as small as a world and as large as alone, Out of interest, why do you believe privilege is...

4:18am April 20, 2015

Anonymous asked: Out of interest, why do you believe privilege is not a useful concept?

natalunasans:

theunitofcaring:

It lends itself very readily to conversations over who is suffering more which are, in my experience, destructive and alienating for the people involved and make activism less effective. It’s used by lots of different people to mean lots of different things, some of which I agree with (’I know more about my life than someone who hasn’t lived it’) and some of which I disagree with (’if you disagree with me, it’s because you’re too privileged to understand my perspective’).
I’ve witnessed debates over whether depressed people are privileged over psychotic people and whether lesbians are privileged over bi people and I feel like the debates did not contribute to communication across communities about how we can be better allies to one another, they contributed to anger and mistrust and aggression. I think if they hadn’t been framed around privilege they’d have been more useful.
Privilege is not useful for talking about issues where a traditionally ‘privileged’ group has a disadvantage compared to a traditionally marginalized group - like, lesbians seem to earn more than straight women and men are more likely to be shot by cops. It’s easy to describe how both of those have to do with the social forces around gender, but I don’t know how to talk about them within a privilege framework.
Also, I’m not sure the extent to which ‘me, except a cis guy’ is a coherent concept but I’m 100% sure that my life is structurally and systemically easier than his would have been. I’ve been stopped by the police for running around barefoot and flapping, and they asked if I was okay and needed an escort home. I have male friends who’ve been arrested or harassed for that. I’ve had access to supportive friendships and sympathy that my male friends have had a harder time getting. I ran a volunteer program working with first graders when male me would have run straight into the stigma and suspicion aimed at men who want to work with children. In every sense that matters to me, I’ve had an easier life than him.

I’m not saying this to invalidate anyone else’s lived experiences, I’m not saying that, in general, it’s not systemically and structurally easier to be male in our society. I’m saying that if you’re awkward and attracted to women and socially-clueless-enough-to-miss-all-gender-socialization and good-at-school enough to buy your social license to be bad at gender - or maybe, ‘if you want to work with children’ or ‘if you’re weird enough that the police are likely to stop you in public’ or ‘if you’re lucky enough not to know any sexist people’ - I mean, I don’t really know which the defining traits are. But my life has been easier because I’m a woman. ‘Privilege’ as a concept doesn’t capture my experience. I know a lot of other women, mostly developmentally disabled women, who have talked about similar experiences.
The privilege model says ‘gay mentally ill woman’ has it worse than ‘straight mentally ill man’ but the actual fact is that I have it better. And I don’t have any idea how we’d fix the model to change this.
Considering privilege as situational (this is not a new idea!), instead of identity-only, solves most of the problems with the concept of privilege.

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