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Remedial women's studies course
Posts
Everybody's accomplishments are a combination of endogenous and exogenous forces.
Privilege means you have more exogenous forces in your favor. It does not mean that you have fewer endogenous forces.[/QUOTE]
I love you, Feral.
Anecdote.
I'm a 27 year-old black male. I live in a predominantly caucasian, religiously conservative town. However, there is also a college in this town, with quite an ardent women's studies, erm... group(I say 'group,' because there is an active organisation/community surrounding it). I've had a fairly high number of jobs since I left the house, and in most cases have worked with and been subordinate to women. So, I've got one group pushing me from one side, and another group from the other.
It's been miserable. And, come to think of it, there could be a movie script in it somewhere.
XBL: DexHavok
welp
I think pointing her out as "here is a cool essay" isn't that much misrepresentation
and uh, the purpose of this thread is wmst 101 soooooo.
Privilege is something that happens to individuals, not something they themselves do individually. It's always part of a larger system.
Essentially, it's not your fault, but it exists anyway. Be aware of it.
People generally are motivated to think of themselves as smart, good, attractive people, and they have various positive illusions that they use to maintain this fact. Evidence suggests that having these positive illusions is generally healthy most of the time.
Recognizing one's own privilege, however, goes against these positive illusions. Rather than thinking of ourselves as good people, we are forced to acknowledge that we continuously, implicitly benefit from systems of oppression. This is generally a difficult thing to accept, and that is why so many people inherently recoil from the very concept of privilege. They try to maintain their view of themselves as someone who is not privileged through a variety of ways.
At some point, however, some people decide to accept the idea that they are, in fact, privileged. In exchange for this loss of the positive illusion of being "not privileged," they gain the positive illusion of "knowing that they are privileged." They get to feel good about the fact that they are the kind of person who knows in what ways they are privileged.
The trick is, however, that recognizing one's own privilege is not a "one time and you're done" sort of thing. Privilege takes a wide variety of forms and manifestations, and recognizing one's own privilege is not a one-time confession -- it's a continuous process. But because people develop the new positive illusion that they know the ways in which they are privileged, they still inevitably find themselves resisting the process.
That's why, in arguments between activists, feminists, etc., you will see lots of people pointing to each other and calling each other privileged. The reason that this type of argument is a) so widespread and yet b) generally so ineffective is that people want to assert their knowledge of privilege over others. Each person has a different understanding of privilege, and when someone else's understanding appears to them to have a "blind spot," that is where debate occurs.
As a side note, I think this primarily happens in spheres where there are lots of people who are privileged in one way but not in another; for example, white, middle-class women talking about feminism.
Obviously, the end result is that you have to develop a way of seeing yourself where you don't ever feel content in your knowledge of privilege. The moment that you say, "Ah, I know exactly all the ways in which I'm privileged," that is the moment where you will have a difficult time being able to engage in discussions about privilege. Unfortunately, I think that this sort of thing is very hard to do -- it's very difficult to function as a person without those positive illusions, most of the time.
Even I cannot wrap my head around that one.
One of the concepts I mention a lot around here, so I apologize if people are sick of hearing it, is fundamental attribution error. Basically:
- When we observe other people's behavior, we attribute too much of it to personality and not enough of it to the situation. (For instance, if we see somebody acting like an asshole at a grocery cashier, we think "Man, what an asshole," not "Man, that guy must have been having a really bad day.")
- When we observer our own behavior, we attribute too much of it to the situation and not enough of it to personality. ("Sorry for being an asshole, I was having a really bad day.")
It actually goes a little deeper than that; it's more much pronounced for undesirable behaviors than for desirable behaviors. This is directly related to privilege for obvious reasons. It's easier to see the effects of social status in others than in ourselves, particularly if that effect is positive.
Well, one notion that I have heard, but I do not entirely agree with, is that "racism" is specifically the intersection of "racial prejudice" plus "power." It is a way of ordering society around race - not merely a personal attitude. In that way, it is possible for a disempowered group to be racially prejudiced, but not possible for the group to be racist.
I don't really like that notion, largely because that's not how most people use the term "racism" or "racist." "Racist" just means "racially prejudiced" in the vast majority of contexts.
