Richard Dawkins tweeted something yesterday (cue foreboding music, cawing of ravens, the rumble of distant thunder):
Oh NO. Just checked my privilege. Turns out I'm a white heterosexual male. http://t.co/3I1J1dWRrq How can I atone? Hair shirt? Flagellation?
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) November 8, 2014
It was enlightening. Why are there people who are so totally hung up on the idea that maybe they’ve received some lifelong benefits from being male, and white, and heterosexual? I’m perfectly comfortable with the fact that I’ve been fortunate to be a member of a socially dominant class, and I have no desire to change my whiteness, maleness, or heterosexuality, nor do I feel any pressure to “atone” for who I am. It seems natural to me to accept the existence of structural patterns of advantage and disadvantage within society. This can’t be so hard for Dawkins to grasp, can i?
And then I looked at the source: this is raw right-wing propaganda put out by a conservative think-tank. Why is Richard Dawkins reading and citing such trash? And the article — University professors attack white, heterosexual, Christian males for being “privileged” — consists of mindless quotes which do not support the thesis of the title, but then, I’m beginning to see that some people regard pointing out reality to them to be an “attack”.
Three professors have launched a “Check Your Privilege” campaign suggesting that if you are white, heterosexual, able-bodied, Christian, or male you are privileged
Yes? Is this at all controversial? Of course you are! It sounds like a campaign to raise awareness of our advantages, and to appreciate that others may not have them. It’s straightforward social consciousness 101.
The “Check Your Privilege” campaign defines privilege as “unearned access to social power based on membership in a dominant social group.”
They write that like it’s weird, rather than obviously true.
So I just made one short reply.
.@RichardDawkins Nothing to atone for. Recognize your advantages, & use them to help less privileged. This shouldn't be hard to figure out
— PZ Myers (@pzmyers) November 9, 2014
We’re atheists. We’re supposed to recognize reality, not take offense at it.
Love that. But what’s with Nugent flailing around in that tweet? He’s making himself look (more) ridiculous.
Dawking hell. Why do they have to do this? Don’t they understand how painful it is to watch people who have built up a reputation for rationality act so nonsensically?
Why would you have to atone for anything just for being privileged? Just stop being an arse to those who aren’t. And stop diving into oceans of irrationality in order to escape from this terrifying strawman you’ve invented. It hurts to watch.
Part of me thinks that Dawkins really shouldn’t use Twitter: it’s not a medium he’s good at, and he frequently comes across as an arse. And part of me says: good, if this medium is exposing the real Dawkins, unplugged from an editing process and the careful scripting of podium appearances, let’s see more of it, to accelerate his slide into irrelevance.
There was a time when I would read about things Dawkins had said and done and think. “good for him!”. Not so much recently, especially since he got into Twitter. I’m past being upset by his attitude, now I just feel a sense of resignation.
I think atheists should view this as a lesson on the perils of hero worship.
It is a simple piece of logic to say that being white, middle class, male and heterosexual gives you an advantage over almost any other group, but is it easy to work out that for yourself if you are in that group?
I always got the concept that living in the UK you were more privileged than many people around the world, but it was not made clear to me (growing up in UK school, and with pretty socially minded parents) that even within that society I had further privileges. Of course, as soon as the concept is introduced to you – as it has been to Dawkins – you should see how rational it is, and how much evidence there is to support the idea. I was certainly very happy to accept the idea.
So not fully appreciating the concept of privilege without prior explanation seems understandable, but the issues arise when you do try and make people aware of their privilege and they wont accept it (eg Dawkins). And this is where I have suffered great frustration in trying to get people to accept their privilege and act on it. I am unsure if people really do miss the simple logic or just don’t want to accept what is evidently true?
Are people unwilling to abandon the notion of what they achieved in life was fully deserved or are there more complex (albeit unjustified) reasons for not wanting to accept your privilege?
As PZ mentioned, there is nothing to be lost by accepting you benefit disproportionately in society, so what is the best way to convince others to see the world like this?
Fairly sure Dawkins and many he knows has pointed out frequently how Christians are given unfair preferences over atheists in a variety of situations in the USA – surely he can’t be that confused when applying the exact same observation to other groups?
mclarenm23:
If anyone had told my father, who toiled all his life in manual labour for not very much money, that he was privileged, it would have been difficult to convince him. But this guy is an emeritus fellow at Oxford. If he hasn’t learned privilege 101 by now, I don’t hold out much hope that he ever will.
It’s not just Dawkins. Way too many people interpret neutral statements of fact, theory, or opinion as pointed attacks against themselves. They flail around and howl about how they’re being “persecuted”, expend vast amounts of energy “refuting” statements never made, and as we’ve seen recently (and formerly) launch counter-attacks against prominent figures in the “conspiracy” against them who have somehow bamboozled the rest of the world.
(Warning: free association ahead.)
This “morning” I checked G+ (bad idea) and one guy I follow was horrified by Wondermark’s now famous Sea Lion comic. That poor sea lion! If people “talk shit” about you (his words) you’re supposed to just take it? Or is reasoned discussion useless and the only recourse is bashing in brains with a brick? Anyone who forwards this comic “to prove some kind of point” is a horrible person.
I am not making this up.
Seriously, what level of paranoia and sense of grievance does it take to identify with a fictional pedant with a chip on its shoulder and no boundaries? And this is a grown adult here, with his own small publishing business and a wife and an apartment and presumably no major psychological disorders.
To quote Angelus from “Becoming (part 1)”: “You never learn, do you? This wasn’t about you. This was never about you. And you fall for it every single time!”
This whole “privilege = original sin” attitude that some people take has always baffled me. It’s “why are there still monkeys” levels of wrong. I understand that existing in a world that was designed and built by and for the convenience of people like you makes it difficult to recognize that there are other perspectives. When you’re part of a marginalized group, you know what it’s like to have to navigate a world that’s not built for you. I think that makes it easier to recognize other axes of oppression. But when it’s pointed out to you and explained with great patience and you still dig in your heals? That just…IDGI.
An analogy that I like for explaining privilege is left- vs. right-handedness since it’s obviously less emotionally fraught than race or gender. The world is built for the convenience of right-handed people. If someone is thinking about the best way to design a tool or device of some sort, they’re thinking with right-handedness in mind. If you’re left-handed, there are dozens of things you have to think about that would never occur to a right-handed person. If you’re a student, is there a left-handed desk available? If there’s not, you probably end up with a tender groove somewhere on your wrist where your arm was hanging off the edge of the desk as you wrote. Is there a pair of left handed scissors available? If not, is there a right-handed person willing to cut this thing for me? When I was a kid and wanted to play softball, I had to learn to throw right-handed because we couldn’t find a lefty baseball glove in my size that my parents could afford. When I go out to eat with a group, I have to make sure nobody is sitting to my left so we’re not constantly bumping elbows as we eat. In school, the outside edge of my left hand was almost always smudged with either pencil lead or ink because, when you’re lefty, you drag your hand over what you’ve already written as you write. A right-handed person could go through their entire life having never considered any of these things. And that’s privilege. The ability to just not ever have to think about certain things that members of other groups have to deal with on a daily basis.
Dawkins could land a political career as the Republicans’ token atheist. He already got the “politics of envy” talking point down.
Because he’s a wealthy dude who enjoyed living in a system where competition is systematically rigged in his favor and refuses to aknowledge it in public?
You know, given the fact that he quite obviously has a very high opinion of himself (it’s ok: I have a very high opinion of myself too), one would have thought that Dawkin would just have said “Fuck it: in a perfectly fair system, I’d still be a successful academic and writer because I’m very smart, therefore I’m perfectly okay with activists bashing a system which allow mediocrities to pretend they are my intellectual peers” instead of backing up said mediocrities.
Oh well….
What an asshole.
Spoken like an adolescent throwing a tantrum. The power of emotions is strong on this one…
The problem is the word “privilege”.
As a straight-white-male-in-a-Western country, I fully acknowledge that I live life on the “Easiest Difficulty Setting”. I acknowledge that I do not face a number of barriers others face, and others are very unfortunate to face said barriers. I also acknowledge a moral duty to assist others overcome those barriers or at least not to contribute to keeping the barriers up myself as much of possible – whilst also being aware that I just don’t know what the barriers are and am undoubtably part of the problem due to ignorance.
But privilege is a bad term to use to describe that stroke of not-bad-luck. Because privilege is either earned or unearned. Earned privilege is fine – but unearned privilege is not, and is nearly always undeserved. By describing my situation as a straight-white-male-in-a-Western-country as “privilege”, you’re saying I don’t deserve the freedoms and rights others lack. This is totally not the case – I do deserve those freedoms and rights. And so do everyone else, merely by the ‘virtue” of being human – _especially_ the people not getting them.
This situation of luck is not privilege – it’s either good fortune on my part, or bad fortune on the part of those not born ‘straight-white-male-in-a-Western-country’.
When someone talks about “white privilege” or “male privilege”, what _I_ hear is that they want to take my freedoms and rights away. I don’t want that – I want to extend those freedoms and rights to others. I want to achieve equality by raising people up, not by tearing them down.
(Caveat: there may be some freedoms and “rights” that I have that I _shouldn’t_ have – freedoms and rights gained at the expense of others. These should go. Many of them have – for example, the “right” of a husband to compel his wife for sex)
That said – my discomfort at the term isn’t important, and I can bear it. If the term “privilege” is more effective than talking about “fortune” or “luck” or “easiest difficulty setting”, go with it. But please be aware you will disaffect – however mildly – people who are on your side, but who are picky about language use. And while I don’t speak for Richard Dawkins, I imagine he falls into that category.
Dawkins IS a fucking child. Good lord, I am so glad I stopped looking up to him when I turned 17 or some shit. I knew he had bullshit just waiting to seep from his inner 5 year old.
No, Dr. Dawkins, merely being white, male, heterosexual, etc, isn’t something you need to feel bad about or atone for.
Making the fact that other people are, through no fault of their own, treated unfairly by the world because they’re not these things… that you should feel bad about.
If you actually want to atone (cue scare chord) for that, you could start by not writing anything else in which you assume you know more about prejudice than its victims. Unfortunately, that would require that you had asked the question honestly and were willing to listen to the actual answers.
We all know know that’s not the case, so never mind, I guess.
I suspect that is because that’s often enough what is meant by it. I seem to recall someone once said, while running for US president, something like “I won’t mention that the other guy is Catholic”. Neutral statement of fact, or pointed attack?
Like it or not, that’s what the general culture is like. There are few neutral statements about people, most are meant to laud them or put them down. (Well, that’s exaggerated, but not all that much.) Plus, saying that you have unearned benefits can easily be heard as an accusation of not playing fair. And there is this common belief that playing fair is important.
robertwatkins @ 14
A) We’re aware of that, thank you, as evidenced by the rivers being cried by privileged straight white dudes over these ideas.
B) If they’re “disaffected” by the use of a word they don’t like, they’re not on my side.
Further to my #18
This hand wringing over potential allies being driven away is predicated on the idea that what we’re after is having as many people as possible say they’re on our side. It’s not. What we’re after is getting people to actually understand the concepts and care about whether what they’re doing is really helpful.
Seven of Mine @18:
Sure, that’s fine. If you require people to agree with you 100%, and not be 99.999% on your side except for one little point of labelling, go for it. As I said, if “privilege” is a more effective term for raising awareness, use it. Just don’t be surprised when some people dislike it. (That said, there isn’t ever going to be a term that everyone likes – so sure, use this one. Organically-grown labels and brands tend to stick better than focus-grouped-to-death versions anyway)
And the problem is? I don’t see any problem, other than idjits who are afraid to look at reality. Those who pretend there is equality (egalitarians) refuse to acknowledge their privileges, and by pretending all is equal (its not, look at the results), can still reap the benefits of their privileges while not working to help others. Dawkins is a prime example. He should be offended daily until he shuts the fuck up and listens.
Seven of Mine @19: Agreed – and if using the term ‘privilege’ helps that, go for it. But please do ask yourself: is using ‘privilege’ to label those concepts instead of, say, ‘fortunate’, really better?
The answer could well be “yes”, BTW. The resulting controversy certainly does help raise awareness, and as the biggest problem on the part of the straight-white-male-in-a-Western-country is ignorance, not malice, raising awareness is vital.
robertwatkins @ 20
I don’t need people to agree with me 100%. Understanding the concept of privilege doesn’t necessitate agreeing with me 100%. If someone runs away screaming at the word “privilege” they are NOT 99.999% on my side. They’re not even a little bit on my side. They’re on the side of their own feelings. They’re willing to say they’re on my side on the condition that I prioritize their ego over my basic humanity. Fuck them and fuck you.
Robert @22, “the biggest problem… is ignorance, not malice…”
Citation needed.
robertwatson @ 22
What is expressed by the word “fortunate” that makes it easier on the pwecious widdle feefees of whiney dudebros than “privilege”?
Thank you for your concern. It will be filed in the appropriate place.
robertwatkins @ 22
What is expressed by the word “fortunate” that makes it easier on whiney dudebro feefees than “privilege”?
Apologies if this ends up a double post. I tried once and it vanished…don’t think I hit any spam filters.
Dear Robert Watkins,
Consider for a moment the possibility that the people you are talking to have been talking about these subjects, and doing activism on the related social justice fronts, for a good amount of time now, and are not going to be “surprised” by anyone’s reaction to the use of the word privilege on account of having talked about it a lot with many, many different kinds of people already.
Consider the possibility that nobody needs your uninformed attempts at a lecture.
Just because you are a cis heterosexual white man doesn’t actually mean you know a anything about talking to cis het white men about how much they suck.
In other words, the problem is not that they don’t like the word. The problem is that they don’t like the truth.
One problem with the word “fortunate” is that it makes all of one’s advantages seem like luck, and that’s basically the opposite of what understanding privilege is supposed to do. It is not a random uncontrollable thing that being white gives you advantages; it’s how other people have structured society and how we are all contributing to keeping it that way. “Privilege” is obviously a social construct in the way that “fortunate” is not.
Nerd of Redhead @ 21: Well, part of the problem is that you didn’t appear to read my post. whereI addressed that. The word privilege, when applied to an unearned situation (and there’s nothing more unearned than the lottery of birth) carries the strong connotation of ‘undeserved’ – so strong that I can’t see how it’s possible to separate ‘unearned’ from ‘undeserved’ in the context of privilege.
But those rights and freedoms you rally against are not undeserved. We all deserve them (well, nearly all of them) simply by the virtue of being human. I assume you would not be happy in a world where single-white-males had to live with the same barriers as others – if they also faced the sexism and abuse and other obstacles.
