Tag Archives: privilege

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Seriously, When Did This Become Revolutionary?

Amanda at Pandagon has a post entitled “We have nothing to lose…” that reads, in its entirety:

By letting sex workers have a voice in the feminist movement. Surely we can disagree on the best practices for reducing the male abuse of sex workers without excluding people from the movement? I have to register my disapproval of the exclusion of sex workers from the International Women’s Day March in London.

Thoughts?

My thoughts: gee, you think? Notes came up in comments about the specifics of that situation (ie. whether we were talking about “exclusion” or simply “not being invited”) and whatever–I don’t think that’s the important point.

Hmm…you know, now that I think about it, maybe it isn’t a good idea to categorically exclude people from ‘the movement’, even if we don’t really agree on everything. I mean, it’s not like they can really hurt us, can they? Yeah, there’s a thought…maybe I should ask some of the other board members, though, because I’m not really sure.

No, seriously, when did this become such an earth-shattering thought that it can be said with this tone of “aren’t I being gracious?”, not to mention the tentative “I might be wrong here, but…” question at the end of it.

Newsflash: “We” — and by ‘we’ I mean the whole fucking human race–have plenty to gain by stopping to listen to voices that have practically always been marginalized. The way power works, and the way power has always worked, has been to silence and marginalize and limit and remove sanction from certain voices that weren’t coming from the “right” kind of people. And the way power can be maintained while presenting the appearance of graciousness is to dole out little tidbits of sanction toward those voices, providing tiny spaces where it becomes okay for those people to say their bit–as long as they’re not hurting anyone, really.

To listen to someone sit back and congratulate themselves for having this fucking revolutionary idea to not silence people categorically while publicly acknowledging the belief, however tacitly, that there is some kind of “we” who have their hands wrapped around the reins of the movement and who get to bestow speaking rights to others and on topics as it suits them literally makes me feel sick to my stomach.

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The Opt-Out Privilege Card

Again, I find that I’ve been thinking about the challenges to having any kind of discussion on dismantling oppression and privilege. And just when I found something clicking in my brain as a way to describe the concept to male friends of mine who bristle against it, I find that, as usual, someone else has been saying it first and better.

The way I’ve been expressing it lately is to say that the basic definition of male privilege is to not be reminded that you have a body, and that it is male. Privilege is what it means to walk down the street oblivious to what people think of the sexual value of your body, positive or negative. Privilege is what it means not to think, on a daily basis, about your human fragility, your vulnerability to violence and not to be given instructions on where and with whom you should walk/talk in order to minimize the threat. Privilege is what it means not to have your sex lexicalized as an adjective (except in very specific contexts) in phrases like “woman leaders”, “female boss”, or even “chick flick”. And on and on and so forth. Privilege is not to be reminded.

And sometimes the most progressive men are the ones who get that least. The linked post goes through the process of how liberals unpack the old invisible knapsack, check it out, say “Wow. That’s a lot of knapsack” and pack it all right back up again. (I was trying to find a good quote, but following the thought process really requires the whole thing.) Not having privilege means there’s no knapsack, and all of that stuff is all around you, with no place to put it if you get tired of it.

I referred above to male privilege, because of course it’s easiest to start seeing this using the locus of privilege that I don’t have, but the principle applies to each of the checklists. My white privilege means I’m rarely made aware of my body as a white body. People don’t highlight my whiteness, my straightness, my gender identity. I can take any given day of my life, chances are, nothing has happened to force my attention back onto those features of my body. If I thought about it, it’s because I chose to, probably because I was talking to/reading something by someone who does not share all of those features (and even then, I was probably more aware of how the lack of knapsack was affecting the other individual than I was of the presence of my own knapsack-holding body). On the other hand, it would be the very rare day indeed when I could say that nothing happened to remind me that my body is female.

In comments to the linked post, michelle says (emphasis mine):

I’ve been thinking about the difference between stuff I have been/am involved with because I have a CHOICE about it, and stuff that I have no choice about. For me, the second thing, what I have no choice about, isn’t in any of the categories, even areas where I am oppressed like gender or sexual orientation. But it’s there and real and it is fucking INVOLUNTARY. I don’t get a choice about whether to be affected or not, I just AM and I can’t ever just choose to opt out and go back to being protected, because — I can’t.

