Self-blindness; August 11 2019

There’s a weird mentality I’ve encountered, lately. ‘If I’m one sort of minority, I’m not privileged.’

I was having a discussion with an acquaintance, and she said she had no interest in politics. She’d heard someone say that people who made that claim were speaking from a place of privilege, and very boastfully declared that that couldn’t be true. She has zero interest despite being neurodivergent.

However, she is both white and comes from an upper-middle class family. She has no problems with accessibility or living comfortably, because her parents allow her to live off them completely. She’s well into adulthood but has a secure place to live, a steady allowance that allows her to purchase luxury items, and two parents who can drive her anywhere she wants to go. She doesn’t struggle with public transit. She never worries about making ends meet. The government is happy to offer her assistance because she, unlike millions of POC, aren’t going to be denied it and gaslighted again and again and again.

These privileges don’t ‘cancel out’ her neurodivergence, but they enable her to live a life free of politics. She isn’t personally affected, so what should she care?

In online communities, I can pass for heterosexual. That’s because they don’t know right off the bat that I’m transgender. Over text, I am a man in a common-law marriage with someone who uses female pronouns. I’m also white, which opens up a whole world of possibilities for me.

In person, I am femme-presenting, living in poverty, disabled, mentally ill, and visibly LGBTQ+. That’s a lot of minority boxes to check.

But I’m still white. That didn’t magically go away. And if I’m communicating with someone solely over text, I’m still a man. These drastically change how people treat me and what laws effect me. When marijuana was legalized here in Ontario, it had zero impact on my life because, in the famous words of John Mulaney, ‘it was always legal for us’. I never would have been in trouble for partaking in nature’s most pungent painkiller.

Perhaps you’re wondering what the point of this blog post is, because this is obvious to you. Of course privilege isn’t cancelled out by being a minority!

And yet, here I was, also thinking this was obvious while listening to this acquaintance go on and on about how she wasn’t privileged at all.

Recognize your privileges, y’all. If you want to turn your back on politics, acknowledge the fact that you’re doing it because you haven’t thought outside of your own situation, and determine what parts of your life have enabled that self-centred behaviour. It’s the first step towards empathy.

Now, it’s story time!

“If you don’t mind a suggestion, maybe I could convince an actual hunting party to do their job in Seyhra’s name, instead?” I ventured. It’d keep me from going out of my way to die, and put me on the path to the Humming Settlement. Two birds, one stone; rather in the spirit of the discussion, I thought.

I lifted my boots from the muck and nettles, taking samples of both with my steps. The road less travelled was going to exhaust me fast, but the thought of a warm bed only two days away bolstered me. If I paced myself after that, I could be home in under a week.

It’d taken the delegation I’d been a part of much longer, but moving a group without drawing attention always took longer. We hadn’t even accomplished that, my fellow worshippers of Seyhra falling prey to the beasts and in-fighting en route. I missed having someone to talk to with a physical presence: Hypohlyta, Lync, Isandra, Tybalt, Patroclus...

And obviously, Leander.