A lot of the discussion I have seen on privilege, including some of this discussion, seems to proceed from a faulty understanding of the term itself: that “privilege” is a shorthand way of saying “who has it better”.
In that context, it makes perfect sense for people to argue that while certainly men have advantages in certain specifiable ways, women also have advantages in other specifiable (often complementary) ways, and so therefore this whole “privilege” thing is just a fancy term for a set of scales, where you can finely dice and measure all the various ways in which this group or that group has it better.
But that’s not what privilege means. Privilege is the ways in which the social system hands you an advantage because of a characteristic you have which you did little or nothing to earn.
Like many things which are real, privilege cannot be directly measured, but its presence and nature can be imperfectly inferred from the ways it acts on other things. If you could take two essentially identical human beings, different only in the unearned characteristic you are comparing, and drop them into the same circumstance, the difference in outcome would be a perfect manifestation of privilege. Practically, this is difficult, but it has been done to a limited extent.
Lists of examples of privilege are very useful, but this is their Achilles’ heel. When you try to describe privilege abstractly, people quite reasonably say, “Can you give some examples?” So we come up with examples. But put enough examples together and to some people with privilege it starts to read like an indictment. (And for some people, “enough” is “one or two”.) They get defensive, and they start to say, “Well, but that’s not fair” and to think of ways to redress the balance… and miss the point entirely.
Yeah, that’s true. It’s not fair. That’s inherent in the nature of privilege. Like the closet, privilege hurts everyone involved; it just gives bigger helpings of hurt to the people with less of it.
Grace
Maybe it’s me, but the last paragraph seems to say the same as the one above in this quote.
Ways in which a social system hands you advantages because of something you didn’t and couldn’t decide. -> Ways in which a group is “having it better”.
It often leads to this conclusion because whenever privilege in the feminist sense is used, it’s used in a unidirectional, privilege-flows-one-way-only way. This is true of white privilege, of cis privilege and of straight privilege. It’s also used that way for male privilege, while the one-sidedness is not as straight-forward.
I could try and look for an example of trans privilege, and the only one I could possibly come up is “Being confronted to a shitty society’s disgusting attitudes towards people like you and actually surviving it, means you are a mentally tougher person afterwards (and possibly a more traumatized one too). You have a point of view very few people even entertain the possibility of existing.”
But we could say a similar thing for the privilege of being conscripted in a deadly war and surviving it (not exactly a good way to live, but some say its what makes a man manly).
I can come up with dozens of examples of male privilege, and examples of female privilege, and they vary on what you value. Cis privilege’s only disadvantage seems to be being blinded by a binary and not knowing there are actual alternatives (ie the disprivilege of not knowing something is questionable, objectionable as a concept, and basing one’s entire existence around this concept). It’s like someone raised Amish not knowing they could live in another way, because of conservative religious extreme shelteredness and brainwashing, from early childhood, and all around you.
I mean the Musem of Creation is in the US for a reason. Very young kids over there are getting told that Barney the dinosaur’s prehistoric equivalent (who lived 5000 years ago only) lived happily with humans. And then not taught critical thinking. They won’t think to question that for a long time, if at all. So are cis people: being told since they’re 2 that pink + vagina = girl, forever female and identified that way strongly, and if you don’t you’re the weird one. And that no-pink + penis = boy, forever male and identified that way strongly and if you don’t you’re the weird one.
I bet people don’t identify as strongly as their sex as they like to think. They just never think about it. Consider it a done deal, proven fact, let’s move on.
I identify strongly as female, at least strong enough to justify social and medical transition. But I’m not that feminine. Not that I’m masculine either. I’m kind of right near the middle. My expression of self seems to be culturally gender-neutral. I like stuff judged feminine about as much as I like stuff judged masculine. And feel unconstrained to like both at the same time, including publicly, unapologetically. Boys have less freedom to do the exact same, are made to feel shame about their feminine likes in a way I’m not about my masculine likes (nor my feminine likes, they’re perfectly acceptable in me only because I’m perceived as female).
