Undoing Privilege: Unearned Advantage and Systemic Injustice in an Unequal World 9781913441135, 9781350257665, 9781913441159

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Undoing Privilege

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Undoing Privilege Unearned Advantage and Systemic Injustice in an Unequal World

Second Edition Bob Pease

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Zed Books Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY and Zed Books are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2010 This edition published 2022 Copyright © Bob Pease, 2010, 2022 Bob Pease has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on pp. vi–vii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design by Rogue Four Design All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: PB: 978-1-9134-4113-5 ePDF: 978-1-9134-4115-9 eBook: 978-1-9134-4114-2 Typeset by Newgen KnowledgeWorks Pvt. Ltd., Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

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Contents Acknowledgements Preface

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Part I   Theoretical and conceptual foundations 1 Oppression, privilege and relations of domination 2 The matrix and social dynamics of privilege

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Part II   Intersecting sites of privilege 3 Anthropocentrism and human supremacy 4 Western global dominance and Eurocentrism 5 Political economy and class elitism 6 Racial formations and white supremacy 7 Gender order and the patriarchal dividend 8 Institutionalised heterosexuality and heteroprivilege 9 Gender binary and cis privilege 10 Christian hegemony and religious privilege 11 Ableist relations and the embodiment of privilege 12 Generational order and adult-centrism

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Part III   Undoing privilege 13 Challenging the reproduction of privilege from within

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References

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Index

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Acknowledgements As a non-Aboriginal author with a colonial heritage, I acknowledge the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and in particular the Waddawurrung people of the Kulin Nation, the traditional owners of the land on which I live and work. I pay my respects to the Elders, past, present and emerging, and acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded. The acknowledgements for this second edition should be read alongside the thanks to those who influenced the first edition. I would like to thank those readers of the first edition, students, academics, researchers and activists, who reached out and gave me feedback on the book. As an activist scholar, my aim was to engage with knowledge that would inform progressive social change and be relevant to struggles against injustice. I was pleased to learn that the ideas resonated with many readers and were politically useful in their own social justice work. As I wrote four new chapters on additional sites of privilege in this edition, I am indebted to the following people who generously commented on the draft chapters in their areas of expertise: Joselyn Baltra-Ulloa, Tanu Biswas, Jacques Boulet, Raewyn Connell, Stella Conroy, Fran Donovan, Sachi Edwards, Sarah Epstein, Mia Eriksson, Heather Fraser, Christine Gibson, Jeff Hearn, Scott Holmes, John Honner, Norah Hosken, Martin Hultman, Chris Laming, Anna Lauwers, Liam Leonard, Carolyn Noble, Maria PallottaChiarolli, Deb Parkinson, Julie Peters, Keith Pringle, Paul Pulé, Josh Roose, Roman Ruzbacky, Andrew Singleton, Cassie Starc, Silvia Starc, Nik Taylor, Yvette Watt and Ian Weeks. Of course, it goes without saying that I take sole responsibility for any errors or omissions in the text. Unlike the first edition of this book which benefited from a period of overseas study leave, frequent face-to-face collegial exchanges and seminars and public lectures, this edition was largely written during a period of lockdown at home resulting from Covid-19 public health restrictions. While this provided opportunities for uninterrupted periods of researching and writing, it also intensified the loneliness of academic writing. I was not only cut off from colleagues at work but during the ‘hard lockdown’ when it was not possible to leave the house, I was cut off from friends and family as well. As was the case with so many during this time, I relied upon Zoom and Skype to maintain my connections with colleagues, friends and family and to present papers on aspects of my work at virtual international conferences. I want to acknowledge all those who provided support during this difficult time.

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I am indebted to all of the authors cited in this book. I hope that I have done justice to their ideas as I weaved them into my argument here. I do not think that I am the authority on any of these ideas. Writing is always a collaborative project and informed by the views of many others. As Audrey Lorde (1984) commented, ‘There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.’ If I have achieved that, the book will feel worthwhile. I have tried to be mindful of the politics of citation and I pay homage to those social justice scholars and activists who write from ‘below’. Also, much of what I know about the issues in this book come not only from published books and journal articles. Not everyone is in the privileged position to be able to turn their theory and ideas into academic writing. I have learned much from the courage and vision of activists engaged in struggles and collective action against the oppression and privilege explored in this book. In particular, I want to acknowledge the student strikes against inaction on global warming, the Black Lives Matter movement which has also resonated with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people in Australia and the women’s marches for justice in the face of increased discrimination, harassment and violence. If ever there was a cultural moment for members of privileged groups to listen, to feel, to acknowledge responsibility and complicity and to act in solidarity to redress injustices, it is now. I would like to thank the anonymous reviewer who commented positively on the proposal for the second addition and Kim Walker from Zed Books who commissioned the book. Melanie Scagliarini from Zed helpfully checked in with me during the early stages of the book and provided an extra three months to finish the manuscript. Tomasz Hoskins responded quickly to my questions and concerns as Zed was acquired by Bloomsbury. Although most of the book was written at home because of University campus closures, I want to acknowledge Deakin University and the University of Tasmania that provided online infrastructure support during the writing process. Finally, I want to express my special appreciation to my life partner Silvia Starc for her love, companionship and support.

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Preface In the preface to the first edition, I traced many of the ideas in this book back to 1990 when I presented a paper at an international social work conference in Peru. The theme of the conference was on eliminating poverty. With hundreds of thousands of very poor people in the capital city of Lima, it seemed like a good place to hold an international conference on poverty. I remember vividly the experience of passing by the shanty towns and the beggars on the way to the hotel from the airport. When I checked into the five-star hotel where the conference was held, I was acutely aware of the tension of discussing poverty in such luxurious surroundings. Is it an irony or a contradiction that professional educators travel to ‘exotic’ locations and deliver papers on poverty? At the conference, I talked about some of the dilemmas and contradictions facing those of us who were privileged, but who positioned ourselves on the side of the marginalised and oppressed. For those of us who are male, white and professional in the ‘developed world’, it seemed to me that we were very much part of the problem that needed to be addressed. How could people such as myself who are members of privileged groups develop a consciousness of our privilege and challenge the ideas that lead us to participate in the oppression of others? Was it possible for members of privileged groups to overcome the interests of our own group? Could we form meaningful alliances with oppressed groups? I remember that I raised more questions than I provided answers in that paper. In most of my research, writing and activism since then, I’ve addressed these questions primarily in relation to men’s work in challenging male privilege and dominant forms of masculinity.1 Where do men who are supportive of gender equality stand in relation to feminism? How can we challenge other men’s sexism and violence without colluding with them? How do we make sure that our work against sexism is accountable to women? But in focussing my work primarily on male privilege I became concerned that I was allowing other aspects of my privileged identity, in relation to, for example, whiteness, heterosexuality, the class-elitist world of academia and my ‘first world’ location, to go unchallenged. An obvious and necessary next step was for me to extend my research, writing and activism into other 1

See, for example, Pease (2000), Pease (2002a), Pease (2017a), Pease (2017b), Pease (2019).

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dimensions of privilege. This book, and the earlier edition, are outcomes of that project. The emphasis of this book on ‘undoing privilege’ makes it different from those books that challenge social dominance by focusing on what the oppressed can do. Many of these books are written by class-privileged, white heterosexual men in the global North who say nothing about their own stake in the political project they advocate. We cannot understand oppression unless we understand our own privilege and our complicity with systemic injustice. Too much attention has been focused on the responsibility of those who are marginalised and too little attention has been given to how those in privileged groups reproduce inequality. It would seem that the concept of privilege has been discussed for some time in political science and sociology. Certainly, elite studies is a wellestablished area of social inquiry, along with the considerable literature on social inequality, social divisions, social exclusion, social problems, discrimination and oppression.2 Since the first edition of this book, there has been an increased discussion about privilege in popular discourses, activist circles and the academy. However, much of this literature still does not adequately examine the complex nature of privilege and how it is reproduced daily by members of privileged groups. Part of the problem is that it remains difficult to get the issue of privilege on the agenda because it is so well legitimated. Privilege is not recognised as such by many of those who have it. Privilege structures the world so that its mechanisms are either invisible or appear to be natural. Therefore, it is necessary to ‘unmask’ privilege and make it more visible so that its consequences can be addressed. I did not expect when I wrote the first edition of the book, and I do not expect now, that those who gain the most from privilege are likely to read a book with the title Undoing Privilege. It is unlikely that white men in the capitalist class, who constitute the most powerful and privileged group in Western societies, will read it.3 However, I believe that there are many people with privilege who are opposed to social inequalities but may be unaware of how they reproduce these inequalities in their daily lives. They may be whites challenging racism, for example, who may not be aware of how they gain privilege by being white. This book is addressed primarily to those who share

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See Chapter 1. Although Scully et al.’s (2018) work on mobilising the wealthy to do ‘privilege work’ suggests that some of those in the top 5 per cent of household wealth may come to see that their privilege is unearned and that they have an obligation to use their privilege to address inequality.

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at least one or more of the sites of privilege addressed here and who are open to exploring the impact of this privilege on people’s lives. As I am a white cis-gendered heterosexual, able-bodied academic man in the developed world, I write from within multiple positions of privilege. Since I am writing a book on privilege from within and I want to engage readers who have privilege, I write in the form of a first-person narrative. I have a dilemma, though, in using the first-person plural ‘we’ when discussing privilege. It is important to clarify at the outset who the ‘we’ is that I am referring to. When I write about gender as a man, a woman will clearly not identify herself as part of that ‘we’. However, that same woman, if she is white, may identify herself as part of the ‘we’ when I am writing about white privilege. A male Black heterosexual activist in Africa will feel excluded from the ‘we’ category when I am discussing Western and white privilege. However, he may see elements of himself within the ‘we’ when I discuss male and heterosexual privilege. Thus many readers will at times be included and excluded by my use of ‘we’. Pennycook (1994) argues that the use of ‘we’ is never unproblematic and that all use of pronouns reflects power relations. More often than not, ‘we’ is used with a lack of consciousness about relations of power. Often the use of ‘we’ assumes a white heterosexual, able-bodied, middle-class man without having been marked as such. I hope that by naming privilege from within, I have avoided ‘othering’ those who do not have access to this privilege. I assume a social change and social justice orientation in this book. I locate myself within the critical sociological tradition. Hence, I argue that unearned privilege is a source of oppression and that it entrenches inequality and damages the lives of people who do not have access to it. I invite the reader to be part of a collective endeavour against such privilege and I hope that he or she or they4 will find some resonance with the argument advanced here. Some readers will disagree with some of the imperatives of this book but I hope that it will stimulate a much-needed debate about the role of the privileged in struggles against oppression. Can privileged individuals overcome their own self-interest in the maintenance of privilege in order to challenge it? Is this just wishful thinking in the current political climate? While I argue against the notion that privileged individuals can give up their privilege, I maintain that members of privileged groups can make choices about whether they want to hold on to their privilege or challenge the basis on which it is allocated to them. All

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My use of ‘they’ here is to acknowledge that some readers may not identify with gendered pronouns.

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readers are invited to critically reflect upon their own position in relation to the sites of privilege examined. I hope this book challenges and unsettles those who are willing to face the role they play, often unconsciously, in reproducing the very social divisions they oppose. Throughout history, members of the middle class supported the rights of working people, Europeans and North American whites opposed slavery, men supported equal rights for women and heterosexual people opposed homophobia. Kimmel and Mosmiller (1992) who undertook a documentary history of pro-feminist men’s involvement in women’s struggles in the United States demonstrate a long history of men’s support for feminist causes. In particular, they note the ability of African American and gay men who struggle against racism and homophobia to examine links between their subordination as marginalised men and male privilege and entitlement. There have been similar historical accounts of anti-racist whites in North America (Loewen 2003). Hochschild’s (2005) history of the British struggle to abolish slavery illustrates striking parallels with recent attempts to challenge privilege from within. Like privilege, slavery was seen to be normal and was deeply entrenched in the social order of the time. It is well known that even Thomas Jefferson, who supported struggles for human rights, was a slave owner (Ife 2010). However, as people came to understand the suffering caused by slavery, they increasingly opposed it and created a large-scale abolitionist movement. Similarly, as people come to recognise the damage caused by unearned privilege, more people may become distressed by its existence. These earlier reflections were abridged from the preface of the first edition, as the original premises of the book still hold. However, increased discussion about privilege, especially in popular culture and some activist work, requires an acknowledgement. In recent years, we have witnessed the increasing development of Privilege Checklists and challenges in the form of ‘Your Privilege is Showing’. While such developments have been important in raising personal consciousness of privilege, they have tended to focus on individual responsibility and personal testimonials at the expense of structural analysis and strategies for systemic change. In some discussions of privilege, the focus is on subjective individual experiences of privilege and there is no discussion of the systemic basis of inequality. There is a difference between using the concept of privilege to understand system inequalities and what has become the ‘privilege call out’ (Bovy 2017). Check your privilege exhortations are more in line with liberal politics (Gill 2014). The study of privilege as individual attitudes, beliefs and behaviours flowing from, for example, whiteness or masculinity in relation to white privilege and male privilege is more likely to occur in counselling and

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educational psychology (Liu 2017). In these disciplines, privilege has often been decontextualised from the structures that grant these privileges. McIntosh’s (1998) work has been significant in raising awareness of white privilege and her white privilege checklist has also led to similar lists of male privileges (Schacht 2003), class privileges (Class Acts 2007), heterosexual privileges (Johnson 2006) and able-bodied privileges (May-Machunda 2005). In the earlier edition of this book, I made use of these privilege lists, even as I pointed out their limitations and emphasised the importance of bringing an intersectional lens and structural analysis to them. However, given recent uses of these privilege lists, I have come to the view that they not only overly homogenise and individualise privilege, they take attention away from the systemic injustices which underpin them. Consequently, I have decided to remove them from this edition. The expansion of the concept of privilege has also occurred in the context of activist scholarship more generally with critical race theory, post-colonialism, feminist theory, critical studies of men and masculinities and critical disability studies. Such developments have led to backlashes in academic scholarship (Murray 2020; Pluckrose and Lindsay 2020) and in populist writing (Peterson 2019).5 In the second edition of this book, the overall argument remains the same. In Chapter 1, I outline how much of the literature on social and political inequality still fails to adequately address the processes by which privilege is reproduced and I examine the characteristics of privilege. In Chapter 2, I explore the intersections and social dynamics of privilege and I investigate how privilege is constructed through the daily activities of privileged individuals and groups. These theoretical and conceptual foundation chapters have been revised to address new theoretical developments in privilege, including, for example, the privileged irresponsibility thesis of Joan Tronto and new understandings of complicity in the oppression of others informed by critical whiteness studies. Since the first edition of the book was published, I have given many presentations, lectures and seminars on topics in the book. While the ideas in the book have been very well received, I have at times been taken to task for not addressing issues of human privilege, religious privilege and adult privilege. I commented in a pre-publication footnote in the preface of the first edition that these sites of privilege were not addressed in the book. However, in the context of increasing concern about climate change and

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See Flood, Dragiewicz and Pease (2020) for strategies to address resistance and backlash to gender equality.

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ecological disasters, conflicts and tensions between dominant faith groups and religious minorities, and rising concerns about the issues facing children and young people, it seems a major oversight not to address these sites of privilege. Furthermore, since the first edition was published, issues facing transgender and non-binary people have emerged more fully in gender and sexuality studies and the notion of cis privilege has been identified and contested. This new edition thus contains four new chapters on these additional sites of privilege. The original chapters from the first edition have also been revised and updated to reflect new theoretical developments, policy shifts and new social movement initiatives. I have also updated the references to incorporate the most recent sources. Chapters 3 to 12 explore privilege in the intersecting sites of anthropocentrism, ‘the West’, political economy, racial formations, gender order, institutionalised heterosexuality, the gender binary, Christian hegemony, ableist relations and the generational order. By naming these specific systems of dominance, I face the danger of portraying each form of privilege and systemic injustice as separate and isolated systems of power that are not connected to each other. To avoid this danger of presenting these sites of privilege in isolation, I explore each particular form of privilege from an intersectional perspective that recognises the heterogeneity and multiple identities within each dominant group and the structural intersections between the different social formations. However, I think that it is important to interrogate and analyse the specific features of particular forms of dominance. Since each site has its own organising logic, it is necessary to examine the way in which privilege is reproduced by social processes and practices in particular contexts and locations. For analytical purposes, I have found it useful to place specific intersecting sites of privilege in the foreground rather than to interrogate privilege without reference to specificity and context. While working within an intersectionality framework that recognises the intersections between different forms of privilege and oppression, I also focus on both the similarities and the distinctiveness of each socially situated form of dominance. If we take intersectionality to the extreme, it is not possible to talk at all about class, gender, race and so on because they are always enmeshed (Cooper 2004). In the final chapter, I explore strategies for members of dominant groups to challenge the reproduction of internalised dominance and systemic injustices. The chapter examines the limitations and potential of dialogue and alliances across structural power differences when members of dominant groups act as allies in challenging privilege. This chapter has also been

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revised to address the critique of allyship and the tensions facing members of privileged groups who take collective responsibility for injustice and who work with oppressed groups to address structural inequality. I hope that this book encourages readers who are new to these ideas to engage with the wider scholarship of critical theory and writings on oppression from below. I could not have written the book without immersing myself in Anthropocene studies, postcolonial studies, Marxism, critical race studies, feminism, queer theory, transgender theory and critical studies of religion, disability, childhood and youth. Thus it should not be read as an alternative to the extensive scholarship that is grounded in the experiences of those who are marginalised and oppressed. The identities of those of us who are privileged are often shaped by our experiences of unquestioned advantages. Challenging privilege can be experienced as undermining the basis of who we are. I am expecting some resistance to many of my arguments in this book. As a teacher who has raised these issues in university classrooms and as an activist who challenges members of privileged groups to think about their unearned advantages, I have encountered a range of defensive responses to these arguments. I hope that readers will seriously consider the many contradictory ways in which we are all affected by privilege and our complicity in systems of inequality. I believe that we have much to gain in becoming aware of the costs of our unearned privileges for ourselves and for those around us.

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Part One

Theoretical and conceptual foundations

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Oppression, privilege and relations of domination

We live in an unequal world structured along the relational divisions of class, race, gender, sexuality and other social divisions. How that inequality is understood and the extent to which it is justified has been the subject of a considerable debate in popular culture and in the social sciences. Numerous books have documented various forms of social inequality in Western societies, including economic inequality, status inequality, sex and gender inequality, racial and ethnic inequality and inequalities between different countries. Many of these books have also examined the sources of social and political inequality in modern capitalist societies and the ways in which social and political arrangements reproduce those inequalities. To help us understand the costs of inequality, key concepts in the social sciences have been used to explain the dynamics of modern capitalist societies: social exclusion, social divisions, social problems, discrimination, disadvantage, powerlessness, exploitation, oppression and, to a lesser extent, the concept of elites. While each of these concepts is important in illustrating the structural dimensions of unequal social relations and examining the costs of these relations for marginalised and oppressed groups, they do little to address the role played by those of us who benefit most from existing social divisions and inequalities. Nor do most of these books examine how these inequalities are reproduced by and through the daily practices of privileged groups. Many writers on social inequality demonstrate the structural and institutional dimensions of social inequality and how it is reflected in political and legal institutions. Such theories of social dominance emphasise the importance of locating inequality within the context of institutional and structural arrangements. These theories have been significant in explaining the continuation of social inequality. They have certainly informed my own understanding of modern capitalist societies, and they have shaped my own critical consciousness of structural inequalities. However, most inequality theorists do not explore the responsibility of privileged groups

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for maintaining these social arrangements. Perhaps they consider it to be self-evident. But it is this self-evidence that lessens the responsibility that members of such groups have to challenge these unequal arrangements.

The other side of discrimination and oppression One concept that would seem to provide a basis for holding privileged groups responsible is discrimination, whether this be class, race, sexuality, age or gender discrimination. There has been an explosion of literature dealing with the experiences of discrimination. While much of this literature acknowledges the structural basis of discrimination based on race, gender, class, sexuality and so forth, it is usually presented in terms of personal attitudes and prejudices. Terms like ‘racist’ and ‘sexist’ are used to describe people who stereotype and discriminate against others. Such terms focus on the behaviour of individuals and ignore the wider context in which discrimination takes place. Mostly, the individual is blamed for being prejudiced rather than identifying the ways in which the individual’s behaviour is socially reinforced and normalised (Wildman and Davis 2000). These descriptions often hide the flipside of discrimination, which is privilege. The concept of discrimination places too much emphasis on prejudice and is too narrowly focused to address the complexity of dominant–subordinate relations. In relation to the concept of oppression, there is a considerable amount of literature that focuses on the oppression of particular groups: women, gays, people of colour and so forth. While it is usually recognised that dominant groups gain from the oppression of others, most books on oppression are concerned with changing the way the oppressed think and act. Considerable attention is given to how oppressed groups reproduce their own oppression. Such writers emphasise how inequality is legitimated through a belief in the ‘rightfulness’ of existing social inequalities. However, when discussing which groups believe in the ‘rightfulness’ of the unequal distribution of rewards and resources, most social theorists emphasise the role played by the marginalised. It is suggested that subordinated individuals perpetuate their own marginalisation and oppression by internalising the ideas from the dominant culture into their psyches. Many people blame themselves for not achieving more in their lives because they are actively encouraged to do so. One way that has been used to explain this accommodation is ‘internalised oppression’, which Pheterson (1986: 148) describes as ‘the incorporation

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and acceptance by individuals within an oppressed group of the prejudices against them within the dominant society’. For example, some gay men may internalise homophobia and feel a lack of pride in their identity and their history. This leads often to a concern with strategies to assist marginalised groups to challenge their oppression. Oppressed groups may accept, accommodate to or reject their subordination. The latter response is what Mansbridge (2001) refers to as ‘oppositional consciousness’. Subordinate groups are said to ‘have an oppositional consciousness when they claim their previously subordinate identity as a positive identification, identify injustices done to their group and demand changes in the polity, economy or society’ (Mansbridge 2001: 1). Such a term is seen to embrace race, class and other forms of consciousness of subordination. Oppositional consciousness encourages subordinate groups to identify dominant groups as oppressors. The rise of second-wave feminism, gay liberation and anti-racist struggles by Indigenous peoples is an example of this critical consciousness of oppression. The concern is with the opportunities and capacity of the excluded to resist the forces of their exclusion. There is a danger here that those who are socially excluded may be portrayed as reproducing their own marginalisation. This notion comes close to blaming the victim for their own victimisation. To what extent can we charge those who are oppressed with not doing enough to challenge their oppression, while those who are privileged have barely begun to acknowledge the role they play in oppressing others? The role of dominant groups in legitimating social discourse through the control of ideology is well known in Marxist theory, whether it is in the form of producing ‘false consciousness’ or, in Antonio Gramsci’s (1957) words, ‘ideological hegemony’. The argument is that dominant groups maintain their position by winning over the hearts and minds of those who are exploited by the existing system. This lack of consciousness of inequality is presented as a way of explaining its continuance. The focus is on how those who are marginalised do not acknowledge the structural basis of social inequality. While these writers acknowledge the existence of dominant groups, the selfinterest of these groups in maintaining the existing inequalities is usually taken as a given and is not critically examined. One of the main factors in encouraging oppositional consciousness is seeing unequal relations as unjust. However, why should this concern only be directed at those who are on the receiving end of injustice and subordination? If we focus only on oppression, we reinforce the invisibility of privilege. If we are really going to understand the sources of oppression in society, we must understand how privilege is constructed and maintained. Furthermore, as Bailey (1998: 117) comments, we need to be ‘attentive to the ways in which

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complex systems of domination rely on the oppression of one group to generate privilege for another’. Why do sociologists focus primarily on the bottom of the social division and not on the dominant group?1 It is often noted that academics are more likely to study ‘down’ rather than ‘up’. There are numerous studies of oppressed and marginalised groups but few studies of powerful and privileged groups. Why is this so? Is it simply because it implicates those in power? If we focus exclusively upon the oppressed and the socially excluded, we reinforce the invisibility of privilege. Understanding the construction of privilege is necessary for a complete understanding of how oppression and marginalisation are sustained. Privileged groups may also come to see the injustice in systems of domination. Men can challenge patriarchy. White people can challenge racism. Heterosexuals can confront homophobia. This consciousness of inequality is particularly more likely if people have an oppositional consciousness about their own subordination on one dimension of stratification. Such people may be able to more easily empathise with the experiences of another group’s oppression. For example, we might expect that Black men would be more likely than white men to support feminism because they have experienced oppression. Sandoval (2000) refers to this as ‘differential oppositional consciousness’. However, while groups that are dominant on one dimension of inequality and oppressed on another may in some instances identify more closely with oppressed groups; on other occasions they may identify their interests with dominant and privileged groups. I examine the complexity of people experiencing both oppression and privilege more fully in Chapter 2. While it is important to recognise the structural constraints on challenging inequality and equally important to explore the potential of subordinated groups to mobilise collective actions against inequality, those who benefit from existing inequalities are often ‘let off the hook’ and the role they play in reproducing inequalities is neglected. This book explores the ways in which members of dominant groups reproduce their dominance, sometimes consciously but often unconsciously as well. We need to develop a new vocabulary to understand the ways in which various dimensions of privilege are interconnected and reproduced. This means that the very naming of privilege as opposed to discrimination, social exclusion, oppression and so forth gives us a new perspective to understand social inequality.

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See Crispin and Jaworski (2017) on elite discourse which explores this issue.

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Elite studies and studying up An exception to the focus on the oppressed and marginalised is elite studies that do study upwards. The concept of elites is commonly acknowledged in the social sciences; however, there are considerably fewer studies of them.2 Elites are those who have considerable wealth and power usually located in politics and business. More than fifty years ago, for example, Lenski (1966: 43), in setting out to answer the question of ‘who gets what and why’, argued that ‘privilege is largely a function of power’. Similarly, over thirty-five years ago Daniel (1983: 12) argued that ‘(t)he status of occupations provides a useful reflection of the way power and privilege is held in society’. Her focus was on how those at the top of the occupational hierarchy constituted an upper-class elite. The concept of privilege is inadequately explored in elite studies. The problem with elite studies is that there is often little critical examination of the legitimacy of elite power.3 The classical elite theorists, Pareto (1935), Mosca (1939) and Michels (1962), all approved of elite domination, arguing that elites were inevitable in all societies because people with superior abilities would excel and achieve high status. Back in 1956 C. Wright Mills noted that ‘ordinary men (sic), even today, are prone to explain and to justify power and wealth in terms of knowledge and ability’ (Mills 1956: 351). Conservatives who have argued that people reach the top strata of society by hard work continue to substantially win the ideological battle over the legitimacy of the power of the elite. Mills’s phrase of ‘even today’ still applies, over sixty years later. Many of those who advocate elitism do not see any incompatibility with democracy. Carlton (1996: 204), in a contemporary revision of elite theory, argues that elite status arises out of ‘necessary role differentiation in society’, and so he regards elitism as inevitable. Woods (1998) also notes that all elite theorists, in portraying an elite at the top of a pyramid above the masses below, end up reproducing the idea of the elite possessing superior qualities and abilities. So many elite theorists do not explicitly challenge the legitimacy of the elite but are instead more interested in the function of elitism.

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For one of the few empirical studies of elites, see Khan’s (2011) ethnography of an elite college preparatory school that illustrates the ways in which privilege is enacted among economic elites. An important exception is Sherman’s (2017) interviews with economic elites which demonstrates the ways in which elites morally justify what they see as their ‘legitimate entitlements’.

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Since elite theories identify privilege and power as being based upon considerable wealth and political and bureaucratic positions of authority, everyone else constitutes the ‘non-elite’. Many of us who have particular dimensions of privilege are encouraged to see ourselves as part of the ‘nonelite’ because we are not in the upper class. This drawing of the boundaries between the elite and the non-elite conceals the multifaceted nature of privilege that I examine in this book. Bailey (1998: 109) describes privilege as ‘systematically conferred advantages individuals enjoy by virtue of their membership in dominant groups with access to resources and institutional power that are beyond the common advantages of marginalised citizens’. Sidanius and Pratto (1999: 31–2) identify the main benefits that accrue from privilege: ‘Possession of a disproportionately large share of positive social value or all those material and symbolic things for which people strive. Examples of positive social value are such things as political authority and power, good and plentiful food, splendid homes, the best available health care, wealth and high social status’. Individuals come to possess these benefits ‘by virtue of his or her prescribed membership in a particular socially constructed group such as race, religion, clan, tribe, ethnic group or social class’. (Sidaneous and Pratto 1999: 31–2)

What is important here is that the groups you belong to are more likely to make you privileged than your individual abilities. Privilege is usually thought of as a positive state brought about by either hard work or luck. However, even many of those forms of privilege that people believe that they have earned through their own efforts are complicated by unearned systems of dominance of which they are unaware. When privilege is systematically conferred rather than earned, it gives one group of people the power to feel superior over another. While some forms of privilege need to be extended to become the norm in a socially just society, other forms of privilege need to be rejected because they reinforce hierarchy and damage people’s lives. One of the first writers to relate the concept of privilege to the specific benefits individuals receive was Peggy McIntosh. She distinguished between ‘earned strength and unearned power conferred systematically’ (McIntosh 1992: 78).4 McIntosh constructed a list of forty-six advantages that were 4

Barajas (2021) proposes that we think of privilege as automatic rather than unearned because it makes clearer that members of dominant groups gain these advantages simply because of their membership of these groups. However, I continue to use the language of unearned because of its reference to the systemic conferring of power.

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available to her as a white person that were not available to people of colour under racism.5 To make sense of how individuals gain these benefits, we need to identify the key dimensions of privilege: the invisibility of privilege by those who have it; the power of the privileged group to determine the social norm; the naturalisation of privilege and the sense of entitlement that accompanies privilege.

The invisibility of privilege Most privilege is not recognised as such by those who have it. In fact, ‘one of the functions of privilege is to structure the world so that mechanisms of privileges are invisible – in the sense that they are unexamined – to those who benefit from them’ (Bailey 1998: 112). Not being aware of privilege is an important aspect of privilege. Allan Johnson (2017) observes how members of privileged groups either do not understand what others mean when they refer to them as privileged or they tend to get angry and defensive. When well-meaning members of privileged groups offer to support the struggles of oppressed groups, they often cannot understand why those groups might be suspicious or even hostile towards them. Many men challenging male violence wonder why women do not embrace and applaud their efforts. Also, many whites who are opposed to racism wonder why Indigenous people are not more supportive of their stand. Members of privileged groups usually do not see how they benefit from the practices that they claim to oppose. Some argue that privilege does not necessarily bring happiness and fulfilment. This may then be used to deny the existence of privilege, compounding the challenge of recognising the power of privilege. These responses represent significant obstacles to the struggle for equality. People are more likely to be aware of experiences of oppression than they are likely to be conscious of aspects of their privilege. Oppressed people are continually reminded of how their gender, their class, their race and so on are sources of discrimination. As a result, they are likely to have a heightened consciousness of their subordination, whereas those who are privileged by those same statuses often go through their lives unaware of them. As Rosenblum and Travis note, members of privileged groups have what they call an ‘unmarked status’. By this they mean that people in unmarked categories do ‘not require any special comment. The unmarked category tells

5

See Chapter 6 for an extended discussion of McIntosh and a detailed analysis of white privilege.

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us what a society takes for granted’ (1996: 142). One of the consequences of this is that members of privileged groups are unlikely to be aware of how others may not have access to the benefits that they receive and thus they are unlikely to be able to acknowledge the experiences of those who are marginalised. Consequently, many privileged individuals may oppress people without being aware of it. By simply exercising our prerogatives in everyday life, we can easily ignore how others are denied the same opportunities as us. When people are unable to recognise their privilege because they are so focused on their oppression, they are unable to see their role in keeping others subordinated. They make a claim to what Razack (1998) calls ‘the race to innocence’. Razack levels this charge at white middle-class feminists for being insufficiently aware of their complicity in reproducing oppression. She argues that some feminist women have a tendency to emphasise their marginalised status ‘to avoid addressing our position within dominant groups and to maintain our innocence or belief in our non-involvement in the subordination of others’ (Razack 1998: 132). While there are some examples of this lack of awareness in women’s history, increasingly, feminists have adopted multiracial perspectives on gender domination in the last three decades. While some men are willing to acknowledge that women are oppressed, they are less willing to recognise that they are correspondingly ‘overprivileged’. McIntosh identifies parallels between the unwillingness of men to come to terms with their male privilege and white women’s reluctance to accept their white privilege. She refers to white privilege as being like ‘an invisible weightless knapsack’ (McIntosh 1992: 71). As a result of this, much oppressive behaviour can be quite unconscious. It is easy to recognise blatant sexism or racism when someone puts another person down because of their gender or their race. But it is much harder to recognise how in our everyday interactions we may reinforce dominance just because we belong to a dominant group by birth. McIntosh says that she did not regard herself as racist because she was taught ‘to recognise racism only in individual acts of meanness by members of my group, never in invisible systems conferring racial dominance on my group from birth’ (McIntosh 1992: 81). Most people seem to have some difficulty in accepting our own involvement in the day-to-day oppression of others and how many of the benefits we receive have been derived from the continued subordination of others. Members of dominant groups are conditioned not to see themselves as privileged or prejudiced because they are able to only identify the more blatant forms of discrimination enacted against marginalised groups. They do not recognise the ways in which society gives them privileges that come with their gender, class, race and sexuality.

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Jean Harvey (1999) used the term ‘civilised oppression’ to describe the way in which processes of oppression are normalised in everyday life. Because civilised oppression is also embedded in cultural norms and bureaucratic institutions, many of these practices are habituated and unconscious. Many of the injustices people suffer are a result of the attitudes and practices of ordinary people going about their daily lives who are not aware of how their assumptions of superiority impact on the lives of others. Such people do not understand themselves as having unearned privilege. Nor do they see themselves as oppressing others. Civilised oppression can be used to describe many of the specific uses of privilege documented in the different sites in this book. In making privilege more visible, we will also make civilised oppression more recognisable. While members of dominant groups may intentionally oppress others, not all members of dominant groups behave in overtly oppressive ways. The reproduction of oppression does not demand the intent of individuals. Ferree, Lorber and Hess (1999: 11) illustrate how ‘the lives of different groups are interconnected even without face to face relations’. They discuss how, for example, white people gain privileges through ‘the subordination … of people of color, even if he or she is not personally exploiting or taking advantage of any person of color’ (Ferree, Lorber and Hess 1999: 11). So, while it is important for us to disapprove of these unearned advantages and even to become distressed by them, this disapproval and distress will not in itself be enough to change them. Unearned privileges are conferred on members of privileged groups because they belong to those groups. Yet our disapproval of inequalities does not exclude us from continuing to benefit from them.

The normativity of privilege People in privileged groups feel that their lives are normal. They have become the model for idealised human relations and this partly explains why most people do not want to know about the experiences of the oppressed. Perry (2001: 192) notes that the privileged group comes to represent the dominant norm (the rules regulating our behaviour), whereby ‘white, thin male young heterosexual Christian and financially secure people come to embody what it means to be normal’. Ife (2010) locates the normative framework that entrenches privilege as a legacy of the Enlightenment and Western humanism, whereby the human was exalted over and above nature. It was a particular construction of the human that was idealised, namely European, white, adult, able-bodied and

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highly educated males. Thus humanism was used to defend a Western, patriarchal and colonialist world view. Perry (2001) observes that through the positioning of self and other, various forms of difference are devalued because they are seen as inferior, weak or subordinate in relation to the normal which is presented as superior, strong and dominant. In other words, ‘racism, sexism, homophobia are all predicated upon such negative valuations of difference’ (Perry 2001: 46). The normativity of privilege means that this becomes the basis for measuring success and failure. Those who are not privileged deviate from the norm. Normative standards lead to the negative valuation of difference. Since the privileged are regarded as normal, they are less likely to be studied or researched because the norm does not have to be marked. Gender, for example, becomes a code word for women, and race always seems to refer to people of colour. The normativity of privilege provides some insight to the process of ‘othering’. Othering is a process of portraying difference as if it is in some way alien to that which is normal. The flipside of the ‘other’ are the insiders who constitute the privileged group. Pickering (2001: 73) reminds us ‘that those who are “othered” are unequally positioned in relation to those who do the “othering”. The latter occupies a privileged space in which they define themselves in contrast to the others who are designated as different’. Some social statuses are valued, while others are devalued. For example, in Western society:

Gender Sex Race Language Religion Sexuality Life Cycle Education Physical Health Ability Mode of Income Housing Marital Status Family Size

Valued

Devalued

masculinity cis white English Christian heterosexual adult educated healthy able-bodied work home owner married two children

femininity trans and non-binary non-white other Muslim homosexual child and senior citizen illiterate unhealthy disabled state benefits tenant unmarried childless or four plus children

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It is necessary to untangle the processes by which this valuing and devaluing take place to understand how particular social statuses come to be valued over others across time and social context. Otherwise, the normative basis of privilege remains untouched.

