Out, proud and now quite a bit nervous

Boood · 2021-12-09T11:30:47+00:00

Was just walked through the “privilege wheel” in a team meeting. Was forced to ask why there was no category for biological sex and explain that gender identity is not a suitable replacement. And now I’m throwing JKR and Maya Forstater references around like they’re going out of fashion and thinking, oh fuck. Please hand hold, share stories and advise how I keep it grown-up and employed without caving.

Tallwhitepine · 11/12/2021 13:46

If a transman is taking testosterone they will experience early onset menopause. Inducing menopause in 14 year olds is pretty fucked up.

NoNotMeNoSiree · 10/12/2021 22:48

@titchy

the most important thing to remember is that not only women experience menopause

Who else experiences menopause then? Transmen clearly don't given the cocktail of drugs they take suppresses oestrogen.

Some trans men will, you won't speak for all trans men. Yes, some won't due to medication /drugs but others will as every one will be at different stages or maybe not even taking drugs. Bit simplified to say everyone's the same.

ArabellaScott · 10/12/2021 17:47

@LobsterNapkin

As far as reflecting on privilege, what seems to me like a more useful exercise is what my Nana always recommended. Count your blessings, and try and remain aware of the struggles that the people you meet might have had. Most of which you won't know anything about.

Absolutely.

ArabellaScott · 10/12/2021 17:47

As if the hope is that once everyone fully realises how it all works, it will all miraculously change

Awareness is all very well, but what are the tools to actually deal with sexism, racism, poverty, inequality? Those useful and logical action so often seem to be entirely absent from the discourse of privileges.

We see and are aware of privilege and oppression.

Great.

Then what?

The tacit encouragement seems to be more about encouraging people to come up with the correct internal emotional response, rather than actual concrete measures to address any of these things. As if it is all a question of feelings. As if we are to carefully identify our place and nurse that identity, use it to signal to our 'tribe'. Find the right flag, matching slogan and correct symbols.

I mean, fuck that. That's not helpful.

DdraigGoch · 10/12/2021 17:16

@CatherinaJTV

It looks like that wheel did its job and everyone is thinking about their privileges?

But not in the way it intended.

LobsterNapkin · 10/12/2021 16:53

As far as reflecting on privilege, what seems to me like a more useful exercise is what my Nana always recommended. Count your blessings, and try and remain aware of the struggles that the people you meet might have had. Most of which you won't know anything about.

Original poster

Boood · 10/12/2021 16:21

@Flammkuchen

I struggle with this as to me the ultimate privilege is good parents. I came from a not well-off background but my siblings and I all did very well as we had excellent parents who valued education.

The poorest family I knew growing up have also been successful as their mum compensated for their alcoholic dad.

Good parenting can transcend class, race etc

That’s an interesting point, and of course the reverse is also true. There are plenty of upper class, white heterosexual males whose privilege got them an elite education where the level of abuse they suffered set them up nicely for a lifetime of poor mental health, difficulty maintaining relationships, addiction… obviously not the focus of feminist interest, but I don’t think any of us would deny that they exist and that privilege hasn’t done them many favours.

OP posts:

BloodyFeetByMoonlight · 10/12/2021 16:09

As if the hope is that once everyone fully realises how it all works, it will all miraculously change

This stood out to me Manderley because it reminds me so much of doing the Freedom programme and the overwhelming distress of “if we can just explain in the right way why what they are doing is hurting us they will ‘realise’ and stop”

When of course anyone that cares will make an effort at day dot and those who don’t give a fuck already know and so will never make an effort.

Those that chose to use their privilege to hurt others don’t stop after being shown a wheel, doing a programme or whatever, because they see the benefit of behaving as they do and sort of crucially if they already have power with privilege there is no way to stop them.

Diversity and inclusion training may help people think about their advantage but I’m pretty sure the ones that wield the most power and privilege are the least likely to make any effort to change.

In fact one might argue that flagging up vulnerabilities or marginalisations might just give those with the most power & privilege
a) more ways to abuse that p&p,
b) more info on who that p&p can be wielded against
or
c) a range of options to identify into as a way to disguise/excuse/continue to impose their p&p while simultaneously claiming more victimhood than everyone they are wielding their p&p over.

Abusive people always find a way to abuse, will rarely if ever admit to it, or change.

