Update: Bearing in mind the house rules, the comments are now open again.
Readers of this blog may be familiar with the Guardian’s Julie Bindel, who thinks “[get] men off the streets” is “a fabulous slogan” and then wonders why some male readers find her rather stupid and objectionable. Ms Bindel insists on “naming men as the problem” and believes that “sexual violence is the only thing in the world that affects all women.” She also thinks that “male violence towards women and children… is pandemic” and “all women know that if we have not been raped, we are lucky.” Nuance of thought is not, it seems, Ms Bindel’s strongest suit, or an obvious aspiration.
As a riposte of sorts to such adamant idiocy, and to broader claims of “male privilege,” Ballgame has produced a Female Privilege Checklist, which highlights some of the less remarked benefits of being female. Among them,
My chance of suffering a work-related injury or illness is significantly lower than a man’s.
If I shy away from fights, it is unlikely that this will damage my standing in my peer group or call into question my worthiness as a sex partner.
If I attempt to hug a friend in joy, it’s much less likely that my friend will wonder about my sexuality or pull away in unease.
If I interact with other people’s children – particularly people I don’t know very well – I do not have to worry much about the interaction being misinterpreted.
Brandon Berg offers a few further points to mull, including:
If I marry, there is a very good chance that I will be given the option to quit my job and live off my husband’s income without having my femininity questioned.
If I become pregnant, I and I alone choose whether to terminate the pregnancy or have the baby. As a result, I can be reasonably certain that I will never be held financially responsible for a child I didn’t want to have, and that I will never have my unborn child aborted without my consent.
Because I am not expected to be my family’s primary breadwinner, I have the luxury of prioritising factors other than salary when choosing a career path.
Although I am every bit as likely as a man to allow my sex drive to compromise my judgment, I will never be accused of thinking with my clitoris.
Sweating Through Fog also shares some checklist possibilities:
I’m entitled to the benefits of a safe, orderly society, but no one expects me to risk my personal safety to maintain it.
When I find myself with others in a terrifying, life-threatening situation, I have the right to be evacuated first, once the children are safe. Others can wait.
If I see someone else being attacked, I’m not expected to risk my own safety to defend them. It’s okay for me to wait for others to intervene, and it’s also okay for me to criticise others if they don’t.
And,
If I fail at something, I can go to college and study the historical forces and social constructs that make it harder for people like me. If others fail, it’s because they just don’t have what it takes.
Readers may, of course, have suggestions of their own.
(h/t, Stephen Hicks.)
Ophelia,
I think it’s true that universalist feminism is much more influential outside of universities as it represents more of the “popular” feminist attitude. I would also say that it is much more influential in Women’s Studies departments as opposed to feminists in the humanities of the social sciences. The problem is that these thinkers are the “theorists” of the feminist movement who write the books that students read, etc.
Might I suggest that your reaction to Dave’s post stems from you taking it personally against your own project, when he is, in fact, attacking an entirely different strain of feminism. I think the point he makes against the bromide of “male privledge” are quite amusing, but only because I interpreted the target to be academic feminists who construct every aspect of our society as a product of “male privledge”.
Jason, no no, not at all – David and I go way back, and I didn’t at all think he was attacking any project of mine. David has written an article for my website in fact. No it’s just that that kind of thing has a familiar note, and it’s not a note I like very much (the quoted bits, I mean, not David’s analysis). It sounds like the kind of thing that appeals to the pseudonymous wit who posted the last comment on page 2. Huh huh huh, she’s on her period, hawhawhaw, that’s a good one, uh uh.
True enough, about the books. Well, that’s one reason we’re writing this one!
Why are you trying to justify yourself to Ophelia? Nothing you do will satisfy her short of an abject apology acknowledging her victimhood.
Here is another addition:
If I work in an office with a clothing policy that says business suits will be worn I can still wear a skirt, loose fitting blouse and sandals while the guys choke on their ties.
Gee, golly, I just can’t imagine how I could possibly ever for one second have thought there was the smallest whiff of misogyny about any of this, when everyone who comments on it is so obviously rational and reflective and skilled at reading carefully. And pro-feminist, of course.
