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]

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.