My life of rainbows and sunshine (the fallacy)

[cookyy2k]

Ok, so difficult rant regarding equality here, please for the love of science don't turn it into a flame war!

I'm a white, twenty something, straight, male.

I support equality across all races, genders, sexuality and any other "division" you care to mention. I engage with equality groups and try to understand where they're coming from.

The thing that will instantly wind me up however, is the implication that I have it sooo easy and have had everything handed to me. Sorry to burst your bubble here people but bad things can and have happened to me too. I have worked my ass off through college and university to get my job, that wasn't handed to me.

I'll admit that I have it easier than the "minority" groups as their is still bigotry out there. But, don't try to tell me my life is so easy and go on the offensive with me. This happens all too often, almost every time I engage with a group that promotes equality for whatever part of society in a public forum I will end up being chased out with pitchforks by members of that part of society.

News flash everybody I am NOT part of the problem, I do not agree with or support bigotry. I am not going to be embarrassed or apologetic about being born white, straight and male! I am allowed to be proud of who I am as much as you are. You are only hurting your own cause by creating a conflict "us against them" atmosphere which only perpetuates bigotry.

 

[Colour Scientist]

It's not that life is automatically a breeze for straight, white, middle-class men. It's that you generally don't experience oppression or bigotry based on your gender, race or sexual orientation. Apart from the kind of confrontations you listed above. Politics, high business positions, many professions, media, sports, movies, video games, etc... Are all dominated by and largely cater to your demographic.

Do you still have to work hard to get what you want? Of course! Can you experience prejudice based on other things, such as your social standing, sure. The defensive attitude from those groups comes from people who try to tell them that any prejudice they experience doesn't exist anymore or it isn't as bad as they think it is, that's where the resentment comes from.
You find it a lot online, where people will argue that they don't observe or experience bigotry or oppression, ergo it does not exist. This can cause the kind of attitudes that you experience within these groups.

There are assholes in every group out there and, unfortunately, the rest of us have to deal with the attitudes that are caused by their behaviour.

 

[Kolby Jack]

I find that argument is only valid if YOU'RE stance is "I know what you are going through." If you don't believe that, then yea, they have no reason to be hostile toward you. At least now you can say "I'm not racist, I tried to throw the baseball at Fink in Bioshock Infinite!" That should help.

 

[Vegosiux]

Yeah, too often this "privilege" talk is used to discredit people in a "privileged" class who still suffer trouble.

Or, to put it a different way. One of those "vs" cases that are so loathed, but that's not the question.

You're a doctor, and you have two patients that are the same in all regards, but both dying from heavy bleeding. You only have time to save one. All other things being equal, one of them is a millionaire, and the other is a minimum wage worker. Both have families, and both have friends who will mourn, and you're not getting any material compensation for your decision, no matter what you pick?

Is it more "noble" to save the poor one? Or is a coin toss the only fair decision?

That's why this "privilege" thing is problematic - if you're allegedly "privileged", suddenly your troubles are less important than the exactly identical troubles of a "less privileged" person.

Even if they're identical.

 

[Thaluikhain]

IF you feel the need to tell everyone how progressive you are, and that you're not part of the problem...you're probably part of the problem.

If you're part of whatever group that supports bigotry but you personally don't, you don't go telling victims of bigotry "Don't be mad at me, I'm one of the good ones", you tell the members of your group that do "you don't speak for me".

 

[manic_depressive13]

Yeah, I don't think you're as progressive and open minded as you think you are, especially if you're interpreting the idea that minorities face oppression to mean that no one who isn't a minority faces hardship. The whole "I refuse to apologise for being a white straight male!" is a pretty reactionary argument. No one wants you to be ashamed, they just want you to acknowledge that current society is biased in your favour. I don't think it's the equality groups' fault if you are taking every generalised statement as a personal attack on your character and achievements.

 

[mokes310]

You can read about something as much as you want, but until you experience it first-hand, it's hard to really understand. Yeah, your experiences may not have been the statistical mean, but chances are, you've had things a bit better than other peoples.

 

[Gatx]

It's not that life is automatically a breeze for straight, white, middle-class men. It's that you generally don't experience oppression or bigotry based on your gender, race or sexual orientation. Apart from the kind of confrontations you listed above. Politics, high business positions, many professions, media, sports, movies, video games, etc... Are all dominated by and largely cater to your demographic.

Well, to some degree he does experience bigotry based on his gender and race when people make assumptions about his life being too easy, even more so if they say he's "part of the problem."

 

[Risingblade]

Why are you engaging people who support equality? Doesn't that automatically make you part of the problem? Assuming of course that they really are talking about equality.

