The self-defeating nature of using "Privilege (Theory)" (in societal discourse)

[Akka]

pointing out any issue with somebody's answer constitutes moving the goal posts and therefore all criticism of a response is invalid

The problem is that you didn't point any relevant issue, you just applied double standards.
And in an especially egregious way, because I mean, trying to claim that suicide is unrelated to social aspects is probably one of the worst and most ridiculous argument you could make.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

The problem is of course that "everything else" is never equal when you actually compare individuals.

This premise is flawed, because you can always find an equal. Sure, you can trot out the poor white kid from the trailer park and the black doctor if you are desperate and not particularly concerned about looking like it, but it's a stupid argument. That poor white kid from the trailer park has huge advantages over the poor black kid from the trailer park. That black doctor faces huge challenges that a white doctor doesn't. That applies at absolutely every level of USian society, so anyone trying to claim "oh, no, there's no white privilege" is either a blind idiot or just in denial.

 

[miaasma]

The problem is that you didn't point any relevant issue, you just applied double standards.
And in an especially egregious way, because I mean, trying to claim that suicide is unrelated to social aspects is probably one of the worst and most ridiculous argument you could make.

this is so disingenuous and misrepresentative it's wild that you'd accuse someone else of arguing in bad faith

i never said suicide was "unrelated to social aspects", i said having a lower suicide rate is not a privilege because women were not afforded a lower suicide rate. i even pointed out how complicated of an issue it is. all i said was that it belonged in a different discussion. seriously, how much of that post did you actually read before you puked this up?

i'd also love it if you pointed out where any double standard was applied because to me, it looks like all i did was zero in on what "privilege" in any meaningful sense means and point out that his post did not address it. women being afforded a "privilege" as a byproduct of rules enforced predominantly by men is not the same as men having privilege through being socially dominant. but, sure, if you really want to call that a double standard i'll let you think that

 

[Birdjaguar]

The problem is of course that "everything else" is never equal when you actually compare individuals. Is a tall, able-bodied, black female from a wealthy background more privileged than a disabled, white male from a poor background? Well, I would say that as a generalization we cannot really judge that. Our model is simply not accurate enough with only those 5 attributes, and that is further complicated by the fact that we do not know what goals in life these people have.

So how do we increase the accuracy? Well, we add more attributes, right? But that's exactly the problem. To make an accurate statement about a population, we need to add so many attributes, that we inevitably shrink down the group that we're targeting. The more accurate we get, the less useful our results.

This is what I see as the inherent problem with privilege theory, the more accurate you make it, the less useful it becomes. All it can deliver is rough approximations about groups that tell us nothing about the individual. That's fine in the context of academia - as far as I understand it, sometimes you need exactly that, rough approximations that are accurate within the model because of the sample size - but it makes it absolutely useless for everyday discourse.

Telling a person that they're privileged because they're a "cis white male" ("aka scum") ignores the fact that they may have been born into poverty, that their mother might have died after giving birth to them which might have left them with a scarring mental health problem that might have ruined their life to a point where they've lived on the street since they were 16.

You simply don't know these things about a person, so all you do by telling a person that they're privileged is to silence a voice who might have something to say that you should have listened to. Chance might be on your side if you're judging a person based on a set of characteristics that have a high likelihood of being associated with privilege, but if you do it often enough, you're bound to find yourself punching down at a person who is less privileged than you and the people you think you're fighting for.

Which is why you shouldn't ever make blank statements about a demographic, even if the average person in that demographic is privileged.

Your thoughts?

The whole idea encompassed by "privileged" is just today's way of articulating inequality and perhaps unfairness. And yes at a broad level some of it makes sense, but very quickly as complexity increases, it becomes mostly useless. I think the real question is do we or even can we balance the innate unfairness and unlucky aspects of life to make things better for more rather than fewer people.

 

[NovaKart]

I wasn't "dismissing" it - I am trying to say that framing these things as something women do to men is obviously incorrect. There is no question that men are also harmed by patriarchy. But women aren't responsible for the presumption in favor of the mother in family law cases. They aren't responsible for the fact that they don't get conscripted. They, in short, are not responsible for how the patriarchy works.



Okay, so you're in denial about the nature of our societies, nothing I didn't already know.

Why does sexism have to be something that one gender does to another?

Men don’t hold all the cards in today’s society and it takes only a brief look at the current situation to see that.