When you use the word privilege, you’re not asking to be given the chance to share the rights and freedoms of others; you’re asking for those rights and freedoms to be removed. Which is not at all in tune with the actions I see by most who use that term – they seem to want to get equality by raising everyone up, not pulling people down.
I can acknowledge the misfortune of others, but I can’t call my right to live a life free of abuse as “good fortune” or “undeserved”. It’s not good luck when you, say, walk across a road and just miss being hit by a drunk driver – it’s bad luck when you do get hit. Similarly, it’s not “good luck” to be born straight-white-male-in-a-Western-country; it’s bad luck to be born into a situation where you’ll be facing barriers for life (subject to the sort of social change we all hope for)
The word must be a big deal – otherwise it wouldn’t be so supported, and wouldn’t draw offence. I can’t see why it’s supported over other words that lack the negative connotation – but you and others presumably do. All I can say is that, personally, I’m on your side to the best of my abilities and knowledge, whilst acknowledging that I have areas of non-wilful ignorance, and that perhaps my dislike of the term falls into one of those areas. It is your choice to either ignore that (which is fine), accept and acknowledge a state of “agree to disagree”, attempt to explain why “privilege” is such a better term (not expected, but appreciated if you do, even if I don’t agree), or push me away and attack (your choice and right – it won’t change my mind on the value of equality, but might make me dislike the term even more).
All I see in most articles and comments on said articles is “he dislikes the term privilege, so he is automatically the enemy”. And that I find sad, because it overlooks actions. (And let’s take Dawkins, in particular, out of this – I agree his history of actions is not the best, and he does have an incredible habit of saying the wrong thing, compounding said history of actions. But he’s not even on the same spectrum of problem as, say, Julien Blanc)
robertwatkins – so what’s your alternative word?
robertwatkins, #14
I disagree with that interpretation of the term. Privilege is an advantage someone has within a system not by their own doing. Thus, when I think of you as a privileged person, I don’t blame you for it even a little bit, since you didn’t take that privilege. I blame the system for it, since the system gave it to you.
robertwatkins @ 30
Bullshit. It has no such connotation outside the fevered imaginations of whiney dudebros.
Yep. I have old, white male, well educated privilege. Only the educated part is earned. I’ve known it for years. Your mansplainin’ is what I expect from the oblivious and unwilling to acknowledge reality. Your concern is noted. And it is dismissed, as it is your problem, not ours. Why don’t you deal with your problem offline?
Meanwhile, those who are offended by the word privilege are not allies. They are the problem.
carlie #29
Very good point, thank you.
Professor Richard Dawkins has his position due to his abilities and the work he has done. He’s not a fat bearded nobody trading in bullshit and censorship with a bunch of professional victims and noballs nebbish types.
Carlie @29 – the social structures in Western nations that benefit straight white men are not a matter of luck, that is true. It is a result of social forces, entrenched inequality, and the abuse of power. (In other nations, the benefits go to straight men of different ethnic backgrounds, hence the qualifier). Nor was the social structure even put in place to benefit straight white males; instead the advantages given to straight white males were often deliberately done in order to prop up the ruling elite (who happened to be white males in most of the world – the straightness part has always been less important amongst the elite). Heck, the “white” part is a relatively recent addition – look at, say, the plight of the Irish, even in the US history
But being _born_ straight, white, and male in a Western country is a matter of luck and fortune, just as being born rich or poor is a matter of fortune. I can’t help that I was born straight, white and male. I can’t help that I was born to middle-class parents, and haven’t experienced the problems associated with extreme poverty. And, by and large, I can’t do much to change the structure of society by myself. All I can do is try and avoid continuing to entrench the inequality, calling out where I see it happen in a way that can be effective, and hoping my actions actually help in filling in the trench.
There is progress and improvements – it’s slow, but it happens. And it needs to happen faster.
Carlie @31 – I gave my preference a couple of times: ‘fortunate’. Particularly, the _bad_ fortune of others in facing the socially-inflicted barriers that shouldn’t be there. “More fortunate” and “less fortunate” are also good terms, from my point of view.
Avoiding a bad situation isn’t _good_ fortune, or privilege – it’s the “null hypothesis” of life: “All things being equal, you should be able to live your life without abuse and fear, in a state of security with the freedom to achieve what you can with your talents and desires”. Anything that obstructs that is bad fortune – and when it’s bad fortune inflicted by social constructs that can be removed, then they should be removed. (And when it’s something that can’t be removed, then help should be given by those more fortunate to assist)
robertwatkins,
When you explain your points, I agree with them. I don’t know why you’re hung up on this privilege term though. Just who is taking offense at the term? So far I’ve just seen MRA types and Dawkins. I don’t give a shit if one word I use offends them. I have yet to see non-assholes get offended by it. You’re not offended by it, are you? Then what’s the problem?
Saad @14:
But the system should have given them to me. And it should have given them to everyone. I blame the system too – for not giving those advantages to everyone. That’s why I use fortune – particularly the bad fortune of others – and not privilege. Because I didn’t get one thing that I know of that others shouldn’t have got.
You are using the word privilege – implicitly or otherwise – to convey the idea that I shouldn’t have the rights and freedoms the system has given me. Which in turn implies – to me, anyway – that you think others should not have those rights and freedoms either. And I disagree with that interpretation. I also suspect you do – which is why it always puzzles me why you use a word that means that.
So, if I’m understanding you correctly, robertwatkins (sorry for the shortened ‘nym earlier, was on my tablet),
1) you’re happy to accept that you have this unearned privilege (YAY!),
2) you just think a) it’s unfair, and b) it would turn you away from supporting fighting against it,
3) if we call it a name which makes you feel slightly uncomfortable.
So…a reasonably accurate technical term, which is now well-established in the vocabulary, should be dropped, if we want to succeed (because if we can’t even get the people who agree with us to support it because of the name, what chance do we have with those who don’t?), because it might make you uncomfortable with hearing about the advantages you admit you have access to.
Laid out like that, can you see how people would characterize this as being whiny, petty, and perhaps even picayune? And that given you’ve posted many, many (MANY) words telling us how this tiny little thing, which isn’t really important at all, but still, it’s important…could you then also perhaps see why we might also tend to view this as representing some hidden premises in the above argument? Like, say,
#(hidden) 1.5) Just kidding! Really I want to keep this shit, and this is the only argument I can make that won’t sound like I’m whining about losing my sweet sweet privs!
Just, y’know, a little logic for your day. Also, first rule of holes. Consider that, young Jedi.
robert watkins, I agree with a lot of what you’re saying about the word/misuse/misunderstanding of the word “privilege”, you have said your piece, you don’t have to argue that there is no other aspects to this concept that is worth others discussing. Like many words, “privilege” has a “dark side” just as much as the “bright side”. Don’t focus on _that_ as being the sole problem with the concept of “privilege”. So Watkins, put down you pedant privilege and just read what other people are writing about this issue.
robertwatkins, #40
No, no! I mean it gave an advantage to you. It wouldn’t be called an advantage if it was given to everyone. I blame the system for giving an advantage to you.
Saad @39 – I am offended by the term ‘privilege’, for all of the reasons I’ve explained. I find it to be an unnecessarily hostile word. I feel it is a deliberately hostile word that attempts to drive people who are mostly on your side away “running and screaming”, to quote Seven of Mine @23, which is an attitude I don’t understand. I find that it gives people like MRA’s a wedge tactic to split off support, and paint people with sensible goals as extremists. In other words, it seems like a tactical mis-step by a group of people I very much support and whom I hope succeed in their goals.
I could very well be wrong in that opinion. As noted above, by Sally Strange @27, people who have been fighting this battle for much longer and much harder than myself have rallied around this term. Also, in today’s rather apathetic political climate, the politics of extremism succeed – and extremists policies require an enemy.
So yes, I could be wrong – but that’s why I don’t like the term, and why I am offended by it.
robertwatkins, #40
Uh, nope. When we talk about the gender gap, do we call men overpaid? No. We call women underpaid. Do we say men need to be earning 77 cents? No. We say women need to be earning a dollar.
Same exact thing with the word privilege. When I call you privileged, it means others should have it too. Not that you should lose what you have.
Now you’re just being an asshole by trying to convince me what I mean.
Why can’t I use the term with these definition in mind:
Wikipedia
Merriam-Webster
Why are you having a problem with letting that stand as what is meant by privilege?
Dawkins is not only white, heterosexual, and Christian, but rich. He has every privilege you could imagine and is being an asshole about it? At least I grew up poor.
Dr Dawkins has less excuse than many to fail to grasp the notion of privilege. He was, after all, born in Kenya in 1941 with a father who had a senior role in the British Colonial Service and later joined the King’s African Rifles – a regiment where the common soldier was African but all the officers were white.
He has more than once expressed an affection for that part of Africa and it seems to have been where his interest in science was first sparked. There is no evidence that he spent his first 13 years in solitary confinement or with his head in a brown paper bag thus he must have noticed, surely, that he as an individual had been dealt a somewhat better hand than some of those around him. He’s a scientist: he must have asked why.
As for the term “privilege” it is merely a means of recognising that many if not all societies are organised to create and maintain a system of structural advantage and structural disadvantage, though the form and the mechanisms differ between places and over time.
Here is W E B DuBois writing in 1935
(Black Reconstruction in America)
I was probably lucky to be at Leeds which was more aware of such things while Dawkins was at Oxford but I find it hard to imagine that no word of the theoretical work from Frantz Fanon on or of the political punch-ups of decolonisation penetrated the sacred quads.
So, Robert Watkins, we would probably be more help to your understanding if we could work out whether your objection is truly to the word itself or to the concept. Once you accept the concept then precisely what you call it matters very little. A number of synonyms are in regular use but somehow the word privilege is the one most in the social and political sciences return to time and again. Something buried deep in the collective subconscious, very likely, or it could well be the etymology of the word itself. It began, after all, as the idea of a private law (or get out of jail free card?) available only to the upper classes.
When we look at the disparate rates of incarceration for minor crime in the US we see that the last explanation is alive, well and still in operation.
So the Brave Hero Atheist Horsemen continue to prove they have the thinnest skin possible. And then they accuse OTHER PEOPLE of being professional victims. If the irony were physical, it would be one of those huge anvils from Monty Python.
robertwatkins @ 44
If a word is enough to make someone take their ball and go home they. are. not. on. my. side. Not even a little bit. Not at all. They are on their own side. They are willing to say they’re on my side on the condition that I preference their ego above my basic humanity.
I will say “privilege” because it conveys the concept that there is a system which has been deliberately designed to privilege certain groups over others. I will not say “fortunate” because it is not a fucking accident that cis-het white males are privileged over other groups. We’re not talking about individuals here; we’re talking about groups. It is not fucking relevant that your sex/gender/orientation/race are an accident of your birth. The system that privileges you is not a fucking accident.
robertwatkins, #44
I haven’t seen or heard anyone using the word privilege to split off support and paint people with sensible goals as doing something wrong.
In fact, you’re the only one doing it so far.
Crap. Can someone whack me with the visibility stick? Our totally supportive progressive friend there doesn’t seem able to see my posts – @24 and @41, if someone could post a Googlemap direction set perhaps?
CatieCat @41:
1) I agree that I have unearned social advantage from being born white, male, and straight. I don’t believe it’s a privilege – which implies I should have the advantages when others do not. I think it is a stroke of fortune – mainly, the misfortune of others, whom I would like to see helped and have their barriers removed. So, yes, yay.
1.5) Of course I want to keep this shit. I want to keep it so much that I want everyone to have this shit as well. This shit is pretty sweet – why wouldn’t I want to share it around? It’s not like I risk losing my right to leave in peace and security without fear of abuse by giving that to others!
2) I think the term is unfair. It won’t turn me away – I came to my views on the subject long before the term came around. I’m personally convinced of the virtues of equality for all, and if I’m not a strong public activist instead of being merely a “fellow traveller”, it’s because of issues in my life which you have no awareness of. I do what I can, to the limited extent I can, to help out – and especially to try and not contribute in a negative way. (I also don’t think that this discussion contributes positively or negatively)
3) I don’t think it’s an accurate term. But that’s irrelevant. The question is: is it a successful term?
It’s certainly a polarising term. I just don’t believe that a polarising position wins – which is why I’m convinced that MRAs and their ilk will lose in the long term.
I get upset over the term because I feel, in the long run, it does more harm than good to the cause of equality. I’m not attacking the decision to use it – I’m trying to explain why it feels, to me, that it’s an inappropriate term to use.
And yes, I’ve said my piece – which hasn’t been a troll, but a sincere effort to explain why this particular fellow traveller gets bugged by a word – so I’ll be going back to lurker status; it’s after midnight where I am, after all – far too late to play SIWOTI-Syndrome (and hey, I’m “Someone” too). You obviously feel passionate about this word choice as well – you have your reasons for thinking it’s not just an appropriate choice, or even a better choice, but the right choice. Go for it – I sincerely wish you the best in your efforts.
robertwatkins:
Bullshit.
Nobody has used the word to imply that you deserve to be knocked down a peg or two — you’ve had it patiently explained to you several times, with no one suggesting you should have your toys taken away.
I suggest the problem is not with the word or concept “privilege”, but lies entirely with YOU. I guess some people are just annoyingly defensive about their privileges, that if someone even mentions them, they imagine jackboots marching down the hallway to take them away.
@ robertwatson
If it’s driving away assholes who value their own egos above my basic humanity it’s not doing more harm than good to the cause of equality. Those assholes who are willing to abandon the cause of equality because the word “privilege” hurts their feefees are harming the cause of equality. Because they’re saying they don’t actually give a shit how I feel unless they can continue to have their delicate little feefees wrapped in bubble wrap and 10 layers of cotton batting. They’re saying they don’t mind me having the same rights they do as long as their needs are attended to first. That is not equality. Equality is not what they’re fighting for. They’re not fucking helping. We don’t want them.
robertwatkins – I would posit that the real reason you find the word to be “hostile” is that it puts too fine a point on something that you don’t want to look closely enough at. The fact that there are real inequities is the reason this discussion exists. You trying to avoid the fact that you do have unearned privilege by saying “everyone should have it” is like people saying “I don’t see color”. It’s a way of trying to pretend everything is equal and that in your perfect world everything would be equal and then you wouldn’t feel guilty for anything, while in reality you are in fact taking advantage of that privilege and other people are still suffering from their lack of it. That flinch you feel on hearing the word is because you know it is based in reality, and that it means that, to be a moral and ethical human, now that you know you should try to work to change it. Masking it with a word like “fortunate” takes away any responsibility to try to change the situation.
