Comment on How possibly?
SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zip 21 hours ago
I hate the word “privilege” used in this context. Words have connotations, and “privilege” conjures up images of playing polo at the country club with the upper crust of one’s community, then going back to the office to work as executive vice president of the company your father founded. Yet, the people concerned about social justice seem unreasonably attached to their particular jargon, even if it gets in the way of communication. Over the past 15 years or so, I’ve seen a handful of people get it when it’s explained to them as, “imagine you grew up hardscrabble dirt poor, but also had to deal with racism.” But mostly, the online discussions devolve into a fight over the definition of the word privilege. C’mon, let’s just ditch the word, ferchrissakes! Keep the concept, call it something more relatable!
Same with “toxic masculinity.” Yes, I get it, the “toxic” adjective is a modifier to talk about a particular type of masculinity, but the people who hear it as “masculinity is toxic” have a point, too. People use adjectives as intensifiers. I guarantee that the people talking about “evil homosexuals” aren’t adding “evil” to distinguish from the good ones.
I also hate the term privilege because it implies those people have something they shouldn’t have, i.e. they need to be brought down, when really it’s that other people have a disadvantage. This makes the ones labeled privileged defensive because it seems like an attack instead of a call for help.
Everyone should be at least at the same level as the “privileged” ones.
Yes, and that’s the point with male privilege? It’s an advantage without any other reason than the holder being male.
Raising women to hold the same privilege is the same as removing it for men, if everyone has it it’s not a privilege.
I think this is why the equality in society moves forward too slowly, not necessarily because men don’t want women to have equal rights and opportunities, but as you said the privileged are defensive because they don’t want to lose their privileges.
Stop argum’ing semmantics and understand what they’re saying! This is about communication, not being technically correct.
FFS, your post is exactly portraying the problem.
You even use a much better word: equality. Yet argue in favor of using a less effective word… Truly sad.
Stop arguing semantics and accept their argument of semantics!
FFS the cognitive dissonance is dizzying.
This is about being technically correct
Semantics are important and I do understand what they are saying. Did you read my comment?
it implies those people have something they shouldn’t have
This for example. Male privilege is something men shouldn’t have since it’s based entirely on gender. So the privilege teeds to be abolished for equality to happen.
And as I said, of course men gets defensive when its problematized and put in the spotlight, you may support equality but who wants to lose their advantages? 🤷
Ironically enough your comment also focused on the semantics instead of the issue at hand.. :)
I think you’re running into a little cognitive dissonance. In this scenario, the privilege is what is causing the disadvantage in the first place. You cannot be privileged in a truly equal society, therefore you can’t elevate everyone to a privileged class, you can only equal the playing field.
It’s a zero sum game.
I was with you most of the way but you lost me here. Some of the biggest privileges for cis straight white males is that they don’t have to deal with racism, sexism, and bigotry over who they are and who they love. That’s not a zero sum game. We can all have that privilege. That privilege isn’t what causes bigotry.
There are some privileges that would be lost, like being preferentially hired by racists. But for the most part we’re fighting in large part for equal good treatment. It’s not a zero sum game.
cis straight white males is that they don’t have to deal with racism, sexism, and bigotry over who they are and who they love
How does that racism materially present itself? With racism it’s by decades of economic support and government programs aimed at creating wealth for a certain ethnicity over another. With sex it’s decades of reinforcing gender roles and denying educational opportunities for women. Rules about race mixing were created to deny a dilution of the ethnic collective of political power.
That’s not a zero sum game. We can all have that privilege. That privilege isn’t what causes bigotry.
I would argue that it shouldn’t be a privilege, but a universal right.
But for the most part we’re fighting in large part for equal good treatment. It’s not a zero sum game.
I think you might want to look up the definition of privilege. You can’t be privileged unless someone is being disadvantaged. If you want to get rid of privilege then what you’re saying is you want everyone to be treated the same.
fight over the definition of the word privilege. C’mon, let’s just ditch the word, ferchrissakes! Keep the concept, call it something more relatable!
I think it’s naive to believe whatever terminology you use as an alternative wouldn’t eventually end up with the same stigma.
The people who interpret it as “masculinity is toxic” aren’t doing it because they have a hearing disability, they interpret it that way as a means to justify their own beliefs.
The same goes for your example of “evil homosexuals”. Anyone who is blaming all homosexuals for something does not have to modify them with the term evil for you to know they are being a bigot.
