The Deciders

[AFK]

RWHN, it if helps, think of it this way:

Assuming an otherwise broadly equal status, SWM are more powerful than compared to other social/ethic/gender groups, probabalistically speaking.

I don't think anyone would deny a black lesbian CEO is more powerful than a white, straight male making minimum wage.  However, assuming broadly equitable socio-economic status, a straight white man is likely to have advantages that others do not.  To continue the working class theme, a working class woman is more likely to suffer from low wages, violence, unequal treatment from police etc than working class men are.  Relationships or power struggles between a white straight man of working class status and others of working class status will likely favour him.

Obviously, this highlights the importance of class and economic power within social relations, something I believe Pixie in particular has brought up, when she linked feminism with socialism.

I understand that, I just don't find it useful or helpful to, intentionally or unintentionally, use that as a cudgel against those SWMs who don't have the lives of the privileged SWMs.  The way things have been phrased in the OP and in subsequent comments, it feels like it is being used as a cudgel. 


That kind of generalization is all well and good when talking about broad social issues or policy, but when you start addressing real people, you need to get out a finer brush or you end ip insulting and alienating many who could be allies.

[P3nT4gR4m]

If you've never tried to get a job with a record then don't tell me how I should feel about workplace discrimination.

If you weren't raised out the ass-end of a "fighting bar" then don't tell me how I need to be more "kind".

If you haven't spent half your life feeling like you needed to hide your intelligence, don't tell me I shouldn't be such a fucking know-it-all.

I am, for all intents and purposes a SWM, but I wholly relate to the OP on the above point.

raised out the ass-end of a "fighting bar" - check!

spent half your life feeling like you needed to hide your intelligence - check!

tried to get a job with a record - negative

Damn, I'm only 2/3rds as oppressed as you. Guess I'm the privileged one then!

[Placid Dingo]

If you weren't raised out the ass-end of a "fighting bar" then don't tell me how I need to be more "kind".

Um. If I don't share your exact background, I have no right to comment on your current behavior? Is that what we're getting at here? Because that doesn't sound right.

Of course, I agree I have no right to tell you how to feel about your experiences.

[Roly Poly Oly-Garch]

If you've never tried to get a job with a record then don't tell me how I should feel about workplace discrimination.

If you weren't raised out the ass-end of a "fighting bar" then don't tell me how I need to be more "kind".

If you haven't spent half your life feeling like you needed to hide your intelligence, don't tell me I shouldn't be such a fucking know-it-all.

I am, for all intents and purposes a SWM, but I wholly relate to the OP on the above point.

raised out the ass-end of a "fighting bar" - check!

spent half your life feeling like you needed to hide your intelligence - check!

tried to get a job with a record - negative

Damn, I'm only 2/3rds as oppressed as you. Guess I'm the privileged one then!

Congratulations on not getting caught 

I've never counted myself as oppressed, but I do count my ass as annoyed when some fucktard starts spouting off about how "I'm doing it wrong" when they don't have the first fucking clue what I'm doing or why. I think that's kind of a universal sentiment.

EDIT: On that last third, I can testify that getting rejected for employment because of some completely fucking unrelated rap I caught a lifetime ago--especially when desperate for income, felt roughly like getting sucker-punched in the gut but worse because the pinche ass-hat that threw the blow wasn't around to punch back. I can only imagine how fucking rotten that would feel if it happened in 100 different ways all the time on the basis of my dangly bits, skin color, or who I liked to tickle.

What I wanted to do when it happened is join with others in the same boat and fight like a motherfucker--not as a human, not as a person who doesn't see color, gender, socio-economic class, or irrelevancies from a background check, but as AN EX-OFFENDER. Fuck you if you want to tell me that I should approach that situation as just an egalitarian everybody because I wasn't really given the fucking choice to do that.

