Re: Absolute truth, the testament of truth.
Ironcross,
Gender has been socially created. You don't get to reject it just because it causes problems for people. You can no more simply wish a hurricane out of existence because it's about to trash your house. Gender as a social construct is real. And yes, it absolutely does cause problems. When girls are dressed in "girl colours" as infants, when they're encouraged to play with toys which enforce gender stereotypes, and when this also happens to boys as well, it enforces society's idea of gender on children long before they have any concrete idea of what the hell they are. This is why you're seeing a lot more gender-neutral toys and colours and general consciousness. When a baby is born with a penis, society works very hard to tell that child, in thousands of little ways, that this is how they should act. The same goes when a child is born with a vagina instead. From a very young age, children are guided to think in certain ways, play in certain ways, interact in certain ways. Gender dysphoria often comes up because that child's brain is not, in fact, programmed to think the same way, and they begin to experience a disconnect between what they feel and what they're expected to feel. This pretty much slams the point home. Social construct. Like it or lump it, but please stop arguing it. Nobody gets to arbitrarily ignore reality just because it's inconvenient.
And regarding privilege? If you experience little undeserved bonuses because of your skin colour, then you experience white privilege. Game, set, match. If you do not experience oppression, you are experiencing white privilege. Game, set, match all over again. This doesn't make you or any other white person bad by default. It doesn't mean you're awful. It doesn't mean all people of colour, or other minorities for that matter, are by their nature lesser. It simply means that (again with the social construct thing) we have systematically treated these people and their ancestors badly for generations. You can't just hand-wave that and make it go away. It doesn't stop existing just because we're better now than we've been in the past. You are by no means responsible for the awful stuff that happened in the past, but if you deny white privilege, you are a definite part of the present-day problem. A smaller one than those who actively try and make life difficult for minorities, I'll grant you, but still part of the problem. If you really do want to help on the equality front, the very, very first thing you must do is to acknowledge the existence of white privilege as a thing that is still happening. You can't help otherwise, because you aren't seeing the problem. it really is that simple, that clear-cut. None of this disempowers the voices of people of colour in any way. You're not saying "See? We're better than you". You're saying, "Yes, we have advantages granted to us that you haven't had. Let's work on that". See the difference? I hope you do.
For context, btw, I am thirty-five (turned thirty-five last year, actually). I'm not just an idealistic young student with a head full of doctrine and no ability to process it. I've studied this stuff academically. I've read quite literally hundreds of articles (both academic and not), I've read textbooks, I've attended lectures, I've read the facts. There is no un-seeing this. I speak from a position of considerable experience. But please remember that one of my primary thrusts throughout this whole thing is that boosting the voices of those who have historically not been heard is of paramount importance. We don't get to decide all the paths that must be walked, but our first step is acknowledging the need for change, and further acknowledging that our historic position of power is at the heart of it.
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