On privilege

[annwfyn]

I saw a really good article on privilege linked to from a community I'm on earlier, and thought it was worth sharing. It's here and it's a really nice and concise article explaining a load of stuff that I think I sometimes stumble over.

Basically, the gist is that you're all privileged. Yes. You.

For starters, you live in the western world. You wake up in the morning, and you know that when you clean your teeth, the water you are using isn't going to kill you. Unless you chose not to, you know that you can eat that day. And then we move on to the other privileges that all of us have at least some of - able bodied privilege, cis-gender privilege, white privilege, male privilege. It's an interesting read and I think well worth poking.

In other news, I'm getting vexed with myself over my sleeping patterns. Last night I couldn't get to sleep until 2.30 am, and then nearly died getting up at 8.30 am. Today is my day off, so I wound up going back to bed around 10 am and then just sleeping until gone noon, which I really don't like in myself.

I need to sort out my sleeping patterns. And I need to somehow do it now.

Comments

[ginasketch.livejournal.com]

I never understood why people freak out over being called privileged.


Do people think it means "rich fop" or something?

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

I think so. The conversation I think I see a lot is something along the following lines.

Person 1: You have male privilege.

Person 2: What do you mean, I'm privileged? I was raised in total poverty and used to work 26 hours per day down a mine pit, before walking barefoot over broken glass back to the iron maiden where I slept. I'm not privileged.

Person 1: I didn't say you were privileged in all areas. You didnt have class privilege, which Tarquin over there blatantly does...

Tarquin: Whatho! I was raised in a palace, you know? And what is this thing called work?

Person 1:..anyway. As I was saying. You didn't have class privilege. You did and do have male privilege, which means that certain things are easier because you're a bloke - you don't have people dismiss your emotions as being 'well, just that time of the month', you can have kids without it messing with your career, no one will look at you funny at job interviews in case you do have kids, and the odds of you facing sexual or domestic violence are much much smaller.

Person 2: BUT I WALKED OVER BROKEN GLASS!

Person 1: Yes. But that's not the same as being a woman.

Person 2: BROKEN GLASS! AND THERE WAS THIS ONE TIME WE HAD TO EAT COAL FOR DINNER.

Tarquin: Gosh, that does sound rather like Eton. Does that mean I'm not privileged either?

Person 1: I think I'm losing the will to live.

[ginasketch.livejournal.com]

Yeah there's different types of priviledge.

I eat well, live in a country without extreme laws over my body, a free health care system and a system that looks after you when you are unemployed. I'm not priviledged in other areas, such as my sex and the fact that I am mentally ill.

I don't get what's so wrong with admitting that.

[ginasketch.livejournal.com]

also: ahahahaha "Tarquin"

[madwitch.livejournal.com]

I've seen someone claim that there is no such thing as ma;e privilege, and that women have all the privilege because they get served in the chip shop first.

I'm not joking.

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

I promise I'm not trying to be an arse. I just want to understand how this works.

If I were to come from humble beginnings, and without the luxury of expensive education struggle to get a well-paid job, so I could raise my children in such a way that they had a life of privilege, who would they have to repay that to?

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

I'd also like to apologise for asking you what must seem like an awful lot of quite silly questions. It's nothing personal.

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

I think the idea isn't that you owe a specific debt to People Who You Hurt. I think the idea is that you pay it on to those less fortunate. At least, that's how I see it.

I would hope in your case that your kids would be grateful to you for giving them the class privilege they enjoy, but also aware that they were given that and didn't have to work for it. Furthermore, they would probably have some privileges that you didn't work for either - they would be white, maybe male, hopefully able bodied. Those are privileges they just kinda acquired and it would be nice if they wanted to help change the world so that those who were not born with those gifts would still have access to all the good stuff that comes from it.

Does that sort of make sense?

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

I get the concept of privilege. I don't necessarily think it's the best model to use when dealing with social inequality, but I understand its appeal.

What I don't get is how you (she/they/whatever) can say that on the one hand having privilege doesn't carry the responsibility of guilt, but on the other hand having privilege does carry the responsibility of having to make restitution.

