a few non-exhaustive words about privilege

[sophiaserpentia]

A friend pointed me to this list of privilege the other day. Quoting bits which are relevant to frequent discussion in this journal:

privilege is consistently responding to disagreement, criticism, and concerns with condescension and hostility, then accusing the unprivileged of being irrational, inconsistent, duplicitous, guileful, and unappeasable

privilege is feeling entitled to the conformity in behaviours and attitudes of the unprivileged

privilege is not having to be self-conscious and self-critical

privilege is the habit of seeking power and influence over others

the privileged sees power over others as success

privilege is the ability to start, end, and avoid discussion with little consequence

privilege is shelter from direct consequences

privilege is feeling entitled to be better off than others

I want to add a few of my own:

Privilege means not having to wonder, ever, if people around you are regularly putting your needs ahead of theirs.

Privilege means being able to laugh at certain kinds of joke instead of being aware of your inferiority.

Privilege means not having to worry about the effects of your words or actions.

Edit. It was correctly pointed out that this list reflects the automatic assumption or perhaps assertion-by-default of privilege.

Comments

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Some of these things are very hard to describe using language, and i believe this is because language is meant to affirm certain things by giving us words for them -- and to hide other things by not giving us words for them.

Privilege (as understood in feminist/critical theory) is one of those things that we just don't have words for. If you have it, you are not aware of having it, but if you don't have it, awareness of that fact slaps you in the face every day.

Most of us can relate to some degree of not having privilege, but we are just not conscious of it. Thinking about privilege while keeping in mind that there is probably some sense in which you don't have it can help most of us to understand what is meant by all this.

There is a way in which humor is usually used to make statements from the perspective of group privilege. If a joke about a group to which you belong makes you feel bad instead of making you want to laugh, you're told you "just can't take a joke." But the thing is, many people in the privileged group see it as a kind of innate right to be able to tell jokes of that sort without having to worry about the consequences. I wish i had a dollar for every time i've seen someone act wounded because they were asked to consider the way in which their use of humor was hurtful instead of funny.

[contentlove.livejournal.com]

If you have it, you are not aware of having it

Um, what if you have it and you're aware of having it and you attempt to live a reasonable life and do not assume other people have everything you have? Is it permissible under any circumstances you can imagine to enjoy one's privilege without it automatically being an affront to people who are not similarly privileged?

What if I'm a bit smarter than the other kids in my class? May I read books at my level?

[griffen.livejournal.com]

Neither can I. I laugh at all manner of ethnic jokes aimed at people of my particular ethnicities, and it's just not an issue for me.

[griffen.livejournal.com]

Heck, most Jewish jokes were originally told *by Jews.* They are a people who have mastered the art of laughing at themselves.

And as the folks at Avenue Q tell us, "Everyone's a little bit racist."

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

I'm glad that you can always laugh. Does that mean someone is defective if they can't? My whole point is that some people seem to think they have a god-given right to make comments that they know are going to offend people, and they act put upon if you ask them to refrain some of the time.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

So, you think when i hear an offensive joke about transpeople, that part of me must surely find it funny but that i consciously decide to be offended instead?

Have you never been offended by a joke? Not once, ever? Offended by something that is presented as funny?

[griffen.livejournal.com]

Everyone is, eventually. That doesn't make that form of humor inherently oppressive, or sexist, or racist.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Agreed. If someone was to, say, make a joke about the size of my privates, I may get self conscious, but I wouldn't feel oppressed or discriminated against.

That line of humor does not reflect a pattern of oppression in our society anyway.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Nope, my own definition of oppression deals with patterns of power imbalance in social institutions and ideologies. I keep my eye on that at all times.

If my anger drives me to make statements that might upset people, i always feel bad afterwards. But i would never try to pass it off as humor.

[griffen.livejournal.com]

The thing that I see happening is that many people feel that malice is inherent in humor. I don't agree with that, but a lot of people feel that way.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Some humor has malice, some does not. It's not always easy to tell the difference, especially if you're not the target of it.

