[seebs]

Originally Posted by Demimonde

There is a perception about these kinds of discussions that is really persistant. This has come up a few times now in your examples, seebs, so I want to try and address it.

Again, that person is not here and so she can't defend what she meant, but if your paraphrase is accurate, she a non factor in the discussion.

Think of it in terms of any other issue. If one was discussing tipping in restaurants and someone made the claim that only those who have worked as servers have any right to have an opinion in acceptable amounts of tipping, then that person is expressing a personal opinion that has nothing to do with the actual subject matter. It is just her opinion. The issue has not been clarified in any way by her expressing that opinion. It adds nothing to the discussion. In fact, I think it hampers discussion and I am glad that she isn't part of this discussion.

It is, however, directly relevant to the question of why people are so quick to form negative opinions of the semantic content of the word "privilege" -- because encounters like that make it seem like it's a fancy way of saying "only we get to have opinions".

I do find it funny though, when the empowered group sees this attempt as a grab for dominance. In actuality quite often it is just an attempt to level the playing field and try to be heard with the same acceptance as the privileged group. An attempt to become empowered is not necessarily a grab for dominance. Though if the binary is defined by that othered group it can sure feel threatening to the privileged one.

An attempt to obtain exclusive power is pretty much by definition a grab for dominance.

I have noticed that, in many categories, a lot of people react to power structures by asserting that we absolutely need a power structure with some people on top, it should just be other people.

Statistically, it is the case that those in the out group get dominated FAR more than those in the in group who are just maintaining the status quo. By definition actually.

This gets fuzzy for me once you start including contextual dominance. Observant Jews in the US are obviously an out group, but once you get into the social group of a given temple of mostly observant Jews, suddenly you have a new out group...

In my opinion, whether or not I undertake the Magical journey of Motherhood is none of their business. But our culture is packed with that stuff.

I am curious as to whether there's ever been a culture that wasn't.

Woman as an object of pleasure is another one that persists, and I must say, your above post perpetuates that in my opinion. It suggests that the male orgasm is all that matters and that a woman's job is to service that pleasure. If your level of intimacy with that person is strong enough, or your tone ironic and aware, she may not have taken offense. I can't blame you for that joke either. You aren't responsible for coming up with that idea, you are mirroring what our culture tells you.

Oh, it was definitely ironic, and was taken as such. It was mostly intended as commentary on the social norm, which we both think is funny.

So much of humor deals with these issues, because humor too is a social construct. I do think, overall, such gender norms of woman as baby machine or woman as pleasure machine are damaging to the culture in general. Personally, I am a fan of humor that subverts those constructs rather than reinforces them.

I agree with this. One thing I've noticed is that some humor can be subversive to aware people, while reinforcing for non-aware people, because they hear totally different jokes.