I’d answer that, but I’m too busy having my vagina embalmed.

That isn’t the impression I’ve gotten from other feminists. I take you at your word that’s what you’ve meant, but I don’t think that there is consensus on your interpretation. Perhaps I’ve misinterpreted what other feminists have written to me.

I agree.

When I (and most other feminists) talk about privilege, we generally aren’t saying that you and other white men get a net gain from this so-called privilege. When we talk about privilege, it’s usually some fairly concrete things we’re referring to: the likelihood of being raped. The likelihood of being arrested, and of serving a long jail sentence, and of being executed. The opportunities to better your life.

Are you better off in a system where women have a 25% chance of being raped and where people of color are harassed by the police? Nope. But that stuff isn’t happening directly to you, though you are affected by the net negative consequences of living in a society where it happens. That’s all “privilege” means.

Now, that explains a lot (but does everyone realize that, among feminists?)!

Among feminists, yeah. For non-feminists, or newbie feminists unacquainted with the jargon, it can be a little confusing. One reason I don’t like the term “privilege” though I use it for clarity’s sake on feminist-dominated blogs like this one.

But that’s clearly not what those of us who have been talking about privilege on this thread mean by it. The word has become part of a jargon now, and in that jargon it means something other than what it means in everyday speech. In everyday speech, “privilege” means “stuff that’s nice but not a right.” But when feminists, for example, talk about “male privilege,” we mean that men aren’t likely to have certain rights of theirs dismissed the way women’s are.

Now, that explains a lot (but does everyone realize that, among feminists?)!

Because not all human beings are 100% self-interested. What does this have to do with anything?

Of course not, but what I’m getting at is that I generally do not agree with the universality of certain rules of privilege, I also think that gender equality and racial equality is in the intersts of everyone, in other words, while racism probably hurts POC more than it does whites, the injustice of racism harms whites too, and it is a net negative result. Few “gain” from oppression, and justice and fairness isn’t a zero-sum game that always screws someone over (I agree with Robert and Daran on what they wrote).

For example, countries that do not have basic rights for women in the law (Saudi Arabia etc.) are usually oppressive to the vast majority of men too in many ways.

Neither are there economic benefits: Often it is talked about how the US was built on slave labor, but economically, despite the initial boost the South received from slaveholding, the oppressive, stagnant system of slavery (with blacks as the most oppressed, poor whites as quite oppressed too, altough not as much) did not have the economic potential of the North with it’s social mobility and Free Market (no links, got this from McPherson’s Battle Cry Of Freedom [book]). The technological and economic superiority was one reason for that particular war went how it went.

Or, about police harassing blacks and latinos: Sounds like a waste of time. This harassment is away from the time the police could use to protect and to serve (spending time harassing noncriminals does not reduce crime).

In short, I do not see that much advanteges in racism and sexism to those with “privilege”, altough the relative position in the system is better.

Would you be more comfortable if we described this, not as “privilege,” but as minorities being deprived of their rights? Because that’s what I mean when I talk about privilege.

I didn’t like the term “privilege”–still don’t, actually–because in my mind “privilege” refers to a teenager getting to take the car out on weekends. But that’s clearly not what those of us who have been talking about privilege on this thread mean by it. The word has become part of a jargon now, and in that jargon it means something other than what it means in everyday speech. In everyday speech, “privilege” means “stuff that’s nice but not a right.” But when feminists, for example, talk about “male privilege,” we mean that men aren’t likely to have certain rights of theirs dismissed the way women’s are.

…and *what,* exactly?

Yeah, because the fact that men got the vote before women is so very hard to deal with. And the fact that they were granted this right by other men. And the fact that t hey then got to own women. And then there’s the fact that other men got to own more women than men.

Sorry, but it breaks down in a very simple way. Are men acting in a sexist fashion? Then they’re sexist. You want to make excuses? They’re still sexist. Kiss their ass if you must, but they’re still sexist, and if you deflect that sexism on another group of women, what are you?

Robert:

The advantage of this approach is that it presents a positive goal, rather than negative ones. You don’t pitch to black people “smash whitey” - you pitch “help make what whitey gets, what everybody gets”. You don’t ask white people to fuck themselves over; you ask them to help other people climb out of the shit.

Firstly those saying “smash whitey” would appear to be a tiny and insignificant minority, and none of them appear to be posting here, so in the context of this discussion, that is a strawman.

Secondly, although you acknowledged throughout your post that racism is oppression, it seems, in the quoted passage, to have turned into mere disadvantage. Disadvantage is being in a tub of shit. Oppression is when people are pushing you into it with ten-foot poles. These people, as I have argued elsewhere, are acting against their own class-interest. So in addition to pitching “help make what whitey gets, what everyone gets” to non-whites, you should also pitch it to whites on grounds of not merely of justice (though that is important) but also self-interest. It may also be necessary to break the poles.