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IMO where people have these choices we are by definition untrustworthy. It’s great if or when we do the right thing, but it’s an action-by-action kind of situation, because at any moment we have the choice to step away, to choose to not notice because we do have a choice. Clearly we in that position are NOT the people who should be defining anything where we hae this disconnect.

That’s a powerful point. I will always be untrustworthy when it comes to any kind of work for change against the system with respect to oppressions I don’t experience not because of any moral inferiority on my part, but because of my moral equality with everybody else on the freaking planet. Because the planet gives me the choice, at any given moment, to forget those features. At literally any moment in time, I can flip the switch back to forgetting, walking away from the people who bother to point out my privilege, choosing not to notice the impact of those body-aspects. And since it’s tiring to notice all the time, and since I’m human, and since humans react to being tired by stopping to take a rest, and since sometimes those rests are short, sometimes they’re long and sometimes they’re permanent, why the hell would I be trusted to help in any way with what is the constant, life or death experience of somebody else, even if I say I want to, even if I helped last time, even if I’m really really nice?

I find it more than a little bit humbling that so much of that just clicked into place enough to allow me to articulate it. But it also makes me extra angry at these conversations where the non-privileged participants have to constantly assuage defensiveness from the privileged. Of course it’s not my fault that I’ve been handed a couple of versions of the opt-out card. But literally anyone would and will at some points choose to exercise that card, sometimes temporarily, sometimes subconsciously, and asking anyone else not to point out when I’ve done that, or asking them to look at my intent, or asking them to look at my history of being a super nice and supportive person is telling them to think of me like some sort of superhuman.

And, in sum, that’s bullshit.

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Action Barriers Part 4: The Good Person

Part 1: Defensiveness
Part 2: Guilt
Part 3: Blame

All of the barriers to action I’ve talked about so far—defensiveness, guilt, blame—hinge on the essential idea that P is a Good Person and that P’s Good Person-ness is the central fact that needs to be discussed. P can’t be Racist/Sexist/Classist/participate in the patriarchy/oppression because P is a Good Person. I’ve perpetuated that discussion to some extent with my image of St Peter at the gates of heaven and the scorecards he may or may not be using in order to evaluate one’s application for entry.

First of all, as I started to suggest in my post on guilt, this type of Good Person depends on a binary version of the scorecard, and on some idea of an ‘essential self’. At some point on a scale of good vs. evil, we do the Right Thing or avoid the Wrong Thing enough times or in enough standardized ways that we become Good and no longer Evil and then we get to stop.

It also depends on people spending a whole bunch of time doing things not simply because they are good things to do, but because we need to be Good People. Christians are often approached to discuss the notion of heaven and hell, both in philosophical and practical terms. One of the ways that it becomes a practical question is in the idea that maybe we practice our religion in order to get into heaven and avoid hell. Many thinking Christians have a well-rehearsed response to these kinds of questions that runs along the lines of “It’s not my place to judge whether or not you’re going to hell. I’m just doing what I feel I need to do and God will sort it out in the end”. That’s an important response in a lot of situations, but I’ve never felt quite comfortable with it, because it doesn’t reflect my personal theology very accurately. (Note that the overall idea applies whether we’re actually talking about heaven and hell or speaking in entirely secular terms to someone who is using the simple expressions of striving to be a Good Person—in fact, those exact words are frequently used by individuals who are defending their non-Christianity by saying that whether they believe in Jesus or not is irrelevant, as long as they are Good People)

I’ve tried to explain to people before that the threat of hell and the promise of heaven are ideas that do not play a role in my day-to-day spirituality, but it goes deeper than that. Whether or not I’m a Good Person is a meaningless question, not only because it depends on the kind of binary that anyone who thinks for thirty seconds can recognize as ridiculous, but also because it ultimately defeats its own purpose. It’s easier to simplify moral action down to what is essentially an economic transaction—if I do x, if I sacrifice y, if I pay the cost of z, I will get a, b and c in return—but if we buy into the concept that unselfishness is good, than this viewpoint is merely doing “unselfish” things for selfish reasons. More importantly to my theology, it represents one of the core examples of my experience of what the Buddhists call craving—grasping and trying to pin down morality/God in ways that can only cause suffering because they are premised on transitory things in the world and in myself. In Christian terms, it’s really a manifestation of pride. If I’m constantly trying to distinguish myself, to figure out how I’m different/better/exceptional, then I’m missing the point, even if I’m doing it in all the right ways.