The naturalisation of privilege The social divisions between the privileged and the oppressed are further reproduced through what is constituted as natural. Rather than seeing difference as being socially constructed, gender, race, sexuality and class are regarded as flowing from nature. Even gender and race which one might suggest are surely natural differences are socially formed. A belief about social hierarchy as being natural justifies social dominance and lets dominant groups off the hook for addressing social inequalities (Gould 2000). In Part II of this book, I show how the various forms of privilege are socially constructed through the interactions between people in historical and cultural contexts and note how the belief in the biological basis of dominance reproduces social inequality. Members of privileged groups either believe they have inherited the characteristics which give them advantages (e.g. gifted intelligence or the will to compete) or they set out to consciously cover up the socially constructed basis of their dominance (Wonders 2000). This belief in the naturalness of inequality leads people to accept and live with existing inequalities in the same way that we live within the laws of gravity. It is only when we understand that social inequalities are human creations designed to benefit a few that we can see the possibilities for challenging inequality. Western culture rests on the idea that differences between people are based on essences (Martin 1994), that is, the belief that people have fixed, innate characteristics that we are born with. This may partly explain why even oppositional groups in Western societies will sometimes essentialise dominance, as, for example, in the assertion by some feminists that ‘all men are oppressors’. Such a notion portrays men as unchanging and as inevitably oppressive just by virtue of the fact that they are men. Part of the process of exploring dominant identities is to question how and why they appear natural. As Tillner (1997) suggests, it may be useful to represent non-dominant identities as ‘normal’ and represent dominant identities as ‘particular’ as a way of subverting the tendency for dominant groups to always represent themselves as ‘the universal’. For example, naming of heterosexual white middle- to upper-class men as a particular group of men will make it more difficult for them to universalise their human experience.

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Privilege and the sense of entitlement Privileged groups have a sense of entitlement to the privileges they enjoy. As Rosenblum and Travis state: ‘The sense of entitlement that one has a right to be respected, acknowledged, protected and rewarded – is so much taken for granted by those of us in non-stigmatised statuses, that they are often shocked and angered when it is denied them’ (1996: 141). Men’s sense of entitlement can result in violence against women. As Connell (2000: 3) puts it: ‘From a long history of gender relations, many men have a sense of entitlement to respect, deference, and service from women. If women fail to give it, some men will see this as bad conduct which ought to be punished.’ Some men will experience women’s challenge to their entitlement as a threat to their masculinity.6 It is necessary to understand how privileged group members’ sense of entitlement is experienced and socially constructed. Adams, Towns and Gavey (1995), for example, identify the ways in which men use language to reinforce their assumptions about male dominance. Men construct what Adams et al. call a ‘discourse of natural entitlement’ which enables them to believe that they are designed to dominate women. These discourses legitimate men’s use of violence against women.7 In reflecting upon my own situation as a white academic man from a working-class background, I had come to believe that I deserved whatever benefits and status I had attained because I had struggled for them. I was very conscious of the class barriers that I had to overcome but I did not recognise how my gender and race facilitated my achievements. We all need to critically reflect upon the ways in which we receive unearned advantages in our lives. One of the purposes of this book is to encourage that process of reflection.

6

7

See Kate Manne (2020) for an analysis of the relationship between male entitlement and discrimination, abuse and violence against women. I explore this more fully in Chapter 7.

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The matrix and social dynamics of privilege

This book emphasises how privilege is actively reproduced by members of privileged groups. Unless we examine the ways in which the privileged reproduce or resist their dominant positions, we avoid one of the most significant dimensions of personal, cultural and structural change. Towards this end, it is important to move beyond those analyses that focus on single strands of oppression and privilege. In much of the discussion about social inequality, there is very little attention given to the intersections of class, race, sexuality, gender and other social divisions in the context of a globalised world. There are of course some important exceptions to this general neglect. At the time of writing (2021), it is over thirty-six years since Wineman (1984) first criticised what he called ‘single cause’ and ‘parallel’ theories of oppression. It is worth revisiting his work at some length, because Wineman’s critique of single strand theories of oppression still has important implications for theorising the intersectional nature of unearned privilege.1 Single cause theories of oppression view all forms of oppression as arising out of one fundamental source. For example, a Marxist analysis places economic organisation and class oppression at the centre of the political world. Historically, Marxists have viewed all other forms of oppression, including sexism, racism and homophobia, as deriving from class oppression. They are seen as ‘secondary forms of oppression’ used by the ruling class to divide the working class and fragment and prevent political mobilisation. Yet, class privilege is the only form of privilege. This form of analysis lets many relatively privileged groups off the hook. In this view, working-class men are not held responsible for their sexism or their homophobia. Some theorists reject the centrality of class oppression but they replace it with another single form of oppression. Some radical feminists argue, for example, that male domination is the cause of inequality in economic, 1

May (2015) refers to these as single-axis models of oppression.

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social and political relations. In this view, the primary form of privilege is male privilege. White women’s racial privilege could be overlooked in this view. These perspectives all claim that a single factor explains all forms of oppression. However, there is ongoing contestation between, for example, Marxists and radical feminists about which factor constitutes the primary dynamic. Parallel theories suggest that different kinds of oppression run on distinct and parallel tracks from one another. According to this approach, different forms of oppression all involve comparable dynamics of domination and subordination. Each form of oppression is caused and sustained by an autonomous set of political, economic and social factors that have a major effect on a distinct group of oppressed people. So class oppresses workingclass people; racism oppresses people of colour; sexism oppresses women; and heterosexual dominance oppresses gay men and lesbians. The political implications are to create single-issue movements, sometimes referred to as identity politics, that challenge only one form of oppression. The flipside of this in terms of privilege would be to regard men, whites and heterosexuals as homogeneous privileged groups. The problem with this view is the inability to acknowledge the multiplicity of people’s identities and the myriad of oppressions that confront them as a result. An ‘intersectional model’ recognises that different oppressions are distinct but acknowledges that they are interrelated and mutually reinforcing. In this approach, any one form of oppression cannot be addressed alone. Since this intersectional approach has important implications for understanding the way in which different forms of privilege intersect with both other forms of oppression and with different forms of privilege, I examine it in more detail here.

Towards an intersectional theory of oppression In the 1980s and 1990s African American, Latina and Third World feminists framed the concepts of ‘intersectionality’ and interlocking systems of oppression (Combahee River Collective 1982; Moraga and Anzalda 1983; Collins 1991; Crenshaw 1991; Mohanty 1991). They argued that white middle-class feminists gave insufficient attention to women of colour and working-class women and that they were unable to analyse the complexity of women’s lives. By failing to sufficiently acknowledge the experiences of marginalised women, gender relations are granted a primary status and other forms of inequality are seen as secondary. One of the results of this neglect is that women who were relatively privileged were insufficiently aware of the

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problems faced by working-class and Black women (Zinn et al. 1986). To understand gender inequality it is necessary to move beyond the experiences of middle-class white women and to explore the impact of class and race on women’s lives. One of the most sophisticated expressions of the Black feminist standpoint is the work of Patricia Hill Collins (1991) who documented the forms of resistance by white feminist women to Black women’s ideas and experiences. The Black women’s standpoint was based upon an Afrocentric feminist theory of knowledge that challenged the hidden white male standpoint represented in traditional scholarship. Collins and others emphasised the importance of seeing race, gender and class as ‘interlocking systems of oppression’. These feminist perspectives grounded in the diversity of women’s lives explored the interconnections between class, gender and race as they were experienced by women in specific contexts. Feminism, in particular, and critical social theory, more generally, are faced with the challenge to develop a theory that is able to address the complexity of how these different dimensions of women’s (and men’s) lives are woven together. While class, race and gender have all been discussed in the social sciences, the intersections between them have not developed in the ways that intersectional theorists would have hoped. There has been little attention to the ways in which these different dimensions of inequality overlap and at times contest each other. We have to develop an overarching theoretical framework that makes sense of how different forms of oppression interact. A number of writers have argued against what they have called ‘additive analyses’ of intersectionality (Razack 1998; May 2015; Mullaly and West 2018). The effects of race, class and gender cannot simply be added on to make sense of people’s lives. A lower-income woman from a non-Englishspeaking background does not experience the single negative effects of being female, migrant and on a lower income. Rather her experience is an outcome of the interrelationship between these different dimensions of her life. While we should be careful to suggest that any one system of domination is more important than another in an absolute sense, the significance may depend upon particular circumstances. The reality is that some forms of unearned privilege have more social consequences than others in specific contexts. Perry (2001: 49) says that ‘in different contexts, in different institutional settings, one may be more visible or dramatic in its impact or different combinations might prevail’. In some situations, one may be more conscious of one’s gender and in other contexts more aware of one’s race and so on. At different historical moments then, particular forms of dominance may assume greater or lesser significance within the wider sociopolitical

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context. Within these contexts, specific forms of privilege will become more significant than others and be more influential in relation to general life circumstances. These connections in intersectional analyses will shift as the historical conditions change. It is also notable that most of the uses of intersectional analyses are focussed on the intersections of oppression. As Acker (1999: 55) has observed, we ‘know more about how gender, class and race are intertwined in the lives of members of relatively subordinate groups than we do about the lives of those in more influential positions’.2 Intersectional analysis needs to move beyond the study of those who are subordinate on all levels of social division to explore the experiences of those who occupy positions of both privilege and subordination, as well as those who are multiply privileged. This is important if we want to understand how those with privilege reproduce the oppression of others. To make things more complicated, many privileged people also experience oppression. Not all men, for example, benefit equally from patriarchy and not all white people benefit equally from racism. This means that most people cannot be categorised solely as privileged or oppressed. Many people may have access to some forms of privilege and not others. So while men may be privileged in some situations, some will be marginalised in others. While working-class men may exercise power over their female partners at home, in the context of paid work they will be dominated by foremen and bosses.3 As different dimensions of privilege and oppression can be more easily revealed through an intersectional analysis, I adopt this framework in the book.

Towards an intersectional theory of privilege An intersectional analysis makes clear that almost everyone experiences both privilege and subordination. Black feminist criticisms of feminism draw attention to the fact that while white women are oppressed by their gender positioning, they also receive privileges through their whiteness. Similarly, while working-class men are oppressed by class, they still receive some forms of gender privilege. These are just two of the ways in which one may be both privileged and oppressed at the same time. Collins (1991) coined the phrase 2

3

See also Carbado and Gulati (2013) who argue that we should differentiate between ‘intersectionally marginalised groups’ and ‘intersectionally privileged groups’. See Coston and Kimmel (2012) for an analysis of how male privilege is compromised by marginalisation through disability status, sexuality and class.

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‘the matrix of domination’ to describe the way in which oppression operates on three levels: the personal, the cultural and the structural. People were seen to ‘experience and resist oppression’ on these levels. This matrix approach can also be used to help understand how people also reproduce or challenge privilege on these three levels.4 Because of the pain of oppression, many people find it relatively easy to identify their experience of subordination but find it harder to recognise how their thoughts and actions oppress others. This is because privilege is normalised in the wider society. Given that most people exhibit some degree of penalty and privilege, it is equally necessary for these individuals to see themselves as belonging to privileged groups as well as to oppressed groups. Some people may struggle against their oppression but at the same time maintain their access to various dimensions of privilege. Razack (1998: 159– 60) suggests that we reflect upon those times ‘when we are dominant and those when we are subordinate’ to identify the way in which the processes of domination and subordination interact. She gives the example of Western women reproducing their dominance when they try and save ‘other women’ rather than organising ‘against the racism that structures migration’. Such a project requires that we recognise our own involvement in the oppression of others. We can begin to do this by reflecting on what it feels like to be privileged or to be a member of a dominant group. If we have consciously enacted some form of oppression, we can also tune in to how it feels. This will be difficult but it will assist us to bring our privilege into conscious awareness. Many writers who explore multiple forms of oppression fail to factor in forms of domination and privilege. This tension between oppression and privilege may inhibit the potential for struggles against oppression. The implication of this contradictory location is that different members of oppressed people may be pulled in different directions. On the one hand, some people will be encouraged to focus on their oppression, while on the other hand, others will be encouraged to reproduce their privileged position. Gender, race and class consciousness are not only developed by subordinate groups. Waite (2001: 200) refers to this tension as the conflict between ‘hegemonic and oppositional consciousness’. The risk is that if oppressed groups are only concerned about their oppression they may reproduce the oppression of others, as in the examples of gay men oppressing lesbians and Black heterosexuals oppressing Black gay men. Social movements that challenge only one form of oppression may thus reinforce other forms 4

May (2015) notes that while intersectionality has been theorised from the standpoints of those who experience multiple forms of oppression, it can also inform how privileged groups are understood.

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of oppression. This leads to what Waite (2001) calls ‘one dimensional oppositional consciousness’. When people are able to define themselves in terms of one or more forms of oppression, they may not feel the need to acknowledge themselves as benefiting from other forms of oppression. In many people’s thinking about oppression, people are seen as either privileged or subordinated and they ignore complexities and contradictions. This can lead to the tendency to excuse abusive practices by oppressed groups because they are seen to be related to the experience of domination. For example, homophobia among Black people may be seen as the product of racism and consequently diminish the responsibility of Black people to address it. An intersectional analysis can help to deal with this complexity and assist oppressed groups to challenge exploitation and domination in their communities. As those groups who are both oppressed and privileged start to examine their privilege, we need to be careful that they are not asked to take more than their share of the responsibility for the reproduction of privilege. Razack (1998) observes, for example, that white women’s writing is judged more harshly than white men’s writing. Some feminist writers, such as Mackinnon (1991), however, take this further to challenge the notion that white women are privileged at all. However, groups that are oppressed on one dimension need to acknowledge their complicity with other relations of domination and subordination. To understand this, they need to locate ourselves in the social relations of domination and oppression. If everyone were simply privileged or just subordinated then the analysis of systems of privilege would be easier. But most people live their lives with access to privilege in some areas, while being subordinate in others. We are never just a man or a woman or a Black person or a white person. We all experience these intersections in our lives. At what stage does oppression on one dimension limit the access to privileges on another dimension? For example, does the experience of oppression by gay men cancel out their male privilege or does it simply modify it? A theory is needed that acknowledges that many people may experience both privilege and oppression in their lives, resulting from their multiple positions in the social divisions of inequality. Such a theory would need to address the complex question of whether, in some instances, some forms of oppression are so severe as to negate any benefits that one might experience from forms of privilege and not to treat this as a ‘zero-sum’ exercise. It is clear that white middle-class women are not protected against sexism and that white middle-class gay men are not protected against homophobia. However, how does the class and racial privilege in the above examples mediate the sexism and homophobia?

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Intersectional theory recognises that diversity and difference within a privileged group are complex. Therefore, challenging white privilege in a given situation cannot always be sensitive to the hierarchies within whiteness. For example, when people confront the white domination of our workplace and note that an overwhelming number of workers are white, they need to recognise that white workers also belong to subordinate groups; some are women, some are disabled, some are lesbians. Intersectional theory requires that we acknowledge hierarchies among privileged groups.5 It requires that people who are oppressed not only struggle against their own oppression but also confront their own privilege and internalised dominance. This places the onus on those who have access to multiple levels of privilege. In advocating a greater level of responsibility by members of dominant groups for the maintenance of privilege, I also acknowledge that an understanding of privilege necessitates a structural analysis that identifies the systemic nature of that privilege.6 In other words, privilege is not just something people can choose to ignore or reject but can also be utilised to contribute to social change.

Fraser’s theory of redistribution and recognition In the last forty years, class politics and struggles around distribution have waned and identity politics and recognition claims have escalated. Issues of mal-distribution are concerned with the unjust allocation of wealth and material resources. Misrecognition is focused on discriminatory practices towards people on the basis of their gender, sexuality, race or ability (Fraser 2003). Social theorists have polarised these two forms of political struggle to the point where they are regarded as mutually exclusive. We need both forms of politics if we are to attain social justice. While all oppressed groups face injustices associated with both distribution and recognition, the causes of injustice will vary from unjust economic and social arrangements for some and a lack of recognition regarding others.

5

6

Intersectionality should not be confused with diversity and inclusion. As Ahmed (2012) and Nash (2019) note, diversity and inclusion initiatives within workplaces depoliticise intersectionality and accommodate differences within existing structures rather than transform social institutions. See Chapter 6 for an analysis of the limitations of diversity awareness training. Some forms of intersectional analysis have been critiqued for over-emphasising subjective experiences at the expense of material conditions and social practices (Grabham et al. 2009). Collins and Bilge (2020), however, demonstrate that structural analyses have always been central to intersectionality.

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Taking gender domination as an example, Fraser (2003) argues that theorists need to address both the structural issue of the gendered division of labour and gender divisions within paid work along with the cultural values that privilege men and masculinity and devalue women and femininity. Racial domination is similarly positioned, being based both in the economic structure of society as well as in the Eurocentric privileging of whiteness. Even in relation to class domination where the major cause of injustice is located within capitalist social relations, there are also forms of misrecognition associated with classism and class elitism. Discussing heterosexual domination, Fraser locates gay and lesbian oppression primarily within cultural forms of heteronormativity and heterosexism. She also acknowledges that there are resulting consequences of maldistribution of resources, as well, that impact on the material lives of gay men and lesbians. Although Fraser does not discuss disability, Dandermark and Gellerstedt (2004) propose that disabled people constitute a bivalent group similar to gender and race. While some forms of social division, such as class for example, will need to be completely dismantled because it cannot take an egalitarian form, other forms of difference such as gender and sexuality can potentially be detached from systems of privilege, although this is not without contestation. For example, there is a tension between those strategies that are aimed at democratising gender and those that challenge the existence of fixed gender categories (Cooper 2004).7 While there have been many critics of Fraser’s conceptual framework (Honneth 2003; Young 2008; Butler 2008; Lazzeri 2009) mainly associated with different perspectives on the nuances in the relationship between the economic and cultural spheres, I find Fraser’s argument for acknowledging the importance of both forms of political struggle, without ignoring the tensions between them, highly relevant to the project of undoing privilege. Fraser (2008) has extended her conceptual framework beyond redistribution and recognition to encompass what she calls representation. This involves changing the frame for social justice struggles from the modern territorial nation state to a globalised world. Inspired by the alternative globalisation activists of the World Social Forum, she emphasises the need for transborder struggles against transnational sources of injustice, arguing that social justice cannot be achieved within national borders while global injustices persist and vice versa.

7

See Chapter 9 for an analysis of the gender binary.

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Fraser recognises that these different axes of oppression intersect and that individuals need to be involved in struggles for redistribution and recognition in different arenas. She challenges the dominant sociological view that the economy and culture are separate spheres, arguing that social practices are both economic and cultural. While Fraser’s framework embraces both the structural and the cultural and straddles the divide between the materialist and the post-structural, there is little consideration given to the interpersonal and psychosocial aspects of oppression in her analysis. Since oppression is psychically embedded, psychosocial interventions need to be examined alongside structural and cultural changes.

The internalisation of dominance and privilege To address the deficit in Fraser’s theory, a useful concept is ‘internalised domination’, defined by Pheterson (1986: 147) as ‘the incorporation and acceptance by individuals within a dominant group of prejudices against others’. This may explain in part why members of privileged groups may unwittingly or unconsciously reinforce the oppression of others. However, Tappan (2008) argues that internalised domination overemphasises the psychological aspects of dominance and obscures the institutional and structural dimensions of privilege. He proposes the notion of ‘appropriated domination/privilege’ as a way to combine psychological and sociological insights. It highlights the fact that psychological factors are part of the explanation of why dominant ideologies of Eurocentrism, class elitism, white supremacy, patriarchy, heterosexism, cis-genderism, religious superiority, ableism and adultism are appropriated by privileged groups. Tillner (1997: 2) takes the notion of internalised domination a step further by defining dominance ‘as a form of identity practice that constructs a difference which legitimises dominance and grants the agent of dominance the illusion of a superior identity’. In this process, the identities of others are invalidated. Thus dominance is socially constructed and psychically internalised. To challenge dominant identities, an explanation of different models of identity is needed, so as to construct subjectivities that are not based on domination and subordination. Social constructionism acknowledges it is not possible for members of dominant groups to escape completely the internalisation of dominance. Negative ideas and images are deeply embedded in the culture and it is unlikely that men, whites and heterosexuals will not be affected by sexism, racism and homophobia. As noted earlier, prejudice is not necessarily always

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consciously enacted by members of dominant groups but more subtly woven into our consciousness. Bourdieu’s (1977) work is useful in explaining how various forms of inequality are reproduced and internalised. He formulated the term ‘habitus’ to explain how a system of stable dispositions leads people to see the world from a particular perspective. Unlike Marxist and radical humanist views, however, which outline how people’s ideas and consciousness are shaped by dominant ideologies, Bourdieu emphasises how dominant ideologies are also incorporated into the body so as to influence behaviour at an unconscious and habitual level. They are then experienced as a form of ‘second nature’. Dispositions are ‘beyond the grip of conscious control and therefore not amenable to transformations or corrections’ (Bourdieu 2001: 95). Bourdieu regards a person’s habitus as a result of one’s structural location or position, whereby he or she internalises the structural context of his or her life. The concept of habitus can explain the ways in which dominant groups come to internalise prejudice towards others. The concepts of internalised domination, appropriated privilege and habitus help us to understand the seeming paradox that Minow (1990) identifies in relation to those who publicly criticise social inequality, while at the same time engaging in practices that perpetuate these inequalities. While she emphasises the task of examining and reformulating our assumptions about the social world, she acknowledges that this requires more than individuals learning to think differently, because of the ways in which the individual’s thinking is shaped by institutional and cultural forces. Privilege cannot be explained merely by internal psychological processes where some people come to see themselves as superior to others, or solely by external sociological analyses which show how social structures and processes reproduce social differences. Privilege is socially constructed through psychological and social processes. So while it is important for individuals to acknowledge the privileges they have and to speak out against them, it is impossible to simply relinquish privilege. As Brod (1989: 280) notes, in relation to male privilege, it involves challenging the social divisions that perpetuate privilege, which is used consciously or unconsciously to oppress others. We need to be clear that there is no such thing as giving up one’s privilege to be ‘outside the system’. One is always in the system. The only question is whether one is part of the system in a way that challenges or strengthens the status quo. Privilege is not something I take and which I therefore have the option of not taking. It is something that society

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gives me and unless I change the institutions which give it to me, they will continue to give it to me and I will continue to have it, however noble and egalitarian my intentions.

Given the complexity of the issues facing members of privileged groups, how might people respond when challenged about their privilege? How might they be convinced to live their lives in ways that are congruent with egalitarian values and beliefs? It is understandable to want to sidestep these questions. It is also easy for people to feel despair when they are constantly challenged by subordinate groups. Are there any ways of resolving these dilemmas?

Privilege and positionality: Feminist standpoint theory As suggested earlier, those in dominant groups will be more likely than those in subordinate groups to argue that existing inequalities are legitimate or natural. Privileged groups will often further their own interests with little concern for the implications for others. Sidanius and Pratto (1999) formulate the notion of ‘social dominance orientation’ to explain why people value hierarchy and non-egalitarian relations between people. They argue that people develop an ‘orientation towards social dominance’ by virtue of the power and status of their primary group. They further maintain that dominant groups act in their own self-interests more than subordinate groups do and are encouraged to do so. In their view, human beings have a ‘predisposition’ to form hierarchical social relations. They argue that this social dominance orientation is largely a product of one’s membership within dominant groups, although they seem to allow that some members of dominant groups may identify with subordinates. Most members of privileged groups appear to actively defend their privileged positions. In this context, government interventions aimed at addressing inequality and mobilisation by oppressed groups (important as they both are) seem unlikely to fundamentally change the social relations of dominance and subordination. So, what likelihood is there that members of privileged groups might form alliances with oppressed groups? What would encourage them to do so? Just as oppressed groups have a range of strategies available to them to respond to their oppression, Dominelli (2002) observes three strategies that dominant groups can utilise to respond to concerns or questions about their privilege: demarcationalist, incorporationist and egalitarian. Demarcationalists view the world through a hierarchical lens and endeavour

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to hold on to and increase their power and resources to maintain their privileged position. Incorporationalists may support incremental changes but they also want to retain existing social divisions. Egalitarians reject the social order that grants them privileges because they recognise the injustice associated with their position. However, this is not so easy in practice and the rejection may not be wholesale. This does not explain why privileged groups ought to develop a critical distance from their privilege. For this, it is necessary to turn to feminist standpoint theory that has its origins in Marxism. It was adapted by feminists and embraced also by gay and lesbian theorists, Indigenous scholars, disability activists and postcolonial writers. Developing knowledge grounded in the experience of oppressed groups, they sought to provide a critical stance against Eurocentric, patriarchal, class elitist, racist, heterosexist and ableist conceptual frameworks (Harding 2004). Feminist standpoint theory posits a direct relationship between people’s structural location in the world and their understanding of the nature of the world. A standpoint is seen to involve a level of awareness about an individual’s social location, from which certain features of reality come into prominence and from which others are obscured. The further one is from the centre of power, the more comprehensive one’s analysis will be. This is because those who are marginalised have to understand the viewpoint of the dominant groups, while those in the dominant position have no need to understand the perspective of the oppressed. While standpoint theory has been used to validate the experiences of the oppressed and encourage collective resistance against oppressors (Harding 2004), it is also useful for dominant groups to critically interrogate the ways in which their own world views and practices sustain the oppression of others. Harding (1995), for example, argues that standpoint theory can offer an explanation of how members of dominant groups can develop knowledge that serves the interests of subordinate groups. In this view, it is possible for members of dominant groups to develop the capacity to see themselves from the perspective of those in subordinated groups. Dominant groups do not necessarily form a homogeneous network of shared interests. It is possible for members of dominant groups to challenge the taken-for-granted self-interests of their own group. This is consistent with my experience of constructing a profeminist men’s standpoint in researching the experiences of men (Pease 2000). I critique patriarchal dominance from within the experiences of white heterosexual profeminist men by examining how men who are supportive of feminism are responding to the feminist challenge. Bailey’s (2000) argument that members of dominant groups can develop ‘traitorous identities’ adds support to this position. She distinguishes between

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those who are unaware of their privilege and those who have a critical consciousness of it. Traitors are those who refuse to reproduce their privilege and who challenge the world views that dominant groups are expected to adhere to. It is from this basis that white people will challenge racism and that men will challenge patriarchy. From this premise, while it is difficult for members of privileged groups to critically appraise their own position, it is not impossible. The process of developing a traitorous identity involves learning to see the world through the experiences of the oppressed. This may not be fully possible but members of dominant groups can make a choice about accepting or rejecting their part in the establishment. Lakritz (1995: 7) discusses the dilemma facing the postcolonial critic ‘who on the one hand declares herself to be on the side of social justice … but who on the other hand speaks from a position of the elite – the class against which the subaltern is defined’. What happens when one faces this dilemma? Is determination to be on the side of the oppressed enough? Lakritz suggests that rather than speaking for the marginalised, it is better for members of privileged groups to talk about their experiences of engaging with the marginalised. How are their lives transformed by their experiences of hearing their stories of oppression and exploitation? Lugones and Spelman (1998) have articulated the challenge to ‘outsiders’ who speak for the privileged. Such outsiders are challenged to make their writings accountable to the marginalised and to immerse themselves in their cultures and their communities so that they may learn about their lives and about themselves. Members of dominant groups who have started to develop some awareness of their privileged position often look to oppressed groups to educate them. In doing so, however, they reproduce their dominant position and do not take responsibility for their own learning. While it is important that members of dominant groups make their practice accountable to oppressed groups, they need to take initiative in challenging their own and others’ privilege. What does it mean when profeminist men who challenge patriarchy are listened to more than feminist women who challenge patriarchy? Alcoff (1995) discusses the dangers of speaking for others. These dangers are concerned with both the limitations on understanding arising from the structural location of the speaker and the impact that the privileged speaking position has on the already subjugated position of the marginalised. As she says: ‘Persons from dominant groups who speak for others are often treated as authenticating presences that confer legitimacy and credibility on the demands of subjugated speakers. … such speaking for others does nothing to disrupt the discursive hierarchies that operate in public spaces’ (Alcoff

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1995: 99). It can in fact reinforce those barriers that prevent the marginalised from having their own voices heard. When feminist colleagues and I have presented papers together on men’s responsibility for challenging male violence, I have been concerned when my voice has been given credibility over theirs. These dangers ought not to lead us to the view that members of privileged groups should only speak for themselves or that they should remain silent. This has been the soft option that liberals have articulated for many years. It is an option that lets privileged groups off the hook. Perhaps one of the most damaging aspects of privilege is that of doing nothing or of not speaking out about injustice. Privileged group members can decide to ignore the struggles of the oppressed. They have what Wildman and Davis (2000: 659) call ‘the privilege of silence’, which may be one of the greatest abuses of privilege. From a social justice perspective, members of privileged groups have a responsibility to critically reflect upon their own position. The view that one’s structural location determines absolutely the meaning of an individual’s speech must be challenged. The fact that we have privilege does not mean that we will inevitably reproduce that privilege when we speak. Rather, members of privileged groups need to be aware of the ways in which their speaking positions can be oppressive and dangerous and at the same time not retreat from political work that is contentious. What could be more privileged than positioning oneself in a way that is free of likely criticism? A popular men’s movement activist in Australia has taken to threats of legal action against those who criticise his work and he refuses to discuss disagreements of his ideas in his workshops. From this position, we would not be required to monitor or critically reflect upon our practice and would not be subject to the scrutiny of others.

Interrogating personal privilege While the positioning of all speakers needs to be articulated, it is even more important for members of privileged groups to critically reflect upon their own positions. Privileged academics seem to be more interested in studying subordinate groups than they are in studying the groups to which they belong. Academics rarely focus their critical gaze upon themselves. Yet they are enmeshed in the social relations of dominance and subordination that they criticise. They too are likely to internalise dominance in varying degrees. In this book, I endeavour to enact the reflexivity that I advocate. However, I am aware that in writing this book, some might say that I am

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suggesting that I am above reproach. I will no doubt at times replicate that which I am criticising. The very act of writing a book on privilege is itself a form of privilege. As an academic,8 I am part of the established order. Although I teach courses and write articles and books on dominant forms of masculinity and privilege, I still benefit from gender, race, class and sexual privilege. As Currie (1993: 23) notes, ‘The real challenge to self-acclaimed “radical” scholars is whether we take our own critical analyses seriously enough to help displace our privileged position – not simply in the text, but in the production of what becomes accepted as “truth” and as knowledge’. In what ways does the academic discourse exclude the voices of marginalised people? Is it enough for us to be simply critical of our positioning, while doing nothing to change the material conditions that produce it? Obviously not, but if we own our positionality (where we stand in relation to class, gender and race) we at least challenge the view that the white middle-class male perspective represents some form of transcendent truth. To challenge this ethos, more white middle-class men will need to read and reflect upon the writings by those who are marginalised and they will need to learn how to listen to the experiences of marginalised people. Furthermore, the more that we as members of privileged groups work against our own privilege, we make it harder for others to discount the experiences of subordinate groups as simply advocating their own self interests.

Tronto’s concept of privileged irresponsibility Joan Tronto (2013) uses the notion of privileged irresponsibility to describe the process by which those who receive care fail to acknowledge their dependence on the care provided by others. As such, members of dominant groups argue that they do not need to concern themselves with hands-on caring activities. By ignoring their dependence on others, those in privileged groups are able to reproduce their privilege. Tronto originally used the term to describe the ways in which white people ignored the exercise of their power to reproduce their white privilege. Privileged irresponsibility is closely connected to hegemonic masculinity and the power of dominant groups of men to exclude themselves, not only from caring responsibilities, as Tronto (2013) notes, but also from wider engagements in social relations of power.

8

While I am now formally ‘retired’, I hold honorary professorships at two universities and I continue to teach and write for publication.

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Tronto (2013) argues that ignorance is one of the main ways in which people avoid responsibility. If you don’t know about a problem, you can absolve yourself from taking action to address it. This ignorance is sustained by broader social, political and cultural processes that obscure the workings of power. Tronto is concerned with the conditions under which people come to see and understand their responsibilities for others. Tronto suggests that one way of understanding the complicity of members of privileged groups with normative and exploitative practices is through the scholarship on epistemologies of ignorance (Sullivan and Tuana 2007). Members of privileged groups, even when they have good intentions, can reproduce social inequalities through various forms of ignorance. The way in which epistemologies of ignorance operate is that members of privileged groups generally do not know the extent to which they do not know. It can be argued that there is an epistemology of ignorance in relation to structural forms of privilege. Such ignorance is systemically reproduced through the attempts by some members of privileged groups to deflect attention away from the social processes that produce privilege. Members of privileged groups have an interest in staying ignorant because it allows them to avoid facing their moral complicity in the reproduction of social inequality (Applebaum 2013). Tronto’s concept of privileged irresponsibility can be used to analyse how privileged groups reproduce their own privilege. Although Tronto is primarily concerned with how the notion of privileged irresponsibility functions in relation to caring responsibilities, the concept is very useful in describing more generally how privileged groups fail to acknowledge their responsibilities.

Overcoming complicity in the oppression of others Applebaum (2010) suggests that the admission of privilege can deflect members of privileged groups from recognising their complicity in the structures that reproduce oppression. For Applebaum, members of privileged groups must see themselves as having privileged group membership rather than simply seeing themselves as individuals. Otherwise, they will be unable to differentiate between individual suffering, which may involve harm, and systemic suffering, which constitutes oppression. Ironically, the acknowledgement of privilege can lead to an avoidance of recognising one’s complicity in the structures that maintain privilege. Levine-Rasky (2010) believes that teaching about privilege as something

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that is possessed by individuals can obscure the links between the benefits of privilege and the practices by members of privileged groups that reproduce structures of privilege. The focus should be not only on the advantages received by privilege but also on the processes by which privilege is appropriated (Leonardo 2004). According to Blum (2008: 311), a person is ‘complicit in injustice if she benefits from it (even if she did not seek that benefit)’. Applebaum (2006: 350) defines complicity as involving ‘participation without intention’. Systemic oppression does not require the intent of individuals. Rather, it is through systemic patterns that are naturalised, normalised and appear to be invisible (Applebaum 2006). Because the structures of privilege are so deeply embedded in society, it is almost impossible for members of privileged groups to escape the receipt of unjust benefits. Much complicity by members of privileged groups is lawful and manifested in the forms of everyday sexism and everyday racism that aggravate harm but are not criminalised. As Card (2010) notes, these forms of everyday oppressive practices create the climate in which physical violence against women, gays and non-white people is legitimated and excused. Card uses the language of ‘enablers’ to describe those men who are not physically violent but are connected to men who are violent without challenging them. Applebaum (2013) refers to two types of complicity. One form of complicity is seen as the outcome of unconscious negative attitudes and beliefs that members of privileged groups hold about marginalised people that shape their practices. The second form of complicity is less focused on the unconscious attitudes and beliefs and more focused on practices and habits of doing whiteness, or gender or class or other forms of privilege. All men are complicit to varying degrees in the reproduction of patriarchy. Because men benefit from patriarchy (although not equally), they have less motivation than women to become aware of the costs associated with it. If men do not notice how patriarchy advantages them and disadvantages women, they are likely to regard the distribution of rewards as normal and natural (Card 2010).9

Privilege as structured action: Doing dominance It is through the processes of ‘accomplishing’ gender, race, class and so on that social dominance is reproduced. That is, people live their lives trying to

9

See Chapter 7.