[Fixed! –Amp]

the significant effect that a white person’s race has on their life is to give them a leg up over almost any person of color in almost any situation.

I agree.

as a white person, i won’t suffer from racism.

The unstated assumption here is that structural racism harms and oppresses non-whites, maybe benefits whites by redistributing some wealth and opportunity from non-whites to whites and has no other effect on whites. I disagree. It seems to me that racism places huge burdens upon society which fall upon everybody. Of course they fall most heavily on non-whites, but the smaller burden which falls upon whites is still heavy enough to outweigh the slight benefits to them.

The focus upon relative privilege (racism unquestionably means that whites are privileged in comparison to non-whites) hides the true situation which is that we all suffer as a result of it, and that it is in the general self-interest of whites to oppose and to seek to remedy racism.

Well, it’s better to be free of racist oppression than not free of racist oppression.

But characterizing that as a privilege of one group seems to require that we posit a world where oppression is inevitable, and only one special class of people is immune from this omnipresent evil.

The difficulty with this approach is that it makes working for justice a complete waste of time. There is no justice; there’s only a question of whether you’re in the special group or not. The only way to improve society for any particular person is for that person to try and make their group the dominant one. The only way to improve society’s overall level of oppression is to get the special group to give up its privilege and be completely fucked like everyone else. Neither of these propositions is very attractive, other than to the relatively small number of people in each oppressed group who think that maintaining a system of oppression, but having their group at the top, would be just ducky.

I - and I suspect, most other people - would instead take the tack that being black or Hispanic are disadvantages in terms of oppression - that white people’s experience of not being oppressed is what everyone ought to be entitled to. The advantage of this approach is that it presents a positive goal, rather than negative ones. You don’t pitch to black people “smash whitey” - you pitch “help make what whitey gets, what everybody gets”. You don’t ask white people to fuck themselves over; you ask them to help other people climb out of the shit.

No, you are leaving racism involving lending institutions out of your mathematic equations. Loans are granted by human beings, not calculators and not computers.

I’m not leaving it out. I am trying to understand what it is you are claiming is the effect of the racism.

Charles:

Daran messed up his clarifying example

So I did. Thanks for your correction.

I don’t disbelieve it, but I’m not clear if that was what you meant or not.

I’d consider that interpretation to be an extraordinary claim.

How? Really how?

He benefits because he’s not black and not Hispanic and therefore free from racist oppression. Again, I have to wonder if you’re being serious.

It is not simple at all to me, this idea that humans exist as parts of a collective hivemind.

Collective hivemind? Huh? Once more you’re imagining things I never said or implied. I’m saying that you benefit from racism, which gives you a leg up on people of color. What does this have to do with a “hivemind”?

Now, can you tell me, as I am a white male (and supposedly benefit from being the same in terms of race and gender as many powerful people, because… Just because!), and it is “simple and straightforward” that I benefit from this, why would I not support White Supremacy and Patriarchy? Why would I ever vote for a nonwhite, or a woman (I have done so. How stupid of me.)?

Because not all human beings are 100% self-interested. What does this have to do with anything?

How is part of the privilege of GWB enjoys transferred to me? What is the mechanism? This honestly sounds like voodoo to me.

It’s not “transferred” to you. It’s your privilege as much as it is his. Because you’re white, you won’t be oppressed by racism. Because you’re not rich and or a member of the Bush family, you don’t have his class privilege. But you share his race privilege. Do I need to provide statistics for you to prove that racism exists?

Bullshit. Lots of rules are not universal, as Amp points out. An “exception” is just that”“something unusual. If you have a high enough number of exceptions, then they cease to be exceptions at all.

Which means that those rules are less valid.

…yeah. And your point? I’m guessing your point is that there are enough exceptions to rules like “black people are oppressed” and “women are oppressed” to invalidate those rules. I disagree, if that’s what you are saying.

I am arguing that white and male privilege, and indeed, the whole concept of privilege is so complex and hard (practically impossible beyond statistical trickery and collectivist measures) to measure that it does not support generalized statements like “all men have privilege by virtue of being men” (this is hardly a “straw-feminist” claim) or “all whites have privilege by virtue of being white” (ditto for the straw part).

No, it’s really not that complex at all. You’re probably never going to be raped unless you go to prison, Tuomas. The same goes for all men. Guess what? ALL of you share that privilege, by virtue of being men.