Saad @ 45 – This really is the last piece that I’ll add to this conversation, because I really don’t want to be misconstrued.
No, I’m sincerely not trying to convince you on what you mean. I’m trying to say what I hear you when you say it. This is a communication impedance mismatch – one that I feel the term “privilege” contributes to.
I have a problem with the word “privilege” because, in addition to that particular dictionary definition, it also has other definitions and connotations – particular in the context of unearned and undeserved privilege. And I sincerely hope I’ve explained that my problem is only with the word, and not the goal.
And finally – Maureen Brian @47 – I feel that I understand what is meant by the concept behind “privilege” as you describe. I may be wrong about that, and I may well be having a bad time explaining my understanding – but I can say 100% I agree with the concept, as I understand it to be. But I disagree that what we call it doesn’t matter – because I sincerely feel that it does.
@ robertwatson
If it’s driving away assholes who value their own egos above my basic humanity it’s not doing more harm than good to the cause of equality. Those assholes who are willing to abandon the cause of equality because the word “privilege” hurts their feelings are harming the cause of equality. Because they’re saying they don’t actually give a shit how I feel unless they can continue to have their delicate little feelings wrapped in bubble wrap and 10 layers of cotton batting. They’re saying they don’t mind me having the same rights they do as long as their needs are attended to first. That is not equality. Equality is not what they’re fighting for. They’re not fucking helping. We don’t want them.
OP:
That’s really all that needed to be said. Perfection.
On the topic of the word “privilege”: This is a damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenario. If you frame it as it really is, that people who aren’t white, male, heterosexual Christians, are mistreated and deprived of fair treatment and basic rights, then the same ol’ brigade of assholes will start chortling about “playing victim”. Framing it as those people having an advantage instead avoids playing into their hand in terms of their knee-jerk opposition to “victimhood”. But it is of course not perfect, because nothing is and nothing will really get the most reactionary fuckwits to end their ceaseless howling.
Random troll:
1. Hero worship much?
2. PZ is a professor you fucking shitwit.
3. Vague appeals to Dawkins’ credentials isn’t a fucking refutation of the arguments against him.
4. Fuck off.
5. Seriously, fuck off.
robertwatkins 22:
Rethink your assumption here. Look at the very topic of the thread you are talking in. Richard Dawkins is not ignorant of this issue. He isn’t. He acts ignorant, but he has been amply informed and just rejects the information. It is not ignorance he is acting on, it is virulent anti-feminism. Which isn’t to say that ignorance isn’t an issue, but do NOT dismiss malice’s role in all of this. The opposition acts stupid, but it is far from JUST stupidity at work here.
I think we should cut Prof Dawkins some slack and go learn how to think. He is simply saying it is his privilege not to know what to do about being privileged. Therefore his dismissive put down of a ‘check your privilege’ initiative is utterly rational and in no sense inane.
Carlie
That’s all he’s been up to these days. Like a broken record. Seems like his life goal is now to get PZ to apologise for things Nugent disapproves of.
Moggie
My grandpa was as working class as you can get. He started working in a coal mine at 14. His dream was to become a watchmaker. It was a dream so fierce he still told me of it when he was well into his 70’s. But still he understood that while he got exactly ONE chance at getting some training and a profession, it was one chance more than his wife got, who supplemented the family income by trading seeds and doing odd jobs for relatives who had some money.
He also understood that the law gave him rights over his wife that no adult should have over another adult.
He also understood that while he got a short end of the stick, working hard in a coal mine, the immigrants who were working with him didn’t get any stick at all.
It’s one of the coffin nails of the western worker’s movement that they forgot that fighting for those weaker than them isn’t charity but justice.
Robert Watkins
Lucky you.
In case you haven’t noticed: you’re talking about how you like or dislike a term of art, we’re talking about how those things affect our lives. Seriously, we can have that whole discussion about the “theory of evolution” with people constantly going on about how “theory” means “guess” and why we should use another word yadda yadda, but I expect you to be smart enough to look through that.
Are you aware that you just said that being a woman is “bad luck”? Or a PoC? Or LGBTQ?
No, you got that exactly wrong. It’s the concept, not the word. Otherwise those dudes would stop whining once the concept was explained to them.
davehooke @57, given you very likely don’t think your own post was inane, I think we can safely say that you are not a reliable judge of the quality.
Seán O Neill, if PZ Myers is a “nobody” then why are you here? Surely he must be meaningless if that’s the case, and you had no need to respond to this post.
Gillell
Bingo. For some reason, robertwatkins has considered the possibility that the reason why these people so often don’t understand and so often react so strongly to the word is because they don’t want to understand and because they hate the idea of losing their power over women and minority groups.
Actually, that almost seems to be exactly what robertwatkins is worried about and why they complain about the word privilege: the entirely imagined implication that it implies we should be taking away that privilege. It fucking doesn’t, robert. That is not in anyway implied. The implication is that EVERYONE should have that privilege. So enough with the fucking handwringing.
CaitieCat, I’m pretty sure davehooke was being sarcastic.
Shorter me:
You are using the word privilege – implicitly or otherwise – to convey the idea that I
shouldn’t have the rights and freedoms the system has given meshould be actively working to get other people those rights and privileges or else I am complicit in maintaining this inequity.You are wanting an egalitarian society, which cannot exist as long a privilege still exists. Which means it has to be faced and dealt with until the results are equal, not just illusion of being equal. Which is what Dawkins and bunch want, the illusion, not the reality.
@robertwatkins
It is the advantage over others, the private law, that is undeserved, not the benefits themselves.
Giliell, I was about to say that it isn’t the word but the concept. But you beat me to that. So that thing you said, just worded worse.
This.
And guys? Why do we have to call privilege, a word with a specific definition that is accurately used in this context, privilege? That word makes rich white dudes cranky. Why can’t we call it the “Fartsparkles Effect”? Doesn’t that sound nicer? We have to sugar coat reality for those who most benefit from the “Fartsparkles Effect” when we discuss the “Farksparkles Effect”.
If only the Fartsparkles Effect wasn’t already taken.
Ah, the sound of white guys crying out, “You want me to have to live like one of you and that’s not fair! You’re a meanie!” in the morning.
It’s like the rooster crow of the internet.
Also, privilege is very easy to see when you haven’t got it.
Which explains a lot about Dawkins
“Giving it to everyone” is also removing privilege. An advantage is removed, whether those who didn’t have an opportunity before now do or those who did before now don’t. So I don’t really get how the word implies “you want to drag us down” – unless you don’t pause to think about what it means, and instead just see it as a good thing everyone should have.
The very definition of privilege is that not everyone can have it.
Gillell
But the thing is, it isn’t even that hard to see when you do have it! I say this as someone who is fairly privileged. All you need is the slightest bit of intellectual curiosity and basic human empathy to see that it is true. All you need is to avoid being an entitled shit who throws a tantrum at the prospect of losing their fucking higher ground. It isn’t difficult in theory, but apparently the urge to tantrum is just too fucking strong for a large group of people.
odin
I guess for some people it’s the dim awareness that on a level playing field they would not be where they are now. Also, if you think about street harassment it does mean that those dudes have to give up something.
While it is clearly not a zero sum game it’s also not quite an everybody gets a trophy game.
No, robertwatkins @ 52, your relative social advantage – will that do? – is not some random and capricious act of the Godess Fortuna. If it were so it would be equally likely to fall upon, say, an illegal immigrant recently arrived in Arizona or an illiterate mother in a Roma settlement without water and sanitation somewhere in Eastern Europe. The facts – remember facts? – tell us that it is not.
The problem is structural. The solution, if you are really looking for one, will have to be structural too.
Nor is the idea a new one. As I indicated above it is centuries old and just about universal. If it is new to you then this is one of the places you’d find sympathy but not if you insist that centuries of use don’t count or that a dozen different disciplines must reorganise their vocabulary, rewrite their classic texts just to spare you a couple of weeks of puzzlement.
(The online etymology dictionary traces the word in English to the mid-C12 and the concept behind it to the way the law worked in Ancient Rome.)
Which side are you on, brother?
Meanwhile, over here in the land of the less privileged, people are being crushed by grinding poverty, harassed, discriminated against, beaten, raped, unjustly imprisoned, executed, tortured and murdered. But that’s no reason we shouldn’t take time out from worrying about those victims, to listen to yet another round of tone-police concern troll over your uncomfortable feelings.
If your concern in the face of those things is whether or not you like the word privilege, you are not on my side, and you probably never will be. You have an empathy deficiency, and I’m afraid empathy is a requirement.
robertwatkins
10 November 2014 at 8:03 am
Look this not about you. This about bigger fucking concepts than you. So I’m going to take a different track than others because everyone is saying “of course we don’t want you to be beaten up by cops, we just want it to stop happening to others” and you’re not getting it. You do have rights that everyone should have. Because you know what? You DO have shit that NO ONE should have and I’ll own that if no one else will. Of course that doesn’t mean I want to take your job and property away, obviously, but you get far more than you’re admitting. Everyone is rightfully pointing out the paranoid of “But I don’t wanna be treated like those people!” but there’s an elephant in the room because as always, it’s being made about specifically you.
No, the system shouldn’t have given you prefrence over blacks, women, and trans* people.It shouldn’t have buried other’s history and accomplishments in favor of others. It shouldn’t have picked you and guys like you over other applications for jobs or scholarships because of those features. It shouldn’t have chosen to pump money into your community while taking it away from the poorer minority communities. It shouldn’t have taken land from others to claim as their own and fled when minorities tried to live there.
Of course, people are behind all that. There are hiring managers and officers and just about everyone with those biases learned from birth that perpetuate it. I don’t know where you or anyone else would be if there was a level playing field, that’s impossible to know. Does it scare you that you might have to start competing? That your children or neices or whatever might not get as far because they have to? That you might have to face the fact you only got so far because other’s qualifications were ignored? I don’t give a shit because it’s un-goddamn-fair how it is now.
The system was set up by powerful rich white dudes, which you admit. But you don’t mention all the little people that support it, that play the role given because it makes them better off than others and in the hope of being on top. It’s not just the 1% I hold accountable, but every person that doesn’t fight against it because silence upholds the status quo. Because while the institutions have been around awhile, you’re still benefiting from them.
It shouldn’t be a misfortune to not be born a straight white cis dude and that quite frankly is more fucking offensive than the world privilege being applied to your bubbled life. The fact that you say that ignoring how people are already made to feel less than because of those qualities and whine about privilege shows how much you don’t get it. “Oh no, I’m not lucky, everyone else just has bad luck.” I’m sorry (not really) but when the vast majority of people are “unlucky” maybe it’s time to admit your small group is the fucking privileged ones.
It’s a privilege not to just be treated as a person but to be the only people that qualify. You have more than just the rights everyone should have while others are struggling for those rights.
Your ignorance of “I just have what everyone should have” ignores that you’ve been given a leg up on the backs of others. No one should that that right, which you and those like you do. Even now trying to be an ally you’re not getting it because you see your world as how it should be. When in reality, it can’t be because you’re quality of life comes at the cost of others.
For instance, those white people directly benefiting from all the tickets given to blacks in Ferguson while they didn’t hardly any and when they did, they didn’t get nearly as punished. That’s a goddamn privilege no one should have. Being paid and protected when committing police brutality is a privilege no one should have. Being protected when committing any crime, especially violence, murder, and rape,against women, trans*, QUILTBAG and POC is a privilege no one should have. Having all the media cater to your group’s wants while ignoring social justice issues is a privilege no one should have. Being believed above everyone else despite evidence and your input being required to be believed is not a privilege anyone should have. Being able to get away with sexist, racist, homophobic, and transphobic language and often fucking rewarded for it is not a fucking privilege everyone should have.
And never fucking forget the people do this shit are everyday people just like you. There’s no wizard behind the curtain to expose, it’s your fucking bosses and neighbors and *gasp* maybe even you.
I don’t think privilege is a hostile term and I don’t care if you think it is but even if I grant that it is, so what? We shouldn’t be hostile to everything it stand for? Hell, I’m liking the term more that it’s considered hostile. The world caters to your group already, why are you expecting oppressed social movements to do so too? It’s not about you. It’s really fucking not. Fuck your fee-fees and if we backed off when the MRA’s found a wedge we might as well go home because they don’t have one so they invent lies to spread.
And look, we’re in another discussion about a whining white straight cis dude because obviously his group’s support means more than anything else. Just ignore the history and everything and everyone that came before you and prattle on because clearly we need you to enlighten us.
JAL, that was a thing of beauty.
I’m just gonna quote one little thing for truth because I feel it perfectly distilled the issue, but I hope everyone will read the whole thing.
So, Robert Watkins, you seem acknowledge that there are many societal advantages for being a white cis man, and that minorities are often oppressed, and yet the huge problem you have is the word that we use to characterize this (privilege). Don’t you see how ridiculously petty that is? I think it’s clear that you haven’t experienced and serious oppression or inequality if that’s where your contention lies. Come on now.
summary of robert:
Get a grip, Robert.
JAL@78, that was amazing. Thank you!
It’s a pretty telling sign of privilege when talking about the oppression and advantages that certain societal groups have, someone comes in to whine about the words that we have chosen to talk about it.
robertwatkins, #53
Are you deliberately doing this?
Here’s the dictionary definition again:
privilege: a right or benefit that is given to some people and not to others
How the hell does that imply what you said? It says the opposite, if anything.
@3: I’ve said this before, probably even here, but: in the ~10 years I’ve been paying attention, Dawkins has always had the ability to make an arse of himself on occasion. It’s Twitter that’s allowed that side of him to shine through.
I’m pretty darned privileged. I lose a lot for being female, but I’m cis, het, and white enough looking to pass and pass easily. The police are likely to be helpful to me if I call them. Authority figures give me the benefit of the doubt when I screw up: for example, if I don’t have a working metrocard on me I’m more likely to be simply waved onto the bus and told to make sure I’ve got the thing loaded next time than to be arrested for fare jumping. People smile when they see my partner and I holding hands or even kissing in public. No one complains that I’m flaunting my heterosexuality. No one has EVER asked me if I’m sure I’m in the right bathroom (well, except for the time I was actually in the men’s room…it’s a long and not very interesting story).
Know what? I’m fine with my privilege. I just want it to be shared by everyone. No one should be assumed to be about to commit a crime because they walk into a store. No one should fear to call the police because they’re as likely to get shot as to get help. No one should be afraid to kiss their partner in public or be unsure if they’re going to get into trouble for using the bathroom.
