I keep being told that “we need
to talk about privilege” and I agree. We
do need to talk about it; it’s important; and I’ll get to it, by and by. Privilege is all over the place. There is white privilege, cis privilege, male privilege,
straight privilege, able privilege, young privilege, thin privilege, pretty
privilege, and probably a whole load more that I have yet to hear about. Privileges result in people being marginalised,
excluded, dismissed and oppressed; it is a critical issue in our society.
However, first and foremost I
would like to talk about The Rise Of The Righteous Ass-Hat. Righteous Ass-Hats are everywhere these days. They are prominent, brash, and in some fields
they appear to be taking over. The
internet seems to either breed them or at the very least encourage them to come
out of their shells and congregate. This
results in displays of Synchronised Ass-Hattery that are enough to put the fear
of the Inquisition in anyone with a smattering of historical knowledge.
“What is a Righteous Ass-Hat?” I
hear you cry. Well, their basic
characteristic is an uncontrollable urge
to break into vehement, superior, or downright hateful speech when exposed to
certain triggers or situations. The
triggers are often imaginary or only imperceptibly connected to the situation. The resulting speech is characteristically
circular in nature, with certain phrases or words repeated compulsively. These interjections, often inappropriate to
the conversations in question and lacking in logic or factual accuracy, may
baffle the onlookers who often become drawn into futile attempts at sensible
debate.
The speech of the Righteous
Ass-Hat is not to be seen as a form of verbal communication as witnessed
between regular humans. The function of
the words in question is similar to the aggressive
territorial displays witnessed in many animal species. Regardless of the particular “content” of the
speech, its only intention is to make the person at the receiving end either
submit to the local dominance of the Ass-Hat or leave the area altogether.
If their behaviour is not handled
appropriately, Ass-Hats can mutate, Gremlin-like, into creatures almost impossible
to handle. When they reach this stage,
they lose all human inhibitions and will
attack violently and without constraints, becoming very dangerous to all in
the area. Furthermore, their mutation is
contagious, potentially resulting in large mobs of Ass-Hats attacking at once.
It is believed that this
condition is caused by a reduction in brain functions caused by an infestation
of Ass-Umptions. These Ass-Umptions clog
up the sufferers’ brains in such a manner as to render them unable to connect
to the reality most of us share. Here,
for your edification, is a list of the main Ass-Umptions you are likely to
encounter:
1.
“You
can’t possibly know anything about this issue.”
These Ass-Hats convince
themselves that, although they don’t know anything about you, they can
determine that you have not been affected by an issue, because it’s quite
simply not an issue that affects “people like you”.
The classic manifestation of this
Ass-Umption is women telling men that they cannot possibly know anything about
rape, domestic abuse and prostitution, because they are “women’s issues”. The fact that there is plenty of evidence out
there proving that men do suffer from rape and abuse and sometimes work as
prostitutes is somehow completely discounted.
I would like to take this
opportunity for a shout-out to the lady who screeched to a male friend of mine
that he couldn’t possibly know anything about rape. As it turned out, she was not a rape
victim. He was. I can only hope that him telling her his
experience, in all its gory details, has cured her Ass-Umption for life.
2.
“Because
you have not been personally affected by the issue, you have not been affected
by it at all.”
These particular Ass-hats must use
a different reproductive strategy from that commonly seen in humans. Clearly they have no mothers, fathers,
siblings or children; they are generated, grow and live in perfect isolation,
completely independently of all other humans.
They never form close social groups.
They probably mate by post. Therefore,
they are incapable of comprehending that people are not only affected by their
personal experiences, but also by the experiences of the people around them,
and particularly their loved ones.
The strapping young friend of
mine they accused of “able” privilege built half his muscles struggling to push
his disable mother’s wheelchair in and out of buildings. The straight boys they did not let participate
in the gay marriages campaign[1]
are the sons of a lesbian couple. This
doesn’t matter to these Ass-Hats – the concept of shared experience is entirely
meaningless to them.
3.
“Because
you are not affected by this issue now, you obviously never were.”
One of my friends was given a
“medical deadline” by his doctor due to the health complications resulting from
his excess weight. He managed to
completely change his lifestyle in under five year. He’s now not only the fittest person I know,
but he works as a personal trainer. He
knows the practical, clinical, and emotional implications of being overweight
and how to best manage that condition.
