Privilege Isn't the Problem

"Privilege": it's often used to shut other people up, particularly in online spaces. Whether intentional or not, its use is frequently aggressive, with the undertone of "You don't deserve to have an opinion, you are not worth our time, you have no right to be in this space."

Privilege is something that others frequently assume is in operation: I have schizophrenia, which impairs the way I process information, my employment opportunities, and the way I see the world. I grew up in an emotionally abusive dynamic, which impacts on how I respond to criticism (real or perceived), and how I handle confrontation and conflict, among other things. I am also a trans man - that is, I was born female bodied, but live, present, and am seen as a man.

However, it is typically assumed that I have, and always have had, white, male, abled privilege.

White privilege, yes. Male privilege - yes, albeit conditionally: if people know my trans status, or find out about it, I am immediately thrown out of the "male privilege" category. Abled privilege? No, not so much.

"Waah, privilege!" is often used to say "I don't value you enough to even listen to your opinion!"

And yet privilege can be used for good: watch this video to understand how.  Sometimes, people don't want to be "the angry black woman", or "the screechy gay guy", or "the aggressive lesbian with the attitude", or "the whiny disabled person", or "the embarrassing trans person", or "the crazy dude." Sometimes, they don't want to draw any more attention to themselves than they already have, especially around people who don't care how awkward they're making interactions for these people.  That's where those with privilege - including conditional, or "passing" privilege - need to step in, and use that privilege to say "Excuse me, this isn't acceptable - you don't treat another human being like that."

Privilege isn't the problem, because privilege can't be helped - I can't change the fact that I was born white, for example. I wouldn't want to change the fact that I can live and be seen as  a male - not because I'm "treated better" (I'm treated about the same, although I'm more likely to be called "faggot", if I try and stop other men street-harassing women. I'm also more likely to be laughed at by women when I wear shorts), but because I feel better - I feel more like me.  Life may one day change the fact that I do not have a physical, visible disability, or it may not.  The fact that I am white and able-bodied, the fact that I am perceived as male, doesn't mean I don't have intelligent things to say, valid contributions to make to discussions.

However, as a person with white male privilege, at least, I need to remember that mine should only ever be a voice in a wider, more diverse chorus - that women and ethnic minorities should speak about issues that directly affect them, that physically disabled people should dominate conversations around public access, because they often have barriers, such as wheelchairs, to everyday navigation that I don't face. I don't have much to say in trans spaces, because I don't see myself as trans, and am not seen as trans by the wider world - I'm male, first, foremost, and (pretty much) exclusively. There are people who, through choice or circumstance, will never be seen as anything other than trans - those are the voices that should be loudest on trans issues, although, where those such as I do have something to say, our voices should be welcomed, and heard - passing, especially as completely as I do, can be very lonely - you never really fit in with the non-trans world, you're always aware, painfully aware, of the general dislike, suspicion, and, in some cases, violent hatred that that world reserves for people like you,  but you don't really fit in with the trans community, either - especially, it often seems, if you're Asexual, as I am: Asexuality embarrasses the trans community, at times, just as it sometimes embarrasses the disabled community, because both of those communities focus - rightly - on the fact that their members "enjoy normal, healthy, sexual relationships." It's always awkward to know what to do with the person who says, nervously, "Ummm...Excuse me, but I...ah...I'm not interested in sex."  When you're focused on normalising your community, and their experience, presenting the adults of the community as sexual people is a big part of that normalisation. Asexuality is poorly understood, and too readily assumed to be "a physical or hormonal problem" - something that can, and should, be fixed.

The problem isn't "privilege", which can't be helped, and is often situation-dependent in any case.

The problem is entitlement - the belief that factors entirely outside your control, and not related at all to the intelligence or validity of anything you may have to say, make you superior to others, and your opinions thus more valid.  Entitlement, not privilege, is what causes people to believe their voice should drown out every other, or that they should be deferred to, that they should have the "final say" on all matters, whether those matters affect them or not. Entitlement feels perfectly justified in blaming those who are perceived as "lesser" for any "failure" of the entitled person's natural privilege to grant them access to what they want - as someone who has the privilege of being a white, physically able male, I understand that, sometimes, a better qualified person will be interviewed for, and given, a job I badly wanted. I understand that successive governments have been forcing down wages, and fostering divisions between employers and employees.  If I don't get a job, or something I try and set up doesn't work out, my first thought is "what do I need to improve about myself, or about this concept?" Entitlement's first response is "I didn't get it because someone else stole it!" or "It didn't work out because all those other people (who are different to me) are awful/lazy/stupid." Entitlement sees "discrimination!" in every refusal, because it cannot comprehend how a "lesser" person can succeed where it has failed.

Normalisation won't combat entitlement. Only standing up for, and in, our diversity will do that, because when we are clearly "different", we can't be "lesser" - because we're not working to the same standard.

