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RE: Measuring 'Privilege'

in #identity7 years ago

Beautifully put - 'can't exist without an oppressor..'. My feeling here is that there are two feminisms - one, here in the West, was largely won, like anti-racism - these are no longer officially tolerated in any way in our laws and general public ethics. Private attitudes are not, and should not be, the subject of public policy. We are emerging culturally from 10,000 plus years of rigidly defined identity roles, inherited from older and smaller societies where rigid identity structures were highly advantageous - often life and death deciding. As these rigidities have dissolved in the transformed modern age, various 'privilege' battles have been fought - and actually won - to the benefit of both men and women. So women can express their traditionally masculine energies more freely, and vice-versa. The feminist battles of equality of opportunity under the law were won two generations ago. Attitudes are a different matter - but legislation directed against attitudes is always oppressive and authoritarian, people have a right to grow up at their own pace, and punishing them into growing is ridiculous and counterproductive. Too many contemporary 'feminists' just do not grasp this - these are the second 'feminism'; they project their own shadow wounds on to the world around them, and refuse to see the obvious struggles of those they target and victimise. This makes them inherently authoritarians - ironically clammering for a freedom they imagine they (and their pet victim groups) don't have, from their position of privilege and freedom.