So a couple of weeks ago Slactivist said something that I, even though I’m not specifically a white male Protestant Baptist, should have said because, hey Baptist, Catholic, Unitarian, agnostic-but-with-a-vaguely-Protestant-sounding-last-name, it’s all the same thing with us people.
Head’s up: it starts out sounding ordinarily Jon-Stewart-y snarky…
Please forgive me for the actions of extremists I have never met who commit acts of violence that I have never advocated
As a white male Baptist, it is my duty today to denounce the violence perpetrated by Patrick Gray Sharp, 29, who yesterday attacked the police headquarters in McKinney, Texas, in a heavily armed but ineffectual assault involving a high-powered rifle, road flares, “gasoline and ammonium nitrate fertilizer.”
I understand that this denunciation must be swift and unambiguous and that, in the absence of such denunciations made by and on behalf of every and all white male Baptists, others are entitled to assume that every white male Baptist is fully in agreement with the actions of Patrick Gray Sharp and to therefore deny white male Baptists the rights others enjoy.
So I denounce this attack and state unequivocally that we white male Baptists do not believe in this kind of violent extremism. I beg you all not to condemn all of us for the actions of this lone member of our community, although of course I will understand if you decide that you must do so and will humbly accept whatever restrictions on our full participation in society that you see fit to impose. That’s only fair.
I further beg your forgiveness for my not denouncing this violent act sooner. Unlike the nearly identical failed attack in Times Square, this attack wasn’t the lead story on our local news and the newspaper I work for somehow didn’t mention it at all. Then today I was outside most of the afternoon cutting the grass and just didn’t hear about the story until now. I plead with you to understand that as soon as I learned of this incident, I rushed to post this denunciation.
...but the twist makes it not only generally relevant to the context of grossly unfair expectations that all even-vaguely Muslim people should apologize for and denounce violence committed by other equally vaguely Muslim people (even if they’re, say, Shiite and the perpetrator was Suni, even if they’re ethnically Persian or Turkic and the perpetrator was ethnically Arab or Pashtun.) The twist makes it appropriate to the context of sex, gender, and relationship blogs like this one. Slactivist continues…
UPDATE: Boy is my face red. This is so embarrassing — I totally skimmed past the fine print on the unwritten rules and completely missed the exemption for hegemonic classes. It turns out that we white people, males and Protestants never have to worry about extravagant displays of vicarious contrition. As a white male Protestant, apparently, I don’t need to promptly denounce every evil act committed by any and every other white male Protestant.
This is awesome. Do you realize how much time this is going to save me? Plus just the relief of no longer having to watch the news on pins and needles, worrying every time there’s a crime or a gun-nut on a spree that it’ll be some white male Protestant guy and that everyone is going to assume we’re all like that. What an enormous relief to be judged only as an individual and not prejudged according to the worst thing ever done by anyone ever claiming to belong to my faith community, or sharing my gender or my ethnicity. It’s not just a relief it’s a … oh, what’s the word? ... privilege. Yes, that’s what it is — a fantastic privilege.
Two points to this twist, incidentally.
1) If you’re white, male, and Protestant it really is a privilege that you don’t have to apologize ever time another fuckwad shoots up a school, a church, an office, a clinic, his family, random passers by, an Oklahoma City federal building, a Texas or California IRS office, random police officers, and so on. No, really, it’s a privilege. Not a resentment-driven, anxiety induced, demanded for male-privilege privilege, I mean it’s a real actual privilege. One that should be extended to anyone else who isn’t directly responsible for supporting, endorsing, instigating, or participating in such incidents should receive.
2) Yeah, Mary Daly was really separatist. Yeah, Catharine MacKinnon is really anti-fellatio. Yeah, Twisty Faster is really antagonistic towards men. And sure, somewhere, some time, someone who identifies herself as a feminist… or more to the point someone you identify as a feminist (even though like Lorena Bobbit or Wendy Vitters they aren’t) may have said or done something that hurt your feelings. But unless you want to start taking responsibility for the behavior of Timothy McVeigh, Dick Cheney, David Koresh, Scott Roeder, and Randall Terry and you might want to ask why you think every feminist should be held responsible for the most extremist, and occasionally even obscure feminist positions.
Of course none of this means one can’t take on responsibility for wrongs committed by others. Whether or not they resemble you in some way superficial or real. It just means your resemblance doesn’t oblige you to.
It surprises me to see you
Submitted by MissQuickley (not verified) on Thu, 2010-09-02 15:01.It surprises me to see you use “Moslem” — It’s my understanding that that particular spelling is deeply offensive to Arabic speaking followers of Islam. This link explains: http://hnn.us/articles/524.html
Oh rats. I knew there were
Submitted by figleaf on Thu, 2010-09-02 16:29.Oh rats. I knew there were better and worse references, I just didn’t know there were better and worse spellings as well. Looks like “muslim” is preferred so I’ll use that. Thanks for the nudge, MQ.
fl
I’d actually rather file this
Submitted by Sungold (not verified) on Thu, 2010-09-02 18:57.I’d actually rather file this comment under your subsequent post, but I didn’t see “add comment” there. So.
If you go back to Peggy Mcintosh’s article on white privilege that put “privilege” on the map, you’ll note two things. 1) She makes the point that the U.S. isn’t the meritocracy that many or most believe it to be, because some folks start the race (for money, power, fame, etc.) way behind the line. Her article is fundamentally a plea for affirmative action in order to make the contest fair. (If you haven’t read this,
I urge you to do it – it’s short, accessible, and great fodder for future posts as well as just generally good to think about.
2) Mcintosh lists a whole slew of different privileges toward the end of her piece. Some of them are good things that every human ought to enjoy, e.g., “If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area, which I can afford and in which I would want to live.” (#2 on her list) Some other forms of privilege are predicated on the existence of a subordinated group, e.g., “I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world’s majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.” (#16) In other words, some privileges are zero-sum (like the latter) while others (like the former) are not.
I like this post a lot. I like Slaktivist’s take on the Cordoba House (and might just make my students read it!).
One niggling question: Are we so sure that MacKinnon unequivocally condemned fellatio? In some ways, her writing is more hostile to male sexuality than Dworkin’s (maybe because it’s much more legalistic in tone and less impressionistic? I’m still working through this). She’s on record condemning it quite furiously.
But then she also had this famous relationship with Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, where she fawned all over him in front of reporters from New York Magazine. (I don’t want to get stuck in your spam queue with a second link, so if you’re interested, just google Mackinnon, Masson, and Susie Bright.) Masson doesn’t strike me as the sort of guy who’d be content skipping hand in hand through daisies. Myself, I strongly suspect this is a case of “fine for me but not for thee.”
I’m not sure that “everyone
Submitted by Nightfall (not verified) on Thu, 2010-09-02 22:19.I’m not sure that “everyone should be privileged” really makes much sense, because it is my understanding that a privilege is something which elevates, empowers, or otherwise conveniences one above certain others – if there is no one “below” you in rank or socially-granted capability (etc), then the term has no real meaning in regards to the particular situation. It’s kind of like saying “everyone is more special than everyone else in the exact same way”.
There are “privileges” that
Submitted by Dw3t-Hthr (not verified) on Fri, 2010-09-03 20:16.There are “privileges” that should not be privileges in the sense that they are “being treated like a human being”, which is a status that should be accessible by all human beings. That doesn’t change the fact that, in the here and now, they are privileges.
Then there are “privileges” that nobody should have, because they are more “the ability to not suffer consequences for behaviour” and other, more pernicious but similarly constructed things.
Thus, everyone should be privilege-1ed and nobody should be privilege-2ed.