Cis-gender privilege reference (5)

Sometimes I feel narked that my gender is mistaken so often, but I'm just not willing to create a presentation and then do it every day, in order to control the responses of others, or for their benefit. I have done all that in younger days.

These days I want to wear and be however i want, not however I need to act/dress in order to pass for my gender. I don't care what other people think my gender is until it directly affects me, at which point I put them straight. And then deal with the consequences of having snuck up on them.. including them still mistaking my gender!

I'm not stealth by any means, I just can't be arsed unless I want to be arsed - the pressure to be and present certain ways is a big chunk of what I hate about gender. For me all gendered presentation feels like drag anyway, whereas I want to feel authentic - my gender is not about what I wear and what I look like, it's about who I am.

De

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Edited 19 Jan 11, 9:39 AM by Degenerate

yeah I picked that up too.

I prefer them/they and I prefer it because it's within normal usage of english language (just as non male/femaleness is within the normal spectrum of humanity) so the need to create new language (for me ) is not there.

I think usage of new terms others us more, so I don't identify with it. But then I also answer to he or she quite happily. (I think some of this is my age,I just dont feckin care any more)

I understand though that others want to use it, and that's OK with me.

De

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A) Privilege is, by definition, a set of automatic entitlements and liberties given to one set of people and denied of another. Privilege isn't something people can opt out of so guilt tripping them over it is both unhelpful* (hassling people about stuff they receive systematically due to wider SOCIAL hierarchies) and actively misleading (this approach to blame culture fails to note that responsibility for social injustice lies not just with the individual benefiting from it but from wider social structures).

B) It's not viable to remember giant checklists of privilege on an ongoing basis. It's much more useful for people to have a rough gist of basic fundamental assumptions underlying prejudice and social inequality.

In discussions where people are commenting as outsiders to a group of people I find it more useful to bring up things like how much stake they have in a discussion. People getting involved because they think they know better than people living with specific issues because they want to patronise those people - they have less stake in it (and less experience to be talking about it to boot).

Also, sometimes privilege is useful to bring up as an issue in itself. One example is that groups are often dominated by their most privileged subgroup, marginalising the voice of others and creating a false sense of "uniformity" (ie: all being the same as the most privileged section when in many cases such a group will form a minority of members). This can help groups look at and redress balances of how they're creating hierarchies within themselves. This isn't the same as saying "STFU cis person with your damned statistics and hard facts" though which is a bit grim frankly. Research is research and bias can be found within it but the data being reported doesn't often rely that much on who is reporting it.

* Just to be clear, I do think people have a responsibility to reduce their own complicity in creating inequality. Everyone contributes to society and not actively hurting people but overlooking or enabling inequality going on around you isn't a "neutral" position to be taking -- it's benefiting from inequality without taking responsibility for doing something about it.

moo

Edited 19 Jan 11, 10:38 AM by foibey

I think, for some people, the old words, whatever their meaning should be, doesn't mean what it means to them. When language is insufficient, we either make up new words, or as English has a penchant to do, steal them from other languages. It is a little strange here though because it's not a taking up of new words, but a replacement of words that are for the most part, still pretty serviceable.

I can only really respect that people choose to use those words, not just for themselves but also instead of they and their for others.

On the list at large:

I think the replies so far have already proved "your milage may vary". To be honest, I'm not too keen on the specific examples approach though, I prefer to keep it to the more encompassing explanations.

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