You seem very concerned about “guilt” and “feeling bad.” Why is that? No one has said in any of this that you’re “guilty” of anything or that you should “feel bad” for circumstances at birth. What we’ve said is that you should be aware and it should inform your interaction with the world, especially when you’re working with people who didn’t get your advantages. Is that really so off-putting that you can’t consider it and asking it is too “political?”
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What? Making is all about the process. It is the process that is being celebrated.
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Tenets of capitalism? Nice slip there… XD
This is a large part of why I have little place for capitalism, I am all about process. So I cannot be one of its tenants. The very world itself and human society seem to me to obviously be process so the quest for product strikes me as kind of delusional.
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… maybe i meant rent-seeking behavior?
Probably not, though. Thanks.
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This article on the PR industry was unsettling for me. It pointed out the degree to which PR is gendered, and how many of the denunciations of the PR industry follow the pattern of privileging the work of men over the work of women. As the article points out, much of PR work involves cultivating relationships, developing social networks, and coordinating social events – and it’s considered less authentic then “actually creating”, when it’s not treated as outright offensive.
I found this uncomfortable, as I’d been used to mocking PR people, in the context of conflicts with their employers – and yes, in every case I can think of, PR people were women.
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I prefer to think of education as an apt example, rather than PR, but, yeah.
I did PR for a few years for a non profit arts group. Literally a thankless task; the other artists were of the opinion that they shouldn’t have to tell the world about their work, that, for example, the local PBS station should have an hour-long show every month about the gallery. For a while they claimed to be a service organization. What service do we provide to the community I asked, thinking there was a good angle for an article: “By making art!”
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I’m not saying it’s always political (but it’s political):
It’s not a level playing field out there, is why. Sorry if people talking about inequality bothers you so very much.
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It does not bother me when people talk about it. It bothers me when people talk about it EVERYWHERE and insist that there apparently should be no sanctuaries.
And then abusing the relationships. PR is inherently manipulative. Ask e.g. this bunch:
It’s not that creating relationships would be less authentic. It’s using them for peddling versions of reality doctored according to the agencies’ customers that makes them less authentic. It’s the emotional manipulation of the information recipients and selective presentation of cherry picked facts, or even completely made-up ones, that makes them less authentic.
PR is widely reviled for well-earned reasons that have nothing to do with the gender ratios of its workers.
THIS.
Without the process, the object made is just another object. It’s only when the process is factored in that it can be replicated by anybody capable of following the process guidelines, modify the process to tailor the results, incorporate parts of the process to making something entirely different.
You cannot share the object made with everybody; there is only one. (Or a small series.) The object is restricted by its physicality. But you can share the process, allowing everybody to replicate it, to create the object themselves. The thing is only a result of an instance of the process.
Then you can share the subprocesses. That’s perhaps even more important; the individual skills that enable you to solder, to weld, to sew, to shape different materials and to understand their behavior.
Sometimes the journey is the destination.
And sometimes you are just too tired to travel.
You should have the choice. Forcing either is wrong.
Some of the arguments sound a bit too pushy. Some people are allergic to (and overreacting mildly) to preceived attempts to be manipulated by guilt/shame; it is a common, and often not entirely consciously used, method. Pretty effective in some societies. And, for some people on their receiving ends, rather irksome.
Especially when about something beyond one’s control. Whether it is the Original Sin, which certain religions love to push, or Being Born White Male, which certain ideologists love to push.
More often than not without examining individual mitigating factors.
And there are starving children in Africa, so eat your greens.
When it is being asked EVERY TIME and EVERYWHERE, then yes.
Imagine how my daughter feels when guys offer to explain things to her constantly like she doesn’t know anything technical or how to do things for herself.
You ask why there can’t be sanctuaries from this? I hate to break it to you, buddy, but if you’re a white dude, the entire world is your sanctuary from having to care about this. You can walk away from this conversation right now and pretend it never happened. After all, what will happen if you do that? Nothing. You don’t need to worry about anything because you’re on top of the heap and can ignore how the world works for other folks. This applies to a lot of dudes online who also complain about why feminism is shoved in their face by people, etc.
My daughter doesn’t get the option since it is shoved in her face every day about how the world is by and for straight, white dudes. So, pardon me, if I’m not too put off by a few guys feeling mildly uncomfortable because they just want to sit back, take it easy, and ignore all this “privilege shit” so they can just make things in peace. That peace doesn’t exist for anyone else wanting to do the same thing or even lead a full and fulfilling life if they aren’t part of the same demographic.
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A female tech is a somewhat rare sight. Did you compare with the rest of the sample, if the non-tech-skilled ones don’t actually appreciate being offered the help?
Also, you may like to complain to those guys then, not to me. I am not one of them and being associated with this is more a collective guilt issue than a logical link.
For the record, I don’t do that collective guilt thing.
Then why there can’t be a sanctuary from this if it supposedly is everywhere?!?
Also, how does this claim hold water in areas with extreme-majority white, and the sub-demographics that are extremely male-biased? Does not the subset automatically nivelize the proclaimed advantage by removing the “disadvantaged” from the set? What if in that demographics you have a better chance of meeting a single gay male than a single female? That kind of negates even the “heterosexual privilege”, doesn’t it?!?
What if we widen the scope? Aren’t the non-white non-males in western world “privileged” in comparison with the Third World areas? With the war zones? Why aren’t THEY fed this line too?
With the changed scope, who’s supposed to be the whipping boy?
You can do that with vast majority of conversations. Anybody can. Conversations are like that.
What do you know about me, about how the world works for me in both the pluses and minuses, about the area where I live and what demographic/cultural/historical factors play role here?
If being a straight white dude is such a wondrous thing, why it does not work that way?
Yes, your pet war.
People can fight other miniwars. There are the privacy vs surveillance, the comm tech availability, the cheap medical instrumentation, computer security, and megatons of others. People can have hands full of their own ones, and not have the willingness to spare the resources for yet one more - especially when there are queues of other warriors with other pet causes who would want the same, and who insist as loudly that their one is The Most Important One. If you take on only every tenth problem you are being shamed/guilt-tripped into, you soon run out of resources.
I don’t have unlimited resources, I am picking my fights.
A wondrous demographics, so wondrous that for decades I cannot get laid to save my life (try to do something more advanced without nonverbal comm reading resolution that’d be worth crap and with rather annoying albeit not crippling anxiety attacks, I guess the “not cripping” part could be also spun as a sort of a “privilege”?), not even dreaming about anything longer-term, and that merely to get a non-boring evening out that is not also work, and not being ignored, is rather… rare. (I learned to carry a book. And to drink.)
And then somebody comes and starts chirping in how “privileged” I am, all while I have to watch others getting better deals left and right. (Bad deals too; better be well-hanged than badly married.) Sorry, so sorry, that it irks me.
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