thus demonstrating the conflict rather concisely. his/her* solidarity is taboo and you can attack him by saying he's just playing for the team _as if that's a bad thing._

would you do that to a girl? a more balanced equality would not qualify arguments based on group membership.

*just making a point with the 'her', I'm sure he's a guy, too.

Not at all. I'm just pointing out that the corollary to "Solidarity has historically been acceptable in disadvantaged groups and frowned upon when exhibited by privileged groups" is that privileged groups have historically tended to perceive equality well before disadvantaged groups (and its true emergence).

As a member of the privileged class, your perception that you are not privileged isn't taboo, it's just wrong.

Girls do better in school than boys. I'm curious why you'd suggest that boys are privileged in this environment.

First of all, there isn't enough evidence to say whether that's because of privilege or because women are naturally more intelligent than men.

Second, we can sure talk about specific environments. Talk to any white kid who grew up in a black neighborhood, they sure don't feel like they're better off for being white. And, yeah, that's bad. We should be doing something to help that kid. But his bad experience doesn't change the reality that when he leaves his neighborhood, when he goes to a job interview or to court or really just about, he is better off for being white.

So, sure. Girls are doing better than boys in school. The last entering freshmen class at my school was almost 2:1 female. Am I worried? Not really. Men still run the world.

We should be talking about how to help boys do better in school. We should also make sure we don't forget that women are an oppressed class, and that any solutions we try aren't contributing to the overall oppression of women.

Which probably means we should get women to do it.

>First of all, there isn't enough evidence to say whether that's because of privilege or because women are naturally more intelligent than men.

I'm amused. Does it matter which is true if men aren't getting the education they need?

>Men still run the world.

Also an old, old statement that reveals why we need to get rid of gender as a real concept. How many men run the world? Not most of them. In what sense does it carry to include the homeless and the destitute who are men in the same group as those who rule?

>We should also make sure we don't forget that women are an oppressed class

HERE. Here it is. This is the error in your thinking.

All people are oppressed.

But when you start categorizing people into those who are Allowed To Be Recognized As Oppressed and those who are Oppressors By Association: They Have A Dick, you're making arbitrary distinctions that are inflexible and rigid.

There is not a single person on this earth who does not experience oppression. A person who does not belong to any of your protected classes will still be oppressed by your exclusion: or what, did you think it didn't count if _you_ oppressed someone based on what sort of person they were?

Have I said something to make you think we shouldn't be fighting all oppression? No doubt the elephant in the room is class — in fact fixing class might just fix everything else automatically — but that doesn't mean we should ignore racism, sexism, homo- or Islamophobia.

But I have to say, at this point I'm not sure what you want from me. I'm advocating for the rights of other people according to my personal idea of what's right. That women are outperforming men in school is worrying from an educational standpoint, but I haven't seen any evidence that it's the result of endemic, institutional sexism against men— unlike that which evidence suggests still exists towards women, which, while very much improved in the last decades, is still real and dangerous. If someone thinks that it's gone because of one metric in which women have surpassed men, then I'm going to speak out against that. I'm going to speak out against that pretty loudly.

I'd be saying the same thing if someone thought that Obama being President means that no one ever gets stopped and searched for DWB, or that gay marriage in New York means no one in high school is going to call someone else a faggot until they kill themselves. We've come a long, long way. We're not done.

(For productivity reasons, this'll be my last comment on the subject, but I'll read your response if there's one— Just wanted to say I dug the civil exchange of ideas. Stay cool.)

> but I haven't seen any evidence that it's the result of > endemic, institutional sexism

You don't consider girls being encouraged to succeed by their teachers and society at large while boys are not (a common situation in schools today, and a stark contrast to as recently as 10-15 years ago) as "endemic, institutional sexism"?

Or you haven't seen any evidence that this difference in societal attitudes is causative in better female school performance?

I can accept the latter, though there is in fact experimental data that suggests that boys do better with more encouragement...

I think my point is that there _isn't_ a way to fight all oppression. Pretty women get objectified, but they also get status. Jocks get power/whatever, but they're also trapped with value systems that actually don't make them that happy.

Even the people holding the strings are puppets.

>I haven't seen any evidence that it's the result of endemic, institutional sexism against men

Apathy is its own form of sexism, which is to say: if selecting based on sex indicates educational disparity, then sexism must exist somewhere in the system.

