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]

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.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

As one person said, much of what we see as racist/sexist humor was created by the people it targets (Such as the jews and their very long tradition of self deprecating humor).

It's one thing if Jews or Catholics tell one another self-deprecating jokes, but quite another if someone else tells the same jokes. For example, if *i* make a joke about the Catholic sex abuse scandal, it would mean something quite different from if you told it, even if it were the same exact joke. Humor is very contextual, and the same words can imply vastly different things depending on who is telling the joke.

[neitherday.livejournal.com]

We could argue about this all day long, but I don't think either of us are going to change our opinions on this matter. Which is why I've never understood the concept of debate in the first place (it usually just degenerates into a bunch of people yelling at each other and calling each other names as tempers flare and attitudes arise--especially online).

IMHO, the point of debates is more to influence neutral observers and not the person(s) one is actually debating with.

[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?

[griffen.livejournal.com]

Most humor, in order to be malicious, has to be intentionally so. I don't think the groups of people who make jokes you would consider malicious to be intrisincally malicious people. And I believe in giving people the benefit of the doubt unless there is other overt evidence of malice.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

I see your point. I tend to analyze based on action; to me, malice and hatred are descriptive of actions and motives, not perceived feelings. People are not always aware of their own motives or feelings, my theory being that we are in some ways blinkered from seeing our own participation in patterns of hate.

IMO telling someone that they "just can't take a joke" is evidence of malice; it is very belittling and means that the target's sensibilities are not worthy of consideration.

[griffen.livejournal.com]

I tend to analyze based on motive, or idea. Action comes from motive and motive comes from ideas. If a person don't have the demonstrated intent to be malicious, it is important to give the benefit of the doubt.

[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.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

I started off by talking about comments made where people are unconcerned about the effects those comments will have on others, and trying to pass them off as humor, and trying to make people feel bad if they take offence at malicious jokes.

This is not the same as my expressions of anger, which i do not try to pass off as humor, which i do not tell people to "get over it" if they are offended by. I never make a comment in anger without feeling bad afterwards. I know my expressions of anger are problematic. (In fact, i want my anger to go away entirely, that way i'll never offend anybody.)

[griffen.livejournal.com]

Speaking from experience about anger - I rarely get truly angry anymore, and I still offend people quite often. So that assertion is untrue. Better to get a handle on the anger so that you're using *it* instead of *it* using you.

Also, I'm not your enemy, regardless of what other people may think. I just disagree with some of your premises. Okay?

[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.