HOW PRIVILEGED ARE YOU?

serious laugh out load @ "if you can't add, -30"

ladies and gentlemen, our target audience

I believe this image originated from 4chan

i am without category it seems

110 I think? Obv this is just for laughs but smh at earning 1m/year awarding the same amount of privilege as living in the Netherlands or being Jewish. MAKES YOU THINK though.

On the other thread I said I was 0, but actually I'm -20. Which is complete bullshit.

Seriously, so many problems with this, I don't even know where to begin...

is it really from 4chan? it seems like a perfect example of tumblr intellectualism to me

i guess there's no Otherkin -500 category

45 but yeah this is bullshit

oh crap I left out the 150-200

Also lolled @ "social autism (freebee)"

105, at least, wasn't sure if I have an attractive face by their standards or if "engineer" includes software development

i guess there's no Otherkin -500 category

― Mordy, Tuesday, October 23, 2012 4:17 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I was looking for this, I confess.

only thing worse than living in the middle east is blindness

is it really from 4chan? it seems like a perfect example of tumblr intellectualism to me

― Mordy, Tuesday, October 23, 2012 11:17 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

I think so, it's subtly-trolly

Someone please turn this into a board game

bad speeling

160. i'll just round it up

China- Rural/shop

Kind of feel better believing it's from 4chan. Sadly it could so easily be real.

it's actually the last page of the US tax forms for 2013

has anyone ever done a social history of the internet social activism movement? like when did this kind of language start to appear on tumblr blogs next to twilight gifs?

Friday or Saterday night

Being tall is apparently my only redeeming factor, woohoo! 20.

country- bankrupt peripheral european
race- white, historically oppressed
overweight, ugly face, can't fuckin believe they didn't allow for GSOH
male, but a long way from alpha
Five ten, but terrible posture
Straight but ws james franco
Atheist, bonus minus points for lol irish
Ablebodied, but clumsy and left foot needs a lot of work
CIS no quibbles here tbf
Gf & I combined = middle, less rent and lol dublin expenses lol gtfo
No option for public clerical officer, gonna say lol

I'm like 115 / 125 depending if you think I'm hawt.

xxxp particularly, did this language migrate directly from academic discourses? if so, how did we go from butler to otherkin (obv 'From Butler to Otherkin' will be the name of the tumblr critical theory collection i'm planning on editing), and if not, where did it come from?

subtly-trolly doesn't being 4chan to mind for me.

105, at least, wasn't sure if "engineer" includes software development

It kind of has to - I have occasional kneejerks of "but but geek = -100" but really we are doing very well compared to nearly everyone else.

120, I counted Canada as being equivalent to "Europe - meh" and I decided I had an attractive face.

Being tall is apparently my only redeeming factor, woohoo! 20.

― she started dancing to that (Finefinemusic), Tuesday, October 23, 2012 11:24 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol ikr? I was like FUCK YEAH I"M TALL GIMMIE DEM POINTS.

oh hold up I was basing things on my parents' income and not my own household income - working my ass off all these years gets me to a 55! Voted in wrong category, alas.

high five, E! UP HIGH.

I forgot the disability bit so I'm actually like 140/150.

oh god

Andrew, you're a software developer! I knew there was some commonality here

I'm guessing some of this moved over when Livejournal split apart?

yeah, i assume most of this stuff comes by way of livejournal but that still doesn't explain how it got to livejournal

presumably it's posted by people

105 or 125 depending on whether I'm supposed to lose fat points and ugly points, or just one or the other.

http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/xxxlibris/1313826/21061/21061_1000.jpg

argh, huge image, sorry.

Kind of feel better believing it's from 4chan. Sadly it could so easily be real.

― emil.y, Tuesday, October 23, 2012 11:20 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well it's not any more or less "real" regardless of what website or message board it originated on, since it's obv something jokey and not academic/governmental/etc

checkyourprivilege.gov

I made this and I made it using science

ftr

argh, huge image, sorry.

― Andrew Farrell, Tuesday, October 23, 2012 11:31 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

god, stop showing off your privilege

the obama administration is going to use this to distribute aid if he wins

I am already falsifying paperwork to claim I am a blind jewish trans person

How the shit do I know how attractive I am?

So, uh, I'm the least privileged person here, apparently? Excellent news!

well it's not any more or less "real" regardless of what website or message board it originated on, since it's obv something jokey and not academic/governmental/etc

― my mansplain songz (some dude), Tuesday, October 23, 2012 4:32 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I meant 'real' as in 'genuinely well-intentioned but unutterably stupid' - which honestly is very possible.

Or amn't?

hotornot.com xp

Underwear pics, Phil, it's the only way.

scored 135; i'll take diseased to be metaphorical, so that knocks me down to 85.

i think it's genuinely well-intentioned and the comments responding to it on my fb feed were certainly well-intentioned

125 before bringing the "attractiveness" section into it (I dot think that's something most people [including me] can objectively assess about themselves; left it at 0, which may be a bit optimistic). I should probably add the -15, though, because I totally would have done this on Saturday night.

Some truly bullshit scoring, of course, but that's to be expected.

I am willing to give anyone on ilx a 1-10 rating if they need help

hahaha

I don't get how everyone is scoring so high - are you all male Jewish Norwegians who do investment banking and have an over-inflated idea of your looks?

there are a lot of jewish people on ilx

i think the "saterday" and the "can't add" are tells

mh - I tend to assume there's quite a bit, as with most people on ILX?

