Dr. Shaun Duke, Professional Nerd

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SF/F Rant of the Day: Privilege is Not Equal

You’re probably already familiar with the shitstorm that
erupted on Peter Watts’ blog over acrackedmoon’s “review” of R. Scott Bakker’s novels.  If not, then you should glance through
to see what has been going on (this is not the same as the other shitstorm which
also involved acrackedmoon’s comments, though certainly the issues are
related).
Here, I am interested in one particular issue:  the question of privilege.  But before I do that, I want to say a few
quick things:

  1. I
    harbor no ill will towards Peter Watts, acrackedmoon, R. Scott Bakker, or any
    of the people involved in the comments. 
    I may not like some of the commentators, but that’s a separate issue.
  2. I
    think Watts makes some valid points.  I think acrackedmoon makes some valid
    points.  I think they both occasionally
    put their feet in their mouths and say things that are counterproductive to
    discussion and debate.  They are both
    human beings.
  3. I
    understand why acrackedmoon takes the approach that she does, and while I do
    not always agree with that approach (sometimes I think she shuts off debate by
    being overly aggressive when taking a step back might be more productive), I
    think many of the issues she attacks are ones we should be concerned about
    anyway.  I think it’s more pathetic that
    we don’t think about the problems she raises (such as the treatment of women in
    literature, racism, etc.) except when someone throws “a fit” and uses “bad
    words.”  For the record:  from what I know of Mr. Watts, he is
    concerned with many of the same issues and reflects that in his writing (this
    based on my friend’s obsession with him as a writer).
  4. I
    do not agree that the “tone argument” is invalid in all instances, as I’ve said
    before.  But I do not agree that
    responding to another’s “tone” with a similar “tone” makes you look any more
    “civilized” than the person you’re attempting to delegitimize.

Now that all of that is out of the way, I’d like to draw
your attention to one problematic comment left on Peter Watts’ blog by someone calling himself Giorgio.

Who the
hell do you think you are? Who the hell do _she_ think she is? What makes you
think that she can arrogate herself any kind of representative role? Who the
hell gave _you_ the right to decide who someone can or cannot represent? I’m
_sure_ all those tormented people feel better now that someone finally can be
obnoxious on the Internet in their place.
 Get down
off your high horse, ACM is a privileged woman from a privileged background (a
Thai Chinese!) who speaks a very good English and is completely steeped in
North American culture in a country where only 10% of the population speaks any
English at all, who has access to Internet in a country where only a quarter of
the population has any kind of connection and apparently has a lot of free time
she can spend reading fantasy books and maintaining a constant Internet
presence.
 If _she_
can represent someone, I surely can decide that I’m the voice of billions of
farmers and factory workers and as such I’m happy to tell her that she’s an
obnoxious bourgeois and should start thinking about doing something productive
and useful to make up for the history of prevarication and oppression who gave
her her role in society.

There is one fundamental problem here:  the assumption that “shared privileges” are
equal.  Let’s take as true that
acrackedmoon is an upper class Thai woman and that a marker of that is the fact
that she has apparently unfettered access to the Internet (the commenter’s
statistic is wrong, by the way:  25.5% of
Thais have Internet access, but another 66+ million and change use mobile
phones – that’s practically the entire population of Thailand; determining how
many of those mobile users also use their phones to access the Internet is a little difficult, but if Africa is any indication, phone-to-Internet access is
likely more common than standard Internet in countries previously dubbed as
“third world.”  You also have to take
into account other forms of Internet access, such as cafes, etc. – basically,
we need to seriously get beyond this “she’s got the Internet, so she must be
totally privileged because Thailand is a backward bumfuck country where everyone
lives in rice patties and huts” bullshit. 
Backwards my ass.). 
What do these assumptions tell us about acrackedmoon?  That she has privilege within her country of residence.
One way to think of this is to use the Internet as an
analogy:  if I have access to the
Internet through broadband, but acrackedmoon only has dialup, could we reasonably suggest that our access is the same?  Are the privileges equal?  The answer: 
no.  While we both benefit from
having access, that does not mean we benefit in the same way, or that we have the
same level of access.  The same is true
if we think only in terms of nations.  A
privileged woman in Thailand
is certainly better off than lower class Thais, but is she better off than an
American woman (or, as the comments seem to suggest, a white American male)?  If you think the answer to that question is
“yes,” then you are naïve as best, or an utter idiot at worst.
Yes, acrackedmoon has privilege, but only within the context of her country of residence.  Compared to myself, a white, straight male
living in Florida
on a University stipend?  We might be
more equal, but there are still things that I have which are not as easily
accessible to her, and our relationships to our countries of residence are not
the same.  I am not as privileged in America as acrackedmoon supposedly is privileged
in Thailand,
and yet in relating our positions it becomes clear that we are not equal from a
socio-economic perspective.
I’m not saying this in order to speak down to acrackedmoon
or Thais; rather, I’m bringing this up because it is important for all of us to
understand where we are in relation to everyone else in the world.  This is why so much work went into fundraising
for Charles Tan at Bibliophile Stalker so he could attend the 2011 WorldFantasy Convention.  Charles lives in the
Philippines
and writes on his blog about issues relevant to this post (currency
conversions, book prices, flight costs, and how all these relate to on the-ground
salaries).  I’m proud of my community for
helping bring Charles to the States for WFA, and I hope we will do something
like this for someone else in the future.
The point is this: 
privilege is not equal.  It doesn’t
matter that acrackedmoon has privilege in Thailand, because it does not mean
that she is the same as privileged people elsewhere.  Using the privilege argument is little more
than a delegitimizing tactic which only shows the impoverished state of one’s
argument.  “She has privilege, so we don’t
have to pay attention” is little more than a longwinded way of saying “whatever.”  Last time I checked, that was a rather
childish way to get out of dealing with another’s argument.
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