It strikes me as saying "don't feel guilty for having privilege, feel guilty for not using it to fulfil my political objectives".

Sleeping Patterns...

[adze.livejournal.com]

I had loads of trouble sleeping last night. I think it was 1 by the time I was even in bed, and I then spent ages trying to drop off.

I don't know if it was the post gaming come-down, where I frequently don't sleep properly after a gaming weekend - my brain just doesn't shut down for ages on a Sunday night - how bright it was last night, or anything else, but it was a real struggle.

And this doesn't help when you wake up at 6 to start waking up for work.

[reindeerflotila.livejournal.com]

I am quiet happy to be gratfeul for the various priv's I am afforded by SOciety, thank you very much, world.

however, I think it is important to reiterate that there is a difference in acknowlegdement of Priv's and becoming an apologist regarding them.

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

What's the difference?

....

[reindeerflotila.livejournal.com]

Acknowledgement frees me to learn and accept the priv's and to work to bring equality in those that I can, for example gender based inequalities etc. Or perhaps to challenge the patriarchal, heteronormative background in which we walk.

Apologistic reaction to the knowledge of those same priv's leads in me at least, to feelings of guilt, of shame and or/ a tendancy to reject the knowledge as it feels too huge to accomodate, to change. To better the world. So, apologists also tend to accept Blame. Which I do not, an example would be any discussion regarding slavery. I accept my cultural heritage regarding the issue, personally condemn it and would seek to end it were it present in the Now. However, it isn't in that I am not personally involved in people trafficking, nor have a ethnic-minority house slave at my beck and call, dependant on my good feelings towards them.
I am not responsible for what was done, and I will not be held personally responsible. 1

That is merely an example however.

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

I dislike the "privilege" term mostly because of the base state it implies.

Describing males as privileged, for example, implies that it's an advance over the norm - that the normal state of affairs is to be discriminated against, objectified, and attacked.

I'd rather consider the status of being, you know, free, equal, with base needs met and treated as a person, as something that should be the norm, and work on the principle that deviations from that are, well, bad.

It's a semiotics argument, but semiotics are important.

Plus, the word "privilege" has all kinds of other negative connotations - "spoiled" being one of the major ones, for example. People react to connotations. Hence, many people will, upon being informed they have "privilege", assume because of common usage that the other person is saying they're "spoiled", particularly if said person seems to be attacking them or a group they're in - as is often the case.

I recognise that it's commonly-used terminology within a certain field, but when a) you're trying to communicate and b) certain terms you use are almost guaranteed to offend and be misunderstood, there's a problem right there.

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

Well, what other word would you use?

To my mind, it's quite a good word. At least, I tend to describe myself as having had a privileged upbringing, for example, and did before I got into this kind of thing. I described myself as having a 'privileged' upbringing because I had loads of good things given to me purely out of luck - I was lucky enough to be born to a fairly well off middle class family in a nice part of the country. And I think it was generally the accepted way of describing 'nice middle class kid who got loads of things handed to them on a plate'.

To my mind, the concept of 'privilege' covers that kind of thing, it is just pointing out that sometimes you get lucky and get shiny stuff that doesn't come from money, but comes from other things, like your gender or the colour of your skin.

'Privilege' is a word used to cover unearned benefits - and they are benefits in that they are not available to the majority of the population of the world. If the majority of the world's population don't have access to clean drinking water, then it is a benefit to have that.

At least, that's how I see it.

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

Ok, this turned into a bit of an essay.

So, "privilege" as a term, and why I feel it's not a great idea to use it anywhere where you are trying to convince people of your argument and/or recruit them to your cause...

Privilege (noun) - Such an advantage, immunity, or right held as a prerogative of status or rank, and exercised to the exclusion or detriment of others."

1) "Privilege" and "Privileged" are perjorative when used to describe others.

---

"He's a privileged douche"

"Some despise Kira for good reasons -- she's rich, privileged, and..."