It makes more sense on Livejournal to me - lengthy nuanced conversations are kind of necessary to build a community of any size without things schisms tearing things apart every six weeks.

If I post underwear pics everyone will know I am Steve Garvey.

I think the "-25 if black and jewish" is the tell for me

you think this was made by a black jew?

In before LennyKravitz.jpg

I meant 'real' as in 'genuinely well-intentioned but unutterably stupid' - which honestly is very possible.

to me it's pretty clearly a joke, but the kind of joke that was designed for some people to take seriously

i am so unprivileged that i can't even begin this, the oppression of mixed-race people will never end

hint on high scoring: if you're white, male, from a european/north american country and at least neutral on religion, you instantly hit 100

I think I hit it despite the -20 for nonreligious in the US. probably needs a jokey mental health checkbox

I don't get how everyone is scoring so high - are you all male Jewish Norwegians who do investment banking and have an over-inflated idea of your looks?

― emil.y, Tuesday, October 23, 2012 11:38 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well, ilx is mostly white, mostly straight, mostly male, mostly euro or american, and 100% people privileged enough to spend too much time on the internet.

xpost

i think i ended up at -105, lol

if you are crazy and like to fart a lot +50

can't believe less than 30k is considered poor by the people i don't know who made the jpg on this thread

oh no, -80, i didn't catch the disability one

I think maybe intended as parody by someone who perhaps doesn't fully understand the concept.

that is £18k - I had forgotten the exchange rate was quite so brutal.

55

totes kinda privileged yo

i thought i was zooming for 200 but then my microtia knocked me back to merely "privileged"

Knowledge of mid and late 90's indie music: +100

it should have "using the word 'privileged'" as a +100

I don't care if it evens out to 0, I selected atttractive face AND overweight because why not

Can't believe they left out MOD PRIVILEGE.

it should have "using the word 'privileged'" as a +100

― Know how Roo feel (LocalGarda), Tuesday, October 23, 2012 11:51 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is pretty stupid. The income levels don't match up!

it should have "using the word 'privileged'" as a +100

― Know how Roo feel (LocalGarda), Tuesday, 23 October 2012 16:51 (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

How does that work, now? The actual unprivileged are too busy down the mines?

if you are crazy and like to fart a lot +50

― ɥɯ ︵ (°□°) (mh), Tuesday, October 23, 2012 10:46 AM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

just posted up a high score, thx dude

yo VG we are priveledge sisters~ I also put attractive fae & overweight too, hehe.

*hi five*

stopped paying attention at "saterday"

How does that work, now? The actual unprivileged are too busy down the mines?

yes, with shit pouring out of their peasant eyes. those are my views.

so should we be displaying our privilege numbers on our drivers licenses or what

145. My profession isnt on here so i gave myself 0 there.

155 but i cheated a bit cos i'm privileged so i get to change the rules to suit me

Bill, I'm pretty sure "runs shit" gets you a +500

xpost hmph, typical 100+'er

who'll be the first to claim a -2585, lowest score possible if i calculate correctly

luna

nobody can claim -2585 because it would mean they can add

-20, which is super lol

maybe a kind privileged person helped them out

-25, i guess that means I don't win anything. Story of my life.

is there an alpha uber privileged person who can claim a +270 on ilx ? you are instantly made mod and get to ban who you like i hear

Bill Magill owning this thing is pretty much where we're at

You'd be talking about some kind of male Amanda Palmer!

okay let's do our alignments next

loool dlh

and what's that cheesy personality test that has the double barrelled name? we should do that too.

myers briggs

i got like -50?

ty goole

did u know that they were married irl?

Is ILX run by NFs?

(among other threads)

oh wait that's not true

xp

it was a mother-daughter team

whoops.

also, they were married

GET YER GREY GARDENS ON, Y'ALL

my dad (who manages now, to his exhaustion and dismay) claims to immediately discard resumes containing a myers-briggs score

haha that is boss

literally!!!

lul

also lul @ grey gardens yall

175? have to double check from the Heeb country club tonight

i'm trying to figure out if +25 jewish indicates that the person who made it is jewish or anti-semitic.

We'll have to manalyze.

Sorry.

mordy what's yr score?

"I'm a +55 privilege INTJ, I enjoy horseback riding and long walks on the beach"

some of these i'm not sure how to grade myself, re: attractiveness or tallness. is 5'11" tall? w/out calculating those i'm like ~175 depending how they shake out a little higher or lower. obv i'm super privileged. i wear my shame on my attractive face +10

100

I'm non-religious but I accidentally typed "Christian" at first, probably b/c I felt so steeped in suburban Judeo-Christian values growing up even though my mom + dad weren't religious and we didn't go to church. But then again, it could have been the Holy Spirit writing through me.

xpost OH PLEASE YOU'RE OVER 150 QUIT YR HANDWRINGING

:)

i kno how privileged i am. i try to cultivate gratitude.

So if you're from Central or South America, that means that you choose the closest, which is the United States – hey, I guess that makes you pretty privileged!

lol I just noticed 'Europe - Meh'

I have to check it daily

people in latin america are going to benefit from trade w/ america under romney

i just noticed you get -20 if you're nonreligious in the u.s., but how much of that do you have to give back if you have a facebook account

you give back 10 but then you get -20 for social autism

i'm trying to figure out if +25 jewish indicates that the person who made it is jewish or anti-semitic.