David,
this is my first time visiting this site. I came from one of those crude, crass sites that uptight people who look for offense in everything in their life would hate. I’m looking around your site and it seems a welcome place to add to my reading list.
Thanks for the humor in a society that sorely needs some.
Ophelia,
Really now, dear. You’re getting way too worked up over this. Why don’t you sit down, have a nice cup of tea and let the men sort it out. Obviously you can’t compete on equal footing without getting your dander up, and that’s so very unattractive. Men are able to deal with the rough-and-tumble world of the blogosphere without crying themselves into the vapors. Just take a Vicodin and sleep the whole mess off and in the morning you’ll be ready to get back into your feminine groove. Now isn’t that better?
As a woman, I never have to put the toilet seat down. But beware my wrath should a man fail to do so.
As an Ophelia, I get to determine what is humorous or not, and berate any whose tastes do not parallel mine.
Ophelia – So sorry we boorish louts fail to live up to your high expectations of witticism and sensitivity. Perhaps you could give us a better example to follow? A funny, lighthearted example of a female privilege, just to show us drooling misogynistic bastards how it’s supposed to be done? Thanks so much for not being the very stereotype of a humorless ball-busting feminist battleaxe.
The privilege of living longer reminds me of an TV travel show I saw recently where it was mentioned that in a particular 3rd world country women had a shorter life expectancy than men, and that was regarded as prima facie evidence for gender oppression and women being to be forced to do the hard work. The opposite, of course, means nothing for some reason.
Boot the humourless value-subtracting harridan. She’s a pylon. And you still reek of Trotskyism.
Someone’s been dealt a poor hand in life: her Shakespearean namesake drowned herself for the sake of star-crossed love – not the most auspicious of angry feminist role models.
Feminist reverence for white males is very complimentary, but not really deserved. White males are super human according to feminists, these men organize, conspire and control everything from a women’s place in this society to the decisions made by millions of non white people half a world away. And it’s not just the suits, feminists look up to every white man – but they do breathe easier when a white guy in a suit is in charge, everyone seems to.
Perhaps feminists are correct about the greatness of white guys, if the proof of reaching a higher plane is being able to laugh at yourself, white men have reached it while no other identity has.
– I can at times of my choosing, interject my opinion into matters in such a strong and forceful manner as to make said matters completely miserable for everyone else involved. even if everyone else involved is having fun with the matters at hand, my opinion is the one that counts and since i am not having fun, no one else should, even if i am not having fun because i do not understand the humor of the situation…
there ya go, now you arent left out Ophelia
Morning all. Maybe we could steer this back to the original subject – of alleged male and female “privilege” – rather than barking at Ophelia or making quips about periods? Don’t make me flick the lights on and off.
Ophelia
What Jason said –
“Either way, I admire your efforts and I think you are being quite unfair to Dave. I think he makes a good point that is revealing to the decadence of Western feminism. It was certainly not meant to be a claim regarding the status of women in general the world over, and interpreting it in such a way strikes me as captious.”
– seems to me to hit the nail on the head.
When you say
“the tone of the comments has by now firmed up my opinion a good deal.”
I wonder what you are getting at. I understand why you might take exception to the TONE of many of the comments, which were often expressed in a pretty salty manner. But would your opinions be better influenced by the CONTENT of the comments? I mean to say, most people here seem to concur broadly with Jason’s view quoted above. David himself has responded courteously, and with clarity, to your objections. To put it bluntly, no-one else seems to have interpreted this thing in the way that you did. Nonetheless you are still not willing even to consider that you might possibly have got hold of the wrong end of the stick. Quite the contrary, in fact. Your opinions have been firmed up.
David
Sorry, our comments “crossed” I think.
Ophelia (and everyone else), please ignore me.
(I’ve just realised that our comments couldn’t have crossed – I missed all the comments after the next >> link – sorry David. I’m going to lie down now).
