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>What would you make of a heterosexual, cisgendered man saying that he doesn't really think people with non-standard gender identities are discriminated against

>What would you make of a heterosexual, cisgendered man saying that he doesn't really think people with non-standard gender identities are discriminated against? So now that I'm a member of an "unprivileged" viewpoint, I'm granted the privilege of determining what constitutes ignorance and privilege in other people--you granted it directly by asking me. In this way you are propagating the inequality of privilege. It is enough for me that a viewpoint is wrong; I do not need to associate it with a group. (Or at least, I do my best.) We are in a war over privilege and who has it: the honest attempt is to balance out the economic and societal privilege with privilege in discourse, privilege in judgment, who has a 'right' to feel a certain way. The dishonest attempt is where selfish action leads those who have power to hold onto it. In a theater of discourse as muddled as the internet, as cacophonous as our cities and streets, the combat is about shutting down viewpoints, which is _not about who is right_. Privilege is not a coherent, sane, or consistent concept. I work as a programmer, and am privileged financially as a result. Should I give up this privilege when the simple fact is _society needs programmers?_ By having privilege do I forfeit the right to be proud of my career? Is there a net privilege quantity that I possess? The only determinative answer I have to these questions is the last one, and it is a solid 'No,' because _each privilege I supposedly possess/lack acts along a different axes_, and sometimes a privilege or lack thereof provides benefits and consequences simultaneously. Discrimination, likewise, is not a coherent, sane, or consistent concept. "Knowing real discrimination"--you reference an absolute concept that is actually based on your personal evaluation of what constitutes real discrimination. There is no real discrimination or fake discrimination: all discrimination is discrimination. Some of it is valid: no one is complaining that Stanford doesn't let in people without graduating middle school. Some of it is invalid: the Westboro nuts are morons. Some of it cannot be helped: despite all the progress of feminism, some women just want to get married and submit to their husband, and we are left with no course but to respect that choice. (I respect it: do you?) And some of it we _recognize_ as technically 'unfair' but are hoping to mitigate larger effects: affirmative action. The OP is making a comment about the wider sea. You didn't really provide any evidence to counter his large-scale commentary except for (implicitly) denying his group any privilege to _even contemplate_ the wider sea. That's the problem with these sorts of discussion: someone can say "We're moving towards equality pretty well, overall" and be attacked with "There is still discrimination X." Both statements evaluate as true, so a fight starts anyway, plus it gets tied up into people's identity (that is something you did _explicitly_, in fact) so people get pissed off. For what it's worth, here's my take: the demographic shift for males in the US is broadly towards lower education and employment. Additionally the heterosexual relationship has an altered power balance: forces in the legal system that were discriminatory against women have been targeted for elimination for the past however many years, while _not_ being targeted for men. How much discriminatory cruft remains from our hetero-normative past? It is almost a given that social forces move too far, take too much, and then have to balance out. There are very few conservative revolutions, very few careful idealists. So how _unlikely_ is it that we have not moved past a point, or will very soon, where the equal status of men and women is ambiguous? Arguably the point of equality is _at _ the point in time where equality is ambiguous, because otherwise there wouldn't be much to argue about! (At the very least we can use this to provide lower and upper bounds, eh?) Your knee-jerk reaction, "No," may very soon be out of date.

Cushman 15y ago
That's certainly a coherent position, but I feel you're talking past me. To wit: So now that I'm a member of an "unprivileged" viewpoint, I'm granted the privilege of determining what constitutes ignorance and privilege in other people--you granted it directly by asking me. You misunderstand. I don't want you to make a determination because you are a member of the oppressed class; I know the answer, and if you had agreed with the hypothetical man's opinion I would have said that you are wrong as well. Discrimination can be documented objectively. I was trying to illustrate that members of the oppressed class are always more acutely aware of their oppression than oppressors are, it's just natural. Likewise, with my farcical "shot in the dark"— of course it wasn't a shot in the dark, I was playing the odds. If we suppose that women are oppressed, then someone who doesn't believe women are oppressed is likely not a woman. For what it's worth, I do agree with the statement that "We're moving towards equality pretty well, overall"— so much so that I wouldn't have put down too much money on ricefield being a dude, because I do actually know quite a few women who don't believe that there is meaningful gender inequality anymore. They are universally in my age group or younger, in high school or college, from middle-class families, and white. They do in fact live in an environment where sexism is mostly about silly things. Now, I think that's awesome. But they're wrong. Anyway, to take this all back around: The privileged tend not to recognize that they are privileged. It doesn't make you a bad person, it's just not something people notice. (It's still unclear to me if this is something you disagree with?) If you want an analogy which doubles as an example: In a relationship, when the man thinks he and his partner share housework roughly equally, the woman tends to think that she is doing much more housework than the men. Statistically speaking, the woman in this case is objectively right; the man is likely doing much less than his share of the housework. He just doesn't realize it. If you ask me, it behooves a man not to rely on his perception of how much housework he is doing, because he knows that that perception is likely to be skewed. (Note that I'm not saying couples should necessarily share housework equally; these are men who want to, and think they are, but are not.) So, likewise, the only thing I'm trying to say here is that if you find yourself thinking, "Hmm, that previously oppressed group seems pretty equal now" that your next thought should be "but then on the other hand I wouldn't expect to notice latent discrimination if it does exist, so maybe I should look into it a little bit closer." Not because you don't get the right to say things are equal if they are; just because they probably aren't.

Cushman 15y ago

That's certainly a coherent position, but I feel you're talking past me. To wit: So now that I'm a member of an "unprivileged" viewpoint, I'm granted the privilege of determining what constitutes ignorance and privilege in other people--you granted it directly by asking me. You misunderstand. I don't want you to make a determination because you are a member of the oppressed class; I know the answer, and if you had agreed with the hypothetical man's opinion I would have said that you are wrong as well. Discrimination can be documented objectively. I was trying to illustrate that members of the oppressed class are always more acutely aware of their oppression than oppressors are, it's just natural. Likewise, with my farcical "shot in the dark"— of course it wasn't a shot in the dark, I was playing the odds. If we suppose that women are oppressed, then someone who doesn't believe women are oppressed is likely not a woman. For what it's worth, I do agree with the statement that "We're moving towards equality pretty well, overall"— so much so that I wouldn't have put down too much money on ricefield being a dude, because I do actually know quite a few women who don't believe that there is meaningful gender inequality anymore. They are universally in my age group or younger, in high school or college, from middle-class families, and white. They do in fact live in an environment where sexism is mostly about silly things. Now, I think that's awesome. But they're wrong. Anyway, to take this all back around: The privileged tend not to recognize that they are privileged. It doesn't make you a bad person, it's just not something people notice. (It's still unclear to me if this is something you disagree with?) If you want an analogy which doubles as an example: In a relationship, when the man thinks he and his partner share housework roughly equally, the woman tends to think that she is doing much more housework than the men. Statistically speaking, the woman in this case is objectively right; the man is likely doing much less than his share of the housework. He just doesn't realize it. If you ask me, it behooves a man not to rely on his perception of how much housework he is doing, because he knows that that perception is likely to be skewed. (Note that I'm not saying couples should necessarily share housework equally; these are men who want to, and think they are, but are not.) So, likewise, the only thing I'm trying to say here is that if you find yourself thinking, "Hmm, that previously oppressed group seems pretty equal now" that your next thought should be "but then on the other hand I wouldn't expect to notice latent discrimination if it does exist, so maybe I should look into it a little bit closer." Not because you don't get the right to say things are equal if they are; just because they probably aren't.