Comment by esotericn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by esotericn | Hacker News Reader

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Sure, because it's a controversial framing.

White privilege absolutely exists, as does 'male privilege', 'health privilege' (mental or physical), 'preference/motivation privilege' (e.g. do you enjoy, or can you at least tolerate, doing things that are financially viable) and a whole host of other inherent advantages that a person can possess from birth, or obtain later in life and hold on to.

Quite literally, 'privilege' (less aggressively known as advantage) is obviously a thing. Even if you don't consider the 'white' variant, people win and lose the game of society based on pretty arbitrary attributes.

We generally don't run around speaking about those issues in those terms, though, because it's just not a very tactful way of addressing them (attacking core components of a person's ego), it's much more politically manageable to discuss equality/empathy/representation for example.

It would be equally unpopular to talk about e.g. the 'transgender plight', despite the struggles trans individuals face. Words are important.

And the same people who love talking about 'male privilege' tend to get offended at the mention of 'female privilege', even though there are numerous documented examples, eg people having to vacate seats on flights just because they were seated next to a child and were male and thus assumed to be a potential predator.

The experience of trans men in particular is filled with realizations that privilege isn't a one way street.

Women aren't required to fight for their nation. They can join the military if they want but conscription is still a male burden.

Female privilege is not having to risk your life fighting for your country. Female privilege is having much stronger emotional support that results in fewer suicides. Female privilege is reduced sentences for equal crimes. Female privilege is winning child custody cases even when you’re a less fit parent. Female privilege is society unanimously deeming you less expendable than men. And yet you will rarely hear the term.

White privilege is nothing but a slur meant to cut people down. It is not surprising that people feel attacked by it.

Conscriptions is no one's burden in the modern US, which has a military expressly designed not to use conscripts in any capacity, even in major contingencies.

... which is incredibly naive. It assumes a permanence to the current state of affairs where none exists. A World War scenario could not be fought with volunteers, which is why the Selective Service System still exists.

>even in major contingencies.

Yeah, no. There are contingency plans for major conflicts that absolutely do involve the draft.

> A World War scenario could not be fought with volunteers

It absolutely could. Something that looked like WWI or WWII couldn't, but a modern major power conflict wouldn't look like anything like those.

> which is why the Selective Service System still exists.

But no draft law, and thus no conscription, exists: conscription is no one's burden. Any actual draft law would likely make changes to the selective service system based on whatever vision of conscription motivated the draft law itself, rendering guesses about the hypothetical future burden of conscription based on the registration-with-no-legal-basis-for-conscription system that exists today purely speculative.

Absolutely. The majority of people do not like being guilted for an unfairness they have not directly contributed to or supported.

A far better spin is to simply address the same factors as equal opportunity violations because then the failure is something bigger and cultural where everybody is invited to contribute resolution.

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