"he's privileged, out of touch and shouldn't ... "

(All quoted from top 20 Google results)

The word privilege and privileged are predominantly used in normal, everyday conversation as an insult, specifically an insult against people whom one feels have unfair and unearned advantages. Indeed, that's very close to one of the dictionary definitions.

Thus, when one refers to someone other than oneself as "privileged", it's likely to come across as an insult. I Googled use of the phrase "he's a privileged" and "she's a privileged", to be sure this wasn't a personal bias, and the results are overwhelmingly in favour of insult. When used to describe someone else, out of the top 50 hits, 12 were from another context or difficult to parse (legally privileged information, or computer use privileges), two were either complimentary or neutral, and 14 were outright insults. That's 7-1 in favour of "privileged" as insult in everyday use.

Self-description as "privileged" doesn't have the same lading, of course. So, you're fairly OK to describe yourself as "privileged", from the point of view of the likely reaction of your audience, but when you describe other people as privileged (as you did in the entry above) you're saying something which is very, very likely to be assumed to be an insult because of its usual context.

2) It's jargon.

The fact that you refer to people frequently misinterpreting your comments, or the fact that the poster you linked to feels the need to define her term at all, says that your use of "privilege" here is jargon. It's a specific definition used within a specific interest group, and there is no reason to assume that anyone outside that interest group would understand what it meant.

It's generally considered good practise, whenever arguing a point with a group which you can't assume knows your jargon, to avoid it. It's a bit like me assuming that you'd automatically know what "user privileges" are and how they work in the computing sense - you might, you might not, but I shouldn't assume that you do if I wish to be understood.

Of course, the fact that, if you don't know what it means, you'll assume it's intended insultingly, because of point 1), doesn't help.

Cont. in next comment...

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

3) It's a descriptor frequently used - in its intended context - as either an insult or a way to shut down argument.

I've most frequently seen "male privilege" used as a phrase to shut down men arguing a point about feminism. "You don't even know, you can't know, because of your male privilege."

The same is true of "white privilege" and conversations about issues of race.

Again, this lades onto any usage of the term. It now has overtones not only of insult because of its common usage, but also because many people who inhabit circles where it might be used in the context you're using it will use the term as a weapon.

Frankly, were I in your shoes, I'd avoid it as a term for that reason alone. Many unreasonable, strident, and irrational arguers use the term as a bludgeon, so it's a good idea to avoid it lest you be perceived as one.

And the fact that it comes so easily to hand as a weapon should be worrying in itself - much like, say, "sinner" in religious circles. Indeed, many of the commenters on the post you link to point out that the original poster's argument seems extremely religious in nature, almost referring to privilege as original sin.

It's very easy to argue that even the correct use of the term in the context you're using it, when referring to anyone other than oneself, is in fact an attack. It's aimed at diminishing your target's perceived status by pointing out the gifts they have, allegedly, received without virtue or work.

4) It's a bad narrative.

"It is a time of heroes. A time for action. The elites, privileged by virtue of birth alone, lord it over the rest of the world. But now, a hero arises, to - "

To what? The way this narrative goes, the hero's arising, almost certainly, to tear down those elites and lay waste to all their unfairly gained riches.

That's the narrative that this endless discussion of "privilege" is implying, and it explains, even more than everything else I've been talking about, why the term gets such a negative reaction. Now, the "privileged elites" story is a good, powerful narrative - but it does imply that the speaker intends to remove the privilege of those he/she's speaking to, to tear them down and make them less. Indeed, the very term "privilege" implies an unfair advantage that should be equalised - the term implies that those to whom it's applied should be made less in some way; that their advantage, being unfair, should in a fair world be removed.

(Worryingly, that also implies that the lack of privilege experienced by others - whether that be discrimination, persecution, or lack of access to clean water - is the norm. That seems like an argument that you shouldn't be advancing. )

The alternate narrative is the one alluded to in the post you link - that the privileged themselves should abase themselves. Still not a great sell.

You're either implying Original Sin or a corrupt aristocracy - both of which are great narratives, but not when directed at the people you're claiming are sinning.

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

The alternative

So you asked about alternatives.

