Finding "privilege" offensive

xsdc · 2011-03-16T20:15:06+00:00

I can sort of see his point in that implying that privilege has made you what you are downplays the hard work and struggle you've gone through. It has also become trendy and politically correct to discriminate against those with a perceived privilege.

However, birth privilege should have little to no bearing in discussing an adult's place in life. Any perceived birth privilege is quite easily destroyed and any perceived birth penalty is overcome with little issue.

Most privilege comes not from your birthing circumstances (race, sex, hair color, ethnicity, etc), but from parental care. Under privileged parents who are interested in educating their child to the best of their ability and means will have a superior child than an over privileged parent that doesn't try to educate their child.

TL;DR: if someone calls you privileged, tell them you'll thank your parents next time you see them.

Kill_The_Rich · 2011-03-17T12:45:38+00:00

Privilege is complicated and I don't agree with the people who dismiss it outright, but I also don't agree with the people who tend to throw the term around as a pejorative seem to lack an understanding of its nuance. First, privilege itself has multiple roots and an infinite number of manifestations...and some of them are perfectly acceptable (i.e. if a person "earns" a privilege, than most wouldn't take issue with it). When it comes to privilege based on inherent qualities such as race, sex, religion, etc., in modern societies, I don't think it comes down to an inherent bigotry or supremacism...I believe it's a matter of majority.

If you have a culture where trait X is predominate, the culture will slowly evolve to favor those who have trait X...this alone ensures that those with trait X are privileged. But more than that, people tend to favor those who are similar to themselves. If two people have trait X and nothing else in common, they're more likely to relate to one another than two people with nothing in common at all. With that in mind, let's take whiteness and the US as an example. There's no denying that whites are the majority, therefore the overriding culture of the US will evolve to favor white people, and on an individual basis white people will frequently favor whites over other races...as such, in the US as a whole, whites will be privileged as a whole. But that doesn't mean that all whites enjoy this privilege. There are plenty of places in the US wherein blacks are the majority. In those subcultures, blacks would be privileged and whites would not, even if whites were privileged by the parent culture. Now, when it comes to gender, women are the obvious majority. And, when it comes to the overriding culture, they're definitely privileged (please walk into any mall...anywhere, and note which gender is being most catered to). However, in some subcultures, men tend to be the majority, so in those subcultures, men are privileged.

I have large feet (13.5 EE)...my shoe size is not in the majority. A person who wears a size 10 D will have an abundance of choices when it comes to shoes as they are in the majority, whereas I am fairly limited. Compared to me, they are privileged...but compared to the person who wears a size 15 EEE, I am privileged. On the other hand, if someone who wore a size 10 D needed a pair of shoes which were only sold in big-shoe catalogs, I would be privileged over them as well (despite the fact that big-shoe catalogs just sell bigger sizes of the most popular regular shoes). Shoes are relatively minor when it comes to privilege, but the privilege still exists.

Conversely, when we try to negate a privilege of the majority, sometimes we end up privileging the minority. An example of this would be affirmative-action quotas, or inherent-trait-specific scholarships. This is a different root of privilege, a privilege which is socially-engineered, and which, I believe, is fairly unique to modern times. Also, there are people who will intentionally seek this sort of privilege...we typically say they're "playing the victim card". I tend to take issue with them, especially since they tend to be the people who throw the term "privilege" out as an insult....sometimes to stop all conversation on an issue.

Claiming a particular group is privileged in one way or another is fair, as far as I'm concerned...but it's not binary (you're not either "privileged" or "unprivileged"...we all have shades of privilege) which makes it pretty unfair to use "privilege" as an insult against a particular individual. And, in some circumstances, it may even be hypocritical, as it requires one be privileged within a subculture for such a harsh judgment to be accepted at face value by other members of that subculture.

2011-03-17T00:42:08+00:00

I've posted about privilege before, it is just a bullshit tactic... an ad hominem attack to discredit someone else.

Women like to claim male privilege to discredit men and pump up their own "triumphs over adversity"... however it is mostly white women who do that. Black men listening to white women saying such things might be fully justified in rolling their eyes.

How then does one try to balance it all? Is a rich black woman worse off than a poor white man? Is a poor white woman's accomplishments less important than a rich asian woman's?

It is all bullshit, apples & oranges - and something where you can just take one trait in isolation.

"Privilege" is a debate technique and nothing more - a smokescreen.

DownSoFar · 2011-03-16T18:36:03+00:00

Someone needs to take a sociology class...

Title	Finding "privilege" offensive
Author	largestinteger
Upvotes	7
Comments	34
Date	March 16, 2011 4:20 PM UTC (15 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/g58cj/finding_privilege_offensive/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/finding-privilege-offensive.1042057 https://theredarchive.com/post/1042057

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