Privileges

     A quick warning to those of Victorian sensibilities:

This post may contain:
1. Profanity,
2. Racial, ethnic, gender, and creedal epithets,
3. Uncensored references to sex organs and sex acts,
4. And whence.

     This site is intended for adults capable of reasoning without having to cringe away from particular words. Accordingly, I shall no longer baby anyone. (Besides, Dad was a Navy man.) Read on at your own peril.

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     Over at The Declination, our esteemed Co-Contributor Dystopic recently penned an excellent column about “hot girl privilege” that excited quite a bit of interest (and interesting commentary.) I’ve been allowing it to ferment for a few days while I worked on the mechanism that powers it. Though it’s not exactly the same as the ones behind “black privilege,” “homosexual privilege,” et cetera, it does display certain markers that are useful in distinguishing an argument that employs facts and logic from one that’s just outright bullshit.

     If you recall this essay, you’ll remember how I feel about persons who assert the power to tell others what they may and may not say. That set of convictions should be matched to a complementary set about what some people are permitted to say and do without being condemned or derided for it: the essence of privilege.

     Who are these privileged persons? Whence (I did warn you) do their privileges arise?

• Some acquire their privilege from a claim that they are (or have been ) oppressed.
• Others acquire it from a claim of being (or having been) disadvantaged.
• A third group has it because others want something they control.
• A fourth group has it because of its propensity for violence.

     Some such group characteristic, whether it excites sympathy, cupidity, or fear, can move others – not all and not uniformly, mind you – to grant the group the privilege of defying norms the rest of us would be condemned (at the very minimum) for violating.

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     In Dystopic’s “hot girl” case the distinguishing characteristic is the possession of an attractive body (by conventional male standards) that possesses a vagina. Many a man will grant such girls the privilege of doing as they please (including mouthing off) in the hope that permitting it will win sexual access to them. Or as a dear departed friend of mine once said, “God gave women cunts so men wouldn’t ignore them.” And with that you have a significant part of the explanation for the extraordinarily disproportionate amount of attention being showered on the (moderately) attractive but (totally) idiotic Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.

     But the “hot girl” is only distinguished from other women in that she receives enhanced privilege. All women are privileged today. They claim many privileges, including preferences in hiring and educational access, on the grounds of having been “oppressed” for their sex – and they get them. They can get away with behavior that would get a man sued for damages or clapped in irons. Check the statistics on sexual harassment complaints. How often do women succeed in getting men punished after such allegations, as a percentage of all such cases? Now check how often men succeed in getting women punished for the same sort of behavior – and be sure to note how often the man is punished merely for lodging an accusation. This is the variety of prostitution – using sex for profit; think about it – that’s legally privileged today.

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     While the legions of the “oppressed” – e.g., Negroes, women, and homosexuals – have received most of the “privilege attention” (despite not having been “oppressed” in any objective sense for many decades), we must not overlook the “disadvantaged:” i.e., those who didn’t exert themselves sufficiently to become useful to others. After all, to be “disadvantaged” is a normal condition – when one wants to practice some trade or art for which one is inadequately equipped. But very few persons are “disadvantaged” at absolutely everything. In our time, the proliferation of technologies that can compensate for sensory disadvantages are many. The technologies that can compensate for mobility and manipulation disadvantages are swiftly catching up with them. Yet the “disadvantaged” continue to moan about their “condition” and wail that they “deserve” special, uniquely easier conditions – i.e., to be accommodated in the pursuit of occupations for which they aren’t suited.

     I have only one question: On what grounds? What makes you think anyone owes you the least little thing?

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     Finally for today we have groups known to be appreciably more violent than the American norm. Young Negroes qualify, but the most feared group – ironically, owing to events not on this continent but in Europe – is Muslims, whose “religion” awards them the right and duty to use violence against “the infidel.” To a Muslim, anyone who isn’t a Muslim is “the infidel.” Indeed, Some Muslims regard other Muslims as “infidels” because of differences in doctrine between Islamic scholia.

     Muslims’ propensity to violence is so well known that it’s routinely joked about: “Islam is a religion of peace and if you say otherwise we’ll kill you, you dirty kuffar.” Hell of a dark edge on that “joke,” isn’t there? But the sentiment is plain – and honest Muslims will admit that it’s commanded of them by their most sacred scripture, the Qur’an.

     And so Muslims, whose “religion” forbids them to hold any allegiance other than to Islam, whose scriptures command them to eject all real and wholesome religions from the world by force, and to punish heresy, apostasy, adultery, homosexuality, and many other things with death, get an unnatural amount of “privilege.” In a sane era, they would not be permitted into the United States at all. Today, we have two of them in the House of Representatives. One has already disparaged the president of the United States as a “motherfucker.” Another has demanded that a longstanding rule of decorum – no headgear in the House – be set aside for her convenience. She’ll probably get her way.

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     As I’ve written before, what defines an aristocracy is its privileges. Today several groups are considerably privileged over the rest of us, whether legally, socially, or commercially. Moreover, to dispute their privileges is usually to be slapped down, and sometimes to be penalized in a material fashion. Only he who is self-sustaining, independent, owes nothing to anyone, and is utterly confident of himself dares to assail such arrangements.

     The failure to challenge privileges of the sort discussed here could doom the United States. Even so, the risks are considerable. As has been said many times, if you want to know who rules over you, ask whom you’re not allowed to criticize...whatever the grounds.