I accept that my privilege makes my life easier and want to extent it to everyone else. I’ll admit that I’ve been the clueless white/cis/het person in the conversation a number of times and I’m ashamed of myself for those acts. But the solution to those times isn’t to get annoyed at the person who calls you on it but to think about the critique, learn from it, and do better next time. No need for a hair shirt or insane defensiveness.
On another thread I mentioned the African American vet whom along with his famiy live under a truck. I have privilege. I AM PRIVILEGED!! Yet use of the word gets lost in translation depending on the speaker and the audience. I was born Hindu and now I am a non-believer. The man under the truck is a Chrstian. And everyone here knows that if I were to speak out on Christian privilege it would be pretty stupid to have this man in the audience and I say “check your privilege cause you get Christmas off but I have to work on Diwali!!”. The statement is factually correct but what is my aim in sayin it? If my goal is universal human flourishing, then I have failed. “Check your privilege” is only effective with the intent of a utilitarian outcome and I hope that is what those university professors are striving for. The statement should not be an arrow but rather a girder to build bridges among groups.
If you follow the link in Dawkins tweet and ignore the article whining about “oh noes these are attacks!1!!1”, the posters for the campaign in question are actually quite good. The only thing I wish was that there was more of them. One of the key slogans is “If you don’t have to think about it, it’s a privilege”. They even have a relatively non traditional privilege: physical mobility.
The outrage and feeling of being attacked and Richard’s disingenuous and snide remarks about atonement are all obvious deliberate misinterpretations.
This part of the article is heartening and shows just how dishonest Dawkins is:
Ima quote this a second time because there’s no such thing as too much.
I kind of understand it. I mean, when I read about white privilege, there’s always a little voice in my head shouting “I’m not privileged! I’m poor! I’m never more than a month from being homeless! No one goes out of their way to help me out.”
But then me and two friends get stopped by the police for marijuana possession. My black friend gets 15 minutes of being carefully searched and lectured. My Portuguese friend gets about the same (he wasn’t even smoking.) I get asked if I have a job and told to turn out my pockets, then I’m on my way. And I realize that as bad as I have it compared to some people, it would almost certainly be even worse if I weren’t white, male, straight, etc.
But that part is a lot harder to see. People are immersed in their own struggles, their own challenges. They see that they have a problem, and they see that there are special resources dedicated to helping black people in their situation, or women in their situation, and they think “Wow, it’s like I’m the only one no-one cares about, and then they’re telling me that I’m the privileged one?!”
It’s a pretty intractable problem, because if you admit that you have every advantage, and yet you ended up in the same position as them, that makes you the least successful, the worst performer. Why else are you tied with everyone else when you got a head start? No one wants to think that about themselves. Give them a choice between that and denial, and you’re going to see a lot of deniers.
That SHOULD be the message, but I feel it is not well conveyed by the posters shown in the article.
There was actually another poster in the series that DID clarify what the campaign was about. I think this message should have been included on all of the posters. (Perhaps it was posted alongside the others?)
http://thepunditpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Privilege-8.jpg
The poster says
Nothing controversial about that at all. Perhaps someone should send Dawkins that poster.
The goal of “privilege checking” is actually to help people recognize that there are many people in the world who have significant unearned disadvantages, and that society needs to help alleviate or eliminate these disadvantages. It ISN’T about shaming people without those disadvantages.
That said, I don’t feel that telling someone to “Check their privilege” is an effective way to communicate this message as it far too often leads to defensiveness. No one should be getting defensive about being compelled to assist others less fortunate than you, but that is not how “Check your privilege” is interpreted.
By the way, one more minor data point to add to the massive pile of data in the “Richard Dawkins is a clueless fucking asshole” pile:
https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/530998373093220352
https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/531001646428721152
Bonus Round: A retweet from Helen Pluckrose, who some of you might remember coming here to troll in the holy defense of St. Dawkins on an occasion or two
Remember when Gnu Atheism scoffed at the idea of the Golden Mean and the sacredness of Moderation? Those were the days. Now it seems that New Atheism has been infected with the same virus as everywhere else: false equivalence, cravings for the sweet Goldilocks middle in politics, and endlessly coughing out BOTH SIDES.
Dawkins is giving a lecture at Iowa State University (admission is free) a week from today and it is shit like this over the past few years that I have put him on my “pay no mind” list (ie. no need to pay attention to him).
From PZ’s Tweet
But it would require him to admit that not everything he has achieved is solely due to his abilities and I don’t think his ego would allow that.
For example, excluding the privilege for a moment, getting a job can involve some luck with the timing of the advertisement and those who apply for the position at that time. You may be the best applicant at one time and get the job, but if the advertisement was a few weeks earlier or later you might not be the best applicant. Then put on top of that conscious and unconscious biases towards women and minorities of the people doing the hiring, it becomes easy to see that the best person does not always get the job. It’s because of these biases that interviews at places like state universities are so structured and may require you to be trained before you can be an interviewer.
Off topic – Was it ever confirmed that Dawkins refused to be a speaker at any event where Rebecca Watson would also be speaking? Did he ever apologize to her for his “Dear Muslima” response to her elevator video? I was actually just wondering about this the other day.
Bullshit, Jeff S. Just BULLSHIT.
It isn’t the fucking WORD they’re objecting to. That’s what they say, but then gamergators say it’s about ethics in journalism, and Rush Fucking Limbaugh says it’s just about jobs and welfare dependency; people with privilege and bigotry ALWAYS say they don’t have it.
The problem is the concept. It wouldn’t matter WHAT FUCKING WORD WE USE. The same people would object to the new word just as fucking much as the old one. Enough with the bullshit derailing on whether or not the most-privileged among us should have to bear the outrageous slings and arrows of “being called privileged”, while the not-as-privileged are worried about whether or not we’ll be KILLED BY YOU.
Margaret Atwood: “Men worry that women will laugh at them; women worry that men will kill them.”
I wonder sometimes whether my own ability to perceive my privilege might not itself be the product of privilege. After all, not only am I straight, white and male, I am educated, and I managed to get that education without taking on serious debt. This allowed me the freedom to seek out different experiences and get to know people different from me. I even had the experience of living as a minority (albeit a very privileged one) while I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa. I had the privilege of knowing girls and women as friends long before I knew them as lovers.
Somewhere along the line, for whatever reason, I learned that I could learn a lot by shutting up and listening to the experiences of people who were less privileged. I learned that I could use the privilege I was born into to help people who were different from me advance in scientific careers.
Maybe Dawkins’ problem is that he has not had the same privileges as I have–that he has confined himself to the tight, inbred, white, male upper class world of academia. If so, his world is very small indeed.
If you want to see the power of privilege transcended, look at the life of Franklin Roosevelt–he was about as privileged as they come, but he managed to see beyond his own experience and made the country better for a lot of people. Not a perfect man. Far from it, but mostly a force for good. No penance needed, Professor Dawkins. Just open your eyes.
#88 stuartsmith, you hit the hammer on the nail. Privilege is often so difficult to articulate that its noble intent gets lost in translation. I think the best and most convincing expression of the concept of privilege is Dr. Seuss’ The Sneetches. Let’s strive towards a civilization where there are no exclusive star bellied sneetches.
JAL, that was amazing
This, this, this.
Thanks everyone! Though it is a tad embarrassing to see all the typos I missed, especially in my quotable, lol.
—————————–
Jeff S
Because they’re fucking privileged.
They have the luxury of not being affected by it, so they don’t see it and do nothing about it. Checking your privilege is about being mindful of oppression and realizing how your world, your viewpoint is so damn different than others because of the kyriarchy. There’s no way to say it that would appease such people except shutting up.
Hell, that’s ramp it up with “Remove your blinders”, “Stop talking down/over oppressed people” and “The world doesn’t revolve around you and shouldn’t, even if assholes set it up that way”.
Get fucking real. The only problem with checking your privilege is that people don’t want to. Fuck that, I don’t give a shit about their comfort level about my perfectly reasonable language. It’s just more civility nonsense and respectability politics.
Do you realize how stupid and petty this complaint sounds when I’m branded as an uppity bitch deserving of rape and murder just for speaking up no matter how politely? Fucking context doesn’t evaporate when privilege people speak and people ignoring the reality of oppressed people is the fucking problem. Hence your complaints about the word privilege proves the point and makes it a necessity.
Thanks everyone! Though it is a tad embarrassing to see all the typos I missed, especially in my quotable, lol.
—————————–
Jeff S
Because they’re fucking privileged.
They have the luxury of not being affected by it, so they don’t see it and do nothing about it. Checking your privilege is about being mindful of oppression and realizing how your world, your viewpoint is so damn different than others because of the kyriarchy. There’s no way to say it that would appease such people except shutting up.
Hell, that’s ramp it up with “Remove your blinders”, “Stop talking down/over oppressed people” and “The world doesn’t revolve around you and shouldn’t, even if assholes set it up that way”.
Get fucking real. The only problem with checking your privilege is that people don’t want to. Fuck that, I don’t give a shit about their comfort level about my perfectly reasonable language. It’s just more civility nonsense and respectability politics.
Do you realize how stupid and petty this complaint sounds when I’m branded as an uppity b**ch deserving of rape and murder just for speaking up no matter how politely? Fucking context doesn’t evaporate when privilege people speak and people ignoring the reality of oppressed people is the fucking problem. Hence your complaints about the word privilege proves the point and makes it a necessity.
(Shit, resubmitting because I forgot to asterisk the slur. )
“Darwin was racist.”
“Yes, but he was a product of his culture and era.”
“Dawkins is sexist.”
“How dare you!”
carlie, #95
I’ll this that again.
So now people have to run the words they choose by the advantaged upper classes too?
Do we have to bow while doing it too? Can we leave the room with our backs to you or do we have to back out while bowing every two steps?
@6, Helen B.
Indeed, in The God Delusion itself he uses that exact word to describe how religion is handled in society.
I kind of had to tilt my head sideways to understand what robertwatkins was saying, because, as PZ said above, privilege does not have a threatening connotation to me. I had to WTF and scratch my head a little bit. But then I got a glimmer.
I imagine that if one grew up in a family where the word “privilege” was used to describe things like watching TV, playing videogames, going out on Friday, or staying up after 9pm, and sometimes one’s parents yanked away those privileges, then the word could have a connotation of “these are things that get taken away by authority”. So maybe that shades how robertwatkins is processing the word?
I’m in my fifties, and I haven’t studied Sociology, so I grew up thinking of the word “privileged” as being a synonym for “wealthy”. (I got schooled on this a few years ago.) If I looked that word up in the dictionary, I would expect to see a picture of Mitt Romney, or maybe Thurston Howell III and his wife (from Gilligan’s Island). I think this explains why some working class men, who grew up struggling to have enough food and heat, flip out when they are described as privileged.
I did see someone upthread point out that when men had legal ownership of their wives, then clearly poor men have a power over their wives which their wives don’t have over them, which is a privilege or systematic advantage.
Two years ago, I commented (at Shakesville) that I thought the word “advantage” was more understandable than “privilege” in casual discussion with laymen. I got shot down pretty fast, but I’m a bit sympathetic to the idea that privilege is a prickly word. (Pun not exactly intended.)
Also, I was going to get up in robertwatkins’ face about “fortune”, but then I read somethings in his clarification that got me past my first interpretation. (My first interp was the same as other feminists, that structural advantages for white, straight men are not accidents. And benefits for rich men accrue from the rules put into the economic system on purpose.)
My thought after rethinking is that rw when talking about fortune probably meant that one’s birth gender, race, health status and geographic location are accidents of fate and fortune. None of us choose to be born female or poor, or conversely male or wealthy, we just are born as we are born. No one, not rw and not the famous RD do actually lie, cheat and steal to become white straight men. They didn’t, at birth, get up early and grab all the goodies to spite other people.
Clearly a sense of guilt can stir up a lot of defensiveness, like a smoky cloud or a diffusing puddle of squid ink?
While the p-word may have some confusing connotations, I think reading feminist writings past the first sentence makes it clear that the movement is about lifting people up who are down, not knocking down people who are up. Keep reading.
Here is the reason why Richard Dawkins is a terrible popularizer of science and a horrid spokesperson for secularism and atheism. When he is upset about a social problem, he is happy to link to sites and people who actively work against a secular society. Campus Reform supports creationism in the classroom. And Christina Hoff Sommers makes videos for a group the promotes a “Christian-Judean” world view.
As atheists, we all ares friends and work with people who are religious. But Dawkins has decided to be allies with those religious (christianist) forces that would silence him. All for the sake of shutting up those uppity SJW women.
kosk11348,
I know! How can we expect Richard Dawkins to realize that women have the exact same credibility and the exact same capability to decide how they feel about things that happen to them as men do?! I mean it’s Richard Dawkins! And it’s the year 2014! That’s too ambitious an expectation.
What do you do about it, Richard? Just don’t be a jerk. Oops, too late. Again. But you could try. Try starting now.
Janine
It’s utterly baffling. Weren’t we given a lot of shit for caring about things that weren’t just atheism? For not automatically considering ourselves allies with atheists who are terrible human beings and for being willing to ally with Christians who happen to be working for a better society? Wasn’t there some sort of implication that we were betraying atheism or some shit by saying that atheism doesn’t trump fighting for equality? And now we have Dawkins doing the same thing, except he is willing to abandon fighting against religious privilege in order to recruit previous enemies to aid him in his fight in defense of ALL privilege. I don’t even know what to make of it.
anthrosciguy:
I’m beginning to think that no matter how many tries he got, he would never make it very far. Give him infinite tries and he would still fail in the first five minutes. He makes basic communication look like it is fucking Cat Mario: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shobon_Action
To Robert Watkins and all the other who don’t like the word privilege.
It is the height of mother fucking privilege to complain about how a word makes you feel icky when the concept of the word in question is that a majority of the people in the world are getting shit on every day of their life. If the word makes you feel dismayed (*swoon*), imagine living in world where the reality is that society as a whole treats you as second class.
@robertwatkins
It is not the act of a would-be equal to demand appeasement. That is the act of someone not only content with having unearned advantages but willing to actively assert them.
People don’t need to apologise for being privileged. They may need to apologize for using it against those who are not privileged, if they have done so. Big difference.
And they need to work together to destroy that power, repair the damage, and create a better world.
JAL #96
I’m literally just saying that I don’t think it is a pragmatically effective way to change minds or to open the eyes of the targeted group (whom in this care are the privileged).
