On Privilege, Intersectionality, and Feminism.
I have White Male Privilege.
It works like this — it doesn’t matter what my reality is, it doesn’t matter what my lineage is, my religion, my sexual orientation, my political ideology, my country of origin, my wellness, or my income. It doesn’t matter when compared to my white male privilege.
My ‘other’ demographics do not matter because I can largely hide anything and everything behind my white male privilege. I don’t have to be defined by mostly anything other than my white male privilege unless I choose to be defined. I can choose to speak to my roots, to name my higher power, to come out, to vote, to be patriotic, to seek help, or to externalize wealth. I can choose to do those things freely because I am primarily defined by my white male privilege, and that definition affords me choices. If I choose to re-define myself by other factors I do so through my white male privilege, and my white male privilege factors into how I am treated regarding those demographics.
If I am defined by others, or by circumstances, it pivots around my privilege.
I certainly can become marginalized, but I can still withdraw back into my white male privilege. I can attempt to transcend it, to shed it, to deny it, to work around it, to use it to the benefit of others — but all of that still pivots around the central core of what my white male privilege affords me.
Everything that I can do, everything that I can be, everything that I am is tied to my white male privilege.
I have, by the simple nature of my birth, more power and privilege than any other person on this planet — unless they also happen to be a white male.
The fact that I have to work to comprehend the marginalized experience of others actually speaks volumes to the reality of my white male privilege — because I do not experience anything other than my white male privilege.
I should not feel shame, or guilt, or unease, or anything negative about who I am in my personhood — but I am beholden to all other humans, with whom I share this earth, to very clearly understand that if I act without accepting my white male privilege then I am contributing to the oppression that gives me so much more at the cost of so many others.
I know that minority classes exist within the spectrum of white males, and I know that oppression and marginalization are also their experiences — but the cascade of privilege rolls downward from the top, and it is an awful reality that I get to be at the top for doing nothing other than being born into this body.
It is a simple thing to understand the concept of white male privilege, and it is an equally simple thing to listen to the experiences of people who do not share in that privilege.
I do not lose anything in acknowledging these things, not anything that is worth more than the equality of my fellow humans, though in actuality I do not lose anything at all, because I retain my white male privilege when I listen to the experiences of other humans — it cannot be taken from me, not in this current reality, it can only be given away in the form of creating space for other experiences to have voice. The sheer fact that this reality exists, that this is the paradigm, is the indicator of necessary attenuation within the movement for equality.
I have white male privilege — the extent to which I have white male privilege — it is to every extent, it is absolute. I (and others like me) hold power, and the system is set up to favor us.
Privilege is more expansive than the pervasive foundation of white male led patriarchy though, there are layers, and within those layers we find the multidimensional marginalization of other humans. Human beings exist across a spectrum of issues relating to race, ethnicity, gender, class, ability, age, religion, and mental health — intersectionality helps us to understand how (and where) those qualifiers combine and create specific identities.
More recently a spotlight has fallen on how feminism intersects with co-occurring causes — white feminists have been asked to look at their agenda, and consider if it adequately includes both the concept and voice of people across a spectrum outside of their own experience. This challenge has been difficult for some, for the simple reason that it ‘feels empowering’ to attempt to include the concept of ‘all’ within one’s empowered action. This creates a strained discourse though, because the consequence of one assuming to speak for another is to unwittingly create an ‘other’ out of them.
If a white feminist claims to speak for all women, there is an implicit presumption that ‘all women’ wish to be represented by a white feminist. There is an even deeper assumption that a white feminist might know ‘how’ to speak for all women, and that the experience of being a ‘woman’ is somehow universal. This leads toward homogenic grouping and lends to silencing the nuance and specificity of experience.
There is a specific difference between advocating for the voice of another, and in implying that one is able to give voice for another. While it is usual that the intention of one standing for another is to be an ally, the reality is that one may perpetuate marginalization by excluding voices, albeit without meaning to do so.
The specific experience of an individual is theirs to define, and theirs alone. We are becoming more aware that power, empowerment, and advocacy do not inherently exist together — they are splintered, and if we do not take care they become fragmented.
As a social worker, my specific role is to empower the disempowered, and to advocate for the marginalized — sometimes I extend that role and I speak to systems and concepts, but I do not presume to speak for any one specific group (or individual). I am in the way if I do so. The best I can hope for is to draw attention and then quickly step out of the way so that a person may advocate for themselves. I stand behind them, or beside them, to lend my privilege and my intention to their voice. I do so because not doing so is feigning care; it is stopping at the top to watch another struggle to climb while telling them “It is easy, I made it, come on”.
Within the complexities of feminist discourse, we find intersectionality shaking up the narrative — we are asked questions like “Can you still be a feminist if you don’t support the rights of sex-workers?” or “How does a white woman relate to woman of color, or a trans-woman of color, or a gender-neutral person?”
The answer is buried within the concept of privilege, and as marginalized groups raise their voices within this discourse it becomes painfully apparent that their voices have been repeatedly stifled, buried by the weight and volume of white privilege.
