The privilege thing
I’m aware of debates around privilege. I’ve been watching for a while, trying to make sense of it, feeling deeply uneasy, recognising there definitely are issues around how we treat each other that this language is flagging up, but feeling increasingly like we’ve got it a bit wrong.
There is a very genuine issue that people have privileges they are not aware of – most of us do in fact – because we’ve not been homeless, or transgender, or illegally gay, or victims of child abuse, or non-sexual, or a thousand other things that can put a person at a terrible disadvantage. In failing to know this and assuming our ‘normal’ should be true of everyone, or that those other problems do not exist, we can mess up, big time. In not recognising how the absence of those ‘normal’ things impacts on a person, we can mess up. If you’ve not been alienated and felt disenfranchised, it is not an easy thing to understand, and when we are the dominant norm, recognising other people may not find that innately natural and comfortable, is also difficult. We need to recognise all these things, though, and do our best to be compassionate in face of them.
The trouble with describing this in terms of ‘privilege’ is that it just doesn’t make much sense in many contexts. I’ve seen ideas about ‘wiccan privilege’ floating around online. Really? Wiccans took the forefront of the abuse and challenge for many years in Pagan rights campaigning. They aren’t perfect, but to take issue with their ‘privilege position’ seems a bit much. It also suggests a state of either privilege or non-priviledge, and that’s not always helpful. There’s a lot of wrong out there, and getting into a fight over who had it most tough, can be totally counter-productive. There’s also an assumption that if you’ve not lived it first hand, you don’t know – and that’s not fair. Plenty of people make it their business to know as best they can, and if we’re too quick to assume the ignorance of people who do not *appear* to have the first hand experience, we’re on a very slippery slope towards a pit full of trouble.
The problem isn’t really the privilege we may have. The problem is talking out of your arse. If you’re talking out of your arse, you are speaking from a place of assumption without thinking about how it might be different for someone else. You’re suffering profound empathy fail. You’re imagining that your beliefs about life are more right than someone else’s first hand experience. You’re almost certainly acting like there’s some universal truth to your opinion and experience, when that manifestly cannot be true. Talking out of your arse is usually patronising, it irritates the people on the wrong end of it, and it makes you deaf to hearing how things actually are for the people you’re dealing with.
Also, I have a feeling that saying “please stop talking out of your arse” might have more impact than “check your privileges” not least because with the first one, no one can pretend they do not understand what this means.
I’ve been in situations where people have told me I couldn’t possibly be feeling what I said I was feeling. I’ve dealt with people who did not believe anyone could do to me what had been done to me. I’ve dealt with people who could not see any problem with the things that had been done to me, and who were capable of saying things like “well, it’s not as bad as if you’d been stabbed or something, that’s much more serious.” This is not about privilege, but about ignorance, lack of imagination and a failure to recognise the not-knowing and not being able to envisage.
So can I suggest, be less worried about checking your privilege, and more worried about checking your facts. Be alert to recognising when you are imagining how something would be, and what you would do, and be aware you are not speaking from experience in such situations. What you imagine is not the same as how things are for other people. So many women say they would never stay with a man who hit them, and denigrate the women who do, because they do not understand there is a process leading to that, and that actually, they’d probably stay too, in the same situation. That’s not privilege, because we should not think of it as privilege to be free from abuse. That’s lack of insight.
Let’s not describe as privileges those advantages that should be better distributed. Let’s do something about getting a fairer distribution of respect, power and understanding. We can do that by checking to see which orifice we are speaking through at any given moment, and being alert to the possibility that if we have no experience to draw on, and we haven’t sought any information, there’s a real chance we are in fact talking out of our bottoms.
There is a very genuine issue that people have privileges they are not aware of – most of us do in fact – because we’ve not been homeless, or transgender, or illegally gay, or victims of child abuse, or non-sexual, or a thousand other things that can put a person at a terrible disadvantage. In failing to know this and assuming our ‘normal’ should be true of everyone, or that those other problems do not exist, we can mess up, big time. In not recognising how the absence of those ‘normal’ things impacts on a person, we can mess up. If you’ve not been alienated and felt disenfranchised, it is not an easy thing to understand, and when we are the dominant norm, recognising other people may not find that innately natural and comfortable, is also difficult. We need to recognise all these things, though, and do our best to be compassionate in face of them.
The trouble with describing this in terms of ‘privilege’ is that it just doesn’t make much sense in many contexts. I’ve seen ideas about ‘wiccan privilege’ floating around online. Really? Wiccans took the forefront of the abuse and challenge for many years in Pagan rights campaigning. They aren’t perfect, but to take issue with their ‘privilege position’ seems a bit much. It also suggests a state of either privilege or non-priviledge, and that’s not always helpful. There’s a lot of wrong out there, and getting into a fight over who had it most tough, can be totally counter-productive. There’s also an assumption that if you’ve not lived it first hand, you don’t know – and that’s not fair. Plenty of people make it their business to know as best they can, and if we’re too quick to assume the ignorance of people who do not *appear* to have the first hand experience, we’re on a very slippery slope towards a pit full of trouble.
The problem isn’t really the privilege we may have. The problem is talking out of your arse. If you’re talking out of your arse, you are speaking from a place of assumption without thinking about how it might be different for someone else. You’re suffering profound empathy fail. You’re imagining that your beliefs about life are more right than someone else’s first hand experience. You’re almost certainly acting like there’s some universal truth to your opinion and experience, when that manifestly cannot be true. Talking out of your arse is usually patronising, it irritates the people on the wrong end of it, and it makes you deaf to hearing how things actually are for the people you’re dealing with.
Also, I have a feeling that saying “please stop talking out of your arse” might have more impact than “check your privileges” not least because with the first one, no one can pretend they do not understand what this means.
I’ve been in situations where people have told me I couldn’t possibly be feeling what I said I was feeling. I’ve dealt with people who did not believe anyone could do to me what had been done to me. I’ve dealt with people who could not see any problem with the things that had been done to me, and who were capable of saying things like “well, it’s not as bad as if you’d been stabbed or something, that’s much more serious.” This is not about privilege, but about ignorance, lack of imagination and a failure to recognise the not-knowing and not being able to envisage.
So can I suggest, be less worried about checking your privilege, and more worried about checking your facts. Be alert to recognising when you are imagining how something would be, and what you would do, and be aware you are not speaking from experience in such situations. What you imagine is not the same as how things are for other people. So many women say they would never stay with a man who hit them, and denigrate the women who do, because they do not understand there is a process leading to that, and that actually, they’d probably stay too, in the same situation. That’s not privilege, because we should not think of it as privilege to be free from abuse. That’s lack of insight.
Let’s not describe as privileges those advantages that should be better distributed. Let’s do something about getting a fairer distribution of respect, power and understanding. We can do that by checking to see which orifice we are speaking through at any given moment, and being alert to the possibility that if we have no experience to draw on, and we haven’t sought any information, there’s a real chance we are in fact talking out of our bottoms.
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