So is there “wealth privilege”, which is real for some people (Bill Gates’ children were born into billions), not a thing for other people (Joe Johnson clawed his way up from dire poverty and is now a multi-millionaire, but he earned every nickel), and kind of a thing for others (Bill Gates was born into a comfortable level of societal wealth, but later earned billions)?
Not meaning to derail, I just like tight definitions that don’t have holes like this, which require a lot of processing and analysis to establish case by case.
Not that you asked, but I’d ditch the clause about things you didn’t do anything in particular to have, and I’d substitute something about ‘things that do not bear directly on my character’. That gets rid of the ambiguity around things like wealth – earned? unearned? – or ease with which someone can emulate gender norms and ‘pass’ – and grounds it in things that aren’t behavioral. Wealth or poverty don’t directly bear on character in and of themselves, so now you can have wealth privilege without worrying about where it came from; at the same time ‘hard work and fair dealing’ do bear on character, so you don’t end up with ‘hard work and fair dealing privilege’ which would be silly.
Robert:
I would say “yes”. In some ways it’s different for Joe Ragstoriches, who has known dire poverty, and therefore is probably more aware of his privilege, than John InheritedBillions, who certainly has no direct experience of what it’s like to be that poor, and may not have any exposure to it. I recall a discussion where my high school classmates and I were talking about college prospects, and I mentioned financial aid, and a wealthy classmate paused and then said, as though the thought were new to him, “Wow, it must suck to have to worry about whether you can pay for college.”
(I am not drawing a parallel between my circumstances growing up and abject poverty; but I am drawing on my own experience of a much wealthier person’s cluelessness.)
However, both Joe and John experience systemic advantages by virtue of having wealth which Jim Notapenny does not experience. Note that it’s not just having the money which confers the privilege; it’s the collateral effects of having the money. Jim Notapenny may be able to eat today, but the collateral effects of not always being able to eat leave marks. When those marks prompt different responses from the system than Joe, John, or Josh Middleincome get, that’s privilege.
I can’t help you with that. Privilege is multilayered, intersectional, and slippery. It’s part of a self-sustaining, complex collection of systems. I can’t provide you with a tidy definition, tied up in a bow, which is applicable in all situations. No one can; that’s why people use privilege lists to try to explain it.
People can discuss in good faith where the line is between something which is privilege and something which is not privilege. (However, in my experience, these discussions are extremely difficult to have between people with different privilege, and many, many discussions are not in good faith, as they often consist of one person denying benefiting from privilege in the first place.)
That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. It’s slippery. I don’t pretend to understand it completely, though I understand it better than I did yesterday, because I’m working on it. If you like, think of me as trying to put some sand on that slippery oil slick.
Grace
You’re oppressing me with your post author privilege and reasonable seeker after truth privilege, knock it off ;)
No, I understand that it IS slippery and appreciate your sand-laying efforts. (And boy are you right that there is a difference between having been rich and getting rich later.) Not trying to foster any big slick spots myself, just sort of…looking for the grittier patches of sand. “Ooh, spread this.”
Schala,
I’m afraid that I have had difficulty following your response, and also some of your other responses. I am confused by this:
You quoted about half my post. The last paragraph of what, my post? Which one above in this quote? The quote of half of my post?
If I understand you correctly, I don’t think I would disagree with that. I was drawing a distinction between privilege as I tried to describe it in my post, and privilege as some people apparently understand it to mean a contest about whose group has it worst overall, where you can compare things like “women don’t get drafted” with “men overwhelmingly do the dirty jobs and die in them at a higher rate”. This sort of attempt at comparison was very clear in nomoreh1b’s post, where he was working toward quantifying the various hardships men suffer versus those women suffer. That sort of thing is necessary in a court of law, where you have to decide on a penalty when someone is wronged and money is the medium, but it’s completely beside the point when it comes to trying to understand privilege.
