What is privilege?

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BEING A WHITE MALE.

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Privilege is having an advantage in society (usually due to your race, gender, religion, sexuality etc) without being aware that you have that advantage.

So for example (and I know plenty of people would try to fight me on this but here's hoping anyway) in some aspects of society men have inherent privilege over women. As a relatively minor example, take catcalling. Pretty much every female I know has experienced catcalling at some point (a survey we did at school showed that 97% of the girls in my sixth form had been catcalled). The vast majority of males that I know have never experienced it (something like 4% in the survey). And, of course, because they'd never experienced it, most of those young men didn't believe it existed and didn't believe it was a problem. They weren't aware of the advantage that being born male gave them in that respect.

In terms of sexuality, a major aspect of 'straight privilege' is that straight people don't have to come out every day, nor do they ever have to worry about losing friends/family/their life because of their sexuality. To most straight people, holding the hand of and kissing their partner in public isn't a big deal. Believe me, it is to gay people. And as for race, it's fairly common knowledge that being black makes you something like 28 times more likely to be stopped and searched on the streets of London. That's something white people don't have to worry about in the same way.

Obviously the ins and outs of each example of privilege and the groups that experience it are debatable. The point is that privilege is something you can have your whole life and never realise, because you'll probably never experience the disadvantages others do. Most people have privilege in some way, without realising, and similarly most people also don't have privileges that others do. It's all relative. Being aware of your privilege is the most important thing, and bearing it in mind when you assume that everyone has it exactly the same as you do.

"Walk a mile in my moccasins to learn where they pinch"

Reply 22

xylas

Original post by TrueDetective01

Privilege is code word for people to find something to complain about in the west :smile:

Some truth in that :smile:

Original post by BefuddledPenguin

People use the term privilege when they feel they are being discriminated against, but cannot find direct evidence. So they claim everyone else is privileged in order to maintain victim status. It isn't genuine inequality, like wealth disparity, or genuine discrimination, like the way black people are treated by police. It's a lot more about personal perception than anything evidence based.

Interesting view. I'm inclined to agree privilege =/= inequality, discrimination

Original post by Nidhoggr

BEING A WHITE MALE.x

haha funny.x

Original post by littlebitofsky

Privilege is having an advantage in society (usually due to your race, gender, religion, sexuality etc) without being aware that you have that advantage.

Spoiler

So if everyone is aware (but nothing else changes) then by your opinion there will be no privilege?

What advantage is it to not be catcalled? What if someone wants to be catcalled? Not a strong example.

You seem to have changed your argument to privilege is when you don't have to worry about things that others do. Then logically according to you, everyone is privileged but in different ways.

Of course we all have different problems, at any moment in time someone may have more or fewer than you. You haven't said that certain people are bound to have more problems in life from the beginning which would be a completely different argument.

What is privilege?

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