How most men, even good caring men, have no clue what women go through

[Juana]

I think he was talking about how in our current society, none of us (as in the people having this conversation) can really be considered "actors".

RWHN, in spite of the fact that he's saying it for all the wrong reasons, has a very good point about class being BY FAR the biggest "privilege chip", to the point that it may now be worth more than all of the others combined.

And I hope you see the irony in saying that you're not interested in playing the oppression olympics right before you say that you're talking about how it sucks less to be the actor in an oppressive system than to be the acted-upon in the context of a conversation in which some people are trying to raise the point that 99% of men are also acted upon by an oppressive system.

"Oppression Olympics" is "I have it worse than you do!" on an individual level. Which is not very productive, whereas discussing group experiences is. That's what I was talking about when I used the term and what I thought he was talking about, too.

I would disagree and say race, then class. But gender still plays a role on a society-wide level for all the reasons I outlined like three posts ago, and within race and class.

Whether or not a man is an oppressive actor depends on how he behaves. Misogynistic behavior is not limited to any 1% of men.

[Juana]

i made it to page 7 and ECH's comment and the subsequent shit storm i'm imagining probably happened after it.  good thread and I'll keep going and sorry if this is now old hat in the discussion.

I've been harassed by both men and women, on multiple occasions, in multiple countries.  Here in the states.

i was followed into a bathroom at a "gay" bar by a guy, who took the urinal next to me, in an empty bathroom of 6 urinals, told me i looked good or was well dressed.  i gave him a "wtf" look and said "uh.. thanks? " (i forget the details because of what happened next) and asked me what i was packing down there and leaned over to take a look at my dick.  i elbowed him in the face and probably would have done more if someone else hadn't walked in. 

i told this story to a long time friend of mine who is gay and he told me "you were in a gay bar, what did you expect? "

the implication being that going to a gay bar means you're obviously gay, and having someone check out your shit should be ok?   does not follow for "hetero" bars, why gay bars?

if anyone says it's because "if you're THERE then you must want to hook up" i have a long, laughing-at-you laugh that will follow.

when I was living in Mexico, i was walking down a side street to the local vet to get medicine for my dog.  the street passed by a local college and there  was a group of girls on the corner, talking, hanging, whatever.  as we passed them on the other side of the street the started "cat calling" me (i don't know what else to call it) yelling "guero guero ven aqui guero.  te quiero.  chingame. "  etc.  not only was it embarrassing, but i was going to get medicine for my dying dog and had no interest in talking to anyone.  they were still there when i made my way home, and it was the same scene.  in my experience, Latin women DO tend to chase men they want in a similar way that men in our culture chase women they want.  expansion on that could be its own thread.

in Belize, i was propositioned by a woman who claimed to be very rich, and told me if i came home with her that night, and came to see her a few times a year, that she'd take care of me the rest of my life.  she had just divorced her third husband, taken him for everything he owned, was rich, and had a grand daughter around my age she would introduce me to.  she was 70 if she was a day and it was clear she was not used to being told no by men at any point in her life. 

I'm going to finish the thread now, but those stories seemed relevant to tell, considering the theme up until this page that this is only an issue for women.  my apologies if that's been hashed out amongst the board by now.

Ah, so you have a taste of what it's like to be a women or female. Welcome to the every day life of a significant portion of us.

[Juana]

*woman. wtf

I think what I'm getting at is that this discussion may be better served by finding a way to explain some of these concepts that doesn't require divisive language. Like it or not, if you're going to illustrate a difference that separates all of humanity roughly 50-50 AND you want to find an effective way of showing the 50% that you're not part of that this concept is good for their self-interests also, you're going to have to find a way to communicate with that 50% of humanity without coming off as divisive or inherently dominant within the context of any discussion or implementation of this concept. And if many of the guys HERE are having a problem with how this is being presented currently, you can imagine how it will play with the average joe.

But that's certainly not an insurmountable problem. And there's no reason that the things that people are getting hung up on have to be broached immediately and overtly in the social dialogue. If history has taught us anything, it's taught us that sometimes you have to use a little trickery to convince people to act in their own best interests.

I don't know how you can talk about these things without words that are going to end up being divisive.

[East Coast Hustle]

I think he was talking about how in our current society, none of us (as in the people having this conversation) can really be considered "actors".

RWHN, in spite of the fact that he's saying it for all the wrong reasons, has a very good point about class being BY FAR the biggest "privilege chip", to the point that it may now be worth more than all of the others combined.

And I hope you see the irony in saying that you're not interested in playing the oppression olympics right before you say that you're talking about how it sucks less to be the actor in an oppressive system than to be the acted-upon in the context of a conversation in which some people are trying to raise the point that 99% of men are also acted upon by an oppressive system.

"Oppression Olympics" is "I have it worse than you do!" on an individual level. Which is not very productive, whereas discussing group experiences is. That's what I was talking about when I used the term and what I thought he was talking about, too.

I would disagree and say race, then class. But gender still plays a role on a society-wide level for all the reasons I outlined like three posts ago, and within race and class.

Whether or not a man is an oppressive actor depends on how he behaves. Misogynistic behavior is not limited to any 1% of men.

OK, gotcha. I'm not sure I completely agree with you about some of that stuff, but I do at least understand what you're saying now. And I don't think that anything I disagree about is really relevant anyway, since we're both in agreement that, ultimately, women are not currently treated as being equal to men in many ways in western society.

[East Coast Hustle]

*woman. wtf

I think what I'm getting at is that this discussion may be better served by finding a way to explain some of these concepts that doesn't require divisive language. Like it or not, if you're going to illustrate a difference that separates all of humanity roughly 50-50 AND you want to find an effective way of showing the 50% that you're not part of that this concept is good for their self-interests also, you're going to have to find a way to communicate with that 50% of humanity without coming off as divisive or inherently dominant within the context of any discussion or implementation of this concept. And if many of the guys HERE are having a problem with how this is being presented currently, you can imagine how it will play with the average joe.

But that's certainly not an insurmountable problem. And there's no reason that the things that people are getting hung up on have to be broached immediately and overtly in the social dialogue. If history has taught us anything, it's taught us that sometimes you have to use a little trickery to convince people to act in their own best interests.

I don't know how you can talk about these things without words that are going to end up being divisive.

I think the trick would be to find a way to introduce these concepts, perhaps subtly or even subversively, into the dialogue before making the "reveal". That way, once someone has basically agreed with you in the abstract it becomes way more difficult for them to flip the switch back off and say something like "Oh, wait, you meant that was actually all about ME? And patriarchy/misogyny/privilege/whatever? Well nevermind, fuck all that shit!"

[Bu🤠ns]

I think he was talking about how in our current society, none of us (as in the people having this conversation) can really be considered "actors".

RWHN, in spite of the fact that he's saying it for all the wrong reasons, has a very good point about class being BY FAR the biggest "privilege chip", to the point that it may now be worth more than all of the others combined.

And I hope you see the irony in saying that you're not interested in playing the oppression olympics right before you say that you're talking about how it sucks less to be the actor in an oppressive system than to be the acted-upon in the context of a conversation in which some people are trying to raise the point that 99% of men are also acted upon by an oppressive system.

"Oppression Olympics" is "I have it worse than you do!" on an individual level. Which is not very productive, whereas discussing group experiences is. That's what I was talking about when I used the term and what I thought he was talking about, too.

Then it sounds like we're in agreement.

I would disagree and say race, then class. But gender still plays a role on a society-wide level for all the reasons I outlined like three posts ago, and within race and class.

Whether or not a man is an oppressive actor depends on how he behaves. Misogynistic behavior is not limited to any 1% of men.

I'm not sure there a really accurate ways of measuring this on a level that is not case-by-case.  I'm not sure that we really need to either. Same with class and racism.  I'm sure we can find compelling evidence for all three oppressions to be considered as "the worst¹."

Instead it seems to be more productive to go into the direction: 1. yes, there is a problem.  2. These are the root causes. 3. These are the corrective measures to reach our goals. 


^1. I really mean to say 'the most oppressive' when i say 'worst'

[Juana]

You can't really leave the other two out, because they're variables you have to take into account, too.

[Placid Dingo]

Doesn't the concept of kyriachy imply that out of class gender and race, different factors can be more or less important in different contexts.

[CorbeauEtRenard]

It seems to me like a large part of the problem here is the problem I almost inevitably see crop up in discussions involving Privilege Theory.

There isn't a clear enough emphasis that privilege is something that happens to some people, not something they are doing.

Receiving privilege does not make someone "part of the problem" and in most cases, one could not divest oneself of a given form of privilege even if one tried.
Receiving privilege doesn't make you part of an oppressive class, it makes you part of a class that is favored in some way by society and/or culture.
Receiving privilege doesn't mean you can't have valid insights, but it does mean there's probably some different cognitive biases that are likely to be at play in your worldview than the cognitive biases likely to effect people who didn't receive that particular privilege.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

It seems to me like a large part of the problem here is the problem I almost inevitably see crop up in discussions involving Privilege Theory.

There isn't a clear enough emphasis that privilege is something that happens to some people, not something they are doing.

Receiving privilege does not make someone "part of the problem" and in most cases, one could not divest oneself of a given form of privilege even if one tried.
Receiving privilege doesn't make you part of an oppressive class, it makes you part of a class that is favored in some way by society and/or culture.
Receiving privilege doesn't mean you can't have valid insights, but it does mean there's probably some different cognitive biases that are likely to be at play in your worldview than the cognitive biases likely to effect people who didn't receive that particular privilege.

It would have been nice if someone had explained this earlier, before "a great has fallen" or some such shit.

It's a little late now. 

[CorbeauEtRenard]

To be honest, I could count the number of discussions I've been privy to about privilege theory that didn't run into that particular variety of mis-communication on one hand.

Unfortunately I've become really leery of becoming involved in discussions about the subject as a result.

I mean, the concept behind privilege theory seems sound to me, but the vocabulary causes so many misunderstandings and blowups. I don't like to think that the packaging can impair the concept like that, but it really does hurt the spread of the valuable meme that's in there underneath.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

To be honest, I could count the number of discussions I've been privy to about privilege theory that didn't run into that particular variety of mis-communication on one hand.

Unfortunately I've become really leery of becoming involved in discussions about the subject as a result.

I mean, the concept behind privilege theory seems sound to me, but the vocabulary causes so many misunderstandings and blowups. I don't like to think that the packaging can impair the concept like that, but it really does hurt the spread of the valuable meme that's in there underneath.

I see nothing of value in any of these conversations.  I see mountains of butthurt, and until you came along, nobody doing a fucking thing to attempt to correct misconceptions.  I see people using this as a means to project their fears or merely use it as a club to beat people with.

Now I understand the concept, and I appreciate that, but I no longer have to urge to discuss it because the people I'd be discussing it have been more interested in clubbing people than they were in the idea imparting that information in the first place.

[Juana]

I'm not sure what to do if you see no point in these conversations, because I think they're important. Corbeau explained things I didn't and I'm sorry for that. And while I left things out, I did try to make sure I wasn't clubbing anyone.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I'm not sure what to do if you see no point in these conversations, because I think they're important.

Yeah, they're so fucking important that I got blasted with texts telling me what a complete shitbag I am, in the middle of a huge welcome home party I was throwing for a friend, trashing my mood to a degree that my guests noticed.  I spent the whole evening explaining to worried friends that I wasn't upset with them in any way or anything.

They're so fucking important that for the horrible crimes of A) knowing Alty, and B) going over the top¹, I am now a "so-called friend" of Nigel's.  I am also Archie Bunker reincarnated, if not Lester fucking Maddox.

Yes, this conversation has been important - in an extremely negative way - because it was more important to shout at people or accuse them of being "the problem" than it was to explain privilege theory in the first fucking place, at least until CorbeauEtRenard saw fit to do so.

It has in fact been so important that I have spent the last hour trying to decide if I want to bother with any of this shit anymore, feminism, privilege, or PD as a whole.  The subject is now fucking toxic as hell, and it's infecting everything.

Because it was more important to tell everyone how privileged they are, rather than explaining what that term meant.





¹  Because I totally want to molest 7.3 Bn people.  There's no way that was a joke or anything.  FFS.

[East Coast Hustle]

In all fairness, I do recall an explanation of privilege being posted in an earlier thread, I think by Pixie.