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attain certain valued aspirations associated with these statuses. Rather than seeing concepts like race, gender and class as reified categories, there is a need to understand the processes of gendering, racialising and classing as Fensternmaker and West (2002: 75) have done. They analyse how race, gender and class constitute ‘ongoing methodical and situated accomplishments’ to understand how people legitimate and maintain social divisions in our society. Messerschmidt (1997: 4) similarly, in discussing crime as ‘structured action’, emphasises how ‘the social construction of gender, race and class involves a situated, social and interactional accomplishment’. Gender, race and class are thus a series of activities that we do in specific situations. Messerschmidt acknowledges that these ‘accomplishments’ are shaped by structural constraints. However, because they involve accomplishments enacted by human agents, it is possible to resist the reproduction of social structures. Talking specifically about men, for example, Messerschmidt (2000: 81) argues that masculinity is something that has to be accomplished in specific social contexts. It is ‘what men do under specific constraints and varying degrees of power’. Perry (2001) draws upon this notion of ‘structured action’ to explain hate crimes. She illustrates the way in which the concept of structured action is useful in understanding how we construct dominant identities more generally. By acting in ways that live up to the normative expectations of one’s race, class and gender, one is not only constructing one’s gender, one is also said to be ‘doing difference appropriately’ and thus reproducing the boundaries that divide dominant groups from the ‘other’. When people act in the world, they are not just operating within structural constraints that are outside their control. Rather, they are determining the nature of those structures through our actions and interactions. The structures that oppress are not only contextual, they are also constituted through our actions. While people construct their identities through their action, they also reproduce relations of power and domination. The implication is that they can challenge those arrangements by engaging in ‘inappropriate’ racial or gender behaviour. Various commentators have argued that this approach neglects the structural dimensions of inequality. Maldonado (2002: 85), for example, says that there is insufficient acknowledgement of ‘the constraints imposed by the macro-level forces in the social environment’. O’Brian and Howard (1998: xiv) also argue that this approach ‘obscures institutional and structural power relations’. Weber (2002: 85) says that Fensternmaker and West obscure ‘the mechanisms of power in the production and maintenance of racism, class and sexism’ because their ‘exclusive attention to face to face interaction,

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macro social structural processes such as institutional arrangements are rendered invisible’. In Weber’s (2002: 85) view, the structural dimensions of social inequalities cannot be transformed by ‘the attitudes and actions of a few actors in everyday interactions’. While it is important to acknowledge the significance of locating class, gender and race relations in the context of institutional structures, it is also important to accept, as Thorne (2002: 85) does, that ‘gender, and race, class and compulsory heterosexuality extend deep into the unconscious and outward into social structure and material interests’. It might be useful to establish a duality of micro and macro forces for analytic purposes, but structure and action need not be mutually exclusive or in opposition to each other. Social action that challenges the processes of ‘differentiating persons according to sex categories, race categories and/or class categories … undermines the legitimacy of existing institutional arrangements’ (Fensternmaker and West 2002: 99). When we challenge the dominant conceptions of manhood, whiteness and heterosexuality from within, we undermine the stability of these analytic categories. O’Brian and Howard (1998: 25) capture the complexity well when they say that ‘we are socially constituted subjects who navigate webs of opportunities and obstacles not necessarily of our own choosing’. Furthermore, the concept of interlocking oppressions must involve a recognition of both ‘macro level connections’ at the level of social structures and ‘micro-level processes’ which describe how individuals experience their positions within the hierarchies of domination and oppression. In challenging the dichotomisation of micro and macro forces, the dynamic and reciprocal relationship between social structure and social action must be recognised. While social structure is reproduced by the widespread and continual actions of individuals, it also ‘produces subjects’. So individuals do not simply produce gender, race and class in a vacuum. Rather, they are reproduced and constrained by institutional settings such as families, workplaces and the state. There are thus limits to our ability to enact different expressions of our multiple identities. Hence I seek to move beyond the conflict between those approaches that emphasise human actions and those that emphasise structural determinants. One of the main implications of this analysis is that we must investigate privilege at interactional, cultural and structural levels at the same time that we explore the intersections of privilege with oppression. In Part II of this book I use this framework to interrogate privilege in ten intersecting sites of domination.

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Intersecting sites of privilege

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3

Anthropocentrism and human supremacy

Introduction I recall in 1998 giving a lecture to final year social work students on privilege and oppression, exploring the intersections of gender, class, race and sexuality and how they played out in the lives of people at these interfaces. It was a particularly busy day and I had little time between the end of the lecture and the start of a meeting. It was lunch time and I would normally buy a sandwich from the university café. However, the café was crowded and so with little time to grab something before the meeting, I went across the road and bought a beef burger at a nearby fast-food café. As I was walking across the road on my way to the meeting, I encountered a student from my lecture. She noticed the burger and challenged me to justify eating meat, given my lecture on privilege and oppression. My response was defensive. It was clear that I had not given any real consideration to the ethics of eating animals. Even when my partner embraced vegetarianism and my youngest daughter became vegan, I was not challenged to face my eating of meat. I have moved a long way from my childhood of growing up with red meat and three vegetables on every plate, and I rarely eat red meat as an adult. However, while I am comfortable with vegetarian and vegan meals, I do eat chicken and fish. The reality is that I like eating meat and I put aside any ethical considerations, until I researched and wrote this chapter.

Anthropocentrism and human privilege To analyse human privilege, it is necessary to understand the Anthropocene. The origins of the term are attributed to Crutzen and Stoermer (2000), who refer to it as the geological time period that identifies the impact of human activities on the planet. The term contains a moral imperative to remind humans the consequences of their continuing ecological damage to the planet. More recently, the Anthropocene has been used in relation to humaninduced climate change (Grusin 2017).

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Anthropocene has led to the term Anthropocentrism, which means that human beings are central and privileged in the world (De Lucia 2017). In Anthropocentrism, human beings perceive themselves as separate from nature because of their rationality, which in turn leads them to becoming masters and conquerors (Marina 2009). The notion of human autonomy appears to mean that relational interdependence between humans and the environment is ignored. Anthropocentrism is the underpinning framework which allows human privilege to flourish. It is more than privileging the knowledge and values of humans. It is a belief system of human supremacy that marginalises and subordinates non-human species (Weitzenfeld and Joy 2014). Anthropocentrism values humanity above all other life forms and is the source of speciesism and human chauvinism. Grear (2015) suggests that the Anthropocene and the current climate catastrophe are a product of a crisis in human hierarchy. Human hierarchies are imposed upon some human beings by other human beings in intra-species hierarchies and are imposed upon non-human animals and ecosystems in inter-species hierarchies. Horan (2019) uses the language of anthropocentric privilege to describe the unearned privilege of humans, which is the source of the current environmental crisis. Such privilege should be acknowledged alongside the intra-human divisions of gender, race, class and so on. How does such human privilege play out in the other-than-human context? Could it be that the dualism of humans and nature is related to other forms of colonisation in relation to privilege and oppression among humans? Human supremacists believe that humans are superior to non-human animals and the planet. This superiority and entitlement is at the heart of ecological destruction and is preserved at the expense of continuing life on the planet. The justifications of human supremacy are similar to justification of other forms of privilege, for example, that men use in relation to women and white people use in relation to people of colour. In an anthropocentric approach to the environment, the focus is on the necessity to maintain nature for the well-being of human beings. The aim of preserving natural resources is for the sole purpose of maintaining the quality of life for humans. Even when concern is expressed for the rights of other species and the ecology of the planet, the focus is often on their instrumental value to human beings (Shastri 2013).1 To reject anthropocentrism is to

1

While many countries have introduced legislation aimed at preventing extinction of threatened species and ecological communities, there is little political will to enact legislation to ensure the survival of non-human species unless their extinction inconveniences human beings. See Cafaro and Primack (2014) on the lack of concern for species extinction if they do not impact on ecosystem functions that benefit humans.

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acknowledge that non-human species and other-than-human life can exist outside of human perception.

Deep ecology and speciesism Deep ecologists have called for an ecocentric ethic as an alternative to Anthropocentrism (Naess 1990). Their approach encourages humans to respect the interests of non-human animals and the ecosystem without just focusing on the instrumental value of the non-human world for humans. Most deep ecologists promote biocentric equality which is premised on all living organisms having an equal right to life. In this regard, deep ecologists have been accused of placing the needs of the biosphere above the needs of humans (Welker 2013). Ecofeminists have criticised deep ecology for its masculinist approach and style, reflective perhaps of the fact that most deep ecologists are men (Chakroborty 2015).2 Whereas deep ecology focuses on the human domination of nature, ecofeminism focuses on gendering the exploitation of the environment and the interconnections with men’s violence towards women and other oppressive practices by men (Sessions 1991). Ecofeminists challenge the premise underpinning deep ecology that women and men are equally to blame for environmental crises. Consequently, deep ecology is charged with being androcentric (Welker 2013). The debate between deep ecologists and ecofeminists centres on whether the fundamental causes of environmental degradation are anthropocentric or androcentric. By proposing that anthropocentrism is the central problem, deep ecologists reveal their male chauvinism and sexism. By failing to link environmental destruction and privileged men within patriarchy, they reinforce androcentric world views (Chakroborty 2015). In rejecting connections between androcentrism and anthropocentrism, deep ecologists argue that speciesism is the source of the problem. Speciesism was popularised by Peter Singer (1975) and is seen as analogous to other forms of discrimination such as classism, sexism and racism. It is presented as a set of mistaken ideas or beliefs of individuals. Is speciesism simply a form of psychological prejudice that is analogous to other forms of prejudice (Caviola et al. 2018)? Some forms of anti-speciesism are premised upon classical humanism and thus reinforce anthropocentrism (Weitzenfeld

2

Joanna Macy (2007) is one of the few notable exceptions.

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and Joy 2014). Singer (1975), for example, challenged the speciesism of traditional humanism but did not depart from humanist premises. Often when humanists oppose the ill-treatment of animals, they do so from a position of superiority and entitlement. Kagan (2015) says that almost all humans are speciesists in the sense of favouring the interests of humans over those of other species. This is evident in using animals for food or as guinea pigs in scientific experiments. Many people may acknowledge that animals count but if there is a conflict of interest, human interests will always prevail. Can humans emphasise issues facing their own species without it being to the detriment of other species? Hayward (1997) argues that there are legitimate and illegitimate human interests. In his view, it is neither possible nor desirable to overcome what he calls legitimate anthropocentrism. However, we cannot escape the fact that it is humans who will decide about the legitimacy of human interests. Calvo (2008) constructs the concept of anthroparchy to describe human domination in contrast to anthropocentrism and speciesism. She challenges the concept of speciesism for limiting the exploitative treatment of animals to behavioural prejudices and practices. It is not just discrimination against non-human species that is the problem. Rather, it is the reality of a society based on species hierarchy that privileges the needs and interests of human beings above those of non-human species. One approach that challenges and destabilises human exceptionalism is posthumanism. In this view, humans are not the most important species on the planet and human ways of knowing and being should not be given priority or privilege over non-human species. In challenging humanism’s construction of the human as an autonomous, rational individual, posthumanism emphasises humans as being one of many life forms (Gaard 2017). It is our disconnectedness from nature and our human greed and selfishness that leads to climate change scepticism and our inability to recognise the climate catastrophe we are all facing (Colebrook 2014). When we understand the interconnections between humans and nature, we as humans will learn how to empathise with other-than-human species (Seiter 2016). Braidotti (2017) brings a posthuman feminist perspective to interrogate and destabilise the unitary concept of the subject that is based on abstract masculinity and triumphant whiteness. The response to the current ecological crisis is the fostering of ‘species egalitarianism’ and the recognition that all humans are embodied and embedded entities that are part of nature.3 3

There is a tension between posthumanism and critical animal studies in relation to speciesism. See, for example, Weisberg (2014).

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Animal rights and animal liberation The concern about the treatment of animals was only taken seriously when male philosophers such as Peter Singer (1975) and Tom Regan (1983) spoke in terms of ‘animal rights’. Both Singer and Regan use reason and abstraction to make the moral argument for acknowledging the suffering of animals. Rights-based theorists make the claim for animal liberation on the basis of reason rather than emotion. This approach is distanced from empathy, care or kindness, in contrast to vegan feminists who argue that a reasoned critique of animal suffering should also be infused with empathy and caring (Gaard 2002; Donovan 2006). Animal rights is a humanist project that draws upon utilitarianism to challenge the cruel treatment of animals (McLaughlin 2019). Many attempts to address violence against animals is premised upon a more inclusive framework of humanism that extends rights to non-human others (Chiew 2014). Singer’s (1975) strategy of extending moral community to some other species rests upon their capacity to experience pain or pleasure, akin to the experiences of humans. Liberal humanism thus frames animals as possessing a diminished form of personhood (Wolfe 2009). A posthuman conception of the human challenges the rights-based discourse of animal rights, which encourages us to morally recognise animals as having rights (Bolton 2014). It goes beyond the widening of the circle strategy of Peter Singer and others.4

Rights of nature and earth rights There are similarities between animal rights and the rights of nature. Rights of nature attempts to reconcile the society–nature dualism by extending legal personhood to non-human nature. The rights of nature movement aims to reshape humans’ relationship with nature to ensure that it is not treated as an inanimate source of resources that can be extracted without consideration to the impact on the wider ecology of the planet. However, this requires conceiving of nature as a living entity (La Follette 2020). Can the humanist concept of rights extend to the earth? Is it possible to develop a non-anthropocentric earth justice system (Schillmoller and Pelizon 4

Some animal rights advocates tend to focus on the suffering of animals that humans utilise for food and other products and less on the preservation and flourishing of other species in the wild.

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2013)? If nature’s rights are inherent, how can they be constructed through human intervention? The rights of nature is opposed to anthropocentrism but at the same time by giving nature rights in law, it is located within anthropocentric legal frameworks constructed by humans. Under earth jurisprudence, it will be humans who are speaking for non-human species and entities (Gwiazdon 2020). Given the unavoidability of human intervention, Schillmoller and Pelizon (2013) propose the idea of ‘rights for nature’ as opposed to ‘rights of nature’.5 The language of rights is a human construct. That being so, there is a concern that rights of nature would result in the humanisation of the environment (Burdon 2010). In the context of liberal capitalist societies and humanist legal systems, concerns for nature may only be expressed when it does not abolish private property rights or impact on economic development. Furthermore, such a proposal is likely to incorporate nature into humanist legal systems (Jones and Otto 2020). The question is whether it is possible to conceive of rights of nature in ways that avoid the notion of a wilful human subject who is acting upon a non-human object. Will a rights-based approach to protecting the environment be effective, given the record of human rights abuses around the world (Gwiazdon 2020)? In the context of neoliberalism, can we expect governing rationalities to move beyond the monetising and marketing of non-living entities, when they have failed to promote the flourishing of human and animal species? Even among our own species, human rights exclude many people from consideration (Grear 2010).6 If anthropocentrism is unavoidable in implementing the rights of nature through legal jurisprudence (Rawson 2015), is this an acceptable compromise if it limits the current practices of extractivism? If the rights of nature can only be enacted within existing structures that have long been entrenched in masculinist constructs, it is unlikely that they will be transformative. The question is more about whether they can be effective in applying pressure for more fundamental change or whether they will be accommodated to neoliberal and masculinist structures.

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6

Lia Bryant (personal communication) assisted me to think this through by reminding me that the rights of nature is basically an ontological question. We approach the issue in a humanistic way because we cannot escape ways of seeing, sensing and knowing from our own ontology. In some rights of nature arguments, Indigenous cosmologies have been used to legitimate a rights-based framework (Sieder and Vivero 2017). However, Rawson and Mansfield (2018) demonstrate how rights of nature universalises colonial modes of existence as natural.

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Beyond the Anthropocene The language of the Anthropocene allows us to name ‘humans’ as a distinct species that causes damage to the planet. The notion of ‘anthro’ implies all humans, deriving as it does from the Greek word Anthropos, which means human being (Bonneuil and Fressoz 2015). Notwithstanding colonisation and other forms of injustice between humans, it is often argued that the threat posed by global warming is being faced by all humans on the planet (Colebrook 2017). Angus (2016), however, refutes the notion that ‘we are all in this together’, which is the often-expressed claim of liberal environmentalists who argue we all face a common fate and consequently share a common responsibility for the survival of humanity.7 Such a claim ignores the reality of social divisions in wealth which both reflect different contributions to the ecological problems facing the planet and different vulnerabilities to the consequences of ecological disasters. Consequently, a number of commentators have criticised the term ‘Anthropocene’ because it implies an undifferentiated humanity that is causing ecological damage rather than specific human endeavours associated with patriarchy, racism and imperialism. As Moore (2018) demonstrates, the concept of the Anthropocene obscures and mystifies the source of ecological damage to the planet. It is not ‘humanity’ that produces global warming but capitalism. The generic human being of the Anthropocene obscures the reality of geopolitical and other social divisions. For example, Americans consume thirty-two times the amount of resources of the average Kenyan (Bonneuil and Fressoz 2015). A small fraction of humanity is causing global warming and other ecological disasters; it is a minority of human beings who constitute the ruling class of capitalism, rather than human beings as a species (Angus 2016). To avoid the inference in the Anthropocene that all of humanity is responsible for global warming, other language categories such as (m)Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Sociocene or Technocene more clearly target the personal and system causalities generating the problem. We should locate any analysis of the Anthropocene within the context of capitalism, racism, colonialism and patriarchy. Hence, halting global warming will ultimately require abolishing these systems of human and environmental exploitation. 7

At the time of writing (November 2020), the world is in the midst of the coronavirus and the proclamation that ‘we are all in this together’ has been used frequently throughout the pandemic. It fails to acknowledge how the social divisions of privilege and oppression create differential vulnerabilities to the virus.

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Simultaneously, we must move beyond this analysis to also address the binary between humans and nature. While the Anthropocene may falsely imply an undifferentiated humanity as the source of ecological destruction, the frame of human privilege, located in the intersectional, interdependent and personal-systemic interactions that perpetuate the destruction of the environment and reproduce the human–animal hierarchy, is still important.

Feminist and decolonial engagements with the Anthropocene As noted earlier, feminist and profeminist commentators have raised concerns about the technicist and masculinist approach to understanding the Anthropocene. Knights (2015), for example, locates the problem as ‘binary fundamentalism’, which is the way in which binary, masculine, linear, rational orientations inhibit corporeal and embodied ethics. A disembodied way of living leads to an overly rational and objectivist approach to the world, which consequently devalues emotions, bodies and nature, all of which are associated with women. Clarke and Knights (2017) articulate a posthumanist feminist framework, locating human supremacy in the context of ‘masculine anthropocentrism’, thus connecting gendered discourses of masculinity and anthropocentrism, as noted earlier. Anthropocentric masculinities are central to human supremacy, as masculine entitlement and human superiority go hand in hand. Anthropocentrism and androcentrism are linked through rationality as the anthropocentric human is equated to the androcentric man. Posthumanism challenges anthropocentric and humanistic masculinities that exert control over minorities, women, children, animals and nature. Marina (2009) links anthropocentrism and androcentrism to elucidate the connections between the domination of nature and women. Ecofeminists have long argued that the oppression of women by men is connected to men’s domination of nature. Thus anthropocentric conceptions of non-human nature parallel androcentric conceptions of women. To recognise that we are not equally as a species responsible for causing ecological crises, we must also decolonise the Anthropocene (Jennings 2019). Deep ecology, noted earlier for its androcentrism, has also been criticised for its cultural specificity while promoting universalism. Deep ecology’s emphasis on biotic integrity and wilderness preservation over the needs of humans, and the lack of concern about inequalities between humans lead to a form of cultural imperialism (Guha 1989).

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Posthumanism could also potentially promote another false universalism if it does not engage with decolonial thinking. If it does not acknowledge colonial practices and the mistreatment of some humans as sub-human, it also will perpetuate colonialism (Zembylas 2018). As new materialism and posthumanism are situated within Eurocentric discourses, there are often few references to Indigenous theorising which predates these new approaches. While most of us in the West need to heed the challenges to embrace the posthuman, Indigenous people have long understood the relationship between humans and nature (Ravenscroft 2018). In many Australian Aboriginal communities, animals are regarded as kin and part of the same tribal group. They demonstrate a deep respect towards them because of mutual interdependencies (Noske 2015). If we are to move from anthropocentric values to ecocentric values, we must learn from Indigenous cultures who have historically practiced holistic and non-materialistic relations with non-human others and the natural environment (Yunkaporta 2019).

Food politics in the Anthropocene: Carnism Most people who eat meat (myself included) have not thought about it as a conscious choice. It is rather the ‘normal’ and ‘evolutionary right’ thing to do. Using and killing non-human animals has historically been part of the natural order (Sanbonmatsu 2014). The term ‘carnism’ was constructed by Joy (2011) to describe the way in which the eating of meat is normalised in Western cultures. It is contrasted with the omnivore, the latter suggesting a biological inclination to eat meat rather than an accommodation to particular cultural beliefs. Carnism is a form of human privilege and speciesism that culturally affirms it is okay to eat certain animal species such as pigs, chickens and cows, but not other species such as cats, dogs or horses, on the basis that it is ethical, natural and necessary (Gibert and Desaulniers 2014). Carnism conditions people to eat meat and discourages them from considering vegetarian and vegan alternatives (Weitzenfeld and Joy 2014). Most people who eat animals hide the truth from themselves by disassociating themselves from their participation in the production of meat and they succumb to the manipulated tastes of consumer choices. If we were to extend our compassion and care for animals, we would question our complicity in the agribusiness and recognise that the animal welfare approach does not address animal suffering and death. Supermarkets and restaurants make it easy for customers to disconnect meat from live animals. When we face the facts of factory farming, we

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cannot avoid the harsh reality that animals suffer for our meat-eating diet.8 We then have to face the ethical decision and more consciously choose our diet knowing that it is at the cost of animal lives. Like Foer (2009) who reflected on his own eating of meat, while philosophically, I thought that I ‘got it’, I pushed this awareness out of my consciousness. I enjoyed the taste of meat and while I ate considerably less meat than my parents, and I ate lots of vegetables, protein alternatives to meat did not appeal to me as a substitute. Caviola, Everett and Faber (2018) refer to carnism as a ‘meat paradox’ in that most people who eat meat do not want to hurt animals. One strategy to enable them to do this is to de-mentalise the animals they classify as food to differentiate them from other animals that in most cultures are not categorised as food. Humans can endorse anti-speciesism and challenge the ill-treatment of animals and, at the same time, not see any conflict with their personal preferences for eating meat. One response to the mistreatment of animals in agriculture is the locavore movement which emphasises organic and ‘humane’ meat and encourages compassion for animals, even though they are killed for human consumption (Sanbonmatsu 2014). While industrialised agriculture is condemned, the notion of ‘sustainable’ meat is celebrated. Locavorists claim it is important to consume food that is grown or slaughtered in local areas to avoid the harmful environmental effects of transporting food from long distances (Trapara 2014). They argue that if they raise and butcher meat and extract dairy products locally for their own consumption, then they are contributing to campaigns against the exploitation of animals in large-scale commercial agricultural operations. Pollan (2007) proposes the notion of ‘ethical meat’. However, is the ethical carnivore an oxymoron? Gibert and Desaulniers (2014) refer to so-called ‘happy meat’ as neo-carnism and small-scale local farms as ecocarnism. The notion of ‘happy meat’, animal rights, ethical agriculture and sustainability hides the reality of exploitative food industry practices. Consequently, those of us who are consumers of local animal products endeavour to avoid any guilt that might come from eating meat. Locavorism not only fails to address the wider causes of global warming, it also normalises the eating of meat because it does not acknowledge how the breeding and slaughtering of animals for human consumption reproduces speciesism (Stanescu 2010).

8

We only have to go online to view videos of slaughterhouses to face up to the cruelty of animal slaughter.

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Food politics in the Anthropocene: Vegetarianism and veganism Are there ways in which carnists can address the well-being of animals without becoming vegan?9 Trapara (2014) argues that one cannot be an anti-speciesist or a feminist and continue to eat meat and dairy products. So are anti-speciesists morally compelled to become ethical vegans? Ethical veganism aims to reduce the suffering and exploitation of animals, as distinct from the health or sustainability-based reasons for not eating meat or dairy products.10 Numerous feminists emphasise a correlation between men’s violence and abuse of women and men’s treatment of animals (Adams 2015; Lee 2019). This is part of the ‘linked oppression’ thesis, whereby women and animals are seen to be victims of the same patriarchal culture. It has thus been noted by many that there are gendered dimensions to vegetarianism and veganism, with women being far more likely than men to avoid meat and dairy products (Delessio-Parson 2017). Veganism and vegetarianism appear to threaten heteronormative masculinity. For men to give up eating meat is to give up some forms of male privilege. The notion that ‘real men eat meat’ inhibits men’s capacity to change their diet (Adams 2015). In response to the dominant discourse that ‘real men eat meat’, male vegans have endeavoured to make an argument that ‘real men do not eat meat’ (Greenebaum 2017). When men become vegan or vegetarian, they often frame their dietary change in terms of becoming morally superior to others through rational justifications based on scientific approaches to health and environmental change (Delessio-Parson 2017). Consequently, they seek to preserve their masculinity rather than destabilise their gender identities based on eating meat.11 One of the contentious debates about ethical veganism is whether or not it assumes whiteness, affluence or first-world privilege and whether it encourages a self-righteous and condescending attitude towards meat eaters (Greenebaum 2017). Feminists have historically been divided on the issue of vegetarianism, with some suggesting, notwithstanding the fact that the majority of vegetarians are women, that vegetarianism is based on white

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A vegan friend suggested to me that this question is like: Can you be an anti-slavery advocate and still keep slaves? Some vegans argue that all veganism is ethically based and should be distinguished from those who follow a plant-based diet for sustainability or health reasons. See Aavik (2020) for the ways in which vegan men frame their veganism in terms of enacting new forms of caring masculinities.

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middle-class male health norms. In this view, vegetarianism is more able to be practised in privileged Western settings. George (2000) advocates semivegetarianism that is context specific and allows small amounts of meat if animals are treated humanely.12 Plumwood (2000) argued against some forms of feminist veganism for being ethnocentric and colonialist in emphasising universal adherence to a Western model of veganism. This model does not acknowledge Indigenous food practices and the cultural context of veganism in the West. Robinson (2013), however, challenges the construction of veganism as white because it inhibits Aboriginal people from practicing veganism as an ethical and spiritual practice compatible with their indigeneity.13 Plumwood (2000) is critical of what she calls ‘ontological veganism’, whereby no animal species should be considered as edible. For her, this approach is not compatible with an ecological or a species-egalitarian perspective. She suggests that one of the premises of human supremacy is the refusal to acknowledge that humans are also positioned in the food chain and thus constitute food for some other animals. In Plumwood’s view, there is no ontological break between humans and the non-human world. She does not accept the ontological vegan argument against the universal human use of animals for food. While she supports vegan opposition to the exploitation of animals, she argues that ontological veganism constitutes a form of ecological anthropocentrism because it elevates humans above nature and ecology (Edwards 2019).14 The notion of ‘plant sentience’ has been used by some meat eaters to accuse vegans of inconsistency. Meat culture is defended by denying any distinction between killing plants, which are also regarded as sentient, and killing animals with nervous systems (Sanbonmatsu 2014). Keith (2009) argues that plants have intentionality and interests. In his view, vegetarianism is a myth because plants are also sentient. Conflating animal sentience with plant sentience allows anti-speciesists to justify carnism. Jensen (2016), for example, defends his eating of meat (that does not come from factory farms) against the charge of speciesism levelled at him by vegans. He argues that there are parallels between human supremacist meat eaters and vegans in that human supremacists justify their eating of meat on the basis that non-human animals are not as sentient and thus less worthy of moral considerations, while vegans justify their eating of plants on the basis that non-human animals are

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From an ethical vegan point of view, this would be like saying that the semi-exploitation of humans is also acceptable. See also Dunn (2019) for a Maori perspective on veganism. Alloun (2015) argues that veganism can overcome Plumwood’s critique if it challenges human/nature dualism and recognises our connectedness to all non-human others.

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sentient, while plants are not. He thus takes issues with the claimed moral superiority of vegans that do not recognise plant sentience. However, one can be vegan and not deny the sentience of plants. A number of writers have commented on how some vegans are so focused on animal abuse that they seem oblivious to other social justice issues (Alloun 2015; Edwards 2019). People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), for example, have used misogyny, sexism, objectification of women and traditional masculinity to highlight the mistreatment of animals (Baran 2017). While ethical vegans will of course focus their attention on justice for animals, many recognise the importance of locating their concerns within a wider circle of compassion that includes humans (Greenebaum 2017). It has been noted that many environmental activists and researchers eat meat (Scott, Kallis and Zografos 2019). This is part of ‘the meat paradox’ mentioned earlier. Why do people who are concerned about animal welfare and the environmental impact of factory farming continue to eat meat? The response by many to this issue is that it is not personal lifestyle decisions by individuals that will change animal agriculture and the widespread carnism in Western cultures. Rather, it is political organising against corporations, governments and powerful interest groups that will lead to change (Scott, Kallis and Zografos 2019). Is this a ‘cop out’ or do individual consumer choices lead people to think that they are ‘doing their bit’ and do not need to mobilise collectively against the animal agricultural industry? To practice veganism individually does not in itself address the wider context of colonialism, capitalism and patriarchy which have shaped global food production, but many vegans through their food choices will become more aware of the wider political and ethical issues and many others are actively engaged in political organising against the agribusiness. If we ate less meat, it would have a significant impact on minimising the effects of global warming and the exploitative agriculture business (Sanbonmatsu 2014). However, it is understandable that some vegans find the notion of ‘semi-vegetarian’, where people largely eat vegetables but still eat some chicken and fish, offensive (Gaard and Gruen 1995). A vegan diet is clearly an important strategy against cruelty to animals and is consistent with feminist principles. The question is whether it is realistic to persuade the majority of the world’s population to shift to a vegan diet and whether this will address human supremacy and enact a principled anti-speciesist position.

Conclusion Can humans come to recognise human privilege and value the lives of non-humans without giving up their human centredness? While survival

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is central for all species, for humans, it is more of an issue of giving up being ‘at the centre’. For change to occur, the most privileged humans in particular will need to experience a sense of regret for their human recklessness and exploitation. However, Jensen (2016) notes, it is difficult for people to understand something when their entitlements and privilege are dependent on not understanding it. One of the key debates in environmental philosophy is in challenging anthropocentrism, how far it is possible or desirable to move beyond a human perspective. Humans come to care about nature and the environment because they see a link between care for the planet and their own well-being (Marina 2009). There is general agreement that part of the problem is that we treat human beings and their activities as being isolated from nature rather than being a part of nature. However, in developing a non-anthropocentric perspective, can human flourishing be part of a rich and diverse biosphere? I support vegan food politics in principle as an important strategy to address human privilege and to endeavour to live an ethical life at the level of individual consumption. Although, as many vegans recognise, vegetables, fruits and protein alternatives are also entangled with industrialised food production and animal agriculture that harms animals, a vegan diet will clearly have less impact on the killing of animals than an omnivore or semivegetarian diet. However, I do not accept that universal veganism is the only ethical way forward, given the impact of geopolitical, cultural, race and class factors on people’s diet around the globe and given the wider context of industrialised animal agriculture. Coming back to my personal diet, where am I now? I practice a more conscious diet after writing this chapter. I largely eat a plant-based diet but, at the time of writing, I am still an occasional meat eater. I generally try and minimise my contribution to industrial meat production but I experience more discomfort than before, as I now cannot ignore the imagined suffering of the animals killed to facilitate that diet. At one level, given my privileged position and the food choices available to me, it is hard to ethically justify to myself or to others why I continue to eat meat. However, I cannot discount my personal history, age and digestive system as factors shaping my food choices at this time. This is part of the dissonance that I am still working through as I struggle with the moral and ethical issues that researching and writing this chapter has confronted me with.

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Western global dominance and Eurocentrism

Writing a chapter on Western global dominance, I need to locate myself geopolitically at the outset, as my positioning will influence my writing. I am a non-Indigenous man who grew up in the 1950s in Australia. Notwithstanding the internal social divisions of class, gender, race, sexuality and disability, many non-Indigenous Australians enjoy high standards of living, health care and education compared to most nations of the world. I reside in one of the most affluent and developed countries in the West. There are numerous theoretical explanations given to explain inequalities between countries. World systems theory, which views countries as occupying interdependent roles in a world economy, is the most enduring notion (Wallerstein 2017). In this view, the most developed nations that control most of the world’s capital flows have gained their prominent place historically due to conquest, protective trade policies and economic support from the state. Less developed nations are caught in a dependency relationship with developed countries through foreign debt, import and export patterns and the practices of multinational corporations. In the 1980s, the concept of imperialism was used to frame our understanding of global hierarchies in which some nations oppressed and exploited others. Neo-Marxist theories of imperialism drew attention to the domination of a small group of industrialised nations over the Third World (Sutcliff 1999). However, as Amin (1989) points out, the term ‘imperialism’ was seen by many as too ideological and unscientific. We thus witness the rise of so-called objective terms like ‘transnational capital’ and ‘international capital’. From a more politicised perspective, the language of ‘neoliberalism’ has been used by commentators since the early 2000s to describe policies that increase the power of wealthy countries over those of the rest of the world (Springer, Birch and MacLeavy 2016). A number of writers argue that the world system is significantly shaped by a form of ‘new imperialism’ (Harvey 2003; Midgley 2008; Suwandi 2019). This new imperialism combines elements of the old form of military and

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economic interventions in the affairs of other countries with the framing of the capitalist market as the best of all possible worlds (McLaren and Farahmandpur 2001). Many books have been published in the last twenty years proclaiming that individualism, consumerism, capitalism and liberal democracy foster prosperity and peace throughout the world.1 The mechanisms of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) ensure that multinational corporations intensify the dependency of Third World countries through debt and foreign aid (Sutcliff 1999). To most people in the developed world, news items about the World Bank and the IMF mean very little. Although the anti-globalisation protest actions are reported on the news, few people grasp the issues at stake. As Danaher (2001) reminds us, in his manifesto of ten reasons to abolish the IMF and the World Bank, these two organisations, which represent the wealthiest nations, are making policies for (and against) the whole of humanity. The IMF and World Bank thus decide the fate of the world’s poorest nations and maximise the profits for the minority, rather than the meeting of human needs for the majority or addressing the root causes of global inequality.2

Globalising privilege In recent years, new editions of books on privilege have been published in North America (Mullaly and West 2018; Johnson 2017; Kimmel and Ferber 2018). However, none highlight American privilege that accrues from living in one of the most developed and affluent countries in the world. While these writers set out to heighten readers’ awareness of forms of white, male and sexual privilege, for example, the privileges associated with their own geopolitical location are not addressed. Much of the recognition of privilege and oppression is framed within a taken-for-granted, geographically bordered sovereign state (Fraser 2008). Working for social justice often only addresses citizens within national borders with little consideration given of privilege within those geographical boundaries likely to impact on those outside of them. Just as there is a growing recognition among some progressive social movements that we must target

1 2

For an excellent analysis of these developments, see Patel and Moore (2018). At the time of writing (February 2021), the world is still in the midst of the global Covid19 pandemic, the causes of which can be located in the ecological imbalance resulting from the increased urbanisation, global agri-business and wildlife trade which are fed by capitalist consumerism (Braidotti 2020). See Cole et al. (2020) for an analysis of how power and privilege shape the likelihood of contracting the virus and dying from it.

