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See the above story is pretty alien in Australia as well - 25% of our population was born overseas, and a further 20% are only second generation. We all mixed and played freely with each other and that's where the egalitarian concept shines through - regardless of skin colour - we were all in the s&^t together in most of this countries working poor suburbs.
I have been to the US and seen the apartheid system there first hand, but can't see a way forward when people throw around the terms 'privilege', as it is really really divisive and belittles the very real problems people might have - that they don't feel terribly privileged when they are white working class poor struggling to eke out a living and seen as 'rednecks' or whatever other socioeconomical slur people want to throw out there.
If there's going to be change, you need everyone on board - and to get that you can't come from a position of shaming and alienating people, the message has to be positive or you get a backlash pretty quickly.
Anyhow, its the sentiment that is attached to the words 'Cis' 'Privilege' etc that I don't like - a word is a word, but they seem to be tabled by people who often load them up with emotional baggage and use them as weapons.
"Cis" doesn't bother me at all. Once "trans" became a category, "non-trans" also became a category, and "cis" is easier to say and write than "people who aren't trans."
"Heteronormative" is fun to say [says it aloud] but I've usually found that someone who uses the word probably has a different worldview and different interests than me. You want more depictions of homosexuals in popular culture? I'm not opposed to that, like, at all, but, uh, wouldn't you rather have a socialist revolution?
"Privilege" I could do without. I can totally understand why, in the late sixties, Maoists were running around telling white radicals they had to renounce their white skin privilege and unite with the NLF and the Black Panthers, but grad students and academics looking down from their ivory towers and telling the white working class that they're privileged? In 2014? Yeah, that rankles.
As usual, very interesting.
Yep.has the term become insulting in Australia?"Privilege" will start fights in the playground... It's classist, a large majority of Australians believe the myth that we are classless. Calling somebody posh, rich, and so on is a prelude to punching them in the face.
Cis is not a term I have heard applied to anybody by my family, friends, and colleagues in the Australian LBGQIT community. My work place is probably one of the most TIQLGB friendly companies in the world (not bad for a Bank).
"Unity is our LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or intersex) community and allies network. It works to increase awareness and support the Group’s LGBTI employees and friends." From the Commonwealth Bank of Australia's diversity policy.
I also find the word harsh to the ear and aesthetically un-pleasing it looks like the t has been left off the end. I don't mind a term being used for my orientation and gender but can't they find something nicer.
Thank you for your input, 8d.
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See the above story is pretty alien in Australia as well - 25% of our population was born overseas, and a further 20% are only second generation. We all mixed and played freely with each other and that's where the egalitarian concept shines through - regardless of skin colour - we were all in the s&^t together in most of this countries working poor suburbs.
I have been to the US and seen the apartheid system there first hand, but can't see a way forward when people throw around the terms 'privilege', as it is really really divisive and belittles the very real problems people might have - that they don't feel terribly privileged when they are white working class poor struggling to eke out a living and seen as 'rednecks' or whatever other socioeconomical slur people want to throw out there.
If there's going to be change, you need everyone on board - and to get that you can't come from a position of shaming and alienating people, the message has to be positive or you get a backlash pretty quickly.
Anyhow, its the sentiment that is attached to the words 'Cis' 'Privilege' etc that I don't like - a word is a word, but they seem to be tabled by people who often load them up with emotional baggage and use them as weapons.
Trouble is it's a real thing, whatever you call. Not talking about it won't fix the problem either and whatever word you come up with will get loaded up with emotional baggage because there's emotional baggage in the whole situation. Whether it's race or gender or sexual orientation or whatever group it is.
I mean, they made up "cis" and it's already too offensive to use. Should we just go back to calling cis-people "normal"? No issues with that, right?
It's not the word that's the problem. People don't want to face the actual issues.Shall we just shut down all talk of the concept of privilege and pretend it's not easier to be white in the US? Or male? Or straight? Or to have your assigned gender match your gender identity? Or to be rich? Or Christian?...
I never said it wasn't real just that this isn't the best way to go about resolution. Identifying a problem is important, but we need to move beyond simple identification, lest it just become another slur used by one group angry at another.