However, I disagree with pretty much all of this. I have seen the terms “male privilege” and “female privilege” used in ways which are clearly not unidirectional. (Some people argue that “female privilege” does not exist, because women don’t have enough power overall to experience privilege. I’m not certain of that, but I’m still chewing on that part of it, so I’m not going to express a firm opinion.) Likewise, I have seen “white privilege” juxtaposed against other forms of racial privilege. Easy example: in Japan, white people have relatively less privilege than Japanese people (but still more than black people). So in Japan, white people don’t have white privilege.
I do agree that it’s awfully hard to find an example of trans privilege. I agree that the one you came up with is not something I would call privilege.
Sure, to some extent, they do. Privilege is to some extent situational, and certainly variable in many ways.
With all that said, I hope I’m understanding you. If I haven’t, can you boil down your most important point and try to be as direct as possible about it?
Grace
My interpretation is that Grace is drawing a very technical distinction. Privilege is the difference between advantages you have with a privileged status and what advantages you would get if that status was removed. Whether Group 1 has it better than Group 2 is just a comparison of how well each of them have it given their current status.
Illustration. 1 is an advantage, 0 is a disadvantage. Position with current gender is bold, alternative under other gender is normal.
male female
Joe 1 0
Bob 1 0
Sam 0 1
Jill 1 1
Lisa 1 1
Jane 1 1
Women as a group are doing better than men (1+1+1)>(1+1+0), but men have more privileges, because they are doing better than they would if they were women (1+1+0)>(0+0+1), while women would do just as well if they were men (1+1+1)=(1+1+1).
I mean the first paragraph vs the next, in the quote. But I guess there was one more, it took more than I wanted when cutting.
Its the 2nd vs the 3rd.
I don’t get what Alex is saying with his example, because privileges are situational.
You can usually just have it one way, unless you’re extremely flexible and/or like gaming the system to have it all.
Either employers think you won’t take care of kids, so ignore your parenting needs, or they think you’ll take time off to raise kids and discriminate against you in hiring. They don’t do both.
Robert @ 2:
I think there are two kinds of privilege that tend to be conflated here: the privilege of having substantial economic power and the privilege of being or having been the responsibility of a person or people with substantial economic power. Bill Gates’s children (and to a lesser extent Gates himself) have the latter. Joe has only the former.
It’s an understandable mistake, particularly as people who have the latter almost inevitable have the former, at least eventually.
Fixed that for you.
And you know, this really isn’t a semantic issue. It’s a propaganda issue.
Folks are constantly appearing to be shocked–SHOCKED–when their completely-random choice of a common term, which is in wide use with a relatively standard set of definitions, gets interpreted in the standard way by a lot of folks. Come on. People get upset when you say they’re privileged because that is not how the world views the word, outside academia and certain political groups.
In fact, the normal use of the word privilege is why they chose that word, and why people continue to use it. Rather than adopting a word like “kyristatus” or whatever the hell you can think of, the word deliberately conveys precisely the opposite of what you’re claiming.
You can talk about privilege (or kyristatus) in good faith. But frannkly, most folks don’t. I’m not sure that you do, either.
You said, for example:
Really? So, when you’re talking about privilege, your point has nothing to do with any way to redress the balance, whether directly or indirectly?
I call bullshit.
I support your right to lobby for your positions whether they’re libertarian or redistributionalist; whether you support AA on diversity or compensation grounds; whether you want legislation based on a 77% or 95% gender pay gap. But I am getting sick of what amounts to propaganda and deception.
I mean, jesusfuckingchrist, how can you keep a straight face while claiming (in essence) that privilege is really just about becoming aware of something, not trying to change it? It’s the lying, not the political position, that I can’t stand.
A distinction that I think is missing from this discussion, and that I think is where a lot of discussions of privilege end up going off the rails entirely, is that between the external effects of privilege–as a man, I am more likely to able to; as a white man, I am more likely to be able to, as a cisgendered heterosexual white man I am more likely to be able to, etc. and so on–and the ways in which the privileges ostensibly afforded to me by those statuses are also a set of internalized expectations and interiorized experiences of myself that will still be there even if the, in any given situations, I don’t get the external benefits I listed above. So, for example, if I am the only white man in a racially and ethnically mixed group–i.e., everyone else is a woman–especially if I am not in a position of authority within the group, many of the privileges that I might normally take for granted would not necessarily be available to me; that doesn’t mean I don’t still experience myself as possessing all the privileges that come with being a white man; nor does it mean that my experience in that group invalidates the fact that those privileges exist in the larger society, that they are structural, institutionalized and so on–pretty much what Grace said in the original post.