He can also give people useful pointers on how to try and resolve it if
they so wish. But no – he now has “thin
privilege”, so he is obviously no longer entitled to express or even have an
opinion on weight issues. This makes as
much sense as telling a blind person who has recently received a successful eye
transplant that they are no longer allowed to engaged in conversations about
disabilities.
You may think this Ass-Umption is
purely the result of hasty profiling.
However, this is not the case.
Mentioning that you were once affected by an issue but have overcome it,
rather than causing these Ass-Hats to back down, generally results in them
going completely rabid and jumping right to the next Ass-Umption.
4.
“Because
you overcame an issue, you are shaming/blaming those who haven’t.”
There is an issue. The issue is serious enough that it is
responsible for the marginalisation, victimisation and general sufferings of
those that it affects; it is serious enough, at any rate, for people to feel
the need to engage in fearsome debate about it.
The issue is a problem, affecting lives.
It was affecting yours. You
managed to do something about it. How
very dare you!
Apparently, the moment you
overcome an issue you instantly become part of the problem. You are no longer one of the good people, the
marginalised minority; you are now one of “them”. This is not necessarily linked to the fact
that the solution is a limited resource – say, there is only so much money, and
in order to gain “rich privilege” you are forcing us all to stay poor. The “fact” is that your triumph, rather than
being encouraging or aspirational, is casting blame and shame, probably with a
side dish of worms, upon those who are still suffering. You should not be proud, or at least
relieved, for what you have accomplished.
You should skulk in the shadows forever so that nobody can be oppressed
by your success.
5.
“Because
you have not affected by an issue, you cannot begin to guess how it feels.”
Let me be lazy, and let Wikipedia
do my work for me:
“Empathy is
the ability to mutually experience the thoughts, emotions, and direct
experience of others. It goes beyond sympathy, which is a feeling of care and
understanding for the "feelings" of others.”[2]
Empathy is a key human
trait. In fact, it is so important that
lack of empathy is considered both a symptom and a serious difficulty in
some individuals on the autistic spectrum or those with certain personality or
psychological disorders. Yet these
Ass-Hats completely discount it; does that indicate that they are incapable of
it? If that is the case, I find it
worrying.
A corollary of this is “because
you have not been affected specifically by this very issue, you cannot transfer your
experience of other issues to inform your opinion on it”. For instance, I have never pushed a
wheelchair. However, I have pushed a
double pram. I have no experience of the
access issues that apply to people using wheelchairs; however, I have a ton of
experience of the access issues suffered by a ridiculously small and feeble woman
trying to push a pram loaded with chubby kids.
Some practical experiences allow us to extrapolate.
6.
“Because
you have not affected by an issue, you have nothing useful to say on the
subject.”
By this token, doctors should not
be able to have an opinion on any disease or conditions that they have not
personally suffered from. Anyone who has
a purely technical, professional or rational understanding of a subject without
being personally affected by it should shut up and go away. This has the brilliant result of excluding
from debates a whole host of people who may be able to make suggestions on how to make things
better. Apparently to the Ass-Hat that
is not a significant problem.
7.
“Because
you have not been affected by an issue, you do not care about it.”
Let us talk about me, for a
little while. I am not gay. I have never been gay. I do not plan to be gay. However, I feel passionately about the right
of gay people to get married. Whether
they can or can’t does not affect my life at all. However, just thinking about the fact that
people who love each other being prevented from celebrating their love upsets
and disgusts me more than I can begin to tell you. To be brutally honest, it tends to make me
cry.
Why do I care so much about gay
rights? I don’t – not a bit. In fact, I don’t believe there is such a
thing as gay rights – we have collectively forgotten that this expression is
nothing but shorthand for “human rights that are being denied to gay
people”. This is also true of women
rights, racial rights, and the rights of any other group that is being in any
way excluded.
I’m a human. I care about human rights. I hate to see them denied in any way, shape
or form. If you can’t grasp that concept,
I am sorry but there is no help for you.
YOU are the one who believes that the differences created by our gender,
sexuality, age, ethnicity, size, etc. are more significant that our common bond
as human beings.
8.
“Because
you benefit from an unfairness, you are in favour of it and wish to exploit it.”
