ElComradio

Gross inequalities between groups _can_ exist, but that tells us _nothing_ about any particular individual within the group, only that individual's chances _when no other information is available_. But other information _is_ available when looking at an individual.

You seem to be suggesting we somehow theoretically add up all one's advantages and disadvantages- But that means... Considering the individual. Great, I agree. Since we are doing that, phrases such as "recognize your male privilege" mean nothing to an individual male, because it is very possible that individual male has severe disadvantages that make singling out the maleness aspect ridiculous- It would be like telling a minority male shot by a cop to reflect on his privilege of not generally facing sexism like a woman does (setting aside that a "male" privilege here is actually a disadvantage, but you get the idea).

In general people have an obligation to help the less fortunate, I agree.

I could clamor for tall rich sportsmen to "send the elevator down for me". That it's their responsibility and so on. What you should do is reflect on exactly why you'd think I should feel silly for saying that, and the other guy to not. Would you tell Michael Jordan to check his privilege if he told a group of average white male nerds to reflect on theirs?

Clinton morally erred by breaking his vows to his wife, but if we set that aside, he did not do anything wrong by the simple act of having sex with Lewinsky. Let's assume, though, that the power differential argument _is_ valid- Who _could_ he engage in a relationship with, being President? Not politically powerful women, because his power is always going to be greater. Maybe other world leaders only? Only world leaders in the G8? He has no peers.

The student/professor example has a few _practical_ concerns regarding why you might want to avoid that situation and you've laid those out, and I agree. But ethically there would be no cause for objection unless actual grade massaging was occurring. That's not a given. In other words, appearance of impropriety is a practical objection, not an ethical objection. I'll zing any professor for taking advantage, express or implied, of one of her students but I will not automatically assume something shady is happening without evidence.

Anecdotes are not data. If we can show that the majority of these relationships are negative, that's a stronger case, but still not worth blanket-ruling the exceptions out of existence.

When you read about these, the authors almost exclusively present it as the person in the dominant position somehow taking advantage of the other. Are you equal, though, in your condemnation of e.g. the flirty student successfully seducing her professor? This happens. Is your message to her that she has no idea what she is doing, and that she's setting back gender equality by doing so? The answer is usually dodged because admitting the situation happens (both participants being into it) pollutes the desired narrative- That one partner has no agency by dint of the power imbalance.

re: your 2nd paragraph, can you provide some links? You present it as common knowledge. What's the actual incidence of negative outcomes? If it's, say, 15%, that means 85% have positive outcomes, and you want to tell those people to go pound sand. I find that unreasonable.

People are being trained to make these leaps even if there are no facts to back them up. You might _feel_ your boss is treating you differently because she asked you out, but should we all adjust behavior to accommodate _potential_ negative impressions in a lowest-common-denominator kind of way (You seem to agree that we should not...)? These discussions tend to assume the absolute worst outcome regardless of incidence.

Some quick googling suggests 30% of office romances lead to marriage. Even if that stat is wildly inaccurate, it still feels bizarre to tell so many people they should have taken one for the team (not had a relationship).

Likewise, in your former, generalized statement, it works if you continue to think of "our universe". The entire notion of anything remotely resembling a brain, or anything like what we understand to be cause and effect (like, nurturing something to keep it functional, or even the very concept of "functional"...) existing in the host environment (whatever that means! :) ) makes the abstract statement devoid of meaning.

In this simplistic example, it comes down to one party using guilt tactics to convince the other party to provide an advantage or a leg up, which necessitates working against their own interests. Guilt tactics are required because it's a social engineering goal; the total number of people at the losers' bar remains the same.

So at our losers' table, you would ask the white winners to help you out over me, and over the other white guys at the losers' table, because we, the white losers, must have fucked up more to get here. The underprivileged losers are entitled to disproportionate aid from the winners.

Of course feelings are important- The feeling you wish to elicit is guilt, not simply acknowledgement.

It would be absurd to tell someone to recognize their privilege that the odds were in their favor but nonetheless they rolled poorly. It's like telling some white guy on death row to feel privileged he had a lower chance of being there.

This is almost certainly a mistake, from my experience. Our fairly small team's productivity dropped by I'd estimate 300% even with a much larger team once HQ decided we needed to bring in management layers. I wonder what GH hopes to gain from these changes.

I think we are starting to go in circles, but: It has the effect of cancelling out free discourse which is important to a functioning "democracy". A trivial example is that a business owner cannot be vocally anti-same sex marriage, because if she is, and a gay employee is fired for a "legitimate" reason, her behavior will go a long way towards convincing a jury.

Where this is going is why we are expanding the number of protected classes over time is that the real "intended result" is that you should not suffer at work for attributes that have nothing specifically to do with the job you are hired for.

In reality, though, I think a jury would be very skeptical of a company's claims that someone was fired for promoting the gay agenda (which would be legal) and not for being a gay person.