Derailing for dummies

[pozorvlak]

[Everything herein will be extremely old hat to many regular readers, but it's new to me and so I thought I'd share. Consider this part of my ongoing project of self-education.]

Charlie Stross, in the comments to his most recent blog post, posted a link to the site Derailing for Dummies. The conceit is that it's a guide to arguing with members of marginalised groups for people who want to drive them to apoplexy and/or despair as quickly as possible - this allows the author to explain why such conversational gambits as "you're just being oversensitive" won't help your interlocutor's blood pressure.

As a "white, heterosexual, cisgendered, cissexual, upper-class male" (plus a bunch of other things besides - able-bodied, literate...) I've only had conversations about race, sexuality, etc, from the perspective of a member of the privileged¹ group [from which perspective the conversations often look like this :-( ]. So I found the site to be rather uncomfortable reading, but also very educational, and I'm glad the author chose to ignore their first two points (If You Won't Educate Me How Can I Learn? and If You Cared About These Matters You'd Be Willing To Educate Me). I've definitely used the lines

If You Won't Educate Me How Can I Learn
You're Just Oversensitive
You're Interrogating From The Wrong Perspective
Aren't You Treating Each Other Worse Anyway
Well I Know Another Person From Your Group Who Disagrees!
You Are Damaging Your Cause By Being Angry

from the page (in all innocence! And with the best of intentions!), and probably a bunch more. If I've said that to you, I'm sorry, and can only plead that I didn't know how upsetting it would be. Now I have some idea of how that feels to the other person, I'll try not to do it any more.

¹ "Privilege" in this context is a term of art that (AIUI) means something like this. Suppose group X is in some way marginalised. Then the world will be set up in such a way that non-X people benefit from their non-Xness in all sorts of ways, big and small, that the non-X people simply don't notice, because they've known them all their lives and think that that's just how the world works for everyone. This means that (a) they simply don't realise many of the ways in which life sucks for X people, unless they've made a positive effort to find out, (b) they are almost certainly unwittingly contributing to the further marginalisation of X people, because they don't understand the effects of their actions - as non-X people, they never experience said effects. Hence, if you haven't made an effort to educate yourself about the lives and difficulties experienced by X people, you're probably part of the problem.

This effect could, I suspect, be understood as an especially unfortunate interaction of various well-understood cognitive biases. To my utter lack of surprise, I am not the first person to think of this.

Non-X privilege also applies to people who are non-X but members of some other marginalised group Y: while the difficulties experienced by X and Y people will probably have some overlap, they won't be identical, and privilege applies to those experienced by X but not Y. The D4D author actually wrote the piece after observing exactly this: conversations in which X¬Y people used the same lines on Y people that ¬X people had previously used on them.

Comments

[neoanjou.livejournal.com]

Yes, the trouble I have with those is that they are (perhaps inevitably) one sided. I rather like the 'female privilege list's which bring a sense of balance [I'm not trying to imply parity though, but an uncommented male privilege list is just too depressing]. Homosexual, or Queer privilege lists are probably a lot harder to construct.

There is also the issue (discussed somewhat here and here) that there is a difference between 'relative advantage' and 'unearned benefit which the group shouldn’t have'. That is to say, some relative advantages are fair, or at least natural ('I can generally run 100m in a lower time than a woman'), whereas an unearned benefit probably never is. [Of course that could potentially lead into the whole 'what is natural' debate.]

I suppose though, one could use such lists to construct a list of actions one needs to take, or at least to bear in mind, e.g., based on here:

1. If I am conducting recruitment for a job, I will be aware that I will probably rank the male applicants as better, and try to mentally correct for this.
2. I will not, even in jest, speculate or assume that a woman has got a job because of her sex.
3. I will promote based upon merit, keeping in mind that I may subconsciously rank male performance as better.
4. I will not use the performance of a woman in the workplace to judge her whole sex.
5. I will never sexually harass a woman. I will stand up and object where I see harassment.
...

Of course some are difficult - point 8 on the linked list is: 'On average, I am taught to fear walking alone after dark in average public spaces much less than my female counterparts are.' and I wouldn't really support actions of either:
8.i) I will not teach any daughters to fear walking alone after dark;
or
8.ii) I will teach my sons to fear walking alone after dark.

In other constructive things, doing a little research reveals this: this which seems, erm, 'nice' - you know.

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

they are (perhaps inevitably) one sided.

Sure, and the authors acknowledge this. To quote the author of the male privilege checklist:

men have disadvantages too - being drafted into the army, being expected to suppress emotions, and so on. These are indeed bad things - but I never claimed that life for men is all ice cream sundaes.

Pointing out that men are privileged in no way denies that bad things happen to men. Being privileged does not mean men are given everything in life for free; being privileged does not mean that men do not work hard, do not suffer. In many cases - from a boy being bullied in school, to a soldier dying in war - the sexist society that maintains male privilege also does great harm to boys and men.

In the end, however, it is men and not women who make the most money; men and not women who dominate the government and the corporate boards; men and not women who dominate virtually all of the most powerful positions of society. And it is women and not men who suffer the most from intimate violence and rape; who are the most likely to be poor; who are, on the whole, given the short end of patriarchy’s stick.

So, not perfect but still useful.

Walking after dark in public spaces: another option might be "I would ensure that my daughters learn (a) some self-defence skills, (b) to run really fast".

In other constructive things

Great link - thanks!