So diversity and inclusion sessions mostly serve to lecture those who are probably quite decent already - committed racists, classists, sectarian(ists?) religious bigots, sexists etc do not and will not give a fuck.

And I imagine find the rest of us tied in knots, trying to do our best, quite funny, because it diverts our attentions & energy inward away from questioning what they are doing.

OopsadayZ · 10/12/2021 16:08

This really pisses me off.... FFS!

I'm not cis-female. I'm female.

So women get marginalised YET again.

I think female should be on the outside of the stupid 'privilege' wheel.

frogswimming · 10/12/2021 16:03

Erm that wheel misses religion off too. Which would vary from country to country. And nationality. And who decided cis women are closer to power than than trans people? Based on what? It's so simplified. Those characteristics could make you closer to power at some times and not others. Oh my god it's infuriating.

Beowulfa · 10/12/2021 15:56

@Flammkuchen

I struggle with this as to me the ultimate privilege is good parents. I came from a not well-off background but my siblings and I all did very well as we had excellent parents who valued education.

The poorest family I knew growing up have also been successful as their mum compensated for their alcoholic dad.

Good parenting can transcend class, race etc

That's interesting, isn't it.

My mum left school at 16 (secondary modern) with two crap O levels, was a low-paid secretary and then a housewife; but she taught me to read and write before I started school, and crucially to love reading. It's the most valuable gift I've ever received.

LobsterNapkin · 10/12/2021 15:49

@NoNotMeNoSiree

Yes, I think class should be on there too, it'd definitely be relevant here in the UK. Bit of a big omission, but if class isn't like it is here in other countries, will maybe explain why it has been left off. Would be good to have the wheel with class on there too. I still think it's a good idea to have though to make people think about the privileges they do have (like white and straight for example) - nothing wrong with being aware of it, can make you more empathetic towards other people's struggles and that's a good thing, surely? Doesn't mean that you're desperate to be oppressed

My guess is that they just didn't think about it.

However, it's also probably that they are using the same ideas that we might call class under different names, likely wealth and race. But even in a UK context, the term class isn't all that clear. It can mean someone with cultural ties to a certain class, or it can mean marxist class categories. Or some combination of the two.

LobsterNapkin · 10/12/2021 15:43

@SirSamuelVimes

It might be an interesting exercise if it were a) produced for the UK and therefore included class, which is an enormous factor in our society in a eat that it isn't in Canada, and b) included biological sex.

White, working class boys have the worst educational outcomes of all groups. Massively, staggeringly so, every single year. By nature of their class they are overwhelmingly likely to also be cis-gender (very little patience with gender ideology in the working class school used to teach in) and if they are gay, they are most likely closeted at school age. So they are white, male, cis, heterosexuals - they should be rolling in privilege! And yet they are at the absolute bottom of the heap.

That's why it's rubbish. It requires us to ignore the actual world we live in.

Your second paragraph here is really important because it reveals that there is a very significant problem with the whole attempt at creating a hierarchy like this, even an "intersectional" one.

People seem to sometimes imagine that the fact that white working class boys do so poorly is in spite of the advantage they have in being white. The idea being that if they were black and working class with all the same individual issues, they would be better off. They can draw on white male privilege even though maybe not class or education or wealth privilege.

But in reality, when you attach white and male to these other things, they cease to function as an advantage at all in many situations, they actually become a social disadvantage.

I suspect this failure comes from identity politics conceptualizing these categories as abstractions, rather than as attempts to describe material processes and conditions. The same kind of problem that can't even start to tease out how race or poverty are correlated to phenomena like police violence, and sees the question as deeply offensive.

RepentMotherfucker · 10/12/2021 15:36

@NoNotMeNoSiree

Yes, I think class should be on there too, it'd definitely be relevant here in the UK. Bit of a big omission, but if class isn't like it is here in other countries, will maybe explain why it has been left off. Would be good to have the wheel with class on there too. I still think it's a good idea to have though to make people think about the privileges they do have (like white and straight for example) - nothing wrong with being aware of it, can make you more empathetic towards other people's struggles and that's a good thing, surely? Doesn't mean that you're desperate to be oppressed

Do you think sex should be on there?

The person who made it clearly thinks women are less privileged than men because they included aspects of that in the gender and sexuality bits.