No, I'm not going to self-censor what I have to say just because someone might not like the fact that it's coming from a fairly well-off white dude.
Rigorous Scholarship
I dont think thats being a conservative, thats being a Republican.
This post has levels.
Levels and levels and levels of self-congratulatory autofellatio.
An ouroburos of man sucking his own cock and giggling about it.
Privilege exists whether you like it or not. There is no virtue in staying willfully ignorant of the inequities in our society.
The issue is not that somebody might not like what you have to say because of your privilege. The issue is that your privilege affects what you have to say. If we're having a discussion on any given topic, and you say, "Well, I don't see the problem with {X}. {X} is normal. That's how the world works!" that's (partly) your privilege talking. Privilege informs your concepts of normalcy. Likewise, if you say "Well, it's crappy what happened to {disempowered person} but if she had acted {in this way that I consider normal} then maybe the bad thing wouldn't have happened to her!" then it's (partly) your privilege talking.
Rigorous Scholarship
It's about recognizing the way reality actually works.
Not that American conservatism really cares.
GT: batshido Hit me up on ME3.
Oh dude that's awesome, can you guys hand-wave away my student loans too?
Have you been reading the thread from the beginning? Feral has made some excellent points about how invoking privilege to shut down a discussion is not fruitful, and how "hearing" the invocation of privilege as an attempt to shut down a discussion isn't fruitful, either.
Is it not worth listening to the perspective of someone else and recognizing that just because it doesn't match your own, it's not automatically invalid?
Sometimes it is. Usually it's not. It's wrong to point to the few times that it clearly is an attempt to shut down conversation and generalize that to all instances of the usage of the word.
Well reading your posts gives everyone else a headache and leaves them unsatisfied, so I'm not sure "sex" is the analogy you want to be using here.
And of course it's sometimes worth listening to other peoples' perspectives.
Rigorous Scholarship
Well something I like to do in discussions is not have a discussion I'm recalling from earlier, but actually try to have the discussion being had at the moment
Then we can get to some good [strike]sexing[/strike] talking, no?
This is about as useful as "All Republicans are liars" or "There may be a few honest Conservatives, but the party as a whole is so intellectually worthless that anyone who admits to being a Conservative is not even worth talking to."
If you want to respond to a specific claim of racism or privilege and argue that its dishonest or bullshit, do that. This grand, sweeping "anyone who talks about race or gender is a mean poopie head who hurts my white man feelings" just makes you out to be a tool. You're not convincing anyone of anything and there's no useful debate to be had with any of your statements, they're intentionally vague and completely devoid of intellectual content.
If you have something to contribute, great. Otherwise, the "poor me, how terrible it is when other people talk about race or gender" shtick is tired and nobody is buying it.
I think it's more that I'm taking the time to explain it. There are other people whose views on privilege are even more nuanced than mine - Arivia, for instance, could run circles around me.
I have to point out here though that it is actually an aspect of privilege that you aren't forced to worry about privilege if you don't want to. That allows you to say "okay, if you're not going to explain it to me, then I'm just going to take my ball and go home." There's more of an onus on those of us interested in identity politics or power politics to explain our terminology than those who are interested in, say, economics or physics. If I didn't know what "pareto optimal" or "externalities" meant, I wouldn't complain that those terms are being used to shut down discourse about economics until I'd made a good faith effort independently to try to understand them. I certainly appreciate it when people explain unfamiliar terminology to me, and I may ask for it, but I don't expect it.
But one of the key points here is that privilege excuses blindness towards privilege itself, which can be manifested by the attitude "if you don't explain privilege to me in a way that satisfies me, I'm just going to assume that it's a meaningless concept."
Respect knucks?
Then privlege isn't particularly meaningful because as members of society we should all be competent enough to know what the norms are. Acknowleging the way things work isn't necessarily an endorsement of the way things work. My understanding that most of the internet is made up of prepubescent boys that are terrified of women and as a result will behave pretty fucking childishly around them isn't "privlege", it's common sense.
Referring to someone making such an observation as "privleged" is an intellectually lazy attempt to label them, instead of addressing reality.
#FreeScheck
#FreeSKFM
You can call me privileged if you want, but it doesn't hurt my feelings because I generally consider the concept to be hogwash spawned in the least intellectually vigorous academic disciplines (i.e, the ones that deal with identity politics).