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You can talk about it, and it might even be a real thing, that's not really the beef here - the problem is that the label has become worn out and is now toxic.
That the label some people chose only recently has already become too offensive to use should serve as some indication around how that label was used.
It also doesn't help one iota when people say 'hey, I don't think I like your label - it is starting to offend' and then you immediately start posturing on the attack, claiming that you are under attack - that you are asked not to call people a name they don't like is in no way shape or form the same as being told you can't discuss the issue. It would be like saying you can't talk about racism without calling people the N word on a constant basis.
You are victim blaming people, and then trying to play the victim.
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Neither Shifty or I iare saying, you shouldn't acknowledge the advantages of birth.
I am very lucky to be a "white" male living in a western liberal democracy with a good income, university education, with all the services available to me in a modern city.
Once you have done that then what?
Do I try less hard so others can catch up?
Do I treat people any different than I do now... I don't judge people on their gender or colour of thier skin or sexual orientation?
Do apologise to everybody for being born?
Should point out the advantages of my birth before I start a conversation.
What should I do once I acknowledge my privilege?
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If nobody has yet done so, I hereby propose that the preferred slur against people who identify with the gender they were born with be "cissy."
(Thank you for the kind words, Comrade Freehold. When the workers revolution comes, we'll get you last.)
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Good point 8D
If I pointed to the 8th Dwarf and said "Mate, privilege", there is really nothing he can do about it. He might also punch me in the nose.
If I was having a chat to him and pointed to another person and said "Mate, disadvantaged" then we could actually start doing something about fixing the discrepancy. When we find "Disadvantaged" it rankles our national concept of "a fair go for all", and we put things in place to fix it.
As a nation we don't always get it terribly right, sometimes we make a mess of it (like us mishandling asylum seekers vs economic refugees) but more often we get it mostly there - multiracial harmony, gay rights, getting women the vote etc. Unfortunately we are having a conservative moment, as we occasionally do - but it wont be long until we are advancing again.
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Which is why I definitely do not appreciate being called a privileged person just because of my beliefs, gender, sexuality, nationality, skin color or anything else on which I have absolutely zero control.
This part right here is incredibly interesting and very telling.
Nothing offensive meant against you, Raven.
Carry on, folks.
Cis can be a negative thing.
cis(pi) = -1
Say what one will about goblins, communism, or the drug-addled posts of Comrade Anklebiter, but one thing you have to give me is that I (almost) always show my work. I took the liberty of re-posting a post from the Gender Sex Politics thread that went up while Comrade Truth was away.
---
Marxism, Intersectionality and White Skin Privilege
Mostly just posting here to bookmark the following articles, which I haven't necessarily read all the way through:
Black Feminism and Intersectionality
I am a Woman and a Human: A Marxist-Feminist Critique of Intersectionality Theory
Exiting the Vampire Castle which spawned about a half-dozen replies on the same website
Is there a white skin privilege? which also spawned a ton of replies
Including one they deigned not to publish: A Response to the ISO: White Skin Privilege and Marxism? by BRIAN KWOBA
A lot of shiznit to go through, I admit, and probably of not much interest to anyone other than me, but initial impressions:
1) I am happy to see that many of the points in the Sharon Smith piece I've been talking about over the past couple of years here on Paizo.com. Autodidacticism for the win!
2) I never had much use for "white skin privilege" theory, but I was hedging my bets because of its roots in the work of Noel Ignatiev and Theodore W. Allen. Now that I've learned that the Peggy McIntosh school shares nothing in common with the Ignatin/Allen school other than a name, I feel much more confident in my original take that "white skin privilege" theory is little more than white guilt liberal middle-class academicism to make its practitioners feel better about their oppressor selves. (EDIT: And that was before I'd even read the Andrea Smith piece.)
3) In Brian Kwoba's piece he quotes the ISOer as writing that woman's oppression is rooted in capitalism. The ISOer may have written that (I haven't had time to double-check yet), but any Marxist worth his salt knows that woman's oppression is rooted in class society, of which capitalism is only the latest stage.
