I agree that you can't judge someone because they're part of Group X. Its impossible to know what struggles a person goes through. But, at least a few of the thinkpiece writers I've seen are commenting on how Group X uses their privilege to discredit the struggles Group Y or Z has experienced because of Group X.
Laughing "about how good people in Group X have it and how hilarious it is that they sometimes complain about their lives" is taking it too far, but I've seen something very similar to the above excerpt used to discredit the very real, systemic struggle of minorities. That makes me cringe. I'm in favor of being empathic to everyone's humanity and not discrediting anyone's struggle.
His counterpoint to you, which I would say has some traction, would likely be that those thinkpiece writers are deploying constructs like "privilege" as a way to discredit the very real struggle of people in groups that don't fall under the accepted rubric of privileged and oppressed, for the very reason that their issues' existence is either ignored or defined out of the category of "systemic oppression."
Most everyone is "in favor of being empathic to everyone's humanity and not discrediting anyone's struggle," but as humans everyone seems to have a hard time putting that principle into practice.
This is a good point. Its tough when being candid about the struggles of one group discredits the struggle of another. Honesty is important, but not invalidating someone's hardship is also important.
> His counterpoint to you, which I would say has some traction, would likely be that those thinkpiece writers are deploying constructs like "privilege" as a way to discredit the very real struggle of people in groups that don't fall under the accepted rubric of privileged and oppressed, for the very reason that their issues' existence is either ignored or defined out of the category of "systemic oppression."
The problem with this counterpoint is that it's easy to misconstrue, even mischaracterize, "acknowledging the distress while continuing to point out the difference in scale" (from an essay I'm about to extol) as "a way to discredit the very real struggle" of privileged people. While the latter is reprehensible, the former is crucial to the healing of society, as explained in one of the best essays I've ever read: http://weeklysift.com/2012/09/10/the-distress-of-the-privile... (Maybe THE best essay I've ever read. This essay provided the single most significant clarification of perspective I've had in the past several years, though I guess I'd been on this path for a while due to the people and schools of thought I was immersed in.)
Indeed, while I'm sure there's no shortage of thoughtless "online thinkpiece writers laughing at Group X" that could demonstrate Scott's original statement, the underlying implication that that's representative of "left wing social justice activists" is inaccurate. The mainstream[1] "left wing social justice activists" rubric actually does attempt to incorporate everyone's struggles in an open-ended way: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Intersectionality The fact that mistakes are still common, that both ordinary as well as widely celebrated "left wing social justice activists" (not to mention "online thinkpiece writers") still routinely discredit real struggles and perspectives, is an acknowledged problem with active efforts to address it, e.g. http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/01/why-our-feminism-must-be... (You'll notice that the RationalWiki page I linked to doesn't mention so-called "neurotypical privilege", which probably best addresses the examples Scott gave. Like I said, acknowledged problem, active efforts.)
(Note [1]: sometimes people are like "you're just calling the-subset-that-we-both-disagree-with extremists and making an unfalsifiable claim that the 'mainstream' is as moderate as you", so if someone insists on getting in the weeds here, let's be concrete: let's start with the concrete, falsifiable claim that that paragraph applies to the majority of people who were doxed by GamerGate.)
I suspect if we get down to concrete descriptions and prescriptions, we'd have a lot more agreement than disagreement. So maybe all of this is semantic, and a bit far afield of Scott's original post.
Privilege is an important concept: many people, however, elevate it to a metaphysical reality, instead of a set of cultural practices and institutions situated in a particular social context. The idea seems to be there's white and black, male and female, rich and poor, and that set of binary relations is defined by membership in a hardcoded hierarchy of oppression. Even "intersectionality," which most everyone is already familiar with, in practice seems to be mostly about "there are lots of checkboxes you can check, and you'll always have some that are checked and some that aren't!" More sophisticated takes on it acknowledge the incommensurability of experience and use that to condemn oppression olympics[0], but it falls prey to a core problem.
Privilege ends up being a very leaky abstraction. "White privilege" (privilege itself, not the term) is a modern invention: white privilege didn't exist in 1500, because white people and black people didn't exist in 1500. Race was constructed in the early modern era to provide the ideological superstructure for the pattern of colonialism and domination originating from the western coast of the Eurasian landmass. And the strange fruits of its maturation in the late 19th century remain with us to this very day, to the extent that in the vast majority of contexts, you're better off being white than black. So I'm very comfortable with using a monolithic white privilege as an explanatory concept when talking strictly about black-white race relations.