Horace,
What I was getting at earlier, in a roundabout way, is that the term “misogynist” (like “racist”, “homophobe” etc) has been devalued by inappropriate use and, as a result, rendered somewhat suspicious. One might, of course, take issue with the checklist points above, but to regard them as misogynist seems odd to me. If the statements I quoted are deemed misogynist, what word can people use for, well, actual misogyny?
David – this topic has apparently attracted the notice of the folks at Ace’s site, where the regulars are doing their thing with it. (Dave in Texas had a particularly good one, I thought.)
the left always do this, with every single subject.
they are a tunnel-visioned context-free zone.
perverting the meaning of words, so that they lose value.
case in point…
even OB is infected to some degree with her use of *misogyny*.
she may be a clever lefty, but she’s still a lefty, and it shows.
too intense and humourlessly over-earnest, sucking the life out of stuff like some energy-vampire.
(no offence dearie 🙂
I should point out I have a lot of respect for Ophelia. I just think she’s wrong about the misogyny. So maybe we could continue with a little less of the baiting and the “dearie” business.
To quote a friend of mine: “Life’s rough. Wear a helmet.”
David…
not sure OB should have protection from baiting for her apparent one-eyed feminism
(surely she can give as good as she gets, and its all done in the best possible taste).
but, no problem…your gaff, your rules.
and you did ask nicely.
Q. “How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb?”
A. “That’s not funny.”
And women wonder why men want nothing to do with marriage. Youing men whisper about getting lifetime stuck with the Ophelias.
Hi, thanks for the link. I’m going to post about feminism and feminists again later in the week, and if it’s OK I’d like to incorporate a fair amount of what you have said here.
Ian
Ian,
By all means.
Ophelia needs to meet the perfect man.
Dimitri. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acERZQIAjUk
If a man cheats on me, disrespects me, or even if a stranger makes a crude remark to me, I have every right to slap the hell out of his face. But it is never, EVER acceptable for man to backhand a woman, even if she’s been banging all of his friends and coworkers behind his back while secretly not paying the bills with HIS money and instead stashing it away so when she decides to leave for some guy she met on the internet she’ll have enough money to travel on.
If a man cheats on me, it is NEVER justified and he will always be the scumbag in everybody’s opinion, but if I cheat, it’s okay as long as I use the tried-and-true “You were never there for me” line, even if he was never there because he worked two jobs while I was working to contribute a whopping 75 bucks to the monthly income by buying and selling beanie-babies during re-runs of Oprah.
I always be able to use child-birth as my trump card. Even though God or nature designed it so that I am the one to bear the children, I will always milk it for all it’s worth as if it’s something we BOTH could do, but my man is just too weak and stupid to do it, so I’ll do it myself. I’ll ridicule my husband and tell him that he’s not as mentally strong as me and he has a lower threshhold for pain. Then I’ll spend the rest of our lives holding it over his head, as if I’ve done something special that no other person in the history of the world has ever done.
Ophelia – this woman will say it then – you are the silliest woman on the face of the earth and your words and attitudes are what makes my life and work as a woman more difficult. If women are facing discrimination and harrassment in the workforce and elsewhere they need to ‘cowboy up’, get a backbone and stand up for themselves. I have faced harassment and discrimination in my life and work – my reaction – I confronted it and a dealt with it – guess what – problem solved. I didn’t rely on some busy body in human resources to ‘mediate’ the problem and make everyone go to sensitiviy workshops and develop new policies to ensure a balanced workplace. Those guys know how I feel about something and no big surprise it ended (for me and for other women in the workplace). I thought these observations were absoluately funny and a true commentenary on the bias of women who want everything nice.
A man will be as good as he has to be, and a woman will be as bad as she can get away with. Ophelia has correctly calculated that she can get away with a lot without you soft touch cryptobolshies calling her on it.
I don’t blame her; like a cat or a dog, she doesn’t know any better. I blame you guys, for enabling her. In any case, what a depressing thread.
Some music, methinks.
http://fp.ignatz.plus.com/onepiece.mp3
“I’m not ‘whining’ – I’m commenting. I don’t whine. I frequently tease or mock or criticize or deride, but I don’t whine.”
Saying it three time makes it whining.
