privilege as a meme

yeah absolutely. We could argue about better or worse ways to handle these problems (and Derrida is a good example, as is Luhmann imo) but it remains to be seen how its gonna filter into general use. For now Derrida in most people's minds seems to mean relativism full stop.

Where Derrida is invested in troubling hierarchies and showing how dichotomies participate in one another, "privilege as a meme" seems to reaffirm these modes of domination. Derrida would likely push back on the notion of 'checking your privilege' since privilege participates in the absence of privilege and vice-versa. Maybe you could ask whether your discourse is coming from a place of privilege or a place without privilege acc to Derrida, but even that seems too rigid.

i agree mordy -- talking about "privilege" as a thing one manifestly "has" is not derridean. derrida sees privilege at work on the level of discourse, with certain concepts, or values, privileged over others in a subtle, but very real way that has the effect of silencing certain kinds of voices, or rendering them unrecognizable within the terms of a given discourse. part of my issue of how "privilege" is used in Internet discussions is that it is too simplistic. that is, i agree that people think a certain way because they have certain experiences and should be aware of the limits of their own vantage, but i think it is quite another thing to, in the blunt and totalizing way I see too often, attribute one's perspective to their identity "as a man" or "as a transgendered person" or whatever. that, in fact, is a kind of thinking that works to reify these forms of identity,and it also sort of depressingly closes off the possibility for people to think creatively about themselves, their world, etc. i don't know, i'd have to think more about this.

One thing I always loved about Queer Studies in grad school was that a large part of the discipline looked to 'queer' normative experiences and demonstrate how things that seem most normative actually resisted themselves, or possessed elements that troubled their own assertions of cis-hood/straightness/etc. This is something I haven't really seen outside the academy - how language undermines its own presentation of self.

I don't know if I follow this line of critique. It seems to me that privilege is a fairly humble concept. Checking your privilege just means reminding yourself that society values and ratifies some perspectives over others. To be aware of that is to gain a small increase in objectivity. You can become self-satisfied with that awareness, or use it as moral license to cease further self-examination, or treat it as a marker of distinction, but these are all basic human failings, and you can't fault a concept for how it's misused.

otm

I think the argument point is over whether objectivity exists

Yes, but I think it's also over whether the act of assessing or identifying privilege is a move towards objectivity, and as such, what are the pitfalls of assuming greater objectivity

I haven't read through this whole thread, but one thing that has become evident is that discussing privilege requires a certain amount of it. The only sort of priv checking I ever need to remind people to do is related to educational backgrounds. I remember very clearly talking with a close friend who was poking fun at her sister in law because the SiL said she had to turn in a rough draft of a paper the next day. My friend (who is otherwise VERY aware of all of this priv checking) was like LOL who turns in rough drafts?! Who even WRITES rough drafts? And I had to be like "well, my students do."

Just an observation, carry on.

Pat and Mordy's above posts sort of remind me of the word "construction" and how it gets or used to get misused to mean something like "thing that doesn't actually exist and is just made up to oppress us."

sorry I meant to write "construct"

I think objectivity exists contrastively--one perspective can be more objective than another by virtue of being more disinterested. I don't think that total objectivity is possible. But I don't think that privilege analysis is about attaining total objectivity.

attaining some degree of objectivity requires a lot of self-knowledge, which involves brutal, soul-searing honesty and hard work, so I don't think it's out of line to just expect a lack of it in any particular debate. even the most disinterested party still has their own values, experience, and perspective to bring bias to the table.

I see talking about privilege as more of an attempt to strip away the illusion of something static, normative, and disinterested and replace it with something more dynamic and relational. By understanding that your point-of-view isn't objective, you actually move towards greater objectivity.

yeah, i definitely agree with that, it's a way of making people recognize that they are a person in society, not a disembodied consciousness. my fear is that the way it is used -- either to qualify one's own position, or to discredit someone else's -- doesn't always do much to actually counter peoples' actual perspectives, but just affects a "knowing" recognition of the perceived origin of this perspective, a "you would think that..." kind of thing. so in that way it can have the effect of erasing complexities because, for instance, it is not always the case that an institutionally privileged person will be the one, in any given debate, putting forth the privileged perspective. who people are, and what they think, are different things, and though they inform one another they do so in complex ways that are not always immediately perceptible.

