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Part of being Privileged is not having to think about being Privileged
- Thread starter Sunstone
- Start date
Kilgore Trout
Misanthropic Humanist
Okay.
Kilgore Trout
Misanthropic Humanist
Next you can vainly attempt to convince me that 2+2=5.
Very true, but so has Eastern society. Just in different ways.
Our species of super-sized ape does not have a great track record.
Kilgore Trout
Misanthropic Humanist
That offends me!
Indeed! As you may have discerned from reading extensively between the lines, it was an insult targeted directly at you and you alone. How nefarious of me to couch it in nominally inoffensive language!
Wherenextcolumbus
Well-Known Member
Sometimes people are not simply "idiots"
Sometimes people are in denial or calculated, sometimes people know exactly what they are doing.
I don't think people are denying that people should not get offended on an individual level (or they may be, but there's a disconnect here in the conversation). I think what's not being mentioned is that individual racist/sexist/homophobic expressions don't simply exist in a vacuum. I don't just walk down the street, hear somebody yell at me that I'm a **** because of what I'm wearing, and that's that.
These types of experiences are compounded by religious and political institutions that calls me a **** for my desire to seek birth control and reproductive rights.
When there is individual, familial, and institutional layering of using the same word against a person for various reasons that is disparaging, it's like walking away from a single threat down the street only to find themselves being hit by a car that was targeting them without even knowing they were coming.
Me, personally, I wear that badge as a **** or whore with honor, but it's got a fighting spirit. I have found privileged people who wonder why I need to fight so much, and that is where the privilege exists. It's with others who are immune to the layering of offenses and disparaging comments. They may hear it every now and then, but not from multiple and pervasive outlets.
These types of experiences are compounded by religious and political institutions that calls me a **** for my desire to seek birth control and reproductive rights.
When there is individual, familial, and institutional layering of using the same word against a person for various reasons that is disparaging, it's like walking away from a single threat down the street only to find themselves being hit by a car that was targeting them without even knowing they were coming.
Me, personally, I wear that badge as a **** or whore with honor, but it's got a fighting spirit. I have found privileged people who wonder why I need to fight so much, and that is where the privilege exists. It's with others who are immune to the layering of offenses and disparaging comments. They may hear it every now and then, but not from multiple and pervasive outlets.
Good point. Some of those institutions are working hard to limit your freedoms too.
Alceste
Vagabond
OK, what I'm trying to say its we don't know the back story when a person is annoyed by some particular comment, and to be fair we should give people the benefit of the doubt. A good example is the retarded, victim-blaming things people say in all those rape threads. Is it any surprise that the people who have been sexually assaulted are offended by those comments? Do you really believe they are likely to be completely in control of their emotional reactions? Or in my case, I get triggered by stupid comments about the type of work women are best suited for, because I'm still angry about being blacklisted by the all white, all male grip department of the film union for being a "tease". It's not about the comment or the person who made it. They don't have power over me. The all white, all male grips in IATSE had power over me, and used it to completely **** up my career because they didn't believe women should be grips. (For icing on the cake, they wouldn't let me take jobs I was offered in sound or props either.)
Even if nobody makes a stupid comment that reminds me of those guys, I still think about them out of the blue sometimes and get pretty damn offended. Sometimes when people make a sexist comment, it's a trigger. I'll take out my anger at losing a $100K job because of attitudes like theirs on them. I haven't been able to find a job that pays more than $25K since, so it's a pretty big deal. Not at all trivial.
I'm trying to say that while the trigger might seem innocuous to you, and it might seem like people are getting offended over nothing, without the back story you really can't guess whether or not the offense is reasonable, or the feeling of being oppressed legitimate.
Your feeling that it's up to you whether or not to get offended is a facet of your privilege. If I had never had my career destroyed by sexism, I'm sure it would be "up to me" whether sexist comments **** me off too. But it's not up to me. I have never in my life voluntarily given anybody power over me, ever. Not even my parents. Not since the day I was born. It was a big surprise to learn that men have power over me - real power - the political and economic kind - and they are sometimes happy to use it to **** me over, and there's nothing I can do about it. Try being aware of that basic reality and not getting ****** off from time to time.
Magic Man
Reaper of Conversation
OK, but I'd rather stick to attempting to convince you of things that are true, as I've been doing so far.
Magic Man
Reaper of Conversation
You should really just listen to the guy who's never had to deal with any of this when he tells you to just control your emotions.
Kilgore Trout
Misanthropic Humanist
You have no idea how hard it's been for us apes. It took us millions of years just to figure out how to do something useful with these opposable thumbs!
Alceste
Vagabond
No kidding! Eons of existential angst because our nostrils are too small for thumbs to be useful.
Kilgore Trout
Misanthropic Humanist
I find it interesting that you often confuse "attempts at convincing" with "immature and incessant hissy fits."
Kilgore Trout
Misanthropic Humanist
If there is a creator, he's got one sick sense of humor.
I think we have the potential to exercise much greater control than we normally do over our feelings. It seems to me that, at 56, I'm much more in control of my feelings than I was at, say, 36. So perhaps some learning how to control my feelings has gone on there.
So does that mean we can control to any significant extent whether someone or something offends us? Ideally, I suppose it does. But I would argue greatly against any notion that our ability to control whether something offends us shifts the blame from the perpetrator to the victim. That's just asinine, since it would imply that blame is determined, not by who perpetrates an act, but by how people feel about the act.
So does that mean we can control to any significant extent whether someone or something offends us? Ideally, I suppose it does. But I would argue greatly against any notion that our ability to control whether something offends us shifts the blame from the perpetrator to the victim. That's just asinine, since it would imply that blame is determined, not by who perpetrates an act, but by how people feel about the act.
O sweetness and grace! O joyful day! You have perfectly set me up for a masturbation joke! A masturbation joke! Who among us does not live to make masturbation jokes!
Not to mention the angst that comes from choosing between the remaining four choices and then neurotically worrying whether you made the wrong choice. That's a biggie, for sure.
I hear you.
Even in my industry, where much of the labor force is dominated by women (though not nearly as many in spots of artistic directors, interestingly enough), I was fired from a company because I was pregnant. It wasn't because they were concerned by health or risk factors, it was because they "Can't have a pregnant woman on stage, and therefore in the company." So, even though I was doing yoga, running, lifting, etc. until I was in my third trimester and the size of a whale, I was fired when I was in my 2nd month of pregnancy just because I was pregnant.
It wasn't a simple statement of sexism. I lost a job because of it. And nobody batted an eyelash.
Probably why when our tumbling instructor at our dance studio found out with her husband that she's pregnant, after trying for over 7 years to have children, that I have no issues with her working as long as she wants. And probably why I find myself biting my tongue when parents ask me what I'm going to do with a pregnant tumbling instructor. It's her uterus, her body, and she knows herself best. Heck, she's 36 years old. She's fully aware after teaching for close to 20 years in dance and acrobatics what is going on with her body and what her boundaries are.
So, no, I don't show how infuriated I get when I hear comments like that about pregnant women in the workforce, or working mothers. But as stated earlier, those comments don't just exist in a vacuum. I cope by biting my tongue, and assuring the parents that the instructor is a professional and knows how to teach their children, and that their children will be just fine. She and I will work out maternity leave and everyone will be aware of what is going on in the meantime.