firecat

I agree with what the following post says about privilege.

http://community.livejournal.com/debunkingwhite/794697.html

The post does not explain how it all works, it just explains the general shape of it.

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From:

webmaven.livejournal.com

It is true that no one can say "even though I am an X, nothing about my being an X and nothing about my actions ends up furthering not-X oppression", but that isn't the same thing as saying "being an X automatically makes you a not-X oppressor".

The fact that losing weight for any reason ends up reinforcing fat negativity does not make the person losing weight sizist, and neither does being thin, which is what section 4 taken as a whole currently says.

Perhaps just the supporting sections need to be rephrased, especially 4.1, which says "if you have white privilege, you will be racist." That could be rewritten as "if you have white privilege, you will contribute to racism."

There is a subtle but important difference between unavoidably contributing to not-x-ism simply due to being an x, and actually being not-x-ist.

From:

firecat

I prefer not to label people and to maintain a distinction between a person as a whole and their behavior and influence, so I would be inclined to agree with you.

I don't think I understand the concept of privilege as a whole well enough, though, to be telling the writer of the post that they "need" to rephrase a particular section.

I need to actually do some work today (the "racefail" conversations have been eating my life and I'm behind), but if I get some time later I may post a comment there asking if there is a reason for using the "being an X makes you Xist" formulation, especially in the case of racism.