I’m not complaining about anything, the phrase doesn’t bother me, although I admit to feeling defensive at first when I first heard it used. I understand what it REALLY means, so it doesn’t make me feel defensive anymore. Its really a statement of facts, and a call to consider the perspectives of others.
If you want to argue that saying “Check your privilege” is an effective way to get privileged people to acknowledge their privileges and reach out to help others, then we simply disagree on efficacy of messaging. I would argue that the pushback to this sort messaging has been widespread, though misplaced. Compelling people to help create a more fair society should NOT be something that gets pushback.
However, it sounds like you are arguing that it doesn’t matter if its effective, what matters is that these people are privileged and need to realize it, so who the fuck cares how we tell them? In fact, we should be doing so in a less civil way, due to the hardships endured by the non-privileged.
If that’s the case, fair enough. Tell people to “check their privilege” and that “The world doesn’t revolve around you” all you like, just don’t expect it to change their mind.
Granted there are plenty of people who will refuse to acknowledge any unearned advantages they have over others, no matter how nicely you do it. These are lost causes, but presumably not the target of such campaigns.
To me this is the most important poster of the series. It’s what turns “Check Your Privilege” from a jarring catchphrase that elicits feelings of defensiveness in many to a thought provoking introspective message. Why isn’t this poster being shown anywhere??
Oh, on the note of Richard’s apology for Dear Muslim, I think we should all take note of the tweet that he follows the tweet in the OP with:
Hmmmm. Richard Dawkins mocking the idea of people in first world countries having less advantages than others within same country, by invoking the plights of those who live in Middle Eastern countries. Where have I heard that one before?
Note: Using this comment as a jumping off point and it applies to things brought up by stuartsmith and ragdish.
smhll
It’s called Intersectionality.Yeah, classism is still a social justice problem that isn’t being ignored because it’s white dudes. The problem is they want everyone to help them but don’t give a shit about others like racist white feminists.
Oh I get why poor white people balk at that description because I’m one of them. The difference is though I’ve seen POC get screwed over and know it could be worse for me if I was different. This “But that means I’ve failed since I’m just as poor as them!” and shit is just fucking stupid. It buys into the American Dream exceptionalism bullshit which the whole point of was getting poor white folks to support shit to stay above everyone else because they might one day be on top and everyone can do it if they try so clearly poor people don’t want it bad enough and blacks are lazy and omfg so much awful shit.
Fuck all that nonsense. They get no sympathy from me for believing that bullshit. I don’t need to try to see from their point of view, I fucking lived it but I shut up, listened, learned and have a wondrous thing called empathy. They just need to check their privilege and get the fuck over it. It might even empower them to discover the way they’ve been oppressed as poor people and used as a weapon against others. It certainly did for me. It also made me really fucking mad that no matter what I have or will accomplish, it’s tainted by the unlevel playing field. Is getting out of the shelter system and getting at least some college negated by the fact I’ve benefited from white privilege? No, but it’s hard for me to enjoy it knowing others can and could do it to, if they weren’t oppressed. It’s the same with consuming media and realizing how sexist and everything else it is but too fucking bad.
My discomfort and entertainment pale in comparison to how it negatively affects others and whining about that instead of working to change it is fucking stupid. Just fucking working towards changing it and it won’t remain a goddamn problem. But nooo, let’s throw a tantrum and complain about it not being their individual fault and how they can’t change the world over night and just perpetuate it. Yeah, that’ll get rid of your white guilt and shame. Why don’t they work towards change? Because they see talking about it and making them uncomfortable as the problem like CaitieCat said in #92.
It’s not hard to “articulate”, oppressed people have been doing that for so goddamn long but blinder make them invisible and listening to people that don”t exist in their privileged world just sounds like crazy talk, which’ll get you pushed down the ladder fast. We’ve been through this “say it nicer” crap since fucking forever. It doesn’t make a fucking difference. Please, stop fucking believing civil rights was won by and because MLK Jr. was moderate, civil and respectful. Shit doesn’t work like that, bullshit does.
In any event, if all they care about is their problems, what’s the fucking point of catering to them? I’m not about to throw everything else overboard to focus on classism so they can enjoy being on top in that area too and not do a damn thing else like again so many feminists privileged on other axis of oppression.
Again, intersectionality. They get on fucking board with tearing down the system completely or they can cling to the privileges they have. Otherwise, they aren’t allies, they’re people okay with oppression as long as they’re on top.
That just makes it fit more because there should be laws enforced about discrimination and enforcing the law fairly with making them just and such.
Personally, I’ve always heard it as “[thing] is a privilege not a right” like driving, which just makes it fit more because they get toys and play pens and attention that no one should have by suppressing other people to better themselves and then they get rights everyone should have but don’t like a proper education, medical, etc, which no one is trying to take away. Which just re enforces the appearance of a child taking their ball and going home when the neighborhood kids aren’t following their made up rules and letting them do whatever they want, no matter what everyone else wants.
Seriously? Isn’t this the guy who said the responses to his harm ranking was “emotional”? (Yes I’ve seen his reactions to other things over the last year, that was rhetorical)
I think a decent general rule to consider is that the more a person benefits from privilege, the more their motivated reasoning tends to kick in. They perceive a threat to their power base, resources, and social tools to effect change. The more immature emotions love to worry about that stuff. It takes effort and perspective develop tools to stop and think about what those emotions are trying to get you to do.
The very fact that Dawkins is now linking to, using, and basically empathizing with right-wing conservative propaganda is not a random thing. They are social allies to right-wing conservative atheists, even as they say they want to reduce the damage of religion. I’m not convinced that religion is as damaging as the underlying human instincts that fuel it. I am not an atheist as a defining personality feature, I am an atheist because of other things that I am. What else is Dawkins?
I read that article that Dawkins linked. My reaction was “This all looks fine to me. We need to be drawing attention to this stuff. Wait, you posted this like drawing attention privilege was a bad thing?” This contrast is a good thing. It tells us about the people we try to ally with.
Re: The emotional effects of the word privilege.
I don’t care if the word privilege makes other white people, men and every other group feel bad about it being applied to us. That is part of what it is supposed to do. It’s a feature, not a bug. You are supposed to feel that twinge of social negativity and that is supposed to motivate you. How it motivates you is information about the kind of person you are.
There is a thing about words that just is (not really but we can’t say why yet) because of how our brains work. Conceptual categories come in a spectrum of intensity and direction, and shades of meaning to connect with other concepts. So we have lots of words for the same things like kill, murder, slay, etc. Additionally absorbing meaning from personal experience and our culture both matter, and matter differently. You have words that are a 5 or so on the intensity scale(“that was insensitive”), to an 8-9 (“that was sexist/racist”, to a 10 (“you are sexist/racist”). This is a feature, not a bug. Precision, accuracy, and desired intensity of feeling matter.
So we get words like racial slurs. My perspective is flawed, but from the outside the N-word looks like it has many uses depending on the situation. For one all the suffering, anguish and every other negative emotion related to the history of an oppressed people seems to get bound to it (let’s face it, our ancestors made that word negative, that matters). As a result white people like me are asked to avoid using it as a minimal acknowledgement of what someone else has had to deal with. That is literally the least I can do to have some awareness of the experience of others. This is actually useful because a white person willing to use the word is signaling that a history and experience of oppression does not matter to them. Neither does casually invoking that experience as a dominance tactic matter to them. It gives us information about these people, of course they want to remove the stigma. I’m sure there are other uses for the existence of race-related forbidden words and would love to hear about them, or corrections to what I just said.
The story for the word privilege is similar. It’s supposed to remind the people on top (in the particular category) that there are people with lives different and less fortunate lives than us. It’s supposed to have a negative shade of meaning to us. We don’t get to just choose to not be subject to evolved negative social emotions. That is what they do. That is literally denying the less fortunate the social emotional tools they need to get the attention that they are allowed to seek. For the privileged removing stigma is manipulation of the social environment to maintain social dominance and I won’t pretend otherwise. If somehow society managed to get the word privilege banned do you know what will happen? The less fortunate will simply choose a new word and before too long the same emotions are back with a new word as our language evolves. And a new crop of emotionally myopic privileged people will try to attack that new word.
Fellow privileged people, it’s not happening. Give up it up. I would rather just keep the same word around and deal with the problem instead of watching the rest of you play a fucked up combination of inter-generational king-of-the-hill and whack-a-mole.
Fucking hell, Richard! Are you really that clueless?
Doddering old fool.
This fucking overprivileged toff is all offended at the idea that he might have it easier than others. Is Dawkins a member of the Tory party yet? He’d fit right in, what with the whining about how pointing out our current cabinet’s class privilege is “the politics of envy”. This man was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, born into a family rich on the labour of others, and has cruised through life blissfully unaware of how easy he has it as a rich white man, likely presuming that he deserves it all because of his brilliance. Then when a few people gently point out how his privilege blinds him to the reality of others’ lives, he acts as if he’s being persecuted. It’s fucking pathetic, and he deserves to be laughed into obscurity. Unfortunately his army of sycophants will assure him his privileged whining is intellectual gold and he’ll have no incentive to engage with anyone who contradicts them.
Mr. Dawkins:
You don’t need to atone for having privilege.
You need to atone for being an a******.
Of course, if you wanted to be more than a mere privileged dog-in-the-manger, you could use your privilege to restructure things to make things better for those without it. Evidently, you’d rather make up stuff about “hair shirts” to whine about. (Talk about “professional victims”!)
BTW, I’m told that Eleanor Roosevelt (sp?) is an example of using one’s privilege for good. You could do a lot worse than to follow her example.
I just want to note that I’m shocked….SHOCKED I SAY! to see Jeff S. is here to throw in a vote for the Tone Patrol.
Gosh y’all, did you ever consider that if we all watched our tone, and used different words, and were less sensitive, and tried to engage better with asshats we would finally get the support of all these fervent, would-be allies who’ve been sitting on their collective asses, doing nothing about the problem, just waiting for us to smarten up?? Well???!!!1! *sarcasm*
Remember that Oxford University Dawkins went to? He built that himself!
Now you know why conservative parties are mostly supported by old white males.
Dawkins recent behavior highly suggests it’s time for him to retire.
this is not a poke, it’s simple observation, having seen the same thing happen over and over again both in and out of academia.
Thx for the shoutout, JAL; you’ve been so much the bomb in this thread that John McCain wants to drop you on Iran.
*fistbump of poor people solidarity*
Anri @ 16,
Yes. His use of the word “atone” was, what? People who honestly care about other people are a religion? We desire atonement from him? That really expressed his “I’m not getting it/I don’t want to get it” stance. With a huge dollop of narcissism.
———————————–
I had never heard of Richard Dawkins until I started reading Pharyngula in 2007. I’d been an atheist for many years before that, without him, so I thought I had no (I hate the expression “dog in the fight”) M-80 in the firework show (maybe that works?). Except I do. He’s what many people recognize as the Head Atheist. This is deleterious to me.
He really needs to just shut the fuck up. Or convert to religion, since he seems to so want to uphold religious gender standards (among other things).
————————————-
stuartsmith @ 88 really made me think about why there’s so much pushback. Being a lesbian, it’s quite obvious to me the lopsided playing ground. I value your input, stuartsmith. Thank you.
————————————–
But mostly I want to thank Carlie, who is ever awesome. I can’t even properly express how much I have learned from you. Your clarity is always thought-provoking.
And JAL, who uses righteous anger. You’re absolutely right. Your #78 was a thing of beauty. I often use anger, too, but not as spot on as you.
Jeff S @ 109,
Jeff, I don’t know if you know this or not but it doesn’t matter how nicely we ask, most privileged people will never get it.
We’ve asked nicely, we’ve asked forcefully, we’ve asked them to listen to us, whilst spitting venom. Y’know what? It’s not our problem. Why should the ones trampled upon have to prostate themselves to get allies? Those are allies unneeded.
I was in the first Phoenix, AZ, Gay Pride Parade. When I was 16. It was very small and very organized and we still got arrested. (Okay, I didn’t because I ran like a motherfucker.) But we were simply trying to ask for society to recognize us. We were a very small group and we were quite quiet and simply asking for recognition of our humanity, nicely.
How many of the cops and citizens stood up for us when we nicely asked? None. I learned a lot in 1981.
*prostrate
Ugh, and I was being very careful in typing. Thanks, iPad.
Perhaps I’m an idiot…. “hair shirt”?
Shirt made out of hair, worn as penance because it’s uncomfortable. Or anything else worn for the same purpose.
I just looked at the posters in the link, and they’re great. I think spelling out examples as they do may be more effective for educating some people than just the abstract concept.
I think reading about trampled prostates is going to make poor PZ wince a little…
The tone trolling in this thread is astounding. There is not a non-confrontational way to talk about privilege with those who cannot see their own. The fact that straight, white males have an institutional advantages is readily apparent. Anyone who refuses to acknowledge this fact is being willfully ignorant and needs to be called out for it. If they don’t like it, too fucking bad.
Does Richard Dawkins imagine that Check Your Privilege means we want him to tighten the cilice around his thigh every time he walks down a New York street without being Stopped and Frisked™ like he’s some fucking albino assassin from a really bad novel? THE DUH PRIVILEGE CODE!!!!
A little late to the thread, but my 2 cents:
JAL
Rather than quoting your #78 and #111 in their entirety, I will just say that they are fucking epic, and I agree.
Moggie #7
Giliell
As has been pointed out (by JAL in 111, among others), a great deal of privilege isn’t actually economic, although it can have economic knock-on effects; poor men get a lot less workplace harassment than poor women, on average, and always have done; poor whites can sometimes get a home loan (the GI Bill helped a lot of white working-class male veterans to buy new-built homes in the suburbs in the 50s and 60 especially; black vets not so much). Even when you’re homeless, being white gives you an edge; I used to frequent a coffeehouse in my hometown that was frequented by street kids (homeless teenagers, many due to sexual or gender minority status, and there’s that damn intersectionality again), who noted that white kids had an easier time shoplifting food that PoCs, because they aren’t watched as closely by the staff. (Also, if they are caught, they’re a lot less likely to be shot or beaten by the police, and will suffer lesser official penalties as well).
I understand why, there’s a great focus on economics (or at least on money and work) in American thought, because we’re supposedly a classless society and blah blah blah. Libertarians are especially bad about this, as are Marxists, and both schools have left a significant imprint on American political discourse in different ways. I admit to focusing pretty heavily on economic issues in my own thinking, but that’s mostly because I understand them better, and furthermore know what remedies are useful for many of them, because economics is really all about numbers and such in the end. Social issues, while I know they can be fixed, I don’t really have a very intuitive grasp on either the underlying causes or the relevant solutions, and tend to defer to folks who know more about it than I.
stuartsmith
But the system also doesn’t go as far out of its way to shit on you.
