privilege as a meme

those are all things, they didn't need to be defined and given names though. all can be filed under 'cuntery'

Microrape

yeah the names are downright unhelpful as they, uh, macroinvalidate the legitimate points being made owing to their comical nature

microrape sounds like a fake company name from office space

 ‘White Trash’ Solidarity: Reject the ‘White,’ Embrace the Trash.

i wanted to go to that

it sounds great

It sounds like it would be hilarious for about five minutes, then crushingly depressing.

every time i see this thread's title i think of
https://encyclopediadramatica.se/It_was_my_privilege

Sue et al are really, in my view, irresponsibly trivializing that whole layer of almost-imperceptible oppression I call "the mini-micro":

Mini-microassault: Proceeding under the micro-assumption that categories like micro-race and micro-gender exist. It's micro-liberals we most need to persecute about this, because they should know better.
Mini-microinsult: Self-censoring communications that would, if spoken aloud, convey micro-rudeness and micro-insensitivity and demean a micro-person’s micro-racial heritage or identity.
Mini-microinvalidation: Characterized by skirting around communications that might be seen (even incorrectly) to exclude, negate, or nullify the psychological thoughts, feelings, or experiential reality of a pre-person (for definition, see Katz et al's The Mini-Micro-Slaughter of Personhood).
Mini-microrape: That flicker of the eyes. You know the one.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e6/Gramsci.png/220px-Gramsci.png

Is the guardian worse than it used to be

did the guardian used to be better than it currently is?

When viewed from the pov of aged privilege i guess

said "check your privilege" to someone in the office the other day -- first time I have ever actually used it outloud. It was sort of half-ironic, but it was because the person I was talking to set something up as "gay people" vs "regular people" -- I don't really remember the exact context but it was along those lines.

Is the guardian worse than it used to be

It should just become a tumblr, as that's what it reminds me of.

twitter lost its shit for a minute when laurie penny's piece on priv seemed to locate its origins in the internet, rather than in the decades-old analysis of women of color feminism.

Twitter in "can't read for shit" shocker.

i mean

she decidedly elided the history of the notion

while managing to imply that it came from ~the internet~

I thought Twitter was losing a shit because of supposed plagiarism?

"Losing a shit". I like that.

granted, as she said, she only had 600 words--but it seems a little irresponsible to imply it came from one place while completely leaving out its actual origins

I thought Twitter was losing a shit because of supposed plagiarism?

― Matt DC, Wednesday, June 5, 2013 4:06 PM (20 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

on the laurie penny thing? i hadn't heard about this.

I was going to post this image but it's maybe pushing nsfw in it's PG-13ness but

here

"pushing"

Hovering at the border

No, I just meant that there's probably a lot of pushing in that video. I'm sure my human resources department, or ANYone's human resources department for that matter, would approve.

That cover would be better if the movie was called "Clothes"

And if he was wearing any

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lf3BNRF9ICc

Privilege denying nude

but it seems a little irresponsible to imply it came from one place while completely leaving out its actual origins

― steening in your HOOSless carriage (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Wednesday, June 5, 2013 4:06 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is why nothing can ever get done, omg, in-fighting within in-fighting. she was defending the concept of privilege to a bunch of people who are basically just being pig-headed about not getting it, and she's the one twitter loses its shit at?

otm, the rxn was over the line

and 'i only had 600 words' was a p reasonable defense

There is probably an interesting article to be written about the way privilege changed from something that was discussed in the 60s to something that was checked on the internet 50 years later, and the sense in which Louise Mensch would probably see the concepts as coming from the internet, but yeah as you say 600 words.

so many of these twitter activists are such dicks about their activism. whenever a privilege-denier whines that "check your privilege" is being used as a personal attack on them, whether it's because they're naive or pig-headed or dumb, it still feels like i have to acknowledge that yes, that does happen, and those people are completely misusing the concept because they are awful people

lol privilege-denier

oh fuck off mordy

I agree with Lex - intersectionality cuts all sorts of ways and it's unwise for a 'serious' activist to trumpet how shallow they are by relying on either skin-deep judgements or some other form of whataboutery that they'd decry from a right-wing, privilege-denying asshole.

lex otm. It's a shame that privilege-checking, a valid, important, easy to grasp concept, has been ruined in many people's minds by a small hardcore of hyper-aggressive Twitter activists who spend all their time "calling out" prominent left-leaning writers for minor blunders or omissions.

I pretty much avoid these extended firestorms like the plague because life is too short but just to make sure we're all on the same page; "pretending people of color don't exist" is not considered to be a minor blunder or omission, right?

If you're alluding to Girlsgate, I don't want to rehash it here but nobody was "pretending people of color don't exist".

I don't actually know what Girlsgate is.

Oh wait, do you mean the HBO show "Girls"? lol no, I know the difference between "ignoring" and "omitting".

also feel quite strongly because those people hijack the argument so that it's about whether some people are aggressive on the internet when it should be about privilege itself - not whether it exists but how it affects us, the multiplicity of its manifestations, how to combat it and call it out etc

xp Oh, OK, what do you mean then?

girlsgate could be a cool kinda chastity belt.

These vicious Twitterstorms are like the handful of window-smashers at an otherwise peaceful demo - the aggro sucks up all the oxygen and the cause that we should be discussing gets shoved to the side. People who don't follow this stuff closely come across a concept like "check your privilege" via the worst possible advocates for it and think, oh, it's just something that angry trolls bang on about.

I have no specific examples because, as I said, I try to avoid these fights. When they do pop up on my radar, the most common iteration I notice is people of color (usually women) saying "wtf we have voices too" which I think is an entirely reasonable reaction and I was wondering how large this blanket condemnation of internecine fighting is supposed to be.

xp They should still be able to think actual thoughts, though, and when they do stumble across a substantial explanation for privilege and how it works, the responsibility still rests on them to think, Oh hey! Those people got it all wrong! instead of LALALALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU, YOU'RE THE PROBLEM whenever it comes up.