I also think it’s important to recognize when those who argue that they are not privileged as fill-in-the-blank are, in fact, tacitly recognizing the existence of the privilege. In other words, there is a difference between saying male privilege doesn’t exist at all, stop imputing to me this imaginary thing and turning me into something I am not, and arguing, simply, that I don’t have male privilege. If I don’t have it, then it’s out there somewhere, and the questions to ask are why I don’t have it, whether anyone should have it, etc., not why someone else is saying it exists in the first place.
gin-and-whiskey:
You’re not sure? You seem pretty sure:
One of the things we cops learn, in court, is that when opposing counsel can’t effectively attack the evidence, they attack the officer.
If there is something specific I have done to offend you, I’d appreciate it if you would point it out, so that I can consider it and offer an apology if I think you’re right.
I, for one, am content to grant that you did not actually intend to impugn my integrity, but simply got a bit hyperbolic before you had your morning coffee. Perhaps you can grant, in return, that I am not deliberately seeking to obfuscate and destroy, but instead am tragically mistaken and misguided. With a bit of effort, we can work from there to having a discussion, as Robert and I have done, instead of exchanging salvos.
Until then, moving on to what I can make out of your point as I shield my face against your
spittlerighteous indignation:You appear to be objecting to my insistence on using “privilege” as a term of art instead of in its arguably more common sense, even in a specific context which is abundantly clear in the original posts. You also appear to be objecting that whoever chose “privilege” to describe this phenomenon should have chosen some other term, because the one they chose is confusing, being close enough to the original meaning that people have trouble distinguishing them without the bright light of routine qualification.
On the second point, I think that ship has sailed. Peggy McIntosh apparently first threw the Molotov cocktail which started this brushfire in 1988. Since then, there has been a lot of conversation about it, some of which has somehow managed to avoid lexical ambivalence. In circles which discuss feminism and racisms and other isms, this term is common parlance. Feel free to propose a new term and lobby for its adoption. If you come up with a good one, you might persuade me to switch.
On the first point, I confess that I don’t have much sympathy. Your own profession cherishes its jargon, of which “term of art” is an example, and so does mine. In my job, a “cruiser” is a patrol car. In the rest of the world, it’s a warship smaller than a battleship and larger that a destroyer, OR a leisure yacht, OR any car which is smooth at high speeds.
Probably that last meaning is where we police officers get our term of art. Somehow we manage to muddle along, each understanding what the others mean when they use the term, even though our term derived from a common meaning and is still related to it.
Perhaps I’m being dense, and you will manage to demonstrate why using “privilege” as a term of art is so difficult. Personally, I suspect that it is a combination of sloppy thinking and a failure to read closely, leavened with a deeply-seated desire to avoid conceding that the phenomenon exists and that people benefit from it, even unasked.
Grace
Richard:
I agree, and I think that this is a good point to try to define when someone is arguing against the notion of privilege.
A few years ago I put the concept of privilege to a colleague of mine. He’s a white man, a Navy veteran, a tactical officer and general badass cop, sometimes prone to ludicrously offensive jokes which he is careful to tell only where people who would be offended cannot hear them. Not, in other words, the sort of person who might be expected to sign right on to the notion that he has benefited from unearned advantages. His reaction: “Huh. Yeah, I dig it.” And he then went on to give an example, so he clearly had a grasp on it.
I wonder what it is that he has which people who fight tooth-and-nail against the existence of privilege don’t. Possibly the self-possession to own that unearned advantage and not let the fact of it kneecap him with guilt.
