Privilege and its technical failings

In my previous post, I discussed how different orientation labels not only have direct meanings, but also oppositional meanings.  For example, "straight" has the connotation of "as opposed to gay".

The inspiration for this topic was the concept of "privilege".  When we talk about White privilege, we're implicitly talking about White (as opposed to Black) privilege.  When we talk about male privilege, we're implicitly talking about male (as opposed to female) privilege.  When we talk about straight privilege, we're implicitly talking about straight (as opposed to gay) privilege.

In particular, the inspiration for this topic, was the concept of "allosexual privilege" (aka "sexual privilege" or "non-asexual privilege".  "Allosexual privilege" is a discredited concept, and has been since 2011.  When the idea was first proposed, it received a lot of pushback, and was the center of a lot of drama. By now, many problems have been identified,* and even its earlier proponents have long been disillusioned. However, I believe that people have so far missed the heart of the problem, which has to do with the technicalities of our language. 

*For example, people originally called it "sexual privilege", but it became clear that there are some justifiable complaints about the word "sexual".  This is basically the origin story of the word "allosexual".

"Privilege" is a way to talk about the minority group by talking about the majority group instead.  The minority group has certain problems that need attention.  That is to say, they need attention from people with power.  Often the people with the most power are people in the majority group.  So how do we make the minority group's problems relevant to the majority?  We reframe minority problems as majority privileges.

Crucial to the reframing tactic is that there are only two groups, the majority and the minority.  Privilege requires a majority/minority binary.  When there are two or more minority groups, the rhetoric falls apart.

When people tried to use "privilege" to talk about asexual problems, no one even thought to talk about "straight privilege".  Because "straight" means straight (as opposed to gay), not straight (as opposed to asexual).  Instead, people talked about "allosexual privilege".  The problem is that "allosexual" refers equally to straight, gay, lesbian, and bisexual orientations.  Many asexual problems are shared by gay, lesbian, and bisexual people.  Thus, a list of allosexual privileges risks erasing gay/lesbian/bisexual problems, despite no one intending to.

By all rights, people should have been talking about straight (as opposed to asexual) privileges.  But this is impossible, because there is no word for "straight" that connotes "as opposed to asexual".  If you look up lists of straight privileges, you will have trouble finding any items that address asexual-specific issues.

A corrolary: similar problems would arise if people attempt to apply "privilege" to other "secondary" minority groups such as Asian Americans, bisexuals, and possibly people with non-binary genders.  Of course, each case will be affected by its own particular details.

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I do not mourn the loss of "privilege" as applied to asexuality.  The truth is, "privilege" is not a very good concept.  "Privilege" is supposed to be a billboard word, something you use in public outreach when there isn't room for more than a few words.  In practice, "privilege" requires so much more explanation.  When you tell someone they have privilege, people don't know what to do with that, and they often feel accused.  Often, I think we can do better by tabooing the word "privilege", to explain what we mean with different words.

Throughout this post, I referred to "privilege" as a framing device, or a public outreach tool.  I've noticed that many people who talk about privilege appear to take it more seriously, reifying it into a real thing.  That is to say, privilege is thought of as a mechanism for the oppression or marginalization of certain groups.  People acquire certain privileges, and through some unexplained process deprive others of those same privileges.  I explicitly reject this view of privilege as not just wrong, but not even wrong.  It's just unclear what any of it even means.  It could mean something completely vacuous, or something completely outrageous, and I think it's all a setup to equivocate between the two.

In this post, I've explained why "allosexual privilege" failed, and it had nothing to do with the particular problems of asexual people (except that these problems strongly overlap with LGB people).  It only had to do with language technicalities.  I believe this supports my view that "privilege" is merely an educational tool.  If privilege were "real", then it would be impossible to talk about the same problems without referencing the advantages gained by straight people.  In fact, people still talk about the same asexual problems, and have simply adopted different language to describe them, like "amatonormativity" or "compulsory sexuality".