{"id":3567,"date":"2011-08-08T16:08:25","date_gmt":"2011-08-08T20:08:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=3567"},"modified":"2014-03-13T17:24:58","modified_gmt":"2014-03-13T21:24:58","slug":"what-privilege-means-to-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=3567","title":{"rendered":"What &#8216;privilege&#8217; means to me"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Recently there&#8217;s been some back and forth on feminist blogs about the term &#8220;privilege&#8221;, beginning with <a href=\"http:\/\/noseriouslywhatabouttehmenz.wordpress.com\/2011\/07\/05\/shut-up-rich-boy-the-problem-with-privilege\/\">\u201cShut Up, Rich Boy\u201d: The Problem With \u201cPrivilege.\u201d<\/a> and continuing with several responses defending the use of the term.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s what the feminist term of art &#8220;privilege&#8221; means to me.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>1. I, as a straight white male, am being what feminists called &#8220;othered&#8221; &#8211; that is, consigned to a category of the threateningly alien that justifies misbehavior ranging from verbal assault all the way up to actual violence and organized political coercion.<\/p>\n<p>2.  The speaker is uninterested in (or outright incapable of) seeing beyond race\/gender\/ascriptive-identity labels to the individual reality of individuals in the &#8220;privileged&#8221; category.<\/p>\n<p>3. The speaker is stuck in an epistemically-closed belief system, and will interpret logical or fact-based criticism of it as a power-seeking maneuver. Reasoned argument with this person is thus essentially impossible. <\/p>\n<p>4. The speaker has failed to apply power-relations analysis to her (or his) own behavior, and so does not realize that use of the term &#8220;privilege&#8221; passes all that theory&#8217;s tests for a power-seeking maneuver intended to suppress thought under the pretense of provoking it.<\/p>\n<p>5.  If the speaker has not already attempted to <a href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=2122\">kafkatrap<\/a> me, such an attempt is near certain within the next few minutes.<\/p>\n<p>That is all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently there&#8217;s been some back and forth on feminist blogs about the term &#8220;privilege&#8221;, beginning with \u201cShut Up, Rich Boy\u201d: The Problem With \u201cPrivilege.\u201d and continuing with several responses defending the use of the term. Here&#8217;s what the feminist term of art &#8220;privilege&#8221; means to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3567"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3580,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3567\/revisions\/3580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}