busyAnd then there are those of us whose warning label should say, "Activist: push to start." (I actually have that on a red button.) Sure, there are times when I use passing privilege of various types because it's easy and I don't have an infinite supply of spoons, or when I believe that acting up would be dangerous. But there are other times when I'll act up even if it is dangerous, and if I judge it safe, I will make a great big hairy scene. Never get into a blurting contest with an annoyed bard, you will lose. Because I can handle the kind of heat that bigots give off when someone objects to them being bigots, and not everyone can, and I want them to know that civilized people won't let them act like giant assholes without at least calling them out for it.
You can readily identify a queer person who does something like, "Oh gosh, you have a sign that says you don't serve queer people in here. I guess I'll leave this big basket of stuff on the counter and take my $96 queer dollars to a store that is not run by giant assholes."
Just because I'm currently wearing a female body and in a permanent relationship with someone in a male body does not make me any less queer. It's just a little harder to see from this angle, until I open my mouth. As long as someone mistaking me for a heterosexual woman doesn't cause an issue, meh, I usually don't care. Random strangers don't need to know my weirdnesses. But when it IS an issue? Open mouth, fire full broadside.
This is why I got beef with people who claim that privilege is inescapable. It's not. It really, really is not. In fact it's a lot more frangible than people realize. You can very easily lose your privilege if someone else mistakes you for a member of a disadvantaged group or if you are forcibly attached to it for some reason. You can also choose to drop your privilege in the crapper and flush it along with all the other shit you don't need, just by voluntarily associating with disadvantaged people or by verbally dispensing with it when people offer you privilege that you don't want to accept. Bigots will enthusiastically diss you for any or all of that.
It's not all or nothing, of course. If your association is not obvious, then you may have the option of picking your battles. That lets you stay reasonably safe while still making a difference. You might flush one privilege today and a different one tomorrow. You might wax and wane your advertisement of hidden traits based on how much energy you have for a given cause or whether it makes you feel bad to hide (or reveal) what you are. It's your life, your choice.
Just understand that it is a choice, just as bigotry or tolerance are choices.
March 31 2015, 00:54:43 UTC 6 years ago
Yes...
March 31 2015, 01:26:04 UTC 6 years ago
March 31 2015, 01:38:08 UTC 6 years ago
Yes...
March 31 2015, 02:04:03 UTC 6 years ago
What I bring to the arena is a Rhetoric major and Women's Studies minor. Which in a typical debate with a bigot is bringing a tank gun to a fistfight, but oh well, if they don't want their arguments blown to small smithereens then they hadn't ought to pick on my people.
March 31 2015, 01:20:29 UTC 6 years ago Edited: March 31 2015, 01:21:06 UTC
Seriously, how could they tell? I mean, anyone could be gay, in point of fact, the most rabidly homophobic often turn out to be... so I guess you could be justified in legally discriminating against a certain Governor for example.
Yes...
March 31 2015, 01:24:56 UTC 6 years ago
Re: Yes...
March 31 2015, 01:31:19 UTC 6 years ago
but you know.. semi-retired super-villain and all that... and on the wrong side of the pond.
Re: Yes...
March 31 2015, 01:34:35 UTC 6 years ago
I wonder how many times someone has "accidentally" lit a spark to let him escape, just for sheer appreciation of bringing down some homo(sexual)phobic hypocrite.
March 31 2015, 12:49:32 UTC 6 years ago
Nobody is going to mistake me for black. Ever. I come from a Dutch background; I'm pale as milk, I have grey-green eyes and even if I dyed my chestnut hair black and painted myself brown, I'd have a hard time pulling it off.
Yes, absolutely, I can agitate for black people (and arguably should) but that doesn't cost me my white privilege. It doesn't mean I am as likely as a black man to be shot by a policeman "reaching for a gun" that is really my ID. If I am mistreated by a policeman for so agitating, the judge I face will be white or someone who gets along so well with whites that white voters prefer him to the white candidate running against him. The jury will probably be mostly white also. And my speech patterns as I testify will not be the sort of thing that make anyone, however bigoted, assume "thug" or "stupid" and I won't have to spend extra processor cycles speaking in a dialect that isn't my own; I had the good fortune to grow up with this accent and speech patterns.
Now, it's a bit easier to mess with privilege when we're talking straight privilege, or religious privilege, but even so, someone of the standard religion or sexual orientation has the option of fading into the background for a rest--whereas someone who is gay, or of an unpopular religious philosophy either has to maintain a lie, or be open and wait for the blow to fall--they don't have the same option of resting, really, in either configuration.
It's great that you agitate for fair treatment for people and good on you!--I totally encourage you in that. It's just... that is not the same thing as escaping privilege.
April 10 2015, 03:01:39 UTC 6 years ago