We all have various areas in which we are privileged and in which we are not. The point is that, when discussing topics related to areas in which we are privileged, we should take care to make sure that we are not only listening to, but truly hearing those who are unprivileged in that area.

So, I am economically privileged, and if I write a post on some point that mainly affects poor people, and poor people approach me and say, hey, you are not really understanding what it’s like to be poor and you’re actually wrong about how this issue affect us, I should pay a lot of attention to that. I should recognize that because I am privileged in this area, I may not be blinded to some important aspect of the issue by that privilege. I may be missing something. It’s not appropriate to say, well, I am a woman and you’re a (poor) man so I’m just as unprivileged as you and you can’t tell me I’m wrong.

Different people have different rhetorical styles. Some people are firey in their prose and some people are purposefully conciliatory and patient with their language. Personally, I get the most out of online discussions when I don’t get caught up in the language used and try to engage with the author’s point. You can get offended, but then you just miss out on what they’re saying. If you want to hear what they have to say, you ignore the style and engage.

here’s a huge difference between showing sympathy and support for a cause, and telling members of an oppressed group what they want, what they feel, and what their motivations are. And I don’t understand why people are shocked when members of oppressed groups emerge to say “this is what you’re doing and we think it’s harmful to us and people like us; stop this.” Hugo has been responding, but he’s speaking from this perspective that we don’t know how we’re feeling or what we should be doing, and if he says it in just the right way, we’ll get it.

And there is a vast difference in having a personal opinion or your take on an issue and “telling members of an oppressed group what they want, what they feel, and what their motivations are.” I didn’t get that idea from reading his piece, and I’m not sure where you get it. It’s his opinion, and in fact, I’m seeing a lot more of other people telling him what to think, or more accurately, not to think at all. You are deliberately taking things out of context and distorting what he is saying. Why the rhetoric?

No, what you needed to do was stop talking. You needed to apologize for your stupid shit, shut up, and listen. If you claim to be an ally, then be a fucking ally. Take some tips from Tia at Unfogged. Practice silence.

Seriously, all of you need to take a step away from your computers, breathe, listen, listen some more, and shut the holy hell up already.”

See, that’s just wrong. I wish all our allies would stand up and shout from the highest rooftops in their loudest voices. I want everyone that can to stand up and take a position against oppression. I want them inspired and taking a stand. Not just on a blog, but out in the real world. And I want them to use whatever tools that are at their disposal to do it. What you preach alienates our allies. And whether you like it or not, we need those allies to affect lasting change. Your methods will be counterproductive to that goal.

I grew up in the dirt poor and non-white part of LA actually, I’ve been homeless twice in my life, the last time was last year when my land lord threw me out of my apartment

You know, I’m going to resist going on a vulgar tirade as you did with Hugo and instead suggest that if you wish to know the meaning of ‘homeless’ that you spend some time in the soup kitchens and homeless shelters (especially in winter) to see what homelessness is really about. Being a white woman between apartments doesn’t count.

The first step I took to be a better person than you and Hugo was to resort to acceptance, not denial, in the face of my racial privelage. You can too, the fear of being a better person you guys have stops when you make that first step.

As a Hispanic woman, I understand privilege and social status all too well, thank you very much. As for thinking you are a better person than Hugo or I, well, I think that statement says a lot about you and your motives.

But you notice that people haven’t stopped engaging with him, though with “friends” like you, some of them probably should to preserve their sanity. .

Yes, definitely. If someone disagreeing with your premise or calling you on your motives and methods makes you insane, double up on your meds before it’s too late.

It is a fact, that in spite of the “obstacles” presented to Michelle Obama in terms of race, the fact is that she has led an incredibly privileged life: a loving and economically secure family of “good” character, beuty, brains, health, an ivy league education, and all the benifits that accrue from this sort of beginning.

Timothy McVeigh, odious as he was, did not get a single break. Does that justify his rampage? No, of course not.

How about this as a better/more nuanced example: How about Andrea Yates? She is, according to the formulations I read here, because she is white (& for all I know–and I don’t—she was a raging racist befitting her redneck roots), inherently privileged. But was she really?