Gay people aren't given the choice to see sexual orientation as irrelevant. Women aren't given the choice to see gender as irrelevant. "Colored folk" aren't given the choice to see race as irrelevant. It's just the truth. Telling them that they should see it that way, or should feel that way, is just, frankly, fucking ignorant--and yes, chiefly perpetrated from the SWM position of "all everything/everybody is exactly as I am", which is exactly the position that is fed back to them on the daily.

[Roly Poly Oly-Garch]

If you weren't raised out the ass-end of a "fighting bar" then don't tell me how I need to be more "kind".

Um. If I don't share your exact background, I have no right to comment on your current behavior? Is that what we're getting at here? Because that doesn't sound right.

Of course, I agree I have no right to tell you how to feel about your experiences.

You can comment on my behavior, but don't assume that you get my behavior based solely upon examining the reasons why you would be doing something that I am doing if you were the one doing it--if that makes any damned sense. Walk a mile and all that.

But the thing is we can't really walk a mile, can we? I will never be a female. I will never be gay. I will never be a lesbian midget eskimo albino. I do not have the ability to ever walk a mile in those shoes. Nor will the lesbian midget eskimo albino ever be able to walk a mile in mine.

That doesn't mean the LMEA has no right to tell me to cut that shit out if she sees me scrapping with some other dipshit on a Saturday night, but it does mean that she's a fucking moron if she assumes that my fisticuffs are an expression of my rage over not being able see over the counter at the whale-blubber bar rather than an expression of my wanting to have a good time (or more realistically some bullshit show of male bravado and machismo-GRRRRR).

--A better example, schoolyard scrap and getting pulled into the counselor's office afterwards to find ways to use our words to resolve our conflicts. THERE WAS NO CONFLICT, YOU WHINY LIBERAL DOUCHEBAG...there were only two kids who like to fucking throw-down from time to time and happened to find an excuse. We would have had at it and been done with it, instead we're made to feel embarrassed and ashamed for simply being who the fuck we are instead of who *THEY* think we should be. Now there's a conflict!

Tell me that if I get in a fight and break shit then you're going to rain down on me with a sack of bricks--that's respectable. Tell me that I shouldn't be who I am because who you are is the right way to be, then you can go fuck yourself.

[LMNO]

This sounds like a probability matrix.  Take two people: one SWM, one BML (Black Midget Lesbian).

Given the same economic environment (and any other equalizing factors you may want to add to get my meaning), what is the probability that the SWM will experience more privilege than the BML?

I would say that the SWM has a consistently higher probability of privilege than the BML from a cultural perspective.

Now, if you change the economic environment for the BML, and make her the CEO of Microsoft, she now has more power, with which she can weild to give her more opportunities for social impact.  But that's an economic angle, not a cultural one.

[Roly Poly Oly-Garch]

I bristled at the term "Deciders" myself, at first...but I think that I read it now as this...

SWM are the "Deciders" of what the norm is, what the mainstream is. If I am in that category it's mighty easy to think that I can apply some universal standard of "doing it right" because to my mind everybody is everybody because I have, much more likely than not, come to understand "everybody" in terms of myself. That's just the way it comes down. Regardless of whether I'm sitting in a board room or a jail cell, as a SWM I'm considerably more likely than a non-SWM to consider my own thoughts and feelings to be "normal", "standard" or even "healthy".

Am I hearing that right, Nigel?

[AFK]

This sounds like a probability matrix.  Take two people: one SWM, one BML (Black Midget Lesbian).

Given the same economic environment (and any other equalizing factors you may want to add to get my meaning), what is the probability that the SWM will experience more privilege than the BML?

I would say that the SWM has a consistently higher probability of privilege than the BML from a cultural perspective.

Now, if you change the economic environment for the BML, and make her the CEO of Microsoft, she now has more power, with which she can weild to give her more opportunities for social impact.  But that's an economic angle, not a cultural one.