I dunno, I think the world ran better when women were chattel and didn’t vote. They just don’t seem to handle their privileges smartly. The very think veneer of civility we have enjoyed in our society is slowly peeling off and at some point the weaker sex will be looking at the stronger one for protection. Since the womens movement has turned our society so pink and there are so many girly men running around with latte on their breaths that there many not be enough real men to put the veneer back on.
The above comment was for sheer provocation. Our society just doesn’t appreciate men anymore and that pisses me off.
Well Ophelia, if you have that many problems with the subject matter, allow me to suggest that you a) stop reading or, b) get thee to a nunnery.
(Was that unfunny? Maybe. Chock full of symbolism about “the sisterhood”? Yep.)
Not only will you “…continue to think it’s predictable, stale, and unamusing,” but you’ll continue to tell us so as well, thus presenting and reinforcing the very archetype of the unhumorous, scolding nag with whom many men have had a passing fling, and *to* whom are so thankful they are not now married.
Congratulations! You’ve actually contributed to the humor quotient of this page … albeit unintentionally.
Heeeere’s Julie!
http://www.pfc.org.uk/node/1544
I’m glad the comments are open again. I came to this party rather late, but I must say that Ophelia Benson, with whose resolute anti-post-modernism I do not agree, has stuck it out admirably here, and is in the right.
It’s all very well to make joking lists of how women have it good, at least in the West. But none of those comments addresses the actual imbalance of power between the genders in our society, and so they fall irritatingly wide of the mark. Hence, I suspect, Benson’s asperity. I share it.
Years ago I wrote a satirical piece in response to an op-ed by a woman decrying feminism. It was about slavery, and how the slaves had a good thing going. One can imagine the list one could compile: guaranteed employment, food and housing, for you and the children; no more cannibals or cruel Arab slavers; the trip of a lifetime across the Atlantic; you get the idea. What did abolitionists offer except an uncertain future on the dog-eat-dog job market, and hatred instead of (admittedly self-interested) care and feeding?
I am sure that descendants of the slaves might react tartly to this. “It’s not funny” they might well say. They’d be right. And (without being accused of making invidious moral equivalence arguments) it’s not funny in the instant case either.
To deny the existence of male privilege is to be wilfully blind. I don’t worry about being anywhere in my city unaccompanied after dark. No one tells me that I’m unsuited to higher mathematics or science because of my gender (in my case, I suggest that it’s ability, or at least motivation). What I choose to wear is not the subject of a constant barrage of adverts and collective clucking. If I were in the public eye, no one would begin a news story by talking about my clothes. There is no glass ceiling for me to challenge, no hostile pharmacists to tell me of the evils of birth control, no worries about pink-collar job ghettos, no assumptions that I “asked for it” if I am unlucky enough to be homosexually raped, no assumptions that I am not capable of high office because I couldn’t handle crises if it were my time of the month. I am less likely to be seriously assaulted in my home, and I’ve never been sexually harassed at work.
David, you are likely too civilized to hold any of those assumptions yourself, much less indulge in any of the objectionable behaviours just noted. But I think you’re downplaying their fairly wide prevalence among those less enlightened than yourself.
I’m with Bindel. To her considerable credit, she’s been provocative enough to re-start the debate. This isn’t the ‘sixties, but women haven’t come nearly far enough, baby.
Dr Dawg,
“It’s all very well to make joking lists of how women have it good, at least in the West. But none of those comments addresses the actual imbalance of power between the genders in our society, and so they fall irritatingly wide of the mark… To deny the existence of male privilege is to be wilfully blind.”
It’s my understanding that the female privilege checklists were largely intended to show just how absurd, selective and condescending claims of “male privilege” and the “imbalance of power” can be. That’s what initially interested me. The ideologues who advocate “male privilege” checklists tend to live in the least oppressive societies on Earth and their concerns are usually about those same societies, not the wider world. The quest for grievance and redress is therefore quite often suspect. Many of the grievances they describe don’t seem to match the experiences of any women I know. “Male privilege” isn’t something I’ve ever heard them grumble about. Who, exactly, are the women who are being told they’re “unsuited to higher mathematics or science” because they happen to be female? And when people resort to invoking “invisible privileges” – proof of which is, it seems, equally intangible – I think some scepticism is in order.