Grace
Alex:
Okay, this is exactly where I think we go off the rails. I think that this kind of analysis may be useful sometimes, but is orthogonal to the notion of privilege. It seems to me that what you’ve done is to employ the scales which I was arguing against in my post. But I think that’s a distraction from the point of talking about privilege, which is not to figure out which group is more advantaged (which I think is usually pretty obvious) but rather, to showcase the ways in which that advantage works and perpetuates.
Maybe this is part of the problem. Privilege is simply not 101 material; it’s useful not to demonstrate the FACT of systemic inequalities, but rather to understand the NATURE of systemic inequalities. If you’re still arguing over fact, then it’s the wrong tool. You don’t use a ruler to demonstrate that the shrapnel is in there; that’s what the metal detector is for. You use the ruler on the X-ray to describe how big the shrapnel is, and what it’s close to, and how it’s causing problems, and whether it’s worth it to try to get it out.
Thanks, Alex!
Grace
The problem with male vs female privilege is that we’re not comparing people who have it good vs people who have it bad (ie rich vs poor people), we’re comparing something like people who live in a swamp vs people who live in a cold mountain.
Both have their problems, they’re unlikely to be the same problems. And the problem isn’t that they don’t have the same problems (ie making them equal would mean both live in swamp or both on mountain), it’s that the system doesn’t let anyone choose, and treats them differently on an inherent basis.
Ideally making stuff better means both get a choice to live in the swamp, on the plains, or in the mountain, or underwater if they want. Add a forest and we have the 5 colors of mana in Magic: The Gathering (blue is island, but meh).
If equality is defined as having women have more choice, period, the end. It implies men already have those choices, or that it doesn’t matter that they don’t.
“A lot of the discussion I have seen on privilege, including some of this discussion, seems to proceed from a faulty understanding of the term itself: that “privilege” is a shorthand way of saying “who has it better”.”
But that is the logical conclusion of someone having a privilege. It must mean that person or group has or is given special beneficial considerations that another individual or group does not have, so it seems a little disingenuous to then say the obvious conclusion that the ‘privilged’ class has it better is somehow inaccurate ignores the essential nature of what it means to have privilege.
So in between earning a living and other obligations, I have thought about how to reply to Johnny’s post in this thread.
I would really like to engage on the substance of his comment. I’m still working on my own understanding of privilege, and I find it frustrating that I cannot articulate my understanding better. It’s not my usual experience. I hope that I’ll do better in the future, and particularly on this topic.
But what I trip over here is “disingenuous”. Now two people in this thread have accused me of duplicity. I don’t understand why. In my view, questioning a person’s integrity is not a step to be taken lightly. I am an inherently fallible human being trying to discuss and explore things which I understand imperfectly, the better to understand them more perfectly, and that seems to me a far more likely explanation of the discrepancies Johnny and gin-and-whiskey see in my part of these discussions. Further, it is the kinder supposition, and the truth of the matter.
So, I’m going to try out a new personal policy for awhile: I’m not going to spend my limited personal hours talking to people who call me a liar. I don’t think it’s worth my time.
Grace
For what it’s worth, I have used “disingenuous” as kind of an all-purpose weasel phrase meaning “I think if you thought your position through with sufficient clarity you would realize X, but X is something that – possibly for very good reasons – you are reluctant to lay down on, and so you’re kind of waffling around things rather than just take X as a starting point and move on”.
Rather than “you know X, you lying liar of a liebot, so quit your lying and admit I’m right and X is the one truth and you suck”, per se. But that’s just me.
I will admit that I am not a past master of progressive privilege theory, and I’ll also admit that a theory of privilege that doesn’t include at least a footnote stating “and thus those with the privilege are better off” seems pretty goofy, and unconvincing. With the footnote, a lot of the theory seems plausible. I’ve seen how cops and bureaucrats treat me as opposed to black people in the same circumstances, I’ve seen how civil and private institutions treat me as opposed to a woman in the same circumstances; “white male privilege” is not something I will wave my hand at and say “silly liberals, making things up again”.