Well, here's another narrative:

"Sue desperately wants to be a Hollywood director. She's willing to sacrifice it all, work insane hours, throw her health and her future into the pot. And she's got the talent to be great. But the process is unfairly stacked against her. Outmoded laws and closed clubs ensure she barely has a shot. ..."

It's one of the first rules of filmmaking. If you want to make the audience like your hero, have something really unfair happen to them. From those two lines, I'd venture to say most people are already rooting for Sue to succeed.

Why does the conversation have to be about all the things that people unfairly have going for them? Why can't it be about the actual problem, which is all the things that other people have unfairly going against them?

I just don't see much use for "privilege" as a term. You can easily discuss difficulties in understanding or perceiving the experiences of others without invoking such a loaded turn. You can say "some people are luckier than others in their circumstances", too. If you want to talk about past discussion of the effects of that luck (like the aforementioned perception problems), but don't want to have the discussion right there and then, you have the Internet - just link to a past discussion of the same subject. But creating a unique term, and using such a perjorative word as the basis of it - not a great way to go.

I'm sure you've noticed that feminism, for example, has a huge PR problem right now - well, terms like "privilege" and the way they're used are part of why. Likewise other equalities groups. It comes across very, very badly.

Saying "Women find it incredibly hard to become film directors" makes me want to help solve the problem you're talking about. Saying "you're only able to be a film director because you're unfairly privileged" is less likely to recruit me to your cause, and more likely to provoke an obscene response. And, more worryingly, no matter how just your cause, it's also likely to make me less sympathetic to it.

And it IS the cause that's important, right, in the end? Actually making life fairer?

[aardnebby.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to get massively involved in this, but my biggest annoyance is how very judgemental this all is.

What gives you the right to tell me how hard/easy my life is? All you can really do is look at statistics, which are general indicators and not specific to each and every individual (is every man paid more than every woman? Does every white guy work less for the same position as a black guy? Does every woman recieve 15% being shot in the face by gangs when the yearly quota is handed out?)

Where's my yard stick for whats worth more? I get a 7% better rate of pay thats worth 5 years of life? By who's judgement? And can I contest?

The attacks on people raising this points in the post you linked disgust me (EG Wakawakawaka or however you spell it got a fair few bits of hate for a fairly reasoned and reasonable comment).

If you measure your privilidge against the lowest possible state then clearly we should sell our homes and send the money to third world countries. Cut down our eatting to near-starvation levels and do the same with that cash. We should vote communist too.

I paid for my higher education, everyone who didnt _owes_ me! Clearly!

[aardnebby.livejournal.com]

should read "recieve 15% less". Can't edit the post :P

[ginasketch.livejournal.com]

-_-

[aardnebby.livejournal.com]

Well put.

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

Rather than doing anything sensible between the hours of 11 and 4 last night, like sleeping, my brain decided to assemble this. Then it contemplated the substitution of institutional free love for arranged marrage in the Communist Manifesto as a means of getting round problems with polygamy that Marx and Engels wouldn't have known about back then. Then it mildly hallucinated something about a rain forest and then it put the finishing touches to this. You're welcome to utterly ignore it, but if I don't get it down I might explode.

Under Privilege
By Rikk Hill, age 26

Plenty of systems that model real-world problems simplify them in order to make sense of them. This isn't necessarily a failing. A physicist will model a human being as a perfect inelastic sphere weighing 100 kilos, and for many purposes this will be sufficient. The entire field of economics rests on the idea that all human decision-making is a completely rational process, and whilst this is clearly not the case, it still works as a modelling methodology.

As far as I can see, every implementation of what I will henceforth refer to as the privilege model makes the assumption that humans are objects with five variables: sex, ethnicity, class, sexuality and able-bodiedness. These would seem to be the big five. When someone talks about a person having privilege, they're almost always referring to one of these. Using these five variables, it is apparently possible to make accurate judgments about the ease or difficulty with which people interact with society. I would like to propose that this model is largely inadequate for this purpose, and intend to demonstrate this using examples where necessary.