My (white) brother has a story about being stopped and given a warning for riding his bike at night without lights, then watching the same cop ticket a hispanic man for the same offence not 2 minutes later.
Traditionally, economically fucked whites are supposed to console themselves with the non-economic privileges mentioned above; that’s why a bunch of the privileges were legislated into place in the first place, as that article PZ linked to a while back about inventing whiteness notes. The thing is, now all us mean SJWs are coming around telling them that ‘well, at least I’m not an {n-word}’ isn’t an appropriate response, which means that now they are just like ‘those people’. That’s why I have no fucking sympathy at all for the viewpoint you’re describing: It’s exactly like the crap that robertwatkins was spewing, and indeed no different in kind from the conservatives who whimper about black people (esp. President Obama) wanting to enslave whites. Because while a lot of privilege isn’t economic, people clinging to their non-economic privilege in lieu of working with the rest of the economic underclass is playing right into the hands of the rich, while simultaneously perpetrating untold further non-economic injustices.
Maybe we have a leverage point right now in the USA with the nomination of Loretta Lynch to be the new Attorney General? I’ve only read a small amount about her, but what I read suggests that since she fought back against the atrocious injustices in the Amadou Diallo case, she has some good injustice fighting muscles. She’ll undoubtedly face a lot of resistant crap from reactionaries during the nominating process, so there’s likely to be a fight, and the odds of winning don’t look too promising. Having another Attorney General who knows injustice from a hole in the ground seems like a nod to a step in the direction we need to go. Would calls to Congressmen and Congresswomen on the committee (um, Judiciary?) possibly have a constructive impact?
Mostly the latter. The fact that we chose a word which has pre-existing connotations of “Spoiled Brat” to express the advantages people get because of being part of socially dominant groups probably doesn’t help, but that ship’s sailed…
I’m what people consider mixed race. You can’t really tell unless you meet both my parents. The not-white side also has a not-white-sounding surname. My parents purposely put the white-sounding surname on the birth certificate because they knew full well that it comes with some perks. I have a sibling who is even less “ethnic looking” than I am who for reasons to dull to get into was given the not-white-sounding surname. Said sibling did something incredibly horrible later in life that made some local papers. At least a few comments to some online articles made sure to note that my sibling was “probably here illegally”. I actually used the not-white-sounding surname informally for a while when I was a kid. I’d get all sorts of requests to translate things, was called choice racial slurs, and was told on a few occasions that “I was expecting somebody with darker skin!” I’ve heard of similar stories from women who tweak a job application to make their name sound more gender neutral to stand a better chance of getting a foot in the door.
So if simply having a white-sounding or male-sounding name can afford a measure of privilege, imagine what having full access can get you. That’s really all that anybody fucking means by Check Your Privilege, Richard. You can loosen the cilice now.
What Richard Dawkins thinks dealing with privilege looks like
Moggie @ 3Part of me thinks that Dawkins really shouldn’t use Twitter: it’s
not a medium he’s good ata medium that he absolutely fucking sucks at, and he frequently comes across as an arse, (and I am beginning to believe he actually is).Oh man. Reading the discussion with Robert Watkins just reminded me of a scene from King of the Hill where the school is dedicating the sports budget to the boys and leaving the girls with no teams, no gear and so on. Connie wants to join the wrestling team and Peggy campaigns for the school to allow it(she herself wasn’t allowed to play baseball as a kid for sexist reasons), so they begrudgingly do. The coach is a shameless sexist and takes his displeasure about the decision out on Bobby, to get back at Peggy. This conversation happens when Bobby tells Hank, who was over the moon about Bobby getting on a sports team, about it:
Bobby: Mom made coach take Connie on the wrestling team, and now he’s out to get me!
Hank: Ugh, no! We were so close! It’s all well and good to talk about equal rights until some man loses his job. How is that equal?
Bobby: Yeah! And it’s worse when they take away our favours ’cause we’re used to getting them.
Later, when the coach is talking to the wrestling team:
Coach: I got an announcement. Because of unprecedented interest in wrestling this year *he looks pointedly at Connie, who looks down* I’ve decided to hold try-outs on Friday. Instead of a guaranteed spot on the team, this year, it’ll be based on ability.
Kids: Ohhh *disappointed sounds*
Coach: I know it isn’t fair, but apparently that’s what some people like to call progress!
Oh the satire. I love that darn show, I tell you hwhat.
Jeff S and everyone else whinging about the word “privilege” or the use of “check your privilege” or otherwise tone trolling:
You cannot keep everyone comfortable and change society at the same time.
@shawnthesheep
Sure, sure, but are you considering how annoying it is when their pleasant and privileged lives are disrupted by the sound of all the underprivileged getting kicked in the face? What a racket! I mean, are you sure we’ve really given enough consideration to that?!
Wow, the sheer volume of tone trolling in this thread is disturbing. Those who are more concerned with the tone being used to check bad behavior than they are with the bad behavior itself – need to go back and re-consider priorities because they are doing it wrong.
Dawkins is a “big winner” is nearly every category of privilege and so what he should be doing is shutting up and listening to those who actually know what the fuck they are talking about.
QFT
Why don’t those whining about “nice” show us successful social change that didn’t have both a loud group that made folks uncomfortable, and a quieter group to help sell the change. All the ones I remember had to have both components. If everybody is nice, nothing changes.
Nerd @139: That niceness never leads to change is, I think, a feature rather than a bug, for those inclined to tone troll.
They want us to be Nev Chamberlain for them, so they can get back to that pressing business in the Sudetenland.
The fun thing about tone trolling is that there can always be wrong with how you say something that will prevent it from being “productive.” There’s always a convenient excuse for people not to listen.
anteprepro #142
Well said.
;)
Has poor poor Dawkins signed up with AVfM yet? Seriously, he’s in the “fucking moron” category for me now. Or what someone (here, I think?) termed malidiocy. He really is a despicable human being.
chigau: Yeah, I have no idea what happened there. Nor do I remember what I meant to say. So……
What the fuck is wrong with Dawkins? God, his willful blindness to the true perspective of others is so goddamned galling. He’s brilliant; he’s clever; and he’s a total asshole that has let his success in one area of his life make him think his feelings in other areas are more validating. I’m white, male, het, CIS, and embarrassingly not so long ago once as stupid as he was on this subject. But his inability to learn is very striking and disappointing. I guess that’s what happens when you are sure you already know everything; you lose the ability to learn.
Right. He isn’t privileged, but everybody else is stupid.
@mclarenm23 #5:
This! When I first learned about the privilege model, I was all, “Wow! Cool! This explains so many things, like how I can hate racism but still benefit from it!” The insistence on digging in on the part of Dawkins et al. strongly suggests less than genuine engagement.
@vayit #10: S.E. Cupp would murder him if he tried; it’s a gravy job. Plus, he’s not nearly self-loathing enough, and misogyny is always more marketable coming from a woman.
Maureen Brian @48 – this reminds me of The New Republic review of Dawkins’s memoir (linked here a while back, iirc). It reads like Dawkins was basking in his privilege (sorry, superiority) and had little or no interest in looking deeper. If the reviewer’s interpreted the book correctly, he couldn’t even empathise with his perceived peers at school, let alone people who weren’t like him.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119596/appetite-wonder-review-closed-mind-richard-dawkins
Privilege? He’s soaking in it.
Because acknowledging that means acknowledging that they’re not special snowflakes; they had an unearned leg up, and therefore their achievements, large or small, are at least a little bit attributable to luck.
Acknowledging the role of random luck, good or bad, in the way individual’s lives play out wouldn’t seem to be hard for rational types to grasp, but the almighty ego doesn’t like to hear it.
We’re Climbing Mount Inpenetrable again, I see.
Thanks Richard! It’s so wonderful to live in a world where the Global Face of Atheism is basically indistinguishable from Rush Limbaugh on these topics.
qwints @ 133:
I have to say I approve of Vonnegut’s editing job of Atlas Shrugged you linked to. Much superior to the unabridged edition.
I imagine everyone’s seen this Demotivational before, but it seems appropriate. (SFW)
Janine @101
QFT. He doesn’t hate religion nearly as much as he hates women.
I’m late to the thread but just wanted to add one small thing. This is not directed to anyone in particular(certainly not in this thread); it’s just a complaint about the general conversation that people have surrounding RD’s twitter idiocy.
A lot of people want excuse or rationalize RD’s bs by mentioning his age or calling him “a product of his time,” but I don’t think that’s a reasonable excuse at all. It’s an insult to all the older people who have been social justice advocates just like us. Heck, as a child I first learned about transgender people’s struggles for rights and acceptance from my grandmother, who was born in 1919. And she largely made her career fighting for women’s reproductive rights and sex education in public schools.
And furthermore, I don’t think elderly people can be excused from what is essentially lessons in empathy. We can’t just give up talking to them or laugh off their bigotry because we assume they are set in their ways. Again, I’m not talking about anyone in this thread or about Pharyngula. I think the commentariot here take RD’s bigotry seriously, but I see a lot of atheists laugh it off as “an old man on twitter.”
John Horstman #148
Nah, there’s totally room for an English version of Cupp without taking her job. They could do a show together!
@CaitieCat #62, I should have closed with a /snark tag.
Of course no-one should be entitled to use their privilege as an excuse not to know what to do about their privilege.
qwints
That was horrible, in more than one way.
I hope it was intended as satire and grows with context.
Dalillama
Actually, my grandfather was a Marxist. ;)
toska
Word!
2kittehs @ 148,
Interesting. Thanks!
You’re welcome, Maureen!
toska @155 – hear, hear. Plus, Dawkins seems to have been a douchecanoe for decades. Age has nowt to do with it.
Krasnaya Koshka – thank you so much for that. :) I’ve been having the kind of week that, well… let’s just say that it really came at a needed moment.
A bunch of academics who really don’t understand how politics works
Politics is 90% presentation, 10% right/wrong fair/unfair/policies
It really doesn’t matter if privilege is the technically a correct word to use, if it is not helpful in getting ‘arseholes’ on your side then you may well be better of not using it. It’s really why scientists tend to make awful politicians they just go around telling the truth and then getting confused why they can’t change anything.
The only question someone should ask themselves if I want to change something how can I get 51% of the population to support it even through I might have contempt for a large part of that 51%.
A good example in the UK is most scientists , legal experts and more liberal politicians support liberalising drug laws. I support liberalising drug laws BUT its still a foolish thing for a left wing politician to suggest as it will lose him more votes than he will gain and not get elected to do even more useful things
Who give a shit about doing anything other than annoying and educating the assholes? The chances of them changing their minds isn’t great. But you have to challenge them to get their attention. Otherwise, if you are too polite and indirect, you are ignored.
@mrjonno
Some of us are more concerned about getting people to trully and honestly understanding a concept than cattering to their ridiculous objections. I personally have little interest in getting 51% of the population to support a cuase if they are doing so for entirely the wrong reasons and if they are hostile to the actual, good reasons….mostly because what that means is that they don’t actually support the cause at all, they support something else which they have confused with that cause.
@azhael
Idealism alone doesn’t change anything, herding people (which is what politics is) to act in a way you want them to is how you can change things.
Science and facts are not enough in politics, they are great on liberal forums, they are great in scientific papers but in politics a spin doctor will blow them away (unless that spin doctor is on your side)
Why don’t you tone trolls, and that is what you are doing mr jonno, take a lesson from Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham jail. You are the ones impeding progress by saying “be nice”, when be nice doesn’t work.
Either present a workable option with references to show it works, or ask yourself, why continue pleading what doesn’t work.
@robertwatkins
I tried responding to you yesterday, when you first commented, but my internets took a dive before I could post. Here’s hoping the internets don’t perform a repeat of yesterday’s performance…
Sorry if this has already been said a billion times – I’m only at ~50 right now.
You’ve misunderstood what privilege refers to.
It is not the fact that people have basic rights that others don’t have, though that’s clearly a foundational part of it, and it’s certainly not the idea that those rights should be taken away. It’s the fact that you have the ability to be completely unaware or unconcerned that others lack those rights and freedoms.
You can tell yourself that everyone is equal, because you don’t have to experience the inequality. You can tell yourself that you have achieved whatever you have achieved through raw talent and hard work alone; that those who have failed to make those same achievements failed because they simply didn’t work hard enough, that they’re simply not as capable as you are, because you don’t have to be aware of the obstacles in their way. You can tell yourself that those who have achieved the same things that you have are equal with you, because they worked just as hard as you, were just as talented, but you don’t have to recognise how much harder they had to work just so they could reach your starting point.
Not only do you have rights that are denied or restricted to others, you are given a false narrative to hide that fact, and all you have to do is accept it to feel justified in believing yourself to be inherently superior. You can imagine life as a race track, where only the best win out, but the truth is that many start far behind you, and have to run far faster if they want to reach the finish line beside you, let alone ahead of you.
In order to be your equal in our society, they must actually be superior to you. What is that if not privilege? Just because it’s a basic right, that doesn’t mean it’s not unfair that you have it while others don’t. That doesn’t mean take it away from you, it means give it to them too.
Kinda missing the point. Yes, you were born as a straight, white boy, rather than the obligatory gay, black girl reference, but society selected your traits as preferable. See, this isn’t really about you, it’s about society. If you had been different, you wouldn’t be benefiting from the privileges that you do, but they would still exist, and they would still be unreasonable.
No, it isn’t the null hypothesis of life. It should be, but it is not. The null hypothesis, the current truth for most people is abuse and fear.
That you think avoiding bad situations is and should be the starting point is beautiful, but it’s wrong. Simply by being able to connect to and comment on the internet, we’re already doing better than most of humanity, and most people online still fail to fit into your idea of the null hypothesis.
@mrjonno
Beating the professional liars at their own game is a losing proposition. People unbound by principles and reality are always going to lie better than you do.
@ mrjonno
This is possibly the stupidest thing I’ve ever read. The object here is not to get people to say they support XYZ, which is what politics is. A politician doesn’t really give two shits if the populace actually understands something as long as they can get enough people to tick the right box on election day. That’s not what we’re here for. We give no shits if someone says they support feminism or whatnot. The object is to get them to fucking understand not just to get them to smile and nod and then go off and do whatever the fuck they’ve been doing all along. You’re deluded if you think that pandering to some delicate little dudebros sensitivities about the word “privilege” is going to make them actually engage with the concept. The concept is what they have a problem with; not the word.
