The problem with the word 'privilege' (and why it does have a point regardless)

[TheUltimateFixx]

I'm sure a lot of you will have come across this catchphrase of 'white / male / straight privilege' in some PC discourse and instantly bridled at it.
I certainly did.

I'm white, male and straight-ish (I'm bisexual, so when I'm out with a girl for all intents and purposes straight). I'm also on the dole and my life sucks in general with physical and mental health problems etc.
So obviously I immediately went 'wtf you mean PRIVILEGED' because that word implies something extra that most other people haven't got, like being rich or exceptionally good-looking or talented and so on.

The best way somebody's ever put it to me is THIS : having white / male / straight 'privilege' DOESN'T mean your life isn't hard. IT MEANS IT'S NOT AUTOMATICALLY MADE ANY HARDER for simply BEING any of those things.

... And to that I gotta say, yep.

I've never had to spend half the time with a customer at my job merely convincing them I was in fact qualified for said job, and being patronised rigid, while being also immediately sexualised, BECAUSE I 'm a man.
I've never been turned down for a flat rental or dismissed in a job interview the second I walked through the door, or been tagged by the local police as a default criminal BECAUSE I am white.
And I've never been spat on in the street or had some random stranger wanna beat the shit out of me on sight BECAUSE I held hands with my girlfriend.

And I can see how merely NOT being subjected to discriminating treatment on account of any of those things which you cannot change about yourself, can be considered privilege by comparison. Could still be worded better and less misleading, but it's a real issue. Thoughts -?


(Edit) mods, I couldn't decide where to stick this. Feel free to move

 

[Vastness]

edit~
Sorry, I'm drunk, I revoke my comment, because I see that you may actually be trying to argue to opposite point to my knee-jerk assumption even though I'll still say I find the fact that this needs to be addressed bewilderingly dumb, but maybe I don't need to aim that at you directly.

In the words of Buddha (maybe) I should try to take my own (I mean, Buddha's) advice - "It is only worth speaking if you can improve upon the silence."

Maybe I'll come back and try to respond more sensibly tomorrow.

 

[Foreigner]

The theories that promote the idea of privilege, such as social justice and social deconstructivism, are not wrong on the whole. They do correctly point out ways in which certain groups of people have more privilege than other groups. They are not complete theories, but they are trying to address an unequal social world.

However, these are systems theories. They analyze and criticique systems of oppresion. The problem with how these theories are used by total idiots is that they are foisted against individuals in one on one interactions. For example, if you're a white cishet man then you may be told to shut up and stop talking because you're too privileged to have an opinion. This is wrong. You can't weaponize systems theories against individuals to silence voices, censor personal stories, and ignore the ways in which individuals face oppression regardless of what the systems theory says.

A systems theory looks at things of statistical and categorical power. i.e. white people, as a category, have more systemic power than, say, black people. However, you can't reduce all everyday interactions to race. And this is where idiots get the whole thing wrong. They think that every single social interaction should be looked at through these categorical lenses in a reductionist way. White person vs black person. Man vs. woman. Rich vs. poor. Straight vs. gay.

It ignores all nuance and it reduces people to automatons of the theories, theories which are meant to look at systems at the population level, not the individual level. All they care about is which group you belong to but not what the individual circumstances are.

This is why I hate the radical left and progressives right now. It's impossible to have a nuanced conversation with most of them about almost anything.