You cannot just lump all men or all whites together, look at some statistics and conclude that this is relevant on invidual level (hence the green-eyed example).

Now you’re moving the goal-posts, and in a ridiculous way. On an “individual level” no generalizations whatsoever are possible. It doesn’t mean that no generalizations are valid. It means that, in order to spot patterns, you need to step away from the individual level. On an individual level, saying “black people are oppressed” in pre-Civil War America would have been impossible.

Truth matters.

Ah, yes. Whereas the rest of us have been claiming that truth doesn’t matter and lies are actually really cool. Good to know. Carry on.

Daran messed up his clarifying example, so let me ask it again, just to be clear.

If a black person with an income of $100,000 goes in to get a $75,000 loan for a $100,000 home, will they have a worse chance of getting it than a black person with a $50,000 income trying to get the same loan for the same house?

I don’t disbelieve it, but I’m not clear if that was what you meant or not.

The better off financially they are, the harder it will be for them to get a mortgage or a housing loan to buy a house.

Me:

I assume that you mean that it is harder for wealthier non-whites in comparison to similarly wealthy whites, not harder than for less wealthy non-whites.

Radfem:

You assumed wrong. It surprised me the first time I learned this in sociology class.

The more money a person has, the more options they have for which neighborhood, meaning for a Black person or family they could move into houses in “White” neighborhoods. Consequently, they have a tougher time often getting money from lending institutions if they are more affluent and have better credit.

I’m still not clear about the claim here.

You’re claiming that a black person earning $50,000 per year would find it harder to get a $100,000 mortgage to buy a $150,000 home than a black person earning $25,000 per year would to get a $50,000 mortgage to buy a $75,000 home, because the $150,000 home is more likely to be in a white area than the $75,000 home.

You’re not claiming that a black person earning $50,000 per year would find it harder to get a $100,000 mortgage to buy a $150,000 home than a black person earning $25,000 per year would to get a $50,000 mortgage to buy the same $75,000 home.

Or is my assumption still wrong?

without going into a who-said-what analysis, my problem with a lot of the comments has to do with the assumption that you can take one aspect of a woman’s identity … her being a woman … and separate it out from all of her other identitiess … especially her racial identity. given the intertwined ways in which race and gender have been constructed in the US, i think anyone who believes these identities can be separated out, let alone prioritized on the ‘oppresson scale,’ is woefully mistaken.

I agree. I think this most definitely applies to the crime of rape.

Radfem:

The better off financially they are, the harder it will be for them to get a mortgage or a housing loan to buy a house.

I assume that you mean that it is harder for wealthier non-whites in comparison to similarly wealthy whites, not harder than for less wealthy non-whites.

You assumed wrong. It surprised me the first time I learned this in sociology class.

The more money a person has, the more options they have for which neighborhood, meaning for a Black person or family they could move into houses in “White” neighborhoods. Consequently, they have a tougher time often getting money from lending institutions if they are more affluent and have better credit. Often, Black people are steered away from looking at houses in “White” neighborhoods by realtors and taken to neighborhoods that are traditionally Black and/or Latino. I’ve heard of a lot of cases of the latter from people trying to buy homes.

it also strikes me that the whole formulation of the question being argued in this thread … whether gender trumps race … largely reflects the privileged position that white people enjoy in the US. if race *isn’t* something you have to take into account in your daily life; and if you don’t have to worry about whether your race determines whether you can be safe, or get a job, or be treated fairly, then it’s easy to believe race isn’t as important as gender.

I agree. How a woman identifies herself is her own choice, her right. I don’t understand how other women(primarily White women) think they have the right to decide what is right for ALL women based on their own experiences as White women. The only way it makes sense is to see it as another way of exercising White privilage.

a not guilty verdict will not demonstrate that Mary Doe lied.

I don’t question that. “Not Guilty” does not equal “innocent”, it simply means “not unanimously proved beyond a reasonable doubt to 12 people”. But what “not guilty” does do is to leave the question open from a legal viewpoint. You may certainly choose to believe her (I’m personally going to wait to see what comes out at trial), but there’s a difference between “Mary Doe was raped” and “I believe that Mary Doe was raped”. A “not guilty” verdict could leave us at “Mary Doe lied about the whole thing”, “Mary Doe was assaulted but rape is an open question”, “Mary Doe was assaulted and raped, but not by the people she named”, or “It appears that Mary Doe was assaulted and raped by the people she named, but they got off due to some legal issues.”

You may have one of these opinions now, but until everything comes out at trial, I think that opinions on the matter are just that; opinions. A flat factual statement of “Mary Doe was raped” sounds like an assertion of fact, but I think right now that’s misleading.