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Omi-Polari posted:The gay rights movement is often cited, because it's been successful. But I don't think the strategy was ever to convince homophobes to start loving gay people. I think the network-building, fundraising resources (money $$$ counts), deploying those resources toward attainable political objectives, and living one's life fearlessly had more of an effect. Meaning the gay movement built a political power base. They changed the circumstances in which people live. Very few people were convinced through reasoned argument not to hate gay people, it was their friends or family members coming out. The circumstances changed. Families changed. (Talking about families is a very un-left-wing thing to do. But that's how it happened.) I think the gay rights movement is a good example of how privilege theory has little to do with affecting real change. It all comes down to building sentiment through association, something that one poster mentioned way back at the beginning of the thread. When I left the military in 2009 I knew the writing was on the wall for DODT, but even in 2010 people were talking about the possibility of repealing DODT like it was a distant dream. Then Biden let the cat out of the bag during an interview and within months DODT was on the way out. This should not have come as a surprise to anyone who was in the military and paying attention. My squadron had several Airmen who's sexuality was widely known and accepted, even if they still couldn't be open about it. No one tried to get them kicked out, and even if they had tried, the Group Commander at the time would have refused to go through with an investigation. He even threatened to reprimand anyone who tried to out a fellow a member of the Group. This was in 2008. Did the Group Commander do this because he had an academic understanding of privilege theory and intersectionality and was therefore aware of his own privilege as a white cishet male? I seriously loving doubt it. Certainly not to the exacting degree demanded by the radical left. What's more likely is that in his years of service he had befriended gay officers who had the courage (and trust) to confide their secret in him. He had probably come to resent the fact that his colleagues/peers/friends/whatever were forced to live in fear of being outed while serving their country. His decision to not investigate any allegation of homosexual behavior by his Airman was his way of lifting up the oppressed. He didn't have to check anything, and he didn't need to give anything up. Maybe privilege is just a lovely, bad word to use for describing things that do not need to be given up for there to be equality? Typical Pubbie fucked around with this message at 03:49 on Dec 10, 2014 |
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Dec 10, 2014 03:43
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SedanChair posted:He checked his privilege He was probably aware, at least intuitively, that he enjoyed a freedom that his gay colleagues didn't. I just feel that "privilege" is a strange way to describe this inequality. Exactly what privilege did he check by doing the right thing and not having the gay Airmen in his Group discharged from the service? Describing the act of making a morally right decision as "checking privilege" sounds reductive and even a little absurd to me, but I admit I'm having a hard time explaining why.
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Dec 10, 2014 04:08
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You're still the best poster. 
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Dec 10, 2014 05:11
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Biomute posted:There's a theory that time and effort is best spent on raising those worst off, and that less marginalized groups will benefit from the process along the way. This argument is pretty essential to intersectional third-wave feminism and is why it's considered acceptable to ignore/deprioritize white feminists and their main issues if it benefits black feminist etc. So, the number of trans people versus the number of gay people becomes irrelevant. Of course, not all feminists agrees with this approach. Deprioritizing white feminists is one of those stated goals in activist circles that never seems to amount to much. My experience has been that no matter how much time is devoted to black or latina women it's never good enough. I attended the first gathering of the Florida SDS a year ago. The students packed as many POC presentations into the meeting as they could muster, to the point where they were bumping off presentations by white students to make room for minority students who decided at the last minute that they wanted to give presentations too. This, of course, in addition to a privilege walk, privilege stacking questions from the audience, as well as actively denying additional input from white students beyond an arbitrary point (whatever the facilitator felt like). The conclusion at the end of the meeting was that they hadn't done enough to facilitate minority speakers and that white people were talking too much.
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Dec 10, 2014 16:57
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blackguy32 posted:Yet, there are things that cannot be fixed by policy alone. People like to jump on body cameras as a way to fix these killings of minorities by police officers, yet we got one that was filmed on video and nothing happened. Something did happen, though. The American people got to watch a cop kill a guy and get away with it. Even my hardcore conservative family members who had been crowing about "race baiters in Ferguson" were stunned by the decision not to indict Garner's killer. We need body cameras on every patrol officer and on every officer serving a warrant.
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Dec 11, 2014 00:00
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