Alone and Unobserved

A Mistaken Presumption

I just finished a delightful book. (A delightfully naughty book, as it happens, in which—oddly enough—three of the main characters are complete prudes.) I enjoyed the entire thing, all two hundred and ninety-two pages of it. And then, after the last sentence (which was, if you are interested, “And Alice blushed pink, all the way down the back of her neck and to the very tips of her ears.”), I turned to the “About the Author” blurb on the two hundred and ninety-third page and said aloud, “Marie Phillips? You mean this was written by a woman?”

There are certain things I had assumed about the author from the first page. That the author was British, most likely a Londoner, since that is the setting of the novel. That the author was white, for no really good reason, except that I had also assumed that the characters where white. That the author was fairly young, because it was a young-seeming book. And, as has already been established, that the author was a man. All of these assumptions could have been proved (in the case of the author’s nationality, skin color and age) or disproved (in the case of the author’s sex) by simply looking at the jacket flap. Perhaps the front cover (which features the author’s name) could have clued me in, but I was a bit distracted by the illustration (a statue of a Greek goddess in flowing draperies and a black leather bustier, trailing a whip from her arm).

I’m not exactly sure what it was that made me imagine a man writing this book. Perhaps the frankly bawdy content (what, women can’t be bawdy? if nothing else does, this book proves they can); perhaps the fact that I identified with the author and I’m a male; perhaps because I lack imagination. In any case, this is a perfect segue into our real topic, which is what prejudiced, privileged, presumptuous asses all of us are.

Privilege in All Its Myriad Forms

If you are reading this post, congratulations! You can read. This is an advantage that not everyone has. If you are reading this on my website, or, better yet, on a feed aggregator, then you have at least rudimentary computer skills and have more than zero access to the internet. If you are male, or white, or straight, or cisgendered/cissexual, or educated, or mentally or physically able, or not impoverished, again: congratulations! You belong to a socially or materially privileged class that does not include part of the population. [If you do not see that males, whites, straights, etc. are privileged above their counterparts in our society, speak to me after class. You have some catching up to do.]

Now think about the privileged classes you belong to, and ask yourself how you use your privilege. If you are able, are you also ablist? If you are male, are you sexist? If you are cisgendered, are you transphobic or trans-apathetic? If you are straight, are you homophobic?

Do you try to deny your own privilege?

• If you are white, do you try to convince minorities that they are not disadvantaged in our society—or even that whites are—perhaps by invoking reverse racism, or affirmative action, or the culture of victimhood?
• If you are straight, do you complain about the word “homophobic,” saying you aren’t homophobic “because I’m not afraid of gays, I just don’t agree with their lifestyle and their agenda”?
• If you are a cisgendered female, do you talk down to transgendered women as being pretenders, or supporters of the patriarchy, or reifiers of societal gender roles?
• If you are male, when women try to tell you or each other about their experience, do you invade their space and try to hijack their discussion to talk about your own ideas (even if you are well-meaning and want to talk about that time you realized that women really do face sexism on a daily basis)?
• If you are a citizen of your country, do you rail about the filthy illegal immigrants taking all your jobs and living the plush life at your expense?

For a lot of people these examples may seem extreme. “I’m a man but I consider myself a feminist. I would never hijack a feminist discussion” or “I grew up the only white kid in a Latino barrio. All my friends were from Mexico and South America” or “I dated an FTM transsexual once. I think FTMs are cute!” Trust me, at some point you have abused your privilege, whether you know it or not. And the sneaky thing about privilege is that it’s very, very hard to see your own, and all too easy to see other people’s. As a homosexual, straight privilege is virtually ground in my face every day, but as a man, my own male privilege is usually invisible to me until someone else calls my attention to it after the fact. This is one of the things that makes conversations about privilege between advantaged and disadvantaged groups so difficult. And thus disadvantaged groups are accused of wanting “special rights” or of having an “agenda.”

The point here is not to make you feel bad about the fact that you are not disadvantaged in every possible way, or even to make you feel guilty for the times in the past that you have abused your privilege. I just wanted to induce you to recognize the advantage of your own position, and maybe help you think about ways that you can join in the dialogue and maybe make things better in your communities.

What You Can Do

Step one: Inform yourself.

Privilege Primers

• White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, by Peggy McIntosh
• A primer on privilege: what it is and what it isn’t, by Betty
• What is male privilege? by tigtog
• Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack II: Straight Privilege, by a group of straight-identified Earlham College students

Informational Blogs and Sites

• Finally, a Feminism 101 Blog, by tigtog
• Questioning Transphobia, by Lisa
• Isocrat.org
• International Blog Against Racism Week on Delicious

Step two: Admit that you have privilege and realize that, while it is not your fault, it harms you as well as others.

Step three: Try to figure out ways you can diminish your own unearned privilege and empower those around you who are disadvantaged.

Step four: Leave a comment here!

Step five: Continually CHECK YOUR PRIVILEGE.

The fifth step will last a lifetime. Better get started!