3 ms·

As someone who is not a straight-white-male, and someone who grew up feeling generations of oppression against me perpetrated by straight white males, the level

As someone who is not a straight-white-male, and someone who grew up feeling generations of oppression against me perpetrated by straight white males, the level of privilege attributed to that group seems like a gross mischaracterization to me. The abusers are merely a tiny percentage of straight-white-males (lets' call the SWMs for short). Most SWMs are average joes, many are living in poverty, and are folks who I wouldn't want to trade places with. Yes, I may have had some additional challenges to deal with in life due to not being a SWM, but there are plenty of SWMs who've had to deal with their own challenges which I didn't have to face. The real problem IMHO is a set of narcissistic, self-serving, almost psychopathic personalities which our current systems of governance tends to let rise to the top. For example, did you know that CEOs are 5x more likely to meet the clinical definition of "psychopath" than the general public? And if you break it down into the specific negative attributes that they display, you'll prob find an even higher prevalence among the top brass.

handsaway 4y ago
I completely agree the primary root cause of minority oppression is a societal pressure to create division within groups that hold shared economic interests (poor whites and poor blacks, for example). We historically see cross-racial class movements being cracked down on _hard_ by "the powers that be" as it were. See the Reconstruction-era Farmer's Alliance, MLK's Poor People's Campaign, Fred Hampton's organizing, etc. I never meant to imply that 100% of SWMs are directly responsible for the oppression of minorities. I'm simply pointing out that the rhetoric of characterizing a social movement as "anti-white" or "anti-man" or "anti-straight" is in itself a predictable reaction from people accustomed to certain privilege. In fact I would argue that this rhetoric plays directly into the divisions I mentioned previously.

handsaway 4y ago

I completely agree the primary root cause of minority oppression is a societal pressure to create division within groups that hold shared economic interests (poor whites and poor blacks, for example). We historically see cross-racial class movements being cracked down on _hard_ by "the powers that be" as it were. See the Reconstruction-era Farmer's Alliance, MLK's Poor People's Campaign, Fred Hampton's organizing, etc. I never meant to imply that 100% of SWMs are directly responsible for the oppression of minorities. I'm simply pointing out that the rhetoric of characterizing a social movement as "anti-white" or "anti-man" or "anti-straight" is in itself a predictable reaction from people accustomed to certain privilege. In fact I would argue that this rhetoric plays directly into the divisions I mentioned previously.