Tag: privilege

Also Maybe It’s Best To Think About Calling Out Privileged Actions

In terms of who’s denying the oppressed person a basic right.

Like in the case of it being acceptable to non-consensually touch marginalized people, the person doing the touching is denying a woman or black person or whoever the right not to be touched without their consent.

In the case of the straight couple having an easier time living together openly than a gay couple?  The straight couple isn’t the one making it hard for the gay couple to live together openly, it’s people like landlords, bosses, families, and communities that might ostracize them.

Or in the case of dude authors getting published more than lady authors, a dude who wrote a book that wrote a mediocre book that got published instead of a lady’s not as mediocre book isn’t at fault.  The publisher, and book reviewers, and societal norms are, but it’s a lot easier to just vent your frustration on the dude who wrote a mediocre book even though like if he hadn’t written that mediocre book it would have been some other dude with a mediocre book but like actually you shouldn’t because that doesn’t address the problem in a way that’ll help and makes a scapegoat of some rando dude so that people vent their rage without actually changing the system that caused the problem in the first place.

Like the fact that there isn’t always a single person, easily confronted villain is shitty, but like if we want to actually change society we have to be ready to address broad systemic concerns as broad and systemic rather than going after symbolic targets that change nothing.

Privilege Problems

There’s a weird thing with privilege where like a lot of demonstrations of privilege are not things privileged people should stop doing. Like white men feel safer walking alone at night than women and POC do. Should white dudes stop walking alone at night? No. Do straight couples have an easier time living together openly than gay couples? Yes. Does that mean they should stop? No. 

But then like sometimes “a demonstration of privilege” is used to mean some behavior that the does need to stop, like men relying on women for domestic and emotional labor or white people touching black people without their consent and I think the lack of a line between “something oppressed people need to be free to do” and “something privileged people need to knock off doing” leads to weird confusion where dudes are like “Are you telling me not to walk at night?” and I’m like “No, but women have to be vigilant in a way you don’t, so like try to give them space and not make them feel threatened”.

Cause like what would dudes who are trying not to make women feel threatened not going out at night get me?  A night full of actively hostile dudes and dudes who don’t care which is an even more threatening prospect cause there are even fewer potential helpers out there.

I feel like oppressed groups are denied basic rights, which are things everyone should be allowed, like being able to walk alone safely at night and oppressor groups are given privileges to treat oppressed groups in ways no one should be treated, like the freedom to touch people without their consent and not receive any repercussions.

You see what I mean?

Also People Are Really Upset By The Idea That All Categories Have Fuzzy Edges

Especially with like privilege based discourse, people want categories of people to have very tidy edges, but like privilege isn’t an on/off switch, it’s gradient, fuzzy at the edges, and I mean everything is fuzzy at the edges, like the category of planet, a human derived concept to distinguish some lumps of shit in space from other lumps of shit in space, may or may not include notable lump of shit in space, pluto.  What’s a mammal and what isn’t. The line between brunette and blonde.  What’s a fruit vs what’s a berry.  Who qualifies as straight?  How we define all the lines between categories are somewhat arbitrary and gradient.   Which is not to say we shouldn’t discuss how different categories of people are treated because of the categories we’ve created, but we have to remember that the boundaries of social constructs are often hazier than we’d like to believe.

Like for example back to the who’s straight thing, in some cultures men who are attracted to both men and women and are the active partner in all their sexual relations are considered straight, and there’s been a big debate about asexuals, and whether bisexuals in het relationships are, or people of non-binary genders in het passing relationships are and believe me I’m not touching those arguments with a 400 foot pole, but I think what’s really important is to note that they’re being had because it goes to show that like where the boundaries of straightness are is fuzzy, and I mean I think it’s kind of important to think about what we mean by straight, straight to who, straight in what context?  Because like how society guages your identity obviously affects how you get treated, and also like your own understanding of your identity affects how you react, and respond to social messages and IDK I guess this idea of privilege as a light switch that is either on or off just kind of bugs me because it’s such an over simplification, which isn’t to say that I think privilege isn’t a useful tool for discussing systemic shit, but that it’s important to remember that it’s a simplification, and like simplifications and arbitrary divisions are necessary to be able to talk about anything, but also that it’s important to remember that they are simplifications.