Rigorous Scholarship
Is driving around town without being pulled over a privilege? Is playing a videogame online without someone messaging you about how hard they want to fuck you a privilege?
I don't know what term would be better, but a "privilege" insinuates that something is given in excess of a basic right, a "bonus," something special and unusual that shouldn't normally be expected.
I'm not calling you privileged, I'm calling you intellectually dishonest and barely worth talking to. Do you have anything even slightly resembling an example or a point of intellectual merit? "Oh hey most people who use these terms are dicks that's all I got!"
Great. I'm so glad you contributed.
You are missing the point. If we acknowledge that there are certain expectations of normalcy, and even if we don't accept or condone that normalcy, that still doesn't deal with the reality that this expectation exists, and can inform people's opinions.
For instance, as is commonly brought up, the tradition of wives taking their husband's surname is a great study in male privilege. I am not saying this is a bad thing, and frankly that argument is beside the point I am making. It is seen as normal that the husband's surname is adopted by his wife when they are wed, and anything that runs counter to that is abnormal. Being able to be a man, and not have to worry about whether or not you will cause a cultural stir if you don't change your name when you wed is a privilege only men currently experience; women have no such benefit.
It is more intellectually lazy (and, as Feral pointed out, another aspect of a privileged position!) to disregard that some groups are given social advantages relative to other groups in similar socio-economic conditions (I.E. being a rich male versus being a rich female)
Privilege isn't a complaint or a charge against you. Nobody expects you to go back in time and isolate your past self from the influences that make you take your experiences for granted.
For example, I am a white male. I am used to seeing positive examples of people like me in the media, I can expect to be treated with respect and as a potential customer, and not a potential criminal in any store I enter, and I can expect anything I accomplish to generally be taken at face value and not in spite of or because of my race or gender.
These are not all bad things, nor do they make me a bad person. They are, however, not universal things that I should take for granted, and that is what understanding privilege is all about.
*edit* PotatoNinja, don't get mad at MM. Talking to him like that is where he gets these notions of privilege from. If you're not respectful he will keep thinking it's a strawman, which it is not.
I think this is semantics, and you know these are examples of classical privilege right? I assume you do, given other posts...
Regardless, these are still beneficial in that they confer no negative consequences. yes they are only beneficial relative to the opposite situation, but still, in the end it is a net benefit to not have to worry about these things.
Could you perhaps in detailed terms then explain why the concept is of no worth rather than making vague gesticulations towards its occasional misuse?
If the concept is hogwash there must be a reason that it is wrong.
So far you're just saying "it's beneath me" which doesn't really add anything to a place called Debate and Discourse.
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
Disregarding your edit, I have to say this:
BAM
Nailed it.
Also for some reason I thought you were a female...granted I don't know you very well, but for some reason....
This needs to be the second thing out of everyone's mouth who uses privilege as an argument, and it seems like often times it isn't. Maybe it comes from a general assumption that the other party should know this about privilege or maybe it comes from something more ignorant--"the other person is privileged, and therefore has an easier time of it regardless of our respective personal abilities."
Framed this way, though, it's much easier to swallow than, "Young white man, you have it good. Pay your taxes and admit you're a mysogynistic racist who has it easy when it comes to finding a job and getting loans."
Both of those are privileges.
The essay that Arivia pointed out and taoist drunk linked actually explains that pretty well.
There are good privileges, like being able to interview for a job without being discriminated against for your race. Those privileges we want to extend to everybody. And then there are bad privileges, like being able to get away with white collar crime with a slap on the wrist. We want to eliminate those privileges.
But, yes, a privilege is anything that gives one group an advantage or makes their lives easier, even if it is relatively minor, like having an easier time running a WoW guild. The key connotation is that privileges tend to be subtle, and easily ignored or understated by those who have them. Technically, Jim Crow laws were an example of privilege, but that's not the context we'd usually use the word, because Jim Crow laws were overt and privilege is usually more covert than that.
I'm hardpressed to think of any characteristic or quality that can't be shoved under the privilege rubric.
At the end of the day, what's the point of having such an overarching term that encompasses everything?
Rigorous Scholarship
FEMALE PRIVELGE