Private law
May. 28th, 2011 10:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
womzillaOn the "wise people agreeing with me" front, here's a great post from Unqualified Offerings's Thoreau about the word "privilege". The first point in particular is something I've been thinking for a while about the term as it is used:
Most of the things I see discussed as "privilege" are in that category--goods or behaviors that should and could be available to everyone but that because of abuses of power structures have been seized by one group and denied to others. Of course, many are not--assuming that one's needs or opinions are more important than other people's is the prime marker of privilege (in almost every sense), and it cannot be the case that everyone can or should be more important than everyone else.
An important aspect that Thoreau misses is that are earned privileges. A random person talking about evolution has, in my world, the right (not the privilege) to an assumption of good will. PZ Myers (of Pharyngula) has earned the (actual) privilege of the assumption that when he speaks about evolution, he has some idea of what he's talking about. Greg Easterbrooke, on the other hand, has earned the opposite assumption by years of active lying on the topic--the right to be taken seriously, that he would normally exercise, he has forsaken.
[it] conflates several concepts: 1) Things that everybody really ought to be able to enjoy (e.g. basic respect) but some people are denied. For instance, not having one's opinion automatically dismissed because of gender or skin tone.
Most of the things I see discussed as "privilege" are in that category--goods or behaviors that should and could be available to everyone but that because of abuses of power structures have been seized by one group and denied to others. Of course, many are not--assuming that one's needs or opinions are more important than other people's is the prime marker of privilege (in almost every sense), and it cannot be the case that everyone can or should be more important than everyone else.
An important aspect that Thoreau misses is that are earned privileges. A random person talking about evolution has, in my world, the right (not the privilege) to an assumption of good will. PZ Myers (of Pharyngula) has earned the (actual) privilege of the assumption that when he speaks about evolution, he has some idea of what he's talking about. Greg Easterbrooke, on the other hand, has earned the opposite assumption by years of active lying on the topic--the right to be taken seriously, that he would normally exercise, he has forsaken.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-05-29 01:13 pm (UTC)