Did you know that a man who's 5'6" in height faces as much quantitative discrimination in the workplace as a woman? In terms of earnings and promotion prospects, he is at as much of a disadvantage as his female colleagues. This isn't the case with women, who need to be pushing dwarfism before their height impacts on their career; presumably height is not viewed as much of a signal of competence with women as it is men.

What's more, the shorter a man gets, the more discrimination he faces, to the tune of about £500 a year per inch of height over the course of his life. So, ladies, next time you're speaking to a man 5'5" in height or less, before you decide to tell him about male privilege, bear in mind that in every measurable quantitative sense he probably faces more discrimination than you in the workplace, and likely doesn't even know it.

It cuts both ways, of course. The taller a man is the more he's likely to earn, which isn't the case with women. Also women, it seems, are judged more harshly on their weight than men, at least as far as job prospects go. An overweight woman suffers far more penalties in terms of earnings and promotion prospects than a man does, but curiously not as much if she's black. These are serious figures we're talking about, on par with discrimination seen in terms of sex and race. They're just less popular as subjects of contention.

It only seems fair, given this information, to add in height privilege and weight privilege to our privilege model, but this does confuse things a little bit. If you're fat, it's better to be a man, but if you're short, it's better to be a woman. So who's got the privilege? All we've done is add in two extra factors. How about attractiveness?

If you're perceived as beautiful, you'll earn 5% more than your ordinary-looking colleagues. If you're perceived as ugly, you'll earn 5% less if you're a woman and 10% less if you're a man. Shall we add in beauty privilege? How complex is that going to make it? Very tall ugly man versus slightly overweight attractive woman; who wins? Wait - one of them is black! Get me a pen and paper. How about perceived athletic ability? IQ? Interpersonal skills? Literacy?

[continued...]

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

[...continued]

It rapidly becomes clear that assuming a consistent set of societal benefits based on handles like "white", "straight" or "male" is not feasible. There are too many other factors, many of them commonly overlooked and some which we may not be aware of, which exert too heavy an influence for us to make consistently accurate assumptions based on just a couple of pieces of information.

To put it another way, individuals differ between each other to a greater extent than grouped categories of people differ from the average. White/straight/male/able-bodied people may very well be collectively privileged, but there is no guarantee that this manifests for any given white/straight/male/able-bodied person in relation to non-white/non-straight/non-male/non-able-bodied peers.

These things aren't incalculable. Statistics has bequeathed us with a wonderful method for figuring these things out called Regression Analysis, which lets us compare any two variables in a set of population data and see whether they're correlated. Not that we can whip this out whenever we're in a social situation to see if we're advantaged or disadvantaged, of course, but plenty of studies on the subject of social inequality are carried out all the time, and nice graduate students will do all the maths for us, allowing us to educate ourselves to the point where we've got a working knowledge of precisely how societal unfairness exists in various situations. We'll certainly be better armed than if we wander round viewing the world in terms of privileged and not privileged.

If you're going to demand people make value judgments about themselves, (and let's not pretend that encouraging people to evaluate how they are privileged is anything other than this), at least suggest an adequate means of doing so, rather than flimsy pop-sociology from off the back of a cornflake packet.

I am aware of the incendiary nature of that last sentence, and how damaging it is to my case, but if the reader doesn't care enough to overlook it, the writer doesn't care enough to omit it.


Edit:
Sources.
Height discrimination studies here (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B73DX-4HWX9SC-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=3ef9a3de56272c5ee70e64190a369eb3) and here (http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=main.doiLanding&uid=2004-95165-004). Weight discrimination study here (http://www.springerlink.com/content/q6n885518156676r/), and the "Beauty Premium" study here (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=226751). Some may require subscription, but googling the name/author of the study will probably get you a reasonable synopsis and plenty of follow-up reading material, if you're interested.

[eladriell.livejournal.com]

*laughs*

We're all privileged compared to someone else, I or instance, have 2 more arms than some people, and am considerably more handsome and witty

What a nice silver lining, however, we all have problems too. Western world my arse. Plenty of people in Beijing with a better lifestyle than me.

Self-deprecating/supercilious white, middle-class anglo wankfests aside, try Valium. It's great!