Vive le Galt!
And since we've been talking about high-falutin' philosophical concepts like, um, I forget, I figured I'd post something from the Socialist Meme Caucus.
Vive le Galt!
Is there a white skin privilege? which also spawned a ton of replies
Great read.
Great read.
Is there a white skin privilege? which also spawned a ton of replies
Yes.
Well, since you guys liked that one so much, I'll take this opportunity to further troll for Revolutionary Socialism:
Actual Socialist Gives Rebuttal To Obama's State Of The Union Address
Break with the Twin Parties of Racist, Imperialist American Capitalism!
Vive le Galt!
The Musical Interlude Post!
Indie rock good ol' boys try to come to grips with the whole "duality of the Southern thing" (alas, the song this "song" sets up is, imho, nowhere near as good)
Otoh,
Contributor
|
I think we have to go beyond institutional economics to explain racism, homophobia, and gender issues. Here's why.
As a teacher (and former kid), I can attest to this issue. Tolerance and generosity have to be taught. They aren't innate.
I think we have to go beyond institutional economics to explain racism, homophobia, and gender issues. Here's why.
Well, sticking with race for now...
I agree. Not because of biology or psychology, although that's a pretty interesting article, Citizen Erwin, and it compels me to confess that in the third grade I called Jerry Deloach a xxxxxx. Sorry, Jerry. [Self-flagellates]
But I do agree that in the United States, at least, it took more than economics to turn white labor against black labor.
1676
"It is in the context of such findings that he offers his major thesis — the 'white race' was invented as a ruling class social control formation in response to labor solidarity as manifested in the later, civil war stage of Bacon’s Rebellion (1676-77). To this he adds two important corollaries: 1) the ruling elite, in its own class interest, deliberately instituted a system of racial privileges to define and maintain the 'white race' and 2) the consequences were not only ruinous to the interests of African-Americans, they were also 'disastrous' for European-American workers, whose class interests differed fundamentally from those of the ruling elite.
1890
It's very annoying. I remember distinctly going "a-ha!" years ago when I ran across a quotation from some southern newspaper in C. Vann Woodward's The Strange Career of Jim Crow explicitly saying "we gotta use white supremacy to divide the poor white trash from the freedmen so they'll stop messin' with our property," but I've just spent the last forty or so minutes flipping through the book and I can't find it. :(
Instead, I'll just link to some page about Tom Watson and another one to a book called Racism: From Slavery to Advanced Capitalism.
I wish I could find that quote, though. Really ruins the whole post.
1980
"…[Y]ou start out in 1954 by saying n%~@#%, n##+**, n$~#*!. By 1968 you can’t say n#~@@@, that hurts, there’s a backlash, so you say stuff like forced busing, states rights and all that stuff. And you’re getting so abstract now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all of these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites." --Lee Atwater
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I think it's been a while since I did one of these.
Heroes of Revolutionary Socialism
So here's a question. Say you have person A and person B. A is one ethnicity and B is another and the difference is visually noticeable. They are friends. At one point A makes a comment relating to their ethnicity and B responds with "You're insert-ethnicity-here?" Apparently the subject has never come up before and B never thought of A as anthing or anyone other than A.
This this a good mindset or bad mindset for B?
I think it's been a while since I did one of these.
Heroes of Revolutionary Socialism
The IWW ROCKS!!!!!!!!
The IWW did, indeed rock, Comrade Drunken Anarchosyndicalist Hetero Life Partner, and they did struggle valiantly and heroically for cross-racial working-class unity in the face of red- and race-baiting anti-union attacks. But, alas, they were driven out of Bogalusa in 1912-13.
The 1919 strike was led, surprisingly, for those of us who know our labor history, by the AFL-affiliated United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners.
[Clenched fist salute]
So here's a question. Say you have person A and person B. A is one ethnicity and B is another and the difference is visually noticeable. They are friends. At one point A makes a comment relating to their ethnicity and B responds with "You're insert-ethnicity-here?" Apparently the subject has never come up before and B never thought of A as anthing or anyone other than A.
