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I do believe in fairies, I do, I do
Friday, December 28th, 2007 01:49 pmOk, f-list, you are all very intelligent, well-educated people, can you do me a favour?
Can you tell me whether you think "privilege" exists? (As in, white privilege, male privilege, heterosexual privilege, etc., etc.)
I think it does. Never named, the concept was touched upon in nearly all our gender studies related courses at the uni. I think it is a rather good concept, and in keeping with other's theories on this (well. Just Connell and Bourdieu, really. I really never read into it that much). Being primarily a literature and now of late an education student, I don't know what the current positions are, of course, but I like it, it seems rather insightful.
It has happened rather often during the last half year that I brought up the term in a discussion and the people I was talking to put a lot of energy into convincing me of the fact that it does not exist, does no longer exist, or has never existed. When I insisted that yes, it does, the responses they gave me betrayed the level of incredulity they'd show with someone who is claiming that fairies exist, or the Easter bunny.
In the latest incident on a message board is not as though I rounded on them, accusing anyone personally and challenging them about their views, it was during yet another discussion on an HP forum about the women in the HP series. I argued that there was evidence of male privilege in the book and was completely shot down by the others, called sexist for advocating reverse sexism, being an extremist feminist, a man-hating feminazi, accusing others of not seeing my point because they are men, the works.
So, please, does "privilege" exist?
Can you tell me whether you think "privilege" exists? (As in, white privilege, male privilege, heterosexual privilege, etc., etc.)
I think it does. Never named, the concept was touched upon in nearly all our gender studies related courses at the uni. I think it is a rather good concept, and in keeping with other's theories on this (well. Just Connell and Bourdieu, really. I really never read into it that much). Being primarily a literature and now of late an education student, I don't know what the current positions are, of course, but I like it, it seems rather insightful.
It has happened rather often during the last half year that I brought up the term in a discussion and the people I was talking to put a lot of energy into convincing me of the fact that it does not exist, does no longer exist, or has never existed. When I insisted that yes, it does, the responses they gave me betrayed the level of incredulity they'd show with someone who is claiming that fairies exist, or the Easter bunny.
In the latest incident on a message board is not as though I rounded on them, accusing anyone personally and challenging them about their views, it was during yet another discussion on an HP forum about the women in the HP series. I argued that there was evidence of male privilege in the book and was completely shot down by the others, called sexist for advocating reverse sexism, being an extremist feminist, a man-hating feminazi, accusing others of not seeing my point because they are men, the works.
So, please, does "privilege" exist?