Even that, though, breaks down when you consider the multiplicity of races: you no longer can have a simple binary of the oppressed and the oppressors, because you have to account for East Asian, Native American, South Asian, etc. experiences as well. You can try to bundle all of them together and talk about "white privilege over nonwhites," but that's pretty problematic itself, because it reduces all non-white racial experience to simply being the Other. Or you can come up with a whole set of racial binaries--white and Asian, white and black, white and non-white Hispanic--which respects the unique discourse that defines each race, but runs into issues when you start talking about, for example, black-Asian relations. I don't think this at all undermines the usefulness of white privilege as a concept, but it's a very subtle concept.
The point of all of this prelude? Even in the simple case of one clearly dominant group, treating white privilege as a monolith is tricky, though I think ultimately it's doable in a way that's useful and powerful. But that brings me to my main point: male-female privilege, which nowadays is better characterized as male privileges and female privileges, though in the past it was very one-sided. The current discourse of privilege, however, is unable to account for that complicated reality, because it insists on parts of each individual's identity being classed into a binary of oppressed and oppressors. And because of that, it very much discredits people's real struggles. It categorically rejects the possibility that men suffer systemic oppression based on their maleness. Men who fall outside the male archetype, in body, personality, or how they are socially situated, are marginalized and face economic and social discrimination. And even men who manage to fall within the narrow scope of our society's hegemonic masculinity suffer a great deal due to it, resulting in harrowing statistics like men comprising 3/4 of successful suicides.
At worst, the response to this from activists is nastiness, mockery, and derision ("I drink male tears!"). Sometimes the response is saying that that sucks, but it's not systemic oppression so it's not worth worrying about, or maybe that men committing the large majority of suicides is bad but it's different in scale from the oppression every woman experiences. Best is the more empathetic and sophisticated ones who cite "toxic masculinity", which is fine as far as it goes: it acknowledges that men suffer based on their gender, and I can enthusiastically be allies with people who recognize that. But it strikes me as trying to fit the square peg of oppressive male gender roles into the round hole of privilege. For point of comparison, consider how ridiculous something like "toxic whiteness" or "toxic affluenza" sounds. But otherwise there's no way for privilege discourse to acknowledge that there's anything at all that sucks about being expected to perform masculinity.
So, that ended up being quite the essay. But thanks if you read it!
[0] Though, isn't "acknowledging the distress while continuing to point out the difference in scale" really just oppression olympics under a different name? Or does this come from the point of view that oppression olympics is a valid intellectual exercise, but isn't useful tactically while collaborating with diverse sets of people?
The same is true of my post, I'm glad you responded :)
And yes, doubtless we agree on a lot more than we disagree on, which I try to keep in mind even when I'm tempted to get heated in an Internet argument.
But even so I'm gonna skip over most of the first half of your essay since you indeed appear to be saying things I agree with (the summary seems to be "privilege is complicated and people on all 'sides' routinely get it wrong"?), and chime in on what I appear to disagree with you on.
> resulting in harrowing statistics like men comprising 3/4 of successful suicides.
This seems to always be the centerpiece of arguments about "female privilege", because other examples tend to be much more nebulous whereas mortality statistics are concrete and factual. But there's nuance here, as you seem aware but don't at all address: though the numbers are less certain, experts agree that women attempt more suicides, they're just less "successful". From my understanding, this is fully explainable (but debated, don't get me wrong!) as just the differing lethality in the societally gendered methods of suicide, but for the sake of argument let's say there's a real, societal, systemic problem causing male suicide rates to be much higher. I'm still going to argue that male privilege is like white privilege (which you're "comfortable with" as part of a binary, right) and female privilege isn't, in spite of the higher suicide rate.
First reason? You realize that suicide among white people is more than twice as high as among black people?
"Toxic whiteness" is indeed rarely discussed, but "affluenza" is only ridiculous when used as a legal defense, it'd be like arguing that a black person is not guilty of murder because they were under the influence of racism; but there's nothing ridiculous about the idea that being rich is actually a curse, you ever seen Gossip Girl? :P (I think we can agree Gossip Girl didn't exactly pioneer that story element.) Other axes of privilege have similar ideas, e.g. "heteronormativity". There's nothing special about masculinity in this regard. The kyriarchy hurts everyone.