It seems to me that so-called “privilege” is found among men and women in various forms to varying degrees – and is certainly not monopolised by men, let alone by all men by virtue of being male. And I’m not sure all of the points listed above are entirely flippant. The item on abortion, for instance, seems quite serious, at least in its implications. Over at Protein Wisdom, Jeff suggests the following: “Consider this. Women have choice. Suppose men had choice, then a husband or boyfriend could terminate his parental responsibilities by filing paperwork with the courts during the same period a woman could legally have an abortion…” As a thought experiment, it’s not entirely trivial.
http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=12817
“Hence, I suspect, Benson’s asperity. I share it.”
Ophelia’s “asperity” seems to me a serious, if atypical, misstep. It took me several attempts to discover that the accusation of “misogyny” was, in fact, “somewhat intuitive”. Which, given the preceding vehemence, really won’t do.
David:
“Who, exactly, are the women who are being told they’re ‘unsuited to higher mathematics or science’ because they happen to be female?”
I was thinking of prospective Harvard students (http://www.slate.com/id/2112799/). But that was, of course, only one example of many.
“Suppose men had choice, then a husband or boyfriend could terminate his parental responsibilities by filing paperwork with the courts during the same period a woman could legally have an abortion… As a thought experiment, it’s not entirely trivial.”
This thought experiment is actually the subject of a long-running Usenet group, alt.abortion.inequity. It seems to me that the argument is of the apples and oranges variety. One involves bodily autonomy; the other, financial responsibility. But that’s a long (and, as I discovered years ago when I participated in the group) inevitably fruitless, not to mention rancorous, discussion.
“It took me several attempts to discover that the accusation of ‘misogyny’ was, in fact, ‘somewhat intuitive’. Which, given the preceding vehemence, really won’t do.”
I wouldn’t be so quick to discount intuition. In any event, as you know from having to do the editing of this thread, in some cases intuition wasn’t required. Overall, the haste to use the “tu quoque” stratagem sets my own intuitive alarm bells ringing. It seems to me to be missing the whole point of unequal gender relations, perhaps deliberately.
Are you suggesting that the battle for equality has been won in the West? Or simply that women here don’t realize what a soft perch they have compared to their sisters under the Taliban?
Dr Dawg
“Are you suggesting that the battle for equality has been won in the West? Or simply that women here don’t realize what a soft perch they have compared to their sisters under the Taliban?”
I’ve seen nothing in this thread, or on this blog in general to suggest that David would hold such a view. One has to wonder, therefore, why you felt the need to ask the question.
I would say that a more appropriate question for this thread would be:
Do you agree that male privilege is ubiquitous throughout western society as Lucy Gillam maintains? Or would you say that women enjoy some measure of privilege in certain circumstances – that it to say that male privilege might be predominant but it is not ubiquitous?
Horace:
I thought that such assumptions might be inherent in a comment like this one:
“It’s my understanding that the female privilege checklists were largely intended to show just how absurd, selective and condescending claims of ‘male privilege’ and the ‘imbalance of power’ can be. That’s what initially interested me. The ideologues who advocate ‘male privilege’ checklists tend to live in the least oppressive societies on Earth and their concerns are usually about those same societies, not the wider world. The quest for grievance and redress is therefore quite often suspect. Many of the grievances they describe don’t seem to match the experiences of any women I know. ‘Male privilege’ isn’t something I’ve ever heard them grumble about. Who, exactly, are the women who are being told they’re ‘unsuited to higher mathematics or science’ because they happen to be female? And when people resort to invoking ‘invisible privileges’ – proof of which is, it seems, equally intangible – I think some scepticism is in order.”
The suggestion appears to be that male privilege doesn’t exist, although no one could argue that it didn’t, say, in the 1950’s (I choose that period as a kind of limit case). That would mean that male privilege has, over time, been overcome–the battle has been won, in other words.
I took the “Taliban” notion from the comment about societies like ours being “the least oppressive…on earth.”
