We do what we can
I recently recognized a layer of privilege I didn’t know I had.
As some of you probably know, I also administer The Hathor Legacy, which looks at how film and TV portray women. It’s a feminist media site. I founded it in 2005, and I’ve been proud of it. But here’s where a subtle shift in perception can uncover a glaring bit of privilege.
Hathor was always intended to be about women and how they are marginalized. It wasn’t that I didn’t care how other people – people of color, queer people, etc. – were treated by the media. I’m very interested in those issues, too. I was just sticking to the issue of women because it’s where my expertise lies.
A few months ago, it hit me: some women are queer. Some women are of color. If you don’t cover them, it’s not a feminist media site. It’s just a site about white heterosexual women, and how we get marginalized.
Privilege enabled me to start a site about white straight women, written primarily by white straight women, about things that affect white straight women, and think I was doing something for women in general. Because white and straight are the default, and I fell right into that thinking.
Eh. I got over the cringe effect with realizing I have inherited privileged views and prejudices a few years ago. I tell myself it’s self-centered to worry about how embarrassingly dense I’ve been, when surely there’s something I could to to make up for it. And in that vain, I took action and posted a shoutout requesting women bloggers who are not white and/or not heterosexual to come and write columns on the site.
Maybe it’s not so much how enlightened we are as how enlightened we’re willing to become.
stacey on 10 Aug 2007 at 10:54 am #
very good post, that’s a huge realization. there are so many aspects of privilege it’s important that we each study our personal reflections on privilege and what we are doing to address it. i.e. as a queer disabled woc, it’s easy to assume i know about privilege and leave it at that… but if i am not studying classist privilege and other types, then i don’t.
Hathor Legacy and Straight White Women « The Blog and the Bullet on 12 Aug 2007 at 3:39 pm #
[...] by Jack Stephens on August 12th, 2007 BetaCandy, who blogs at Blind Privilege, came to a certain realization of an institute she administers for that studies the portrayals of women in the media: Hathor was [...]
Jennifer Kesler on 13 Aug 2007 at 1:40 pm #
Stacey, that’s very true.
I’m still not sure what caused me to lump, for example, racist portrayals of non-white women in with racism instead of feminism. It’s part of both (and a phenomenon unto itself). But it certainly belongs on a feminist site. It’s just not possible to distill feminism down to one set of problems faced by all or even most women, because we all have additional privilege issues beyond our gender. Better to be inclusive, and welcome those sudden embarrassing realizations that there’s yet someone else I’ve left out and correct it in the future.
Sweatin Though Fog on 31 Oct 2007 at 6:01 pm #
In my view, all these discussions of privilege are just retreads of standpoint theory – the claim that privileged people are morally blemished, and hence unable to make any valid claims about the true nature of society. To me it is just nonsense.
See my blog entry for more.
http://sweatingthroughfog.blogspot.com/2007/10/playing-games-with-privilege.html
Jennifer Kesler on 05 Nov 2007 at 7:55 pm #
If you don’t like talking about privilege, this may not be the site for you. I mean, that’s fine and everything, but I’m not clear on why you left this comment on this post. You seriously can’t see where I was being blind to something my whole life, and this epiphany hit me and I realized I could do better?
Call it privilege or ignorance or whatever works for you, but I was definitely missing something, and now I’m at least aware of it.
ThatDeborahGirl on 30 Apr 2008 at 10:45 am #
It’s post like this that give me hope.
I like the fact that you didn’t waste a lot of time feeling all guilty. You realized it, addressed it and worked to fix it.
Thank you.