Just right off the bat, this
flies in the face of actual history. The
fact is that most inequalities and discriminations were not overturned by
bloody battle. The oppressed minority
did not fight its way to success despite the nasty, mean, oppressive
majority. The suffragettes campaigned,
but it was men who voted to give women the vote – women, back then, couldn’t
vote to give themselves the vote, because, well, they didn’t have the vote. Suffrage was entirely enacted by men. Women could have railed in the streets forever
and nobody had to do anything beyond going “yes, dear, that’s lovely. Please try not to get arrested until after
you’ve made my tea.”
Just because someone belongs to a
majority, it does not mean that they support the oppression of a minority. Just because someone is, for whatever
reasons, better off than you, it does not mean that they want to use that fact
to hurt you.
9.
“Because
you truly do not understand a single thing about this issue, you should be
excluded from conversations about it.”
“Let them eat cake” is the
sentence commonly misattributed to Marie Antoinette, Queen of France[3]. Regardless of its historical accuracy, it is
the perfect example of clueless privilege – a privilege so big that the person
enjoying it has no understanding of what “real life” is like.
This sort of people can be very
frustrating to deal with, that’s undeniable.
Having a notorious lack of patience, I am routinely tempted to whack
their heads into the nearest hard object just to see if I can knock some sense
into them. However, being clueless does not
mean that the person is unwilling or incapable of learning about the
subject. In fact, they may want to know
more about it – maybe, just maybe, that is why they have entered the
conversation in the first place. Telling
them to shut up and go away is unlikely to make them more informed. And maybe, just maybe, the result of our
education will be that they will be on our side. Can we afford to waste allies?
10.
“You
are guilty of everything that anyone “like you” ever did.”
Under this Ass-Umption, anyone born
within a certain group, with certain privileges, is guilty of the past, present
and future sins of the entire group.
For instance, you happen to be
born a man. You have had absolutely no
say in this. You have also have
absolutely no say in what other men have done in the past, are doing in the
present, and will do in the future. The
only actions you can control are your own.
None of those facts matters in the least to this breed of Ass-Hat - you
are male, hence you are guilty, by birth, of every bad thing every bad man ever
did.
The extreme form of Ass-Umption
causes the sufferer to spout broad-sweeping, factually incorrect, and deeply offensive
statements, such as “all men are rapists”.
I do not know if this is a reflection of a severe and possibly incurable
case of rectocranial inversion, or whether it is a true reflection of these
people’s situation. If the latter, hell,
they are welcome to stay at my place as long as they need to; wherever it is
that they live, that place really sucks.[4]
-
- -
“We need to talk about
privilege”. Yes, we do. Privilege
causes people to be marginalised, excluded, dismissed and oppressed, because
people use the word as a weapon. Claim
that someone has a “privilege” that affects a certain issue, and you are
apparently given the power to take away their right to state an opinion on that
issue, or even to have an opinion on
that issue. You give yourself the right
to shut them up and shut them out. If
they do not comply, you give yourself the right to accuse and vilify them.
The bottom line is that
discounting someone’s argument purely “because it is them saying it”, which is
the operative system here, is neither big nor clever. It does not show discernment. It is frankly irrational, as well as rather
uncivil. You are purely suffering from a
bad case of ad hominem fallacy, and
it’s showing.[5] I’m sorry to say it, but you are being a
Righteous Ass-Hat.
Now, if you are involved in a
private or restricted conversation and someone tries to butt in, by all means
let them know that they are not welcome.
Whether at a coffee house or on a specific internet forum, you have the
right to restrict who you want to talk to.
In a public setting, however, people have a right to state their
opinion. If you give yourself the right
to shut someone up “because they have privilege”, what you are doing is giving
yourself a privilege – that of controlling participation in a public dialogue
on the basis of arbitrary standards and often a heap of assumptions. The definition of privilege is “a special
right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person
or group.”[6] Its origin is from the Latin “privilegium”,
essentially meaning “private law”. It is
beyond the ironic that a concept originally designed to highlight existing
discriminations for the purpose of helping to fight them should be used to
create a whole new one.
[1]
And were called “breeders”, which, in the context of a campaign against
discrimination on the basis of sexual preferences, is just peachy.
[4] As
an aside, if you are prone to making such accusations and find yourself less
than popular with the group you are accusing, you might need to do some
thinking. You may want to ponder the possibility that their behaviour
towards you is a function of the way you are treating them, rather than proof
that they are mean, nasty people.
3 comments:
This is a great post.
For me, your best blog to date. Sublime.
And people wonder why I pray for an asteroid strike...
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