I don’t think it’s people fighting for social justice who get unreasonably attached to words. I think that describes the people who feign an inability to utilize context or reason when they hear them.
Yeah there’s no magic word choices that make good communicating automatic or guaranteed.
Bad faith pretends otherwise, for cover.
But that does not imply that all word choices are equal.
Yeah, some are privileged.
Sure, as somebody pointed out above, any social justice term will be attacked and tarred by well-funded right-wing think tanks. But let’s not give ‘em a head start by using words that consistently turn off our audience, eh? In my experience, “privilege” and “toxic masculinity” do just that. This example actually bolsters my point: The people using “evil homosexuals” don’t need to add the “evil,” because they’re bigots who believe that homosexuality is evil. Likewise, the people who use “toxic masculinity” don’t need to add the “toxic,” because they’re bigots who believe that masculinity is toxic. (No, I don’t actually believe that, but lots of people seem to.)
But let’s not give 'em a head start by using words that consistently turn off our audience, eh? In my experience, “privilege” and “toxic masculinity” do just that.
Because the well funded rightwing think tanks have already started them…
people using “evil homosexuals” don’t need to add the “evil,” because they’re bigots who believe that homosexuality is evil. Likewise, the people who use “toxic masculinity” don’t need to add the “toxic,” because they’re bigots who believe that masculinity is toxic.
I use toxic masculinity and I don’t think masculinity is inherently toxic?
And I don’t think a significant amount of people think masculinity by itself is toxic by itself. Otherwise everyone would be force femming their husbands, or hating any trans men choosing to express themselves.
The only people who seem to be interpreting toxic masculinity as an implication of masculinity as a whole are people who seem to think all maledom is under siege.
If you’re going to misrepresent my words, there’s no point in continuing a discussion.
Nah. Many, many people who come from inside that peivilege are being naive. To think they’re trying to defend the privilege itself is exactly the problem coming from outside the blinders.
The “evil homosexuals” comment is trying to elucidate you to that reality for crying out loud, but noooo, you just want to make yourself feel better by pretending it’s not able to be perceived the same way…
From someone who grew up conservative and now hates conservative values… Your attitude is part of the problem.
Failure to communicate is a two way street.
Nah. Many, many people who come from inside that peivilege are being naive. To think they’re trying to defend the privilege itself is exactly the problem coming from outside the blinders.
Eh, I would say there are some people who are naive enough to not realize their own privileges. However, that itself is only possible because there are whole media systems coaching the reflective defense of their privilege in the first place.
The “evil homosexuals” comment is trying to elucidate you to that reality for crying out loud, but noooo, you just want to make yourself feel better by pretending your choice of words cannot be perceived the same way…
Lol, I was just remarking on how the modification of words with negative descriptors doesn’t reallyatter when the ideas behind the concept were bigoted to begin with.
Your attitude is part of the problem.
Yes, it’s the actions of people of color who made us this way… I’ve heard that before.
Failure to communicate is a two way street, and you arguing the exact same phrasing is somehow magically not problematic from your side while being problematic from the other is exactly the issue OC’s talking about.
I don’t really see how I am…? My whole point was that if we stopped using terms that bigoted people dislike and made up new ones, the new words would just end up being disliked by bigoted people.
Stop being OK with creating in groups and out groups by such simple terms as “white” or “homosexual”.
First of all… I can’t “other” white people as a whole, I’m not powerful enough to innact systemic racial programs, nor would I want to. The term white privilege is used to describe the systemic advantages white people have enacted over hundreds of years in this country.
Secondly… Nothing I said can be interpreted as attempting to “other” homosexuals? The only time I refreced homosexuals was when I said someone willing to use a sentence that includes “evil homosexuals” wouldn’t be made better by removing the “evil” part. For a hyperbolic example if I said “the evil homosexuals did 9/11” wouldn’t be made better if I just said “the homosexuals did 9/11”.
. If you want to other someone simply living their life, especially over differences they didn’t even ask for, then you’re still part of the problem.
Something tells me you didn’t stray too far away from your conservative upbringing…
I might not have white privilege, but I am still privileged when compared to the rest of the world, and I have no qualms about recognizing that. Anyone living in a rich nation is privileged when compared to the vast majority of the world that suffers in poverty. I didn’t ask for that, but I still recognize it as a problem that we need to address.
Maybe you are feeling a little insecure, and maybe that’s a problem you should think about?
I always knew who really did 9/11
Fact is that as white people in North America, we DO get privileged treatment from the banking system, law enforcement, shopkeepers, bus drivers, random people in the street…
And white people in North America have it their whole lives, and will continue to have it their whole lives for the most part.
