privilege

I have some discomfort with the political concept of 'privilege', e.g.:

• Being white is a privilege.
• Being male is a privilege.
• Being straight is a privilege.
• Being born into the upper class is a privilege.

To start: I don't disagree with any of these. It's hard to argue that each of those categories doesn't bring advantages and opportunities, all else equal. What's more, they bring the ability to go through life without necessarily even being aware of all the ways in which life is harder for people on the unprivileged side of those divisions. My own experience is that being gay is hard, for a million reasons that I couldn't fully understand until I lived them.

But what is true in aggregate may not be true at an individual level. Ultimately the world doesn't care about our categories---categories are just models, and all models are wrong. Since free will doesn't really exist, there is a very real sense in which everyone's life outcome is determined by luck. And not just the luck of the high-order bits, but in many smaller ways: in opportunities that come or do not come, in people they meet or do not meet, chance events that happen or don't.

Categories are not totalizing

Compare a successful black woman---Kamala Harris, or Oprah maybe---with an unhappy straight white man. You might be tempted to say that the white man is highly privileged and is unhappy in spite of his privilege, while the black woman has virtuously overcome her lack of privilege. And sure. There are some very real difficulties around being black or being a woman. It takes strength to overcome them.

But it seems weird to lionize the woman in this case, or to hate on the man. Everyone would be happy and successful if they could. If the woman was stronger than the man, it's because she was privileged to be born with that strength or to have role models or life experiences that helped her develop it. Overall, the fact that the woman became successful meant that although she was flipping coins with worse odds, she got lucky and a lot of those coins turned up heads. And while the man may have been lucky in certain aspects of the circumstances of his birth, he has clearly been unlucky overall.

So I understand why a poor straight white male might justifiably be angry to be called 'privileged'. His life experience has been of growing up poor, having opportunity taken away from him, and maybe becoming a genuinely mediocre person (in whatever sense) because some combination of the culture and economy that he grew up in didn't guide him towards growth and success.

It is still true that, under our broad categories, he has enjoyed some kinds of privilege: those are real, and they can be useful to the discourse. There are real and specific barriers associated with being black or female or gay etc., and these categories are somewhat predictive of outcomes. But the map is not the territory: if your map says that some piece of land should have risen very high, but in reality there's a crater there, then you have to recognize that your map might not be fully explanatory. Categories of privilege are real, but not totalizing: they don't explain the full human experience, or even necessarily very much of it. We are all subject to universal suffering.

• As Scott Aaronson put it:

  The second concession is that, all my life, I’ve benefited from male privilege, white privilege, and straight privilege. I would only add that, for some time, I was about as miserable as it’s possible for a person to be, so that in an instant, I would’ve traded all three privileges for the privilege of not being miserable. And if, as some suggested, there are many women, blacks, and gays who would’ve gladly accepted the other side of that trade—well then, so much the better for all of us, I guess. “Privilege” simply struck me as a pompous, cumbersome way to describe such situations: why not just say that person A’s life stinks in this way, and person B’s stinks in that way? If they’re not actively bothering each other, then why do we also need to spread person A’s stink over to person B and vice versa, by claiming they’re each “privileged” by not having the other one’s?

Example: straight privilege

It might be less loaded to explore this in the context of my experience being gay. Being gay often involves psychological issues around repressing your sexuality, having few societal models for how to show affection and relate to the people you love, not having experience in relationships at a young age, and not being able to find a partner as you age (romance is twenty times harder for gay people). It can involve shame. It can involve being unable to see yourself as a 'normal' person deserving of love. There is a unique constellation of systemic issues.

But not all gay people have all of these issues, and straight people can develop many of them as well. Scott Aaronson's comment infamous comment #171 articulates his experience of shame growing up as a nerdy white male. Honestly, as a teenager I felt at least as much of what Scott describes---feeling that I was both too awkward and nerdy to 'deserve' being with girls while also feeling like I didn't know how to approach them without crossing lines---as I did the shame of having same-sex attraction.

And meanwhile, some gay people are fine. They grow up in a supportive environment and find happy relationships. Or they have problems early on but find happy relationships eventually. Meanwhile some straight people spend their entire lives as lonely virgins.

Systemically: yes, growing up straight is a privilege. And we have to discuss and understand the systemic effects if we are to make systemic change. But individuals are a lot more complicated than any systemic category can recognize. I would be very careful about calling any individual person privileged just because of their category memberships.