This this a good mindset or bad mindset for B?
Hee hee! More stimulation of the ol' memory-banks, although this time I have to leave race aside.
After attending an anti-fascist rally in South Boston in, I'm guessing here, 1994, I, along with two high school friends and a local man, founded the Nashua, NH branch of the International Socialist Organization (the comrades who run the Socialist Worker website that had all of the articles about "Is there a white skin privilege?"). After a couple of months I ran into an even further left organization, the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist), and they'd drive up from Boston and talk to us at the Burger King by Exit 11.
Needless to say, I've always been attracted to ultraleft sectarian in-fighting and it didn't take long for them to convince me that the ISO were a bunch of Stooges of the Plutocracy, so I joined them instead.
Not long thereafter, the dude who recruited me started telling me about his time as an activist in the Red and Lavender Flag Union. When I relayed some of his stories to one of my high school comrades, his mouth dropped open in surprise and he blurted out "Tom's a homo?!?"
I mocked him, he blushed and that was the end of it. (I told Tom about it years later and he cackled with laughter.)
Years--decades?--later, Comrade High School Homophobe had dropped out of ultraleft sectarianism (he's now a far left liberal who votes for Nader--and, I suspect, although he'll never admit it, Obama), worked his way through law school, married a Romanian woman that he met while interning in Germany (sidenote: when they were courting, he was convinced that she was two-timing him because she'd always take off and refuse to tell him where she was going; later, he discovered that she was working under the table and, if caught, would've lost her student visa and been deported back to Romania) and had a beautiful baby boy (who, for some reason, the wife would not allow my high school comrade to name Barroughlin McLaughlin).
I was admiring their handiwork one day, when she made a comment about how he'd grow up and marry a nice Romanian girl. Being an inveterate troll, I couldn't help but ask "What if he's gay?" She replied that if he turned out to be gay, she wouldn't love him anymore. I, of course, started teasing and yelling for my friend who was out of the room. When he heard what she said, he started blushing again (Irish guys blush easy) and, controlling his anger, lectured his wife about how they were going to love Barroughlin no matter how he turned out.
She wilted under the two-pronged assault, and mumbled under her heavily-accented breath "Of course I'll love him if he's gay...just not as much." Comrade High School Homophobe shook his head and, I, inveterate troll and all-around sick, twisted individual, laughed.
(There was another time that Comrade High School Homophobe came home from work and found his heavily pregnant wife crying. "Baby, what's wrong?" "I was thinking about the baby and what if..."[starts crying again] "What if what?" [She continues to cry] "Honey, what if what?" "What if the baby doesn't love me?!?" Comrade High School Homophobe said all the reassuring things that fathers-to-be say to mothers-to-be in this situation, told me about it the next day, and we laughed our asses off.)
AFL?.......link
:)
The American Federation of Labor, which had a history of organizing only among the skilled and the white. In the thirties, United Mine Workers president John Lewis led a break-away from the AFL to form the Congress of Industrial Organizations which led the pitched labor battles to create America's industrial unions in the late thirties.
Later, during the McCarthy witchhunts, the CIO kicked out all of the commies and remerged with the AFL to create the AFL-CIO (or, if you're an ultraleft, the AFL-CIA) whose first order of business was to kick out my union, the Teamsters, although that wasn't for being commies, it was for being crooks.
Louis Proyect has been having a long-running feud with Joyce Brabner so I will overlook his nasty attack on Alan Moore who is God.
I haven't read any of the Black Dossier stuff, but if there's one man I trust to deal with racist tropes, it's Alan Moore.
But, as I said, I haven't read them yet.
Regardless, I encourage all of you to troll Louis Proyect.
Uh oh. I just received a Friend request on Facebook from Louis Proyect.
(I gave in, Comrade Freehold, for Paizo connections. And communism.)
Also,
What should I do once I acknowledge my privilege?
Overthrow capitalism.
Vive le Galt!
Butbutbut... Isn't that ALWAYS the proper thing to do, gobbo?