[griffen.livejournal.com]

I've been the target of racist jokes (Irish, Scottish, English, Mexican - due to my past marriage to someone who was ethnically Hispanic), religious jokes (pagan and Catholic), sexist jokes (as I was born female), gay jokes and trans jokes. Most of them were told by people who were of the same ethnicity, religion, etc. as the targets. My late father-in-law was 100% Mexican-American, and he collected what he called "beaner" jokes. He thought they were hysterical.

I do not agree with your contention, and it bothers me that you'd rather focus on the oppression or supposed malice than on the humor. It makes me wonder if you've ever laughed at yourself, or allowed yourself to be the target of a joke without feeling enraged or oppressed.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

What do you want me to say? Sometimes humor is malicious, sometimes it is not. Do you feel that humor is never malicious?

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

No, it doesn't. But some jokes ARE inherently sexist or racist... even if everyone who hears them thinks they're funny.

[griffen.livejournal.com]

So, let me see if I'm reading you correctly. If it can be construed as racist or sexist, get rid of it, even if it's funny. Right?

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

I am not an advocate of censorship, i'm an advocate of training people to be a bit more sensitive about the effects on others comments they make.

[griffen.livejournal.com]

Then I think that total_static is correct, and your prejudices about Christianity need to be toned down. When I have posted diatribes like yours on the subject of Christianity, I've offended a lot of decent people who happen to be Christian.

Sauce for the goose. If you can't take the same criticism of your views and expression of them, you have no business criticizing others' views or expressions of them. Period.

[akycha.livejournal.com]

There are reasons, of course, when people do not laugh.

Humor serves a lot of social purposes. Two of those myriad purposes are to construct social solidarity and ease (to make people more comfortable in a group) and to take the power away from a feared subject (group, person, topic, etc.). (There are other functions but I'm not going to address those here.)

The first purpose, social bonding, makes people more comfortable with one another. The second purpose takes the power away from something by making it laughable-- this is probably one of the reasons there are so many jokes about death.

When jokes are made about subaltern/minority groups, they can function in both of these ways. The first purpose is to establish the people making the joke as not part of those groups-- to make the people in the "in-group" enjoying the joke feel safer and more social with one another by indirectly stating that they are not part of a despised group. At the same time, the power those despised groups have to frighten the people in the "in-group" is lessened-- they are portrayed as laughable, idiotic, dirty, what-have-you.

Of course, people within the minority groups also use humor to create social ties-- even often humor about themselves. This functions in the first way, but it also facilitates bonding in terms of irony and shared experience. In some cases-- the one I can think of is gay male jokes-- it also distances the joke-teller from the stereotypical characteristics that the joke is usually about, as in "I may be gay, but I'm not effeminate like the person in the joke." On the other hand, the jokes can be used (in this case, among effeminate gay men) as a social bonding mechanism, "proving" that they have a sense of humor about their situation.

Making jokes about one's own group is also often a way to bond with people outside that group, by lessening the power of one's subaltern group and thus lessening people's fear that one is a part of it. (Again, I'm thinking of "gay jokes"-- making such jokes when one is gay is often a ticket to social acceptance among heterosexuals.)

When members of subaltern groups do not find jokes about their groups funny, it is often because they are aware of the power differential between the perspective of the joke and their own experience. They also may be aware of how such jokes are used to diminish and mock their group. And lastly, such jokes are often used in order to exclude them from a social group, either deliberately or not, or else to "keep them in their place," to remove perceived power from them as individuals. (I am thinking here of sexist jokes, which are often made around women as a means of excluding them from a group or to remind them that they are not as valued as men and "shouldn't be.")

Lastly, one reason that people in such groups do not laugh (or laugh falsely, a whole 'nother issue) is that such jokes are not always funny. Humor depends, in large part, on one's perspective.