I look fully male.  It is not a "failure" of "lesser" trans men that they don't - it is a difference, and one that should be celebrated.  Some trans women conform to traditional ideas of female beauty - others do not. That, again, is a difference of people who are diverse, not a "failure" of those who are "lesser."  I don't understand or interact with the world in the same way someone without schizophrenia does - I never will do. That is my difference, not my failure, just as a wheelchair is the physically-disabled person's difference, not their failure.  I look at members of the Deaf community, as someone whose schizophrenia includes auditory processing impairment, and I wonder how anyone can see as lesser, as "failed", people who have learnt an entire language, who have often spontaneously innovated within that language.  I am, and grew up, working-class. Like many working-class people of the traditional stripe (ie, what is now called the "working poor", rather than those in receipt of welfare intervention), I never thought my family was "poor" - we were different. Our experiences were different. But we never saw them as less valid. (As an adult, I tend to see the working-class experiences of part-time childhood jobs, of making do and mending, of innovating - using an old bed frame to make a garden gate, for an example from my own childhood - and of getting by on very little as far more valuable, in practical terms, than the experiences of exotic gap years, plush internships, foreign holidays, etc - but, at the same time, I understand that wealthier people who enjoy these things see them as valuable in the scheme of their life, and that's fine, too.)

I love, and value, interactions with people whose experiences aren't like mine. With people who aren't me. I can't help it - I'm a writer: people are meat and drink to me.

Defending Defences

The UK government has just voted to renew Trident, the UK's nuclear deterrent, which comprises of a fleet of "constantly deployed" submarines off the coast of Scotland.

Opinion, as with most things the UK government does, is divided.

The cost (over £200billion...) is the thing that most people who are against Trident are angry about - especially when the UK has suffered under several years of "austerity" which has seen salaries and services slashed, threats to privatise the NHS (National Health Service), government support for zero-hours contracts (which pay per hour worked, provide NO minimum guaranteed hours, and often include an "exclusivity" clause, meaning a person employed on a zero-hours contract can't work another job alongside the zero-hours one), and money being taken away for spurious reasons from the unemployed and disabled, along with rampant harassment, bullying, and humiliation of such individuals by the very people who are paid (quite well) to help them develop the skills - including self-confidence - to manage sustained employment.

The cost is often countered by the idea that Trident supports employment in the area - estimates of jobs "dependent on" Trident remaining in place vary from the hundreds to the thousands - a  brief Google search for "employment related to Trident" includes figures ranging from 520 jobs to 13,000!

Undoubtedly, defence is a big industry, and, especially in predominantly working-class Scotland, industry and employment are necessary. However... when other industries are closed down, such as the British steel industry, the general attitude, particularly from government, is that affected individuals can "re-skill in alternative sectors."

The issue - with British steel, with jobs lost if Trident is ever scrapped - is that, to date, the UK has not had a government that is prepared to ACTIVELY SUPPORT re-skilling, to genuinely invest in helping people - often the "wrong side of 40", who have spent their working life in a particular industry - to gain the skills and experience needed to access the "next generation" of jobs; hell, there often isn't the interest in providing this level of support to disadvantaged young people trying to get into the labour market for the first time, who may not have had the opportunity to develop the required skills as part of their formal education, which is overwhelmingly focused on passing exams and ticking boxes, rather than relevant hard and soft skillset development, and readying young people for adult responsibilities, including employment.

The question, in the end, shouldn't come down to cost, or jobs: it should come down to relevance. To the threats currently facing the UK, and Trident's ability to deal with them.

So far, the biggest threat - to any country - has come from home-grown terrorists acting alone, often with very simple, but effective, kill methods.

It is likely that, in the next 40 years, cyber-terrorism will increase as a viable threat, computers and internet access being typically easier to get hold of than nuclear weapons, cheaper, and capable of causing much more wide-ranging devastation.

Trident can't answer either of those threats - it's not meant to.  Our largest single defence expense is designed and funded to NOT counter what look like becoming the two biggest threats we'll face.

But we can't. either, ignore the people who will be left unemployed if Trident is ever scrapped - as it eventually will be.  This government - the one the UK has now, in 2016 - needs to actively invest in sustainable employment in working-class areas, and in the up-skilling and re-skilling of workers in "at risk of obsolecence" industries, as well as the education, and readying  for adult responsibilities of those currently in school - from primary school onwards. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) needs to drastically improve its services for, and attitude to, the unemployed.

Trident is a Catch-22, not because of the presumed "status" we're told it confers on the UK, and thus the potential "loss" of that status should it be abandoned, but because the UK can't abandon Trident without further investment in alternative employment, and the necessary skills training across all age groups and social demographics that alternative employment will require, yet such investment will never take place while there is the option of Trident - because the latter is far more effective as an "ego boost" to the current political class, and also far more tangible an asset on the cost sheet of the UK budget: you look at £200billion pounds spent on a submarine fleet, broken down into the manufacture of the vessels, the equipping of them, maintenance, staffing, etc, etc, and you can nod and smile and understand. "Employment and employability" are vague terms, terms which cause problems when people try and understand the amount of money spent on them.

So much needs to change before calls to scrap Trident have a hope of being heeded - we need to stop thinking we can run a country like a business. We need to educate our politicians and media in how to explain, and our populace in how to understand, the costs and benefits of intangible assets. And, most of all, we need to find our pride in people, and their success and quality of life, rather than in brute power, and how much of it we have.