Moments of Permanence - An Object Lesson!

About An Object Lesson!

Previous Entry An Object Lesson! Mar. 5th, 2010 @ 04:35 pm Next Entry
So, uh, still not dead, there has been Much Porblems, will make real personal!post at some point.

However, for the content factor on this post: my dear adored friend C just provided an excellent lesson in How To Deal With Privilege Checks.

Scenario: I just bought a new mouse. I got a Razer DeathAdder, a high precision gaming mouse, as it happens the same kind C has.

So he asked curiously why I chose that one. He wouldn't have thought it would be my choice, as it's the kind of mouse that's perfect for people who play first-person-shooters and the like, which I don't, most of the time.

I got upset. I felt like he was suggesting that I didn't need this kind of mouse, that I'm just not hardcore enough, that it was pointless for someone like me to have a mouse that's a high-precision gaming mouse.

So, we resolved that, between us. And things were okay.

In order to make things remain properly okay, we set out to spend some time together. I had a bunch of paintbrushes and things on the couch, so I told C to clear it off, explaining: "You get to do it, because I'm in combat [I was playing EVE online] and anyway you were a jerk." Pause. "Sexist."

I was adding that mostly to show him I was kidding, because any time I tease him for being sexist, I'm kidding, because he isn't. But then he replied that he'd just realised that as a matter of fact, he should shut up.

He'd been feeling a little put out, because he felt like he hadn't been a jerk, because he had just been curious, and hadn't meant to imply that I wasn't Hardcore(tm), or anything like that, but he'd just realised exactly *why* I'd got upset.

Girl gamers get a lot of disrespect and deal with extensive misogyny and so on. Which is why I was stung by getting something that felt a lot like that from someone I love.

C: "So I'll just take my privilege over here and shut up."

He recognised that he had caused pain due to a rather subtle point of privilege. The pain caused to me is not his fault; he's not a misogynistic jerk, he's respectful towards women in general and in gaming. He himself pointed out that I'm a more hardcore gamer than he is, most ways. He doesn't have a problem with this. It's not his fault.

And yet, upon realising that there had been a Thing there, and it was a privilege issue, he concluded immediately that it was therefore his responsibility to suck it up.

More people should do this. A privilege check doesn't mean you're a bad person for having the privilege or for not having realised it until confronted with it; how you respond to that is what matters. If you respond by accepting that that means that what seems unfair to you totally isn't, and you suck it up and deal with your own hurt feelings to make it up to the person you hurt, then that makes you a good person.
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