Steal Hearts, Steel Bonds/ This is Pittsburgh

Drunk, again, and reading my old Livejournal, again, I came across this memory of a day in a class, and was delighted:

I enjoy my Men & Women In American Society course lots and lots. Yesterday we talked about “unpacking the invisible knapsack” of white & male privilege. I said one my male privileges was being able to ride a submarine in the navy except not because I’m gay. The white girls giving the presentation on the essay said that these privileges were bad. And I asked, But would you give them up? and they ignored me. And then a black girl said, This boy asked, would you give them up, cause if I had them I wouldn’t. And the white girls for the first time in their lives told the truth about something important and said, No, I don’t think so, I don’t think I could.

In a couple of weeks I get to give a presentation with this cute and kinda awkward looking straight boy about ambiguous genitalia and American clitoridectomies, God that’s a hard word to spell, that D doesn’t seem like it should be there at all. I love this class. People are learning things. I am learning things. Only known [none] of the boys ever talk, which bothers me.

We don’t choose our privelages and we can’t help but have them.  If we don’t acknowledge them, if we don’t acknowledge that weenjoy them, we’re not helping anyone.

As for that presentation—I remember doing most of the work, and refrencing Law & Order SVU, that episode where the incestuous twins murder their therapist after learning that one had been the victim of a post-natal sex change following a botched circumcision.  And I remember, really, none of the boys ever talked unless they had to. Which reeks, again, of people failing to own their privelage.