I’d also say it includes that the message that the people who disagree with you are the sheeple, and if you watch fox news, you are, if not part of the elite, then at least you know the score. It’s also about the us/them mentality, with no room for shades of grey.
Agred… but it also means that people will use that to their advantage.
What’s that line from the gogol bordello song? “Of course there is no us and them/but them that do not think the same”, so that’s a problem. There are plenty of people who do not see this as being a team, but instead they see it as zero-sum-game, where if “we” win, “they” lose, ignoring the fact that we all lose everyday with that mindset. How do we even go about getting people on the same page and to see that racism/sexism/homophobia/transphobia/anti-semitism/islamophobia/etc, whatever else you add existing in our society is bad for EVERYONE, but most especially those on the receiving ends of structural inequality?
But GRA already stands for Graduate Research Assistants, the Georgia Research Alliance, the Guyana Revenue Authority, Gamma-Ray Astrophysics, the Georgia Racquetball Association, the Girls Rodeo Association, Inc., and the Geochemistry Research Association (in Japan), and I hate to tar them with association with that unfortunate, but apt acronym.
Perhaps we could use Massive instead of Giant, and call them MRAs.
I’m sure that wouldn’t be a problem.
Sweet jesus. That’s an image that will stick with you.
In all honesty, though, I think that even that may have value as a transitional phase. A brief, horrifying phase that we try not to think about afterwards.
While I do agree that we need more women, POC, etc in national politics, doesn’t that assume that all women and POC think the same way?
I don’t know, do we all keep trying to assume or get to a place of consensus, but what if that just doesn’t exist? What if all there is is the struggle?
Italy elected Illona Staller, La Cicciolina, to parliament.
They also elected Silvio Berlusconi.
And who’d want a politician who’d marry Jeff Koons.
More than likely, the Bachman-Palin Protectorate-Overdrive would be followed in turn with The Restoration.
On one hand: Handel’s Messiah.
On the other hand: Shakespeare ('s Titus).
I think this is exactly where an understanding of class relations is critical: because there’s no upper bound on the amount of social power in the form of wealth an individual can control, and it’s that enormous imbalance in power, reinforcing all the other forms of oppression and inequality like so many client states, that makes all other forms of oppression seem so intractable.
Well that use of the word “privilege” isn’t very well recognized outside of SJW circles so writing an article about the nuances of it’s definition seems unproductive.
Perhaps too soon if I do say so! Har har har har!
Who wrote an article about the nuances of its definition? What article are you talking about?
I think that almost all [insert group here] identify with [insert particular experience here]. Everyone is going to interpret it differently, but at least they understand the general idea in a way someone outside of that group wouldn’t. There are a whole lot of things in life that maybe you can understand on a purely intellectual level, but which you can’t really grok unless you’ve experienced it for yourself.
I do think the struggle is a large part of the point. It’s that constant back-and-forth that keeps us growing and evolving as a society- BUT, when the rare consensus does come out of that, well, hooray for us.
Except you can see how that’s not always true. It didn’t matter how much wealth accumulated in black communities, they still were the victims of racism and in fact often because of their accumulation of wealth. The Atlanta Race Riot in 1906 was a key example of that. So, in that case, race trumped economic class.
But yes, understanding class is critical, I fully agree.
Dude, I had my privileges revoked enough times as a teenager to know that plenty of people know the concept of privilege. But you go ahead and blame the SJWs for your crappy economy or the cow giving sour milk.
[quote=“Richard_Kirk, post:12, topic:49034”]
Perhaps there is no generic solution
[/quote]But surely there is a generic solution. It’s called treating people as individuals. Not as part of some “tribe”, whether artificial or otherwise (where, e.g. male and female is probably the most obvious example.)
However, the evidence of six thousand years of civilisation, along with who knows how many millennia before that, is that the main reason Homo Sapiens took over from the intelligent hominid species was that it understood that tribalism (combined with violence, natch) was the way to go. Oh, and the mutant subspecies which is sometimes referred to as the sociopath clearly doesn’t help matters either.
That’s why I don’t necessarily see this as some sort of fight “against” sexism or racism or misunderstanding (whether accidental or deliberate) but more of a fight “about” realising that what matters is our own individual unique weirdness, and about realising that the mistake we all repeatedly make is in trying to make someone else conform to our own weirdness, instead of embracing and learning from theirs.
Can’t I unironically refer to myself as a SJW without being a GRA? Or does this only apply when one does it to other people?
And sadly,
At the same time, I want you to understand that that very real suffering does not cancel out male privilege, or make it somehow alright.
I can tell you from personal experience that this is about the moment when a formerly picked-on person tunes out.
It’s the condescending, “You’ve still got it better than someone else,” attitude. I would never, ever, ever dare to go to, say, a poor Lakota on the rez and tell them, “Check your first-world privilege; you’ve got it better than people in Sierra Leone.” Why not? Because that would make me sound like an asshole.
