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Syndicate
My father's equivalent expression was "Were you born in a barn?" To which the obvious comeback would be "What have you got against Jesus?"
And thinking about it, "raised by wolves" unintentionally references the founding myth of a great ancient city state. What is it about expressions meant to imply declasse habits, but which inadvertantly end up comparing their targets to revered religious figures?
Oh, the Romulus and Remus myth. Who killed whom? Wasn't that a retelling of the Cain and Able story? Funny how these stories embed themselves in Western culture.
I wouldn't put much truck in the stories of brothers who were founders but were murderous. I'm more of the opinion that women, being the founders of hearth and home at that time, probably established a society while the men were busy slaughtering each other. Makes historical sense.
Oh, the Romulus and Remus myth. Who killed whom?
Romulus killed Remus, and gave his name to the city he founded.
The Cain and Able myth is thought to have some sort of anti-agricultual bias. Shepherds(Abel) good, farmers(Cain), bad. Not sure what way-of-life RNR is supposed to be promoting.
I am not sure how the irony of the comments make this thread less racist. Indeed it probably heightens the racism rather than anything else.
Rock 'n' roll.
Hey Revolution Please-- you are part of this place. Please stick around.
Ok, RW, not picking on you in particular, but its a good place to jump back in. To a thread that Boom Boom correctly diagnoses in #18.
Obviously I misread the thread, came upon the trigger phrase 'white male privilege' - which I've been mulling a good deal since, why I'm so sensitive to it that is - and had my little shit-fit. Reading it an hour or so later, noticed what a clumsy arse I'd been and pulled it. Too late, obviously, to avoid the ghouls, who now feast upon my misstep.
First: context, since I don't usually misread ironic comment. There is a personal element. Yesterday I learned my oldest friend on the planet will die in the next few months, cancer. There is no hope. I suppose the morphine will ease his pain, but his mind and body will be broken and he will die. He's just past fifty and I can't stop thinking about what this will do to his wife and two teenage kids. Who I last saw a few weeks ago. Some of you have experience of such close personal loss. I don't. My parents thrive. I had three glasses of strong beer, then thought to divert myself with a bit of Canadiana, via babble. And thence to 'white male privilege'.
Cut to facetious thread on white males (no offence Freedom, in retrospect a humourous notion) and my meltdown. Follow that thread back to other tendencies that have recently emerged on babble, in which its somehow acceptable to make stupid jokes about 'white males'. I'm a white male. I make jokes about white males. People who aren't white males can make jokes about white males too but if they get visibly aroused in the process, we're moving into sociopathy and its suddenly not amusing. Kinda like who's allowed to say 'nigga' and who isn't.
I really don't care if as some abstract demographic 'white males' appear to be doing well and are scrutinized for it. This is maybe the nub of it. I support the useful empirical work done around this pernicious subset of humanity BUT I am careful to distinguish between the ABSTRACTION and the PARTICULAR. And when the general term, which applies to both, is deployed willy-nilly one risks confusing the two, that is, freighting an individual with the baggage of his group, which is monstrously unfair.
We don't consider all Germans to be Nazis. We take a dim view of those who blame Jewish people for killing one of their own, one Jesus of Nazareth.
So how is it ok to make hip ironic comments about white males? Because as an analytical abstraction, 'white males' are thriving? Reveling in their privilege?
Here, let me share some privileged white male anecdotes. Last week I had a guest I'd met in Damascus a year ago. She's helped a number of Syrian families financially and stays in touch. Some of the men from these families have had to leave the country - others have been killed - and are living as refugees in DESPERATE circumstances in Italy, Lebanon, etc. And when I use the term 'desperate' most of you - honestly? - haven't a clue what I'm talking about. Its just a word, you've never been there, and you probably never will, praise Allah. The women and children are safe, it seems, not under direct threat, not obliged to FLEE. Their men's DAILY emails to her are tales of heartbreak and homesickness and misery. If you felt like enlightening the men there on their white privilege, I'm sure they'd welcome you royally, ply you with tea and cigarettes, listen to you with interest. Anything to fill the time, and they'd find your western manners fascinating.
Its not that I DON'T think there is such a thing as white male privilege and it is an obscenity. Its just that I'm aware its NOT THE ONLY GAME IN TOWN. (Diggin the caps yet, 'writer'? Quicken the pulse, do they?)