So here's a question. Say you have person A and person B. A is one ethnicity and B is another and the difference is visually noticeable. They are friends. At one point A makes a comment relating to their ethnicity and B responds with "You're insert-ethnicity-here?" Apparently the subject has never come up before and B never thought of A as anthing or anyone other than A.
This this a good mindset or bad mindset for B?
Hee hee! More stimulation of the ol' memory-banks, although this time I have to leave race aside.
After attending an anti-fascist rally in South Boston in, I'm guessing here, 1994, I, along with two high school friends and a local man, founded the Nashua, NH branch of the International Socialist Organization (the comrades who run the Socialist Worker website that had all of the articles about "Is there a white skin privilege?"). After a couple of months I ran into an even further left organization, the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist), and they'd drive up from Boston and talk to us at the Burger King by Exit 11.
Needless to say, I've always been attracted to ultraleft sectarian in-fighting and it didn't take long for them to convince me that the ISO were a bunch of Stooges of the Plutocracy, so I joined them instead.
Not long thereafter, the dude who recruited me started telling me about his time as an activist in the Red and Lavender Flag Union. When I relayed some of his stories to one of my high school comrades, his mouth dropped open in surprise and he blurted out "Tom's a homo?!?"
I mocked him, he blushed and that was the end of it. (I told Tom about it years later and he cackled with laughter.)
Years--decades?--later, Comrade High School Homophobe had dropped out of...
Maybe its the Pastrami and Roast Beef but I don't see how this applies to my question.
Louis Proyect has been having a long-running feud with Joyce Brabner so I will overlook his nasty attack on Alan Moore who is God.
I haven't read any of the Black Dossier stuff, but if there's one man I trust to deal with racist tropes, it's Alan Moore.
But, as I said, I haven't read them yet.
Regardless, I encourage all of you to troll Louis Proyect.
Uh oh. I just received a Friend request on Facebook from Louis Proyect.
(I gave in, Comrade Freehold, for Paizo connections. And communism.)
Also,
What should I do once I acknowledge my privilege?Overthrow capitalism.
Vive le Galt!
I am slowly through measured discourse and non violent action I am a Fabian Socialist.
From encyclopaedia Britannica
Fabian socialism
As the anarcho-communists argued for a form of socialism so decentralized that it required the abolition of the state, a milder and markedly centralist version of socialism, Fabianism, emerged in Britain. Fabian Socialism was so called because the members of the Fabian Society admired the tactics of the Roman general Fabius Cunctator (Fabius the Delayer), who avoided pitched battles and gradually wore down Hannibal’s forces. Instead of revolution, the Fabians favoured “gradualism” as the way to bring about socialism. Their notion of socialism, like Saint-Simon’s, entailed social control of property through an effectively and impartially administered state—a government of enlightened experts. The Fabians themselves were mostly middle-class intellectuals—including George Bernard Shaw, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Graham Wallas, and H.G. Wells—who thought that persuasion and education were more likely to lead to socialism, however gradually, than violent class warfare. Rather than form their own political party or work through trade unions, moreover, the Fabians aimed at gaining influence within existing parties. They eventually exercised considerable influence within Britain’s Labour Party, though they had little to do with its formation in the early 1900s. ...
[QUOTE="Don Juan
What should I do once I acknowledge my privilege?Overthrow capitalism.
Vive le Galt!
I am slowly through measured discourse and non violent action I am a Fabian Socialist.
Well, hurry up!
;p
Vive le Galt!
Maybe its the Pastrami and Roast Beef but I don't see how this applies to my question.
More thsn likely it's the [bubble bubble bubble]
Sometimes, I use others' posts to stream-of-consciousness, sorry. It's a personal flaw of mine.