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injustice across national borders, the recognition of privilege must also be understood within an international or global frame.3 Schwalbe (2002) notes that non-Western foreign university students in North America tend to know more about the United States than most American students. This is because non-Western students’ lives are shaped by the policies of the US government and the diffusion of American cultural hegemony, whereas American students do not have the same awareness of policies of their own government or those of non-Western countries. Most Westerners are simply unaware of the impact of the West on non-Western countries. Like most of my contemporaries, I grew up in ignorance of the privileges associated with my geopolitical position. In my lifestyle, my professional practice and my political work, I unwittingly perpetuated a Eurocentric vision of the world.

The idea of the West To understand global privilege, it is necessary to interrogate the concept of ‘the West’4 which is presented as an ideal model of progress for all countries in the world. Developments in the West are seen as flowing down to inspire traditional societies along similar routes of progress (Slater 2004). Modernisation is a concept used to describe the growing gap between the industrialised countries of the West and the impoverishment of the non-West (Marks 2002). The premise is that all countries of the world should adopt the values that informed the rise of the West. This belief in the superiority of Western values and rationality is what constitutes the myth of Eurocentrism, which Marks (2002) argues is no more than an ideology that distorts the truth and masks the Western global dominance. The West’s greatest power is not its economic and technological supremacy but its power to define progress and ultimately what it means to be human (Sardar 1999).

3

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See Khader (2019), for example, for a decolonial anti-imperialist feminist analysis that challenges universalising women’s oppression from a Western standpoint. Mohanty (1991) notes that terms like ‘West’ and ‘East’ and ‘global North and South’ focus on countries in the Northern and Southern hemispheres. Jolly (2008) argues that these geographical terms dehistoricise and naturalise inequalities between nations. Kothari (in Harcourt 2007) believes that these terms have become meaningless because there is growing affluence in some parts of the South and extensive deprivation and disadvantage in parts of the North. Notwithstanding these inequalities within countries, it is still meaningful to use these terms to analyse institutionalised inequalities in wealth and power between nations.

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Western culture portrays itself as the only culture that is capable of engaging in a reflexive critique of its own accomplishments, but there is very little indication of reflections about the premises of Western superiority. On the contrary, Western dominance is sustained by what Slater (2004) refers to as ‘imperial knowledge’, which he defines as a belief in the need to intervene in other ‘less-advanced’ societies, a belief in the legitimacy of imposing Western values on non-Western societies and a belief that non-Western cultures are inferior and consequently that their rights can be legitimately denied. Western supremacy requires the silencing of non-Western cultures and demonstrates no interest in learning from these cultures. It is understandable that the West views history from a European perspective. However, the West does not accept that it is simply one of many ethnocentric views of the world. It is the claim of the West’s universal applicability of its culture to the rest of the world that constitutes it as Eurocentrism. Western countries refuse to acknowledge that their claimed superiority is based on their values and their biased perceptions of the past. Rather, they claim to base their superiority on scholarship and scientific evidence. A number of writers have challenged the view that the West pioneered the modern world, arguing that the West and East have historically been interconnected. The East has played an important role in the development of Western civilisation (Hobson 2004). Robert Marks (2002) provides an alternative historical account of the origins of the Western world and demonstrates how the West was able to present itself as progressive, while positioning Asia, Africa and Latin America as backward. Hobson (2004) also illustrates how many so-called Western concepts have Eastern origins. Similarly, Narayan (2000) challenges the view that concepts such as human rights, democracy and equality are Western based. Hence, it is not simply a matter of imposing Western values on to non-Western cultures but rather the propagation of the myth that these concepts have solely Western origins that reinforces Western supremacy. To challenge Western supremacy, it is necessary to question the rational and scientific premises of modernisation and technological development. Such challenges must come from the non-West, as they formulate and advocate new concepts (Sardar 1999). This does not mean that we have to accept uncritically all that comes out of the non-West. There will need to be a capacity on the part of the West to engage with and respect determinations that are different from its own. To eliminate the gap between the wealthy and poorest nations of the world, a move beyond Eurocentric understanding of the modern world is needed. This means endeavouring to get outside of Western ways of knowing and acknowledging that such ways of knowing are Eurocentric.

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Moving beyond Eurocentrism Eurocentrism involves the belief that Europeans are superior to nonEuropeans. Blaut (1993) refers to it ‘the colonizer’s model of the world’ because it is premised on the view that European civilisation has superior qualities associated with race and culture compared with non-Western cultures. Western culture is also predominantly white culture. While the dimensions of white privilege will be explored in Chapter 6, it is necessary to establish here that there is a direct link between Western expansion in the world and the concept of whiteness. There is a close connection between Western global dominance and white cultural influences (Shorne 1999). While all countries that constitute the West are capitalist, there is a need to mask this historical and culturally specific formation to avoid any suggestion of alternatives. The West is presented as the best of all possible worlds. The economic development of the West then must be portrayed as a transhistorical social formation based upon eternal truths and instrumental rationality (Amin 1989). Dominant ideologies in the West legitimate capitalist societies as the only possible form of economic and political relations. Eurocentrism then grows out of colonial domination and provides a legitimation of inequalities between nations (Gheverghese, Reddy and Searle-Chatterjee (1990). Amin (1989) refers to Eurocentrism as a form of prejudice that distorts theoretical understanding. Western social sciences are so embedded within Eurocentric assumptions that most social scientists are unaware of European bias. Eurocentrism underlies all social science disciplines, including history (Gran 1996), sociology (Connell 2007), psychology (Naidoo 1996), social work (Midgley 2008), urban theory (McGee 1995) and geography (Blaut 1993). To challenge Eurocentrism is to question the assumptions that underpin all Western social science disciplines. Blaut (1993) raises questions about the term ‘Eurocentrism’ because it implies a form of prejudiced attitudes. If that is so, then it can be eliminated through enlightened thought. However, Eurocentrism functions not just as a matter of attitudes but rather is founded on beliefs informed by scholarship and science and it purports to be based on scientific and empirical evidence. It is validated as a form of truth about the world. Highly educated and supposedly unprejudiced Europeans are consequently not likely to critically interrogate the assumptions underpinning it. Non-Western intellectuals have also been influenced by Eurocentrism. They are encouraged to borrow theoretical constructs and categories which have value in Western societies and relate them to their own context where their value may be questionable (Gheverghese, Reddy and Searle-Chatterjee

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1990). This raises difficult and complex issues when progressive Westerners encounter these developments. In 1988, I joined a small Australian delegation to an Asia and Pacific Social Work conference in Beijing that was to launch the first social work course in China. As someone who is committed to local knowledge and culturally grounded social work practice, I supported efforts by Chinese academics to develop their own conceptual frameworks for social work theory and practice. However, a number of leading Chinese academics who founded the course had undertaken their PhDs in North America and adapted North American models of social work and psychology to the Chinese situation. I thus found myself in the uncomfortable position of promoting local knowledge that went against the views of some Chinese delegates who had cognitively adopted North American models of theory and practice. A more inclusive form of world history requires recognition that Eurocentric world views are only appropriate to understanding the West as a historical and cultural construct. A non-Eurocentric history involves developing a more holistic understanding of global issues. Western social science understandings of the non-West require decolonising practices and locally based scholarship (Gray and Coates 2008).

Orientalism: Constructing the non-West One of the most significant early challenges to Eurocentrism was Edward Said’s Orientalism first published in 1978. Orientalism is ‘a body of ideas, beliefs, clichés or learning about the East’ (Said 2003: 205). It forms the basis of representations of the Orient in Western consciousness. However, it is not simply a body of knowledge about non-Western societies. Rather, it involves an ideological construction of the Orient that is mythical and transhistorical. It presents characteristics of the East as immutable and in opposition to the West and proclaims the inherent superiority of the West over the East (Hobson 2004). Orientalism goes beyond the disciplines and practices associated with the study of oriental societies. It involves an epistemological and ontological approach which creates a polarised division between the Orient and the West (Turner 1994). The West is portrayed as productive, hard-working, mature, honest and progressive and the East is constructed as the opposite of these values. Said (2003) demonstrates how this process of ‘othering’ maintains unequal power relations throughout the world and provides the legitimation for Europe to ‘manage’ the Orient. Through Orientalism, the West perpetuates its dominance over the nonWest by attributing essences to both the Orient and the Occident. Orientalism

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becomes a colonialist method of subjugation that legitimates colonialist interventions (Sardar 1999). Twenty-five years after the first edition of his book, Said (2003) argued his analysis still held true. Orientalism fuelled the anti-Islam views that were propagated under the presidential administration of George Bush in North America. While the West continues to be appropriated by neoliberal capitalism that supports military interventions into non-Western countries, anti-Western sentiment continues to influence the rise of radical Islamism (Bonnett 2004). Said’s work has been criticised by some as anti-Western polemic, but it does not portray the West as evil. Although some have argued that in response to the debates about Orientalism, a form of Occidentalism arose where everything to do with the West was subjected to critique. Turner (1994) says, for example, that it is inappropriate to regard all Western analyses of the orient as negative. Otherwise, all Indigenous and nonWestern frameworks would have to be accepted as legitimate. This may in some cases promote political conservatism and equally distorted and prejudiced views of the West. Said is also accused of portraying the West as monolithic and unchanging (Sardar 1999). If all Western intellectuals are Orientalist, then does that mean that there is no progressive thought in the West? There were and are counterhegemonic intellectuals in the West who oppose colonialism and resist imperialism and ethnocentrism (McLeod 2000). Paranjape (1993) maintains that it is important to acknowledge that the West is a divided entity and not a monolith. It is ideologically and ethically divided in relation to the global South. Hence, it is possible to forge alliances with progressive groups within the West to promote more socially just relations.

The poverty of development A number of development writers have noted that after more than forty years of development programmes and foreign aid, the poorest countries of the world are worse off than they were before Western interventions (Verhelst 1990; Escobar 1995; Munck 1999; Tucker 1999; Khaled 2018). Esteva (in Harcourt 2007) has noted that in 1960, rich countries had twenty times the wealth of the poor countries. Twenty years later, following development interventions, they were forty-six times richer. Today the gap is even wider. Given these outcomes, one must ask whether the dominant model of development is part of the problem. This is especially so in the context of espoused individualistic and capitalist accumulative principles rather than redistributive and justice-based principles.

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White European men wrote the history of development and established the foundations of truth that is universalised for all (Munch 1999). As early as the 1970s, critics of development were identifying the Eurocentric assumptions underpinning modernisation and Westernisation and how these interventions had increased the dependency of non-Western nations on the West. Not only had they failed to improve the living conditions of those in non-West, they had actually intensified the poverty and hardship faced by the masses in these nations. Peet and Hartwick (1999: 1) posit that development ‘is a founding belief of the modern world’. However, while Western affluence was propagated as a dream for all, the reality was that it was only achievable for a few. Tucker (1999: 1) defines development as ‘a process whereby other peoples are dominated and their destinies are shaped according to an essentially Western way of conceiving and perceiving the world’. Development is then connected to imperialism where developed countries impose their control over non-Western countries. This control operates not just in terms of economic processes but also in relation to cultural meanings about the nature of the world. Tucker challenges the view of development as a natural and transcultural process, arguing that it is premised upon Western myths. Modernisation theories of development invalidate the cultures of traditional societies and impose a Western model of progress and the imitation of the Western model of development is presented as the only solution to the growing gap between the wealthy and poor countries of the world. Slavery, genocide and colonialism have all been legitimated under the guise of progress. The challenge to those in the West is to become aware of their Eurocentrism and to acknowledge that their monocultural prejudice is not new. However, it would appear that many NGOs who claim to be in solidarity with the people of the non-West have failed to heed this challenge. This may be due in part to the fact that development has become an industry. People are educated and credentialed at Western universities to work in the development sector. Development practitioners thus establish comfortable and well-paid careers. Horn (in Harcourt 2007) says there is a tension between unpaid mass-based social movements for social justice and the salaried end of the development sector. A number of publications have documented the experiences of Western development workers who went to non-Western countries to ‘help’, only to discover that what they had to offer was not what was needed. Subsequently, as they developed awareness of their own assumptions and the assumptions of the programmes they were embedded within, they wrote about the failures of dominant models of development (Danaher 2001; Boulet 2003; Goudge 2003;

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Bolten 2008). Danaher (2001) reflects on how he was once told by a grassroots activist in Africa that while it was appreciated that he came there because he wanted to help, that if he really wanted to help, he could do more by going back to his own country and work to change government and corporate policies which supported undemocratic leaders in non-Western countries. There is an ongoing debate about the effectiveness of foreign aid and whether it is allocated fairly. For many years, anti-development writers have been arguing that foreign aid entrenches the privilege of wealthy groups. However, Peter Singer (2009) has argued that people in affluent countries should donate money to aid agencies to fight world poverty. He provides a moral argument to persuade affluent people to not purchase luxury goods once their basic living costs have been met but should instead donate excess money to save lives in non-Western countries. In contrast Moyo (2009) argues that foreign aid to Africa has increased corruption and despotism and done nothing to address poverty. Easterly (2007) has challenged the utopian agenda of trying to use aid to eliminate poverty and change political systems. He argues that the best aid can do is to improve the lives of the poor in practical and material ways. Like many development economists, Easterly regards the problem of aid to be more to do with problems in social engineering rather than with corporate globalisation. Chang (2007) in contrast argues that the rich countries, in alliance with the IMF and the World Bank, use aid to force developing countries to develop neoliberal policies in their own countries. Goudge (2003) argues that foreign aid not only fails to help the non-West but also falsely creates the impression that the West is doing something when it is not. An alternative to aid is to change to the international trading system to benefit poorer countries. Held and Kaya (2007), for example, point out that agricultural subsidies provided in rich countries are ten times the total amount of aid given to Africa. Changing the agricultural subsidies given to farmers in rich countries to supplement their income would provide more concrete benefits to poor countries (Milanovic 2007). Gronemeyer (1995) asks people to reflect upon their responses if they knew someone was coming to their home with the expressed purpose of doing them some good. Citing Thoreau, she suggests that one would run for their life in case some of the good was done to them. Gronemeyer demonstrates how the concept of ‘helping’ the non-West has become an instrument of power with its own self-justification. Goudge (2003) distinguishes between specific forms of help that are requested and help that is imposed on others using Western theories and methodologies. Shiva (1993) observes that whenever countries in the North intervene in the lives of people in the South, it is premised upon a notion of superiority,

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usually legitimated on the notion of the ‘white man’s burden’. If the crisis in the South is to be overcome, it will require a decolonisation of the North whereby their Eurocentric assumptions and internalised dominance are critically interrogated. Important as it is to be aware of the exploitative role of the IMF and the World Bank and the interventionist policies of Western governments, people must also engage in the more painful step of acknowledging their own personal Western privilege. How do our actions as Western individuals reproduce global inequalities? The more we as individuals in the West gain benefits from the exploitation of poorer nations, the greater our responsibility for doing something about it. The ecological argument is ‘live simply so that others can simply live’.

Conspicuous consumption in the West Numerous books have been published on over-consumption patterns in the West.5 Such books demonstrate the relationship between what we consume and who we are. The purchase of furniture, cosmetics, wrist watches, home entertainment systems and designer clothes is used to highlight our status (Schor 1998). We are also encouraged to believe that having material possessions and wealth is important to improve the quality of our lives. Increasingly, research demonstrates that the pursuit of materialistic goals does not increase our happiness (Kasser 2002). Rather, it sustains our insecurities and negatively impacts on our relationships and psychological well-being. Many in the West seem to be very dependent upon their material possessions and the high consumption patterns in their lives. Hamilton and Dennis (2005) and James (2008) use the term ‘affluenza’ to describe the desire that people have to make more money and purchase more possessions, describing such consumption patterns as a form of addiction. While most of the books on over-consumption in the West focus on the consequences of materialistic values for the Western individual, few books examine the link between our affluence in the West and the problems of global poverty and ecological unsustainability. There has been growing evidence for some time that the material consumption that supports average lifestyles in the West is ecologically unsustainable and grossly unfair in terms of global inequalities (Westra 1998; Rees 1998; Milanovik 2018). In 1996, Wackernagel 5

See, for example, Hamilton (2003), James (2008), Graaf, Wann and Naylor (2014) and Schlossberg (2019). For a reflective account of interrogating one’s personal complicity with consumerism and capitalism, see Biss (2020).

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and Rees developed the ‘ecological footprint’ to measure human impact on the earth and to estimate the resource consumption and waste production of people within particular societies. While we are all encouraged to calculate our ‘ecological footprint’, it is another step, however, to measure how many times the resources of others in the South are required to support individual lifestyles in the West. A person’s ecological footprint is directly related to their wealth and income. Those in rich countries have the largest ecological footprints. More than 80 per cent of the goods and services produced from the resources of the earth were consumed by the wealthiest 20 per cent of the world’s population (Marazzi 2017). A baby born in the United States will consume twenty times the resources of a baby born in Africa or India during their respective lifetimes (Sagoff 2008). While the wealthiest 20 per cent own 87 per cent of motor vehicles in the world, the poorest 20 per cent own less than 1 per cent of motor vehicles. The top 20 per cent of wealthiest people consumer 58 per cent of the energy of the world compared to the poorest 20 per cent consuming less than 5 per cent (Hossay 2006). There is a fundamental contradiction between international development goals that aim to lift the standard of living in Southern countries towards those in the North and the reality that the global ecosystem cannot sustain current consumption patterns. This is not to argue that Gross Domestic Product in poor countries should not be improved but rather to suggest that current standards of consumption in industrialised countries will have to be reconsidered (Wackernagel and Rees 1996). It would appear that to effectively address the destruction of the global ecosystem, we will also need to challenge the global inequalities in the distribution of wealth. At the time of writing (January 2021), there is still a standoff between the wealthy countries and poorest nations in relation to climate change. Understandably, the poor countries do not want to limit their own choices while the wealthy countries, who produce the greatest amount of greenhouse emissions, fail to develop and meet appropriate targets for greenhouse reduction.6 Many of those who want to help the poor in developing countries do not want to compromise their own lifestyles and consumption patterns. Our consumption patterns in the North are undermining prospects for those in the South to improve their standard of living. Consumption in the North will 6

See Warrienius (2018) for an analysis of the concept of climate debt. As rich developed countries are mainly responsible for global warming, they should take the major responsibility for mitigation and adaptation costs. This is premised upon the notion of ecological debt that any attempt to achieve climate justice must address social and ecological injustices between rich countries in the North and poor countries in the global South.

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have to be reduced to enable the poor to increase their share. Goudge (2003) challenges white Westerners to consider the part they play in maintaining unequal power relationships. Acquisitiveness and greed in the West is one of the main causes of poverty in the non-West. It is the unexamined belief in Western superiority that people believe gives them the right to consume a disproportionate share of the earth’s resources. We in the West need to confront the views we hold about our superiority and the rightness of our actions. We need to reconsider our role in the accumulation of material goods and to reflect upon our own consumption patterns. Our responsibility lies more in challenging our own lifestyles than working to change the lives of others. No governments in the West seem prepared to put a case for modifying consumption patterns in their respective countries. In all the discussion papers on climate change and global warming published in Western countries, there is no suggestion that we should challenge economic disparities between rich and poor countries. While the West continues to increase its consumption patterns by purchasing goods produced cheaply in the non-West and simply regarding non-Western countries as exotic holiday destinations, global injustices will continue.

Deconstructing epistemological privilege Dominant forms of knowledge provide the resources for colonialism and oppression. If global inequalities are to be effectively challenged, it will be important to address the epistemological underpinnings of these inequalities. As Santos, Nunnes and Meneses (2007: xiv) state: ‘there is no global justice without global cognitive justice’. Santos et al. contest the epistemological privilege granted to Western science and document the ways in which it suppresses indigenous forms of knowledge. Scientific knowledge is unable to accept diversity in knowledge systems. Santos, Nunnes and Meneses refer to this suppression of alternative knowledge systems as ‘epistemicide’. In contrast to the monocultural form of scientific knowledge, Santos, Nunnes and Meneses propose an ‘ecology of knowledges’ to embrace a diversity of different systems of knowledge around the world. To decolonise and democratise knowledge, those in the North would need to accept learning from the South and recognise a plurality of knowledges about the world and their experience of it. To be open to a dialogue about epistemologies, one would have to accept that all knowledge systems, including Western science, are incomplete. Postcolonial studies, Afrocentricity, Indigenous knowledge and Southern theory are four

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alternative discourses that have been developed to challenge the power of Western knowledge and allow alternative voices to be heard.7

Postcolonial studies: Constructing anti-colonialist practices Whereas imperialism is concerned with military, economic and diplomatic affairs, colonialism is more concerned with transforming local cultures and the minds of exploited people (Bar-On 1999). Post-colonialism refers to the body of work that focuses on issues arising from colonialism and its aftermath (Kirkhaum and Anderson 2002). McClintock (1992: 87) suggests that the term ‘postcolonial’ is ‘prematurely celebratory’ and that it may obscure the continuities of colonialism. Shohat (1992) argues that the term ‘postcolonial’ implies that colonialism has been surpassed. However, McEwan (2001) emphasises that post-colonialism does not imply shift from colonialism to after-colonialism. Rather, it involves a critique of the discursive and materials legacies of colonialism. Hence, postcolonial perspectives might be more accurately called anti-colonialism. A good example of anti-colonialist practices arising from critiques of colonialism in India is subaltern studies. It was developed in the 1980s by Indian academics in response to the top-down approach to Indian history (Bahl 1997). The term ‘subaltern’ signifies the subordination of people in relation to caste, class, gender, language, culture and race.8 The focus provides a form of history from below and challenges the elitism in academic work in South Asian studies (Prakash 1994). However, its impact extends well beyond India to inform studies in Latin America, Africa and Europe. Subaltern studies addresses the marginalisation of Indigenous and local knowledge under the conditions of colonialism. It is one of the challenges to the impact that colonialism has had upon the development of alternative forms of knowledge. Subaltern studies draws from both Marxism and poststructuralism. This has been controversial, as some have argued that adopting postmodern and poststructuralist ideas has de-radicalised the transformative project (Chakrabarty 2000). Subaltern studies has been criticised for moving away from documenting the experiences of the poor and for accommodating to dominant political realities (Connell 2007). Bahl (1997) argues that subaltern studies ignores the material working and living conditions of people’s lives 7

8

There is a vast literature in all of these four areas of scholarship. I cannot do justice to the extensive debates within each field of study. My aim here is simply to provide an introduction to them as non-Western forms of knowledge development. Caste systems in India persist despite economic growth and development.

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and by ignoring these material conditions, the proposed solutions are said to be individualistic. This ‘either-or’ debate continues to surface in all fields of progressive politics between those who focus on material conditions (redistribution) and those who give priority to culture and dominant discourses (recognition). Furthermore, we see the same divisions between those who focus on difference and diversity and those who emphasise the commonalities of people’s lives based on material conditions. This study is less concerned with the debate about whether strategies for resistance to colonialism are best conceived as neo-Marxist or poststructuralist. Rather, the focus is on denouncing the ethnocentric modes of thinking that underpin colonialist and imperialist ideologies. Postcolonial studies has been subjected to hostile criticism from various quarters. Some have suggested that postcolonial studies has given insufficient attention to class, gender and sexuality (Kirkhaum and Anderson 2002). Others question how postcolonial critics in the West can avoid dictating the shape of postcolonial studies, given their privileged positioning. Some have argued that postcolonial studies has become institutionalised within Western universities (McEwan 2001) and as a result, the colonised and oppressed have been excluded from having a voice. While postcolonial studies focusses on strategies to develop anti-colonial consciousness among colonial subjects (Loomba 2005), there is concern in this context about how one develops an oppositional consciousness among those in the West to undermine colonialism. How can the unequal relationship between Western scholars and non-Western scholars be addressed? There are numerous appraisals of the philosophy and politics of postcolonial writers (Loomba 2005; Hiddleston 2009) and the conclusions reached about its potential to bring about radical change. Although there have been debates about the shortcomings and potential of postcolonial studies as a disciplinary field, they highlighted some of the major legacies of European imperialism and Eurocentrism.9

Afrocentrism and the validation of African experience Eurocentric theories of society and human behaviour have ‘vilified people of African descent and other people of colour’ (Schiele 1996: 286). Western

9

In more recent years, there has been an emerging literature on decolonial perspectives. See, for example, Bhambra (2014) and Tlostanova (2019).

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social science is a vehicle of domination that has biased knowledge about African people. African scholars have constructed an Afrocentric framework as a response to Western bias towards people of African descent. Bakari (1997: 1) defines Afrocentrism as ‘a modern way of knowing based on ancient African experience’. It is based upon communalism, ethics, cooperation and spirituality. It aims to reconstruct the narratives, spiritualities and myths of African people’s lives (Monteiro-Ferreira 2008). Unlike the Eurocentric focus on individualism and individual identity, the African sense of identity is located within a communal space (Fennell and Arnot 2009). Controversially, Afrocentricity relies more upon non-scientific knowledge, including mysticism and tradition (Pellebon 2007). In fact, spirituality is a foundational premise of Afrocentrism. Most Afrocentric writing comes out of North America where African American and African diasporic scholars seek to make sense of the African experience of the world (Bakari 1997; Schiele 2000). There appear to be differences in the expression of Afrocentrism in North America and in Africa (Njeza 1997) and there is more popular support for Afrocentricity outside Africa. Bar-On (1999) argues that the application of Western social work models in Africa continues the colonisation of Africa by the West that was begun with the work of Western missionaries. He is alarmed by the extent that African social work academics have accepted Western ideas and practices and have rejected their own traditions. This has come about in large part because many Africans studied social work in the West and consequently ‘became Western themselves’ when they returned to Africa (Bar-On 1999: 17). Thus Western social work has unconsciously become part of the Eurocentric hegemony.10 In response to the Eurocentric bias of social work and human services practice in North America, Schiele (2000) proposes the development of an Afrocentric approach to human services based upon the philosophical concepts, traditions and experiences of African Americans. Afrocentrism has been criticised from many quarters. Some critics challenge the notion of cultural unity in Africa. Connell (2007) critiques the African philosophical tradition for its assumptions about static culture and nationalist thought. She emphasises the danger of founding contemporary knowledge on traditional cultural beliefs. However, the critical question is whether an acknowledgement of heterogeneity and diversity in Africa necessarily invalidates an Afrocentric perspective (Schiele 2000). 10

For further reading on the impact of Western knowledge on social work in Africa and Afro-centred Social Work, see Mungai (2015) and Bent-Goodley, Fairfax and CarltonLaNey (2017).

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Afrocentricity is also criticised for being homophobic and sexist. Akbar (1992) and Asante (2007), for example, argue that homosexuality is against the values of Afrocentricity. Mutua (2006a) is also concerned that some expressions of Afrocentricity focus on the issues facing Black men at the expense of the plight of Black women. Some suggested strategies of male empowerment rely upon the subordination of women (Mutua 2006b). Some critics charge Afrocentricity with ignoring class analysis and class domination. Williams (2005) notes that in rejecting Marxism, Afrocentrists also reject a realist epistemology. In doing so, they are unable to address structural arrangements and institutionalised inequalities which shape the life chances of Africans. By focusing solely on culture as the primary source of racial oppression, they end up focusing on attitudes and consciousness as the major basis of change. Dick (1995) maintains that Afrocentrism is unable to effectively address Eurocentrism because it does not acknowledge the political and economic determinants inherent within capitalism. Rather it focuses solely on the cultural manifestations of Eurocentrism. Akinyela (1995) also argues that Afrocentricity focuses too much on racial domination and does not address political and economic power differences and other forms of oppression such as sexism and heterosexism. For many of these critics, Afrocentrism is not able to address intersectionalities in the construction of African identity. Defenders of Afrocentricity argue that critics are simply imposing Eurocentric Western concepts on to a perspective that has different philosophical assumptions (Schiele 2000). Certainly, some of the critiques of the Afrocentric perspective are predicated upon Eurocentric premises and defend Eurocentric hegemonic thought (Conyers 1996; Schiele 2000). Further, many critics fail to acknowledge the Eurocentric and colonialist context which gave rise to Afrocentrism in the first place. Some Afrocentric writers have responded to the critiques by expanding the Afrocentric perspective to include other conceptual frameworks. Oyebade (1990), for example, believes that Marxism can be incorporated with Afrocentrism to analyse how Africa’s economy is dominated by the global economy of the capitalist West. Akinyela (1995) argues for the development of ‘critical Afrocentricity’ that develops strategies against the multiple forms of oppression that African people experience.

Making space for Indigenous knowledge Fennell and Arnot (2009) note that the universalising agenda of modern knowledge is up against Indigenous knowledge. Indigenous knowledge

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relies upon a spiritual as opposed to a scientific understanding of the world. Smith (1999) emphasises how indigenous knowledge involves a different understanding of subjectivity, time and space which is at odds with the scientific approach to understanding the world. While there are differences between Indigenous people around the globe, there are common understandings about a holistic approach to the world that embraces spirituality and harmony with the land. Smith (1999) identifies the relationship with the land as the distinguishing feature of the clash between Western and Indigenous belief systems. Attitudes to the land are fundamental to indigenous knowledge systems, whereas in Western culture, disconnection from the land is the norm (Hawthorn 2002). Many forms of indigenous knowledge are not recognised within a Western science paradigm. Rather they are regarded as forms of superstition and expressions of irrationality. Hence, Western international agencies operate on the premise that they have ‘good’ knowledge that will address the problems that people in the non-West experience. Western social work, for example, has been increasingly challenged by Indigenous and anti-colonialist writers for reproducing Western imperialism. Over thirty-five years ago, Midgley (1983) wrote about what he called professional imperialism in social work. The widely held belief that social work was based on universal values and was applicable to all societies was rarely challenged. He echoed the views of many Indigenous activists that such an approach constituted a Western liberal framework that was incompatible with Indigenous cultures. While the world has changed dramatically since then, and there has been substantial writing about these issues over the years, Midgeley (2008) argues that professional imperialism in social work (and one could argue in other Western professions as well) has not been adequately addressed. In the context of increasing awareness of globalisation, many universities in the West were encouraged to Indigenise their curricula to acknowledge the diversity of cultural experiences. However, Gray and Coates (2008) point out the difference between Indigenisation of the curriculum in professional education courses and supporting Indigenous practice. The former finds ways to import Western knowledge to the cultural particulars of a specific country or population group, as opposed to affirming the knowledge of Indigenous cultures. Traditional research epistemologies constructed within the West have also come under criticism by Indigenous and postcolonial scholars. Rigney (1999) says that research epistemologies should be critiqued in the context of colonialism and racism. Mutua and Swadener (2004) argue that research itself can be considered to be a colonising construct. As a result of different

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histories, experiences, values and cultures, indigenous people are likely to interpret reality and the world differently (Rigney 1999). They should explore the implications of anti-colonial epistemologies and methodologies to validate their local knowledge and experiences. A number of writers have identified the importance of Indigenous knowledge as an important resource for developing strategies of social change (Foley 2002; Kincheloe and McLaren 2005; Strega and Brown 2015; Archibald, Lee-Morgan and De Santolo 2019). Tuhiwai Smith (1999) provides an extensive critique of Western paradigms of research and knowledge from the position of a Maori woman. She challenges traditional Western ways of knowing and calls for a ‘decolonisation of methodologies’ by developing new non-Western epistemologies and methods of inquiry. Writing in the Australian context, Foley (2002) documents how the British system of knowledge eliminated Indigenous knowledge, traditions and cultural practices. He puts the case for the acceptance of Indigenous knowledge and Indigenous standpoint theory.11 The writings of Indigenous people validate alternative ways of knowing and provide a basis for oppositional practices against Western imperialism. To challenge Eurocentrism, we will need to recognise the struggle of Indigenous people to affirm and validate their knowledge.

Southern theory and Northern dominance Connell (2007) demonstrates how the social sciences, which represent ideas as universally valid, reflect the views of the global North. When the privileged North claims that its knowledge and values are universal, it becomes part of a hegemonic project. Northern theory builds on the work of a privileged minority of people in the world and then assumes that it is valid for the majority of the world’s population. In Connell’s view, this entails a perspective shaped by privilege and affluence that is then extended to include marginalised and subordinated peoples across the globe. This process of producing and circulating knowledge further reinforces Northern dominance and Southern marginalisation. Connell (2007) demonstrates that a close reading of mainstream social theory reveals its ethnocentricity, as it pertains specifically to the issues facing 11

See Yunkaporta (2019) for an argument of how Indigenous knowledge can be incorporated into non-Indigenous thinking and how non-Indigenous people can learn from Aboriginal ways of knowing to address the lack of sustainability in Western societies.

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Northern societies. Theories arising from the colonised world are rarely cited in general social science texts published in the North. Thus important ideas about the world in the South are neglected in mainstream social science. Furthermore, colonial experience and its associated social processes are usually erased from Northern social theories. Although Connell’s book is focused on sociology, similar books have been written on other social and behavioural sciences and professions.12 Connell (2006) acknowledges that her own earlier work shares most of the dimensions of Northern theory. I would say that this is also true of my own early work (Pease 1997a; 2000; 2002b). It is only in recent years that I have acknowledged the global dimensions of masculinities and endeavoured to address the white Western bias in masculinity studies (Flood et al. 2007; Ruspini et al. 2011; Enarson and Pease 2016; Bozalek and Pease 2021). To address this issue, Connell argues that it is important to reconstruct the relations between the North and the South to allow for shared learning. It is important to circulate knowledge and experiences that come out of nonNorthern geopolitical contexts. If social science is going to live up to its function of social critique, it will need to produce knowledge that informs democratic social movements and challenges the control of knowledge by the privileged. Five years before Connell, Canagarajah (2002) wrote a book from a Southern perspective addressing the concrete practicalities of trying to get ideas from the South published in the North. He documents his attempts, and those of his colleagues in India, to get scholarly work published in mainstream academic journals. He similarly argues that knowledge produced in ‘Third World communities’ is marginalised and appropriated by the West. Many of Connell’s arguments are foreshadowed in Carnagarajah’s work. He writes about how the mainstream publishing domain reproduces the intellectual hegemony of the West. Furthermore, he documents how Western interventions in marginalised nations often get it wrong because they are informed by Western paradigms. Ironically and significantly, it is Connell’s book rather than Carnagarajah’s that has been most widely read.

Conclusion The struggle of oppressed groups is as much about validating their world views as it is about empowerment and equal rights. If we are to avoid the

12

See, for example, Carrington et al. (2018) for an application of Southern epistemology to the discipline of criminology.

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imposition of the Western world view on to non-Western nations, the West will need to interrogate the historical basis of its own discourse and be open to other ways of organising social relations (Tucker 1999). The challenge is how Western academics such as myself can decentre ourselves and our knowledge systems in ways that challenge existing unequal power relationships. Young (1990) alerts us to dangers of developing an awareness of Eurocentrism without disrupting our privilege and dominant power base. Most commentators agree that it is essential to establish a dialogue between the West and the non-West. But the challenge is how to engage in this dialogue in the context of Western hegemony and unequal power relations. The West must find a way to avoid assuming an a priori normative high ground and be prepared to submit the premises underpinning its own social sciences to reappraisal (Tucker 1999). The aim of this chapter has been to find ways to decolonise the minds of those of us from the North. To do this, we will have to learn how to see ourselves through the lives of others. As most of the readers of this book are likely to be Western, the challenge is to engage in what Bulbeck (1998) calls ‘world travelling’, understanding the lives of others to question the dominant practices of Western culture. Boulet (2003) reminds us that we have much to learn from Indigenous knowledge systems and cultures ‘less developed’ than our own. Esteva and Suri (1998) argue for the development of an ‘epistemological humility’ that is able to recognise and accept limits to scientific knowledge. This means challenging the notion that only Western knowledge is legitimate knowledge. In a similar vein, Hawthorn (2002) emphasises the importance of an ‘epistemological multiversity’ where the context and real-life experiences of people are valued. This work on recognising Eurocentrism and Western privilege must be located within the wider alternative globalisation movement. Antiglobalisation struggles have been framed as a confrontation between the global South and the global North (Santos 2007). Such struggles are not against globalisation per se, however. Rather, the focus is on challenging neoliberal globalisation from alternative, counter-hegemonic forms of globalisation from below (Santos 2007) or what Danaher (2001) calls ‘people’s globalisation’. Danaher (2001) identifies the many dimensions of the work of the global justice movement, including downsizing Western materialism, fair trade, eco labelling, socially responsible investment, shareholder activism, alternative models of ownership, micro-enterprise lending groups and the corporate accountability movement. Many writers have encouraged local initiatives and small grassroots activism. Simple living based upon spiritual and ecological principles is encouraged.