Here's an email from a Canadian friend, anonymized for her protection, received yesterday:
"Thank you M. I needed that I just came home from X Class at X totally bewildered by an incident concerning a youth at the centre I only know what he told me so there could be variables to this situation BUT ........ I found out that he had a very important homework essay to write tonight and a staff member was going to assist him. . I was told it was part of his "Community Service" something he "earned by committing a criminal act He is 13 years old and has a criminal record!!!!! It seems he has been a victim of long time bullying He used to walk away but that caused more attacks by others. He has been suspended for misplaced anger 3 times now this. He was being harrassed by an older boy with onlookerswhen he said " One more word from you and I`ll smash you in the throat" One of the onlookers told the mother of the bully The OPP were called The boy was arrested and charged with uttering a Death Threat. We ask, How come we have wars ? How come we have prisons? How come we have very angry young men who may one day become killers? I could go on but I know that I probably will keep an eye on this boy who helped me dig and plant the Comfie Cat garden and who tonight chopped and measured and did dishes and smiled and said Thank you X You are a good person. X"
Anyone care to jump in here and bring this misguided youth up to speed? Let him know the role he plays as privileged-white-man-in-waiting? He has all the attributes!
Here's a picture of me at age 19, after I dropped out of school and spent a year hitching around Sudan and the Congo. I spent a summer working in the Alberta oilpatch to fund it. The clothes I abandoned only reluctantly, they were so much more comfortable than our western gear.
I suppose I put up this painfully personal image in hopes of establishing that one of my first acts as an adult - was to repudiate the embarrassing 'privilege' of my geography and genes.
RW I can take generalized remarks about my gender but when you presume to lecture me on PLANET EARTH and white male privilege I am afraid I conjure an educated middle class Canadian woman who to a good 9/10ths of the WOMEN on this planet epitomizes a privilege that transcends even gender. But I am sure I am mistaken. You are good-hearted, and live in one of the richest countries in the world!
Good post Merowe. Generalizations are frequently mistaken. Stay strong man you'll get through!
So, Merowe, you smear feminists and complain about reasonable requests for consideration by people of colour after a white man makes an ironic post – you miss the irony, you have bad personal happenings, and you decide it's a good time to barf out crap lurking deep down in your brain.
And now you go on and on justifying your barf, tying it up prettily with a generalization about a particular babbler you clearly know nothing of.
"Sorry, I made a mistake" works. Instead, what you are asking for with the post above is unreasonable, and far too common in our culture. Women are supposed to eat insult, and be nice about it. People of colour are supposed to eat insult, and be nice about it. You rationalize, and we are to feel bad for standing up to a smear. For making you feel bad by calling a smear a smear.
Not a good post. A revealing one. About privilege, and exactly how it works.
I am very sorry about your friend. I am sorry about the struggles of others. I am glad you traveled. It doesn't justify posting abusive, anti-feminist, racist, reactionary dreck.
"Sorry." Without rationalizing, deflecting or minimizing. You might want to try it.
oop. tee hee.
Thanks for posting that and for being so candid, Merowe. Very interesting adventure. I've posted stuff and photos here about my own adventure in Central America in the 1980s, but there was little interest. I find white bourgeois anti-imperialists in dreadlocks who often talk past and over us are not easily impressed. We can't discuss a lot with certain people because they tend to know everything.
Why are you still here? I thought you left.
Mrs Mulder I've been here for a long, long time. Sorry if I haven't taken notice of your thoughtful commentaries in the past.
Dismissive, condescending comments like the one quoted below, directed more often than not at the few women whose stubborn presence and occasional comments are all that keep this male-dominated space from becoming a male-only space.
I've watched others try to patiently, thoughtfully, eloquently call some of us on our shit, only to be met with defensive denials, rationalizations, and deflections. Not much seems to be getting through, so I thought maybe an ironic suggestion of a forum for white males (some might prefer to think of it as a quarantine) might provoke some self-reflection.
I was wrong. It didn't work. Sorry.
Do you know of any babblers who wear their hair in dreadlocks?
I wonder if this is all more about a negative experience you may have had in the past...
@ Freedom 55
Yes, I got your rhetorical point, and I am aware of what you were talking about. I was just wondering aloud about which of the recent event tipped the scale for you. But at this point I don't really care.
I can see that you were probably trying to help. Problem is, well-intended though it may be, I don't expect it's the kind of gibe that's going to relieve tension, illuminate anything that everyone doesn't see already, or lead to any kind of resolution.
I expect most of us were smiling and poking fun through gritted teeth.
I never saw any caucasian Americans or Canadians with hair in dreadlocks while traveling through Guatemala, Belize and Honduras, no. And it's too bad, too, because we could have used them to help push the Ford out of some muddy spots in the "roads." I think they prefer Muskoka and even Jamaica during March breaks. D'yer mak'er, ya, mon.