Like, for example, Musical Interlude: Capitalism Is Not Love
For the purposes of this discussion... White.It feels really weird asking this, but it seems relevant: are you black or white (or other, please describe)?I was once arrested for rape with the sole description being my hair color and the glasses I wore. Apparantly I wasn't that MUCH of a match as I was released in a half hour.So you would have no problem with the cops showing up to your door to arrest you saying you match the description of a child molester based on nothing more than your race?sorry to hurt your feelings but truth is truth, if we are looking for a child molester odds are we are looking for a white guy. The sooner we grow up and start addressing why these trends exist instead of trying to ignore them the sooner we can do more to end it.Sorry Andrew, was working late tonight, I'll try to knock over a liquor store on the way home.Not to derail the thread, but given the discrepancy of race in US prison population, you wouldn't say CRT is relevant to the US Court system?if you discount the possibility of one group simply committing more offenses to end up in prison
I'm actually shocked to hear this. As a white guy from a neighborhood where there are plenty of not white people, it is my experience that my not white friends get this treatment, but the white guys do not. (The very definition of privilege, in my opinion). I'm sorry to hear that you had to suffer such an accusation, especially under such dubious circumstance, but understand that many not white people suffer this all the time!
I realize that race is not part of the actual thread but also recognize that (-ist) does. Sorry if I have derailed in any way.
It's the antonym of trans. Cis is the Latin preposition "this side of" and trans is the Latin preposition "across, beyond".
There are plenty of posts between yours and my response but I feel like thanks are in order (especially if they have not already been offered). How the term came to be was a mystery to me. (I'm not kidding, sometimes I can't be bothered with reading the whole wiki entry [assuming it was even there!])
Time for some generalisations.
People from the US often see situations in black and white and have little room for shades of gray. There is a tendency to apply a one-size fits all to the rest of the world. Americans look at the world through there own experience and the only way to ressolve issues is the American way. This gives the rest of the world the s**!s... We had to deal with kind of cultural imperialism from the British, not interested in doing it again.
Lets look at Australia
Australian Aboriginals make up about 2% of the population. Australias biggest sin is the attempted genocide of the Aboriginal people - No different to the genocide of Native Americans in the US. Its is something we are beginning to comprehend the implications and scale of and we are starting to try and make amends and apologise for. It is a stain that we have to wear and acknowledge.
Less than 1% of Australians are from Africa or of African descent.
Less than 1% of Australians are from the Americas.
76% are from Europe.
We did not have slavery. Although a number of pacific islanders were used as indentured labour in the state of Queensland.
The first Europeans to settle Australia were the dirt poor refuse of England, convicted for minor crimes and transported against their will to a alien land 12000 miles from home to work for the state and to be rented to free settlers as labor. Where the were starved and beaten and treated harshly in a harsh land.
We have to deal with a constant low level of racism from the English who make us the but of jokes and refer to us as the Convicts. That is why we do our best to be better at everything the English do, out of spite we just want the residents of that gray and miserable island to be envious.
Women got the vote in Australia decades before the rest of the world and a couple of years behind the New Zealand. The Feminist movement is strong but it has a different set of issues to deal with.
How do you apply the US concept of Privilege to Australia or...
Maybe a little late...but WORD.
Oh, yeah...and I am American. I have to admit, when I started reading your post, I was a bit iffy, but by the time I was done...right on, brother!
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I feel as I may be more attuned to racial privilege issues myself for two reasons:
1. I lived in the American South as a kid and was friends with black people in my school (it was a mostly white school with maybe <15% black kids). Its tough to be friends with people who are targeted by authority figures (administrators and teachers) completely on account of their perceived delinquency. (I.e., in a fight, the black kid almost always got worse punishment). Most black people I knew were stoic about it - drawing attention just drew more aggressive persecution.
2. My daughter is part African American. When I take her to the park, other kids have refused to play with her because of her skin color. Even when I overheard one kid tell their parent "I don't want to play with her because she's dirty" (i.e., has dark skin) the kid's parent refused to address this (this sort of thing has happened several times). I think that there is a human instinct - stronger in some of us than others - to exclude or avoid people who do not resemble our families. I'm pretty sure you have to pro-actively act to undercut this sort of childish racism before it becomes reflexive. Also, how one's parents react to people who are different tends model whether you act in a suspicious, uncaring, or fearful way to people who are different. It's partly this that suggests to me that the problem is white institutions and families not querying how they teach such reactions and not challenging the development of exclusionary affectionate patterns. After all, a major factor in the development of tolerance and even love for people who are queer, non-white, or disabled is actually have a real, non-aquaintence, friendship who is one of these things. But in fact, because children have a tendency to pick up on even slight non-verbal cues about our biases, it's quite easy to pass on low-level racism even if you don't intend to. Obviously I don't want to impart these prejudices to my daughter; and I wrestle with my own. I don't think we should be...
