ARGH! Damn Kids! Get offa my polemic!

[anthraxia]

I'm feeling grouchy and want to yell at a few people. General details - a new faculty club is forming at Adelaide Uni for the Humanities and Social Sciences, which is great and I absolutely support it. As tends to be the way of such things, there's a lot of focus on 'we need a committee for this and a process for that and a representative for

Comments

[reverancepavane]

This is why I don't believe that Privilege exists (especially as it is defined by the people that use it). Partly this is because, like the Political Correctness of previous decades, it is used to shut down discussion rather than promote it, and because it cannot be eliminated.
On the other hand, Unprivilege can be eliminated, and there is great incentive to do so.
Says the (theoretically) white western heterosexual male.

[spherissa]

(i am the privileged minority stop discriminating against me)

[reverancepavane]

So how do I stop being discriminated against?

[anthraxia]

I think privilege does exist, but not in the way it gets thrown around and used to silence people. Privilege is a specific state of ignorance brought about through inexperience. So, for example, as I don't need a wheelchair, I'm not consistantly concious of how wheelchair accessable places are. I come from a position of privilege; I am privileged not to have that constant source of consideration. But that doesn't mean that I can't learn, or that I can't be aware of the problem, or that I can't design wheelchair friendly spaces. It simply means that, in the case of wheelchair access, I need to do two things: a) think beyond my own experience and b) accept that when someone in a wheelchair disagrees with me about how accessable something is, the odds are that even though everything I see tells me I am right, I need to accept that I am probably wrong. And I'll probably be wrong not because I'm thick or incapable of understanding in general, but because there is a difference between 'understanding' and 'grokking' and for some issues I

[shellbun]

I can only say - Bah :/

[spherissa]

Did anyone point out that when you set up a situation where you need a Rep for Everyone omg you always leave someone out thus opening a Whole New Door for Discrimination Problems? Rather than just having one contact/goto person who, one hopes, has a clue?

[darthstoat]

So if she can somehow get rid of her common sense, the problem will go away?