Privilege is not simply held by cis-white males alone, yet the majority of power is locked into and disseminated through that paradigm. The narrative of patriarchy and privilege exist in complex (and sometimes competing) measures for dominance. Understanding how intersectionality informs us of the motion of power is integral to addressing the imbalance of power. It is necessary in re-defining racism and feminism, and in understanding what true advocacy is — it is integral in defining oppression as a force rather than a power. We have to support the larger body of suppressed voices in coming to the fore if we intend to truly understand how better to collectively manage our experiences across the human condition spectrum.
Listening to people advocate for their own experiences of oppression, to their experiences of marginalization, and to their experience of invisibility within narratives is having an open to hear how you have been unintentionally tripping up the person you are trying to support.
I have white male privilege, in acknowledging the extent to which I have white male privilege — it is to every extent — I (and others like me) make moves to dismantle the power, and the system, that is set up to favor us over others. It is in understanding how alternate paradigms intersect within the causes of equality that meaningful work can be done towards addressing such a need.
Of course, our experience is always localized, it is subjective, and this can lead to myopic points of view. We can be reductive, moving us further away from intersectional perspectives. Within the broader anti-labels movement there is a sub-trend away from associating with feminist/feminism as a title; there are cis-gendered males who disassociate from feminist ideology (largely because they are either ill-informed, misogynistic, or both), and there are women across the spectrum who do not identify with feminism itself. Here we witness an interesting correlation between right (in that it is a person’s right to self-identify) and that of responsibility in attending to the management of socio-political forces.
To say that one is not a feminist because one wishes to live their life however they please (as some have said), and without labels or judgment, is to misunderstand the point of feminism as a humanitarian goal — it is to consciously reject the notion that maintaining equal freedoms and fostering justified empowerment are shared universal responsibilities, and that if they do not exist unilaterally then their presence is manifest elsewhere by means of privilege.
It is not sufficient to exalt empowerment in championing one’s own reality while failing to recognize the oppression experienced by others outside of your own paradigm. One does not have to be a cis-gendered white male to benefit from privilege; one simply utilizes the freedom of choices at their disposal and fails to look past that experience.
Equality must be a global endeavor, not only community based, not just racially or ethnically specified, nor can it be fairly defined by gender. We collectively co-exist and the struggle of one is the struggle of all if the goal truly is empowerment — otherwise we are separatist, we are localized, we marginalize, we oppress, we ignore the plight of others in reference to our own experience, and we run the risk of being in competition for validation through our suffering. Intersectionality informs us that differences are contextual, and without predominance. It is not possible to effectively claim that one experience is more valid than any another; reasoning is just as expansive as it is reductive in that matter — again, if we seek equality then recognizing one in suffering is seeing that all suffer.
The spirit of revolution is transient, but it is not exhausted by change, it is effectively conjured when directed through an intersectional lens. Awareness of one’s own privilege informs the application of revolutionary action, it underlines the necessary motion of a drive for equality at any given moment.
Ironically there is no true victor in systemic competition, only victim and victimizer. Victimization in and of itself is subjective, reductive, and disconnected. Clearly it is possible to take the victimization of a group and present that as a cause, but within that cause exists a myriad of separating factors — paradoxically it is that separation between clauses that serves to undermine change; in filtering the motion against oppression into a plurality of specifics we rend our power against each other and weaken the effect upon established modes of oppression. This is the frequent criticism against intersectionality, that it ‘waters down the mud, making it harder to remove’. A shift in perspective regarding intersectionality reveals the necessity of identifying clauses without mitigating the struggle. Transposing change-action through intersectionality serves to unify causes by recognizing the inherent similarities that drive equality and empowerment in a transitory sense — giving pause to the seeking of one’s own transcendence to equalize the plight of another provides a greater momentum, making it easier to tackle the larger structures of oppression and marginalization.
Refocusing how we conceive differing revolutionary aims into branches of a centralized (humanistic) cause, based on principles of equality, choice, accessibility to opportunity, and freedom from oppression / violence is universal and mature.
If we falter and to enter into competition based upon suffering or marginalization we reduce our effectiveness in addressing the causation of inequality: bias. It is when we shift our perspective toward objectivity within a greater understanding of intersectionality that we increase the efficacy in campaigning for universal and collective change.
Increasing the scope of how we address inequality to comprehensively include bias provides an individual call to action that is both manageable and effective — if we collectively dismantle the inherent structural biases we hold then we immediately create space to be filled by the experiences of other people. Those bias filled space act as walls, limiting our potential for interconnection and advocacy. Emptying those spaces does not threaten our structural integrity, it removes barriers to lateral growth and invites upward motion for those who have been oppressed — if we ‘let go’ of the benefit of being ‘at the top’ and take time to assist other groups in also ascending then we redefine what ‘the top’ is — it becomes less of a pyramid and more of a plateau. The journey for equality then becomes an incremental climb, one where we are all linked together, in a myriad of ways, and the fall of one becomes the fall of all.
I have white male privilege, but when I choose open the place that I was given and allow someone else to take a stand I increase the potential for universal growth, as the biases and inequalities that maintain my privilege are revealed they show themselves to be stagnant and poisonous — I attend to that toxicity by recognizing that my privilege comes at the cost of others, and though collective action is the ultimate goal it is my responsibility first to listen and make space.
(Recommended reading: Letha A See; Kristie Dotson; Rachel Elizabeth Cargle; James Baldwin; Reni Eddo-Lodge; Robert M. Sapolsky)
