[Saya]

Originally Posted by Murder.Of.Crows

See, I just have a problem demonizing the guy in the story. He didn't understand why a difference of setting, time, and approach would matter. Rather than attacking people for their ignorance though, we should at least put the information out there. Of course, that happened during this argument. Many of you were linking quite a bit of things I have never read before. All of which are not even on the top of a majorities minds to even google. Granted, it's a fucked up system, i'm not at all happy with. But, teaching people about privilege's they have is a delicate process. Too much at once, or anger in response, they get scared and bury their heads up their asses. Too little and those affected suffer even longer.

Added: Wow. Honestly forgive my posts a bit. My mind is all over the place recently, reading what I typed. Well... It was all over the place...

There's an Golden Girls episode (and yes I sit at home and watch rerurns and knit while doing so because I'm secretly eighty) where Blanche does something really insensitive to Dorothy and Dorothy gets really mad. Blanche doesn't see the big deal and tells Dorothy she's making a mountain out of a mole hill. Dorothy replies that she's getting upset because she always does things like this, "I've had five years of mole hills!"

That's what its like putting up with a million insensitive guys like the guy in the elevator, mixed in with guys who get angry or violent when you're polite and give them the benefit of the doubt, and after you hear so many stories of women being rraped or murdered because of it. Cuckoo's post illustrated this nicely. Last night I was on talking to Versus on google talk and he was reading off this article where a lot of drive by cat callers shot women who refused advances. I had nightmares last night, most cat callers who bother me do so in a car when I can do absolutely nothing about what they're doing. On top of that, I get very afraid whenever I hear of queer people getting attacked and murdered. And I'm tired of having to worry about this shit. I have to get angry and motivated to change because people are dying and its an emergency. The only other alternative is to accept that I might get murdered someday because of who I am.

Originally Posted by AshleyO

But then I got to thinking. For example; I have the privilege of not having to be aware of my gender or my race. I NEVER have to think of myself as a white man. I can think of myself as a human. I doubt that PoC and other genders enjoy such a privilege. Instead of stripping that aspect of my privilege away; I'm left wondering if it'd be much better if there's a way to extend that particular privilege to everyone so that it's no longer a privilege. Shouldn't we all be able to see ourselves as human?

When I made my second post yesterday and went to work and came back to read, yeah I was glad that you guys sensed what was wrong about the elevator thing but I couldn't believe that no one pointed out until Solumina came in that elevators are scary. To me and to her, we were raised with that and it seemed obvious. Your privilege in this case was your blind spot. Privilege doesn't make you a bad person. It can make you oblivious to things for other people to point out.

Privilege also means more basically to be above the law. To my understanding this is the original meaning. Odds are a white cop can get away with murdering a black person, that's the standard in this society. When Anonymous hit the Neo-Nazi site I remember in one of the pms one of the Nazis said that its easy to kill black people and claim self defense, that he has wronged every but one of the ten commandments and gotten away with it, and he hasn't committed adultery. Its also the standard that a rapist has a really good chance of walking away scott free. For the oppressed, there is no justice. This aspect of privilege obviously can't be stretched without making law or justice meaningless.

What I'm trying to say is privilege doesn't make you evil. Privilege gives you a greater capacity to commit evil. Privilege in this society may even encourage a person to commit that evil. But part of being a good ally is refusing to do so.