Everyday Feminism is a publication of articles on privilege, allyship, gender and race from a progressive viewpoint.
HN commenters cite it in arguments about privilege and tone policing, with some using it to represent progressive views while others dispute its claims.
> What if the lower class is getting simultaneously bigger and also better off? Do you think the bottom 10% is living as bad as they were in 1940? 1980? Things that used to be luxuries are now normal across all income brackets... That's a good thing. :-)
Ah yeas, the good ole "TV's and refrigerators" argument[0]. They have luxuries! Even homeless people have cell phones, what a world!
Now how about things that actually matter:
* Housing
* Healthcare
* Education
* Transportation
* Income security
All these things are less accessible now than they used to be.
As for the "luxuries": when everyone is expected to have something, it's not a luxury anymore, it's a necessity.
Before most people had a fridge and a car, daily grocery delivery and grocery stores a walk away were the norm. It isn't now because cars and fridges changed the infrastructure. You are screwed without either in most places (and yes, relying on McFoods instead of a fridge is "being screwed").
Public bathhouses aren't the norm because most people aren't homeless and have access to those at home. In that regard, the very poor are worse off than a hundred years ago when a lot of tenements didn't have showers/bathtubs[1].
Before everyone had a cell phone or a computer, people weren't expected to find jobs online. Now this is a requirement to be a member of the society in most cases.
And so on, and so on.
In short, "Poor people now have ________, so we're better off!" is a bad argument. If these people…
First, that things have "always been" one way does not mean they should remain so. And "people are people" is not excuse for bad behaviour. People can choose to be good or bad.
Second, there are a really big bunch of clear rules about how to talk and the things it is okay to say and think that are being worked out right now. It doesn't equate with talking "nice". I'll give some examples:
- Use the name and pronoun and non-binary person requests you use, [1]
- Don't ask a transgender person what their "real name" is. [2]
- Stop Using Diminutives [3]
- Do not say racism is over because we have a black president. [4]
- Don't say #AllLiveMatter, nor that you can where whatever you want, nor that black culture is disrespecting women [5]
- Don't think reverse racism is a thing [6]
- Don't say things that suggest physical contact or simulated physical contact [7]
- Do not say, “Hey baby,” or “Hi cutie.” [8]
- Acknowledge your privilege [9]
- Do not center yourself, tone police or victim blame [10]
For twitter examples of people policing ways of talking and thinking ( but bearing that burden without legislative support ), see: and [11], and [12] for some examples, and see [13] for it beginning to happen with the help of law enforcement at the intersection with civilian-enabled speech policing.
This is not fascism because this was created by the American and UK left, these are the same people who railed against Trump, drive changes in the civil rights and social justice…
> In what jurisdiction is this?
I live in NY, USA, I don't know about other areas.
I did find this while googling the Tricare thing: "The military does not recognize Common Law marriages or domestic partners unless they are legally married." I don't know if this applies equally to same-sex and opposite-sex partners, though, but being a US vet of 4 years in the USAF, I'm not terribly surprised if that's true, although it looks like the courts are slowly coming around.
> How do you enter such a relationship?
Signing a single piece of paper at the office of your local government
> How does dissolution work in such a relationship?
You sign another single piece of paper at the office of your local government. No lawyers necessary.
> What sort of "cruft" does marriage have that a "domestic partnership" lack?
Oh, where do I begin? The history of marriage is mostly the story of men owning women. Marriage is perversely incentivized against if the male has a vastly disproportionate net worth from his would-be spouse (this is the case in my case). Marriage has a 30-50% failure rate despite the fact that 100% of people, on their wedding day, would never imagine getting a divorce in a million years (why else would you get married and toss away all future romantic options, right?)... This speaks to a certain lack of realistic behavior on the part of humans who engage in it. Marriage dissolution is biased in favor of women and especially against fathers (see this Everyday Feminism…
Well, there's two issues I would have with your statement.
The first is that "pointing out" is not where the story ends; like parent said, there is a small minority of people who use this "average man"(an amalgamation of features that doesn't actually exist in reality) to shame specific individuals(e.g. calling out novel authors for being "privileged" and thus shouldn't write characters with a different skin colour). This usage opens you up to an obvious reciprocal attack you would probably object to - one could point out that the average black person is much more likely to be arrested(https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2015/crime-in-the-u.s.-2015/tables/table-43) and use this to call specific black people "dangerous". In both cases, you are prejudging based on a stereotype.
The second objection is that once you start to delve into the "privileges", the label just doesn't seem to fit the actual things being described. Actually searching for "white male privileges" leads me to articles that are so easy to fight that I feel like I'd be addressing a strawman[0][1][2], so if possible, could you provide a list? My general contention is that the lists of "privileges" end up being a mix of: significant outcome benefits which have controversial correlation-not-causation interpretations(e.g. is blacks being arrested more "white privilege" or simply the amalgamated effect of high poverty, low education and latent racism?); things you would not really describe as "privileges" but…
First of all, obviously no one in this thread wants to discredit real people's real struggles. "I have just gotten home from treating a member of Group X who attempted suicide"---these are problems that deserve addressing, and I'm glad that the clearly very capable Scott is working hard on them.
> His counterpoint to you, which I would say has some traction, would likely be that those thinkpiece writers are deploying constructs like "privilege" as a way to discredit the very real struggle of people in groups that don't fall under the accepted rubric of privileged and oppressed, for the very reason that their issues' existence is either ignored or defined out of the category of "systemic oppression."
The problem with this counterpoint is that it's easy to misconstrue, even mischaracterize, "acknowledging the distress while continuing to point out the difference in scale" (from an essay I'm about to extol) as "a way to discredit the very real struggle" of privileged people. While the latter is reprehensible, the former is crucial to the healing of society, as explained in one of the best essays I've ever read: http://weeklysift.com/2012/09/10/the-distress-of-the-privileged/
(Maybe THE best essay I've ever read. This essay provided the single most significant clarification of perspective I've had in the past several years, though I guess I'd been on this path for a while due to the people and schools of thought I was immersed in.)
Indeed, while I'm sure there's no shortage…
There are people who actively wish ill on all kinds of groups and the “woke” are no exception. Plenty of people hate their political enemies and have no great concern if they are hurt and some take real joy in the idea.
Yale invites speakers who talk about their fantasies of killing white people. Mainstream feminist websites do backflips trying to sugarcoat that they think every single man is a threat.
> Yale speaker says comment about killing White people was meant to spark deeper talk about race
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/06/09/yale-lecturer-talks-about-killing-white-people/
> But the socialization of men is such that even a good man – a supportive man, a respectful man, a trusted man – has within him the potential for violence and harm because these behaviors are normalized through patriarchy.
> And as such, we know that even the men that we love, never mind random men who we don’t know, have the potential to be dangerous. Surely, all people have that potential. But in a world divided into the oppressed and the oppressors, the former learn to fear the latter as a defense mechanism.
> So when you enter a space – any space – as a man, you carry with yourself the threat of harm.
https://everydayfeminism.com/2016/10/yes-actually-it-is-all-men/
More narrowly the demographic that loves censorship is of the left now.
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/professor-terminated-art-history-paintings-muhammad-2238922
> In a controversial move, an adjunct…