God, I feel like hell tonight.
 

I warned Not Bob that he was going to get friend-zoned by that chick if he kept wearing that stupid "A Woman Needs a Man Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle," but that boy just don't listen.

Re: Imagine
 

Oh! Oh! One more, man! Let's have TASS publish the stuff the Israelis gave him.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I'm boooooorish. The story's borrrrring.

I'd have slept with her. Only a fool turned his nose up at the crunchy/granola chicks, and they were always talking some political stuff. Hell, in those days, I'd have tried out one of those chicks who used to spin in circles in billowy skirts at Dead shows (even the ones who kept doing it through Drums>Space). Some of them were really cute, and they rocked that hippie mitt... which was kind of exotic at the time.

Re: Imagine
 

Let's find you a friend (or at least acquaint you with "ETA").

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Privilege is mostly Vanilla Ice.

Rather than define disadvantage as the baseline, which allows one to view people like me as "privileged," isn't the actual reality one in which my situation is (or should be) the norm, and the circumstances of those discriminated against an abnormality? Isn't it really a situation in which white, cis males are treated in an "average" manner, and people discriminated against for color, sex, or sexuality "unfairly disadvantaged"?

I'm not privileged so much as treated the way everyone ought to be treated. Instead of focusing on guys like me (possibly the least relevant humans in these debates) who are being treated in utterly average ways, isn't the proper focus placed on people who are being treated unfairly? People who are treated in a fashion below the baseline standard at which we should all be treated?

I'm going to tell you you're being frivolous if you tell me to check my privilege. But if you tell me other people are being unjustly treated below the standard at which we all ought to be treated, you've got my ear. You can appeal to a person's sense of disgust at others being treated horribly. That brings people to action. You won't be getting many ears trying to guilt someone about his luck of birth.

ETA: Stated more simply, isn't the better lens for this, "We need to even the playing field by brining everyone who is below to parity with everyone else" rather than saying, "Hey, you need to recognize that you're lucky." The former is compelling. The latter, I'm sorry, cannot be said without implying some form of guilt or ill-gotten advantage.

Re: God, I feel like hell tonight.
 

He got to stay in her dorm, waking with the first rays of the morning, hung over as hell, to find himself spooned against her in that school-issued twin bed. He was embarrassed to discover his manliness was titanium turgid, pressed against her, impossible for her to mistake as anything else (cell phones not being invented until 25 years later)...

He ran back to the apartment he shared with three other members of the ultimate frisbee team with a spring in his step that morning!

...Only to have his spirits sunk when his roommate walked in on him TCB'ing away that morning erection, and the realization struck, that yes... his unrequited love was probably halfway across campus by now, banging her sorta-boyfriend who played drums in that Allmans/Dead/Santana cover band.

At least they hadn't been so drunk that she let him go down on her and he received no similar reciprocal treatment before they passed out, that being the most demeaning corner of the Friend Zone.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

You and I enjoy the benefits of ill-gotten advantage. Why not recognize that you're lucky that way? What does it cost you?

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

That's the essential fallacy of the "privilege" paradigm. You and I are not beneficiaries of any ill-gotten advantage. (It's not a zero sum game.) We are being treated as all people should be treated. Others are being unfairly treated below that standard.

We have a duty to remedy all systemic devices by which others are kept below the standard of treatment we receive.

Saying "I'm privileged" implies one has received something special, or been elevated above others. All you and I have received is baseline, decent treatment that all people should receive. This should not be considered a privilege (which highlights just how abhorrent it is to treat people below such a low standard). The treatment of others in a manner below the baseline standard of human decency is the problem.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Sure.

Sure, but it's not.

Other people aren't. What does that make you?

No. That absolves you from responsibility, which is what you're trying to do.

This discussion started with you griping that you can't act the ways you really want to act.

ETA: Btw, it wasn't long ago that you were arguing that the economically successful needed to realize that they've been lucky.

Yeah, that's where you're going off the tracks. You're not guilty because of your privilege, you just need to keep it in mind when you're dismissing other people's experiences.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Treated appropriately.

My responsibility is to not perpetuate, and attempt to remedy, systems that treat others unfairly.

They should. And I've admitted, I'm lucky to not have fallen into a category of people treated unfairly. But that's a not a privilege. There exists no scenario in which I was elevated above others or given anything. The situation is one in which others have had things taken from them.

Here we mostly agree. I'm quite cognizant that others are treated badly. Hell, we've all seen it happen, numerous times. I'd never dismiss that reality. If anything, we have a duty to tell people who'd dismiss that reality how fucking deluded they are -- how perniciously the system fucks with those against whom it discriminates. But doing that is a far different thing from going along with the notion one has received some special elevation above others. I'm probably not alone in noting that, rather than view my life as one elevated in any manner, I'd have to say the world has treated me pretty fucking average. It simply does not seem to care all that much about me. Which is exactly the "average treatment" we all deserve.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I think you mostly get the concept; you just don't like the terminology that the kids are using these days. We straight white guys in the soft alcoholism of middle age are used to thinking about "privilege" as some special and unique gift for certain individuals. So we bristle at the idea that the grandson of an Irish stone cutter who came to the US via Ellis Island, and the son of a blue collar Union guy, is "privileged" in the same way that a Princeton legacy admitted WASP whose name has Roman numerals is "privileged."

But we are. In all sorts of ways, big and small. Senior government officials getting pulled over for driving while black. White lawyers assuming black female lawyers at a deposition are the court reporters. A black female cop came onto my crowded subway (shhh!) the other day, and bumped two or three of us as she walked by. I got an "excuse me, sir" but she didn't say anything to the black guy in a suit standing next to me. Silly example, but there you go.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

There's no essential fallacy in what you're saying, just a semantic quibble about the word "privilege" and whether your baseline is normative or positive. We are privileged to be treated in a way that most people are not treated.

I do think, though, that you're missing a huge dynamic, which is that status is relative, and the significance of the behavior that we're talking about here is not that it falls below some standard in an absolute sense, but that it's meant on some level to reinforce a hierarchy of sorts in which white men are generally at the top. There's no point in being the king if you don't have any subjects.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Does this style work for you in litigation?

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Which is impossible to do if you never consider the advantages you get from the systems that treat others unfairly.

These two sentences completely contradict each other.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I have to say, it is incredibly sad to witness an educated person fight tooth and nail against how one labels the concept that they are in a better position than those he knows for a fact are in a worse position.

"It's all a matter of perspective. And in order for me to not be completely disrespectful and dismissive, use mine. Don't say I'm privileged, because I don't like thinking about it that way. Say you're underprivileged. Then I'll engage."

What a fucking asshole.

And it's so classic. It is the fundamental game plan white people employ to avoid shit they don't like. Take the word that is used as shorthand to define a problem, vilify the word, ignore the issue. "Feminist?" Man-hater. Can't deal. "Politically correct?" Ugh. I can't say anything anymore. "Privilege?" I'm not privileged. I'm normal. This concept is dumb.

Notice that he's not really arguing over the fact that there is clearly a difference in how he's treated. He just doesn't like that the word to describe that difference focuses on him and what he gets instead of others and what they don't get. Can't take it. It's not his fault he was born into a system that benefits him (which won't change until he agrees not to always exercise those benefits and sure as hell won't change if he won't even acknowledge them as benefits).

And while I appreciate Hank's story (and fully understand how he used it to make his point), the fact that this one absolutely ridiculous example of a white person talking about not benefiting from privilege (and I've never, ever seen anything like what he says happened in his story) sticks with him given the literally countless stories of white people exercising their privilege to their own benefit, says something, no?

TM