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>>Privilege is multifactorial. There are such things as white privilege, and male privilege; but those are not the only (nor arguably, the most significant) privileges there are.<<

Well, that's exactly the problem with the "white male privilege" verbage: it's just one single angle of the global problem regarding social / ethnic class issues.

Even from an Euro-American perspective... When it comes down to it, who has more "privilege" or social status? A college educated Asian-American woman from an urban, wealthy family? Or a poor, rural uneducated white male from, say, Appalachia or the Deep South?

Yes, there are obviously people with lower "social standing" than the poor, rural, uneducated white male -- and color or sex does play a part. But the point is, sex and race are not the only factors that make up social status, even from a Euro-American angle.

If you factor class issues in the entire world, it gets even more complicated. Each area has their own quirks and social structure.

Unfortunately I find that many people who advance the "check your privilege" arguments are not very nuanced. Social status is complicated. So I think it does a disservice in the end. Again, let's take that a poor, rural, uneducated white male in Appalachia, no job since the coal mines shut down, on benefits, etc. They come across an article written by a college educated woman, in an urban area, probably making quite a bit more than he is. And this person is telling all white males to "check their white male privilege".

What do you think this person is going to think?

So then, even among all the other "privileges" there are those for looking good, and bad, smelling bad, looking like someone that someone hates, having a weird voice, bad teeth, an accent, dressing inappropriately or strangely, weird hobbies, mental problems/physical/emotional abuse, anything at all by which anyone can judge....these are infinite and subjective, and dependent on context.

Who are you to judge someone, and tell them to "remember/check their privilege" without knowing all these intimate details of struggles throughout their life, all these factors, regardless that you seemingly know just one of these infinite characteristics?

This is a hopeless topic to discuss without a way to measure these factors.

The way it is discussed here, the privilege theory is unfalsifiable. You can always trot out more (unmeasured) privilege categories to explain any empirical data.

Like the saying goes, "He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense".

While I'm microranting, I'd also love to hear how big a factor privilege is compared to other factors for people's success in life.

Something like: Privilege: 40%, Effort: 30%, Luck: 30%, with a breakdown of each kind of privilege, and explanation of how it's measured. Give me that, and I'll start taking it seriously as a way to understand the world.

If, on the other hand, you genuinely want to understand what "white male privilege" is all about, you should look at how women of racial minorities fared in your home town, or other similar towns.

Such an analysis would not yield the results I believe you expect. Most of the minority families from my town have been very successful -- they put high demands and expectations on their children, worked hard, etc. The world didn't expect them to fail, as it does with "white trash" males, and their potential was theirs to make. In no universe am I saying they excelled because of affirmative action or anything of the sort -- they worked for everything they got, and earned it -- but society isn't predetermined to expect failure from them.

I grew up a poor white male in unfortunate circumstances. Nothing was expected of me (I often joked about wishing I was Jewish, because then I'd have expectations), and every door was shut. There were no advantages. I remember one particular malignant teacher saying to another, after I had left a room, "water flows to its own level". And of the white males who I grew up around, most did menial jobs and cycled in and out of unemployment, some went to jail, etc. 90%+, roughly, still live in that small town.

The whole white male privilege thing seems to be a classic divergence between the median, and the mean. A small percentage of spectacularly successful white males pull the mean up, while the median lies in the masses of people living miserable lives. But the masses have to suffer and acknowledge their privilege because of the mean.

Or maybe we should simply discard with the whole premise of trying to simplify large groups on traits.