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These counter-hegemonic forces came together at the global level in the World Social Forum of Porto Alegre and have now spread throughout the world. The World Social Forum provides the basis for conceiving of alternative worlds that can co-exist alongside each other. In a context where many people are endeavouring to protect and defend their privileges, others are trying to create a new world order. The view from the South will experience the North as a homogeneous bloc (Connell 2006). Wealth and poverty are not defined by national boundaries. Just as pockets of wealth can be found alongside the wider impoverishment of the population in most countries of the global South, in the West, classbased and racially oppressed populations reside within the wider affluence and wealth of the general population. Notwithstanding the need to globalise privilege and oppression, it is still nevertheless important to challenge forms of privilege within national borders as well. Wilkinson and Pickett (2009) suggest that egalitarian societies are more responsive to global injustices, whereas those societies that condone privilege within their borders will be less likely to recognise their Eurocentrism in the international arena. As we shall see in subsequent chapters, the North also contains many social divisions and complex inequalities based upon privileges within the nation state and country borders.

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Political economy and class elitism

Most discussions of class within critical theory focus on the possibilities and limitations of the proletariat as a force for progressive change in capitalist societies. While some argue that the working class has ceased to have any capacity to be an agent of social change, others maintain that it continues to be the only potentially revolutionary force in modern capitalist societies. How one answers this question depends on how one understands the changing composition of the working class. As more people work in community services and universities than in transport and construction (Sheppard and Biddle 2017) does this mean that a new class of professionals and intellectual workers has emerged or do we need to broaden the definition of the working class to encompass the increase in professional occupations? The focus of this chapter is on the class identification and class politics of these professionals, many of whom consider themselves to be middle class because of their job, their education, their relative wealth and where they live. While a few members of the owning class have become allies to the working class in class struggles, because of what they have to lose, many of them will unlikely be responsive to the arguments advanced here. This chapter is thus directed more at those who possess relative class privilege and it questions how class privilege operates among those of us who are positioned between labour and capital. How do those who have some class privileges engage with our class positioning and classed subjectivity to act in a progressive way on class issues?

A personal narrative of class At the outset, I should locate myself in relation to class. I am a recently retired university academic and a professional social work educator who grew up in a working-class household in inner Sydney in Australia.1 My father worked

1

Although, as noted earlier, I still engage in research, writing, consultancy and activism.

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in factories all of his working life as a timber worker, as did my older brother. When I turned fourteen, I left school to work with my father in a timber yard. For the first five years of my working life, I engaged in physical labour amidst the whirring machinery noise and sawdust of the timber yard. A chance encounter with a woman from another class opened up an alternative pathway for me. So at the age of nineteen, I went to night school to complete the last four years of high school to enable me to go to university. I was the first in my extended family to gain a tertiary education, and notwithstanding the completion of four degrees, including a doctorate, I have always felt that I did not quite belong in the middle class. My analysis of class is grounded in my own experience of upward social mobility. My foray into the middle class was an uncomfortable one for me. I remember when I first read Richard Sennett and Jonathon Cobb’s Hidden Injuries of Class (1972) how strongly I related to the experience of not feeling comfortable in any class situation. I started to mix in middle-class circles where people always assumed that university would follow the completion of their secondary schooling. However, while I read widely in the social sciences at university, my general vocabulary was more limited and this would become evident in relation to the use and pronunciation of certain words. When I spoke, my class markers were often evident. Some of these experiences of working-class discomfort in middle-class milieu are movingly described in anthologies of the experiences of university academics from working-class backgrounds (Dews and Laws 1995; Ryan and Sacrey 1996; Mitchell, Wilson and Archer 2015). What, then, is my class location? While I grew up in a workingclass family, I worked in universities for over forty years and I now live comfortably on a university superannuation pension. Am I working class or middle class? Given the qualifications I’ve attained, my previous academic work and where I live, I would be regarded as being ‘middle class’. However, I do not identify with that class positioning in terms of my interests and my political involvements. The irony is that as I studied critical social theory, I became more closely identified with my working-class positioning just as I was moving away from traditional working-class labour. My father thought that I betrayed my class by going to university, just as I was becoming politically active on class issues associated with homelessness and unemployment. I could relate to the views of the working-class young people in Paul Willis’s (1981) study who had the talent to break away from their class but chose not to because of what it would mean for their relationships with their family, their friends and their community. So my journey towards critical class consciousness coincided with my move from low-paid factory work to university education and

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later on to professional work. I entered a world of relative class privilege at the same time that I was developing a politically conscious workingclass sensibility and coming to feel a strong allegiance to the struggles of working people. Those of us who have experienced a degree of upward class mobility experience both privilege and oppression. By representing myself as middle class, I certainly receive many unearned privileges. However, like Loomis (2005) in his account of growing up working class and moving into the middle class I was also subjected to classist discrimination and I continue to carry some elements of internalised oppression associated with my previous class positioning.2

Theorising class There is a rich sociological literature on class, most of it published during the 1970s and 1980s. There are numerous theories of class, including Marxist approaches (Westergaard 1995; Wright 1998), Weberian models (Goldthorpe 1980; Parkin 1983), stratification theories (Kerbo 2003) and cultural studies approaches (Bourdieu 1987b; Jameson 1991; Hall 1997). Determining class membership is a matter of debate; the focus can be on income, educational qualifications, origins or workforce status (Brantley et al. 2003). In stratification theories, there are numerous levels of class distinction based on income levels and occupational status. In non-Marxist writings about class, relations of ownership and control disappear to be replaced by occupational categories and the working class is replaced by the language of ‘the lower class’ (Aronowitz 2004). In a Marxist analysis, class location is determined by the relationship to the means of production. In this view, there are two main classes: the capitalist class and the working class. The capitalist class has control and ownership of significant amounts of capital and productive resources and the working class provides their labour and are dependent upon wages to survive. There are also intermediate classes that stand between these two classes. However, these intermediate classes are not seen to be of historical significance or revolutionary consequence. Some Marxists argue that anyone who works for wages is a member of the working class, while others would argue that managers and professionals should be excluded because

2

See my account of the injuries and privileges of being a man from a working-class background in the academy in Pease (2015).

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they have too much of a stake in the system. This is a question to which I will return. While I adopt a structural Marxist understanding of class in terms of its relation to the means of production, I also believe that we need to understand how class is subjectively experienced and reproduced in our lives. This means understanding the ways that class is culturally constructed as well as structurally determined. Bourdieu’s (1987a) analysis of class is useful here because he differentiates between economic and cultural forms of capital. He identifies cultural capital accruing to people from their attainment of educational qualifications and outlines the importance of social capital based on group membership and connections. Those who hold these various forms of capital have access to legitimised power. Some forms of Marxism have under-emphasised the role that cultural capital plays in reproducing class-based oppression. However, cultural understandings of class are not necessarily in conflict with viewing classes as locations in social structure. The most salient meaning of class for me is that which arises from specific class struggles, as choices and actions in relation to specific class interests are those that determine whether individuals are allies or not (Walkowitz 1999). This study is thus more concerned with whose class interests are served by our practices in the world than how we might fit into particular class schemas, even though our identities are constructed in terms of classbased experiences.

Whither class? It is difficult to write about class in 2021. In the 1970s and 1980s, class was at the centre of analyses of social and economic inequalities. In the last forty years or more, however, the debates about class have declined dramatically. Numerous academics have noted the marginalisation of class in social theory across a range of academic disciplines (Ferguson 2002; Aronowitz 2004; Hollier 2004; Acker 2006b; Carter 2015). Over twenty-five years ago, Pakulski and Waters (1996) claimed that class does not exist anymore. More recently, Carter (2015) observed that class is used more often than not in the Weberian terms of different levels of economic and bureaucratic power and prestige. In my field of social work education, there has been a lack of class analysis and a neglect of the impact of class on the lives of people. Searling (2008) has noted that class-conscious social workers are likely to feel ambivalent about the social control practices in their profession and that such discomfort

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cannot be easily resolved. Perhaps this explains in part why class has been neglected in social work. Even much of the critical and anti-oppressive social work literature (Thompson 2017; Tedam 2020) does not address class and when it does, it tends to focus on it only as a source of discrimination and prejudice.3 It is not only in social theory and professional education that class has been marginalised. Kendall (2017) notes how the majority of people in the United States do not talk about class oppression or the class-based nature of American society. Most people do not experience their identity in class terms. Rather, the discussion is about the wealthy and the poor, which are seen as immutable and natural. Between the wealthy and the poor are the middle class where class differences are muted and class conflict and class exploitation are avoided. The United States, the UK and Australia are regarded by many as classless societies.

Whither socialism? The decline of class in social analysis can be understood in part as a response to the fall of the Soviet Republic and the dismantling of the socialist bloc in Eastern Europe. There has been considerable analysis in the last thirty years of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe (Habermas 1990; Kennedy and Galtz 1996; White 2001; Lasky 2017). Much of this analysis has focused on the consequences of socialist regimes for Marxism and critical theory in the West (Habermas 1990; Kennedy and Galtz 1996). Does the end of state socialism mean that Marxism holds no inspiration for radicals who envisage a world beyond capitalism and neoliberalism? The collapse of communist regimes is used to argue that another world beyond capitalism is not possible (George 2004). If socialism is not a viable alternative to capitalism, what is the value of class analysis of capitalist societies? Marxism has always had a fraught relationship with communist regimes. Western Marxists were critical of these regimes well before their collapse in the 1980s because they sacrificed democratic ideals in the pursuit of centralised power. The collapse of communist regimes should not be equated with the failure of Marxism as social theory. While communist states used Marxism as a form of legitimation, Western Marxists never regarded highly centralised political and economic power within an authoritarian state as

3

There are some notable exceptions to this neglect. See, for example, Ferguson, Ioakimidis and Lavalette (2018) in the UK and Hosken (2016) in Australia.

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an embodiment of the socialist alternative (Wright 1993). The collapse of these regimes is not evidence of the failure of Marxism as a normative and theoretical framework. In spite of the lack of logic in equating the demise of state socialism with the refutation of Marxism as a social theory, these events inevitably raise questions about the utility of class analysis and Marxist social theory. Many contemporary Marxists recognised that if Marxism is to continue to be useful in analysing capitalism, it will need to be reconstructed (Wright 1993; Massimo 2019). It is thus important that Western Marxists engage with the relationship between the rise and fall of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe and Marxism as an explanatory social theory. This will mean confronting the reality that Marxism has been both neglected and rejected in Eastern Europe. This will be important if Marxism is to continue to provide inspiration for radical politics.

The myth of meritocracy and upward social mobility Most people in the West identify as middle class now, as everyone is purportedly getting richer through social mobility. The concept of the middle class allegedly embraces everyone with the exception of a few rich people at the top and a small number of poor people at the bottom (Carter 2015). Almost fifty years ago, Parker (1972) deemed that positing the notion of a homogeneous middle class ignored the differences between the upper and lower strata of that class. He could be writing today when he discusses the persistence of the ‘myth of the middle class’. Such a notion of homogeneity serves both blue-collar workers because it takes the ‘sting’ out of the reality of the class structure for them, while easing the conscience of the uppermiddle class professionals because it posits that their privileges are available to everyone. The view that everyone is middle class is a myth that continues in spite of the fact that class differences seem so obvious. In the view of many people, the term middle class has lost connection to the notion of economic class. This lack of class identity limits the potential for professional workers to develop politically progressive responses to widening inequalities. A middle-class identity that is devoid of class meaning is likely to be an obstacle to practices that promote social justice (Carter 2015). Also, the problem with the language of the middle class is that it is just as likely to be the class of choice by manual workers as non-manual workers (Scott 2000). The majority of working-class people believe that hard work can enable them to achieve economic security and wealth.

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Burgmann et al. (2004) note that although the Australian Labor Party (ALP) was traditionally the party of the working class, they do not use the language of class anymore.4 During the Labor Party election campaign of 2004, the then Labor Party Opposition Leader Mark Latham promoted the notion of a ladder of opportunity whereby people could move up the ladder to improve their economic situation. The capacity of the Australian labour movement, both in terms of the Australian Labor Party and the trade union movement, to mobilise working-class opposition has declined significantly over the last thirty years. The same comment about the retreat from class has been made of British Labour’s ‘third way’, where the language of ‘social exclusion’ replaced class analysis and an acknowledgement of class divisions (I. Ferguson 2002). In New Labour’s third way, it was clear that there was little room for recognition of class divisions or the undermining of inequality by class relations. The priority was to combat social exclusion, a discourse that denied the validity of class analysis and the very existence of class divisions.5 Various explanations have been offered as to why working-class opposition to capitalism has declined. Some say that many workers have become stakeholders in the system that exploits them. Many workingclass people have the resources to purchase their own home, latest model cars and consumer goods. Some even have market shares in companies. It is argued that working-class people will come to defend the system that protects their investments. Connell (2004) has noted, however, that while many people do own company shares, very few derive a significant income from such ownership. Yet the claim by some is that anyone can achieve wealth in Australia and that most of the wealthy are self-made millionaires (Gilding 2004). However, in spite of this marginalisation of class as a sociological concept and as a subjective source of identity, the reality of living in a class-based society is all too central in the lives of many people, whether they frame their experience in terms of class or not. Research in the United States (Kendall 2017), the UK (Savage 2015) and Australia (Paternoster 2017) reveals immense variations in economic well-being. One’s class status continues to have a significant impact on one’s economic prosperity. From a structural point of view, one’s location in the class structure shapes access to material resources, including material comforts, the 4 5

Writing in 2021, this is still the case. In a challenge to Tony Blair’s third way in the UK, Jeremy Corbyn took over the leadership of the British Labour Party in 2015 and moved it further to the left, but a devastating election loss in 2020 has seen the Labour Party return to third way politics.

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physical demands of one’s work and one’s diet and health. Numerous studies demonstrate the impact of class upon our health and life chances (Wilkinson 2005). Working-class people die younger and experience more ill health than those from more privileged classes. The reality of a class-dominated society is that individuals cannot impact on these structural class forces. There is considerable evidence that class divisions are alive and well. Illusions of upward mobility fail to match economic realities. The best predictor of a person’s class position continues to be the class position of one’s parents (Holvino 2002). Iain Ferguson (2002) notes that if you are born and brought up in a working-class family, the likelihood is that you will end up in a working-class occupation. In spite of the belief in social mobility and meritocracy, Aronowitz (2004) demonstrates that less than one-third of people move even one step beyond their social origins to reach technical and professional occupations. Comparative global studies show that very few working-class boys and girls go to university (Rowe 2016). Notwithstanding claims to the contrary, the school system continues to reproduce and legitimise class inequality. There is some class fluidity, and some individuals will change their class status. Everyone can think of someone who has significantly changed their class location. However, class is not as fluid as most people believe. The belief in social mobility leads people to blame themselves if they do not succeed. Leondar-Wright and Heskel (2007) reflect upon the cruelty of people believing they can succeed when class forces make it less likely that they will be able to. Almost fifty years ago, Sennett and Cobb (1972) described the impact of meritocracy on people as ‘the badge of ability’, whereby people evaluate their human worth in terms of what they have achieved. Because financial rewards are not always directly correlated with what people do, most economically disadvantaged people experience their lives in terms of personal failure. Those who do blame themselves for not succeeding have internalised class oppression into their psyches (Barone 1998). Aronowitz (2004) believes that class is deeply buried in the unconscious. Lack of attention to class creates a major difficulty in being able to highlight class inequalities in capitalist societies. If one lives in a classless society, then class differences do not exist. Challenging exploitative class relations is difficult because of the reluctance to acknowledge a class identity. In this context, it is not surprising that there is so little anger and opposition to unearned class privilege. One must raise the question about whose class interests are served by arguing that class no longer exists. Milner (1999) suggests that the denial of class can itself be seen as a consequence of class forces. He asks whether the

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lack of attention to class by middle-class professionals and academics may serve the class interests of these groups, as most university academics come from middle-class backgrounds. Skeggs (1997) notes that it is those who have class privilege who promote the retreat from class, by drawing attention away from their own privilege. Erasing economic class is a strategy that ensures the identity of the middle class. Theorists of mobility, individualisation and identity who displace class are in effect reproducing their own middle-class power and avoiding having to name it or accept responsibility for it. hooks (2000) says that class-privileged people who remain silent about economic inequality do not want to address the issue of ‘where they stand’, because of what they have to lose.

From redistribution to recognition With the decline of traditional working-class radicalism, new sources of opposition to the existing social order have surfaced. There has been a move away from struggles in relation to poverty and economic deprivation towards those focused on identity and difference. A number of post-Marxists have argued that the new social movements represent the most likely basis for social transformation (Laclau and Mouffe 1985). Even Connell (2004) who is not antithetical to class theory has noted in the Australian context that the main opposition to the system has come from alternative health movements, Greenpeace, queer politics and refugee support groups. She acknowledges that these groups have little connection to working-class people, let alone the labour movement. The move away from class in new social movements can be seen in part as a criticism of the tendency for class analysis to either ignore or marginalise the oppression of women, disabled people and people of colour. In making these forms of oppression a central focus, class was often ignored completely. Oppression is understood in terms of the actions of individuals and groups rather than the structures of the state and the social relations of capitalism. Aronowitz (2004) believes that such social movements are premised upon a pluralist analysis of societal power that disassociates class relations from sex and race. He argues that whatever their radical potential may have been, many social movements have now been absorbed into the establishment. Milner (1999) also argues that the new social movements are antithetical to class politics because they focus more on individualistic rather than structural solutions to problems. He attributes this to the fact that most of the activists come from class-privileged backgrounds and they have no interest

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in challenging class divisions in society. It is possible to be concerned about gender inequalities and inequalities associated with race and sexuality, but not challenge the inequalities based on class (Hollier 2004). While it is true that structural analysis tends to be ignored in some forms of race and gender studies, it is also true that some neo-Marxist analyses have not engaged adequately with the personal and social dynamics of oppression that are highlighted by feminists and critical race theorists. It is important to challenge the view that the labour movement is just a fading enterprise. However, reasserting the importance of class analysis over, rather than in conjunction with, analyses of race, gender and sexuality is not the way forward. To reaffirm the importance of class analysis, some revision of class analysis will be necessary. As discussed in Chapter 2, focus on both redistribution (class) and recognition (status) is crucial in the struggle for social justice.6

The politics of the professional-managerial class When middle-class people get involved in activist politics, it mostly takes the form of identity politics, new social movements or community politics associated with education, housing, health care and the environment. Given the charges levelled against middle-class social movement activists, what potential is there for them to engage in more class-conscious progressive politics? If most professionals do not experience themselves as part of the working class, then how are they to act in relation to class issues and class struggles? Over forty years ago, Ann Ferguson (1979) argued that parts of the professional-managerial class had as much potential as the working class to be revolutionary. The ongoing question relates to how progressive alliances can be formed across local struggles. Professionals organise themselves primarily through professional associations rather than trade unions. During the 1970s and onwards, there have been various attempts to articulate a radical professionalism. Ehrenreich and Ehrenreich (1979a) believe that many of the practices of radicals in professions were aimed at protecting the interests of their class against challenges from the working class. At the same time, they noted that many radical professionals developed a ‘negative class consciousness’ that interrogated their own claims to special knowledge and expertise. Radical 6

This discussion of class is confined to Western societies. Caste and tribal allegiances also complicate class in Africa and other non-Western countries. However, the concept of caste has also been used to interrogate race, class and other forms of hierarchy in Western societies. See, for example, Wilkerson (2020).

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social workers, doctors, teachers and lawyers became actively involved in challenging professional elitism.7 Class consciousness requires an understanding of tensions and contradictions inherent in professional–working-class relationships. If professionals are unaware of their own class location, they unwittingly undermine the class consciousness of working-class people. In turn, workingclass people may be antagonistic towards professionals who uncritically subject them to surveillance and control, especially since most are employed in social services.8 So how can professionals and working-class people form alliances for social change that move beyond this antagonism? According to Barbara and John Ehrenreich (1979a), this can only happen when professionals identify and challenge their attitudes of elitism and condescension that reproduce class oppression. It requires professionals to theorise and interrogate their own class location without ongoing defensiveness. How are salaried managerial and professional workers to be theorised? Scott (2000) uses the language of intermediate classes to designate the class position of those between subordinate and advantaged classes. He locates those employed in managerial, professional and technical occupations in this class. Giddens (1973) refers to this group as ‘the new middle class’. Bourdieu (1987a) locates these workers as a dominated fraction of the dominant economic class, whereas in neo-Weberian theory, they constitute a separate service class (Milner 1999). For many Marxists, salaried managerial and professional workers form part of the new working class. Donaldson (2006) argues that conflict and hostility between professionals and manual-based occupations does not constitute class division and does not place these occupational categories in different classes. He believes that it is simply part of the changing composition of the working class. Attempts to synthesise Marx and Weber lead to designating them as ‘privileged strata within the working class’ (Milner 1999: 155). Over thirty years ago Barbara and John Ehrenreich (1979a) explored this issue in a seminal paper that was the subject of extensive and heated debate. At the time, they noted that the left in the United States comprised predominantly of activists who identified themselves as middle class. They

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8

See, for example, Noble, Pease and Ife (2017) for autobiographical accounts of social workers who were active in the radical and progressive movements in Australian social work from the 1970s. Graeber (2014) notes that many working-class people have no hatred for capitalists because they haven’t met them face to face. However, managers, bureaucrats, supervisors and health and human service professionals are often the public face of their oppression.

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argued that professional, technical and managerial workers comprised a distinct class in capitalist society, what they called the ‘professionalmanagerial class’. While such workers are not part of the owning class, they are actively involved in the reproduction of capitalist class relations and capitalist culture. This places them in an antagonistic relationship to the working class. There were many Marxist challenges to this argument. Carter (1979) argued that professionals will not relinquish the power that keeps the working class in their position willingly. Because of their contradictory position in relation to capital and the working class, she believes that professionals are dubious allies in class struggles. They will lose out to some extent as the working class makes gains. These contradictory pressures upon them can make them waver. Noble (1979) believed the notion of the professional-managerial class was another example itself of middle-class elitism. Aronowitz (1979) challenged the conflation of professionals and managers, believing that managers should be separated from technical and professional employees. Later Aronowitz (2004) argued that such workers should be located as part of a new working class rather than as part of the middle class. Perhaps the most theoretically elaborate critique, however, came from Erik Olin Wright (1979) who argued that professionals and intellectuals occupy contradictory class locations. Rather than occupying clear class positions, they are torn between the major classes in that they share interests simultaneously with both the working class and the petty bourgeois. For Wright, they are both working class as they have to work for wages and have limited control over their labour process and middle class because they have control over the work of others. What Wright captures in his notion of contradictory class locations is that salaried professionals are both exploited and exploiters. In his view, we have to grasp the contradictory character of their class location to understand their relationship to class struggles. Ehrenreich and Ehrenreich (1979b) criticised Wright’s notion of contradictory class locations for being too economically determinist because it defines class solely in terms of production and ignores the cultural sphere. They argue that a person’s political consciousness is shaped by other experiences outside of occupational categories, such as family, friendships and experiences of consumerism. For them, the class issues facing those outside of the labour force need to be considered too. Barbara Ehrenreich revisited this issue in 1989 in Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class. She outlined how professionals and managers come to see themselves as constituting a distinct class and how that is connected to class elitism. She maintains that professional elitism reproduces structural

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barriers that inhibit cross-class alliances. One strategy she proposed was to remove the barriers preventing access to the professions and to expand opportunities for all to blur the boundaries between the professional elite and those that they serve. Walkowitz (1999) suggests that social workers, as representative of professional workers, can be considered as part of a ‘working middle class’ in that like many salaried professionals they have limited control over their work processes. In spite of this proletarianisation of their work, many professionals continue to identify themselves as middle class. Walkowitz explains that the professional-managerial class has fractured into two quite different groups with some professionals identifying themselves as part of a new middle class, while others frame their allegiances to the working class. Professionals in the service occupations such as social work, teaching, community development, law, social policy, health sciences and international development are more likely to be open to developing a consciousness of the class positioning than middle-level managers in the corporate sector. Professionals in these fields will also come into contact with working-class people as clients, consumers, patients and students where they will have authority and power to make judgements about their lives (Ehrenreich 1989). To the extent that professional workers regard themselves as middle class, however, they will distance themselves from those that the serve (Walkowitz 1999).9 Professionals have a range of privileges connected to their relative job security and control over their labour process and the work of others (Metzgar 2020). So, their material interests are connected to the status quo. For this reason, many commentators have argued that middle-class radicalism is unlikely to challenge class inequality (Milner 1999). This is the case even though many state sector workers and professionals have found that these privileges are also being eroded and their work proletarianised (Metzgar 2020). Over the last forty years, a number of writers have observed an increasing proletarianisation of professional work in general and social work in particular. Many have observed increasing bureaucratic controls, decreasing work autonomy and increasing paper work (Braverman 1975; Wright 1979; Jones 1983; Walkowitz 1999; Ferguson 2002; Baines 2018). Iain Ferguson (2002) locates professional workers as part of the working class rather than as a separate service class because they have to sell their 9

Catherine Lieu (2021) has recently critiqued the professional-managerial class (PMC) for waging a war against the working class rather than against capitalism. Many members of the PMC develop a sense of moral superiority (what Lieu calls virtue holding) to justify their relative dominance in the class hierarchy.

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labour power. He does, however, acknowledge that some members of the salaried classes are in positions where they are involved in the social production of capital. They perform social control functions for capital by keeping the working class in their place and they receive special privileges and rewards for doing so. Within Marxism, the question of the class position of professionals continues. There is a tension between them being representatives of the dominant economic class while also being largely salaried employees of the state. Many members of the professional-managerial class work for the ideological apparatuses of the state. They reproduce the dominant ideology of the social order while also facing the increasing proletarianisation of their work processes (Walkowitz 1999; Baines 2018). This tension is often reflected in the competing pressures of professionalism and unionism as alternative sources of occupational identification and organisation. In general, professionalising processes tend to encourage the construction of middleclass identities, while unionisation fosters working-class consciousness. There is a middle element between the major classes. There is disagreement, however, about whether this middle section is a strata, a class or whether it occupies a contradictory position. However classified, there has been a substantial growth of white middle-class employees in a range of occupations in class locations that are different from manual and trade workers (Carter 2015). They are not part of the traditional working class and they are not part of the petty bourgeoise or the capitalist class. Professionals occupy a hybrid or double-class identity that encompasses both middle- and working-class dimensions (Walkowitz 1999). This is why those in the professional-managerial class need to develop a critical consciousness of their contradictory class positioning and be cognisant of that positioning if and when they engage in social activism. They need to come to terms with what will be lost as well as gained in working towards a more egalitarian social order.

Confronting middle-class privilege and internalised dominance Gilbert (2008) asks what it means to be a person of class privilege. Dominant group members come to believe that they are more deserving, more intelligent and more articulate than working-class people. For the most part, children of middle-class and owning-class families grow up to believe that they are more intelligent and superior and are born to be in control (Leondar-Wright and Yeskel 2007). Most are socialised into oppressor patterns of behaviour that

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will enable them to take on middle- and owning-class occupations and world views (Barone 1998).10 As in other forms of privilege, middle-class experience is presented as universal. The white heterosexual gentile middle class is presented as the normative standard that others aspire to. Skeggs (1997) talks about ‘respectability’ as one of the key signifiers of this class positioning, as it is the basis upon which people pathologise others. Respectability is a normative standard. Skeggs (1997: 2) says that it ‘embodies moral authority’ as distinct from those who need to be controlled. It is the basis upon which middleclass people position themselves against ‘the masses’. Middle-class people construct their identity by distancing themselves from the working class. It can be difficult for middle-class people to recognise their own class conditioning because they are led to believe that they represent the ideal that working-class people aspire (Leondar-Wright 2005). To talk about class privilege itself threatens the myth of equal opportunity and social mobility (Gilbert 2008). It is necessary to remember that while the professional-managerial class have privileges compared to the traditional working class, they are also subjected to the power and privilege of the owning class. In developing a consciousness of their relative privilege, they need also to contextualise this in relation to the corporate power of the dominant class (Ehrenreich 1989).

Towards cross-class alliances Leondar-Wright (2005) notices the disjuncture between middle-class movements for change that are not connected to working-class peoples’ experiences. She underlines the limited support that middle-class people have given to working-class movements. Sennett (2003) believes that we overcome the class divide by developing mutual respect. In his view, real compassion about the experiences of others can only come through solidarity with their struggles. This entails people challenging their assumptions about class superiority. To develop solidarity with working-class people, middleclass professionals will need to challenge their socialisation into dominating class positions. Skeggs (1997) challenges middle-class academics to develop a more dialogical approach to the working class where they listen to their experience, rather than simply making judgements about them and their 10

Feagin and Ducey (2017) refer to this as being socialised into a ‘capitalist class frame’ that promotes a positive view of capitalists as virtuous and superior and a critical anti-worker view of workers as inferior and in need of management.

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arguments. Academics need to take greater responsibility for the judgements we make about others and how such judgements reproduce power relations. To progress class analysis, we must find ways to develop class alliances and, in particular, to encourage professional and managerial workers to explore alliances with the traditional working class against the interests of the dominant class.11 At this historical moment, it is time to challenge middleclass entitlements, as a key step towards such alliances. Middle-class social activists need to understand how they may be perceived by working-class people. When working-class people express feelings of deference and hostility towards professional workers, it may be due to feelings of paternalism and contempt the workers have towards them (Lieu 2021). Leondar-Wright (2005) stresses that it is important for middle-class people to demonstrate greater humility and to challenge their inclinations towards superiority.

Class and the intersections with other forms of oppression Experience of class is shaped by gender, sexuality, race, region and ability/ disability among other sources of identity (Bohrer 2019). Class also plays an important role in perpetuating other forms of oppression. It intersects with other forms of oppression by determining access to privilege. For example, in the West, most wealthy people are white and most poor people are Black or Indigenous (Leondar-Wright and Yeskel 2007). Non-class forms of oppression are manifested in forms of class oppression in the sense, for example, of women being much more proletarianised than men (Wright 1997). Middle-class lives are also shaped by race and gender. Some middle-class people may experience oppression on the basis of gender, sexuality, race or disability. Even so, they still need to face their privileged class position. bell hooks (2003) examines this issue in relation to middle-class Black men and women. The social mobility of small numbers of Black people into the middle class was held up as example for all Black people. Meanwhile, many middleclass Blacks looked down upon less privileged Black people who were used to measure how far they have moved. Thus class privilege mediates some of the oppression caused by racial supremacy. This privilege is not available to others who are on the receiving end of racism. Class privilege undermines struggles against racism because it creates a ‘safe house’ from the worst forms 11

The consequences of the failure to forge such alliances can be seen in the large workingclass vote for Brexit in the UK (see Ferguson 2021) and working-class men’s support for Donald Trump in the last two presidential elections in the United States (see Pease 2021).

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of racial discrimination. Their allegiance to their class interests overrides their commitment to their race. While they will still face the issue of racial discrimination, they will not acknowledge their class power. The challenge hooks identifies is how Black people can have access to class power without undermining their solidarity with those less privileged.

Gendering and racialising class Perhaps the most significant challenge to class analysis has come from feminists who have challenged the view of Marxists that class was more important than gender. Many feminists argue that class analysis was unable to account for women’s experience of oppression and exploitation. Acker (2006b) argues that class analysis focused on the experiences of white men and ignored the experience of women and people of colour because it was developed from a privileged white male perspective. She addresses the neglect in class analysis of male and white privilege and demonstrates how both hegemonic masculinities and white supremacy supported class domination and oppression. Gendering and racialising processes and practices are essential to the reproduction of class inequalities. Some Marxists have responded to the feminist critique of class. Aronowitz (2004) argues that the women’s movement has been more concerned with assisting women to break into the echelons of top management than addressing the demands of working-class women who are relegated to subordinate positions in the class structure. hooks (2000) has also observed that many white middle-class women were campaigning for equality with men of their class rather than being engaged in challenging class inequality, which impacted on working-class women of colour. Only the more radical forms of feminism challenged racism and class domination. Acker (2006b) acknowledges that conceptualisations of class are embedded with feminist assumptions about gender and that they do not always address the realities of many women’s lives. Relations of gender may not be able to explain the full range of women’s experiences under capitalism, as Iain Ferguson (2002) notes. However, it is equally distorted to then dismiss them completely. It is rather a matter of understanding how class and gender interconnect in specific situations. Although Ferguson (2002) acknowledges that men act as agents of women’s oppression, he rejects the view that men benefit from the oppression of women more generally. Since men are also constrained by family relationships, he is unable to see how families benefit men. Furthermore, he argues that women’s oppression is not a product of male power when it comes

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to the working class because they are in positions of powerlessness. Workingclass white men will not feel very privileged, given their class subordination and they are likely to reject claims of being powerful and privileged. The argument is that if working-class men are oppressed by class, this cancels out any access they might have to privilege (A. Johnson 2006). It is true that working-class white men may not be able to claim all of the benefits and privileges associated with being white and male.12 What is more problematic in Ferguson’s (2002: 100) analysis, however, is the claim that ‘no section of the working class benefits from the oppression of any other’. He rejects the view that men benefit from the oppression of women or that white people benefit from the oppression of Black people and so on. Notwithstanding their class oppression, heterosexual white workingclass men still have some access to male privileges in a patriarchal society as well as privileges associated with their whiteness and their heterosexuality. Furthermore, some white working-class men have come to accept their subordination to wage labour by constructing their subjectivities as being superior to women and Black men (Acker 2006b). Alan Johnson (2017) also notes that working-class men will emphasise their supposed racial and/or gender superiority over people of colour and women to protect themselves from being seen to be at the bottom of the heap. Acker (2006b) believes that many white working-class men were able to adjust to their subordination as workers by viewing themselves positively as head of households and breadwinners. These identities have ensured the subordination of women and the exploitation of their unpaid domestic labour. At the same time, workingclass men’s dominance in the home may have inhibited their involvement in class struggles against their powerlessness in the workplace. Hence, different sources of oppression and privilege create tensions and divisions between members of oppressed groups that make the forming of progressive alliances very difficult to achieve. I address these tensions and divisions in Chapter 13.

Class-based oppression and classism Most class analysis is more concerned with the effects of class structures on societies as a whole and less concerned with the impact on individuals.

12

This means that men’s sense of gendered entitlement can no longer be guaranteed and is sometimes unlikely to be achieved. This can be expressed in working-class men’s support for right-wing nationalist populism where such men direct their anger at women and immigrants partly because they perceive them as taking jobs which they believe belong to them (see Pease 2021b).

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Barone (1998) argues that class oppression needs to be extended to include an understanding of classism. This involves an understanding of both social structures and human subjectivity and agency. It is important to remember that class is not only about economics. It is internalised in our psyches and it shapes our subjectivity and identity. Class affects people on an emotional as well as an economic level (Brantley et al. 2003). Barone (1998: 4–5) defines classism as ‘the systematic oppression of one group by another based on economic distinctions, or more accurately one’s position within the system of production and distribution’. Unlike some writers who use the language of classism, he locates the primary cause of class-based oppression as the capitalist mode of production. Classism plays a key role in the reproduction of class divisions and economic exploitation. In his view, class struggles also occur at the cultural level. Classism seems to have two meanings in the literature. Some writers use it to refer to a class-based system of exploitation and oppression, while others use it to describe class-based prejudice and discrimination. Pincus and Sokoloff (2008) are critical of the term, however, because most of those who use the concept ignore class conflict and capitalism. They argue that the theory of class implicit in the concept of classism is the stratification view of economic inequality, whereby classism has come to simply mean prejudice towards working-class people. Pincus and Sokoloff point out that not all forms of class-based oppression can be captured by prejudice and discrimination. The social relations of capitalism that frames the economic exploitation of workers cannot be addressed as a form of discrimination. While the sources of class-based oppression are located within capitalism, however, discrimination and prejudice against working-class people still constitute significant harm and are important to address in their own right, as long as the structural underpinnings are acknowledged.13 In addition to the material consequences of class oppression, there are also psychological consequences. Leondar-Wright and Yeskel (2007) identify the harms caused by classism in terms of low expectations and self-doubt about one’s intelligence. There are many emotional and psychological costs associated with people’s class locations. Yet, most people seem unable to relate the causes of their suffering with their locations in social structure (Hollier 2004), and to the extent that people internalise oppression, the class system is perpetuated. 13

Feagin and Ducey (2017) address this tension through the language of ‘systemic classism’, which includes the many forms of class prejudice and exploitative practices directed against working-class people and the institutionalised patterns of subordination and domination and the social privileges and power capitalists access through the class hierarchy.

