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this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
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This is so important, and so poorly understood by many people who aren't heavily involved in intersectional discourse. It's what leads to people claiming there's no such thing as privilege because their own experience as a working class white cishet male hasn't been spectacular. And of course this misunderstanding isn't helped by a deliberate attempt to suppression the correct understanding of what privilege means by the right.
This is going to be a controversial take, but I believe this confusion comes from applying the wrong word to the concept being conveyed. The word "privelege" means to grant an advantage/immunity to an individual above the usual rights/advangates people get. I acknowledge that language evolves and the word privelege can evolve to mean a lack of impediments that some people suffer under. But that sort of evolution usually takes generations.
There's a perspective matter at play as well: If the "baseline" rights and advantages of "usual" are somewhere below what "joe average" white man gets, then Joe isn't average any more. And that's a perspective shift we need the whole population to acknowledge.
Personally, I'm fine with acknowledging that I don't suffer the impediments of race or gender that many people do. I suffered under different impediments though: As a kid I was very small, not really having my teenage growth spurt until after I left school. I was also poor. These impediments, while not related to race or gender were no less real. Growing up, I sure didn't feel priveleged. Does a gay, financially secure black girl feel priveleged? I recognise that today, I am priveleged the way that term is applied in modern discourse. I am also neither short, nor poor any longer. But for all that, I still feel like "joe average".
I can see how telling a white man who is burdened with some sort of impediment that he's "priveleged" because he doesn't suffer under the impediments you suffer is going to be a hard-sell. I believe we'd all be better served with a different word to convey this concept. We already acknowledge that the current term of "privelege" is misinterpreted and misunderstood. I am not smart nor connected enough to come up with a new word and spread it, though.
Your third paragraph is a perfect example of why it's so important to talk about these things intersectionally. Because yup, there is definitely a "tall privilege" for people who are taller, and a "pretty privilege" for people who are more conventionally attractive. And the privilege of wealth and class are the most obvious and intense of all. And anyone can have any combination of different privileges, gaining an advantage or not in any number of hundreds of different aspects of life.
Could there be a better word used? I dunno, maybe. I'm reminded of arguments around things like "defund the police". The argument is that even if the term isn't literally the most accurate, it gets across the broad message in a pithy way that's much easier to spread. In the case of privilege, I believe it may be an academic term that has breached the containment of academia and is being unfortunately used among a public that doesn't have the necessary on-ramping to understand what it means with context. Like what happened to "critical race theory".
It would be wrong to tell someone in the broad sense that they "are privileged". Instead, a person may have formed a specific opinion due to their privilege. To use some examples from this article, a man might not understand how it can feel unsafe to walk at night due to his male privilege. A woman might not understand men's inability to express emotion due to female privilege. For what should be obvious reasons, some kinds of privilege are more significant in more areas of life than others, so the line can get fuzzy when it comes to whether saying someone has privilege is appropriate. But it's still worth paying attention to.
@Zagorath @Nath when your language switched from describing "a woman" to "female", I found myself reacting to those terms. It's none of my business really. Though I want to say two things. One, that a woman can experience privilege, but a female not so much. That is, female is an attribute, and as such is completely inadequate to describe a woman, who has much more than just one attribute. The second thing is that privilege relates to the experience of life, where the subject of the privilege does not encounter a particular struggle. Not only that, because they never encounter it, they aren't even aware that someone else might do. Tall people know they are tall. How can you know what someone has experienced, unless you know them well? How many privileged people can you say you know that well? Not only that, it's probably likely perceived as a pejorative, because it points out what someone else doesn't know. I don't necessarily agree with the academic containment bit. Though I think you make some good points.
Sorry, did I do that? I thought I (certainly, it was my intent to) only used female in the sense of as an adjective. Describing "female privilege" as a counterpart to the "male privilege" which is much more talked about (and far, far more prevalent).
I think you're wrong to claim that the word female can only be used as an "attribute". But I would say that one should only use it that way, because it's kinda gross and reductive to use it as a noun. Which is why I tried to avoid doing that.
@Zagorath it's a fairly common usage. Though 'male privilege' has the same problem. Referring to a category of privilege as if maleness is it's only attribute, is generalised and problematic. It's quite different from saying "privilege that men tend to have". Calling it male privilege, has an implicit catch-all. The term is describing social categories, as if they are discrete groups, where as in reality what each person is aware of forms more of a spectrum. I think it's problematic because it diverts from the intent of the distinction, which is to highlight the privilege, rather than who necessarily has it. Anyway, like I say it's a fairly common usage, I'm not singling you out. I just reacted to that form of language.