― Mordy, Tuesday, October 23, 2012 12:31 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm thinking the latter

Or trolling.

that's a given

I read it as soft anti-semitism, 'jews are all really successful' sorta same level as 'asians are all smart'

Difficult to work out what kind of 'Asian' they mean. Are Japanese, Burmese and Afghan all considered the same category of privilege? No option for mixed race either.

yeah I thought the same as iatee

I missed the -20 for American nonreligiosity, so 105 I guess.

oh i did too, that's 140 for me then

lol white people

^ plutocrat

man if anyone gets off the hook here it's plutocrats

am I supposed to vote for "50 to 100" or "100 to 150"?

man I wish I was a plutocrat, I just went to college with a bunch of them

Within a worldwide framework of privilege, I am definitely well up the scale. I scored 135, iirc (it was only two minutes ago, but it doesn't take me long to forget meaningless numbers). This may be low compared to Mitt Romney, but I'm in the stratosphere compared to about six billion people.

150, if I class myself as having an attractive face.

am I supposed to vote for "50 to 100" or "100 to 150"?

― *triumphant sauce horns* (crüt), Tuesday, October 23, 2012 1:06 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the truly privileged instinctively look for ways to downplay their privilege

for instance, i am so disabled in vision that i have to wear prescription glasses to see

the great thing about being privileged is even if you're shamed to admit that you have a particularly high privilege score you can console yourself by thinking about all the privileges you have

Why is Middle East automatically 200 less than Africa? Sure the average Kuwaiti is far more privileged than the average Congolese...

Landed at 60, answering reasonably. For a white european male that's not great, I feel a little put out.

hi five, privilege sister

Why is Middle East automatically 200 less than Africa?

mathematics have failed us yet again

if this thing is trolling, who is the intended troll audience? is it trolling ppl who take tumblr social activism seriously enough that they might want a score to quantify privilege?

i honestly can't suss if it's trolling or clueless

if this thing is trolling, who is the intended troll audience? is it trolling ppl who take tumblr social activism seriously enough that they might want a score to quantify privilege?

― Mordy, Tuesday, October 23, 2012 1:30 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes? its trolling all the ppl on yr facebook who took it seriously, i assume?

It's trolling ppl on the internet who take a concept as vague and ill-applied as 'privilege' seriously

i take "privilege" seriously!

I had a myers-briggs discussion with a friend a couple weeks ago because he likened it to horoscopes so I tried to read up on professional critiques and, surprise, they do compare its usefulness to horoscopes

poll: how seriously do you take privilege?

very seriously
somewhat seriously
average seriously
not so seriously
not seriously at all

seriously on friday and saturday, not seriously during the week

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pevbj2ubH50&feature=related

i think theoretically privilege paradigm is useful but % of the time i've seen someone use the term privilege and it was valuable contribution to letters was around 3%

if iatee had started this thread on friday afternoon the numbers would have been instantly skewed!

It's trolling ppl on the internet who take a concept as vague and ill-applied as 'privilege' seriously

it's not really vague

unskewed privilege!

I know that this form is corny and risible on lots of levels, but I'm still kind of surprised that I'm a -20- I think as a white male with income I ought to be higher- the big drop is the -150 for being gay, and, well . . . . hmm. I mean, I get that my being gay is a setback relative to straight privilege in lots of environments (high school, rural America, normative suburbia, insert strawman here) but being gay in urban academia is just not some big burden to carry, frankly. And this form classifies me as a "teacher" but, relative to my workforce, as a tenure-track professor I'm *ridiculously* privileged. But is my disappointment at a low score just some flickering desire to feel privileged? Or is the form just lame?

Also, I think the 9+/10 option is hilarious- but I would guess that the sheer self-confidence implicit in believing that you deserve such a score and giving it to yourself would carry over into a kind of temperamental payoff across the board, in that your aggressive self-belief in your own value perhaps would grant you some kind of emotional "edge" relative to other more realistic people? (is narcissism a kind of privilege?)

Privileges began life as well-defined benefits automatically bestowed on everyone who met a particular set of qualifications. They have since fallen into the status of vague advantages generally available to ill-defined groups that shade off toward the edges into ever more tenuous existance. This makes the newest incarnation of privilege a much duller tool, but it is still capable of doing some useful work.

But is my disappointment at a low score just some flickering desire to feel privileged?

haaaa i totally get that, talk of privilege - specifically w/r/t race and sexuality - makes me come over all unprivilege-denying. I'M FINE THX. NOT ANYONE'S VICTIM.

the form is obv just lame though

the quiz does not fully account for the complexities of the kyriarchy

tunespace: there's tons of (pop, at least) social science which says that it is

35, due to current unemployment and rating face = ugly, am unquestionably priv'leged however.

family status is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay under-weighted on that little chart up there

Really? My family by that definition is "poor", but I myself am (higher on the list, wont say how high). which one is supposed to count?

Your answer will determine whether i get to blame other people for my problems, or whether i get blamed for other people's problems.