What happened to the 'going native' pic? Anyways, how about a thumbs up for putting this thread out of its misery? It has to rank as one of the worst we've seen in awhile.
This is an interesting article somewhat relevant to the OP and subsequent discussion (N.B. I am not accusing F55 of hipster anti-racism!)
A Guide to Hipster Anti-RacismI'm not sure what is less productive, trying to deal with a tense disagreement with ill-timed satire, or by reducing others' positions to pathologies, as if all they need is to correct the delusion and all will be well.
There's plenty of things in this thread which I think are unfortunate, and with which I disagree. And I am quite aware that I am not 100 percent right because my experience is not the only thing on the table. But I don't suspect anyone here of dishonesty or ulterior motives, or superficiality.
Reducing it to that just glosses over real feelings, however they are expressed. And if I'm not going to pay attention to someone laying down the law, I am probably going to be even less receptive to being dissected like a frog on a table.
(edit)
Sorry, CF. I don't mean to get too heavy about it, as that is an interesting piece. It's just the timing I am not so sure about.
I'm very sorry to hear about your friend Merowe.
I would've liked to do what you did when you were young, but the world isn't a safe place for a woman travelling alone. Hell, often home isn't safe either. Besides, I left my childhood home when I was still in high school and was too broke and busy trying to support myself so that I could finish school to even think of travelling. I suppose I could've done it a few years later, but by the time I was 25 I had an infant I had to support, an abusive ex-husband to hide from, and was working to save enough money to put myself through university. That was about the time I became an activist.
I think it's much more of a challenge to live in and actively try to change a society that brutalizes people than it is to turn your back on it and go walkabout. Then again, I've never done the latter, so I guess I'll never know for sure.
ETA: Sorry, didn't mean for this post to sound so whiny and self-righteous. As a white North American woman growing up in a relatively safe city in one of the most affluent parts of the world, I had opportunities that other women didn't. I've never been subjected to racism - institutionalized or otherwise - I've never had a disability to deal with, and I wouldn't change a damned thing, good or bad, because I'm in a good place now, I have an amazing husband and children who, despite my botched attempts at effective parenting, love and respect me (most of the time).
The absolute largest barrier to privileged folk coming to terms with their privilege is their incessant and seemingly intractable need to take any analysis, acknowldgement, identification or naming of that privilege as a personal attack. It's not. About. You.
Indeed, that's what the article says.
ETA. Cross posted with RW
is your trigger more important than others who live in constant trigger phase because of white male dominance over fucking everything?
and you think you have the right to call us "ghouls" because we call you on your crap?
i guess white males here like yourself are going to continue to drive other voices away 'cause ya can't give it up. it is always someone or something else's fault for your own bad behaviour and inner perspectives on how wonderful ya are but we just don't "get ya". we get who ya are all right.
bah...NFWI
Oh, it's ALL about me. Didn't you get the memo?
@ Catchfire
#56
Sure, The fallback position is that it is traits and privilege and learned behaviour, and to take it personally means you are just being petty and not paying attention
But it seems that in many things that get talked about here, it comes down to who a person IS - something which is usually broken down into one of us, and one of them.
Sorry, I get the distinction in my head, and even so, that fallback feels like more of an excuse than anything sometimes. Especially with all the levels of discrimination, and dynamics, and differences in values and politics, and attitudes, and everything else that muddies the waters.
And my point was not that that article doesn't make some sense. Sure it does, as a theoretical exercise. But it hardly matters if it is going to serve the purpose of throwing gasoline on a fire.
Ok-- so this makes the strongest comment about privilege in this thread.
Irony is nice but sometimes telling it like it is can be extremely effective. Wonderful post.
A point has been made that just about everyone here has privilege of some kind-- having internet access in one of the wealthiest nations of the world in all it may be hard to argue. But the fact that it is relative is critical. The experiences of people we live near-- right here in this privileged society are so different and the relative privilege that some have in this society-- those being white and male come together with blinders such that many cannot accept that people around them don't have the same privilege they have. Then of course the effect of privilege is mis-identified to be hard work, luck, determination and intelligence etc. Of course that attitude feeds a great deal of right-wing intolerance for anything that is not white and male.
Much has been said about the potent impact of sexism and racism when they come together as there is privilege being white and privilege being male and when it comes together it is overwhelming. Quite often it comes with inherited economic entitlement although that is one last of the trio I don't personally have experience with-- ;-)