Is it unpleasant to be reminded that you’ll spend your whole life playing with the White Assist mode, and that every single non white person knows that about you? Yeah.
That there are circles you won’t be let into by default because of actions taken by other people? Yeah.
White supremacist ideology is bad for everyone, including white people, but it’s bad for white people in an emotional health way, while it’s bad for non white people in a life and death way.
The question you have to ask yourself, though, is this: Do I want to scold white people for their privilege, or do I want to get them on my side to fix it? In my experience, rubbing their noses in it is going to set people’s minds against you. Yes, they’re wrong, yes, they’re bad people, but the real world means hard choices between the euphoric glow of self-righteousness, or actual political effectiveness.
The question you have to ask yourself, though, is this: Do I want to scold white people for their privilege, or do I want to get them on my side to fix it? In my experience, rubbing their noses in it is going to set people’s minds against you.
I think you are making the same mistake they do. You can’t very well get someone to help fix a problem if you don’t let them know the problem exists. Just discussing or explaining white privilege isn’t the same as scolding someone about it. The folks who take it that way are going to take it that way no matter what terms we use, because they don’t want to admit it exists.
I’m so white it looks like my veins got drawn on with a blue sharpie. I went to a segregated prep school.
The “you are playing a multi player game on easy mode and currently you are economically roflstomping the people who are playing on hard mode, and bragging about how well you are doing. Is that who you want to be?” argument was what got to me.
Granted, I used to be male-passing, well paid, healthy, decent looking, I got dealt a very good hand, so that presentation of it found me where I was.
I personally don’t like the idea of the phrase toxic masculinity because I don’t believe that the masculine energy is toxic in and of itself. I feel like a more appropriate term would be pseudo masculinity. Because that implies that people are not naturally this way, but they are forcing themselves to act this way in pursuit of some perceived ideal of masculinity.
I mean, humans are frequently guilty of using terms that mean a very specific thing in a much broader sense as a shorthand for clearly communicating what we specifically mean in that instance.
For instance, I have heard people are use the phrase “toxic masculinity” to describe boyfriends that don’t want to do the dishes, when the actual correct term is “lazy piece of shit”, but for some reason, when communicating this information to other people, it is easier for them to ascribe an issue with the sex of the person than an issue with the sex of the person, implying that the only actual fix is to repair your emotional relationship with your own sex instead of accepting that everyone has a human responsibility to contribute to doing the chores around the house.
Once again, I reiterate that masculinity and masculine energy is not toxic, any more than femininity and feminine energy is toxic, and I also exhort anyone that took the time to read this much to do their best to effectively and accurately communicate using specific language rather than emotional shorthand.
I’m also strongly resonating with pseudo-masculinity!
Thanks for coining that wee gem
Love the term “pseudo-masculinity.” It takes away from the gender slant of toxic masculinity, implies anyone can have it, and makes clear it’s not what masculinity should be.
The people who are offended by “toxic masculinity” already use pseudo masculinity to describe everything not toxic masculinity.
All yold I think pseudo masculinity can only be more confusing.
I’m not married to those terms, but I’ve never heard anyone suggest better ones for what they mean. These concepts must be communicated somehow. Got any ideas?
Yes, I suggested that what I’ve seen be effective is suggesting that white people imagine their struggles, but with the added burden of aggressive policing, employment discrimination, housing discrimination, and racism in general. There’s no need to drag the term “privilege” out of its academic context, because it has the baggage of many connotations in vernacular usage. That is, just don’t say the word privilege.
Other commenters have offered some good suggestions. Instead of “toxic masculinity,” I’m partial to The Man Box, which frames the issue as discussing the outside factors that trap men into negative behaviors, rather than implying that they themselves are bad or broken. Wherever the problem actually exists, men are much more receptive this framing.
Instead of ‘male privilege’, “equality” or better, “equity”.
For “toxic masculinity”, I like, “machismo”, or better “toxic machismo”, since not all sorts of masculine pride are harmful.
Instead of pee, poo
Any suggestions? It's pretty useless to write 2 paragraphs that deride how dumb something is while providing zero alternatives to the dumb thing. At that point youre just noise.
I disaggre. I feel like it’s valid to point out an issue to make everyone think about it and possible solutions to it.
