The Perils of "Privilege": Why Injustice Can’t Be Solved by Accusing Others of Advantage

280 Pages·2017·1.85 MB·English

by  Phoebe Maltz Bovy

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Table of Contents
About the Author
Copyright Page

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FOR JO
AUTHOR’S NOTE
THE ONLINE PRIVILEGE conversations covered in this book occurred during
or prior to spring 2016. Just as my own thoughts on the topic of privilege
have evolved and continue to evolve since I began exploring the subject
(around 2009) on my blog, What Would Phoebe Do, it’s entirely possible
that the writers and thinkers cited herein will have changed their own views
by the time this book is published, or at some later date. I do not wish to
claim that something someone published or posted in, say, 2013 defines
what he or she will think for all eternity. That’s not how opinions, mine or
anyone else’s, work.
Furthermore, I wish to remind readers that Internet Web sites and source
notes referenced in this work may have changed or disappeared between
when the book was written and when it will be read.
“We used to live in this tiny old tumbled-down house with great big holes in the roof.”
“House? You were lucky to live in a house. We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no
furniture,… we were all huddled together in one corner…”
“You were lucky to have a room! We used to have to live in the corridor.”
—MONTY PYTHON, “FOUR YORKSHIREMEN”1
I’m not as thin privileged as I used to be.
—“SAVAGE LOVE” (DAN SAVAGE’S SEX-ADVICE COLUMN), ONLINE COMMENTER J.R.2
INTRODUCTION
THE “PRIVILEGE” TURN
“[A] HORRIBLE PERSON”
In a freezing-cold flat in Berlin, I’m standing under the shower with the water turned up as
high and hot as it will go. I’m trying to boil away the shame of having said something stupid
on the internet. The shower is the one place it’s still impossible to check Twitter. This is a
mercy. For as long as the hot water lasts I won’t be able to read the new accusations of bigotry,
racism and unchecked privilege. I didn’t mean it. I don’t understand what I did wrong but I’m
trying to understand.1
* * *
THE ABOVE RECOLLECTIONS, from a 2015 article in the New Statesman by
the writer Laurie Penny, are where I wish to begin because they make up the
most wrenching, but accurate, description that I’ve come across of what it
can feel like to be called out online. The phenomenon she describes—the
privilege call-out—is a new, if increasingly familiar, experience. Penny’s
reaction—“I’ve spent very dark days, following social media pile-ons,
convinced that I was a horrible person who didn’t deserve to draw breath”—
may have been extreme, but such interactions aren’t the high point of
anyone’s week. While I’ve never experienced quite that spiral, I know what
it’s like to see a new blog comment or Twitter notification, and then
another … followed, predictably, by the heart-racing realization that the
Internet (and it always feels, in the moment, like the entire Internet) has
found me out.
The outright hateful comments are, as Penny notes, easier to handle, in a
way. As unpleasant as it was the week when neo-Nazi Twitter made me its
Jewess-du-jour, and as frightened as I was during the weeks when pro-gun
Twitter made it known what it thought about my anti-gun stance, there’s
something more viscerally draining about an “unchecked privilege”
accusation. What’s so useful about Penny’s description is that she hones in
on two of the key reasons why that’s the case. One is, as she spells out, that
the accusation manages to tap into the accused’s worst fears about her value
as a person. The other, which she does not, is the lack of specificity. Unlike
earlier generations of bigotry accusation, the privilege call-out is
intentionally vague, while also, at times, hyperspecific. Either your privilege
is showing, and you’re not entirely sure which form of privilege (let alone
how to appropriately respond), or you’ve suddenly learned that you’re
wrong because surely you’ve never worked in food service, something
about which your interlocutor, a stranger on the Internet, is remarkably
certain.
A privilege accusation prompts the accused to contemplate his or her
unearned advantages, and—all too often—to publicly self-flagellate for the
same. The less saintly among us, though, will soon remember (and, all too
often, reply) that we haven’t had it quite as easy as our accusers imply. And
sometimes the specific privilege accusation will have been inaccurate.
Regardless of how, exactly, all of this plays out, one thing’s for sure: The
conversation will have switched from one about some broader issue to the
ultimately trivial question of our privilege.
However, I’m getting ahead of myself. What is this thing, “privilege,”
and why is getting accused of possessing it so fraught?
FROM PRIVILEGE TO “PRIVILEGE”
PRIVILEGE ISN’T SO much a concept as it as a worldview. It has a simple
definition—unearned advantage, likely having to do with wealth—but
implies so much more. The approach originated in academia and
progressive activism, but its reach now expands to cultural commentary and
mainstream (even conservative) politics. It made its cultural debut primarily
through two personalities. The first is Girls creator Lena Dunham, noted for
being the first-ever entertainment professional who grew up wealthy in New
York. Or so it would seem: From 2012 on, a good chunk of the Internet has
consisted of critics calling out her (often overstated) privilege.2 Prior to
Dunham-privilegegate (which, as I type, continues; Dunham had recently
expressed her privilege by threatening to move to Canada should Donald
Trump get elected3), online commenters had been accusing one another of
unchecked privilege for years. Yet there weren’t really opinion pieces about
whether X is privileged and what it all means. Whereas today, that pretty
much describes cultural criticism and opinion journalism.
The second is Tal Fortgang, another New York–area-reared millennial. A
then-Princeton freshman, Fortgang’s 2014 essay, “Checking My Privilege:
Character as the Basis of Privilege,”4 in a right-leaning student publication,
was quickly reissued in Time magazine with the provocative headline, “Why
I’ll Never Apologize for My White Male Privilege.”5 Just about every
publication in the English-speaking world6 (including The Atlantic, with a
piece by yours truly7) used the Fortgang episode as a starting point for a
broader debate about what the “privilege” discussed on college campuses
refers to, and what checking it entails.8
While “privilege” plays an enormous role in the online shaming culture,
both of these are examples of people who’ve parlayed privilege accusation
into celebrity. Dunham remains in the public eye, and has incorporated the
image the culture has of her into her own work, effectively copyrighting the
“millennial brat” persona. Fortgang, though not a celebrity of Dunham’s
stratosphere, is making a name for himself as a young conservative
journalist on the “privilege” beat. A 2015 essay of his, “38 Ways College
Students Enjoy ‘Left-wing Privilege’ on Campus,” appeared on The College
Fix.9 The two faces of privilege are doing all right. The critics of privilege
shaming may take some comfort in knowing that these two, at least, have
not been shamed into silence.
The political conversation about “privilege,” meanwhile, has its own
overlapping timeline. The concept is well suited to politics. Long before
privilege awareness became fashionable, candidates (often from quite