philippos42 | Privilege? What privilege? (Yeah I'm just reposting someone who agrees with me)

In, of all places, a comment thread on Ménage à 3 strip, I just read something that explains the loose talk of privilege coming out of certain ostensibly progressive quarters and articulates why some of us find it irksome.

Re: 01-11-11 Poppushikuru
by quekchoze on Wed Nov 02, 2011 1:32 am
BrianX wrote:
quekchoze wrote:
I think it is the fact that, in mainstream culture, violence against men and the suffering of men are often considered more acceptable than violence against women and the suffering of women. I guess that was his point, and certainly, I can point out scenes in different media that were played for laughs when a man was on the butt of the joke, but would have been highly controversial, even unthinkable, if the genders were flipped.
There's a reason for this. Someone, not sure who, pointed out that the key to success in comedy at someone else's expense is to punch up, not down. That is, abusing someone in a place of privilege is funny, but doing the same thing to someone who is part of a class that's frequently abused anyway is just cruel. That's why a man getting raped in a story can be used for humor (although it's just as abhorrent IRL as it is when done to women) but the reverse doesn't work for women. (A similar thing applies to N-word privileges, and the broader case of reclaiming words like "gay", "trap" or "slut" -- when the in-group uses a term like that, there's a certain degree of gallows humor involved, but when an outsider uses it, it comes off as oblivious at best and rubbing salt in the wound at worst.)

Privilege is a funny thing, because it's so often unconscious in a culture, but essentially, if you're someone who traditionally gets the short end of the stick, you can get away with a lot more than you can if you aren't. (Me? I'm a white male with chronic mental illness problems. I can make jokes about being crazy all I want, but I have no right to use the N-word because I am not a member of that community.)
That sounds like vulgar rationalization of double standards to me.

As to the "privilege" thing, it is a concept that I find particularly insulting. I am quite familiar to it actually, and the more I learn, the more I find it distasteful. I get that it was a way to "involve" people from non-discriminated groups in the fight against discrimination. I think some social studies showed that talking of "privileged" groups was better received than just talking of "discriminated" groups and that's why activists have put all their bets on it. It works basically by shaming people who weren't in the specific discriminated group.

The reason I find it insulting is because it ignores so many individual realities. Calling all men privilege, including people who have been mocked and scorned for not being "man"-like, like "nerds" for instance, while saying that women are not privileged, including naturally beautiful women who have been inundated with positive attention and given rewards socially for being whom they are, severely clashes with reality. If we can take examples from fiction, look at characters in this comic, who are exaggerations based on real archetypes. Gary is a virgin in his 20s, socially awkward, his shyness has seemingly made him unattractive to any woman before the start of the comic. Zii and Didi both are women who have had full and happy social lives. But according to the "privilege" concept, Gary is still privileged over Zii and Didi, because he has a penis. What gives?

Oh, yes, I know, let's say "intersectionality" and avoid thinking about the flaws of the "privilege" concept. We'll just assume that Gary is "privileged" as a man, but not privileged on other levels. It's a cop-out, but anything to salvage the concept. I think the reality is that people are assigned social roles based on their gender, if they "fit", they are socially rewarded, if they don't, they are socially shunned in certain ways. If people naturally like the roles assigned by society, then all is dandy for them, if not... well, that's another thing.

http://www.pixietrixcomix.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=11964&start=105#p350231