thread: 2006-04-10 : I roleplay like a little sexually-irrelevent nerd
On 2006-04-12, Ian Charvill wrote:
Living in western society, there's a five-box system. Five boxes, give or take. The boxes are: white; middle-class (you can sub in "college-educated" for this one pretty interchangeably); male; straight; able-bodied. If you can tick all of the boxes a number of things are true, the two most important things are:
Firstly, you are, in terms of money, employment, social status, better off than you would be if you couldn't tick all of those boxes, ceterus parabus. This is because of biases inherant in society—biases founded in things like racism and sexism—and this means you are the beneficiary of these biases. To make that explicit: you as someone who can tick all of those boxes are the beneficiary of racism, et al. Even if you didn't mean to be, even if you don't like to be, even if it makes you feel like crap thinking that you are, you are.
Secondly, being in a position to tick all of those boxes limits your perspective on the issues facing people who can't. It takes a considerable effort of imagination—of empathy and sympathy—to understand at all the position of the people who can't tick all of those boxes. This is an ongoing effort that would, from a standing start, take years.
These two things make me sad, to think of them as being true. Sadness isn't a reason not to believe them. One uplifting thing though, and I think it's genuinely uplifting, is that these things seem to be generational. We are less bigoted than our parents, and our children will be less bigoted than we. One of the ways in which we make this true, is by being aware of the problem and acting on the awareness.
Which is a long winded way of writing that, Vincent, when read you describing yourself as sexist and as not liking that about yourself, I think that's a hopeful thing, a positive thing.
And for what it's worth, me too.