We should all be thankful we aren't Stevie Wonder

older tumblr social justice drama: http://jezebel.com/5924950/internet-social-justice-mob-goes-batshit-on-well+meaning-sex-ed-activist

-150!

should have added "Proficient in math +5668"

Hey, we are brothers in -150dom!

and that's after I gave myself points for "hawt"

I guess I should take the 0 for asexuality, but for fun, I'll go with the -150.

It's trolling ppl on the internet who take a concept as vague and ill-applied as 'privilege' seriously

i don't credit the form with trolling but this word is basically a stick for a certain type of person to beat another with.

at least in the sense it seems to be being used...

buckle up!

lol

and that's after I gave myself points for "hawt"

― Cap'n Hug-a-Thug (The Reverend),

I inflated my grade at least 50 points

Hah, I deflated mine by about -200.

Er, technically i deflated it by 200.

Difficult to work out what kind of 'Asian' they mean. Are Japanese, Burmese and Afghan all considered the same category of privilege? No option for mixed race either.

― Go Narine, Go! (ShariVari), Tuesday, October 23, 2012 12:51 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

fwiw the way the west classifies people from the continent of Asia is generally extremely problematic

This chart needs more Science. And more Cowbell.

i think theoretically privilege paradigm is useful but % of the time i've seen someone use the term privilege and it was valuable contribution to letters was around 3%

― Mordy, Tuesday, 23 October 2012 18:40 (56 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That's grand - you just need someone who scores <100 to agree and you're set.

I have occasional kneejerks of "but but geek = -100"

I bet you do AF ;)

i think "privilege" can be a useful framing tool for helping people understand imbalances of power, obviously its often used in problematic or unhelpful ways but i think it kinda sucks to just dismiss it out of hand

kinda feel like quibbling over how different things are weighted on this chart is a weird way of engaging with it, as if there was some "right" way it could have been done

learning about the concept was a bit of a lightbulb moment for me in that it encapsulated a lot of things i hadn't been able to put my finger on previously - things that i experienced that white people or str8 people would have literally no knowledge of or idea about. it's both useful and obvious.

seeing the word flung about, often in frustrated/frustrating ways, is obviously much less useful, but social justice tumblr is awful because it's tumblr, not because it's social justice, and often the basic point is actually correct, it's just made in a punchable way.

people who dismiss the idea of privilege out of hand without wanting to at least recognise its existence, well, let's just say it's an alarm bell.

Damn right I do, you're talking to someone who saw "Revenge of the Nerds II" in the cinema! But those times have passed.

i got -10

being a geek is like +500 at this point, all they do is make money and hate women

anyway i'm off to revive the l.a. noire thread

how the hell is being a geek a lack of privilege? do you get passed over for jobs or get denied voting rights or will people not sell you property

liberal internet posters don't want to have a high privilege score bc they associate privilege w/ bad things. (or they don't want to appear to have a high privilege score.) i think bc of what ellen willis wrote:

But the [anti-PC] campaign has hit a nerve because it gets at something real. Coercion and guilt-mongering -- the symbiotic weapons of authoritarian culture -- inevitably provoke resistance; when the left uses these tactics it merely encourages people to confuse their most oppressive impulses with their need to be themselves, offensively honest instead of hypocritically nice. Perversely, racism and sexism become badges of freedom rather than stigmata of repression, while the roots of domination in people's rage and misery remain untouched.

Not so much the coercion piece, but that 'perversely, racism and sexism become badges of freedom rather than stigmata of repression,' so that - idk, I don't want to speak for AF but I think for many ppl - there's a desire to participate in this non-privileging experience. I think. That's where I think privilege as an idea fails - when it is constitutive of political categories that you can participate in (or are born into) - instead of just being a way of outlining certain common sense ideas about how racism + sexism operate.

i found a forum where there's a lot of that "X should be -100!" talk of which AF's example is not the most egregious but seems to participate in the same kind of fetishization of victimhood

I can't even stay out til 10 o'clock anymore and this jaypeg's trying to tell me I have 140 privilege.

Privilege isn't something you can necessarily give up. I think people justifiably feel a responsibility to use that to help others and protest against the idea of them being privileged to overcome feelings of guilt or remorse.

I mentioned in conversation not long ago that I feel like I try to help others when I can and pretend that I'm abdicating the power of privilege by laying low and not taking advantage of it, but it's really the highest point of privilege to be able to coast on by without worrying either way.

Innate privilege is what people are most hesitant to accept exists. But you really can't overcome it without being broke, having a criminal conviction that's a felony, or building up a bad reputation.

i found a forum where there's a lot of that "X should be -100!" talk of which AF's example is not the most egregious but seems to participate in the same kind of fetishization of victimhood

Kind of? I think it's more an attempt to deny your own privilege or stake a claim outside the mainstream. If you have decent hygiene and look relatively normal, being a geek isn't going to have any affect whatsoever on getting a mortgage, running for office, or really anything else.

I think a lot of that help often takes the form of noblesse oblige and not an actual fundamental restructuring of socioeconomic institutions + policies. (I'm not trying to place blame, just agreeing that the 'coast on by without worrying' privilege is substantial.) xp

I was trying to be diplomatic, mh.

oh, certainly

like, giving money or volunteering with poor kids is very respectable, and are things I've done, but it's nothing compared to policies that could conceivably lift entire neighborhoods out of poverty

I get that, Mordy, but I think that "denying your privilege" is a little less diplomatic than "fetishization of victimhood!"

err, a little MORE diplomatic

idg why privilege as a concept necessarily leads to 'fetishization of victimhood' or how that ellen willis bit relates, tbh.