>(For productivity reasons, this'll be my last comment on the subject, but I'll read your response if there's one— Just wanted to say I dug the civil exchange of ideas. Stay cool.)

Same here--thanks to you as well! I especially appreciate that you qualify this as civil; I know I go for the throat sometimes, and sometimes I think HN wants us to be more polite than effective, if you follow.

My point, in fact, was that the conflict is _over_ the perception of privilege. Indeed, it has to be. The corollary to your statement:

>privileged groups have historically tended to perceive equality well before disadvantaged groups (and its true emergence).

... is that disadvantaged groups tend to perceive equality after its true emergence. Please disentangle the current context (gender) from this discussion so we may examine a power struggle in the abstract--which is to say, I am _not_ commenting on whether or not gender equality has 'emerged' because such a question is a) too detailed, and b) probably way too ambiguous, because equality is not well defined. (and c) true gender equality, at least from my perspective, require an abolition of gender using lgbtq viewpoints)

Groups act in their self-interest. Privileged groups are required to act as if they do not--equivalently, they are asked to place disadvantaged groups within their 'self'--equivalently, their sense of identity is dissolute.

Thus (to bring the discussion back in context) my statement was not about 'correctness' or 'taboo,' but the fact that the conflict is _over_ what is 'correct' and 'taboo.' There is a vague discomfort in this topic with the idea of 'girl power.' The wave is beginning to build in the other direction. But those who stray too far, to identify with their group, are shot down by the taboo. (Incidentally, I was not trying to toe that line, merely trying to comment on the line's existence.)

We are not in stasis. At some point the wave will have crashed and those 'privileged' with 'unprivileged' status will lose that privilege, and those 'unprivileged' with 'privileged' status will as well.

Finally, I consider myself 'queer.' Examine which 'status' that accords my viewpoint, since you are readily prepared to ascribe membership to classes based on viewpoints.

First, since it wasn't clear, my use of "you" in that last bit was rhetorical. Wasn't intending to address anyone in particular, sorry about that.

But since you mention yourself, sure, let's talk that— What would you make of a heterosexual, cisgendered man saying that he doesn't really think people with non-standard gender identities are discriminated against?

Again, that's not a taboo thing to say. He's not speaking from bigotry, just ignorance. He has no reason to know or care whether discrimination is going on or not. That's privilege.

That's the hallmark of privilege. It's taken for granted. We're just "them". The wealthy, the white, the straight, the cisgendered, the male— we don't need identity, not in this country, not today. We don't need marches or flags or bumper stickers. Every day is our day.

And so of course we feel worried by a phrase like "Girl Power" or "Gay Pride" because, not knowing real discrimination, we think that's what it looks like. So I just stopped by to say, you know... No.

>What would you make of a heterosexual, cisgendered man saying that he doesn't really think people with non-standard gender identities are discriminated against?

So now that I'm a member of an "unprivileged" viewpoint, I'm granted the privilege of determining what constitutes ignorance and privilege in other people--you granted it directly by asking me. In this way you are propagating the inequality of privilege.

It is enough for me that a viewpoint is wrong; I do not need to associate it with a group. (Or at least, I do my best.)

We are in a war over privilege and who has it: the honest attempt is to balance out the economic and societal privilege with privilege in discourse, privilege in judgment, who has a 'right' to feel a certain way. The dishonest attempt is where selfish action leads those who have power to hold onto it.

In a theater of discourse as muddled as the internet, as cacophonous as our cities and streets, the combat is about shutting down viewpoints, which is _not about who is right_.

Privilege is not a coherent, sane, or consistent concept. I work as a programmer, and am privileged financially as a result. Should I give up this privilege when the simple fact is _society needs programmers?_ By having privilege do I forfeit the right to be proud of my career? Is there a net privilege quantity that I possess? The only determinative answer I have to these questions is the last one, and it is a solid 'No,' because _each privilege I supposedly possess/lack acts along a different axes_, and sometimes a privilege or lack thereof provides benefits and consequences simultaneously.