Right, so you have one quadrant of SMWs as deciders, those who are SWM AND have economic and social power.  But those at the ass-end of things, who have neither of those, are most certainly NOT deciders, despite being SWM.


That's why I say again the generalization is too broad and actually becomes alienating for the SWMs in that quadrant.

[LMNO]

Ok, I'm thinking you might be getting stuck on the word "Decider".

[AFK]

No LMNO, it's been more than just that word in this thread, example:

On a cultural level (which is what Nigel's talking about when she says "Deciders") all white straight men are the ones who decide how things will go.

I object to that ALL mentality because it most certainly is NOT all.

[LMNO]

Ah.  I think I automatically changed that in my head to, "On a cultural level (which is what Nigel's talking about when she says "Deciders") the ones who decide how things will go are all white straight men."


But yeah, I see your point.

[Verbal Mike]

RWHN: How do you feel about the wording "the set of white straight men is the one that decides how things will go (as compared to any other set it does not intersect with)"?

(I hope it doesn't take too much logic geekery to get this, I just find basic set theory really useful for understanding things like this.)

EDIT: Actually I hope it does take too much logic geekery, since a bunch of y'all have been using references to some old American TV show I've never watched with total disregard to those who didn't grow up on that stuff. 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I bristled at the term "Deciders" myself, at first...but I think that I read it now as this...

SWM are the "Deciders" of what the norm is, what the mainstream is. If I am in that category it's mighty easy to think that I can apply some universal standard of "doing it right" because to my mind everybody is everybody because I have, much more likely than not, come to understand "everybody" in terms of myself. That's just the way it comes down. Regardless of whether I'm sitting in a board room or a jail cell, as a SWM I'm considerably more likely than a non-SWM to consider my own thoughts and feelings to be "normal", "standard" or even "healthy".

Am I hearing that right, Nigel?

Yes, that is a huge part of it; everyone tends to do that to some degree, and it's called false consensus. However, those who are considered normal by society have their false consensus culturally reinforced, to the point where it can be incredibly difficult for them to believe, let alone perceive, that other people have experiences that they are unaware of. In addition, from early childhood there is enormous social pressure on men, and on white men in particular, to take charge, be decisive, be a go-getter, make things happen. Our culture considers these highly desirable traits in men. Men are socially trained to communicate in order to make things happen, and far less to communicate to convey emotion or to enhance social bonding. You could see that illustrated here in another thread, in several reactions to the idea that women often communicate just to share their feelings. The adverse reaction was fascinating... to communicate solely for the purpose of sharing emotional reactions was called stupid, needy, and draining, among other things.

When you have a demographic who has been culturally reinforced to value taking charge, fixing things, and make things happen, it can be very difficult for its members to stop doing those things at times when it's not appropriate. It goes against a lifetime of conditioning. Many times, they can't even see the ways in which it disempowers/angers the people they are trying to "fix things" for.

[Verbal Mike]

Whoa, you just blew my mind. Because the combination of culturally-reinforced false consensus (nice term!) in a group socialized to be assertive and active explains so. damn. much. shit.

[AFK]

RWHN: How do you feel about the wording "the set of white straight men is the one that decides how things will go (as compared to any other set it does not intersect with)"?

(I hope it doesn't take too much logic geekery to get this, I just find basic set theory really useful for understanding things like this.)

EDIT: Actually I hope it does take too much logic geekery, since a bunch of y'all have been using references to some old American TV show I've never watched with total disregard to those who didn't grow up on that stuff. 

It's better in that it acknowledges that there are SWMs who have no power, but it doesn't take into consideration that there are nonSWMs with considerable power,  But I suppose it works in a more general, long-range, broad-view conversation.


But it still holds potential landmines depending on who is part of the conversation.
At the end of the day, it shouldn't alienate anyone by conveying a scenario that is contrary to their real world, day-to-day experience.  Otherwise, they will shut you off and not listen to anything you have to say, at which point, you are pretty much done as being considered a trusted communicator.