First a quick note.. the recent posting at Simple Dude in a Complex World marking his two month anniversary in the blogosphere reminded me that this past September marked one year with this particular blog. Yay Me! I've actually been blogging since roughly 2005 if you count my now deleted MSN Spaces account (although I did make sure to copy that sucker to a text file) and my blog at MySpace that is still accessible here. Still working on archiving that one.
On to my point...
I was struck by an interesting comment on a recent post at Feministe advocating that people in a debate regarding privileged groups and marginalized groups should be upfront about their own particular privileges. Since I have some new readers, and occasionally I like to dig past my day to day happenings and kind of delve into the sociological muck, goober that I am, I'd like to present you all with a list of the areas of privilege and marginalization that I myself am coming from.
My Areas Of Privilege
I am white
I am Anglo Saxon
I am straight
I am cisgendered (Wikipedia Definition)
I am working class
I am able-bodied
I am university educated
I am gainfully employed
I am literate
I speak English as my first language
Areas Where I could be considered marginalized
I am a woman
I am a (formerly) above-average sized person
I am divorced
I am a single parent
Other factors that play into my personal experiences but might not be considered privileged or non-privileged
I am from a mostly rural area
I am of no religious affiliation
I am a product of a two-parent family
So, when I discuss social issues, these are the areas of privilege and non-privilege that I am speaking from, that help to shape my personal understanding of the world. Sometimes I may think I understand a situation better than I actually do, based on my own privilege. Feel free to call me on it, if you think I am out of line.
That being said, I fucking hate trying to spell privilege. Just sayin'
As a college-educated, art degree holding, single, white, female who lives in a rural area, votes democratic, and really likes Pink Floyd — I can tell you that when I have a problem spelling a word I just start typing it into google and then copy and paste the correct spelling. It works like a charm.
ReplyDeleteObviously, I have a blog too. And I realize that my blog purposefully doesn't touch on a number of subjects — most of which involve opinions on political or social issues... but that's kind of by design (in other words: on purpose).
Everyone is a little bit different, and I hope that everyone looks at the world with just a little bit of skepticism, including how they look at the world from whence they came.
Don't become too consumed with defining definitions of yourself or where you came from, because the ones that you mention will always be just as emphatic for what they are as what they aren't.
This is interesting. I feel like the more privileged we are the less we think about those privileges. Being white, heterosexual, educated, English-speaking, and middle-class, I try to put myself in the shoes of those who aren't, who are less privileged. Life could be very different, and that's a problem...
ReplyDelete