I think it's more than there IS a fetishization of victimhood that discussions of privilege inevitably play into. Not that they must, but that they do.

it seems to me that you want to criticize the SJ tumblr crowd, which is fine, there are a lot of jerks there, but youre throwing the baby out with the bathwater. the SJ jerks arent jerks because they heard the word privilege, theyre just jerks!

I think that is the right-wing talking point, that the so-called "privileged" person is actually the norm, you can pull yourself up by bootstraps to be "privileged" too, you're really just fetishizing victimhood instead of aspiring for the norm?

Ok, if you claim that someone from a disadvantaged group is 'fetishizing victimhood' and you're right, I wasn't being rigorous about the terms I was using. This is something different tho where ostensibly very privileged people feel guilty about that privilege and for whatever reason would rather identify with a marginalized group. (Nb despite earlier claims I may have made this might be the psychological underpinning of Otherkin.)

I also assume this is the subtext of the Elizabeth Warren Cherokee thing.

Yeah, I don't know if those people understand their privilege as much as they don't know how to do anything effectively so they're blaming it on some supposed way they're different.

(I'm not making any claims about Warren herself, just that I think this question of privilege + privilege-denial is at the heart of that controversy.) xp

I think you're throwing in a half-dozen issues here, Mordy

Can you please type in a detailed way what you're thinking because you went from criticizing Andrew to jumping to a general case then going back to otherkin and now you're on to Elizabeth Warren. Maybe we need a flow chart or diagram so you can tell us about how these are different sorts of interactions with privilege?

sulpicius rufus abandoned his patrician status and became a plebian

he just wanted to be tribune tho, you can't trust these people

lol, there's no flow chart. i'm just making different, tenuous, connections.

are you hi

almost everyone I know whose family has been in the Midwest for more than three generations believes that they have Native Americans in their family tree, plus practically every African-American family believes this

liberal internet posters don't want to have a high privilege score bc they associate privilege w/ bad things. (or they don't want to appear to have a high privilege score.)

That's a pretty broad brush, in fairness - unless you're claiming that to be a liberal internet poster is to be disingenuous, I'd say they're more interested in recognising their privilege and dealing with it. I mean, "internet poster" still correlates to a measure of privilege right off the bat.

I understand what you mean about the "X should be -100!" - I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but IME it's the voter fraud of this sort of discussion - more damage done by reacting to the idea of it than by the rare instances of it.

In my specific example though I'm not saying it's not true as much as no longer true - and obviously -100 is ridiculous, but the comparative scales are as noted already ridiculous.

DJP, that is crazyish, although I have run into people like that. Both sides of my family have been around forever but I'm aware of zero native american claims. Then again, my great-great-grandfather married one woman, had several kids, then married her sister and had more, so we have our own interesting family tree branches

i don't think anyone is born a geek however xp

DJP, that is my experience too. I've met a number of white people living very privileged lives who claim to have some (but never too much) Native American heritage.

The fetishization of victimhood is very contextual though - sure you can go on shakesville and people will tell you you're great all day, but the point of the system is that when you go to the store for some milk, hey, there the kyriarchy is!

the UK equivalent is white people claiming they know what racism feels like because they're welsh or their parents are italian or something

I read once this thing about types of egalitarianism that was really excellent and broke down various different models of equality (equality of luck, equality of choice, etc). I don't remember where I saw it, though.

I have a personal bias by which every time I see the word kyriarchy I can't help but think of dragons?

I read once this thing about types of egalitarianism that was really excellent and broke down various different models of equality (equality of luck, equality of choice, etc). I don't remember where I saw it, though.

― Mordy, Tuesday, October 23, 2012 4:02 PM (33 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://www.amazon.com/Spheres-Of-Justice-Pluralism-Equality/dp/0465081894

Oh shit, I found it! http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/political_philosophy_and_the_left/

He talks about unconditional income in part 2 which is something I believe is on its way (tho maybe not in the near near future).

Having a bad work day but this made me chuckle. I'm 100 not counting cis gendered (no idea what that is).

I get +20 if I count myself as able-bodied with no disabilities, but I'm gonna call it like 18.5 due to depressive weirdoness and slightly busted knee (or a pleasing round 0 if I take their freebie "Social Autism" points) (yes I know I can't do the 18.5 thing but apparently the 0 is perfectly fine)

this is kind of silly as I have a pretty cushy life, even if I sometimes envy coworkers (etc) who talk like it's a given that everything they say is confirmation they're the cleverest person in the room even if it's actually wrong or has already been said, then look totally blank with occasional eyerolling like "is the fat woman still speaking" if I try to dip into the conversation

105, at least, wasn't sure if "engineer" includes software development

Eh I put myself under "technology" which is only half as many points as "engineer", but then my job title says I'm a programmer not a developer and I certainly don't earn the kind of money Americans think software developers earn

I've met a number of white people living very privileged lives who claim to have some (but never too much) Native American heritage.