So, I guess what I am saying is that the constant bandying about of the P-word in a particularly corner of the blogosphere looks a lot to me like a bully tactic, employed to shame and to silence. And as long as that is going on, I don’t see how anything even resembling cooperation can occur.

Said differently: disagree (and for what is its worth, I am not much of a fan of either Jessica Valente or FFF, though I suppose one could argue that Andrea Yates might be in a better situation today had she read it as a young woman) with substance, but as soon as the ad hominums begin, then it becomes a matter of whose little posse is bigger and louder (or cruder–that self-congratulatory backslapping over at BFP is not only nauseating it is schoolyardish, imo). or more long-winded and nothing else is proved or disproved.

I hope you recognize the privilege in using your super mind reading skilz on Hugo. Really. One doesn’t have to literally be a member of the oppressed group to be at least sympathetic to and supportive of their cause.

I’m not reading his mind. When he starts slinging people’s names around to help him make his points without paying attention to his positions, he kinda proves he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

There’s a huge difference between showing sympathy and support for a cause, and telling members of an oppressed group what they want, what they feel, and what their motivations are. And I don’t understand why people are shocked when members of oppressed groups emerge to say “this is what you’re doing and we think it’s harmful to us and people like us; stop this.” Hugo has been responding, but he’s speaking from this perspective that we don’t know how we’re feeling or what we should be doing, and if he says it in just the right way, we’ll get it.

My ego tells me that given a chance, I can persuade anyone of anything. I’m as much a salesperson as a teacher, as much a performer as a professor. Part of that is my childhood upbringing (eleven years in a theater company from age seven to age eighteen); part of that is my temperament. Part of that is a deeply unattractive and puerile need to be liked and validated.

But you notice that people haven’t stopped engaging with him, though with “friends” like you, some of them probably should to preserve their sanity.

Y’all are pretty liberal about throwing the word ‘privilege’ around. Seem to me to be more of a silencing and shaming tactic. I wonder if it’s not you that fails to understand it’s meaning.

Oh, I’ve been silenced and shamed more than enough to know what’s meant. But that’s the thing about learning from your experiences and listening to people — you start to get better bit by bit and more resilient. Not like when you build a wall and rely on who you are largely to get your points across rather than the reality around you.

Isis:

So, who is speaking about what is in the heart of another person she does not know?

No one. If you read this post, you see that Hugo feels that his problem is one of persuasion and personal likability and not of the points he’s making. That’s not true. No one has ever said it was.

And for what it is worth: “Privilege” is not an absolute. EG, in “real” terms poor white boy born into a family which routinely brutalizes him (and perhaps grows up to be a horrific misgynist and racist) has less privilege than Michelle Obama, who despite being black and female, had the good fortune to be born into a “good” family who saw to it that she had a chance to succeed.

Privilege may not be an absolute, but it still does its share of blinding. A poor white boy with that background may have less economic privilege in the fact that he’s poor, but does that justify his misogyny and racism? I really don’t understand the example you’re giving here because the lack of privilege in one area doesn’t make up for the bigotry and abuses of privilege in another (and this is jumping off your example — not in relation to Hugo).

It’s so telling that conversations about cooperation between white feminist movements and women of color feminist movements always turn into making scorecards for the individual white interlocutor’s privileges. I’m done here until we get back on that subject of cooperation, and not a minute before then.

That’s all.

There’s a slight difference.

I grew up in the dirt poor and non-white part of LA actually, I’ve been homeless twice in my life, the last time was last year when my land lord threw me out of my apartment after illegally jacking up the rent a proposterous amount.

I had moved to that apartment after my previous landlord got drunk and broke into my home as a prelude to attempting to make yet another sexual pass at me while I was asleep and I left by the end of that week for obvious reasons.

I’m privelaged, I have never walked the border, but I have feared the police, I have been attacked multiple times be men who wanted to rape me, I have been homeless.

The first step I took to be a better person than you and Hugo was to resort to acceptance, not denial, in the face of my racial privelage.

You can too, the fear of being a better person you guys have stops when you make that first step.

with support like this… he needs detractors?