 

[loc978]

IF you feel the need to tell everyone how progressive you are, and that you're not part of the problem...you're probably part of the problem.

If you're part of whatever group that supports bigotry but you personally don't, you don't go telling victims of bigotry "Don't be mad at me, I'm one of the good ones", you tell the members of your group that do "you don't speak for me".

And if you don't identify with that group, or any other group for that matter? If you're an outcast who happens to share a skin tone with them, what then?

Not sayin' that's me, I'm a working class white person who is held up as a shining example of all that is right... by people I openly loathe. When I tell them so, they just smile nervously. They don't argue with the more progressive of america's "heroes"... they just call us "troubled" vets.

Where was I going with this? Oh right. There's no point in working within the system from below. You conform or you stagnate... if you're less privileged than I (and yes, I recognize that I am very much privileged), you get shitcanned. I'd rather try standing alongside those who are discriminated against directly... and that is more and more acceptable lately. So yeah, that would be my advice to the OP: You may have to pick a side at some point. Be ready to choose what you know is right over your employers... possibly even your family (in my case, about 60% of my extended family).

Also: "If you know what the word "proletariat" means, what does that make you? Well-read and erudite... for a communist."

 

[Darken12]

The thing that will instantly wind me up however, is the implication that I have it sooo easy and have had everything handed to me. Sorry to burst your bubble here people but bad things can and have happened to me too. I have worked my ass off through college and university to get my job, that wasn't handed to me.

That is not what privilege means. Please understand what privilege means before getting angry about it. Privilege, and I am explaining this in the most layman terms I can, does not mean that your life is easier. It means that society has given you without your desire or consent a set of invisible tools and keys that you can use to your advantage. Imagine you want to get into a very exclusive club, so you get in line. When it's your turn, the doorman looks you over, sees that you're white/straight/male/cis/able-bodied/middle-or-upper-class/young/etc. and lets you in just because of that. It doesn't mean that you will have fun in the club. It means that you got in while someone else might not, because they didn't belong to the right group.

Being privileged is not your fault. You weren't asked if you wanted to be privileged or not. But you are. And that's what pisses people off, the denial of something that you are, turning a blind eye on people's legitimate plights because you can't accept the fact that you are just as much of a victim of society as every other marginalised person out there.

News flash everybody I am NOT part of the problem, I do not agree with or support bigotry.

We're all part of the problem. Marginalised group, privileged group, in-betweeners, we're all part of society. The only way you can say you're not part of the problem is if you're a hermit who lives by himself in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, and never interacts with society in any way. If you're part of society, regardless of whether you're privileged or not, you're part of the problem.

It's not your fault, you didn't choose to be part of the problem, nobody does. Nobody wakes up and says "I'm gonna be super-duper racist today! !!!", you just internalise all the racist messages society feeds to you since birth, and nobody can ever truly shake all of them off. Even if you don't distrust a couple of black kids walking towards you just because they're black, even if you don't say any racist slurs, even if you don't assume anything stereotyped or racist about black people, nobody's perfect, and deprogramming is exceedingly hard.

That's why the only way to change things for the better is to change society as a whole, so that the next generations grow up with less prejudice.

The thing is, at the end of the day, this is about empathy. Being empathetic means recognising that you are part of a privileged group, and reminding yourself that you have invisible advantages that marginalised groups don't have (and again, this doesn't mean your life is easier, merely that you have more tools at your disposal), and being humble about it. Nobody's forcing you to be empathetic, sure, but nobody forces them to be okay with your lack of empathy either. They have just as much a right to be upset by your lack of empathy as you have to be unsympathetic in the first place.

 

[Thaluikhain]

IF you feel the need to tell everyone how progressive you are, and that you're not part of the problem...you're probably part of the problem.

If you're part of whatever group that supports bigotry but you personally don't, you don't go telling victims of bigotry "Don't be mad at me, I'm one of the good ones", you tell the members of your group that do "you don't speak for me".

And if you don't identify with that group, or any other group for that matter? If you're an outcast who happens to share a skin tone with them, what then?

Doesn't really matter. Even if you genuinely don't want to be, you're still stuck with it. If people could easily pick and choose their groups, if it was about them as individuals not as people in pigeonholes, there'd not be such a problem.

 

[loc978]

IF you feel the need to tell everyone how progressive you are, and that you're not part of the problem...you're probably part of the problem.

If you're part of whatever group that supports bigotry but you personally don't, you don't go telling victims of bigotry "Don't be mad at me, I'm one of the good ones", you tell the members of your group that do "you don't speak for me".

And if you don't identify with that group, or any other group for that matter? If you're an outcast who happens to share a skin tone with them, what then?