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Even those who do not feel impeded by class or those who do not recognise it at all are nevertheless shaped by it. Skeggs (1997) discusses the experiences of working-class women who denied the reality of their class positioning. In terms of access to material resources, these women did not have sufficient capital to define themselves as middle class, and yet they did. At the subjective level, passing as middle class has its costs. It is not easy to hide one’s class background (Barone 1998). This uncertainty does not plague those who were born with class privilege. Passing as middle class reproduces the class system and delegitimates the working class, rather than challenging it (Skeggs 1997). Those who have class privilege have cultural capital. It comes down to entitlements. Most working-class people do not believe that they have the same entitlements as middle-class people. Skeggs (1997) argues that to reinvigorate class analysis, we need to focus on class entitlements and the effects these entitlements have on others. Because class entitlement is produced and institutionalised, it can also be challenged and reconstructed. This class struggle is at the cultural level where class subjectivities are contested. While class and class divisions must be understood in the context of objective structures, they are also legitimated at a subjective and cultural level by classist attitudes and beliefs. Class is internalised within the psyches of individuals who slot themselves into positions of subordination and domination. Oppression functions on institutional, cultural, intergroup and personal levels.14 Beyond the structures of class oppression, working-class people experience prejudice and negative attitudes directed towards them due to stereotypes of working-class people. These individual beliefs are based on cultural norms that legitimate class oppression through notions of meritocracy (Barone 1998). As we have seen, middle-class professionals occupy a precarious position between the owning class and the working class. They are both oppressors and oppressed. They are socialised into a position of dominance over those below them. Classism is another form of systematic oppression that ‘is held in place by systems of beliefs that ranks people according to economic status, family lineage, job and level of education’ (Brantley et al. 2003: 3).

Conclusion There is an ongoing tension in critical theories of oppression and privilege between how much to focus on the face-to-face interactions of individuals

14

See Chapter 1.

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and groups and how much to focus on the institutional and structural dimensions. Class is not just performed and one cannot simply change one’s class by an act of will or choice. The social capital associated with class is structural and institutionalised. Sayers (2005) makes the point that professionals treating working-class people equally and avoiding class-based prejudice will not challenge the economic foundations of class inequality. Because of the sources of class domination in social structure, challenging class-based privilege will be more difficult than changing some other forms of social inequality where recognition of difference is more important than distribution. Working-class people do not need recognition of their difference. However, while addressing the symbolic domination of class prejudice will not in itself challenge the objective social structures of class domination, it will encourage people to position themselves as part of a counter-hegemonic force against class domination. While much of the experience of class-based oppression is a product of unequal social structures, those who occupy positions of class dominance act in ways that are either complicit with those structures or stand in opposition to them. So while anger is an appropriate response to class-based form of exploitation, those of us in the middle class must also address the complex feelings associated with our complicity in reproducing those structures. We also need to recognised that while class is a reflection of objective social conditions, it is also reproduced and reformulated through our actions and practices. Thus middle-class subjectivities are constructed in ways that reproduce the oppression of working-class people. Marxists are right to argue against the view that the politics of recognition should replace the politics of distribution. This does not mean that the politics of recognition should be abandoned. We need to construct a class politics that addresses the subjective experiences of class and the cultural construction of class-based identities at the same time as we challenge the structural bases of economic inequality. One cannot be done without the other. Weber (in Collins et al. 2002) argues that this is not an either/or proposition. Systems of oppression operate at both the macro-structural and micro-psychological levels, as I argue throughout this book. While oppression is socially constructed, it is also recreated through ideological and psychological dimensions. In Marxist formulations, there is also a subjective dimension, as a class only becomes true to itself through a critical consciousness of itself (Milner 1999). Social structures are embedded with social relations that are constantly constructed and reconstructed. Race, class and gender are racialised and gendered class practices rather than structures. Individuals are ‘enmeshed in complex webs of racialised and gendered practices that change over the

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course of the lifetime’ (Acker 2006b: 67). This is because identities are both fluid and contradictory. My approach to class in this book avoids the false dichotomy between objectivism and subjectivism that plagues many writings about class. What is missing in relation to sociological debates on class is how class constructs subjectivities and identities. The identities and subjectivities of individuals are significant in either reproducing or challenging structures of privilege and oppression. Those who are professional workers need to understand how they have internalised class into their psyches and address the role that they play in reproducing class-based oppression.

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Racial formations and white supremacy

Race has been used historically to categorise and value people on the basis of their physical characteristics. Essentialists attribute psychic and biological differences to people of different races. Biologically based theories of race have thus legitimated racial inequality because within a biological framework racial difference is regarded in a hierarchical way. Those who continue to defend racial categorisation make the distinction between racialism, which they claim does not make value judgements on the basis of categorised physical features, and racism which does make such judgements (Machery and Faucher 2005). Yet, the scientific claims of racialism have been the basis for the belief in the superiority of white people over people of colour. Those who believe in racial supremacy do not necessarily see themselves as making political and ethical decisions. Many believe that they are simply defining reality ‘as it is’. Challenging racial inequality can therefore be interpreted as trying to upset the natural order. There is considerable evidence to demonstrate that race does not have a genetic basis and that it is socially constructed (Chau 2017). The meaning of race changes from place to place and over time; it is not a static or fixed category. Notwithstanding the socially constructed nature of racial difference, because it continues to be used to rationalise and legitimate unequal treatment, it constitutes a material force that shapes people’s lives. For this reason, it is important to continue to use it in analysing racism and white privilege.

Growing up white What does it mean to be white and why should those who are white think about it? I was thirteen years old when my older brother formed a relationship with an Aboriginal woman in Australia. When my parents became aware of this relationship, they became outraged and disowned him as a son. It took some years before they were able to grudgingly accept my brother’s partner as a part of the family. Even then, they needed to exceptionalise her. They

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needed to see her as different from other Aboriginal people so that their racist views were not disrupted. Encountering my parents’ racism as a child shocked me. No less shocking was becoming aware of the Aboriginal city slums and rural reserves, where many Indigenous people lived. The more I connected with some aspects of urban and rural Aboriginal culture in Australia, the more I developed a consciousness of being white. In my teens I did not have an awareness of how this experience of whiteness represented privilege. While I was very critical of what I saw as the racist attitudes of my parents, the experience did not in itself lead me to a consciousness of my own internalised racism. All of this would come much later. People’s perceptions of the world are influenced by their personal biographies and their social locations. Some writers refer to this notion as ‘positionality’. This means that how people think and what they see in the world is limited and constrained by the positions they occupy. Once they recognise this positionality, they can also see how they can ‘reposition’ themselves. Those in dominant positions are not locked into a position of dominance and have room to move. Through understanding how their position is reproduced, they can choose to act in ways that challenge their privileged position. I am conscious that when I write or talk about white privilege as a white man, it is likely to carry more credibility than if a person of colour raises these issues. This is one of the consequences of privilege; the views of the privileged are more likely to be listened to. There is power in speaking from the dominant positioning in part because I benefit from the privileges that I critique. While there are tensions here, I have a responsibility to use that power to name and speak out against white privilege.

Racism as prejudice Studies of race relations and racism tend to focus on racial prejudice. Like most people, I came to think about racism as a form of prejudice – bigoted views that one group of people hold about another. Not surprisingly, racism is also something that one is unlikely to identify with or own as a part of oneself. How many people have begun to talk about non-white people with the following statement? ‘I’m not racist, but ….’ Even white supremacists are not likely to see themselves as racist. As I challenged racism, it became clear to me that it was more than simply prejudice or bigotry. Racism is more pervasive than that and it involves everyday beliefs that whites carry around that defend our/their advantageous position. As a participant in a study carried out by Lawrence and Tatum

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(1997: 336) said: ‘I had been taught that racism was an individual act of meanness perpetrated against some minority group. I never suspected that it was an intricate system of advantages of which I was a part.’ Seeing racism simply as a form of prejudice places all forms of racial prejudice on the same level. In this view, non-white people can also be racist in relation to white people and other people of colour. However, in critical perspectives on race relations, racism is understood as ‘prejudice plus power’ (Rothenberg 2000). Within this definition, only white people can be racist in a white supremacist society because only they have the institutionalised power to convert their prejudiced attitudes into legislative policies and organisational practices. Understanding racism solely as a form of prejudiced attitudes does not allow us to name and interrogate the institutionalisation of racial hierarchy in white-dominated societies. Also, because racism is more than prejudice, one does not have to be racist in order to reproduce racial inequality.

Race relations and colour blindness Colour blindness has become a strategy for challenging racism.1 In this view, people do not see colour, as in the following statements: ‘I see only people’ or ‘Why do we look at people by the colour of their skin? It shouldn’t matter.’ This notion encourages people to ignore ethnicity and race when they form impressions of others. In the eyes of some, consciousness of colour is seen as being racist. It is believed that if we see racial difference, then we are being prejudiced. That is why we are encouraged to see everyone ‘as individuals’. Frankenberg (1993) talks about white people believing that they can see ‘the real person’ beneath the skin. People’s humanness is emphasised and the race of a person is ignored. Racism, in this view, is something connected to individual acts of discrimination. Being ‘colour blind’ means that we do not see racialised structures of inequality and unconscious racism. We may recognise how people of colour face discrimination without understanding how white people are privileged. Colour blindness also does not recognise the pride that one may associate with their ‘colour’. For some racialised groups, their experience of a racialised identity provides them with a sense of

1

The use of the word ‘blindness’ as a metaphor for lack of awareness has been criticised by disability theorists for trivialising sight deprivation. See, for example, Schor (1999). Gormley (2018) suggests ‘privilege ignorance’ as an alternative to describing not knowing about one’s privilege or knowing about it and ignoring it, but it doesn’t quite work in the context in which I am using the metaphor here.

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empowerment and solidarity that acts as a buffer against some of the negative effects of racism. This colour-blind approach can also be used to charge those on the receiving end of racism with racism when they seek special treatment to counteract the disadvantages they suffer. For if we are all just individuals, then special treatment would not be justified. Because it disavows institutional racism, the colour-blind approach reinforces white privilege while enabling white people to consider themselves non-racist. Sefa Dei et al. (2004) challenge the idea of white people being ‘non-racist’. In their view, we are all either anti-racist or racist. That is, not actively challenging racism implies complicity in condoning it. They use the notion of ‘aversive racists’ to describe those who think of themselves as being free of prejudice while they enjoy the privileges accruing to their white skin. Grimes (2002) believes that between 80 and 90 per cent of white people who regard themselves as non-prejudiced are likely to express aversive racism. It is this kind of attitude that enables white people to support egalitarian values and tolerance for difference, while benefiting from structures that continue unchallenged.

Diversity awareness: Race as the ‘other’ Another problematic approach to race relations is diversity awareness. There are many books and courses on understanding how various cultural groups differ from white people. Race is something that white people tend to attribute to other people. Many white people are now trying to appear to be more conscious of difference. Diversity is a buzz word at the moment, in the classroom and the workplace. Versions of diversity awareness have even become ‘corporatised’ in education and business. Whites are trained in ‘cultural competence’, defined as ‘the capacity to work effectively with cultural others’ (O’Hagen 2001: 83). Frankenberg (1997) has observed that such training focuses attention on racial difference at the expense of examining white dominance. Once again whites re-emerge as the normal standard bearer, with whites magnanimously wanting to become ‘competent’ in relation to members of ‘marked’ cultural groups. The diversity approach seems to assume that it is only non-white people who have a culture and a race. A few years ago, the Australian Association of Social Workers engaged in a review of its code of ethics for social workers. One significant development in the new code was the prescription of social workers to ensure that they were more responsive to cultural difference. This was ironical given the unstated assumption that all of the social workers

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were white. This is an instance of how unexamined whiteness unconsciously informs professional thinking. Racism and race relations are also often taught in universities as an issue facing people of colour. Moreton-Robinson (2000) has written about how white feminist academic women in Australia have incorporated cultural difference into their curricula but have failed to acknowledge or challenge their own middle-class white positioning. They have not racialised themselves, and Moreton-Robinson charges them with complicity in racial oppression of other women.2 Lasch-Quinn (2001) also notes that diversity training has burgeoned to the point of creating a ‘diversity industry’. DeRosa (1999: 190) has called this ‘racism as tourism’: ‘stopping along the road of life to learn bits and pieces of other cultures but not understanding the political implications of misappropriation, cultural intrusion and seeing “the other” as “exotic” ’. Certainly, many white people have used the cultures and traditions of Indigenous people and people of colour for their own purposes. The racial diversity approach often assumes that racial differences are inherent and it tends to ignore the relations of power that reinforce these differences. The focus is often on cultural and ethnic differences at the expense of structural and political issues. We seldom see the ideologies and structures of white supremacy named and interrogated within diversity awareness training (Jensen 2005).3

Making whiteness visible Most white people have very little awareness about their own racial identity.4 Whiteness is a concept that has meaning for white supremacists but it is ignored by the majority of white people who do not think of themselves as white and as benefiting from white privilege.

2

3

4

See also Hamad (2019), Saad (2020) and Beck (2021) for critical engagements with white feminism by women of colour. In recent years, inclusion and diversity training has incorporated unconscious bias training as a strategy for addressing racial prejudice. This approach, rooted in psychology, is premised upon the notion that prejudice is normal and largely unconscious to people. It diverts attention from institutional and systemic racial inequality and the agency of white people who sustain it. See, for example, Noon (2018) and Tate and Page (2018). Throughout this chapter, I explore the complex layering of whiteness. It should be acknowledged, of course, if one is talking about African Americans or Aboriginal Australians, that non-whiteness has complex layers as well.

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If you are a white reader, you might say ‘I don’t see myself as white’. I encountered this view many times when I have asked white students what it means to be white. The most common response is that they haven’t really thought about it. White male students have often commented to me that they see themselves as ‘persons’ or as ‘individuals’. White people, like members of all dominant groups, are more easily able to think of themselves as individuals rather than as racialised persons because they locate their behaviour as part of their personal characteristics rather than framing it by the colour of their skin. When white people speak, they claim to do so on behalf of humanity as a whole. People who are raced, however, are only able to speak for their race (Dyer 2002). This is what Anderson (2003) means when he says that whiteness is ‘the invisible norm’. Since whiteness is unexamined, it is seen as what is normal and natural. White people are encouraged not to think of themselves in racial terms. Whiteness represents normality and humanness. It is the universal standard against which judgements are made about moral worth. Of course, while whiteness is often invisible to those who have it, it has always been highly visible to people who are not white. In recent years, a new field of scholarship has emerged called ‘critical whiteness studies’ or ‘critical studies of whiteness’ (Applebaum 2016). Unlike the usual focus of race studies on the problems facing culturally diverse groups, this field of study involves an investigation of the experiences and behaviours of white groups. The most widely cited premise of critical studies of whiteness is that white people do not recognise their unearned white privileges (Rasmussen et al. 2001). The task identified by many anti-racist activists and scholars is to make whiteness more visible. Just as feminism has challenged men to critically reflect upon their masculinity, so anti-racism challenges white people to reflect upon what it means to be white. Just as men have been challenged to not take ‘male’ for granted, so white people have been challenged to not take ‘white’ for granted. For white men, of course, this involves a double challenge. Frankenberg (1993) describes this as ‘race cognisance’, whereby racial inequality is understood as being related to social structure. This latter approach involves white people explicitly naming themselves as white because of the understanding that one of the ways in which white privilege is maintained is through white people not naming themselves in racial terms. Referring to this developing awareness of whiteness as ‘critical whiteness’ Knowles (2003: 199) defines it as ‘challenging the privileges accruing to whiteness and seeing it as a set of racially located positions among others and not as a norm’. This means that we need to understand what has happened in

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the past if we are to take responsibility for acting in the present. Critics label this as the ‘Black armband’ view of history and tell us that what happened in the past has nothing to do with us (McIntyre and Clark 2003). For example, in Australia there has been an extended public discussion of the idea of Aboriginal reconciliation. A question rarely asked, however, is whether we can achieve reconciliation with Aboriginal people without interrogating our whiteness. As Dom, a participant in a study by Wadham (2001: 289) put it: ‘Whiteness must become a problem for Australians if reconciliation is to be achieved.’ If we do not see ourselves as white, it is easy to deny that we have anything to do with maintaining white privilege. One of the strategies of interrogating whiteness is to encourage white people to recognise the racialised nature of their experience and to see themselves in the context of their particularity (Garner 2007). The aim is ‘to induce self-consciousness or awareness of one’s racial privilege and racial embodiment’ (Seshadri-Crocks 2000: 161). As a tactic for raising this awareness, Thandeka (2000) suggests that white people play the race game that invites white people to experiment for a week using the word ‘white’ whenever they refer to a white person. The exercise upsets the norm of whiteness among white people and has a consequence of making them more conscious of being white. Thus when I speak, I speak as a white person. White people often feel most white or conscious of their whiteness when we find ourselves in a minority among an otherwise non-white gathering. When I was attending a conference in Washington DC, I inadvertently wandered into a predominantly African American neighbourhood in search of a restaurant. As I walked in to the restaurant, I not only immediately became conscious of being the only white person there but also that my presence was clearly taken as being out of the ordinary for the other diners. Since this experience happens so rarely for me and because I can easily go elsewhere and avoid the situation in the future, this is not the same as experiencing the racialised gaze felt by people who are not white. Nevertheless, for just a moment, I felt what it means to be the object of a racialised gaze. Most of the scholarly writing on whiteness is published in North America, although there is now a developing literature in the UK (Garner 2007; EddoLodge 2017) and Australia (Moreton-Robinson 2004; Hamad 2019). We need to be careful not to overgeneralise the culturally specific knowledge developed. In Australia, discussions of whiteness need to be located in the context of the ongoing colonisation of Indigenous people and particular government policies on migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. Historically, Australia

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has not been willing to acknowledge its occupation of Indigenous people’s land and although there is a growing awareness of past injustices against Indigenous people, Australian governments have failed to recognise Indigenous sovereignty. There is ongoing public debate about the need for white and Indigenous reconciliation, and what form it should take. There was a formal apology in 2008 by a previous Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to Indigenous people affected by the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families. In 2017 the Uluru Statement from the Heart, a national Indigenous consensus position on Indigenous constitutional recognition, was released. However, the then Malcolm Turnbull LiberalNational Coalition government and the subsequent Scott Morrison LiberalNational Coalition government have both rejected the statement. The failure to address land rights and sovereignty indicates that there is a long way to go to address colonising relations in Australia and elsewhere.5

Recognising white privilege One of the reasons for studying whiteness is to make more visible the privileges and entitlements white people receive so as not to cast all nonwhites as the ‘other’. For Levine-Rasky (2002) this means understanding the following: the historical dimensions of whiteness, how white dominance gains legitimacy, how it is socially constructed and practiced and how it is modified or reinforced by other social divisions. Addressing whiteness requires recognition of it. The problem is that because white people are rarely challenged about their privilege, they are not likely to be reflective about the benefits they receive. They have to learn to see those processes that reproduce their privileged identity (Sacks and Lindholm 2002). Peggy McIntosh, in a frequently reprinted article, identified fifty privileges that she benefited from as a white person. She turned the tables to examine the other side of racial disadvantage (McIntosh 1992). This list provided a compelling illustration at the time of how white privilege is reflected in the everyday lifestyles of white people. In the first edition of this book, I reproduced some of the key privileges from the list. Although I noted the limitations of the white privilege list in not acknowledging how class 5

Although I draw upon the international literature about whiteness in this chapter, and my argument about white privilege applies to all white supremacist societies, invariably my experiences of white privilege are shaped by the particular experiences of Aboriginal Australia.

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and other forms of oppression can impact on advantages of having white privilege, I did not at the time make explicit how the notion of white privilege as an ‘invisible knapsack’ individualised privilege.6 While I still believe that asking members of privileged groups to reflect on their privilege is an important part of bringing about a transformation of subjectivities among those in privileged positions, there are dangers in this approach if one does not recognise one’s complicity in the structures that maintain privilege (Applebaum 2010). Lensmire et al. (2013) argue that McIntosh’s understanding of privilege seems to be premised on the idea that privilege is individual rather than systemic. Hence, understanding one’s own privilege may not necessarily lead to struggles to overcome systemic oppression. Teaching about privilege as something that is possessed by individuals can obscure the links between the benefits of privilege and the practices of members of privileged groups that reproduce structures of privilege (Levine-Rasky 2010).7 If you believe that race is not a significant factor affecting life chances, then you are also unlikely to see your own advantages and privileges. You are also likely to use individualistic explanations for achievement in the world. White people are likely to maintain that the achievements in their life are a result of their hard work, not the privileges of their skin colour. Those who have less than them are cast as lazy and incompetent (Sefa Dei et al. 2004). As a white person, I benefit from whiteness as a system of privilege everyday whether I want to or not. We all tend to think that we have earned the privileges we enjoy. After all, we have worked hard and made sacrifices along the way. While I am not denying the reality of hard work and sacrifice, many of the privileges we have as white people are unearned. Even many of those who acknowledge the reality of racist oppression blame it on historical circumstances and systemic structures outside of people’s control and thus ignore their own complicity in those systems of injustice. Many white people who see themselves as progressive do not acknowledge their complicity in reproducing the structures of racial stratification. If they do not recognise the privileges that accrue to them because they are white, their actions against racial dominance are unlikely to be effective.8

6 7

8

This is why I have chosen not to reproduce the list in this second edition. While not engaging directly with her critics, McIntosh has updated her analysis of white privilege and extended the knapsack metaphor (see McIntosh 2016). Notwithstanding the critiques of the concept of white privilege for failing to address white people’s complicity in the structures of white supremacy (see, for example, Zack 2015), I argue that the discourse of white privilege is a necessary and insufficient step towards acknowledging complicity and collusion in the production of white supremacy.

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Whiteness and intersectionality Some critical race theorists have regarded race as the central organising dynamic of oppression and have ignored the roles played by class and gender dynamics. Critics have pointed out that there is a tendency in much of the critical whiteness literature to overlook the differences and social divisions that exist within whiteness. O’Grady (1999: 132), for example, argues that we have to be careful not to ‘essentialise race or see everything in terms of race alone’. Some of the discussions of whiteness rest upon notions of a fixed or natural essence. As Frankenberg (2001: 76) says, ‘whiteness as a site of privilege is not absolute but rather is cross-cut by a range of other axes of relative advantage or subordination; these do not erase or render irrelevant race privileges, but rather inflect or modify it’. Just as all men do not have the same access to ‘the patriarchal dividend’ (Connell 1987), not all white people are able to take the same degree of advantage from white privilege. Whiteness is fractured by gender, class, sexuality, ethnicity, age and ablebodiedness (Alcoff 2000) and the relationships to these attributes will impact on the degree of white privilege we are able to access. Whiteness may fade into the background if you are faced with discrimination based on your gender, sexuality or class. White privilege is thus likely to be mediated by these other aspects of identity. Marxists emphasise the role that capitalism and class divisions play in promoting racial hierarchy. They also draw attention to the differences in class privilege among white people (Philip 2004). In the North American context, poor working-class white people are represented as ‘white trash’ (Wray 2006). Some authors see this group’s oppression as comparable to that of racial minorities, while others emphasise the importance of raising awareness among this group of their racism and white privilege. While both men and women are implicated in white privilege, there are significant differences in the ways in which men and women embody these privileges. Yet, when I attended a whiteness studies conference, where most of the white participants were women, there were no papers and no discussion of how whiteness is mediated by gender. We should be careful in talking about white women as being privileged in an absolutist way (LevineRasky 2002). Kim (2004) also raises the concern that whiteness studies construct a binary white/non-white framework that does not acknowledge the differences in the experiences of non-white groups. There is a tendency to locate all non-Black people as white. Some racial minorities who may not be as disadvantaged as Black people may be regarded as white, even though they are relatively disadvantaged compared to white people.

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The question is whether recognising diversity within whiteness takes the focus off white dominance (Philip 2004). Although white people do not all have the same degree of access to white privilege, this does not negate the notion of white privilege; it just complicates it. That some whites also experience some form of oppression does not let them off the hook from addressing their white privileges. All white people are capable of being racially prejudiced and unaware of their white privilege, irrespective of their gender, sexuality or class. However, many debates about how differences among white people influence their racism and/or their privilege tend to be quite polarised. Either it is said that working-class white people are more racist than middle-class white people, or working-class white people are presented as a marginalised group who have no responsibility for racism. Whiteness accrues most privilege when it is associated with upper-class men who are dominant in most institutions (Feagin and Ducey 2017). There is a problem when explanations of white privilege fail to acknowledge how class, gender and other social divisions influence white identities and the privileges associated with them. Strategies that challenge institutionalised racism must take account of these structural differences and differences in consciousness among white people (Sefa Dei et al. 2004).

Transforming or disowning whiteness Once those of us who are white acknowledge our whiteness and the privileges that flow from it, we then have to decide what to do about it. The strategies are often framed as either transforming or disowning whiteness. Can whiteness be reconstructed or does it have to be repudiated? One argument is that we can construct a positive version of whiteness: that whiteness can be more than a form of domination. Flagg (1997: 629) argues that white people can develop ‘a positive white racial identity’ that is ‘neither founded on the implicit acceptance of white racial domination nor productive of distributive effects that systematically advantage whites’. In this view, whiteness as domination can be unlearned, just as men can unlearn hegemonic masculinity.9 Helms (1995) developed a six-stage process that white people can move through to develop an ‘autonomous white identity’. The final stage represents the internalisation of a positive anti-racist white identity that is not hampered by racism. 9

There are similar debates in masculinity studies about whether masculinity can be transformed into an alternative, positive, healthy masculinity or whether men have to exit masculinity altogether. See Chapter 7.

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Should white people try to create positive white identities? Such work lends itself to understanding racism as arising from individual personality disorders that leave the cultural and structural bases of white privilege unexamined (McKinney 2005). It also raises the question of whether whiteness is capable of being reconstructed towards a more inclusive form of subjectivity and whether it can be separated from the exercise of oppression (Kim 2004). Some writers have argued that any attempt to find goodness or acceptance in whiteness is problematic (Lopez 1996). These writers talk about disowning whiteness by becoming a ‘race traitor’. The journal Race Traitor founded by Noel Ignatiev takes the following position: ‘It is not merely that whiteness is oppressive and false; it is that whiteness is nothing but oppressive and false’ (Roediger 1991: 13). In this view, whiteness is only about domination. The motto of Race Traitor is: ‘treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity’ (Garvey and Ignatiev 1997: 346). Ignatiev (1996: 292) argues that white people should ‘forget that they are white and promote their interests as workers or women’. In this view, the project of repudiating white privilege also means repudiating white identities. Critics of this strategy argue that whiteness cannot simply be rejected or abandoned by an act of will (Seshadri-Crocks 2000; Garner 2007). While whites may develop a traitorous identity in relation to their white privilege, it does not mean ignoring that they are white. To think of oneself as raceless raises the danger of ignoring the implications of race on one’s life and the lives of others. Those of us who are white will continue to receive privileges for being so while white dominance persists (Sullivan 2006). In a context where racial domination continues to exist, I do not believe that we can simply construct individual non-oppressive white subjectivities. While whiteness may be able to be reformed at the level of identity, I do not believe that this means it is able to be completely disassociated from white privilege. This aim can only ever be achieved when white domination ends.10

Doing and undoing whiteliness Whiteness is a process. It is one of the ways in which we ‘do’ social dominance. It is not just an identity that comes out of having a white body; it is also something that is performed or practiced (Levine-Rasky 2002). Knowles

10

DeAngelo (2018) suggests that white people should aim to be ‘less white’, which means to be ‘less racially oppressive’.

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(2003: 25) refers to this process as ‘race making’. This means we reproduce racial inequality through ‘a myriad of ordinary everyday social processes’. It is the activities of people in their everyday lives that sustain white dominance. For those of us who are white, we make ourselves through our habitual practices. It follows that there is potential for us to ‘undo’ some elements of the maintenance of white privilege. Perhaps, through changing what we do in the world, we can influence both who we are and what we gain from being white. There is debate about whether we can ‘do’ race in ways that do not reproduce racial hierarchy. Critics suggest that seeing whiteness as something that is simply performed fails to make connections with institutionalised dominance (Ahmed 2004). The maintenance of whiteness involves group loyalty and material interests as well as individual performance (Anderson 2003). However, to suggest that whiteness is socially constructed through everyday activities challenges the conception of whiteness as a fixed social category. White privilege is not something that can be simply rejected and denounced. White people cannot give up their whiteness. However, developing an awareness of one’s whiteness and one’s racial prejudice can be a part of challenging racial inequality. Sullivan (2006) argues that while the structural concept of white supremacy captures the deliberate intentioned forms of white domination, it is unable to articulate the habitual practices which sustain white privilege. Sullivan acknowledges that racism operates on conscious and unconscious levels. This means white supremacy must be resisted through transformation of the self as well as through restructuring structures and institutions. Whiteness is internalised in individual white people as ‘an unconscious habit’ and as such it is often outside people’s experience or knowledge.11 White domination is located both in the world and in the individual white person. While racism is embedded within global political and economic structures, it is people’s commitment to these structures that reproduces them. To explore how racism takes root in people’s lives, changes in institutional structures need to be complemented by psychic changes in individuals. One cannot fully shirk racist habits, however, while conducive political and social structures are in place. Thus one needs to be working on both fronts at the same time. Sullivan (2006) makes the distinction between being white and being whitely. Being white simply refers to white skin colour, whereas being whitely embraces habits and dispositions that reproduce racial hierarchy and white 11

This notion of racism as an unconscious white habit should be distinguished from the current practices of unconscious bias training to challenge racism. See note 2 in this chapter.

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privilege. In her view, one can be white without being whitely. One can detach oneself from whiteliness that reproduces racism by challenging one’s racist habits and disposition. The process of unlearning whiteliness is not one of transcending white privilege but rather of acknowledging it and using it to struggle against racial domination. Bush (2004) also argues that there is an important relationship between prejudiced attitudes and racialised social structures. She believes that systemic racial inequality is reproduced through individuals’ complicity with ideologies that support those structures. If you believe that you are not part of racially unequal structures then you can enjoy the benefits of being white without having to do anything about them. We may even express anger at the injustice of those structures as long as we are not implicated in them or held personally responsible for them. By demonstrating how the everyday consciousness of people sustains those structures, we open up spaces for individuals to contribute to the elimination of white domination.

Facing whiteness: Emotions and the catalysts for change If I have managed to convince white readers that they have privileges that non-white people do not have, why should you relinquish these privileges? Why should you not enjoy them and if necessary defend them? What motivation for change would prompt you to challenge your own privileges? Wanting to create a better world is one motivation. Justice and fairness should motivate at least some people to let go of privileges (Rothenberg 2002). For others, challenging racism is motivated by a desire to live their life ethically and morally. The issue of motivation is captured in a vignette that Wise (2005) describes when he was challenged by a Black woman’s expressed lack of trust towards him despite his anti-racist work. His response was to say that he wasn’t challenging racism for her but was doing so for his own humanity. Hobgood (2000) argues that white privilege damages and impoverishes the lives of white people. When it comes to motivation to change, Wise (2005) also believes that it is only when whites realise how it damages their own lives that that will be prepared to do something about it. Recognising the privileges accruing to whiteness is likely to engender anxiety for many white people. Jensen (2005) says that the continuance of racism should cause us discomfort. If white people are serious about challenging white dominance, they must accept that they will experience some discomfort. For Jensen, the overwhelming feeling associated with acknowledging white privilege is one of sadness. Such an emotion is inevitable if we consider the level of racial injustice in our society.

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In Australia, the formal apology given by the previous Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (Rudd 2008) to those Indigenous people affected by the widespread removal of children from their families marked an important change in Australian race relations. The apology was only a small step towards reconciliation, yet, symbolically, it was nonetheless very important in encouraging white Australians to acknowledge and confront the Stolen Generation as an aspect of the colonial legacy. I was among many white Australians who on the day the speech was delivered found myself emotionally overwhelmed by the public acknowledgement of these injustices. Guilt is the emotion that often arises when white people start to engage with privilege. White people often respond defensively to the suggestion that they have white privilege because they do not want to feel guilty. Views are divided about whether guilt is positive in anti-racist work. Some people believe that there is no place for guilt and shame in addressing racism because it is seen as a waste of time and energy. Many white people do not believe that they should feel any guilt at all (Hitchcock 2002). They charge those who talk about white privilege with demonising white people. It must be remembered that they do this in a culture that refuses to acknowledge anything negative about whiteness. Some people regard guilt and shame as a ‘wake-up call’ and as a catalyst to initiate change. For them the refusal to feel any guilt can lead to a refusal to acknowledge any complicity in the suffering of others. Ryde (2009) believes that guilt and shame can play an important role in addressing white people’s complicity in white privilege.12

Defending whiteness: Resistance to change Defences to acknowledging white privilege take a number of forms. They range from the view that white privilege does not exist to defences of white privilege on the basis that it is a good thing because of the contribution of white Europeans to civilisation or because white people are morally superior (Jensen 2001). Wellman (1993) identifies the various ways in which white people defend their white advantages. The key strategy is to explain racial inequality in ways that do not implicate them. Even those who acknowledge that white privilege may not be morally defended argue that it cannot be

12

Yancy (2015) suggests that white people need to critically reflect on and emotionally experience how it feels to be a white problem. They need to stay for a time in the pain of ‘being a problem’.

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changed because it is part of human nature for one group to dominate the other. Still others retreat into cynical despair. Challenges to unjust systems of privilege are often experienced by members of the privileged group as a threat to their identity. Because white identity is founded on a belief in the natural superiority of white people, challenges to the ‘natural order of things’ will unsettle an identity that is founded on superiority (Sacks and Lindholm 2002). Others have used the meritocracy argument, noted earlier, that they have worked hard and thus deserve the rewards they receive. Some white people believe that if they accept the reality of white privilege it will negate their achievements. It was easy for me to construct a narrative about the hard work I did and the class barriers I had to overcome to attain the class privilege of becoming a university academic. It was much more difficult for me to acknowledge that being a white man opened many doors for me along the way. Some white people believe that they are a disadvantaged group now because of affirmative action policies that favour non-white people. Many white men believe that they are missing out on key positions because of the advances made by women and people of colour. They often feel that they are discriminated against for being white because they are victims of antidiscrimination policies (O’Brian and Feagin 2004). There is thus a move to construct being white as an obstacle to life opportunities and to deflect whiteness from being a privileged social location (Garner 2007).13

The politics of whiteness There is a possibility that whiteness studies may reproduce white dominance rather than unsettle it. Ahmed (2004) cautions that using the term ‘critical’ in relation to whiteness studies does not offer protection from the dangers of appropriation. How do you study whiteness without recentring white privilege? Whiteness and dominant white identities are privileged daily to the detriment of other racial identities. While Cuomo and Hall (1999: 3) argue that the process of ‘critically interrogating whiteness seeks to decentre rather than recentre whiteness by making performances of whiteness visible’,

13

See also DiAngelo (2018) for an analysis of white fragility, where even a mild challenge to whiteness and white privilege triggers a strong defensive posture. For some nonwhite anti-racist activists, these defensive responses by white people are so emotionally exhausting that they have decided to give up on talking to white people about race. See, for example, Eddo-Lodge (2017).