But to your own question. I don’t think that there’s a simple answer to it. There are all kinds of privilege–race, class, gender–that intersect, and sometimes trump each other or cancel each other out. Hence I would agree that male privilege is salient in some instances, but not others.
Dr Dawg,
“I was thinking of prospective Harvard students…”
You and I discussed the Larry Summers saga at tremendous length some months ago. It was pretty clear then that there was quite a gap between what Summers actually said and what you thought that meant. Let’s not do that dance again.
https://thompsonblog.co.uk/2007/09/diversity.html
“In any event, as you know from having to do the editing of this thread, in some cases intuition wasn’t required.”
The claim of misogyny was made at the start of the thread regarding the items I quoted in the post and the likely motives behind them, not the subsequent comments here. One shouldn’t confuse the two. I’ve posted articles on, say, Islam that have attracted dumb-ass comments which in no way reflect my own views or those of the people I quoted. Likewise, I see no reason to assume that reactions to one commenter here should define the intentions behind the original post or the people I happen to quote. And the point remains that if one is going to dismiss something as misogynist, it helps to have some clear explanation why. As I said, the currency of such terms has been cheapened by careless and opportunistic use, which may in part explain some of the reactions.
“Are you suggesting that the battle for equality has been won in the West?”
I said nothing of the sort. But framed in this way, the notion of a “battle” for “gender equality” is somewhat tendentious. As is the notion of “male privilege”. Men and women are not always interchangeable, which matters in some important respects. Again, what interested me was how the “female privilege” checklists highlighted the selective and condescending tenor common to claims of generic “male privilege”. Apparently, it’s okay to mock and question one, but not the other.
David:
Is there any way of getting directly to this page rather than hitting “Next” a few times?
I didn’t intend to re-open the Summers discussion. I was simply responding to your question. I try to put myself in the place of members of a group of young people told by pillars of the academic community that they don’t have the stuff to do science and math. Summers is far from alone even today in being discouraging in that respect.
On the question of misogyny, once again I don’t have a problem with intuiting it. Benson seems quite level-headed in that respect. I was drawing attention to explicit instances of it in this thread (including one or two comments that remain up) as an indication that misogyny is generally at play when one creates lists of alleged female privilege out of the context of gender power relations.
Suppose we were talking about race instead of gender, offering up a list of alleged Black privilege vis-a-vis whites (because such lists are always composed in reaction, to contest or even nullify the original claims). That would first of all appear to challenge the notion that whites have any more power and privilege in their dealings with Blacks than vice-versa. It could be seen as somewhat mischievous in that respect–even, by some, as racist, in denying the lived experience of Black people.
Dr Dawg,
“Summers is far from alone even today in being discouraging in that respect.”
I suggest you re-read our lengthy exchange, linked above. Despite the length of the thread, you failed to establish that Summers actually said what you took him to be saying, yet you go on as if it were obvious that he had.
“On the question of misogyny, once again I don’t have a problem with intuiting it.”
Well, I certainly expect claims and insinuations to that effect to be supported. Intuition just won’t do, for fairly obvious reasons. And, again, you’re presuming motives you cannot, as yet, establish. The readers’ comments here do not define my motives or the motives of the people I quoted, some of whom may be female for all you or I know.
“Suppose we were talking about race instead of gender…”
No, let’s not. You do have a habit of shoehorning race into discussions. It’s not always helpful and often confuses the issue with misleading connotations.
“Is there any way of getting directly to this page rather than hitting ‘Next’ a few times?”
Ah. Apparently not. Clicking on the name of the latest commenter *should* take you to the latest comment. But it doesn’t. Possibly some glitch in the new comments format, with them split over several pages.
“‘Suppose we were talking about race instead of gender…'”
“No, let’s not. You do have a habit of shoehorning race into discussions. It’s not always helpful and often confuses the issue with misleading connotations.”
I’m afraid I don’t understand this objection at all. I’m arguing by analogy. Sexism and racism are both forms of oppression: unequal relations between groups of people. I fail to see how observing this and making a point about consistency is “shoehorning” anything into a discussion.