 

[NovaKart]

do you think about why women might do this, though, or do your thoughts about it end there? where do you think beauty standards for women began? do you think they sprang up from nowhere? do you think society is by and large patriarchal?

women adhering to beauty standards and judging other women for not doing so (or not doing so 'properly') may be, on the surface, participating in what you think is sexism, but all they're really doing is playing into a larger set of expectations that men have, historically, projected onto women

sexism also neither begins or ends with judging other people's appearances - i know you never said that it did, but if we're going to discuss 'privilege' we can't limit ourselves to comparatively benign manifestations of whatever ism we're discussing - and while your opinion may be that women judge other women more often than men (i'd amend this to women judge other women differently than men do), something as socially ingrained as sexism cannot only be analyzed by what is spoken out loud

I don’t think it really matters where it began. Society has changed and evolved. And who said sexism begins and ends with judging appearances? This is just one example.

 

[Lexicus]

Why does sexism have to be something that one gender does to another?

I don't understand the question. I am not even trying to say this is not sexism, I am trying to say it is not sexism from women toward men that is responsible for these problems that men are experiencing. Because the whole context in which these issues are brought up inevitably seems to be trying to prove that men aren't the privileged sex in our societies, which is just patent nonsense.

Men don’t hold all the cards in today’s society and it takes only a brief look at the current situation to see that.

So this leads us to: which cards don't they hold? then you cite a bunch of examples of men being screwed over by other men, and we come around to exactly the same point in the discussion.

 

[Naskra]

So this leads us to: which cards don't they hold?

Women can annihilate all of posterity at will. That's power.

 

[Akka]

this is so disingenuous and misrepresentative it's wild that you'd accuse someone else of arguing in bad faith

Pot, meet kettle.

i never said suicide was "unrelated to social aspects", i said having a lower suicide rate is not a privilege because women were not afforded a lower suicide rate. i even pointed out how complicated of an issue it is. all i said was that it belonged in a different discussion. seriously, how much of that post did you actually read before you puked this up?

So basically what I said : you were given a clear example what was asked ("what are the advantages of being a woman") and you just twisted it into "well, it's due to psychological differences between men and women, and lots of other factors, but it doesn't count as a privilege". In other words, you dismiss it by redefining what a privilege is.
So I'm just going to ask you, about men commiting effective suicide at a MUCH higher rate than women :

do you think about why men might do this, though, or do your thoughts about it end there?

i'd also love it if you pointed out where any double standard was applied because to me, it looks like all i did was zero in on what "privilege" in any meaningful sense means and point out that his post did not address it. women being afforded a "privilege" as a byproduct of rules enforced predominantly by men is not the same as men having privilege through being socially dominant. but, sure, if you really want to call that a double standard i'll let you think that

Ah, so women having to wear make-up and dress and so on and being judged on it is sexist and a sign of male privilege, but men having to repress emotion, not ask for help and being mocked for any failure is just a byproduct that doesn't count.
You're right, no double standard and no bad faith here

(and for the record, I still think that men have it better, but your dishonesty still disgusts me)

 

[Lexicus]

do you think about why men might do this, though, or do your thoughts about it end there?

In the United States could could almost entirely do away with the disparity by taking away the guns.

 

[Akka]

Yes yes, as usual I know that the US is the limit of your thoughts and your horizon.
But you are on the Internet, you have a significant amount of the world's knowledge at your fingertips. I'm pretty sure even you could probably manage to get statistics from some other irrelevant part of the world that is not the US in order to get a clue about what happens elsewhere and notice if guns really are the difference on this point.

 

[Broken_Erika]

Yes yes, as usual I know that the US is the limit of your thoughts and your horizon.
But you are on the Internet, you have a significant amount of the world's knowledge at your fingertips. I'm pretty sure even you could probably manage to get statistics from some other irrelevant part of the world that is not the US in order to get a clue about what happens elsewhere and notice if guns really are the difference on this point.

Who has time for that? People have no time for such trivial nonsense and are busy doing important things, such as arguing with strangers and looking at cat pics!

 

[Lexicus]

Yes yes, as usual I know that the US is the limit of your thoughts and your horizon.
But you are on the Internet, you have a significant amount of the world's knowledge at your fingertips. I'm pretty sure even you could probably manage to get statistics from some other irrelevant part of the world that is not the US in order to get a clue about what happens elsewhere and notice if guns really are the difference on this point.