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does this eventuate? How are we to discuss whiteness without once again putting it in the centre? Some critics have argued that whiteness scholarship creates new forms of white privilege because it opens up new opportunities for white academics (Anderson 2003). Hill (2004) is sceptical about what has been achieved by whiteness scholars since the emergence of the field beyond the creation of new privileged academic positions. In the North American context, Omi (2001: 226) has reported that many African Americans are concerned that whiteness studies may be ‘a sneaky form of narcissism’ and that it may shift ‘the focus and the resources back to white people and their perspective’. Clarke and O’Donnell (1999, 4) talk about ‘white fetishism’ and discuss how ‘even critical white studies can recentre dialogue around whiteness’. They report that in some multicultural conferences in North America, discussions about whiteness dominate the discourse about race. Gillborn (2006: 319) regards it as a move to bring the voice of white people back to the centre in terms such as: ‘But enough about you, let me tell you about me’. hooks (1992) has also pointed out that in some discussions of whiteness, there has been an overemphasis on how racism is victimising to whites. She argues that this strategy, which is aimed at encouraging whites to act against racism in their own interests, is misguided. One of the other dangers of critical whiteness studies is that whites may only read what other whites have to say about whiteness, just as many masculinity scholars do not read feminism. Subordinate groups ‘have done most of the work of figuring out how privilege and oppression operate’, so we need to read what they have written (Johnson 2001: 156). It is important to remember that people who are not white have written the most important work on whiteness and it was non-white academics who first brought the issue of whiteness to prominent attention (Hill-Collins 1990; hooks 1992; Morrison 1993). Some critics have charged whiteness studies with overemphasising the cultural dimensions of whiteness at the expense of the structural determinants of racial inequality (Garner 2007). McLaren (1998) argues that we need to focus anti-racist struggles on the redistribution of resources rather than on white identities. We must remember, however, that racism is an ideological reality as well as having a material base. Whiteness functions as cultural capital in the form of values and norms. It is worth distinguishing between whiteness as identity, as ideology and as institution. Frankenberg (1993: 1) says that we need to separate out whiteness as a form of structural privilege from whiteness as a standpoint from which we view ourselves and others, and again from whiteness as ‘a set of cultural practices that are visibly unmarked and unnamed’.

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Some forms of white studies analyse the impact of whiteness on particular white people without examining the links of whiteness to white privilege and racial inequality (Bush 2004). Attitudinal change among whites will not in itself dismantle white privilege. We have to move beyond studies of prejudiced attitudes of white people to understand the ideologies and structures of white dominance. The danger is that studies explore white identities without locating them in the context of unequal racial formations. This is a danger that must be faced because white people’s roles in challenging racism must be addressed. We must ensure that any focus on whiteness should always make the links to racism and white privilege. To struggle against racism is not to transcend it but rather to acknowledge one’s relationship to it. Ahmed (2004) challenges white anti-racist activists to consider ways in which the recognition of white privilege itself may also potentially intensify it. As white people, we always remain implicated in whiteness and white privilege. Sometimes out of our desire to take action, we are unable to fully listen and hear from non-white people about the effects of racism on their lives. To stay accountable, there needs to be ongoing engagement with non-white anti-racist activists.

Listening to those who experience racism An important part of this process of undoing privilege is learning to see ourselves through the eyes of others. Kincheloe and Steinberg (2000) argue that if white men see themselves through the eyes of Indigenous people and people of colour, they may be more able to confront their inclination to negate the impact of racism. The question is: how do we encourage whites to become more open to seeing themselves as others see them?14 If whiteness is to become something other than privilege and racial dominance, whites must listen to what non-whites have to say about us. We must take the perspective of those that we define as ‘the other’ seriously. Learning to listen responsively to the experiences of non-white people is often a significant challenge for white people. Studying the insights of Indigenous peoples and others from non-white cultures is important not only to understand their experience of oppression but also to learn about their ways of perceiving the world and whites within it.

14

Alcoff (2015) suggests the importance of developing a ‘white double consciousness’, where white people come to see themselves through two sets of eyes, their own and those who are marginalised and subordinated by whiteness.

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Sacks and Lindblom (2002) suggest that we need to overcome what they describe as ‘social distance’15 between ourselves and those who are marginalised. In effect this means that we need to spend time with people who are different to us rather than always associating with ‘our own kind’. However, there are also times when white people’s presence in the worlds of non-white people will not be appreciated. Knowing when to engage with non-white people and when not to is a complex matter and we need to develop an awareness about when our presence is not wanted.

Conclusion The starting point for effective anti-racism by white people must be an acknowledgement that they are white. We must also recognise that we live in a white supremacist society, that we have privileges accruing to our whiteness and that we are personally implicated in the reproduction of the ideologies and structures of white dominance. White people must also come to understand that what we do in the world reproduces our privileges. It is difficult for all white people to come to understand the complexity of our connections to white privilege, how we collude with the system that perpetuates it and what to do about it. Our opposition to it does not necessarily negate it. White anti-racist activists thus need to acknowledge that developing an oppositional stance against white privilege does not stop them accruing privilege by virtue of their white bodies. It does not guarantee that their anti-racist practice will be free of complicity with racial domination (Philip 2004). Those of us who rebel against some form of injustice need to recognise that it is more than likely that we will be contributing in some ways to that injustice as well, in spite of our opposition to it. It is not possible for us to be completely detached from the system that grants us privileges. We thus need to work at transforming the system and continue to be open to recognising when we get it wrong. The concept of whiteness is useful as part of the critique of white supremacy because it is important to challenge the invisibility of whiteness as normative. It is possible to construct an oppositional white identity as long as we do not lose sight of institutionalised racism and structural inequality between people categorised as white and non-white.

15

It is ironic that at the time of writing (February 2021), the language of ‘social distance’ is being used in public health promotion to require people to physically distance themselves from others to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

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7

Gender order and the patriarchal dividend

I first engaged with the issue of privilege in response to being challenged by women about my entitlement as a man. As a heterosexual white man, reading feminist theory and being in a relationship with a feminist woman, I was forced to confront my male privilege. In the 1970s my partner would come home from women’s consciousness-raising meetings and challenge my limited participation in housework and my over-commitment to paid work at the expense of our relationship. I had to work out what these challenges would mean not only for my personal relationship but also for my career of social work and my political activism on issues of social justice. I have written elsewhere about my experiences of living with a woman in the 1970s who was discovering feminism and about my involvement in antisexist men’s groups and campaigns about men’s violence (Pease 2017b). This engagement with gender privilege would take me into theorising and research with men about the pathways by which some men become pro-feminist and how to analyse men’s power and resistance to change (Pease 2000). I have also written about my experiences of teaching university courses on critical studies of men and masculinities (Pease 1997b; Pease 1998) and running patriarchy awareness workshops for men (1997a). This chapter draws upon that earlier work. However, in the process of writing this chapter, I found myself approaching it anew in light of the wider theorising about privilege that is the focus of this book. During the 1970s and the 1980s, as the second wave of feminism swept the Western world, the study of gender understandably focused on women’s experience of oppression under patriarchy. Although there were early responses by men to feminism during the 1970s and 1980s (from feminist supportive to anti-feminist hostility) it was not until the 1990s that the issue of masculinity would become a popular topic both in non-academic books about men and in the scholarship of critical studies of men and masculinities. In university courses about gender, there was a shift from focusing on the experiences of being oppressed to the issues faced by those who were the oppressors. With the development of new courses on men, these courses and women’s studies became subsumed into a single field of gender studies.

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Many feminists, however, criticised the notion of gender studies for fear that it may marginalise women’s experience under generic labels (Yea 1997). It might also imply parity between women’s and men’s studies, premised on a belief that the study of men is worth equal time. There were further concerns that men will focus more on the hazards of men’s lives than the privileges men enjoy. It was observed in the 1990s that many men’s studies courses gave insufficient attention to a critique of men’s power and privilege (Hearn 1996).1 In addition, Canaan and Griffin (1990) were concerned that men’s studies might deny women’s experiences of men and masculinity. They pondered the genuineness of men’s motives, suggesting that it may be yet another source of research and publishing jobs for the boys. Many feminists within universities are still very cautious about the development of men’s studies. They are mindful of Hearn’s (1987) warning over thirty years ago that such programmes may attract male social scientists who have no commitment to feminism or, worse still, a commitment to some form of anti-feminist position. The important issue here is the theoretical and political orientation of this work to ensure that it challenges male domination.

From gender difference to the social construction of masculinity There is an enormous volume of literature on men and masculinities. Theoretical approaches range from socio-biological, psychoanalytical, Jungian and sex role theories through to materialist and discursive approaches. My aim is not to provide an overview of the different theories, as I have done that elsewhere (Pease 2002b).2 My focus here is to specifically theorise men’s gender privileges and situated dominance in relation to women. In spite of the vast scholarship on men and masculinities published in the last thirty years, and an awareness that challenges traditional thinking about male dominance, the ‘common-sense’ approach to understanding men is to continue to invoke a language of biological differences. Claimed biological

1

2

See Hearn and Howson (2019) for an overview of the key arguments for this academic work to be informed by feminist scholarship and grounded in critical studies of men and masculinities (CSMM). The main emerging theoretical development since the first edition of this book has been new materialist and posthuman engagements with men and masculinities. See, for example, Pease (2021).

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differences between men and women continue to be used to legitimate male dominance and gender inequality. Stephen Goldberg’s (1973) The Inevitability of Patriarchy is perhaps the best historical example of this argument. Goldberg argues that differences in concentrations of particular hormones give men an ‘aggression advantage’ over women. He believes that it is rational for women to accept a subordinate position because they do not have the same competitive edge. ‘Men must always have the high status roles because women are not for psychological reasons as strongly motivated to obtain them’ (Goldberg 1973: 47). Apparently, this ‘aggression advantage’ means that men will inevitably dominate women, as ‘the hormonal makes the social inevitable’ (Goldberg 1973: 49). If inequality is based upon some natural order, it has to be accepted. In this view, there is no point in trying to equalise the genders because patriarchy is regarded as an inevitable product of our biology. Nor is there any point in trying to change the basis of gender relations because it will only upset the natural order. Consequently, in this view, the feminist vision of a gender-equal society is doomed to failure. Goldberg updated his book in 1993 and reaffirmed his analysis in spite of considerable anthropological and sociological criticism of his thesis (see, for example, Connell 1987; Clatterbaugh 1990 and Messner 1992). This socio-biological analysis is still ‘alive and well’ in much contemporary popular writing about men (Moir and Moir 2003; Biddulph 2018). As I have written elsewhere (Pease 2000; 2002b), there is no convincing evidence to sustain an argument that biological differences constitute a foundation for male dominance and gender-segregated work.3 Instead, I argue that gender and masculinity are socially constructed throughout life. Following Connell (2000b), it is most useful to understand men and masculinities as involving six key dimensions: 1. Multiple masculinities that arise from different cultures, different historical periods and different social divisions between men. 2. Different masculinities that reflect different positions in relation to power with some forms of masculinity hegemonic and dominant, while other masculinities are marginalised and subordinated. 3. Institutionalised masculinities embedded in organisational structures and in the wider culture as well as being located within individual men.

3

See also Cordelia Fine’s (2017) critique, from within neuroscience, of the fallacy that biological sex differences explain gender inequality.

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4. Embodied masculinities that are represented physically in how men engage with the world. 5. Masculinities produced through the actions of individual men. 6. Fluid masculinities that change in relation to the reconstructive efforts of progressive men and in response to changes in the wider society. Within this theoretical context, Connell (1995) identifies four forms of masculinity: hegemonic, complicit, marginalised and subordinate. Hegemonic masculinity is the culturally dominant form of masculinity that is manifested in a range of different settings (Connell 2001). Such masculinity is idealised and promoted as a desirable attainment for boys and young men to strive towards. It is presented as heterosexual, aggressive, authoritative and courageous (Connell 2000a). The manliness of men and boys is judged by their ability to measure up to this normative notion. Sporting prowess, work status and power over women are the key signifiers of this form of masculinity. Hegemonic masculinity also establishes the foundations for men’s violence against women (O’Toole and Schiffman 1997). Many writers have noted the close links between exalted masculinity and the legitimation of violence, especially in response to any form of threat (Messershmidt (2000). The concept of hegemonic masculinity has been criticised from various quarters (Donaldson 1991; Peterson 1998; Demetriou 2001 and Jefferson 2002). These criticisms range from the charge of essentialising and psychologising men on the one hand to claims about structural determinism on the other. However, the concept should be retained because it still captures the social divisions between men and the hegemonic influence of dominant forms of masculinity. Although the majority of men do not adhere to hegemonic masculinity, it nevertheless represents the most valued form of masculinity and all men are positioned in relation to it (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). It does not have to correspond to the lives of the majority of men to hold power over men’s experiences of being a man. The majority of men engage in what Connell (1995) refers to as complicit masculinity. Complicit masculinities refer to those men who do not meet the normative standard of hegemonic masculinity but nevertheless benefit from it in various ways. The concept of complicit masculinity is useful in understanding how men who do not regard themselves as oppressors nevertheless act in ways that reproduce men’s dominance and male privilege. Complicit masculinities also maintain the structures and ideologies that reproduce men’s violence. One might refer to these men as ‘perpetuators of violence’ (Pease 2008). While the majority of men may not engage in

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excessive forms of hegemonic masculinity, they nevertheless do not challenge patriarchy and male privilege that supports this form of dominance (M. Mills 1998) because they adhere to the dominant discourse. Marginalised and subordinate masculinities are useful in understanding the relationship between gender and other dimensions of stratification such as class, race and sexuality. Connell (2000b) uses these concepts to illustrate how the diversity of masculinities is marked by hierarchy and exclusion. This hierarchy of masculinities means that men do not benefit equally from male privilege.

Theorising male dominance and men’s privilege As outlined in the theoretical framework in Chapter 2, gender is manifested at structural and cultural levels of social organisation, as well as at the level of interpersonal interactions and in the identities and subjectivities of individuals. This suggests that masculinities and male dominance are best understood through the levels of the material world, discourse and the psyche. Rather than positing a single theoretical frame, it is most useful to straddle the tensions in multiple levels of analysis. Consequently, feministinformed materialist, discursive and psychoanalytic perspectives together offer the most promising insights. Materialist perspectives locate men in the context of social institutions. Masculinities are constructed in schools, workplaces, families and the state through both cultural and structural processes (Haywood and Mac an Ghaill 2003). Tolson (1977) was an early writer to focus on the way in which masculinities are reproduced by working conditions and class divisions. He argued that the social organisation of paid work shaped the various forms of masculinity and that they were differentiated by class divisions leading to particular working-class and middle-class masculinities. In this view, male dominance is explained in socio-economic and structural terms. In contrast to those perspectives that emphasise workplace cultures, feminist materialist analyses point out that the sexual division of labour within the home is as important in understanding men’s power and privilege as class divisions in paid work (Edley and Wetherell 1995). Hearn (1987) stresses the importance of sexuality, child rearing, nurturing and care for others as significant practices in the production of masculinity. McMahon (1999) has developed a materialist analysis of men’s labour in relation to the domestic sphere and has examined how men’s participation or non-participation in household work shapes their experience of masculinity.

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Discursive theorists argue that materialist approaches are structurally determinist and neglect the potential for individual agency and the possibility for resistance and change (Whitehead 2002). Discursive approaches emphasise the role of culture, ideology and discourse in constructing masculinities (Beynon 2002). In particular, they examine the way in which masculine norms are constructed by dominant discourses which position men to take up particular subject positions (Pease 2000). It is within discourses that we are offered subject positions which convey notions of what it is to be a man (Pease 2000). Men are invited to take up or turn down different subject positions and the sense of masculine identity that goes with them. In this view, one brings about social change through producing alternative discourses which lead to new subject positions (Ramazanoglu 1993). The progressive potential of this analysis is to reveal alternative possibilities for the construction of masculinities not yet realised (Saco 1992). Discourses are not autonomous from social relations and material oppression. On their own, they do not engage with the structural dimensions of gender associated with the state and political economy and with materialist practices in the family. As we have seen, gender relations are not only shaped by cultural norms but are also influenced by paid work, domestic labour, child care, sexuality and violence. Men’s dominance is both discursive and material and it is necessary to attend simultaneously to both diversity and difference in men’s lives resulting from multiple subjectivities and the wider structural dimensions of power and privilege (Pease 2000). Whitehead (2002) maintains that such a position is ‘untenable’ and that one cannot hold both a structural and poststructural position. I reject this view, as I believe that we need to straddle the modernist/postmodern divide to develop a more complex understanding of the relationship between the material and symbolic structures. What is not included in the materialist and discursive perspectives, however, is the process by which male entitlement is internalised by men and how men might come to work for change. Also missing in these perspectives are the mechanisms through which men’s masculinity comes to reflect the socio-economic structure of capitalism and the gender relations of patriarchy. We need to understand the ways in which the dominant ideology is internalised in the psyches of men and how this ideology interacts with material conditions to shape men’s experience. We also need to examine the relationship between subjectivity and the unconscious (Pease 2019). Psychoanalytic perspectives focus on the mind and the psyche in relation to the production of desire, fantasy and emotions (Edley and Wetherell 1995). Orthodox psychoanalytic theory has much to answer for in relation to the

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reinforcement of women’s subordination.4 However, in 1975 Mitchell wrote a qualified defence of psychoanalytic theory, arguing that it was important for feminist struggle. For Mitchell (1975), dominant ideologies are deeply buried in women’s unconscious and psychoanalytic theory was essential for understanding the ways in which these ideologies were internalised. The feminist engagement with psychoanalytic theory coincided with a series of Marxist-psychoanalytic dialogues which attempted to explain capitalist alienation not only in terms of political and economic oppression but also in terms of emotional impoverishment and psychic oppression. Leonard (1984) argues that by understanding the nature of the unconscious at particular periods in history, it unmasks important aspects of dominant ideology. What is required then is not only a change in the external world and a change in consciousness but also a transformation of the inner structure of people’s unconsciousness. These analyses have implications for understanding internalised dominance as well as internalised oppression. From a feminist psychoanalytic perspective, hegemonic masculinity and male domination are reproduced by denying the feminine (Frosh 1994). Such repression leads men to feel antagonism and hostility towards women, which in turn reproduces men’s dominance. In this view, it is men’s hatred and fear of women that fuels their need to dominate and control them (Jukes 1993). Rowan (2007) argues that the process of transforming the male psyche will need to involve ‘unconsciousness-raising’ as well as consciousnessraising because some elements of hegemonic masculinity are deeply buried in the unconscious. He uses the term ‘patripsyche’ to describe the formation of patriarchal patterns in the psyche. These internal patterns mirror the external oppressive structures, which Rowan believes are kept in place by an oppressive male ego. Segal (1987) contends that violence and discrimination against women result from inequalities of power between men and women rather than from internal psychic dynamics in men. I do not see these sources of men’s dominance as necessarily ‘either–or’ and I believe that a feminist-informed psychoanalytic theory has an important (if insufficient) contribution to understand the ways in which male privilege and men’s sense of entitlement is reproduced within men’s psyche. Over thirty years ago, Grosz (1988) developed a conceptual framework for understanding the various forms of knowledge underpinning misogyny and discrimination against women. She distinguishes between sexist, patriarchal

4

In the 1970s, psychoanalytic theory was subjected to numerous feminist critiques. See, for example, Firestone (1971), Figes (1972) and Millet (1972).

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and phallocentric forms of knowledge that underpin women’s oppression. Sexism refers to observable discriminatory practices that privilege men and disadvantage women. These can include hostile, suspicious and excluding practices whereby women are treated differently because they are women. Patriarchy encompasses more systemic forms of domination that go beyond individual practices of gender discrimination. This includes the underpinning structures of gender oppression that position men and women differentially in the gender order and legitimates the sexist discriminatory practices. Phallocentrism operates at the discursive or symbolic level whereby women are represented in terms that are consistent with masculinist norms. I find this multilevel framework useful for interrogating the various levels of male privilege.

Patriarchy and systemic domination Feminists from the 1970s onwards used the concept of patriarchy to articulate the overarching framework of the various forms of male domination and men’s systemic exploitation of women. Alan Johnson (1997) identifies three dimensions of patriarchy: male-dominated, male-identified and malecentred. Male-dominated refers to men’s authority and control over the major social, political, economic, religious, legal and military institutions. Male-identified refers to the cultural ideals about good, normal and desirable forms of masculinity and the various ways in which women are devalued in our society. Male-centred refers to the way in which men’s experiences come to represent human experience more generally. Some feminist writers have critiqued patriarchy for being ahistorical. Rowbotham (1981) rejected it because of its biological connotations and the suggestion that male dominance was unitary and unchanging. Barrett (1980) also criticised it for being apparently fixed and unchanging and suggesting a transhistorical and universal oppression. Whitehead (2007) similarly expresses reservations about the concept because he says that it implies a static and fixed state of women’s oppression rather than recognising the extent to which male dominance is fluid and changing. He believes that patriarchy does not acknowledge feminist achievements and advances towards gender equality and does not capture the complexity of men’s dominance over women. Some early feminist versions of patriarchy did not seem to allow a place for intervention and seemed to offer no position from which women and men could challenge the gender order. Implicit in some theories of patriarchy was the notion that male dominance and masculinity were reflections of each

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other, where all men are seen as a coherent gender class with the same vested interests in controlling women. Such analyses are biologically or structurally determinist and the political prognosis is pessimistic. If all men are the enemy, then it is difficult to envisage the possibility of men and women working together against patriarchy (Edley and Wetherell 1995). Notwithstanding these criticisms, patriarchy is still useful to describe men’s systemic dominance over women across a wide range of social institutions and gendered sites. The benefit in continuing to use the term ‘patriarchy’ is that it focuses attention on the systemic and global nature of women’s subordination and it provides a framework for identifying the privileges and advantages accruing to men as a result of men’s dominance. Many feminist writers acknowledge that patriarchy is not monolithic and that it contains contradictions. Patriarchy is not fixed, as its form changes over time and different aspects of it have greater or lesser significance in different contexts (Walby 1990). Patriarchy is best understood as an historical structure with changing dynamics and it needs to be understood as involving the intersection of numerous factors and multiple levels of experience (Dragiewicz 2009). It may be more useful to refer to patriarchies in the plural to acknowledge the culturally specific forms that arise from different regions of the world.5

Phallocentrism and symbolic order The origins of the term ‘phallocentrism’ are located in Lacanian psychoanalysis (Lacan 1987) which emphasises the importance of language in reproducing power relations. Derived from the Greek word phallus, the representation of the penis comes to embody patriarchal authority and hegemonic masculinity. Phallocentrism was first used by Derrida (1976) to describe the privileges associated with the male phallus. It operates at the discursive or symbolic level of male privilege and is generally used to refer to the assumed dominance of masculinity and male-centredness across multiple sites of cultural and social relations. Since phallocentric discourses are so commonly shared and pervasive and are often internalised unconsciously, their oppressive dimensions are rarely

5

In Facing Patriarchy (Pease 2019), I develop this analysis more fully, arguing that patriarchy is a structural formation with ideological and discursive dimensions, and also functions at the levels of homosocial bonding among men, in interpersonal relationships between men and women and in the identities and subjectivities of individual men and women.

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recognised. As most men’s beliefs about male superiority are experienced as being natural and normal and are institutionalised and culturally exalted, they generally do not notice their advantages. They may even express opposition to blatant forms of sexist discrimination but not see the relationship between sexism and male privilege. French feminists such as Kristeva (1980) locate domination and oppression within the structure of language. Adams, Towns and Gavey (1995), for example, identify the ways in which men use language to reinforce their assumptions about male dominance. Men construct what Adams, Towns and Gavey (1995) call a ‘discourse of entitlement’ which enables them to believe that they are designed to dominate women. Discourses such as these legitimate men’s violence against women. From a discursive perspective, one challenges phallocentric discourses by replacing the male phallus with alternative forms of symbolic power.

Sexism and coercive control Mederos (1987) differentiates between the institutionalised patriarchal system, which refers to the structural advantages and privileges that men enjoy, and the personal patriarchal system which involves men’s face-to-face interactions with women both at home and in the public sphere. Because all men are socialised within patriarchy, they will all believe to some extent that they have a right to make normative claims upon women. Men will differ in relation to what claims they make and how they enforce them. These claims include deferential treatment, unpaid domestic labour and child care, sexual services and emotional support. Most men come to believe that they deserve something from women, which they then experience as an entitlement. The totality of these entitlements and claims is what constitutes male privilege. This sense of entitlement may not necessarily be conscious and it may only come into their awareness when they are deprived of this unreciprocated service. While some men have learnt to see the oppression of women, far fewer men have learned to see male privilege. Belief in male superiority and male authority is deeply embedded in most men. Brittan and Maynard (1984) argue that all men are exposed to socialisation experiences that turn many of them into ‘male supremacists’. Men are under pressure to internalise beliefs and feelings which naturalise their commitment to the subordination of women. One of the key features of patriarchy is control. All men are controlling to some extent and that there are no substantial differences between men

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who are violent to women and men who are not (Mederos 1987). Some men engage in control over women in response to their own experience of being controlled by other men at work. Given that men judge their manhood by how much control they have, these men’s control of women can serve as a form of compensation for their lack of control at work (Johnson 1997). Stark (2007) believes that the entrapment of women in personal life cannot be adequately understood by violence, not even by extending the definition of violence to include a range of abusive and controlling behaviours. In his view, we need to use the language of coercive control to best capture the multitude of ways that men dominate women through intimidation, economic oppression, limitations of movement and speech. Defining men’s violence as abuse of their authority and power implies that men’s power over women is legitimate. For many men being in control is an essential part of what it is to be a man. To challenge men’s coercive control of women will be even more difficult than preventing men’s violence because it involves challenging the normative foundations of men’s privilege and their sense of entitlement to make claims upon women.6 Challenging the legitimacy of men’s power over women takes us to the heart of men’s sense of entitlement.

Gender regimes and the gender order In 1987 Connell developed a comprehensive theoretical overview of gender relations. Drawing upon important feminist work at the time, she formulated the concept of ‘gender order’ to describe the socially constructed pattern of gender relations between men and women. While patriarchal power and unequal gender relations constitute the basis of most forms of gendered social organisation, she emphasised that there was no inevitability that the patterning of gender should be patriarchal. Within the context of this wider gender order, Connell used the notion of ‘gender regimes’ to describe the current pattern of gender relations within specific institutions such as workplaces, schools, government and other apparatuses of the state. Connell (1987) first formulated her then threefold model of gender as a structure of social practice: labour, power and cathexis (emotional attachment). Connell (2005) later added the fourth dimension of symbolism because she had previously underestimated the significance of culture in

6

At the time of writing (February 2021), there is a debate in the women’s services sector in Australia about recent moves to criminalise coercive control. For an outline of the arguments for and against, see Walklate and Fitz-Gibbon (2019).

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constructing masculinities. We can use these four dimensions of gendered power to disaggregate various forms of male privilege. At the level of power relations, Connell documents the various forms of subordination of women to men. This is manifested in men’s control over most of the senior positions in power in both the corporate and government sectors including: the military, the police and other sectors of government (Connell 1995).7 Male privilege is normalised through cultural understandings of men’s monopoly of the upper echelons of these private corporations and public sector institutions. Powerful interrelationships between hegemonic constructions of masculinity and hegemonic constructions of management and leadership produce a taken-for-granted association between maleness and organisational power (Collinson and Hearn 2005). Male managers often find that management offers a powerful validation of masculine identity in expressing many of the qualities of successful manhood (Whitehead 2002).8 Men’s violence against women can be located within this framework. Connell (1995) regards men’s violence against women as providing a general benefit to men’s dominance because it provides a threat to women, even if it is not overt or actualised. Many writers have connected men’s privilege and sense of male entitlement to violence against women. We live in a culture that legitimises and sanctions violence. Most men believe that they have the inherent right to control decision making and the division of labour in the family. Because women’s domestic work is seen as an affirmation of a patriarchal masculinity, these men are easily disappointed and frustrated when women do not do what they expect of them. Historically, feminist analyses have argued that violence against women is a reflection of patriarchal structures that subordinate and oppress women. O’Toole and Schiffman (1997) understand violence against women as flowing logically from inequalities in power between women and men. Websdale and Chesney-Lind (1998) point out that numerous studies link power relations in families to the extent of men’s violence against women. They show a significant relationship between economic dependence of a woman on a man and greater likelihood of her experiencing acts of violence.9

7

8

9

Although Connell made this point about male dominance of corporate and government sectors in 1995, the 2020 review by the Workplace Gender Equality Agency in Australia demonstrates that there has been little erosion of male dominance in the subsequent twenty-five years. See Flood and Pease (2005) for an analysis of how male privilege is manifested in public sector institutions. This is more complex than arguing that gender inequality measured by inequalities in employment, education and income is the main cause of men’s violence against women. See Pease (2019) for an analysis of men’s violence against women in the Nordic countries

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At the level of the gendered division of labour and production relations, Connell (1995) examines the dividends men derive from their status and position in patriarchal authority relations, in terms of higher wages and other material benefits. Men have higher levels of workforce participation, earn twice the average income of women and control most of the wealth in society. Men earn consistently more than women in comparable jobs and women are more likely to be working part-time and have less access to superannuation (Workplace Gender Equality Agency 2020). On the global scale, while women undertake approximately two-thirds of the economically productive work in the world and provide almost half of the food, they receive only 10 per cent of all income and only 1 per cent of all property (World Economic Forum 2020). These gendered inequalities persist in spite of legislative changes and challenges by the women’s movement. Patterns of gender inequality are also evident when we examine domestic work in heterosexual living arrangements. Men’s lack of involvement in family work is documented in numerous studies. Many surveys demonstrate men’s proportional involvement in child care and housework has increased only marginally in spite of women’s increased participation in the paid labour force. Studies carried out in North America and Europe in the last twelve years consistently demonstrate that the sexual division of labour in the home is very rigid (Thebaud 2010; Davis and Greenstein 2013; Fahlen 2016; Rousseau 2016). Even when men’s and women’s work outside the home is equal, women still do significantly more housework than men. At the level of cathexis and emotional attachment, Connell interrogates the expression of sexual desire. Heterosexuality for men embodies specific privileges in relation to women’s subservience to men’s sexual pleasure and men’s receipt of emotional support from women partners that they do not have to reciprocate (Connell 1995).10 At the level of symbolism, Connell notes that men are culturally exalted over and above women in part because they control cultural institutions such as the media, universities and religion where men’s and women’s statuses are defined and promoted. Women are defined as subordinate to men and consequently receive lower levels of recognition for their contributions to society (Connell 2000a).11

10 11

which have achieved greater levels of gender equality and the importance of locating men’s violence against women in the context of patriarchy. See Chapter 8 for an analysis of the privileges associated with heterosexual desire. Connell’s level of symbolism can be equated with the concept of phallocentrism previously discussed.

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Connell’s four dimensions of gender practice collectively form ‘the patriarchal dividend’. This patriarchal dividend constitutes the advantages that men gain from their maintenance of gender inequality (Connell 2000a). For Connell, men have interests in actively defending these benefits that they receive. Sexism and patriarchal arrangements can only be overcome if we acknowledge and address male privilege flowing from the patriarchal dividend. When gender inequalities are acknowledged, they tend to be discussed more in terms of women’s disadvantage than male advantage and privilege. Even many pro-feminist writers who recognise gender inequality do not theorise male privilege (Carbado 2001). So rather than talking in terms of women’s lack of resources, we should talk more about men’s surplus of resources (Connell 2002). Eveline (1994; 1998) has drawn attention to ‘male advantage’ in contrast to ‘women’s disadvantage’, pointing out that focusing solely on women’s disadvantages and ignoring male privilege normalises and legitimises masculinist standards.12 If men do not recognise the unearned privileges they receive as men, they will be unable to acknowledge the impact of these privileges upon the women in their lives. Men gain these benefits whether they actively support male domination or not. Even those proactive against men’s privileges will continue to reap the benefits of them. Men must examine their lives to become more aware of the privileges they experience every day simply because they are men, as a precursor to changing what they do.

Intersections and the social divisions between men Connell (1995) acknowledged that men’s interests are divided by class, race and sexuality and consequently men do not have equal access to the patriarchal dividend. Indigenous men, immigrant men from non-Englishspeaking backgrounds, working-class men, disabled men and gay men do not benefit from patriarchy in the same way as other men. Differences are also found across cultures and through historical time. Connell (1993) has pointed out that the discourse about ‘masculinity’ is constructed out of 5 per cent of the world’s population of men, in one region of the world, at

12

See Schatz (2003) for a list of male privileges but, as is common with privilege lists, Schatz fails to account for the intersectionalities of men’s lives and the institutional and systemic dimension of men’s privilege.

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one moment in history.13 We know from ethnographic work in different cultures how non-Western masculinities can be very different from the Western norm. Furthermore, although most of the early work on men and masculinities was based in North America, the UK and Australia, in the last twenty years there has been an internationalisation of masculinities research and theorising that has resulted in major anthologies and research monographs from many countries and regions of the world along with global comparative studies.14 Our geopolitical positioning will influence our theorising and our understanding of the relationship between gender and other social divisions. It must be acknowledged then that this examination of male privilege is undertaken in a Western context and that the literature reviewed is biased by Western knowledge.15 The question is whether the recognition of differences between men means that we lose sight of men as a gender. In acknowledging men’s differences, we have to also ensure that we do not lose an understanding of the institutional power of men (Messner 2003). However, to critique the notion of a homogeneous category of men is not to deny the reality of systematic gender inequality. The fact that men are divided among themselves along ethnic and class lines only makes the task of analysis more difficult (Brittan 1989). Many men deny that they have any privileges because they are subordinated by class, race, sexuality and so on. Even if they are marginalised by other social divisions, they still maintain gendered advantages over women within their marginalised communities. Furthermore, Messner (2003) has identified that some of the strategies marginalised and subordinated men use

13

14

15

Although Connell noted this almost thirty years ago, the hegemonic influence of studies of a small group of men in specific countries of the global North has not significantly changed since then. See Pease and Pringle (2001), Jones (2006), Flood et al. (2007), Ruspini et al. (2011) and Gottzen et al. (2020) for introductions to these global perspectives on men and masculinities. In the early 1990s, Mohanty (1991) challenged Western feminism for portraying ‘Third World’ women as an undifferentiated ‘Other’ and as being victims of timeless systems of patriarchy. She argued that Western feminism was itself embedded with unexamined assumptions of ethnocentrism and privilege which led it to universalise the experiences of women. Many Western feminists have responded to this challenge, recognising that women globally do not face the same universal forms of oppression. Rather, it is understood that divisions between women in relation to race, nationality, religion, class, language and sexuality both within and across nations are more significant than was previously recognised (McEwan 2001). Connell (2016) has extended this analysis in light of postcolonial critiques to critically evaluate hegemonic masculinity and male privilege and power in a global context.

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to resist their class, sexuality and race-based oppression can often reproduce men’s domination over women. It is thus important to maintain the tension between an analysis of systemic gendered oppression and differentiated forms of male power flowing from other social divisions (Haywood and Mac an Ghaill 2003).

The unintended consequences of men’s power and privilege Although men are privileged, it does not mean that men do not experience pain in their lives. Men can be both privileged and miserable at the same time. Kaufman (1994) notes that men’s lives involve both power and pain and that much of men’s pain arises from men’s power and privilege to constitute the ‘the contradictory experiences of men’s power’. The patriarchal dividend is not totally successful in advantaging men because men experience emotional and physical costs associated with their dominant position (Whitehead 2007). Connell (1995) acknowledges that there are disadvantages for men associated with their gendered privilege. For her, many of the costs for men are by-products of the advantages they gain from the patriarchal dividend. When the costs of masculinity are documented in popular books about men, however, they are rarely framed in terms of the unintended consequences of men’s advantages. Populist writers of books about men talk about a ‘crisis in masculinity’ as men find their traditional privileges and symbolic power being eroded (Biddulph 2018; Peterson 2018). A number of writers have expressed concern about the ways in which men’s physical and mental health issues have been used to position men as the ‘new disadvantaged’ (Whitehead 2002; Pease 2006; Riska 2006; Jordan and Chandler 2018). Whitehead (2002) argues that ‘the male crisis discourse’ distorts the connections between hegemonic masculinity and men’s health. The idea of masculinity in crisis may itself be a strategy enacted by men to reinforce their power (Allen 2002). Connell (2005) also makes the point that most of the costs associated with patriarchy for men are not necessarily experienced by the men who gain most of the benefits. Many current men’s health policies and programmes fail to recognise the social and economic context of men’s lives and the impact of class and race divisions on their health (Pease 2006; Bentley 2007; Pease 2009).16

16

See Roberts and Elliott (2020) for an analysis of how critical studies of men and masculinities, including those focused on men’s health, often fail to address the issues facing working-class men and boys on the margins.