But weirdly they've ignored it as an actual factor. I wonder why?

I don't wonder why, it's because this kind of navel gazing bollocks is inherently misogynistic

Ereshkigalangcleg · 10/12/2021 14:49

I'm a name changer and being tongue in cheek.

Ah

Dinosaurhearmeroar · 10/12/2021 14:24

Well done 👏!!!

AdamRyan · 10/12/2021 14:21

Which sex are they?
I'm a name changer and being tongue in cheek. Couldn't think of anything to say about non binary people without a risk of being deleted. Suffice to say I think people eho go through menopause are women but there are a number of people who don't identify that way.
Why that's "the most important thing" about menopause I don't know

LobsterNapkin · 10/12/2021 14:17

@SirSamuelVimes

It might be an interesting exercise if it were a) produced for the UK and therefore included class, which is an enormous factor in our society in a eat that it isn't in Canada, and b) included biological sex.

White, working class boys have the worst educational outcomes of all groups. Massively, staggeringly so, every single year. By nature of their class they are overwhelmingly likely to also be cis-gender (very little patience with gender ideology in the working class school used to teach in) and if they are gay, they are most likely closeted at school age. So they are white, male, cis, heterosexuals - they should be rolling in privilege! And yet they are at the absolute bottom of the heap.

That's why it's rubbish. It requires us to ignore the actual world we live in.

I really disagree that class isn't significant in Canada - or the US for that matter.

I am actually pretty surprised anyone would say that, how would that even be possible in a capitalist society? If you are an Irving, or a Trudeau, or even a Thomson which has less name recognition, that is hugely advantageous in your everyday life.

And even if you just mean visible cultural connection to class via things like language, that's not really as opaque in North America as a lot of Brits seem to imagine.

Flammkuchen · 10/12/2021 14:15

I struggle with this as to me the ultimate privilege is good parents. I came from a not well-off background but my siblings and I all did very well as we had excellent parents who valued education.

The poorest family I knew growing up have also been successful as their mum compensated for their alcoholic dad.

Good parenting can transcend class, race etc

Ereshkigalangcleg · 10/12/2021 14:14

Which sex are they?

AdamRyan · 10/12/2021 14:09

All of them?
No, only the menstruators obviously

oviraptor21 · 10/12/2021 14:06

Transwomen currently have a whole lot more privilege than women in many spheres (prisons, rape crisis centres, Olympic sport, to name a few). That doesn't seem to be shown on the wheel.

Manderleyagain · 10/12/2021 14:02

I think its an inbuilt flaw in some current progressive activism - we are encouraged to listen to others with lived experience, think about & check our own privilege, understand the intersections of different privileges and oppression, reflect on our own position, listen again to people with less privilege... And then what? Its an endless cycle if info gathering, listening and reflecting. As if the hope is that once everyone fully realises how it all works, it will all miraculously change. The 'bring about transformations', 'work towards justice and liberation' are never practically laid out.

It's OK to think about how ppl are disadvantaged or advantaged in different ways. I just thought that wheel wasn't great even though it had some interesting factors. It's missing some main ones, and the way each segment is equal isn't true to life. If you have very little money, no stable income, no way to predict what your income will be going forward, that disadvantage will trump most of the other ways that you could be privileged. Lots of things stem from that one.

There's something v individualistic about it that I can't quite put my finger on.

Bit pp is right that it works as a conversation starter.

LobsterNapkin · 10/12/2021 14:02

@RobotValkyrie

That wheel looks both interesting (because it covers many categories, e.g. language, housing), and really flawed, in that it assumes a very rigid hierarchy of privilege.

For instance, some white people suffer racism too (e.g. Travellers), some English speakers are discriminated against based on their accent (e.g. because they sound "Northern"), etc.
In some fields (e.g. tech), some degree of neurodivergence is actually valued.

The omission of sex is glaring, if only due to biological differences (see Invisible Women). Secondary sexual characteristics such as size or voice pitch would also be relevant. Shorter people with higher pitch voices are typically overlooked in many social situations.

Yes, and sometimes being "lower down" can be advantageous, which is why you get people self-declaring as members of disadvantaged groups on things like university or scholarship applications in some instances. For example.

Power can be leveraged in all kinds of ways.

Ereshkigalangcleg · 10/12/2021 13:52

Non binary people

All of them?