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Society
You're wrong to focus on privilege and oppression
last edited 2024-11-05
A core fixture of leftist thought is that the world is full to the brim with discrimination; a few traits - being male, white, heterosexual, cisgender, etc - carry *privilege* or *institutional* power, and those without these traits are "systemically" oppressed.
While I've always thought leftists exaggerate this, I find it mostly pointless to argue about that because a proper understanding of the correlated trait fallacy shows it's irrelevant to most things. For example, programs aimed at helping disadvantaged groups. We all agree that helping the less fortunate is more morally valuable than helping the more fortunate. So, the best thing to do is to help the people who are least fortunate, not the people who have the most traits correlated with misfortune. Surely it's better to help a homeless white person than a black millionaire.
Correlated trait fallacy
Caveat: if you believe those traits are not only correlated with misfortunate but likely to cause more misfortune in the future, then you can consider those traits themselves to make a person less fortunate. But your plan should still be to help the least fortunate overall, so as long as you admit that some things (like being homeless) outweigh any of those traits, you should still screen for misfortune, not for oppressed traits.
Another point I want to make is that the term "privilege" is a destructive one. All of us are oppressed by the state, even cishet white men. A slave treated better than another slave is not "privileged". Except for those responsible for the state's violence, we all belong on the same side, and calling each other *privileged* is victim blaming. (I prefer "lucky" or "fortunate", if you must.)
Why you should be an anarchist
Finally I want to drive home that while cishet white men might be *more likely* to be fortunate than others, not only are there individual exceptions, but there are large-scale examples of bigotry against these traits which leftists need to stop denying. My intention is not to claim that white men are *more* oppresssed than nonwhite people and non-men; again I have little interesting in arguing about who has it worse, but to shut leftists the fuck up about it "not existing".
Anti-white racism
If you participate in political discourse at all and you're white, you've probably seen lots of people who immediately disregard your opinion for being white; who say "white people" when they mean "racists" or sometimes when they mean "rich people" (see again correlated trait fallacy); who, upon losing an argument, will make some snarky comment about how they can't reason with you because you're white.
Or what about all the organizations who list something like "<minority>-led" as a selling point? Unless you believe all these organizations are self-sabotaging, that proves that being a member of one of those minorities is socially *advantageous* in at least some contexts.
The "ACAB license", an example of the "ethical licensing" movement:
ACAB license
Business entities with boards/management comprising less than 1/2 POC may not use the work for any reason.
It doesn't matter how anti-racist you are; this author wants to stop you from using their works only for being white. Fucker.
When I point out some of these, a common retort I receive is that this stuff isn't oppression because it doesn't violate rights... from leftists who have suddenly adopted a very strict libertarian definitions of rights which they would never use in any other context because it would also exclude most of the racism against nonwhite people. If anything that doesn't violate freedom of association is not oppression, then slurs, misgendering, and conservative institutions refusing to serve queer customers are all not oppression.
Another common retort is that these things are oppression when done to marginalized groups because they fuel the systemic oppression that goes beyond these things, but similar actions against privileged people don't because there's no systemic oppression of those people. This is just a refusal to admit that exceptions exist. Real societies are complicated and there are communities and relationships that don't work according to your simplistic analysis of the world; there are white people who are subject to this kind of discrimination.
Misandry
If you don't live under a rock, you've probably also seen things like this feminist who hates men so much that it's never okay for other women to sleep with men:
https://youtu.be/v11wfp8vmrM?t=319
But why bother with game like that, when there are several examples of systemic violence that specifically target men?
- Conscription. Men in America are required to register for the "Selective Service System" - "service" of course meaning slavery. If you don't already know, I encourage you to read about the punishment for refusing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_Service_System
- Asymmetric violence rules. A man physically striking a woman is seen as scandalous almost regardless of the circumstances, but a woman physically striking a man just for saying something she doesn't like is often seen as funny. This is so widespread that if you tell me you haven't seen it, I think you're just being wilfully ignorant.
- Legal system bias: the proportion of American prisoners who are men is well over 90%. I know this doesn't constitute bigotry, but besides the sheer magnitude of the disparity, there's good reason to think this is a real indication of it: the bias pervades our culture. Ordinary people's stereotypes of criminals are *always* male. Nearly all villains in media are male. Judges, cops, and the assholes who call them all come from a culture where criminality is seen as masculine, so it would actually be surprising if there were *not* misandry involved, *even before knowing the statistic*.
https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p17.pdf
https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_gender.jsp
No doubt someone will claim it's justified because most criminals are men. You have no idea how circular reasoning works if you make that objection. Those stats don't count criminals, but *convicts*, so they can't be used to prove a lack of bias in the conviction system.
It's infuriating that lots of leftist websites actually spin the incarceration stats as *misogyny*. They'll say things like "the incarceration rate for women has been *rising* twice as fast as for men for the last two decades", ignoring that prisoners are still almost all men.
Circumcision
I left this for last because it's tasteless to mention anything else after this. If you know about this and still claim men are 'privileged', shut the fuck up until you're ready to stop being a victim-blaming asshole.