At the same time, the counterarguments about death in war and violence and social condemnation of non-orthodox gender expression also seem to have some merit. I appreciate hearing the viewpoints of everyone who comes into the conversation with at least apparent goodwill and I think that people like yourself, who can provide first-hand reporting from both sides of the gender experience divide, have a lot to say. So I hope you don’t refrain from continuing to say it, even if some people are perceived (rightly or wrongly) as thinking you’re a big ole liar with disingenuous ways.
Maybe Scalzi’s post is a useful link here:
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-the-lowest-difficulty-setting-there-is/
Elusis, I like that.
In the end, what people want to know is relatively simple: Who deserves to get extra help/attention/money/sympathy/consideration/employment/etc? And who is going to be responsible for providing it?
The concept of privilege as a tool for understanding but not for action is comparatively meaningless. If all that you do is to talk about an issue without trying to change an issue, then from a social perspective you’d be better off focusing your efforts elsewhere. “Yes, black people are discriminated against, fascinating” is bizarre; we expect folks to replace “fascinating” with “that’s bad, and should stop.”
So then you get back to answering the underlying question: who gets the benefits, and who pays the costs? And that’s a lot more complex, because then you start talking about specifics. Should you prioritize the needs of one group over another? What if someone carries a lot of certain privileges but is nonetheless far down the kyriarchy–poor, white, uneducated, unemployed people?
The discussion may be global. But the effects are local. And the more local that you get, the more granular, and less smooth, things get.
Take a group of 1 million men and 1 million women and you’ll find a lot of things which are usually mostly true, whether it’s “men are more privileged” or “men are taller.” Look into your class, or your grade, or your school, or your smallish company, and you’ll find a lot of exceptions, reversals, and so on.
“Straight white male” is the easiest way for many people. But not for everyone, obviously, in every situation.
Some folks ignore that; they either don’t acknowledge that reversals exist (stupid) or they simply figure that they’re not worth focusing on (rational, at least in the general sense of large-scale interventions.) But no matter which tack you take, it comes down to a weighing of privilege: How much are you willing to ignore? How much are you willing to prioritize one set of needs over another?
And perhaps most of all: Who the hell gets to judge the end result?
I don’t think that’s necessarily the most relevant question.
http://www.drsheilaaddison.com/2012/05/18/so-what-if-privilege-is-the-lowest-difficulty-setting-a-response-to-scalzis-post/
http://www.drsheilaaddison.com/2012/05/24/quick-post-a-great-example-of-using-ones-privilege-for-good/
(I intended to start a whole series on positive uses of privilege, and have a bunch of examples jotted down in my writing notes, but life got a little out of hand.)
Sure. And that post says–as I’ve maintained from the beginning–that the real point about discussing privilege is that you are supposed to do something about it. “We’re just trying to talk about it, not get the privileged to give up their position” isn’t true. At all.
“Doing something about it” may not involve a physical transfer of wealth or goods from Group A to Group B. But it involves–at the least–an assignment of mental effort from one view to another, and that’s a cost at least as “real” and major as giving up five bucks. Or, the most common request: make your (privileged) voice less important, and step aside for the voice of someone else. That’s a high cost.
When you start talking about transfer of wealth; effort; speech or social capital (a different type of wealth) and such things… well, you tend to say “how do you imagine that will happen?” and take a position somewhere between two general extremes.
The extremist non-transfer type says “well, we can’t support ANY transfer of ANYTHING until we have 100% complete perfect information regarding every single kyriarchical status, and 100% means to ensure 0% error rate.”
The extremist pro-transfer type says “well, all I care about is getting the transfers done and the river flowing in what i think is the “right” direction; I am confident enough that the transfers are necessary that I will not shake my confidence by discussing when they’ll stop; what the costs may be; whether the transferee and transferor groups are properly selected; or anything else.”
Both of the extreme positions are ridiculous. I don’t actually hang out with many right wing folks so I don’t know how common the view is, but an unfortunate amount of liberals seem to be in the extreme left camp.
Classic “bingo” examples of the extreme left might include:
1) Classifying any attempts to define boundaries as improper. The question “I see you’re proposing that we start ____. How would we know when ____ program should end?” is a reasonable one. Refusing to answer it is zealotry. Classifying it as 101 and also refusing to answer is it idiotic zealotry.
