, because seriously, I don't usually get that much bullshit from professors (who as mentioned had to have some of that training themselves), but the graduate students I've had to deal with have all made my life miserable in a sexist-flavored sort of a way.

What I'm trying to say is this, I guess: I think that trying to have faith that women can become more than they've shown themselves to be and giving them resources to build those positive examples, behaving like the community actually thought they could be worth something, would go a really, really long way.

[Leafsnail]

The analogy in this essay (and I'd recommend the followup posts as well) might help more, but I'll take a shot at it.

This article is really patronizing, I don't think I'd recommend using it.

[Neonivek]

If I fail in my job or career, I can feel sure this won’t be seen as a black mark against my entire sex’s capabilities

This feels SO ironic to me. I mean this ENTIRE discussion is exactly this!

8. On average, I am taught to fear walking alone after dark in average public spaces much less than my female counterparts are.

That... isn't a privilege. It is also one of the few ones I could just reverse and put on the women's privilege list.

Don't get me wrong, not harping on the list as a whole... I am just a pedant, or was it pendent?

The only legitimate complaint I can give towards the checklist is that it is NOT a checklist of "Male privilege" it is a checklist of "What women do not have but would want to have" in disguise. It becomes more and more obvious and while I am aware that those things are the same at surface level there are differences between them.