Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   hypolite (hypolite@friendica.mrpetovan.com)'s status on Wednesday, 29-Nov-2023 07:13:41 JST hypolite

   in reply to

   • starbreaker

   @starbreaker I guess we have to back to the basics of privilege, which is a general likelihood of enjoying the benefit of the doubt. This is hard to self-appreciate, because the benefit of the doubt mostly suppresses some negative behaviors towards you. So it isn't as much about how hard other people have it and more about how much harder it could have been for you with less privilege.

   It's mostly easy to know when you didn't enjoy the benefit of the doubt, but it's harder to know when you actually did, because it's unlikely you would know about the potential negative behaviors if the circumstances were slightly different, and you can't redo the match anyway. But sometimes you can have a glimpse of it.

   When I was in high school, we sat down on a river bench in a bourgeois neighborhood park on a summer night with a few of my very white friends. A municipal police patrol came to us and asked us bluntly if we were smoking pot. None of us had ever smoked as much as a cigarette, so we got a little cocky and in your face with the police officers. After a few regulatory warnings about marijuana, they left us alone, but I realized much later that it could have turned ugly if we hadn't all been white.

   In this sense, allyship as I understand it is mostly about forcing ourselves to extend the benefit of the doubt to people from population who more generally don't enjoy it. I say "force ourselves" because we've been raised in a discriminatory society and so we have discriminatory reflexes that we have to overcome to extend this benefit of the doubt.

   • Linux Walt Alt (@lnxw37a2) {3EB165E0-5BB1-45D2-9E7D-93B31821F864} likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     starbreaker (starbreaker@libranet.de)'s status on Wednesday, 29-Nov-2023 07:13:42 JST starbreaker

     in reply to

     The plain fact is that despite having clawed my way into the ranks of the petit bourgeois, I can't seem to get my head out of survival mode. I might have gotten mine, but I could lose it all with a single mistake. Hell, I could do everything right and still lose, and nobody would give a shit because I'm privileged.

     Therapy hasn't helped. And I'm not so privileged that I can easily access effective mental health services, let alone afford them.

   • Embed this notice
     starbreaker (starbreaker@libranet.de)'s status on Wednesday, 29-Nov-2023 07:13:43 JST starbreaker

     I may have mentioned this, but I was born a bastard and worked hard to become an asshole. What makes me an asshole? Somebody who isn't an asshole wouldn't think the following, let alone post it.

     I've become extremely cynical about people requesting donations and calling it "mutual aid". Most people requesting help genuinely need it, but will never be in a position to help me should I ever need it, so from them "mutual aid" is just a disingenuous euphemism for charity.

     I refuse on principle to engage in charity: the principle being that I already pay taxes and that the taxes I pay should be used primarily to ensure that those in need get the help they need, regardless of who they are or whether they seem "deserving". Of course, that's not how it actually works, but I'm not sitting atop billions of dollars in wealth accumulated by shafting consumers, stiffing workers, and evading taxes so it's not really my problem.

     Likewise with "allyship". The way it's used nowadays, it seems like a demand upon the "privileged" to give of oneself without any expectation of reciprocity. I suppose that whether one responds to such demands depends on one's sense of noblesse oblige. For my part, I'm hardly noble, and I don't see myself as particularly privileged, so I have no sense of obligation toward people who seem to see me as nothing but a means to their ends and thus try to exploit me by playing on what vestigial idealism I still possess.

     Instead, I've come to think that Edmond Dantes in The Count of Monte Cristo had it right when he said to Alfred's friends:

     “Perhaps what I am about to say will appear strange to you gentlemen, socialists, progressives, humanitarians as you are, but I never worry about my neighbor, I never try to protect society which does not protect me -- indeed, I might add, which generally takes no heed of me except to do me harm -- and, since I hold them low in my esteem and remain neutral towards them, I believe that society and my neighbor are in my debt.”

     I won't burn down the village just to feel its warmth, but if somebody else strikes a match, I will get involved lest my own house burn, too. I'm selfish, but not stupid, and my myopia primarily affects my eyesight, not my thinking.