@mrjonno
I don’t want to win over arseholes. I want them to stop being aresholes. If they take having their privilege pointed out as a personal insult, I don’t want them on “my side”. We aren’t voting here. We don’t need 51% to win anything. It’s not a democracy to decide if privilege exists. It does exist and it hurts real people. I’m not willing to bend to the side of power to win acceptance. If we hold the hands of rich white men do you think they will really learn anything? Dawkins been coddled his whole life and look at that arshole. Changing a word or asking nicely isn’t going to change anything.
I don’t want to win over arseholes. I want them to stop being aresholes.
—————————————
Then you will never achieve anything, first rule of doing so is to accept that a significant percentage of the population are irredeemably stupid. The herd needs to be manipulated to be best scenario that can be achieved. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having contempt for arseholes just don’t let them know you have contempt for them.
I’m not interested in changing people’s opinions I’m far more interested in having them locked up when they act on those opinions, ie changing the law
Further to my 169:
As evidence, see robertwatson above. He said he preferred “fortune” but that doesn’t accurately convey the concept and even then he insisted that it was the bad fortune of marginalized people and not his good fortune. He was at great pains to make it be something that just kinda happens to people who just kinda happen to be unlucky. Not something anyone can do anything about, least of all him.
mrjonno @ 171
This is such a breathtakingly privileged attitude. I’m not interested in waiting til they act on their opinions. I’m interested in stopping them from doing shit that kills people and destroys lives, before people get killed and lives get destroyed. Some of us don’t have the luxury of watching from the fucking bleachers, asshole.
Jebus, you are being irrelevant and non-sequitur. This thread isn’t about changing laws, never has been. It has always been about getting individuals to recognize their privilege, and voluntarily looking at ways to make society more egalitarian, through working to dismantle the effects of those privileges. No laws need be enacted.
To the tone-trollers:
If you see someone on the street hit a child and the child’s parent turns around and says “Fuck you”, do you walk over to the parent and say, “Hey, hey! that language isn’t gonna solve the problem”.
That’s what you’re doing here. The unprivileged people are being “hit” and when they say “fuck you”, you decide it’s a good idea to lecture them instead of the assholes abusing them.
@mrjonno
I’m still not sure what you are on about. I’m not interested in a winning a majority or manipulating a herd (seriously wtf?). I don’t know what power you think I have or influence I wield. When I see someone being a bigoted asshole I tell them they are being a bigoted asshole. Doing this I’ve lost “friends”, which apparently from your point of view is a bad thing because my coalition(?) is shrinking. To me it’s a good thing because I don’t want to hang out with sexist/racist bigots. I’m not a politician. I don’t care about what the majority thinks. I care about what is right.
Jebus, you are being irrelevant and non-sequitur. This thread isn’t about changing laws, never has been. It has always been about getting individuals to recognize their privilege, and voluntarily looking at ways to make society more egalitarian, through working to dismantle the effects of those privileges. No laws need be enacted.
——————————————————————————————-
I’m not interested in how individuals think only in how they act, you seriously think you will ever stop people being racist/sexist or whatever?.
The way you change behaviour is a very big stick, different groups will always look down on other groups that isnt going to change. What you can do is ensure there are decent equal opportunity laws and punish people who break them. They will still be racist /sexist bigots but the ability to put that ideology into practice will be seriously limited.
Sooo…. did LGBTetc people use a very big stick…. or did they work to show that the bigotry against them was stupid and pointed out that people were being stupidly bigoted?
Because I didn’t see any sticks.
My grandmother didn’t need a stick. What ended up is that one of her beloved granddaughters is a lesbian, and because she saw that my cousin wasn’t a terrible person, she realised that gays and lesbians are not automatically terrible people. And she was 87 when my cousin let the family know she’s a lesbian.
mrjonno, you have an exceptionally awful view of human beings in general, what with the idea of people being irredeemably stupid and referencing herd animals. They’re not. And while groups may be easily led, that doesn’t make them the same as bleating sheep.
You and your awful view may kindly piss off.
This might surprise you, mrjonno, but people can actually change. Prejudices can be overcome to different degrees, particularly if they are understood and recognized. You may still have the same prejudicial thoughts, but knowing that that’s what they are allows you to act differently and against those prejudices. That can definitely be learned, but it won’t be learned unless people understand the nature of the prejudice and they are hardly going to if we hide it from them so as not to hurt their fewings.
mrjonno @ 176
You’re so fucking clueless it’s not even laughable.
Slavery was abolished in the 1860s. Do you know how many years went by before the practice actually ended? About 80. And even then it was only the fact that keeping slaves sort of looks bad when you’re trying to condemn Nazi Germany for exterminating Jews that made the federal government get off its ass and enforce the constitution. Roe v Wade was 41 years ago and yet there are still a lot of places in the US where getting an abortion is well nigh impossible and still getting harder. This shit doesn’t just automagically stop when you pass a law, shitwit.
PSA
Doing this
<blockquote>paste copied text here</blockquote>
Results in this
It makes comments with quotes easier to read.
You seriously think people are less racist now than they were in the 1860’s?, they can’t act on it but the bigotry hasnt changed.
If men could own slaves without legal and/or economic consequences there would still be slaves. You think people wouldn’t have slaves because its wrong?. Are people really that naive?.
People act in a certain way due to benefits and costs for their actions, not because its right, not because of god. It does include a social shaming cost but its always comes down to self interest
mrjonno,
In most places that people here write from the law as written is perfectly fine – not perfect but good enough to be getting on with so that major legal revision is not a priority. Neither is a slight revision of the wording or even wholly new laws likely to achieve the key objective.
What is that objective? To arrive at the point where all the rights that people already have are respected, regardless of irrelevant detail like race, class, gender, and that where they seek the protection of that law directly they are not brushed off, do not find their access to that full protection blocked by a whole crowd if loud-mouthed idiots shouting, “Me first! Me first! I’ve got to be first forever because I always used to be first.”
That, by the way, is essentially a religious argument in favour of discrimination. It is not helpful to any of us and in these parts is generally regarded as bollocks.
And that’s the fundamental flaw in people’s thinking. You will never ever get most of humanity to respect each other. Utterly ridiculous aim, the problem in society is we have too much respect not too little.
What you can aim for is to accept that while we might not like each other very much we need to act in a certain way to each other so we can share this planet. I don’t care if you are racist, homophobic or sexist. What I do care about is you are not allowed to legally discriminate others. Want to to shout abuse in your own home fine, just don’t do it in the workplace
When I was young I used to think democracy was about the people getting together to find the best way to run society, as I’ve matured I’ve realised this is bollocks. What you have in society is basically different tribes who quite simply despise each other. In less civilized times we would just be killing each other but instead what we do is we fight our battles within politics. We agree to have a fight every few years and in better societies no one dies but people do win and lose but only on the condition that we can have rematch.
I would rather die that respect much of humanity, there are people I value but there are an awful lot I don’t. I don’t respect them and nor do I ask for anyone to respect me only tolerance
mrjonno @ 182
I explicitly said the practice was only stopped when the federal government saw an incentive to stop it: i.e. that it looks bad to be keeping slaves if you’re going to go around accusing other countries of gross civil rights violations. The point, fuckwit, is that changing the fucking laws did fuck all to stop it happening. It took people *gasp* changing their fucking MINDS about the appropriateness of it for it to actually stop.
mrjonno @ 183
Oh, do fuck off, you fucking bigoted piece of shit.
Perfectly put.
Dear White Dudes,
You don’t get to tell us what words to use to describe why you think you can tell us what words to use.
And this is why everything you say is dismissed. If the goal is unrealistic to you, shut the fuck up and let those of us who find it doable, do it. YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.
Strange that I thought slavery stopped in the UK because you could go to jail for a long time if you did it or in the US you would simply be killed (ie a civil war).
That’s one serious incentive, it doesnt take god to be good but it does take a policeman with a big stick
Having everyone respect everyone else is not only unrealistic its immoral in fact its actually evil . Many people do not deserve respect.
Respect is earned by behaviour not by existing
mrjonno, #183
What is this mysterious creature you speak of?
“I will hold in my mind the conviction that dark skinned folk, women, and homosexuals are scum worthy of contempt, but I will NOT treat them thus for they are my fellow man and woman!”, declares the Theoretical Bigot, oft-rumored but never seen.
So mrjonno, with his proven paucity of brain power, now claims he’s the one to tell us who among the 7 billions is worthy of respect?
That’s not being good, that’s being prevented from being bad.
Your despair about humanity is quaint and all, but you should really stop pretending that you know that changing people is impossible because the evidence says you are fucking wrong.
I’m all in favour of having laws that prevent arseholes from acting on their arseholery, but that’s not a perfect system and if given the opportunity, arseholes will do what arseholes do, so trying to change people’s minds is a far more worthwhile endevour, which by the way has been desmonstrated to work, over and over and over….You are latching on to the fact that it doesn’t work universally to claim that it’s futile.
Also, do you really think that the people who are racist/sexist/homophobic, whatever in their homes are magically non of those things in the work place? The laws only prevent people from acting on their prejudices without consequences, they don’t actually prevent the prejudice from happening or from manifesting in ways that are not regulated by that law.
Actually, it’s both. The default position, if you are a decent human being, it’s not to not respect people until they earn it, it’s to respect people until they demonstrate that respect (within certain limits) is not deserved.
What is this mysterious creature you speak of?
——————————
I was actually thinking of the uneducated underclass, which in some perfect utopia might be saved from their own parents by society but in reality are just going to grow up to do nothing more than reproduce/ go to jail. In the west most of these are white and heterosexual UKIP chav’s or in the US the tea party rural inbreds
Then minorities are basically fucked because the privileged people and the majority will always have the bigger sticks.
mrjonno
The US civil war didn’t stop slavery fuckwit. It just stopped people calling it “slavery” and made them change up the logistics of it a bit. This is the point I’m trying to make to you. Putting a law on the books saying “slavery bad” didn’t stop slavery. There were attempts to enforce the law but they were met with tons of resistance. People who kept slaves were indicted but it was impossible to get a jury to convict them. They were assessed symbolic fines which were rarely, if ever, collected and sent about their merry way to keep doing what they were doing. Attitudes had to change before it actually stopped because it takes more than a fucking piece of paper. People had to be willing to actually fucking abide by the laws for it to stop.
I couldn’t disagree with this more, the default position is to not go around causing harm to other people unless they cause harm to you. That’s not the same as respecting them. I don’t value the people I get on a bus with as quite simply I don’t know them and I can’t imagine they respect me much as they don’t know
Respect to means like or at least value and to be honest I generally only respect/value things I agree with. I don’t respect religion if I did I would be religious., I don’t respect racism as I don’t consider myself to be racist.
Respect really is a horrible ideology, where you are meant to value ideals you may find repulsive. The only thing I respect is the right to have those values not the values or even the people who have them, that is the only thing I require out of others (or for that matter any sensible law needs)
Apparently mrjonno believes taht societal change that was always achieved against the will and interest of the ruling classes happened because god came down to earth and changed the laws. Not because people actually changed their minds and thought that it was not OK to burn a woman because she was thought to be a witch.
Bwahahahahahahahaaaaaa!
*wipes tear*
You are just precious.
Jackie, I beg to differ. I find it hardly funny. He reeks of callous disregard for fellow human beings. Severe empathy deficit. Scent of a gibbertarian.
Punch down harder. I’m not sure you’ve illustrated exactly how massive a racist, classist, fuckwit who buys into his own “superiority” you are.
That sounds like what Donald Trump would name his signature cologne.
Alternatively, it could be a shitty straight to video sequel to Scent of a Woman.
If it was possible to use the internet to successfully teach humility, think how awesome the world (and internet discourse) could be. (sigh)
mrjonno seems to only think that “a big stick” from the police or whatever will help.
Completely ignores that other forms of backlash are also “sticks”.
Not that I want to read in detail another “be nicer it is the only politically succesful way” bullshit screed. It’s simply a factually incorrect position.
Pain management
You know what’s curious? No one here tone trolling has defined “nice” or “polite”, have they? I wonder why that is. Perhaps because it can be very subjective?
I wonder if, when Harvey Milk started encouraging people to come out and be open and honest, that those against gay people pursuing political office thought Milk was being polite? I bet you they thought he wasn’t being polite!
I wonder if, when I risked arrest to silently and non-violently protest against DADT at a senate hearing in 2010, specifically against John McCain, if McCain and others like him thought I and my fellow protesters were being polite? I bet you they did not. And yet, DADT is now repealed. Hmmm. (Not that I believe *I* had much to do with it, but rather the collective work of a lot of pissed off people who many considered to be not very polite at all.)
“Hope will never be silent.” -Harvey Milk
So many people on the opposite side of progress think merely SPEAKING OUT is being rude. Fuck that shit.
LOL! Sorry about the “pain management” — that was left in my word document from some work stuff and got coppied over by accident. Woops.
@196 mrjonno
Please don’t ride the bus anymore. Thanks.
You can respect someone’s agency and their rights without “knowing” them. You should have respect as your default. Because what’s the opposite? Disrespect everyone except those who have proven themselves worthy of you?
Well, fuck you very much.
Hey, mrjonno, do you think people thought Martin Luther King, Jr., was being polite? ‘Cuz I assure you, they did not.
I see we have another visit of the USS Intrepid (NCC-1631) to our humble abode. So nice to have a fresh party of Vulcans along to tell us how we’re Doin’ It Rong.
I have a song for you, my pointy-eared friends.
If you want to save yourself some time reading, I’ll summarise: fuck off, you condescending pseudo-objective Vulcan-worshipping rectal haberdashers.
One small little point: education, it fucking works.
A larger point: People have no value unless you know them, like them or agree with them in something that matters to you? You are a despicable human being and i hope never to encounter someone like you. FUCK YOU.
In case it’s not clear, i don’t respect you, at all, and yet i think you have value as an individual, although i’m not sure in your case that amounts to much.
Well hopefully you don’t puke all over them…
You sound like a GOP fatcat talking about immigrants.
I’m not American and actually quite like immigrants. Far better than some of our native vermin which think the world owes them a living due to where they are born (mostly white and heterosexual)
This is derailing heavily. Maybe the discussion should be moved to the Thunderdome should.
I wish PZ Myers would stop poking me with the reality that Richard Dawkins seems to be insufferably right wing, and he’s one of the most prominent faces of atheism. Yuck.
