Someone just legit made a post about how Jennifer Lawrence is rude for not being more feminine because black women have to enact femininity just right in order to be respected. They said that. It has hundreds of notes now. A couple hundred people think Jennifer Lawrence is rude for not acting the way black women do not WANT to act but have to act. I know black women are subject to that (because I grew up with that pressure) but….they shouldn’t be. That’s not even remotely fair to ask of black women. But it isn’t fair to ask of anyone. Why on earth would we want anyone else to live to that standard? To restrain themselves into useless and antiquated gendered expectations?

This is the problem with the dialogue around and language of privilege - not having to perform gender strictly is not a privilege. It’s a fundamental right. Nobody needs to give up their “privilege,” and asking them to is ridiculous and impossible because they do not determine for themselves the social conditions that inform how they live their lives. You can’t give up what you didn’t create. White “privilege” is walking into a store and not being followed. Yes. This is currently true. But what do we want, for self-righteous white people to have someone tag them in the store?? Nobody should be followed in a store. That’s simple. This is the entire problem with the discourse on this site surrounding social conditions- lots of people on this site who mean well understand that the problems we face as queer, black, working class, etc people are systemic but they also believe that the solutions can be approached individually. They can’t. It makes no sense to suppose that they can.

I am acted upon by power and social and material conditions which I have not created myself and which I cannot on my own destroy. And the discourse on the site is filled with so much cognitive dissonance- charity is pity work that should be left to the people within a community, but “checking your privilege” is a necessary action for destroying systemic issues. If by checking our privilege we mean not to be an asshole, we should say that- if we mean that we should be thoughtful, we should say that. But the benefits and packages that come with most forms of “privilege” are not in fact privileges but fundamental, basic rights which certain groups of people are not afforded.