Other end…

I sure do! Just last night I woke up from a dream in which my downstairs neighbors were yelling only to discover they were actually yelling.

This still sounds like a problem of contextualisation, not semantics to me. “Privilege” is an appropriate word, precisely because it is poignant and strikes at the heart of the matter.

My solution to the problem you’re describing wouldn’t be sugarcoating the words, but explaining why the words have been chosen. We are seeing the slow suffocation of nuance, and nuance takes more than a couple of words in order to thrive.

Plus in my opinion you’re describing solving systemic issues not by changing the system, but by compromise and discourse. I ask you, do we currently have a system which would work well with compromise and discourse, or is it the very trajectory of action which gradually shifted Liberals from Center-Left to Right?

If there’s one thing which therapy taught me is that sometimes growth needs radical truth and radical acceptance. Sugarcoating it just lets one simmer in their comfort zone because “eh, it’s not THAT bad since you put it that way…”

This is… so not just a class war, though. It’s intersectional, everything is linked to everything else, class, racism, sexism, homophobia, everything! And sugarcoating the truth just leads to the same thing, over and over and over again.

No, semantics aren’t the issue here, the issue is that nobody’s explaining anything anymore. Everyone just expects to have their meaning understood through five words or less, then starts arguing semantics without analysing the context.

It is a privilege to be a white male. And, yes, as long as you’re not part of the 1%, you’re getting shafted regardless. The two are most certainly not mutually exclusive, the privilege being that white guys get less shaft.

I understand what you mean, but I am of the opinion that arguing raw semantics in political contexts is like analysing love from a strictly neurochemical standpoint, if that makes sense.

In this specific situation I’d still call it a privilege. I agree that the default should be decency and fairness for everyone, but, again, it isn’t. Because we as humans have decided to apply different standards to different groups of people. And as long as the norm isn’t decency for all, existing on the “right” side of the divide is a privilege - I was born white, I didn’t bleach myself to get here (I mean no offense through this).

In the hopes that my point is made clearer, I’d use an analogy (deprecated, see edit): what we have now is the equivalent of playing Monopoly with someone who’s allowed to reroll their dice at least once every roll if the numbers aren’t to their liking, and the process of choosing who gets to reroll is weighted by subjectively defined specifications.

Edit, because I’ve realised I’ve botched the example: it’s like playing Monopoly, but one of the players has a starting handicap applied (less money distributed, weighted dice which favour smaller rolls, having to pay more for Rent on owned slots, etc.). The rest of it stays the same, in that the process of selection is purely subjective and decided by a third party for everyone else involved.

Let’s do, indeed, stop with the racism and sexism, and heterophobia, I think, is not the thing most people who argue against Cis privilege encompass.

Honestly, sounds to me like YOU need to have a default more than nature does.

I agree, that wasn’t what I was arguing against.

But in how things currently are, the very point is that we are not all equally treated with decency and many do, indeed, have who they are be used against them. Thus, it’s currently a privilege to be part of those who are not besieged by the above-mentioned.

That’s the idea of the “other,” as long as it exists, we cannot apply the average as being “decent.” Because it’s utterly inhuman when you average the two sides. I’d go as far as to say barbaric.

Well, it’s an unearned advantage, isn’t it? What else would you call such an advantage other than a privilege?

Social privilege is 100% a thing. You can bet that the fact that a white person doesn’t receive subconsciously ingrained doubt and xenophobia from literally everyone else pretty much ensures that a white person will be subconsciously favoured. (edit:) this doesn’t mean that they will necessarily receive a cornucopia of riches, but it pretty much guarantees that they’ll be first pick for the football team, so to speak.

Same goes for Maleness™ and Cis-ness (?), they are perceived as defaults, as standards. It also applies in the neurotypical-neurodivergent face-off.

In short, as long as there is any kind of “other” and one is not perceived as part of it, one is intrinsically privileged.

(edit 2:) And the only thing which trumps social privilege is money.

According to Corp propaganda, not doing more than what one’s job description entails is ruining profits, so it shouldn’t be hard to achieve. And it doesn’t go against work ethic, either!