I had a friend in college who called herself Native American because she thought her great grandmother was Native American. Her whole family was a family pale redheads like the Weasleys so it seemed very strange to me.

the thing with African-American families is more tragic than crazy; it's all part of a not-so-subconscious desire dating back to slavery where people wanted to identify the family tree with anything other than being black in order to jump up the American racial hierarchy

xp Okay, but people are born with something, and that something can get them called a geek, which was not always a good thing for them? Obviously it's more likely to flourish if it has access to the resources that come with a level of privilege.

the UK equivalent is white people claiming they know what racism feels like because they're welsh or their parents are italian or something

just because white people are less likely to be victimised by the worst kind of racists doesn't mean that somebody from a different background living in the uk might not be conscious of their own race or forced to be conscious of other people's racism.

it's highly offensive to suggest otherwise.

Jews are the only white ethnic group that has never felt the sting of racism.

lol OTM

i think "privilege" can be a useful framing tool for helping people understand imbalances of power, obviously its often used in problematic or unhelpful ways but i think it kinda sucks to just dismiss it out of hand

the only time i see it used is on ilx, or online in a similar way to the jpg above. there are much more useful ways to highlight racism, classism, sexism, or prejudice based on sexuality, imo. dismissing this use of "privilege" does not equate to dismissing the existence of prejudices.

I don't want to say that lex chose his examples carefully as such, but they do seem to avoid those obvious pitfalls, yes.

re "-100 points for geekdom", I have to admit that part of why the "brogrammer" thing irks is not just that fratty gymrat programmers tend to be jerks to women (so do plenty of non-fratty non-gymrat programmers) but out of a kneejerk feeling that I spent my teens being spat at and verbally/physically bullied for looking like a geek (or as much like a stereotypical geek as a woman can), and now those folks can stride in here with pecs and designer jeans and "lol, only nerrrrds would know anything I don't know" banter and get immediate access to a better range of jobs than is open to me just for being young, male and somewhat charming

but, y'know, those people probably think I have something totally undeserved and cushy that they don't so whatever

"Jewish" being +25 is possibly the redd(it)est flag on a jpeg full of things which make me suspicious as to the author's motive

DJP otm, i've probably encountered more people who claim Native American heritage than not when the subject has come up, including my father. whether true or not, if the amount is less than like 25% it's probably not worth ever bringing up as if it means anything imo. (xpost)

controls media, finance +25

meets in secret room yearly to set out plans for global events +500

will have his bond, will have no speaking, will have his bond +100

is a freemason +1000

135 but that's including a -20 for being nonreligious in the US (??)

godless heathen tax

"lol, only nerrrrds would know anything I don't know" banter

I'm perfectly willing to admit that not having to live in a country with the UK's definition of "banter" is a privilege. +100 points.

+135, which is why I don't spend time railing against some perceived societal menace holding me back--whatever's not right in my life is entirely my own fault. Was kind to myself with a zero for attractiveness: I like my face, could stand to lose 15 pounds. ("Zero for attractiveness" looks less kind written out.)

You have a great face, clem.

yes! flag post imo

Thanks! Just bumped myself to +137; feeling more privileged than ever.

*mutter* YAY! :)

I think I'll go have a butter tart to celebrate.

I got 180, damn. I think the fact that I'm a plutocrat kind of skewed the thing though. It's totally overweighted for being a plutocrat.

our new president

185 CAN YALL SMELL THE PRIVILEGE FROM OVER THERE

*bows*

actually tho i'm not technically privileged because, well, i'm just a really swell guy and i deserve all of these gifts nature, patriarchy, imperialism have bestowed upon me, i think of the fact that i was born white, male, middle class more as an a priori recognition for being a cool guy deep down

http://awesome.good.is/transparency/web/1002/almighty-dollar/flat.html

I guess the survey is supposed to be worldwide, whereas this infographic is for America, but Hinduism appears to actually be quite privileged in the US -- second highest percentage of its people in the top quintile, lowest percentage of its people in the bottom two quintiles.

Also there are kind of a lot of underprivileged Catholics worldwide, assuming that comes under "Christian"

max otm throughout this thread.

* high 5s horseshoe *

I've decided to own up to my privilege.

happy to admit that max is always otm, he's just an advanced prototype. we'll all get there someday i hope.

Hinduism appears to actually be quite privileged in the US -- second highest percentage of its people in the top quintile, lowest percentage of its people in the bottom two quintiles.

That's a little startling but I don't think that really applies internationally.

although that may have something to do with why US posters didn't seem to think Apu was based on a stereotype.

still waiting for an ilxor more underprivileged than poor Alfred and I

why is engineer +10 but scientist -15

income?

Look at the white male deny his privilege. TUT TUT, CRÜT.

-50 give or take 15/100/600, depending on whether you think Malaysia is closer to China/India (developing economies), the Middle East (cuz it's a Muslim country), or Australia (proximity)

lol @ US-centric view of privilege though - I might earn less than 20K USD a year, but that makes me comfortably middle-class where I am, plus being Muslim in a Muslim country really should be a wash, rather than -550. everybody otm, basically.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

So fuckin lol at Jewish +25

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

who are these 200+ gods who walk among us

lack of investment banker plutocrats is ruining ilx.

I wasn't quite over 200 but there was no option for 150-200 and I figured going to the higher bracket was more honest than going into the lower.