or maybe a better way to put this is that i don't think it's useful for "calling out privilege" to be seen as an end in itself, but rather, as the basis for a more searching, critical discussion about how harmful race/gender/class paradigms can be overturned. jezebel sometimes just sees calling out privilege as, in itself, a worthy goal, such as when they defended this one tumblr that posted pictures of nerdy guys' okcupid profiles in order to ridicule them for the sexist logic that underlie their self-designation as "nice guys." this kind of thing doesn't strike me as advancing the cause of feminism. http://jezebel.com/5972788/no-one-is-entitled-to-sex-why-we-should-mock-the-nice-guys-of-okcupid

so to recap, calling out peoples' privilege can be a great tool but it is not itself a substitute for actual analyses of intersectionality. not that anyone here is claiming that, but i felt that it should be said anyway.

ftr nothing hugo schwyzer says ever matters

what gave you the impression that that tumblr's goal was to advance the cause of feminism

or another question, why is feminism and other "social justice" movements always seen as a single cause rather than an ideology with multiple purposes

i don't think that is the goal of the tumblr but the jezebel article strongly implied that mocking those people would help spur a conversation about privilege and entitlement. i just used that as an example of how the rhetoric of privilege can be abused to justify abject bullying. but to your second point, your right, there are many feminisms as there are many feminists and all other social justice movements are the same.

xp to myself, i should really jsut write bigger posts huh

why is it not feminist for women to enjoy those sorts of takedown exercises regardless of their global impact on women's issues, why is the individual always shunted away in favor of the movement, etc

everything being relegated to a massive "movement" just makes it that much easier for capitalist forces to swoop in and control, monetize it

i don't think that is the goal of the tumblr but the jezebel article strongly implied that mocking those people would help spur a conversation about privilege and entitlement. i just used that as an example of how the rhetoric of privilege can be abused to justify abject bullying. but to your second point, your right, there are many feminisms as there are many feminists and all other social justice movements are the same.

― severely depressed robots are "twee" (Pat Finn), Thursday, April 11, 2013 5:28 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well if there's one thing that's right about that idea, which isn't really that impt because schwyzer has nothing to do with the tumblr and nothing he says matters, the discussion about the very topic of "nice guys" and about okcupid harassment is near the forefront of internet feminist discussion and the tumblr serves as a store of data for that argument

whether that's the point of the tumblr or not has no bearing on the myriad other ways in which it provides value to the people who value it

i think that's true, and i think the discussion of "nice guys" is valuable in bringing to light the sexist logic lurking behind a certain cliche, but i also think the tumblr is bad because its "humor" derives from ridiculing people who, for the most part, would be ridiculed by patriarchal culture anyway. so the humor of the thing is just rooted in sadistic bullying -- calling people out for being not privileged, but grotesque -- and i think that is, in itself, immoral in a really basic sense.

i dunno imo the popular idea that ugly nerds with heaps of white/male/straight/cis/etc privilege have it just as bad or worse than people without that privilege is reason enough for blogs like that to exist

there's the common refrain that "patriarchy hurts men too" but that doesn't mean that the men affected most by it won't also hesitate to use it as a weapon just as much as the alpha betas

Alpha Betas are ok if you like sweat socks. We prefer your high IQs to their great big jocks.

hm, i don't know. the conflation of nerdiness with sexism is itself a cliche. i don't know that every straight white cis male nerd would use his privilege as a weapon when backed into a corner, the guys featured on that tumblr certainly would, but i think locating sexism in the figure of the nerd, as opposed to the alphawhatever, is equally mystificatory. and also, saying that you shouldn't be openly cruel and hostile to someone is not the same as saying that they have it "just as bad or worse than [institutionally oppressed people.]" it just means that cruelty is, in itself, bad.

yes, it's cool humiliating random people because 'some idea exists' and 'some men afflicted with awkwardness might conceivably use the patriarchy too' so fuck 'em all by default, especially these fedora dorks who we need an excuse for making fun of for being awkward and ugly.

xp

Ftr "locating" sexism is not a zero sum game--just because I identify a nexus of it in one place does not mean I'm going to run out of little colorful "sexism: u are here" info flags to use when I find it somewhere else.

yeah, being mean to weak people is a patriarchal move, so deploying patriarchy -- even against someone who might subscribe to its values -- seems problematic/a less-than-ideal feminist tactic. like, that tumblr isn't ridiculing those guys *only* from a feminist standpoint, but also from the standpoint of "they are weird and gross" and i just think its shitty.

i never said "every" -- i don't know if ppl who identify as nerds are more likely to act sexist but i certainly don't think they're less likely than any other social dude group. but the public perception of nerds = harmless innocents is still pretty huge especially within their own ranks ime. there is certainly a more specific brand of horribleness that exists in reddity places/xbox headsets and w/e and i think the discourse abt that is still pretty new

but this is sort of veering off topic, sry

xp

ok "being mean = always patriarchal" is where i peace out

I feel like one of the worst things the internet has done is to accelerate the breakdown of many people's ability to distinguish "some" from "all"

maybe that's just adulthood, though

i didn't say that you said "every" but i think, i don't know, the consolidation of the nerd stereotype with the misogynist stereotype seems to be a real thing that is happening, and it seems to be a part of the logic of that blog, i.e. "look at these kinds of people!" i don't think people have thought nerds are essentially harmless since after columbine.

