Privileges and Rights

Do you ever get the feeling that someone is just making assumptions about you based on what they think they know about you? I tend not to worry about that sort of thing, but sometimes it just smacks  you in the face, and you have to react to it. I had that experience this week, when one of my final assignments was marked and I received feedback.

Being told that your arguments come from a 'privileged lens' is basically their way of saying that your arguments are invalid because of who you are. It's the latest craze in ad hominem attacks, where the person, and not the argument, is attacked. The usual reason for doing it is because the person has no way to effectively rebut your argument, so they try to disqualify it from being considered altogether by attacking you.

I'm used to that online; I frequent more than a few online discussion groups that have a lot of that sort of attack going on. I've even resorted to it myself on occasion because I had already exhausted the store of counterarguments, and I was basically talking to a brick wall. But I don't expect to find it in a university setting, a place where open discussion is allegedly the highest goal. Sadly, while that used to be the case, it's vanishing in a hurry in modern society, replaced with safe spaces and trigger warnings.

Being told that you're 'privileged' basically means that your opinion is invalid because you are part of a social group that is viewed as 'oppressive' or 'colonialist,' which in almost all cases means 'white', 'male,' 'Christian', or 'straight.' In my case, I check all four boxes, and I make no apologies for any of them. But generalizations often miss the mark by a long shot. In this case, the attack fell very flat. I won't go into details, but suffice to say, being born into two distinct cultures and having a child with a disability cancels out a lot of those 'privilege' points.

I try to avoid politics in my blog; I suppose it's inevitable that it will crop up once in a while, because I have opinions, and I'm not afraid to share them. Since the blog is new, I'm trying to not alienate a chunk of my potential readership before they get a chance to see what kind of person I really am. But there are times when it's inevitable, because politics seems to have infiltrated every aspect of our lives in the past decade or so. And when someone comes at me with the 'privileged' attack, I'm going to respond to it, because nobody needs to have that flung in their face, particularly when it's merely a way to avoid the issue at hand.

While I do avoid politics and religion in my blog as much as possible, I don't necessarily avoid them in my writing. After all, writing is the deepest expression of one's own inner thoughts and feelings. So, for a taste of what I'm talking about, take a look at my first fantasy novel, The Chronicles of Meterra: Arrival, available now on Amazon in e-book or paperback format.