2) Refusing to discuss underlying foundational issues. If you say “we need to do this because of ____” then you need to discuss ___. You can’t reasonably claim that “the scope of male privilege is fully established; the only question is when we start the transfer;” you need to be willing to discuss the scope. As above, refusing to answer it is zealotry. Classifying it as 101 and also refusing to answer is idiotic zealotry.
3) One-sided-bias claims. The classic example here is that men’s opinions regarding sexism are less valuable, because men are biased to deny sexism. Which is true–men ARE biased by self-interest to deny sexism; whites are biased by self-interest to deny racism, and so on. But so is everyone else. If “men are privileged and we should fix that” is the claim, then BOTH SIDES have incentives which match with bias. Self-interested men would deny the claim. Self-interested women would support the claim. Claims of bias work both ways; liberals don’t see that.
4) Classifying common arguments as less valid due to their commonality. This problem is plain ol’ dumbnedd. “Bingo” (used here ironically) is a great example: Do you know why so many particular arguments come up time and time again? Because often they’re sensible arguments, which are difficult to answer.
G&W – You’re treating privilege as a zero-sum game, but it really isn’t. It’s true, there are some privileges that are associated with power or material imbalances where that applies. But look at the male privilege list posted at this site. The vast majority of them are not in the category of “men have more stuff than women” or “men have more power than women”, but rather “men are more likely to be treated with respect than women”.
And respect is not a zero-sum game. You don’t lose respect by treating others more respectfully, there’s no transfer involved.
Privilege lists have been useful to me because they make me learn more about how my behaviour is interpreted by, and how it affects, others. They make me more concious of my assumptions when I deal with people who have different backgrounds than me. Obviously, the lists are reductive and simplistic. Obviously, not all items on the lists apply to my personal experience. And I’m no activist or model of self-sacrifice. I’m not engaged in the endeavour of trying to fix all of society’s ills. That doesn’t mean that the privilege lists are useless to me, or that I feel that if I read them I’m somehow pressured to become anything other than more self-aware.
What about the FF101 claim that sexism against men and/or by women is impossible (ie men can also be sexist against men, that’s what some call “white knights”)?
Society itself denies sexism against men. So patriarchy is biased to deny sexism-based discrimination against its “ruler class” (which I think is the 1%, not all males). Society is unlikely to want to court male voters with male-centered issues like services for DV against them or rape against them, or financial aid for poverty against them. Apparently some theory is that men don’t care either way (though it would be hard to measure that since I’ve yet to see a politician actively being pro-man in those ways), so no need to court their vote.
The reason for the lack of sympathy for what men suffer is simple: We (society) give men so much perceived agency that everything that happens to them (or that they do) is seen as their own damn fault. If they can’t provide for themselves, or make themselves go psychologically better on their own…then they don’t merit to be helped either. Because being male is being self-sufficient, so say the role. The expectation bar is way up there, comparable to how a mother is judged for kids’ behavior.
It also means that any crime they commit is NEVER caused by circumstances (like poverty, being beaten, being manipulated). They have so much agency they’re unaffected by all that. They actively choose to be evil. Only reason possible. So says the criminal system. Hence they’re punished more heavily than women, whom are seen as not entirely responsible for the crimes they commit.
It really seems to me that most roles, and thus privileges tied to them, come from perceived hyperagency and perceived hypoagency.
And to quote Eytan:
Respect comes with being assumed to have had some free will into doing what you did, wether it was good or bad. It didn’t “just happen to you”, and it’s not “someone who made you do it”, wether it’s being a CEO or The Don. That’s true even if the CEO grew up with Batman’s wealth and The Don grew up with thugs all around them as step-family.
I love this entry. You really break down privilege to make it make sense. People often think that privilege means that someone has to be unhappy, but that isn’t the case. While some people would argue that men do not have the “privilege” because being a female isn’t negative and there are hardships within each gender- that clearly isn’t the point. I loved your perspective on this and the way you approached the subject!
Chelsea
chelseasimmons.wordpress.com
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