Your objection to that tumblr doesn't seem different to me than some of the objection to Adria Richards' taking and posting that guy's photo, which is basically: oh noes some people who we depended on not having much power changed the playing field and now we can't be quite as sure of "winning" when we attack them.

The boys and men whose okc profiles were part of the "Nice Guys" phenom were most similar to each other in that they placed themselves there with their sexism and their willingness to show it off and claim it and call it a virtue. No one did that TO them. If some of them shared a quality of not being very highly placed in a patriarchal system, it didn't stop them from turning it on people even lower than them AND WANTING TO BE PRAISED AND REWARDED IN THE SYSTEM FOR IT.

Rewarded with access to women's bodies and sexuality, I feel that should be said right out because it's so offensive that I don't want anyone to lose sight of it.

I'm not even sure that higher/lower "in the system" is all that useful here. If a male construction worker catcalls a female corporate attorney, on one hand, the female corporate attorney is probably in the grand scheme "higher in the system" than the blue collar guy, but in that moment there's male privilege at work. In another kind of interaction between the exact same people, there could be her class privilege at work.

deploying patriarchy -- even against someone who might subscribe to its values -- seems problematic/a less-than-ideal feminist tactic. like, that tumblr isn't ridiculing those guys *only* from a feminist standpoint, but also from the standpoint of "they are weird and gross" and i just think its shitty.

yeah, that's really the side of all of this that's bothering me a bit lately, not the ideas, but how easily they often get invoked on the Internet as yet another cover for people to be really cruel, politics be damned. which I think is defended too often, seemingly out of a fear of appearing to be on the 'wrong side' or something

this thread has gotten so weird!

thanks chris. and yeah, i also agree with hurting 2: people who are underprivileged can still invoke privileges, including and especially male privilege, and they are NEVER justified in doing that. it's just that, i don't know, i want to be a person who is anti-sexism and also be a person who is anti-bullying.

what is the context for talking about "nice guys"?

Okay this is now waaaay off topic but this is why we can't have nice things: because any talk about types of privilege is clogged with people in quite privileged categories insisting that their category isn't really as privileged as everyone else seems to think, which is just a way of dismantling the conversation and invalidating the tools.

I agree w/ in orbit. They posted these things on a public website where anyone could see them. No one's privacy is being infringed upon and no one is entitled to be protected from being embarrassed by their own behavior. If anything, public mockery + censure is how we enforce cultural norms and teach people what is appropriate. Also, no one is obligated to be nice.

hl: I think they mean the trope of the forlorn "nice guy" who is resentful of women for not sleeping with him (subtext being "I don't get it, I though just by virtue of being male and not openly being a violent, hateful prick I was entitled to sex. Yet I am not easily getting laid, therefore women are (hypocrites/whores/whatever epithet)" Ironically, this of course makes them not very nice at all, just somewhat passive. There have been a lot of pretty good explanations of this phenomenon, can't find one right now.

and the corollary idea that that guy is not really "privileged" because look at what a loser he is

xp ok, i have not been saying that i am not privileged or anything like that and i am definitely not defending those people featured in the tumblr. it's possible, though, that i am (due to privilege) underestimating the necessity of public mockery and censure as a tactic because i find it distasteful.

yeah, I'm aware of the trope. thanks for the context. this thread has gotten dizzying.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/auteurs_production/images/film/revenge-of-the-nerds/w448/revenge-of-the-nerds.jpg

like, i don't want to understate how ugly and hateful their attitudes are. it's just that i wish the force of the tumblr was somehow able to more geared toward the ugly theses nerds' ideas are and not, you know, the nerds themselves.

Again, WHY are you identifying them all as nerds? Iirc there were many different types of men and boys, SOME OF THEM OBJECTIVELY QUITE GOOD LOOKING. I think the nerd similarity is your own lens here.

maybe, from what i could gather (looking briefly at the tumblr, but also mostly at the images included in the banner image of the jezebel article) the "nice guys" featured were sort of inept and lame. i mean, you would have to be to include bitter misogynist remarks in a dating profile.

this thread has gotten so weird!