Racism is far less acceptable in certain genteel circles than is sexism. I think it’s quite reasonable to point out that we can be inconsistent in our views of two practices that we explicitly eschew. In the instant case, it seems perfectly acceptable to draw up lists of ways in which women in our society are privileged; but the very suggestion that we might, in the same semi-joking fashion, draw up such lists for visible minorities raises hackles. I can understand the hackles, but not the objection to the line of argument, namely that an intuition of racism in my hypothetical case might not be so easily dismissed as an intuition of sexism in the case under discussion.
Incidentally, I can’t get your “Remember personal info” thingie to work either.
Dr Dawg,
“I can understand the hackles, but not the objection to the line of argument, namely that an intuition of racism in my hypothetical case might not be so easily dismissed as an intuition of sexism in the case under discussion.”
I wouldn’t accept an unsupported “intuition” on either basis. I’d expect something more substantive. If we do accept “intuition” or “feelings” alone as a sound basis for complaint and compensation, we then run the risk of legitimate grievance being defined as whatever the person complaining loudest says it is, regardless of their motives. It would, of course, be unfair if those who claim to be aggrieved are the ones who automatically get to decide whether something is actually, in reality, offensive or malicious.
Moral judgment and objectivity shouldn’t be surrendered to whichever members of a favoured group happen to be shouting loudest. The denial of objective criteria in such matters is, frankly, a little sinister, because injustice is then defined, unilaterally, by feelings, or claims of feelings – and by opportunist leverage. Phobias, prejudice and oppression become whatever the Designated Victim Group or its representative *says* they are. And the basis for apology, compensation and flattery becomes whatever the Designated Victim Group *says* it is. The practical result of this is egomaniacal license and the politics of role-play: “Feel my pain, now do as I say…”
“Incidentally, I can’t get your ‘Remember personal info’ thingie to work either.”
It doesn’t work for me either. Imagine the indignity.
“Others can wait?” “Others to intervene?” Others?
We are no longer men, it would seem. We are “others.” It’s the language of radical feminism. It is easier to defeat the “enemy” once they have been dehumanized.
David,
Have you seen this?
The Victim Privilege Checklist: http://sweatingthroughfog.blogspot.com/2008/07/victim-privilege-list.html
“7. I can be sure that when I get angry, it isn’t for selfish reasons, but rather because the experience of my people has fostered in me a keen sensitivity to injustice. When others get angry, it is yet another sign of their hatred.”
“8. I can be sure that when others tell me I’m wrong about something, it means they lack insight, perspective and empathy.”
“9. I can be certain that any negative views of my people aren’t due to anything we’ve done. After all, my people have a long history of this sort of bigotry from others.”
“10. I can be certain that any negative views of me personally just reflect hateful stereotypes promoted by others.”
😉
Anna,
Heh. It does capture the self-justifying thinking that we’ve come to know and love. Sort of “heads-I-win-tails-you-lose.” As I mentioned earlier, I’ve been told more than once that my rejection of certain claims of “privilege” is itself a sign of “privilege” and thus compounds my innate male wickedness. And the more I have the temerity to argue, the more my wickedness grows. Fiend that I am.
erm;
Jest for U:
The PC brain is a black hole: no light escapes. Anything that goes into orbit is torn asunder. A jet of near-lightspeed destruction blasts anything that is unfortunate enough to be in line with its axis. All information is extinguished, except for mass. Which grows inexorably greater. At the core may be a link to alien universes where other incomprehensible laws of physics apply.
Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here! is written in deep furrows on the forehead of the carrier.
The party’s obviously over here, but I do have to wonder…
Say these were lists representing “black privilege”? Stuff like “I get to do badly in school and still get into a great university.” Then would the Rush Limbaugh-isness of it be obvious? (As in, the completely doltish right wing US radio guy.) And to complete this thought experiment, let’s say black commenters were saying “dumb, not funny.” Would they then be told to go back to their plantations? Would they be told to lighten up? Just wondering…
Yeah, there’s some female privilege, but the thing is, women still get the short end of the stick by a wide margin. So poking fun at female privilege ain’t that bright.