Jeff, if you grew up where I grew up, things would have worked out for you...pretty much the same. I'm from Prince George's County, Maryland, called by some "the largest population of affluent African-Americans in the United States."* Racism is no small issue here, and, despite the overall presence of non-troublemaking African-Americans, the law still sits on the side of, well, anything white. My neice is half-black and she's frikkin awesome. She's six, now, so she's just starting to hear the really stupid s#!t that comes out of people's mouths and I'm afraid that my sister isn't up to the challenge of setting her up for success. I could go on for a long time, but I know that all of my ability to structure paragraphs and make sense in the long run is screwed when I start talking about this sort of thing.
Hit me up on PM if you want to talk. I'm here for you, man.
*Since I don't remember who I'm quoting, just consider it a paraphrase.
So, anyway, onto the original topic: The Cis / Privilege definition and intent...
First, anyone sympathetic to non-cis...anything shouldn't take any offense to the use of the prefix. I only discovered it as a result of this thread (to give a yard-stick metric as to how "normal" the term is). If you really are understanding to...anything not your own, regarding sexuality (this could probably be applied to many, many other "less-than-mainstream" concepts or lifestyles)...than you probably don't care what word or group of words describes your way of living.
The only people who will give a crap about being called "cis" will first, be "cis!," second, dislike (probably have some irrational hatred of) things not "cis," and third, be so creeped out by the possibility that they could be considered non-cis, that they would research it enough to actually care about it.
That's enough for one post. The (-ist) part should be covered. Back in a few with commentary on the privilege bit.
On to the "privilege" portion.
First, for anyone who believes that no such privilege exists, WAKE UP! Yes, it exists, for ALL "normal" statuses (white, male, American, wealthy, hetero, "cis," WHATEVER!). I am a white, male, hetero American and I am certain that those qualifiers mean something to employers and to the people I meet. To believe otherwise is folly.
Should it matter? F()k no! Your sysadmin doesn't need a white guy who likes chicks! It needs someone who can manage accounts! Employers, unfortunately, do not always see it my way. While Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity and other, similar programs exist to combat the prejudice, they are NOT 100% effective. Employers still, to this day, hire based on "could I sit down and drink a beer with this guy!"
So, even legal action to counter these biases are not entirely effective. Do we have a transgender director? No, but we've met our quota for...oh, wait! I don't think that there even is an equality program for sexuality....
(I'm sorry. I've been drinking and I feel pretty strongly about equality)
I've been drinking too, but can't say I'm with you 100% on the equality thing. (Well, I've got strong feelings on it, just not in that direction.)
Extrapolate, maybe? I'm down for intellectual debate, for certain, right now!
Well, time's up, so to speak; I've got to go to bed. Maybe tomorrow.
The something is money. A man can be sent to jail for life in New Jersey for robbing a pizza joint. A buisnessman who scams millions and deprives thousands of their life savings may never see jail time.
It's almost as if there's a completely different legal standard in this country, depending on race or something!
Robbery and stealing by embezzlement or scamming are treated differently because of the risk of violence.
Butbutbut... Isn't that ALWAYS the proper thing to do, gobbo?
Yes. Btw, you look stunning today, Madame Sissyl.
[Blows kiss]
Robbery and stealing by embezzlement or scamming are treated differently because of the risk of violence.The something is money. A man can be sent to jail for life in New Jersey for robbing a pizza joint. A buisnessman who scams millions and deprives thousands of their life savings may never see jail time.
It's almost as if there's a completely different legal standard in this country, depending on race or something!
Except that the former usually entails years in prison while the latter entails months in a detention facility.
Wasn't Bernie sentenced to, like, over a century?
Anyway, More Kimberle Crenshaw.