*falls to the ground in prostration*

Look at the white male deny his privilege. TUT TUT, CRÜT.

fwiw I am probably not going to finish my engineering degree :/

iw a loss of +10

if you become a scientist instead you can pull a 25 point swing

90

-50

karma's a bitch

revised upwards to -30 bcz i might not be the most objective judge of my appearance

w/e

Why is scientist low on privilege and engineer high? It's like you're inviting envious scorn toward scientists. I don't like the undercurrent of this. Scientists and engineers are held in high regard in so-called second- and third-world countries, like doctors. Are they all supposed to feel "guilty"?

Also, not all engineers make piles of money. Some scientists are very privileged. Not that I think privilege is bad, it's what you do with it.

Also, I'd rate teacher below fireman or police. I mean, you can get fired more easily being a teacher, there isn't job security in the early years. Not respected at all in many communities.

Why is scientist low on privilege and engineer high?

If you must know, it's bcz the entire quiz was pulled out of somebody's arse.

i just assumed that scientist with low privilege was kinda tied into christianity having high privilege. ie trolling.

what does being a humanities major v. going into math & science do

ruin your life

-500

75

I couldn't do math and science as a major. My dad was an engineer from engineering school so I didn't feel any pressure about it! Thank god I didn't grow up with the attitude of "you're wasting time." Of course I studied history, not English - maybe I wouldn't have gotten a hard time.

http://www.wearysloth.com/Gallery/ActorsM/tve90907-19830705-2285.jpg

-250 & not even a damn Pepsi

if you can "afford" to major in humanities you are probably more privileged

ie, higher chance your parents are more affluent and didn't pressure you to go into something with more stable employment. at least that's the case for a lot of kids in engineering or science programs i've met. humanities majors tend to say things like "oh, i don't know, maybe i'll go work for the UN after i graduate, definitely wouldn't want to work in, like, an office"

also if you go into humanities and do want to make $ after college you're probably planning on going to law school, which suggests you expect your parents to pay for it

I think you are making too much of a limited experience flopson. there are a lot of english majors at the university of nebraska or whatever. a lot of first gen college students don't have people pressuring them because they don't have people pressuring them.

(rather than cause they have priv hippie parents)

yeah i go to a pretty high income family school, too

def feel like this dynamic exists for a significant amount of students though, students whose parents are first generation immigrants seem to be under the most pressure to make value on their education

I am like -85, oh well

but I guess I'm a 65 if you account for the fact that [somehow] I don't read gay to a lot of people

I think that is true for sure, tho rather than 'make value' I think it's more about risk aversion - people who have experienced lives w/ a lot of risk push their kids into the safest careers possible.

whereas middle class white americans prob aren't entirely aware of how unsafe 'english degree from university of nebraska' has become, because in their experience that wasn't true.

xp

there are a lot of english majors at the university of nebraska or whatever

you're blowing my mind with this stuff

I think that is true for sure, tho rather than 'make value' I think it's more about risk aversion - people who have experienced lives w/ a lot of risk push their kids into the safest careers possible.

totally. my roommates' fgi mother cried when he went into Physics rather than engineering or accounting

you're blowing my mind with this stuff

I'm rooting against notre dame just for this rude comment

do think that assuming something like oberlin is the 'average college experience' is a error a lot of people make when talking about these kinda things tho

humanities majors tend to say things like "oh, i don't know, maybe i'll go work for the UN after i graduate, definitely wouldn't want to work in, like, an office"

I dunno, the English/History majors I knew were somewhat resigned to office drone futures whereas the science/CS/engineering students say things like "definitely wouldn't want to be ~just~ an office worker, I'm gonna be the cofounder of an AWESOME LAB SPACE MISSION STARTUP ~making stuff~ and ~fixing the world~"

maybe you could just say that no 19-year-old has ever thought themselves not to be a cut above the average office worker, although their justifications for this vary

PS it is like 600 years (ok, a decade) since I dropped out of university so I may be a little out of touch w/what undergrads today are saying, tho I do meet a few grad students as I'm still living in a university town waiting for some of that being too special to work in an office magic to rub off onto me

xpost haha. c'mon iatee, you should root for notre dame with me. manti te'o is so nice, and the alternative is alabama. ;_; <-- regis tears

you've been outta the game for a decade, but you are otm

I worked an engineering internship at Honeywell during undergrad and my project mentor said he couldn't hire an engineer out of nearby 'A2' because it was before the dot-com bubble burst, and every engineer thought her website would be huge.

xpost haha. c'mon iatee, you should root for notre dame with me. manti te'o is so nice, and the alternative is alabama. ;_; <-- regis tears

I am prob gonna just go w/ 'pray meteor hits the field', which is my favorite team these days

yeah sports suck good point

http://offbeatempire.com/2012/10/liberal-bullying

...what's the biggest challenge we deal with every day? The challenge that has my editors second-guessing every post and quaking in fear, just waiting for the awfulness to begin? It's attacks from our fellow progressives... Increasingly, I've started recognizing this kind of behavior for what it is: privilege-checking as a form of internet sport. It's a kind of trolling, with all the politics I agree with, but motivations and execution that turns my stomach. It's well-intended (SO well-intended), but when the motivations seem to be less about opening dialogue about the issues, and more about performance, righteousness, and intolerance for those who don't agree with you… well, I'm not on-board.

forget it, jake, it's chinatown

I got an 85

But that was being pretty generous in a few categories.

your methods are borked

xp

i'm a white man who speaks english and has a job so i figure i score about 1000000000

So basically the richest man is Saudi Arabia is unlikely to score better than -600.

who knew this was a whole thing?
http://www.metafilter.com/122432/privilegechecking-and-callout-culture

lots and lots of ppl

kinda too stunned by 'jewish -- +25' to even begin to consider how fucked up the rest of this might be

no way, being jewish is awesome

I consider it...a privilege

lol

it's not as cool being straight as this thing says, it's kinda boring

ditto 'able-bodied'

able-bodied straight people are the worst

getting all j g ballard itt

Are asexuals really more privileged than gays? How many TV shows feature asexual characters?