So if heteronormativity hurts straight people too, and the patriarchy hurts men too, why is being straight and/or male a privilege? For the same reason that it's not "oppression olympics" to say that even though white people have a higher suicide rate and are underrepresented in hip-hop (just like men have a higher suicide rate and are underrepresented in nursing and stuff), being white is a privilege in black-white relations.
Final note---did I mention that "acknowledging the distress while continuing to point out the difference in scale" is a quote from one of the best essays I've ever read? Have you read it yet? I would love to hear your thoughts: http://weeklysift.com/2012/09/10/the-distress-of-the-privile...
- Most people in America are struggling
- Most people outside America are struggling much, much more, to a degree not fathomable by Americans.
- Therefore, people in America should acknowledge they have it really good and stop complaining.
[1] http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AppealToWorseProb... [2] http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=641605
But I think there is a real problem when worrying about one problem comes at the expense of caring about another more severe problem.
Contrived thought experiment: You have the magical power of either curing your own toothache, or curing the world of AIDS. You choose to cure your toothache because it affects you. I would argue you should have considered the alternative.
The problem is not that you can't care about problems that are less severe than others, but given finite availability of "care" in your own mind and in the world, it is better to direct our "care" to where it can have the biggest impact.
You then die when a tooth infection kills you.
Would it have not been more practical to safeguard such a vital national resource as the world's first wizard? Had you lived longer, what other ails of the world beyond just AIDS could you have cured as your powers recharged?
> The problem is not that you can't care about problems that are less severe than others, but given finite availability of "care" in your own mind and in the world, it is better to direct our "care" to where it can have the biggest impact.
Care is finite, but this is not a zero sum game. Caring properly for oneself is an investment - increasing your ability to care for others (by having a longer, healthier life), and gives you direct experience in what care may or may not be effective using yourself as a guinea pig.
But let me allow it, and move it to the real of practicality. Based on the skills and resources I now have, the contribution I can now make with my skills and resources (the "magical powers" at my disposal) would only fractionally help cure AIDS. At best, I might be able to supply a certain number of people with life-extending HIV meds by contributing all my assets and future income.
And why AIDS versus a hundred other maladies where my entire wealth and income improves and extends lives? Or does balancing the ability to build capital effectively come into play? Would we be better off with the issues the Gates Foundation is tackling if Bill Gates had decided to spend all his time from 1975 forward working with an NGO trying to eradicate malaria and polio? Or getting in a position where he focused on first world problems so that he could address some global issues?
I appreciate your concern--but "care" isn't necessarily a point in time measurement or a zero sum game--it's possible to care about multiple things at once, and it's possible to care proportionately more as means allow. (And in many cases, it might be more efficient to do so.)
You cannot possibly know the level of anyone's suffering except yourself. How do you know how much people are struggling in or out of America? How do you know people outside America suffer more? How do you compare suffering? You don't. You can't. Even if you did, it wouldn't matter. You're comparing problems as if they were numbers. They're not. They're not comparable. What hurts one person a lot may not hurt another very much and vice-versa. Postulating a thing you cannot possibly know is where you're wrong. Not to mention belittling the problems of millions of Americans by subjecting them to your random judgement.
You acknowledge that Americans have actual, real problems. What is your plan for after Americans stop complaining about their problems? What does that achieve? What happens next? Why is that a desirable future state that you want to encourage?
- You have a broken arm
- Somewhere else in the world, someone has stage IV pancreatic cancer
- Therefore your broken arm should be of no concern even to you
The flaw should be intuitively obvious, especially to anyone who's ever had a broken arm. But hey, you actually concede you're a robot in your HN profile, your hyperalloy combat chassis is no doubt proof against such mishaps, and why should anyone expect you to understand or care what humans feel?
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This is part of why I get enraged whenever somebody on Tumblr says “People in Group X need to realize they have it really good”, or “You’re a Group X member, so stop pretending like you have real problems.” The town where I practice psychiatry is mostly white and mostly wealthy. That doesn’t save it. And whenever some online thinkpiece writer laughs about how good people in Group X have it and how hilarious it is that they sometimes complain about their lives, it never fails that I have just gotten home from treating a member of Group X who attempted suicide.