It’s especially grating when it’s directed at me, someone who comes from U.S. Flyover Country. Y’know, us ignert racist rednecks. Someone whose graduating class was less than 40. In a town where the median income is about the same as the median income for American black households.
A place which, yes, I’ll readily admit that life would be hell for a black person–I’m not even 40, and had a friend in grade school whose family was apparently given the “get your black ass out of town before sunset” speech–and where a few people still expect a man to go out and be the worker drone, while the woman stays home to have babies.
It can also be hell if your behavior, mannerisms, etc. don’t match what the bullies consider to be the heterosexual norm. Doesn’t matter if you are heterosexual; what matters is behavior.
And the person reminding me of my privilege comes from England, in a coastal town, and attended Oxford. I can virtually guarantee that she had a lower bar of entry to Oxford than I did to a state school, and, unless she has worse learning disabilities than mine, she didn’t have to work nearly as hard as I did to get a degree. She had access to national healthcare. I, on the other hand, think I’m experiencing angina, but am avoiding the doctor’s office because if it’s anything serious, it could lead to astronomical bills which I cannot afford. She can travel and move anywhere in the Commonwealth given the money; I have to have a passport for Commonwealth countries, and the bar to moving to, say, Canada or England is beyond what I’m capable of.
Granted, had I been born into a country where I could much more easily have been accepted into Oxford, I wouldn’t have faced the same pressures as a guy, given that all other socioeconomic factors were the same.
Men get to be whole people at all times. Women get to be objects, or symbols, or alluring aliens whose responses you have to game to “get” what you want.
Since I have the experience of actually being a man, and one who hasn’t had the privilege of being a writer and public speaker, I can say this simply isn’t true. Sometimes you’re just the human resource. The factory needs a person there to lift heavy things,and you can lift heavy things? Go be the thing that lifts heavy things. We’ll give you money later.
This is why Silicon Valley Sexism.
Of all the First World Problems to lead with, this is the First Worldiest, to be sure, though to be fair she’s responding to someone at MIT who claims to be among the least privileged (fucking really? Is he that big of an asshole?) It’s an important topic to tackle, and tech companies have got to work on this. On top of this, while we’re busily replacing white guys with white women, maybe we could also consider why so many young black men and women never get the opportunity to aspire to that lifestyle.
Finally,
And this, for me, is the root and tragedy both of nerd entitlement and the disaster of heterosexuality.
Since sexual orientation isn’t a choice…what the fuck?!
Men, particularly nerdy men, are socialised to blame women - usually their peers and/or the women they find sexually desirable for the trauma and shame they experienced growing up. If only women had given them a chance, if only women had taken pity, if only done the one thing they had spent their own formative years been shamed and harassed and tormented into not doing. If only they had said yes, or made an approach.
Oh. I see. Well…the thing is…OK, I can’t speak for anyone other than myself when I say, and I mean this with the utmost respect, no, oh my no. I’m not even sure I could name any of my childhood/teenage crushes. The things that stand out in my mind are the people–boys and girls, men and women–who made my life miserable for being different.
And there aren’t similar problems in non-hetero relationships? Really?
Again, I don’t completely disagree; I’m mostly pointing out why people may tune out the message or even get defensive. I have to say some of it raises my hackles. If anything, it proves that making the conversation entirely about privilege is an imperfect way to have the conversation. Because if you’re the type of person who explains to people in poverty how they’re privileged, the person you’re talking to might not be the problem.
You forgot some stuff! You were lucky enough to …
I’m sure I’ve forgotten some stuff. We’re all so lucky we basically hit the one in a googolplex jackpot just by being born.
I think I might be being a bit thick here, but when engineers and programmers are getting jobs not based on their skills, but because they don’t have external genitalia, or because they have a tan, then who has the privilege?
I have seen this, I have felt the effects of so-called “positive” discrimination, and it’s horseshit. I don’t know how I could look my colleagues in the eye if I had obtained a job because of what I pee out of. I have a young daughter, and hope when she gets to working age, she’ll be competing on a truly level playing field and not be patted on the head by patronising socialists and slotted straight in at the top.
the term privilege really seems to get on some people’s nerves. I was recently thinking of why that is, when there is a fairly similar term used by Christians - “blessed” that is not nearly as controversial. Obviously “privileged” doesn’t involve the concept of a god, but they both:
While Christians are thinking about a deity giving them these things, at least the ones rejecting the prosperity gospel also reject the idea that your good fortune is down to you being better or more worthy in any way. A lot of the same things were mentioned - we were blessed to be living in a peaceful country with a stable government, not to be refugees, to have a roof over our heads, to have family who cared for us, to have enough money, food etc. to live on. Other people don’t have that, so we should be grateful and work to help other people (and my church and parents were very active in providing social support - it wasn’t just words). On the other hand, there are a number of differences, which I think is why the concept of privilege is so much more unpopular:
