Some thoughts on "white straight males"
Nov. 23rd, 2010 04:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sour_idealistInspired by this poem but also by a lot of other things.
In Internet discussions of politics - in terms of feminism, in terms of race, in terms of gay rights, in terms of poverty, in terms of anything - one thing that keeps coming up is The Guys With All The Privilege: white, straight, regularly abled,upper-middle-class men. Usually, in these discussions, they're seen as the ignorant ones, the blind ones, the ones who are very lucky and don't realize it, the selfish ones, the ones who cause and perpetuate the problems. And there may be a grain of truth to all of that. There may be a lot more than just a grain, depending on circumstances. And it's easy to get behind that. It's easy to agree with it. It's easy to be angry with the lucky ones, especially when they don't realize all they have. Definitely, people who argue with this viewpoint tend to be considered over-privileged and ignorant themselves. For a while, I never even thought of arguing with this.
Then I thought about it - about the lists of characteristics. White, straight, cisgendered, regularly abled, upper-middle-class, male, not any minority religion.
My brothers fit all of those characteristics. So does my dad. So do a lot of my friends.
And yeah, sometimes they don't get things. Sometimes my brother and my dad don't understand why I can't stand to watch all of Casino Royale and stay silent. Sometimes my friends crack a joke that makes me wince. Sometimes they do the kinds of maddening things that cause people, people who have had it far harder than I have and have had ENOUGH, to get angry.
But on the other hand - these are my friends, my family. They screw up, but that isn't how I define them. I define them as the people who hug me when I need it. The otherwise well-behaved brother who, ages ago, body-slammed a kid who was mocking me for being the brainy, geeky one, and never stopped being that guy. The brothers who collaborated with me to find Christmas presents for our mom, and played ridiculous imaginative games with me in the backyard (we basically came up with a very crude form of LARP) and never told me I couldn't pretend to have a sword. The friends who respect my opinions enough to have hour-long arguments over Shakespeare or nuclear weapons or whatever else. The father who went with me to pottery classes and shared Broadway cast recordings with me. People I care about. People I love.
Sometimes they Don't Get It, with capital letters. But does that make them bad people? I can't see them that way. Does that mean I'm not getting it? I have a lot of privilege too - I'm female and bi, but I'm still white, still cisgendered, still upper-middle-class, still regularly abled. Am I missing something here; is this post just plain asinine BS? I don't know.
But I still can't see my family, even with all of their privilege and their mistakes, as bad people.
In Internet discussions of politics - in terms of feminism, in terms of race, in terms of gay rights, in terms of poverty, in terms of anything - one thing that keeps coming up is The Guys With All The Privilege: white, straight, regularly abled,upper-middle-class men. Usually, in these discussions, they're seen as the ignorant ones, the blind ones, the ones who are very lucky and don't realize it, the selfish ones, the ones who cause and perpetuate the problems. And there may be a grain of truth to all of that. There may be a lot more than just a grain, depending on circumstances. And it's easy to get behind that. It's easy to agree with it. It's easy to be angry with the lucky ones, especially when they don't realize all they have. Definitely, people who argue with this viewpoint tend to be considered over-privileged and ignorant themselves. For a while, I never even thought of arguing with this.
Then I thought about it - about the lists of characteristics. White, straight, cisgendered, regularly abled, upper-middle-class, male, not any minority religion.
My brothers fit all of those characteristics. So does my dad. So do a lot of my friends.
And yeah, sometimes they don't get things. Sometimes my brother and my dad don't understand why I can't stand to watch all of Casino Royale and stay silent. Sometimes my friends crack a joke that makes me wince. Sometimes they do the kinds of maddening things that cause people, people who have had it far harder than I have and have had ENOUGH, to get angry.
But on the other hand - these are my friends, my family. They screw up, but that isn't how I define them. I define them as the people who hug me when I need it. The otherwise well-behaved brother who, ages ago, body-slammed a kid who was mocking me for being the brainy, geeky one, and never stopped being that guy. The brothers who collaborated with me to find Christmas presents for our mom, and played ridiculous imaginative games with me in the backyard (we basically came up with a very crude form of LARP) and never told me I couldn't pretend to have a sword. The friends who respect my opinions enough to have hour-long arguments over Shakespeare or nuclear weapons or whatever else. The father who went with me to pottery classes and shared Broadway cast recordings with me. People I care about. People I love.
Sometimes they Don't Get It, with capital letters. But does that make them bad people? I can't see them that way. Does that mean I'm not getting it? I have a lot of privilege too - I'm female and bi, but I'm still white, still cisgendered, still upper-middle-class, still regularly abled. Am I missing something here; is this post just plain asinine BS? I don't know.
But I still can't see my family, even with all of their privilege and their mistakes, as bad people.
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no subject
Date: 2010-11-23 09:51 pm (UTC)Even ignoring and not recognizing their privilege and Not Getting It in general isn't necessarily them being bad. It's part of the privilege that they have trouble grasping it. Even if they refuse to try to grasp it, they can still be decent people, so long as the topic at hand doesn't relate to privilege. Granted, when the subject turns to something like they, they tend to make asses out of themselves, but they're still the people who hug you when you need it, and hang out with you, and do fun shit that's got no point other than being fun.
Also, your brothers sound awesome. Mine never let me have a sword. He just made me play football and street hockey with his friends. Though I was a pretty kick-ass goalie, if I do say so myself.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-23 10:11 pm (UTC)And yeah, I love my brothers. Well, they always hogged the TV and I quite frequently want them to SHUT UP - not about any particular subject, they are just loud people - but at the end of the day, I love them. (And the swords would mostly appear to the observer to be sticks or whiffle bats, just for the record. And street hockey sounds like it was fun too.)
no subject
Date: 2010-11-23 10:15 pm (UTC)(Still wish I could have played with swords, even ones made of sticks and bats. :P )
no subject
Date: 2010-11-23 10:49 pm (UTC)(Did you not play with swords because your brother didn't let you or because you guys didn't play that kind of game?)
no subject
Date: 2010-11-23 11:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-24 10:34 am (UTC)I'm reminded of something that happened at a conference the Dutch Women's Council held to celebrate their 100th anniversary. In the conference hall they had put up posters that showed landmarks in women's rights. One of those posters carried a quote from a male parliamentarian: "I don't see why women should not have the vote."
The woman I was standing next to when I read that poster said, "Ah, some men supported the cause of women."
Well, duh. If not at least 51 men in Second Chamber and at least 26 in First Chamber thought that women should be able to vote, women would not have gotten the vote. (Minimum number of parliamentarians who have to vote in favour of a law to have it passed, at the time women's suffrage was voted for. Strangely enough, perhaps, women could be elected into parliament (and one was) before they could vote for parliament.)
I think the woman who made the comment was supposed to be one of those people in the Get It category, but I don't think she actually got the part that the people with the privileges are not evil. Which is a good thing, because you need their support to change things.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-24 08:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-01 04:50 pm (UTC)But the white straight upperclass cis guy- he can't understand, what it's like to feel marginalized. They still have that little-kid belief that life is fair, because they've always been given a fair chance. The process of opening one's mind is long and painful and for most of them, they've never had a reason to even get started on it.
And that creates a sense of alienation, an us-versus-them mentality.
But they're the ones who put it there in the first place. I think that's important to remember.
And anger can be bad, but it can also be the lesser of two evils, because it's better to think they're the problem than to think you are.
But it's definitely not black and white. There are fewer entirely privileged people than Hollywood would like us to believe.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-01 05:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-01 06:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-01 07:23 pm (UTC)