There’s always going to be issues with the terms because both any termd chosen will fail to capture both the internal and external perspectives. Toxicity, for example, only shows how a certain type of manhood effects people who come in contact with it. However, a young man searching to be an adult in the world may come across this way of being a man and doesn’t necessarily see it as a good fit. So it’s too “rigid”. I’m not sure we’d want to talk about one’s “rigid manhood” but the quality is notable. We could also use the term “The Man Box” to capture the difficulty of people who struggle to meet these impossible standards.
I also like the term hyper-masculity, but there are worthwhile questions there too.
It’s important that remember that no term will do a great job of capture the full range of issues facing society and men, but even a cursory investigation will show how different vantage points help show and counter balance different terms.
For white privledge, we have to remember that in this society the baseline or default is white, male, young, affluent, etc. These people don’t get that suspicious look or assumption that they aren’t capable or criminal or dishonest like the OP noted. We could say society has minimal friction for them.
So as to not just have some more noise, here are some of my dumb suggestions: white tailwind, white standard, white default, white baseline, presumed while white.
I would point out that I have already shared what I have seen work to get people to understand the issue: Acknowledge that they were not privileged, and to imagine their non-privileged life with the added burden of racism. As for an alternative to toxic masculinity, AlfalFaFail covered some good ones.
You don’t need an alternate route to justify a “bridge out” sign.
Establishing that something is a crap use of energy and attention is perfectly fine as a standalone statement. It needs nothing else.
AFAIK there is a term to describe the phenomenon when talking about discrimation : Intersectionality. But I’ve only read this in German literature so it might not be used internationally.
It describes how discrimination feels is unique and everyone faces different forms of discrimation, but there is some overlap (intersection of circles) between these discriminative experiences. By arguing with Intersectionality your experience is unique to you while still using the umbrella term discrimation. This situation here seems similar to me but instead of the negative discrimination we are talking about the positive privilege. But to me it seems like the concept still applies.
Yes, the term intersectionality was invented here in the states. Conservatives have already poisoned the term and made it into “the oppression Olympics”, rather than what it actually is, a framing device to explain that life is different for a black man and a black woman or for a black woman with a disability.
Cause that’s the real problem here. US has a high-powered counter-propaganda movement called The Chicago Institute & Friends (Conservative Think Tanks). Any term you come up with to explain how our world is fucked up will be subsumed by conservative think tanks into the worst idea imaginable.
Open borders? You mean letting in criminals by the boatload, rather than a measured response to the harms of immigration quotas.
15 minute cities? You mean communist lockdowns, preventing the free movement of people and ideas. Instead of what it actually is, designing urban spaces to accommodate the people that live there instead of devoting every square foot to car dominance.
White privilege? You mean demonizing people for the color of their skin, exactly what MLK didn’t want to happen. Instead of what it actually is, a framing device to show white people that there is more going on in this country than just what directly impacts them.
The fact of the matter is that “the left” (big tent, from liberal to anarchist) doesn’t have a messaging problem, it’s that the opposition has a lot of funding and influence to drown out whatever point the left is attempting to make.
Sartre’s quote on anti-semites here
God damn, it’s this shit right here that I’ve been calling out to my leftists circles whenever the topic of some messaging semantics change comes up. It doesn’t matter what terminology we agree on, bad faith actors from far-right think tanks will churn out BS and blast it on Fox news 24/7 until we sit down again and come up with new terminology because this new one isn’t reaching people like we intended it to reach. It’s a tactic to keep us from actually discussing ways to fix the problems, by instead focusing on those semantics and labels we affix to them.
Intersectionality is in use in English as well, mostly by people with no power.
This comment is a breath of fresh air.
Tons of people use a few correct points about social justice as a way to make themselves publicly noble. It’s horrendous, and it sends the signal to everybody else:
“we’re like you, we don’t care about the underprivileged either, we just leverage their plight differently, for different personal gain”
There’s no greater goal to work towards with such a person. They’re looking to set themselves above you, nothing more. This is not the step with which most group projects begin.
If you don’t want these discussions to continue, you should probably learn to scroll past a meme without engaging in said discussion and keeping it alive.
Shhhhhhhhhh I’m having fun
chuckleslord@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Whatever term you come up with, conservative think tanks will immediately poison. Trying to twist yourself in knots to find the perfect way to express the idea is just failing to understand that the issue is that those who benefit from these systems at the highest levels have every incentive to keep things as they are. They can and will use their captive audience to fuck with any explanation you try to give that’s contrary to the system as it exists today. The only concessions they will give will only be to get enough people to pack it in since “we won”. And those will only be temporary.