SNL

"privilege" = the new original sin

http://lhote.blogspot.com/2013/02/bullshit-social-climber-faux-antiracism.html

Nothing could be more indicative of the state of American social liberalism than the divide between the graduate classes I take and the undergraduate classes I teach. The students in the graduate classes are endlessly careful to check their privilege. That's good. Privilege is real, it's better to think about it than not to. But the obsessive focus on privilege checking is the epitome of how people misunderstand social change. People of the world, I implore you: what is privilege checking doing for anyone? Is anyone in the world going to materially benefit from someone in some grad seminar checking their privilege? Has all the privilege checking in every cultural studies class in the history of creation ever put clothes on someone's back or food in their belly? Ever stopped a single cop from beating a black man senseless? Don't mistake your purification rituals for progress, please.

Meanwhile, my undergrads are mostly good kids. But they are absolutely repulsed by what they take organized social liberalism to be. I talk about politics with them and they seem generally to be on the side of the angels. But you mention the word feminism, and they recoil. It's visceral. And the young women are even worse than the men. They aren't racist, mostly. But in large majorities, they are skeptical to outright hostile towards organized antiracism. Why? In part, because of ignorance and privilege and apathy. But in part, because they have grown into a world where social liberals are more interested in demonstrating their superiority over them than in educating them. Because they perceive, correctly, that white antiracism is dominated by people who are more interested in being right than in doing right.

just waiting on the fine detail from croke park II before i recheck my privilege, psyched

oh look another douchebag in grad school blogging about it

a very inspiring and educational voice

I went to grad school and all I got was this lousy blog

loll

Wait, do people actually talk about privilege checking in an academic context?

Or is it just a blog thing

just a blog thing

wtf do you think grad students do all day?

it's not something that bright grad students do

thinking about your innate societal advantages every time you speak must take ages. would be simpler to just not be bigoted and go about your day like a normal person

in an academic context they check it with a red pen

social liberals are more interested in demonstrating their superiority over them than in educating them

what a choice

has this been linked yet

http://myprivilege.tumblr.com/

People of the world, I implore you: what is privilege checking doing for anyone? Is anyone in the world going to materially benefit from someone in some grad seminar checking their privilege? Has all the privilege checking in every cultural studies class in the history of creation ever put clothes on someone's back or food in their belly? Ever stopped a single cop from beating a black man senseless? Don't mistake your purification rituals for progress, please.

This is suffering from the category error it is accusing the grad students of making.

be that as it may "don't mistake your purification rituals for progress" is some top shelf rhetoric

i'm just gonna spend a minute trying to work out if 'top shelf' means over there what it does over here

at zuccotti park (and presumably other camps tho idk) there was 'progressive stack' which meant that at the big meeting underrepresented minorities were supposed to get pushed ahead of others in the speaking line. this was annouced at the beginning of every meeting. when ows started getting bigger and it took 2 or even 3 rounds of shouting for everyone to hear something, it would seriously take like 20 minutes to explain to everybody how underrepresented minorities were gonna get priority in speaking queue. this seriously basically never affected anything in the actual dialogue that took place - which was mostly housekeeping stuff regardless - but it took a really, really long time.

holy shit you pushed minorities into doing the housekeeping?

be that as it may "don't mistake your purification rituals for progress" is some top shelf rhetoric

Freddie is a student of rhetoric, nice to see his hard work paying off.

Don't believe me? Read the Tweets that aren't written by a small group of self-selected fellow travelers. Read the comments on websites that are writing about this controversy.

d00d just discovered racism on the internet huh

what is the point of freddies blog post

i wouldve thought an old school Marxist like him would be into the 21st century maoist self criticism of privilege checking

My parents are affluent but I am poor. They would have been classified as poor at my age though I think

privilege checking can be conveniently elided with liberalism. 21st century Mao/Stalin apologists will jump through whatever hoops they have to to decry liberalism some more

Little red hoop

'i committed the bourgeois practice of privilege checking' -- me at my next jiantao sesh

xp I went from A to Z, I took out every liberal in town, and as I held them, all I did was talk about how lame they are and how anti-racism is pointless as long as NASCAR message boards have racists on them

a common refrain at the local struggle sessions was the amount of privilege our class enemies refused to check. how can we ever quantify the advantages with which the sub-kulak starts?

if only lenin had access to the how privileged are you quiz

don't we all long for the privilege of an all paid vacation to the magadan gulag?

Magadan laundries

lmao at "scientist -25", a+ trolling of clowns like http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/the-lay-scientist/2012/jan/26/1

How come jews get a score and the irish dont, ridic

better in central midfield

if you try to get the lowest score you can come up with the latest social justice youtube star.

black intersex gay transgender blind muslim whose homeless in the middle east. prob have to make it United States, though.

don't forget scientist

poor homeless scientists

Labless tbf