Don't Be That Guy.
I keep thinking about the discussions that have come up in the comments to my post about sex-positivism and performative sexuality and the concept of bystander consent, and I keep thinking about all the subtle little cues and clues I personally use to separate Okay from Skeevy when people approach me. Talking in the comments there made me realize
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In a discussion of privilege, are the privileged people not allowed to say "I acknowledge that your experience is not the same as mine, but this is my experience and it's not the same as yours, nor is it the same as what you think mine is"? Or is it taken as read that the experiences of the privileged are all monolithic and identical (and identical to whatever image the non-privileged have of them)?
Gah. This is a question that I struggle with constantly, because -- like you say -- a particular something that one person's identified as belonging to "male privilege" might really be (in someone else's eyes) part of class privilege, or etc.
I keep going around and around with it, and I think I've finally settled on (for my own personal default set of rules on LJ) the best solution being taking the discussion back to my space, laying out a summary of the discussion elsewhere, and unpacking my thoughts and reactions in 'my' space, so that I'm not coopting the original conversation but beginning my own offshoot. That's not possible in person, obviously.
Ultimately, I think the issue of pointing out "monolithic perception of privilege" is that there can be two motivations for it: one, to actually try to unpack the complicated tangle of forces operating at play, and two, to shut down the discussion that's actually happening and re-focus it on what the person doing the pointing-out wants to talk about. (And they're not mutually exclusive, either. I mean, we all want to talk about ourselves. For all of us, from our own perspectives, it's All About Us.) And I think people are very likely to believe that an attempt to do the first is really an attempt to do the second, because overwhelmingly, it's more common.
It kind of sucks for the people who do have a desire to do the first. (Okay, no, it really sucks.) I think the problem also happens because historically, part of privilege is the default assumption that conversations are All About You, and the ability to maintain that belief and the ability to always find a conversation that is All About You. (Generalized 'you' here, not you in particular.) The people who don't fall into that group are trying to build spaces where it's not All About whatever privilege is being discussed, so there's a real hostility to expanding the focus. It comes across, a lot of times, as "oh God, can't we just have one conversation that isn't about ..."
I think that in person, a good solution might be "I'd like to have a conversation about this, and I know this isn't that conversation, but let's talk about it later." I know that's not ideal in any sense, but I really don't have an answer for this. I flail around a lot, because sometimes it feels like you can't fix (or work towards fixing) one problem without complicating or worsening another.
Being a human being is hard, dammit.
Thanks for accepting my apology. :)
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Speaking for myself, I think it would. Most people will at least make with the clicky on the links, if nothing else... or you could add an [hr]-bar and an edit at the bottom of the post, without changing the post itself? That's what I sometimes do in my own Threads That Eat My LJ: "ETA: It has been brought to my attention that in point Blah, I myself did something that point Foo says shouldn't be done. To sum up: [summary]; the thread in question is [here]."
As for this: Gah. This is a question that I struggle with constantly, because -- like you say -- a particular something that one person's identified as belonging to "male privilege" might really be (in someone else's eyes) part of class privilege, or etc.
Perhaps that might be a question put to your friends list (and mine?) in new, separate posts? My partner asks: why is it so important to know what the motivation of the person is? Why can't we just address the issues? and I'm wondering about that, as well. Why can't we just address the issues?
Being a human being is hard, dammit.
Yes, it really is.
Thanks for accepting my apology. :)
You're welcome! May I add you to my flist? I think I could learn a lot from you (and I'd hope you might find me worth learning from, as well).
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I think that the reason we can't just address the issue, a lot of the time, is that there is this seething mass of context to any sort of discussion. There's a really strong tradition, on the internet, of Objectivism/libertarianism, the idea that we should (and that we even can) discuss one issue at hand, in a direct one-on-one sort of fashion, and the problem that comes in is that none of us operate in a vaccuum. The playing field can't be even, because of the systematic biases inherent in what everyone brings to the table.
I think there's a lot of room for the difference between "okay, we're going to explore this issue now" and "we're going to explore people's reactions to this issue now". It's the difference, I think, between "let's talk about all of the things that this issue brings up" and "let's talk about how people have experienced this issue". The one is focused on the actual problem, and the other is focused on the people who have experienced the problem. The problems really start to happen when one person is treating the discussion like it's about the problem when another person is treating it like it's a discussion about the effects the problem has had on them.
And yes! My view of the friends list is that it's really an I-am-reading-you list, and I never mind anyone adding me. Welcome. (And thanks again for giving me the chance to explore this.)
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Yes, that. Exactly.
Do you mind if I riff on this idea in my own LJ? I think that among us in this thread, we've hit on some important points about why these kinds of discussions often degenerate into partisan flamewars, and getting the ideas out there into the blogosphere might help to alleviate some of that (except, probably, among the most polarized persons who can't acknowledge any view but their own).
My view of the friends list is that it's really an I-am-reading-you list, and I never mind anyone adding me. Welcome. (And thanks again for giving me the chance to explore this.)
I have added you; feel free to add me back if you want to :) And you're more than welcome for any assistance I might have provided. I'm glad that my initial anger didn't degenerate into a flamewar.
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It's been my theory for many years, that only people who feel powerless violate others. They do not realize or control their own strength, because they feel like they don't have any. Very scary. The whole tangle you mention, is one of perceived powerlessness.
If you feel slighted, or weak, or helpless, you can very easily hurt others, intentionally or not. Starting out with a premise "men are privileged and women are not", right off the bat sets you up to be That Guy-- because now you (and your commenters) are justified in piling on the "privileged" group. In that frame, men's opinions automatically don't matter, because we're privileged and you're oppressed. Again, there's tons of evidence to indicate that you're correct, but still, it's a dangerous premise from which to begin a discussion.
Most men who are being That Guy do NOT feel privileged at the time they are doing it. They (we) feel desperate, needy, helpless, and weak. We have a raging hard-on, or a fluttering in the heart, or both, and we WANT you, we NEED you, and that's indeed dangerous, and your fear is well-founded: neediness can and too often does skid across the continuum from skeevy to creepy to scary to outright assault. Desperation and weakness is a very evil headspace to get into.
The same is true in gender politics though. If you are feeling oppressed by the patriarchy, then watch out. Some man is going to get his balls chewed off, and possibly for no reason at all, or, in a very subtle way, be invalidated and demeaned.
I keep thinking of the Israelis and Palestinians-- two groups who both feel like the victim, and thus either unaware of how they invalidate and violate each other, or able to feel justified in doing so.
I'm not sure how to get out of the tangle either. But you're wrestling with a very, very difficult problem, and have added a great deal of clarity to it.
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