Rosiv said:
So to your quote above, why even focus on power when to prove power it can only be done contextually. Am i misunderstanding, because the way i parse it out, if a white gay man calls a black straight man a "n-word", where is the power difference in this scenario?
It's not about the person's power, but the idea's power. Both of the men in your scenario, are capable of citing powerful words that can greatly degrade the other, through the invocation of a historical oppression and it's present day supporters.
That's what everyone also misses when they go on about how patriarchy isn't real because some men are powerless and some women are powerful.
It's not that, say, a random reddit poster calling a female politician "ugly whore" is such a badass that he will utterly annihilate the whole politician, but that the phrase itself still invokes a lot different ideas, than, say, some other poster there who calls everyone other than herself "cis scum".
The latter is a bit like those trolls who signed a petition for Target to stop selling Bibles. It's not even just that they were sarcastic, it's that they would have been practically
incapable of being anything other than sarcastic, because forcing a major store to stop selling the holy book of the dominant religion of the land, or hating all non-transsexual people, are both so out there, that it satirizes itself.
If some by chance a person meant it seriously, it's still not in the same ballpark as the reverse.
Rosiv said:
The concept of power in my opinion is too arbitrary to be a focus in discussing any -"ism", and we should focus on the prejudices instead, for that we can combat with logical thinking.
That's a nice starting principle for not being a raging dickbag, and you should definitely do that. But it's not an either/or decision.
Once you got the "prejudice is bad" principle covered, you might also want to get involved with analysis of how major historical prejudices got formed, what effect they had on society, and how their effect can get indirictly reflected on us often in unexpected manners.
(for example, like in my parallel discussion with WhiteNachos on how a "women are caretakers" stereotype ended up codifying the belief that a man who wants to travel alone with a kid, is creepy deviant. "Maybe I shouldn't unfaily stereotype men" is a nice starting sentiment, but sometimes people also want to understand the bigger picture.