Solid response by PZ.
-___- forgot to backspace that “should” at the end.
mrjonno
People are not vermin.
End of story.
mrjonno
Kindly get off my planet, please and thanks.
mrjonno, #213
Something has gone wrong when one finds oneself saying, “I quite like immigrants.”
But would they let an immigrant use their bathroom?
I think troll is trolling to troll. He wants a banhammer so that he can go back to his GG/slyme buddies and brag.
Bad troll. Bad.
I knew a few overeducated overclass non-vermin like mrjonno when I was growing up. We called ’em intestinal worms back then, or crotchlice, but some were my friends, and I didn’t really mind them, I quite liked a few, particularly those with good weed and blow. They were mostly white and heterosexual, and thought their trust funds owed them a living, just because their great great grandpappy exploited the shit out of people. We used to like herding them around, using words they didn’t mind, like yacht and polo pony. At least 51 percent of them accepted our laws.
As others have said, the tone trolling in this thread has been awful. I don’t remember when I was introduced to the concept of privilege as it is understood sociologically, but I remember being fascinated to learn all the ways I benefited simply for being born male. For me, it was a case of “Damn. I never knew this and I want to learn more. I may not be able to change my privilege, but I can be aware of it and do my best to not say or do things that punch down.” At no point did I ever throw my hands up in the air in frustration that people said “check your privilege” or think that I should feel guilty for feeling privileged. I recognized it as a concept that explains the advantages possessed by people who belong to particular social groups. It’s fucking amazing that Dawkins refuses to get this. I wonder if he refuses to accept all the ways he is privileged, or if it’s just along one or two axes. Does he recognize how much more privileged he is as a heterosexual person? Does he know that he has many social, political, and economic advantages not possessed by people of color? Surely he knows that not everyone is privileged with wealth and that those who are not have a more difficult time throughout their lives as a result.
(Btw, kudos to the comments by CaitieCat, carlie, rabidwombat, JAL, Saad, and stuarstmith)
mrjonno @162:
Bless your heart.
You think the opposition to privilege is the word, rather than the concept. Do you honestly think that if another word were used that people would just embrace it and there would be no irrational opposition?
@171:
“Intelligence is a barrier to getting people to stop treating others like shit”?
People, even the most vile, racist, homophobic, shitspigots on the planet, are very often NOT stupid. You’re reducing social ills and complex problems down to a question of intelligence when in fact, it has nothing to do with intellect. People of all different intellects embrace equality for women. People of all different intellects understand and accept the concept of privilege. It has fuck-all to do with intelligence.
Did/do Civil Rights leaders act as if lack of intelligence was a barrier to fighting against civil rights? Not that I’m aware of. Seems they actually treated their opponents like they were capable of reasoning and using logic to support their opinions. They treated them with enough respect to say “hey, I have a problem with how you’re treating me and you need to do something about it”.
Did/do gay rights activists treat Americans like they were stupid when fighting for marriage equality? By and large, I’d say no. That doesn’t accomplish a damned thing, bc intelligence is not the issue here. When it comes to social injustice, it doesn’t matter if you’re the smartest person in the room or not. Your whole “treat half the population as if they’re stupid” does nothing to help social movements achieve their goals. I can’t believe you’re stupid enough to think that. Oh wait a minute. I don’t think you believe that because of a lack of intelligence on your part. There’s another reason you’d have us think that we should accept that a significant number of people are stupid. So what is your reason? Aside from the fact that you’ve not established the truth of your premise (which really comes across as a mindless soundbite with no substance), why should we accept it, even if it is true?
****
Athywren @167:
Yup. I recently became aware of another aspect of my Male Privilege (that’s for the benefit of those who haven’t yet read this list of examples of the various ways we men benefit socially by being men), I recently read an article about the lack of equal bathroom access for women:
I never thought about the ways bathroom access can affect my life, or the life of women. I never had to, because of my privilege. I bet there are a lot of women who *have* thought about this though.
mrjonno @176:
This is a pile of shit. People act on the things they think. If you can convince people to change the way they think, you can change the way they act. Think that hasn’t happened?
Let me introduce you to movements that changed how people treat women, LGBT people, and People of Color. Contrary to what you think, change doesn’t need to happen with a big stick (and I question whether that’s even effective). It can happen by persuading people. You know, like all the people who have been persuaded that marriage equality should be supported? They weren’t hit with a big stick. They were convinced.
A lot of the social ills in society are not illegal. There are many, like street harassment of women or LGBT people that are not illegal. How do you propose we end street harassment? What big stick would you use? How could you guarantee it would be limited?
You talk as if it’s difficult to change peoples’ minds. It can be, but it’s not impossible. I look around this blog or FtB, and I see a great many people who *HAVE* changed their minds. They *HAVE* changed their behaviors. I know for a fact that people do it. I certainly have. There are gendered and racial slurs I don’t use. There are positions that I advocate for that I wouldn’t have 10 years ago. I changed my behavior by changing the way I think. It can be done, but not if you’re going to chuck your hands into the air and say “nope, we can’t do that”.
@183:
(bolding mine)
What. The. Actual. Fuck.
How do you have too much respect? If LGBT people had more respect from others, we might be included in anti-discrimination laws across the world (did you know that in the US, 29 states do not include LGBT people in anti-discrimination laws?)
If black people had more respect from others, we might not be treated like thugs or thieves. We might not get shot by the police for walking around with a toy sword or walking down the street with a friend.
If women had more respect from others, they might not get harassed during the course of their everyday lives while doing nothing more than existing.
Too much respect you say?
That’s so fucking wrong I can’t even…
There’s too damn little respect. How you can’t see this is beyond me, but the color of the sky in your world much be something other than blue.
So basically you’re saying that all the ways people are impacted by social ills are not a problem unless they’re illegal. So when I’m called a ‘fruitcake’ or a ‘mongrel’, bc that’s not illegal, you don’t care. Well guess what? I care. I don’t like being called a mongrel fruitcake. I know a lot of people don’t like that. We’re not calling for speech to be made illegal. We’re calling for people to change the way they think. To treat others with decency and respect, and to stop being bigoted shitstains.
You, clearly, have no interest in actually dealing with reality. You place far too much trust in the law and the system, which, if you’d open your eyes, you’d see often fails to protect trans people, hispanic people, or women. Laws are not enough. You *have* to change peoples’ minds if you want things to get better.
@188:
Wow, you don’t know your history very well.
Also, in the world you live in, I guess people don’t rape because it’s a criminal act, because here in this world, despite it being a criminal act, people still rape. Criminalizing an act doesn’t diminish its occurrence.
The Pentagon on the other hand has plenty of bathrooms. One of the few benefits to building it in a segregated state.
I have a story, perhaps <<>> will enjoy it.
Back in 2008, when Prop 8 passed in California, I decided to join the fight for equality. I remember having several pointed and heated discussions with Jessica (named change), a girl I had grown up with — our parents had been friends before either of us were born. She was against gay marriage — very strongly so. It was all about god and all that other stuff — lots of “hate the sin, love the sinner” bullshit. She wasn’t very well educated on LGBT people in general. I had several conversations with a close mutual friend and our sadness about her vocal ignorance.
I remained friends with her (not true about everyone I grew up with in the middle of nowhere Arizona, though). We added each other on Facebook, as it goes.
Flash forward to this year. It is now legal for same-sex couples to get married in ARIZONA, my home state. Which still blows my fucking mind.
Jessica, this same woman who 6, 5, even four years ago was strongly and vocally against same-sex couples marrying publicly and proudly congratulated the first married same-sex couple in our small home county. A lesbian couple who had been together for 15+ years and whom everyone knew and loved. Jessica is now in fully support of marriage equality.
Change can happen. It happens all the time. That was a great reminder.
Haha. I never scrolled back up and put mrjonno‘s ‘nym into my little place holder. Sorry about that.
mrjonno you are an awful person.
Which is exactly the point, its irrelevant if someone is a nice or awful person. Do they obey the law is what matters?. If you don’t like the laws then get them changed instead of making pointless ethical judgements on how someone should or shouldn’t behave.
Generally people will behave as badly as they can get away with, if you don’t want them to behave badly increase the cost of them doing so instead of some absurd idea that you can appeal to some fictional better nature
Meh, blockquote fail. I’m pretty most of you can figure out which part is mine..
Horseshit + citation needed
Fixed
Good evidence for people acting as badly as they can get away with is software/music theft.
People will get themselves into all sort of crap in justifying why they do it but the real reason is because they are unlikely to get caught and will get lots of nice things. People who don’t do it are more rare than those who do
Me I’m not going to be a hypocrite if I could go into a shop and steal a brand new TV with absolutely no chance of ever being caught I would take one and in the end when all your neighbours started doing the same thing instead of buying one so would you (until you the shop ran out of TV’s of course,)
mrjonno, #236
Troll less obviously ;)
@ mrjonno #236:
Citation needed. Not for the thing, that without law enforcement crimerate would be higher. But for your statement that without law enforcement people would behave absolutely sefishly.
Because reality does not seem to concur with such statement. I know for a fact more than one person (myself included) who indeed did not steal despite the odds of being caught were essentially zero.
Just because you are unemphatic sociopath without conscience does not mean that everyone else is.
My response to Dawkins… How about you just stop making comments that discredit everything you’ve ever done and make it nearly impossible for me to defend the 90% of the things you do that I agree with?
Logically, one has to recognize being absurdly wrong on one issue doesn’t invalidate opinions on other issues. However as a rhetorical matter, it more or less invalidates said opinions. A rapist could for example provide a moving argument against capital punishment, the condition of being a sexual predator has very little to do with the ethics of capital punishment. The same goes if you are a convicted felon who happens to have really good arguments against things like bigfoot and alternative medicine. However no one is going to take the argument of a rapist or a felon seriously no matter how factually substantiated or rational they are.
And if it sounds like my last two examples were references to Michael Sherman and Brian Dunning, its because they were. Though in Dawkin’s defense being obtuse and outright sexist isn’t quite the same as being a sexual predator or a felon, and he’s done more for secularism than both the other two combined. Still, I feel like someone should take his twitter away, for his own sake, and ours.
Troll saying something that don’t believe to start an argument
Not me I’m just quite happy to be pro society but try to be amoral. Never trust anyone who claims to be a ‘good person’. Never takes more than a few minutes to show that they are a complete hypocrite.
I obey most laws (everyone breaks a few minor ones) and fulfil the rest of the social contract (which doesn’t require being ‘nice person) but that’s as far as it goes.
Going to have a nice dinner tonight, might buy a charity book for 50p on the way. During my meal some children somewhere in the world will die of starvation tonight. Do I actually care that much not really (about 50p’s worth) but if you are having a nice meal tonight neither do you
mrjonno, #240
The jig is up, troll.
mrjonno
Criticizing how people behave is increasing the cost of behaving badly, you gibbering nitwit.
mrjonno (#231)
So we should rely on the law to keep public life bigotry-free and not worry about what bigots think about in private. Then how do we change the laws while the bigots-in-private are voting for those lawmakers, law-enforcers and law-upholders who flatter their prejudices?
You may not be a troll but your position is inconsistent. I bet I could find something even you wouldn’t do if you knew you could get away with it. And I’m pretty sure most everyone else would agree that it would be wrong. You wouldn’t rob, rape and murder someone just because you could get away with it. If you say you would, then that’s antisocial behavior.
Oh, and stealing televisions isn’t a victimless crime. Besides the shopkeeper, other honest folk who go to the store to purchase televisions will have to pay a premium for your crime spree. You would indeed be affecting people socially. So your amorality is mutually exclusive with society.
In my case, I had an “empathy hook” making the concept of privilege more intuitive. It’s pretty shitty growing up with Tourette’s Syndrome. Every “in-group” has a least a couple of people that threat you like shit. What passes in me for a feeling of social bonds has barbed-wire and broken glass riven through it.
It’s never enough to ever understand what it is like for a group that is unprivileged in a different way. But it is enough to get a sliver of it. Enough to pull your senses in and actually read for meaning at some point. It also helps that the core of it runs off of the same group competition bullshit so there is a functional similarity in bullshit flavors that you can see after a while.
mrjonno @236:
Have you heard atheists respond to godbotherers with the following “if the only thing keeping you from raping and killing people is believing that god is going to punish you, then please, keep believing in god”?
The only reason you don’t steal is because it’s against the law? Wow, you’re a vile shitstain.
Also, fuck you for projecting your wishes onto everyone else. I sure as hell wouldn’t steal a tv even if there was no chance of being caught.
mrjonno @240:
I find it quite easy to both enjoy a meal and care about people starving in the world.
@mrjonno
Lazy fuck. Have you heard of consistency and memory? Good people will act a certain way over a period of time and make amends for hurting another. I rather think that you realize you are not such a good person yourself and are projecting on to us.
Oh you say that now, but while criticism and harassment are not the same thing, they share emotional elements. You are here for a reason and I think I see why.
The social contract is a metaphor for things much deeper than that. You can no more ignore the parts you don’t like than you can breathe water because you want to. I rather think that you see what is happening to the religious right with respect to how they talk about gays and lesbians. They squeal like we are the SS and they are about to be loaded into train cars. A behavior norm change can suck, but I have lots of tiny violins. Enough for everyone!
The only reason you put so much effort in to the picture is prop up your own emotions. Enjoy it while it lasts. I am perfectly willing to criticize outside of places like this. You would be fun to notice in real life. I bet you would have yourself a nice little public temper tantrum perfect for youtube.
mrjonno,
It takes a lot of privilege to say something as stupid as this. Why don’t you ask POC and domestic and sexual violence victims how much the law protects them? How much justice is there for people who are victims of crimes that are already against the law? It’s culture that has to change. Laws aren’t enforced unless our culture supports them. That’s why black men and boys can be gunned down in the streets by vigilantes and cops with no repercussions for the shooters. That’s why rape victims are slut shamed and told they are lying by the cops who are supposed to be helping them.
yeah, I do remember that, because it wasn’t that long ago.
I suppose to put a positive spin on things, I guess it means the discussion is moving along faster than I would have predicted.
of course the negative is discovering that the convesation is now covering basic material that should have been covered long before now.
it’s like having a discussion about calculus, looking forward maybe to linear algebra, and then discovering we failed to cover set theory.
end. of.
so changing the laws should involved a discussion of what instead then?
funny, most laws get changed in response to people debating how someone should or shouldn’t behave, often involving *gasp* ethical judgements.
are you always this obtuse, or just here? I’d like to know if there’s any other place I should be looking to point and laugh at you.