Doesn't really matter. Even if you genuinely don't want to be, you're still stuck with it. If people could easily pick and choose their groups, if it was about them as individuals not as people in pigeonholes, there'd not be such a problem.

True. One can choose to leave the group they're born into, but they can't expect to be accepted into another. Just saying the OP is most likely voiceless (which is understandably frustrating). Complaining to those who consider themselves his betters can do no more good than complaining to us about being accused of bigotry he didn't participate in. The realities of human society suck, no two ways about it.

But that's probably why we're all drawn to a site that references escapism right in its name.

 

[Spinozaad]

White,(upper) middle class men used to have it easier compared to other groups. I, as a white middle class, university-going male am paying the price for the White Man's Sin.

"Affirmative action", or its European equivalent "positive discrimination" is still discrimination, and it flies against the face of the principle that all humans are equal. But alas, society feels it has to "fix" past "wrongs".

 

[Thaluikhain]

White,(upper) middle class men used to have it easier compared to other groups. I, as a white middle class, university-going male am paying the price for the White Man's Sin.

"Affirmative action", or its European equivalent "positive discrimination" is still discrimination, and it flies against the face of the principle that all humans are equal. But alas, society feels it has to "fix" past "wrongs".

Yeah, it's almost as if racism still exists, but that'd be silly.

Now, you can argue that positive discrimination hasn't worked, that the downsides outweigh the good it does, but to argue that it's wrong because there's no problem to fix is absurd.

 

[Spinozaad]

White,(upper) middle class men used to have it easier compared to other groups. I, as a white middle class, university-going male am paying the price for the White Man's Sin.

"Affirmative action", or its European equivalent "positive discrimination" is still discrimination, and it flies against the face of the principle that all humans are equal. But alas, society feels it has to "fix" past "wrongs".

Yeah, it's almost as if racism still exists, but that'd be silly.

Now, you can argue that positive discrimination hasn't worked, that the downsides outweigh the good it does, but to argue that it's wrong because there's no problem to fix is absurd.

Discrimination is wrong, therefore we shall institutionalize discrimination. Just at the cost of the group which has traditionally not suffered from discrimination. Thing is, people are not groups. Humans, as individuals, are equal.

There would be some rationale to this policy, if the individuals who now get the short end of the stick were the perpetrators themselves. I never discriminated in my life. I never denied someone a job/rights based on their gender/ethnicity/sexuality. Why should I should I be judged for these traits?

The logic that you can fix discrimination through discrimination is ludicrous.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Why should I should I be judged for these traits?

Because you are being favoured for those traits whether you like it or not. Here and now, not in the dim misty past.

Again, whether or not it works it very different to whether or not there is a problem to begin with.

 

[Combustion Kevin]

bah, scumbag ancestors haunting me to this very day, I'll never be special for being born a specific way.

Black people have their "black and proud" slogan, and they get applauded for their heroism in the face of dicrimination.
Gay people have their gay parade, a bonafide parade celebrating their sexuality.
Women get their "Girl power" and everybody cheers.

I'll never get my "straight parade", people roll their eyes at me when I say "man power" and GOD FORBID I ever say "white and proud.". >.>

 

[Phasmal]

Ah the `my life isn't perfect so I'm not privileged` argument.
You can't really claim to be one of the good ones if you can't even see the things that you are given (and things you aren't) based on being a straight white male.

That doesn't mean you are bad for being a straight white male. Just that say, you are unlikely to have your anger dismissed because it's `cute` or `you're just on your period`. And other things to that degree.

 

[DoomyMcDoom]

Hahaha, seriously? Ok, let me get this straight, you've gone to college, you are working in a career, and you're complaining about people calling you out as privileged?

Look bud, you're a straight white male, so for starters, you're 90% less likely to be raped or beaten by a partner, you're not going to be targeted by like 80% of the groups who perpetrate hate crimes, you have an education, and you have a job.

Sorry, but everything you are and have, is a product of that, if you couldn't get a job, or an education due to being a straight white male, then I could see you having issues, but when it comes down to it, every man jack of us has to work for shit, don't matter what colour or creed or sexual orientation you are part of, it's just a fact of life mate, don't stick your nose in with others trying to fight for equality, thinking that you "know what they're going through" cuz bud, you don't.

Hell from the sounds of it you don't even know what it's like to be part of the really shit end of the straight white male demographic, I've been homeless and jobless due to it, not shitting you, when all of the places that're hiring people with your level of qualification, are all of different ethnicities and don't hire whites, then you can bloody well ***** about it.

'Til then, be happy that you have what you have, cuz I can tell you, it's more than I'll ever have.

Also nobody is telling you that you can't be white and proud, just don't join any groups that proclaim that unless you really love the KKK or neo-nazism.