The only binary that’s ever made sense to me is the quotation that “Saints are the sinners that go on trying”. If we’re going to have any discussion about trying to improve anything, the overall point can never be abstract ideas of how to be a Good Person. I don’t care whether P is a Good Person. I don’t care for practical reasons, and I don’t care for theological reasons. That’s not intended to be heartless or unsympathetic towards P—I don’t actually care whether or not I’m a Good Person either, for all of the reasons listed above.

If the point is how to make a Good World, then looking inward about whether or not I am or you are a Good Person is only hindering us from looking outward at what is or is not happening. To me, this is the difference between the conversation I’m trying to have and the conversation P is trying to have, which is where the barriers are tracing back to.

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Action Barriers Part 3: Blame

Part 2: Guilt
Part 1: Defensiveness

(I do still exist, I just moved in to a new apartment last week and have been busily doing many things that are not writing)

In the trifecta of reasons why our friend P doesn’t have to do anything about sexism, racism, homophobia and oppression, though he knows they exist, recasting blame is the most frustrating to deal with, in my experience. Again, it’s interconnected with both defensiveness and guilt, but I feel like there’s an extra layer to unpack in dismantling these blame-deflections before we can get at the actual point.

There are tons of variations of the blame theme, all amounting to “Everything is fine here in my corner. Look over there.” Claims of reverse discrimination, saying that “real” racism now comes from POC, casting blame on feminism for the ills of men. These are pretty obvious tactics for making sure that, whatever else is going on, we’re not talking about P and we’re probably no longer talking about oppression.

The variation I’m most frustrated with lately is the blame that excuses inaction by refocusing on the missteps of those who speak out in the first place. Al Gore shouldn’t get the Nobel Peace Prize because he drives a private jet, John Edwards talks the anti-poverty talk but gets a $400 haircut, Bono has no right to tell us to do something against global poverty unless I see just how much money he’s personally giving to the cause. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Look over there. It’s not that these people aren’t right, it’s just that I don’t have to listen to them if they’re not perfect.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t criticize these people for their shortcomings, or that we should excuse, say, a self-identified feminist who ends up saying something racist or even sexist. I, personally, want to be called to constant self-improvement and have no expectation that I’ll ever reach 100% on the mythical scorecard I’ve been inventing, but I’d like for people who care about me and about the world to help me get closer.

The thing about focusing on the stones that Gore is throwing, Bono is throwing, Edwards is throwing, and then pointing to their glass houses is that all you’ve done is throw your own, slightly smaller stone, and now you’ve retreated into your own glass house. Why does Gore’s jet and John Edwards’ hair matter? In what way are those things standing in the way of making changes to your won life, from seeing the opportunities to have a positive, creative impact that are staring you in the face?

I’m not grading my own moral self-evaluation on a curve. Someone else did something worse, the next someone else neglected to notice something equally or more important, and another someone else falls short or is a hypocrite. Fine. Agreed. Also irrelevant, and leading us to talk again about why not to act, why not to change, when, just like when we somehow ended up on not-rapists and not-racism, that’s the exact opposite of the point.

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Action Barriers Part 1: Defensiveness

I have a series of thoughts on, basically, giving a crap, speaking out, and some common reactions to that. The reactions can basically be summed up into guilt, defensiveness and blame. They all tend to be interconnected, but I’m going to take them one at a time—they’re all long, but frankly, I’m okay with that.

To start, defensiveness. The general, well-known form that this takes is for a member of the privileged group—white, male, hetero, with no disabilities, Christian, hell, even first world—or some combination of privileged classes gets into a conversation criticizing sexism, racism or other forms of oppression. Privileged individual—let’s call him “P”—hears me talking about (for example) ‘male privilege’ and relating the concept to rape culture and he interprets what I just said as “All men are rapists”. So he gets angry at me, and defensive.

This is a silencing move. The conversation is no longer about men who are rapists, it’s about men who are not. I’m angry about the ubiquity of sexual violence—I’ve experienced it personally and heard countless other women (and several men) talk about their experiences with it. We talk about being shamed and silenced, and we talk about being afraid of having it happen again and angry that we have to feel that way. But P and I aren’t talking about that anymore. We’re talking about how angry P is, how afraid he is to be considered a rapist.
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