Discrimination, likewise, is not a coherent, sane, or consistent concept. "Knowing real discrimination"--you reference an absolute concept that is actually based on your personal evaluation of what constitutes real discrimination. There is no real discrimination or fake discrimination: all discrimination is discrimination. Some of it is valid: no one is complaining that Stanford doesn't let in people without graduating middle school. Some of it is invalid: the Westboro nuts are morons. Some of it cannot be helped: despite all the progress of feminism, some women just want to get married and submit to their husband, and we are left with no course but to respect that choice. (I respect it: do you?) And some of it we _recognize_ as technically 'unfair' but are hoping to mitigate larger effects: affirmative action.

The OP is making a comment about the wider sea. You didn't really provide any evidence to counter his large-scale commentary except for (implicitly) denying his group any privilege to _even contemplate_ the wider sea.

That's the problem with these sorts of discussion: someone can say "We're moving towards equality pretty well, overall" and be attacked with "There is still discrimination X." Both statements evaluate as true, so a fight starts anyway, plus it gets tied up into people's identity (that is something you did _explicitly_, in fact) so people get pissed off.

For what it's worth, here's my take: the demographic shift for males in the US is broadly towards lower education and employment. Additionally the heterosexual relationship has an altered power balance: forces in the legal system that were discriminatory against women have been targeted for elimination for the past however many years, while _not_ being targeted for men. How much discriminatory cruft remains from our hetero-normative past?

It is almost a given that social forces move too far, take too much, and then have to balance out. There are very few conservative revolutions, very few careful idealists. So how _unlikely_ is it that we have not moved past a point, or will very soon, where the equal status of men and women is ambiguous? Arguably the point of equality is _at _ the point in time where equality is ambiguous, because otherwise there wouldn't be much to argue about! (At the very least we can use this to provide lower and upper bounds, eh?)

Your knee-jerk reaction, "No," may very soon be out of date.

That's certainly a coherent position, but I feel you're talking past me. To wit:

So now that I'm a member of an "unprivileged" viewpoint, I'm granted the privilege of determining what constitutes ignorance and privilege in other people--you granted it directly by asking me.

You misunderstand. I don't want you to make a determination because you are a member of the oppressed class; I know the answer, and if you had agreed with the hypothetical man's opinion I would have said that you are wrong as well. Discrimination can be documented objectively.

I was trying to illustrate that members of the oppressed class are always more acutely aware of their oppression than oppressors are, it's just natural. Likewise, with my farcical "shot in the dark"— of course it wasn't a shot in the dark, I was playing the odds. If we suppose that women are oppressed, then someone who doesn't believe women are oppressed is likely not a woman.

For what it's worth, I do agree with the statement that "We're moving towards equality pretty well, overall"— so much so that I wouldn't have put down too much money on ricefield being a dude, because I do actually know quite a few women who don't believe that there is meaningful gender inequality anymore. They are universally in my age group or younger, in high school or college, from middle-class families, and white.

They do in fact live in an environment where sexism is mostly about silly things. Now, I think that's awesome. But they're wrong.

Anyway, to take this all back around: The privileged tend not to recognize that they are privileged. It doesn't make you a bad person, it's just not something people notice. (It's still unclear to me if this is something you disagree with?)

If you want an analogy which doubles as an example: In a relationship, when the man thinks he and his partner share housework roughly equally, the woman tends to think that she is doing much more housework than the men. Statistically speaking, the woman in this case is objectively right; the man is likely doing much less than his share of the housework. He just doesn't realize it. If you ask me, it behooves a man not to rely on his perception of how much housework he is doing, because he knows that that perception is likely to be skewed. (Note that I'm not saying couples should necessarily share housework equally; these are men who want to, and think they are, but are not.)

So, likewise, the only thing I'm trying to say here is that if you find yourself thinking, "Hmm, that previously oppressed group seems pretty equal now" that your next thought should be "but then on the other hand I wouldn't expect to notice latent discrimination if it does exist, so maybe I should look into it a little bit closer." Not because you don't get the right to say things are equal if they are; just because they probably aren't.

>but I feel you're talking past me.

I believe this is because you're still focused on the content/intent of your post, and I'm focused on the effect of your post.

>I know the answer

Then you're only asking it to affirm your own opinion, _assuming_ that I will agree with you.

All of what you're saying about oppression and likelihood and ignorance is true. That doesn't mean that you aren't _in effect_ assigning out rights to grievance based on your classification of what sort of person is an oppressed group.