Eh, you right. The US isn't by any means an outlier here. Though there is plenty of research establishing that access to firearms is correlated with suicide rates, and that men tend to use guns to commit suicide far more often than women. Anyway, I digress.

Clearly, the first step in reducing the "suicide gap" is to abolish feminism. Feminists and women more generally obviously are exerting some sort of spooky power to cause this problem.

 

[miaasma]

Pot, meet kettle.

So basically what I said : you were given a clear example what was asked ("what are the advantages of being a woman") and you just twisted it into "well, it's due to psychological differences between men and women, and lots of other factors, but it doesn't count as a privilege". In other words, you dismiss it by redefining what a privilege is.
So I'm just going to ask you, about men commiting effective suicide at a MUCH higher rate than women :

do you think about why men might do this, though, or do your thoughts about it end there?

Ah, so women having to wear make-up and dress and so on and being judged on it is sexist and a sign of male privilege, but men having to repress emotion, not ask for help and being mocked for any failure is just a byproduct that doesn't count.
You're right, no double standard and no bad faith here

(and for the record, I still think that men have it better, but your dishonesty still disgusts me)

oh, i see, so i was trying to communicate with somebody who has a banana boat understanding of societal privilege and power dynamics

next time a woman attempts suicide and survives i'll tell her that her social privilege helped her out

totally did not see this coming

trust me, i'm totally surprised to see this bile coming from you

this is the sort of brazen cluelessness i visit this website for

Moderator Action: Knock off the trolling. Now. --LM
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Lemon Merchant]

Moderator Action: If you people are going to be snarky at each other, there will be repercussions. I suggest that some of you adopt a more civil manner of discourse, or at least try being a little less insulting to each other before this gets out of hand and we have a heated argument. Ignore this mod notice at your peril.

 

[Akka]

Clearly, the first step in reducing the "suicide gap" is to abolish feminism. Feminists and women more generally obviously are exerting some sort of spooky power to cause this problem.

Actually, no, that's exactly the opposite, and the feminism is right on the money on this one. In fact, if you actually bothered to read my posts instead of just making all your conversations in your head where people are put in boxes and follow your scripts, you would have noticed that I already pointed the likely reason :

Ah, so women having to wear make-up and dress and so on and being judged on it is sexist and a sign of male privilege, but men having to repress emotion, not ask for help and being mocked for any failure is just a byproduct that doesn't count.

My bet is that suicide rates are higher mainly because of the pressure put on men by society (I guess the shorthand would be "patriarchy") and the internalized shame of not being able to meet up impossible standards (notice, yet again, that it doesn't mean women don't have also a lot of expectations piled on them to hold up to another set of standards, but they are different and cause different problems).

 

[Lexicus]

My bet is that suicide rates are higher mainly because of the pressure put on men by society (I guess the shorthand would be "patriarchy") and the internalized shame of not being able to meet up impossible standards (notice, yet again, that it doesn't mean women don't have also a lot of expectations piled on them to hold up to another set of standards, but they are different and cause different problems).

But you think that this situation where men succeed in killing themselves more often is best framed as a "female privilege"?

 

[Ryika]

People say Make Up is a negative factor for women, but it's actually a "female privilege". Using and improving your looks to get ahead in your career is something that women can do much more efficiently than men.

 

[Senethro]

People say Make Up is a negative factor for women, but it's actually a "female privilege". Using and improving your looks to get ahead in your career is something that women can do much more efficiently than men.

Laying out snark bait while the mods are on alert is dishonourable.

 

[Akka]

But you think that this situation where men succeed in killing themselves more often is best framed as a "female privilege"?

I'm pretty sure the whole "check your privilege, bro" meme comes mostly from wanting to remind people that their privilege is having what they consider "normal" being a better situation than what someone else from a different subgroup consider "normal".

I'm also pretty sure I could find many of your own posts crying about "white privilege" by comparing disproportionate alcoholism/drug/other self-inflicted woe that can find their roots in societal situation among minorities compared to whites (no, I can't be arsed to check, in the very very very very very unlikely case I'm wrong, more power to you), but somehow you seem to not want to apply the exact same reasoning when it goes the other way.

I could also formulate it differently : do you think that women being three times less likely to kill themselves isn't an advantage of women over men ?