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The current focus on what men have to gain from gender equality does not sufficiently acknowledge what men have to lose. Men need to be encouraged to see their involvement in campaigns for gender equality as attaining a more ethical sense of self as opposed to the benefits they might get out of gender equality. In contrast to the crisis of masculinity discourse, Connell (1995) prefers to talk about ‘crisis tendencies’ that arise from structural tensions and inequalities in the gender order. These crises are generated in the structures of gender by women’s advances towards greater equality in public policies, women’s increased participation in the paid labour force and women’s challenges to men’s sexual prerogatives. Men’s responses to these crises range from anti-feminist backlashes to pro-feminist support for gender equality.

Men’s resistance to change Any attempt to articulate the benefits for men in gender equality and nonviolence must acknowledge the various reasons for men’s resistance. Connell (2003a) identifies four areas: 1. The material benefits including the care and domestic services men receive from women 2. The identity problems about change involving men’s internalisation of hegemonic notions of masculinity about strength and toughness 3. The resentment against gender equality programmes by men who get very little of the patriarchal dividend 4. The ideological defence of male supremacy by men who have deeply internalised a sense of male entitlement There are also major cultural and political infrastructures reproduced by men that maintain patriarchal power relations. To involve men in changing unequal gender arrangements, we must persuade them that the costs associated with the current system outweigh the benefits (Connell (2003b). So how do the health disadvantages and the work pressures add up against the services of domestic and emotional support that men receive from women? While many of the arguments about men’s involvement focus on how men will gain from gender equality, the reality is that most men do not see the gains as benefits. In the prevailing view, much of men’s opposition to gender equality is based on their ignorance of what is in it for them. Too often gender equality is conceptualised in terms of attitudes, as if the real issue is in men’s minds.

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In this instance, if we construct a good enough argument, most men would change their minds. However, focusing on what men will gain by gender equality and non-violence has not worked very well for practical policies and programmes targeted at men. Gendered power and privilege are often ignored in this approach. As previously mentioned, if we move towards greater gender equality, men will lose some of the domestic services performed by women. They will have less power over women and there will be an erosion of cultural traditions that prioritise men. It will not necessarily be a ‘win– win situation’ (Lang 2002). While there may be long-term gains for men in terms of improved relationships with women, greater capacity for emotional intimacy and better psychological and physical health, there are certainly short-term losses. As a result, the reality is that many men will not be willing partners in the change process. Most men believe that on the whole the existing gender relationships serve them very well. Most discussions of changing men tend to underestimate the extent to which men have material interests in maintaining the current hierarchical gender arrangements (Connell 2002). While men will often refer to critiques of patriarchy as ‘male bashing’, it is in part because they are unable to separate out patriarchal arrangements from their own experience. Many men have difficulty untangling a critique of patriarchy as a particular form of gender order from a general critique of men. Many men think that a critique of patriarchy implies that all men are oppressive in their behaviours towards women. Some men will act defensively, however, because they identify with the values of patriarchy and they do not want to relinquish the male privileges associated with it (A. Johnson 1997).17 It is often difficult for men to acknowledge the oppression of women because they are implicated in it. Gender is differentiated from many of the other social divisions because it is experienced in the context of intimate relationships at home (Rideway and Correll 2004). When it comes to men’s wives, mothers, sisters and daughters, it is likely that they have participated in the subordination of these women who are a part of their life. Many men are reluctant to acknowledge that male privilege exists because they fear they will have to face guilt and shame for their part in maintaining their privileges (A. Johnson 1997).

17

For a review of strategies to challenge resistance and backlash to gender equality, see Flood, Dragiewicz and Pease (2020).

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Conclusion Connell (2000a) articulates a vision of an egalitarian society by advocating changes in the four major structures of gender: the relations of power, the relations of production, patterns of emotional attachment and symbolic systems. Changing power relations involves usurping men’s political dominance in the state, the professions and management and by ending violence against women. Changing production relations means equalising incomes from paid work, valuing and respecting previously defined ‘women’s work’ and ensuring an equitable division of household work. Changing emotional relations involves ‘reconstructing heterosexual relations on the basis of reciprocity not hierarchy and disconnecting masculinity from pressures towards violence’. Changing the symbolism of gender means ‘formulating different gender meanings for men and images of different ways of living’ (Connell 2000a: 205).18 Men have to be involved in the process of challenging patriarchy. While many have been resistant to the challenges to their privilege, there have always been small counter-hegemonic groups of men who are opposed to patriarchy. Their ability to reconstruct their subjectivities and challenge the cultural and structural foundations of their privilege is the subject of extensive debate within feminism and pro-feminist masculinity politics. It is possible for men to develop a cognisance of their gender privilege and to act in ways that challenge the reproduction of gender inequality. The concept of doing gender (West and Zimmerman 1987) focuses our attention on the interactional dynamics that men engage in to reproduce our privileges. This idea challenged the structural determinist approaches to gender that seemed to leave little room for resistance and change. Undoing gender, which describes interactions that challenge gender inequality (Deutsch 2007), allows us to identify how we can challenge the reproduction of male privilege. Although feminism offers men the promise of a socially just and genderequal world, most men have developed a defensive reaction to feminism. As men, we remain threatened by the autonomy of women. Having to meet women in their autonomy and independence is a challenge to the domination men have assumed. Whatever our rationalisation, it is difficult for us not to feel that women are ‘ours’. Possessiveness is so deeply embedded within our culture and so internalised in our identities that it is hard to work it through. 18

See Pease (2002) for my elaboration of a slightly different framework encompassing the revisioning of family life, the redistribution of economic power, the transformation of the culture that supports men’s violence against women and recreation of the masculine self.

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Even to acknowledge the depth at which feminism threatens us as men would be a first step (Seidler 1991). In Connell’s (2000) view, the primary motivating factor for men to support gender equality will come from their ‘relational interests’ winning out over their egotistic interests. It is men’s relationships with partners, daughters, mothers, sisters and so on that will provide the basis upon which men will come to support change.19 We must not underestimate, however, how difficult it is to challenge unequal gender regimes. This is due in part to the fact that powers of those who are defending these regimes often overpower those who are challenging them (Acker 2006a). Nevertheless, there have always been very practical things that men can do every day if they have the moral courage to challenge the reproduction of patriarchy and male privilege: men can read feminist and pro-feminist literature; they can join an existing pro-feminist men’s group or they can get together with some other men and start one themselves; they can ensure that they do their fair share of household work; they can stop interrupting women when they speak; they can stop sexualising women’s bodies; they can speak out against men’s violence; they can listen to women; and so on.20 For this to happen, men have to acknowledge that patriarchy and unearned male privileges exist, that they are reproduced by the practices of men and that men will have to develop the moral courage to act in concert with women to live a life based on reciprocity rather than unearned entitlement.21

19

20

21

While it is often these personal connections to women who have experienced discrimination and abuse that motivates some men to challenge men’s violence, it should not be necessary for men to be impacted personally to encourage greater empathy towards women who are abused. Numerous lists of what men can do to challenge sexism and violence against women have been developed over the years and are available on feminist and pro-feminist sites on the internet. There is no shortage of practical and concrete actions that men can take if they want to. For a more in-depth analysis of what this might mean for men personally and politically, see Facing Patriarchy (Pease 2019).

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Very few heterosexually identified men have written about heterosexuality. Most writings in the emerging field of critical heterosexual studies have come from heterosexual and lesbian feminists and gay and queer theorists. Writing about heterosexuality from within the dominant position poses a number of difficulties because when heterosexual men have written about sexuality, they have done so as a form of objective truth. Our ways of knowing and seeing the world have inscribed a particular form of epistemological dominance over contemporary debates, what Ryder (2004) calls ‘epistemological imperialism’. This is particularly so when we define the experiences of others rather than talking about ourselves and our experiences of privilege. In this chapter I want to problematise heterosexuality as a given. I know that I am in a contradictory position in writing this chapter because while I attempt to challenge heterosexist practice, I continue to benefit from heterosexual privilege. I proceed because many lesbian and gay writers have challenged heterosexuals to talk about and problematise our heterosexuality rather than just assuming it (Humphries 1987; Jeffreys 1993; Bruce 2015). We should not leave it to gay men and lesbians alone to deconstruct heterosexuality. While I am conscious that there are problems in talking from within the dominant position, there are equal problems in silence. I hope that by writing from within the dominant heterosexual position, my comments may provide some basis for dialogue with feminist, lesbian, gay and queer theorists on heterosexuality. I know that I continue to learn from my gay and lesbian colleagues and friends. My ‘taken-for-granted’ privilege as a heterosexual man has been pointed out to me on many occasions.1 Also it is my own

1

I have chosen to not use the word ‘straight’ as describing heterosexuality (except when citing other writers who use this language) as it does not challenge the assumed normalcy or binary thinking that reproduces heterosexuality. See Halley and Eshleman (2017).

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experience of homophobia and heterosexism that has contributed to my consciousness of it in others.

Theorising (hetero)sexuality Perhaps the most significant division in sexuality studies is between the essentialists and the constructivists. Essentialists regard sexuality as a biological force, whereas constructivists regard sexuality as being socially constructed. Many gay theorists have argued that being gay or lesbian is grounded in a fixed and stable sexual identity (Appleby 2006). Gay essentialists argue that there is an ‘essence’ within homosexuals that make them homosexual. There is considered to be some gay core of their being or their psyche or their genetic make-up. Arguing that gay and lesbians were born that way is an attractive idea to many gay men and lesbians (Jackson 1999). Essentialism has greatly influenced some sections of the gay liberation movement and the formation of a positive homosexual identity. This movement has attained greater recognition of the legitimacy of gay and lesbian lifestyles and challenged much of the prejudice and discrimination that non-heterosexual persons have faced. In contrast, gay constructivists argue that homosexuality is culturally and historically constructed and they are critical of the idea of a fixed homosexual nature. Rather than asserting a gay identity, they believe we should engage in a struggle to dissolve sexual identity and break down the division between heterosexual and homosexual. They point out the tension in attacking a naturalised system of sexual hierarchy, while at the same time affirming an essential homosexuality. Katz (1995) argues against the biologically determinist view of homosexuality and sexual orientation that has underpinned some gay rights strategies, believing that sexual desire is not embedded in people’s bodies outside the social context of their lives. He is critical of the response of those gay activists who want to naturalise homosexuality to demand its legitimacy. While he acknowledges that the affirmation of a ‘natural homosexuality’ has been important in the struggle for homosexual rights, he believes that this approach is unable to address the sources of homosexual oppression because it cannot challenge the dominant assumption that heterosexuality is normal. Scott and Jackson (2000) similarly believe that the essentialist approach is unable to address the social inequalities that arise from sexuality. When we posit heterosexuality as immutable, we maintain a hierarchical relationship between heterosexuality and homosexuality whereby homosexuality is constructed as deviant.

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In raising this debate within gay scholarship, my purpose is not to take a position about the construction of gay subjectivities and identities. Rather, my focus is on construction of heterosexuality. There has been a tendency for social construction theories of sexuality to be confined to gay studies. It has not been widely discussed in relation to the dominant form of sexuality. There are dangers in examining gay, lesbian and queer identities without at the same time interrogating heterosexual subjectivities (McCormack 2018). Many critics fear that constructivism will be applied only to homosexuality and leave the construct of heterosexuality unchallenged. Why should lesbians and gay men develop a consciousness of a socially constructed sexual identity when heterosexuals do not?

The construction of heterosexuality as natural and normative One of the ways in which heterosexuality is sustained is through silence. Unless we are otherwise informed, most of us will assume that everyone we meet is heterosexual. People generally ‘do’ heterosexuality without thinking critically about it (Jackson 2005). The only time that heterosexuals name it is when it is experienced as being under threat or challenge (Jackson 1999). Yet, it is through the naming of heterosexuality that the taken-for-granted identity is made visible. Those who are heterosexual do not usually think of themselves as having a sexual identity in the same way that gay men and lesbians do. They simply regard themselves as ‘normal’. Research shows that most heterosexual people accept their heterosexuality without question and do not recognise the social forces that influence and shape it. Because it is normative and assumed, the privileges associated with it are also taken for granted (Evans and Broido 2005). This is even the case with many queer-friendly heterosexuals who recognise the disadvantages associated with homosexual desire but do not acknowledge the advantages flowing from their own heterosexual orientation (Carbado 2004). When heterosexuality is accepted as normative, it becomes the standard for all legitimate sexual behaviour (Ingraham 2005). Other sexualities are judged against it and found wanting because they do not conform to the established norm. For heterosexuals to see themselves as being normal, gay men and lesbians must remain abnormal (Katz 1995). Hence, the normalisation of heterosexuality provides a regulatory function. Jackson (1999) observes that homosexuality has long been regulated and consequently stigmatised and oppressed, while heterosexuality remains institutionalised and unquestioned. We also need to analyse the ways in which heterosexuality is institutionalised

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through gender hierarchy. How has heterosexuality become an oppressive political institution that privileges some at the expense of others and is rationalised in heterosexist legal discourses (Ryder 2004)? Since sexuality is understood as a natural biological drive, heterosexuality is legitimated through its assumed naturalness. The naturalisation of heterosexuality prohibits critical analysis (Katz 1995). Biology and nature are used to rationalise heterosexuality and its assumed superiority, in ways similar to the naturalistic discourses that legitimate racism and sexism. To the extent that we see heterosexuality as an outcome of natural drives, then it is unlikely that we will be able to overcome resistance to its dominance (Robinson 2007). If being a heterosexual is natural, then homosexuality is unnatural and abnormal. Homosexuals have somehow been failed by or transgressed from nature (Ryder 2004). For Hanscombe (1987), however, heterosexuality is no more natural than feudalism. For heterosexuality to have an egalitarian future, we have to rescue it from nature. We need to interrogate the assumed naturalness of heterosexuality and to see it as constructed and organised in very detailed ways rather than assuming it to just be the way we are. It is important to debunk the key myths about heterosexuality to expose the assumptions upon which its hegemonic power is maintained. In contrast to the view that heterosexuality is natural, universal, transhistorical, fixed and monolithic, it has a history and constantly needs to reproduce itself. To challenge the naturalisation of heterosexuality, we need to historicise it. Katz (1995) demonstrates how the concept of heterosexuality is a relatively recent invention that arose in the late nineteenth century. By studying the history of heterosexuality, Katz challenges its hegemonic power. He demonstrates how heterosexuality is simply one particular form of sexual pleasure that signifies one historical arrangement of the sexes and their pleasures. Richardson (1996) suggests that those of us who are heterosexual ask ourselves why we consider ourselves to be heterosexual. Because heterosexuality is taken to be the norm, heterosexuals are rarely asked to name their sexuality (Logan et al. 1996). In response to this avoidance, Martin Rochlin (2003) developed a heterosexuality questionnaire to turn the tables on the multiple interrogations of the lives of gay and lesbian people. Heterosexuals are asked to consider the following questions: 1. What do you think caused your heterosexuality?  2. When and how did you first decide that you were a heterosexual?  3. Is it possible that your heterosexuality might be a phase you are going through?  4. Is it possible that your heterosexuality stems from a neurotic fear of your own sex?

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5. If you have never slept with a person of the same sex, is it possible that all you need is a good same-sex lover? 6. To whom have you disclosed your heterosexual tendencies? 7. Why do heterosexuals feel compelled to seduce others into your sexual lifestyle? 8. Why do you insist upon flaunting heterosexuality? Can’t you just be who you are and keep it quiet? 9. Would you want your children to be heterosexual, knowing the problems they face? 10. A disproportionate majority of child molesters are heterosexual. Do you consider it safe to expose your children to heterosexual teachers? 11. Even with all the societal support marriage receives, the divorce rate is spiralling. Why are there so few stable relationships among heterosexuals? 12. Why do heterosexuals place so much emphasis on sex? 13. Considering the menace of overpopulation, how could the human race survive if everyone were heterosexual like you? 14. Could you trust a heterosexual therapist to be objective? Don’t you fear that the therapist might be inclined to influence you in the direction of his/her own leanings? 15. How can you become a whole person if you limit yourself to compulsive, exclusive heterosexuality and fail to develop your natural, healthy homosexual potential? 16. There seem to be so few happy heterosexuals. Techniques have developed that might enable you to change if you really want. Have you considered trying aversion therapy? Turning the tables on heterosexuality challenges it as a ‘default position’. If heterosexual people began to reflect upon why they think they are heterosexual, it might start to challenge its normative status and hence its privilege and domination. While heterosexuals continue to be naïve about their sexuality, little progress will be made. Throughout this book, I have argued that to understand privilege we need to give attention to experience, structure and discourse. These psychosocial, structural and cultural realms are interconnected and we need to explore these interconnections to understand how oppressive practices and beliefs are sustained (Rocco and Gallagher 2006). This same framework can be used to analyse three layers of anti-homosexual prejudice: homophobia, heterosexism and heteronormativity. There is a tendency in the literature to focus on one of these dimensions to the exclusion of the others. Homophobia focuses on prejudiced individual practices and ignores the wider structural

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factors. Heterosexism is based on the institutionalisation of heterosexual privilege. Heteronormativity addresses dominant discourses and explores the ‘taken-for-granted’ assumptions about the normalcy of heterosexuality (Crowhurst 2002).

Homophobia and anti-gay prejudice The term homophobia is attributed to George Weinberg who in 1972 wrote Society and the Healthy Homosexual. Homophobia is usually used to refer to fear and/or hatred of homosexuals and also to anti-homosexual prejudices and beliefs. The latter includes the perception of homosexuals as being perverted, sick and unnatural in comparison with heterosexuals who are seen as normal and natural. Whereas previously homosexuals were regarded as sick and deviant, Weinberg used the concept of homophobia to pathologise those who regard homosexuality as sick or deviant. Many writers have argued that the concept alone is too psychological and individualistic (Fish 2007; Bryant and Vidal-Ortiz 2008). Some are concerned that the terminology of ‘phobia’ locates anti-gay prejudice within a psychiatric discourse outside of political and moral critique (Hopkins 2004). Given its origins in psychology and individual pathology, it is seen as having limited usefulness for challenging cultural and institutional forms of discrimination against lesbians and gay men (Griffin, D’Errico and Schiff 2007). As Hicks and Watson (2003) argue, one of the limitations of the concept of homophobia is that it is more concerned with ‘bad attitudes’ rather than social practices, ruling relations and official discourses. Challenging homophobic attitudes might help at one level but it leaves the systems which privilege heterosexuality in place. Nevertheless, the concept of homophobia continues to be used to describe anti-homosexual prejudice (Signorile 2016). Beneke (2004) believes that it is important to differentiate between heterosexual men’s anxiety about possible homosexual desire within themselves and the prejudice that fuels oppressive practices against gay men and lesbians. He argues that by conflating homophobic anxiety with homophobic oppression, opportunities to work with heterosexual men’s discomfort with their homoerotic feelings are lost. Given that most heterosexual men will possess some level of homophobic anxiety, a less hostile environment is necessary because they need to be willing to explore their homophobic feelings if they are to become allies with gay men. I only acknowledged my own homophobic feelings in a context where I shared a house with a gay male academic during a period of study leave

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in Canada. At home in Australia, I prided myself on my gay affirmative attitudes both among my friendship group and among my social activist colleagues. However, it was only in a context where I was immersed in gaymajority spaces and where my heterosexuality was not assumed that my homophobic feelings began to surface. This led me to critically interrogate more substantially the ‘taken-for-granted’ aspects of my sexual identity. Sedgewick (1985) believes that homophobia can best be understood in the context of homosociality, whereby the non-sexual social bonds between men reproduce their dominance over women. Recently, there have been moves to develop concepts to acknowledge the wider structural and institutional dimensions of the problem that go beyond the prejudicial attitudes of individuals (Rhodes 2017).

Heterosexism and institutional heterosexuality Heterosexism is a more explicitly political concept in that it focuses on the privileges associated with heterosexuality and the legitimating discourses that naturalise those privileges (Hopkins 2004). Bella (2002: 2) defines heterosexism as ‘the assumption that heterosexuality is the only natural, normal and moral sexuality’. This ideology or taken-for-granted belief constructs heterosexual as superior and entitling one to privileges. Nelson (cited in Cashwell 2005: 25) defines it as ‘the continued promotion by the major institutions of society of a heterosexual lifestyle while simultaneously subordinating any other lifestyle’. Herek (2004: 497–8) defines heterosexism as ‘an ideological system that denies denigrates and stigmatises any nonheterosexual form of behaviour, identity, relationship or community’. Heterosexism refocuses the problem away from individual attitudes to consider the role played by social customs and institutions. It puts the focus on the institutional and structural advantages of heterosexuality and how they are manifested through customs, institutions and legal frameworks and embodied in language, organisational practices and everyday encounters (Flood and Hamilton 2008). Heterosexism plays a key role in reproducing heterosexuality because it naturalises it, penalises homosexuality (Ryder 2004) and obscures the system of privileges and advantages attached to its institutionalised practices (Griffin, D’Errico and Schiff 2007). Simoni and Walter (2001) state that heterosexism encompasses both homophobic attitudes and institutionalised heterosexual dominance, while some writers argue that heterosexism should be used as an alternative concept to homophobia. Plummer (1999) points out that they are not the same. There are, however, clear links between them. Heterosexism is regarded

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by some scholars as the foundation upon which homophobia rests (Hopkins 2004) and Flood and Hamilton (2008) regard homophobia as a part of heterosexism. Certainly, if you believe that heterosexuality is the only natural expression of sexuality, you are likely to feel that discrimination against gay men and lesbians is legitimate (Whitley and Aegistottir 2000). Some activists prefer to use the language of homophobia because it carries more emotional and rhetorical weight (Hopkins 2004). Beneke (2004) argues that while heterosexism challenges structural privilege accruing from heterosexuality, it is unable to address the hatred that some heterosexual individuals feel towards homosexuals. This has led some scholars and activists to use the language of homo-hatred and to describe anti-homosexual practices as hate crimes (Alden and Parker 2005).2

Heteronormativity and compulsory heterosexuality Heteronormativity refers to ‘the institutions, structures of understanding, and practical orientations that make heterosexuality seem not only coherent … but also privileged’ (Berland and Warner 1998: 548). Warner (in Sumara and Davis 1999: 294) defines it as the complex ways in which ‘heterosexual culture thinks of itself as the elemental form of human association.’ This means that heterosexuals learn to ‘see straight, to read straight and think straight’ (Sumara and Davis 1999). The concept of heteronormativity provides a way of understanding how many men and women do not consider any alternative other than being heterosexual. It establishes a hegemonic and normalising discourse in relation to heterosexuality (Yep 2003). One of the consequences of heteronormativity is that gay men and lesbians are under pressure to pass as heterosexuals in the workplace and other public places. This ‘passing’ further reinforces heterosexual privilege and creates a form of heterosexual identity among lesbians and gay men (C. Johnson 2002). When gay men and lesbians ‘come out’ and when they display affection in public places they challenge the power of heteronormativity. To do so in many public contexts, however, may be dangerous and may invoke homophobic and anti-homosexual practices by heterosexuals who are threatened by this behaviour. Many heterosexual people believe that they are not homophobic or heterosexist because they ‘tolerate’ non-heterosexual lifestyles. They 2

In more recent years, the language of homohysteria has been proposed as a more useful way of understanding anti-homosexual prejudice. See Negy (2014) for an overview of the debate about the value of this terminology.

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may repeat the old chestnut. ‘Some of my best friends are gay.’ However, such tolerance exists only in a context where lesbians and gay men pose no challenge to heterosexual privilege (Scott and Jackson 2000). Brickell (2005) locates the concept of tolerance within the philosophy of liberalism and argues that it underpins heteronormativity. Those who tolerate are heterosexual and those who are tolerated are gay or lesbian. Liberalism obscures both the impact of social structures on individuals and the ways in which we are always enmeshed in power relations. Liberalism also reinforces the subordination of homosexuality and the dominance of heterosexuality through the tolerance of homosexuality. Consequently, heterosexuals are often unable to identify the privileges that flow from unequal power relationships.

Heterosexual privilege: The other side of sexual oppression The other side of the costs of homophobia, heterosexism and heteronormativity for gay men and lesbians is the privilege associated with those who are heterosexual. Heterosexual privilege is legislated through laws that confer a variety of benefits and rights on heterosexual spouses that are not available to homosexual partnerships (Ryder 2004). Heterosexuals are not subjected to the discrimination and marginalisation that face lesbians and gay men. By conforming to the dominant construction of heterosexuality, they receive various incentives and perks. Notwithstanding recent legal changes in many countries, heterosexual individuals have greater economic security and family and social acceptance of their sexuality.3 Part of the process of challenging privilege at the cultural and structural levels is reflecting on how we gain unearned advantages because of some aspects of our identities. We have to reconstruct ourselves as well as transforming our institutions (Carbado 2004). Bunch’s (2004: 219) challenge to heterosexuals who are unaware of privilege is to ‘go home and announce to everybody that you know … that you’re queer’. If heterosexuals try being queer for a week, they will get a sense of what it means to have heterosexual privilege. Alternatively, one need only spend some time walking hand in hand in public with someone of the same sex to test one’s commitment to heterosexual privilege. Such practices can be dangerous of course.

3

At the time of writing (February 2021) there are thirty countries that have legalised same-sex marriage (Masci and DeSilva 2019).

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Heterosexual men make themselves vulnerable to anti-gay violence that lesbians and gay men face every day. There is very little acknowledgement of the role played by heterosexuals in maintaining heterosexual privilege. Heterosexuals have some investment in the oppression of gay men and lesbians because of the benefits they receive for having relationships with those of a different sex. It is difficult for many heterosexual people to come to question ideas about sexuality that they have been taught are logical, true and fair when they are actually illogical, false and unfair. Yet, if we really care about a society based on social justice principles, we will have to take personal responsibility for how we conduct our lives (DiAngelo 1997). Simoni and Walters (2001) illustrate how heterosexual privilege mediates the relationship between heterosexuals and ant-gay attitudes and practices. As with other forms of privilege, heterosexuals may acknowledge the oppression of gay men and lesbians without appreciating the unearned entitlements and advantages they receive from their own sexual identity status. Recognising heterosexual privilege is fundamental to decrease prejudice and increase understanding and empathy for those without such privileges. Increasing awareness among heterosexuals of the privileges that they accrue from their heterosexuality is likely to encourage greater awareness of the impact of heterosexism and foster commitment to work against homophobia and antigay bias (Russell 1997). Heterosexuals are not a homogeneous group, though. Gender, class, race and ability/disability divide them. These divisions will impact on the meaning of heterosexuality and the privileges that accrue to it and thus heterosexual privilege will impact on people’s lives differently in relation to these dimensions. These intersections also mean that any critique of heterosexuality must engage with the experience of sexuality in relation to other systems of domination and privilege.

Heterosexuality and gender domination Heterosexual privilege cannot be understood without analysing its link with gender. Since the 1970s feminists developed a critique of heterosexuality in terms of its role in subordinating women and its eroticisation of power difference (Kitzinger, Wilkinson and Perkins 1992; Jackson 2005; Robinson 2007; Chu 2019). Women do not share the same heterosexual privileges as men because of their subordination in marriage and their exploitation in most relationships with men. Some feminists have even argued that heterosexuality should replace gender as the primary source of women’s oppression (Ingraham 2005).

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It is over forty years since Adrienne Rich wrote her ground-breaking article ‘Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence’ (Rich 1980). She formulated the notion of ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ to describe the many ways in which heterosexuality was imposed upon women. She argued that women were coerced into heterosexuality and she highlighted the way in which sexuality was socially constructed as opposed to being natural. In her view, all women were positioned on a ‘lesbian continuum’. The other early feminist writer to challenge heterosexuality as an institution was Monique Wittig. In The Straight Mind (1992) she argued that the heterosexual marriage contract was a basis for the reproduction of women’s subservience. She maintained that heterosexuality as a discourse was all pervasive and oppressed all women who refused to locate themselves within it. In her view, a ‘straight mind’ is unable to conceive of an alternative to heterosexuality and unable to identify the mechanisms that socially produce it. Heterosexual feminists have continued to debate the place of heterosexuality with lesbian feminists. Heterosexual women have sought to defend their sexual relationships with men against the charge of ‘sleeping with the enemy’. Of course, many heterosexual feminists were offended by the charge that they were coerced into heterosexuality. Many women experience sex with men as pleasurable and chosen freely rather than compulsory (Wilkinson and Kitzinger 1994). It is perhaps more accurate to conceive of heterosexuality as involving both constraint and choice (P. Johnson 2005).4 In the special edition of Feminism and Psychology on heterosexuality, first published in 1992, many heterosexual feminists expressed ambivalence about identifying with the label ‘heterosexual’ because it did not in their experience describe their lifestyles. It was not a part of their political identity and this stood in contrast with lesbian feminists who claimed a lesbian identity as a self-naming and oppositional stance against institutionalised heterosexuality (Kitzinger, Wilkinson and Perkins 1992). Jackson (1999) argues heterosexual feminists cannot claim an oppositional political identity because their sexual practices conform to the institutionalised norm. Some heterosexual feminists recognised that their heterosexuality was privileged in comparison with lesbian feminists. For Kitzinger, Wilkinson and Perkins (1992), this raised the question whether their interests in patriarchy

4

Beasley, Holmes and Brook (2015) challenge the argument that heterosexuality is synonymous with heteronormativity. They consider various forms of heterosexuality (what they call heterodoxy) that transgress and subvert the hegemonic form, including non-cohabiting heterosexual couple relationships that challenge the centrality of heterosexuality in people’s lives.

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may influence their theorising of their heterosexuality and further how they gauge the impact that institutionalised heterosexuality has upon them and other women. Certainly, heterosexual women experience contradictory effects from heterosexuality. On the one hand, they benefit from the privileges associated with its normative and superior status. On the other hand, many of them are subjected to dangerous contraception, date rape and rape in marriage (Kitzinger and Wilkinson 1994). Women’s experience of heterosexual privilege is problematical because they are on the receiving end of hierarchical relationships with men.

Queer theory and the heterosexual/homosexual binary An alternative theoretical and political challenge to heterosexual dominance comes from queer theory. Queer theory aims to destabilise categories of identity and to expose the heterosexual/homosexual binary as culturally constructed as opposed to being naturally based (Yep 2003). In contrast to feminist challenges to male dominance in heterosexuality, queer theory focuses on the processes by which homosexuality is rendered marginal by the normativity of heterosexuality (Jackson 2005). Queer theory highlights the way in which heterosexuality is dependent on the production of homosexuality as an opposite to establish its identity. Ironically, heterosexuality reproduces its dominant status through its dependence on homosexuality. It needs to be constantly affirmed and protected to sustain itself (Yep 2003). By challenging the opposition between heterosexuality and homosexuality, the social construction of both types of sexual identity becomes more visible. The aim is to disturb, trouble and destabilise heterosexuality in order to make space for non-heterosexual identities (Jackson 1999). This entails challenging the notion of a fixed homosexual identity which has been the foundational concept underpinning gay affirmative identity politics. While queer theory has been very important in deconstructing heterosexuality, its dismissal of structural theories has ignored struggles in relation to the state and changing social practices (Adam 1998). Queer theorists have also been criticised for ignoring the material conditions of women’s lives and for not addressing male dominance within heterosexuality (Jeffries 2003; Jackson 2005).5

5

See Showden (2012) for the development of a sex-positive queer feminism that explores a convergence between feminism and queer theory.

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Gay politics and equal rights As Jackson (1999) observes, some of the goals of the gay movement are in conflict with feminism. She challenges the gay equal rights movement for refusing to critique heterosexuality and for ignoring the feminist critique of heterosexuality as a patriarchal institution. Momin Rahman (1998) similarly questions the pursuit of an equal rights agenda because it accepts the normalcy and naturalness of heterosexuality. In his view, the campaigns to legalise same-sex marriage reinforce the patriarchal heterosexual marriage contract. Jackson (1999) argues that equal rights campaigns are aimed at achieving forms of heterosexual privilege rather than challenging it. She maintains that to achieve real equality with heterosexuals, heterosexuality would have to be displaced from its privileged status and institutionalised normalcy. Carver and Motter (1998) believe that the pursuit of equal rights by lesbians and gays with heterosexuals lends support to heterosexual families. Gay men are accused of wanting to retain male privilege while striving for equality with heterosexual men. Warner (1999) talks about ‘the politics of normal’, whereby the aim is to blend in and not be too different. The problem of regarding oneself as ‘normal’ is that it begs the question of whose norm is being used as the standard for determining normalcy. The difficulty is that by expressing demands in terms that do not threaten the normalcy of heterosexuality, there is greater likelihood of success. Gay marriage is a good example. While Wolf (2009) acknowledges that gay marriage will not eliminate the oppression of gays and lesbians or challenge heteronormativity, she nevertheless defends it as a reform that will bring material benefits to lesbian and gay couples in the interim. Legalising same-sex relationships through marriage and changing the law to recognise entitlement to tax allowances and pensions offers the promise of greater respectability and acceptance but at what price? Jackson (1999) asks why gay men and lesbians would want to emulate the unequal relationship between men and women in the marriage contract. Kelly (2009) argues that the state-recognised institution of marriage marginalises all non-marital relationships. This not only disadvantages gay men and lesbians but also many non-white and poor people who do not marry. She proposes instead an extension of full marital benefits to all who want them.6

6

See Richardson-Self (2015) for a philosophical analysis of the arguments for and against same-sex marriage.

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Challenges to heterosexuality must analyse both male dominance and heteronormativity. Any critique of heterosexuality should address both the normative status of heterosexuality and how it marginalises gay and lesbian sexualities and the male-dominated gender hierarchy in which heterosexuality functions in patriarchal societies.

Heterosexuality and masculinity Since men predominantly perpetrate homophobic violence, we must examine the relationship between masculinity and heterosexual dominance.7 Research demonstrates a strong relationship between the holding of traditional gender role beliefs and negative attitudes towards homosexuality (Whitley and Aegistottir 2000). Furthermore, men adhere more to traditional gender role beliefs than women (Flood and Pease 2009). Theodore and Basow’s (2000) research confirmed that heterosexual masculinity fosters anti-gay prejudice. They found that men who defined their identity in terms of traditional forms of masculinity were more likely to express homophobic attitudes towards gay men. Thus men are more likely than women to express homophobic and heterosexist attitudes (Flood and Hamilton 2008). Masculinity is constructed through how men walk, hold their body, use hand gestures and voice, through to how they wears clothes, groom themselves and live their life. For many men, such identity practices are as much about projecting a heterosexual identity as a masculine one (Dean 2006). Homophobia can help to bolster heterosexual masculinity. Often this often involves expressing a hyper-masculine or exaggerated form of masculinity. According to Hopkins (2004), homophobia would not exist if there was not a need to confirm masculine identity. Masculinity plays a key role in naturalising and privileging heterosexuality to the point where masculinity is regarded as being heterosexual by definition. While heterosexuality is portrayed as being natural, many heterosexual men experience it as being fragile and feel so insecure about it that they are easily threatened by homosexuality (Beneke 2004). That is why so many heterosexual men are threatened if they are mistaken as gay. As Allan Johnson (2017) argues, most heterosexual men who engage in violence against gay men and lesbians feel uneasy and threatened just by the existence of homosexuals.

7

Research in Australia on anti-gay homicides reveals that almost all of the killings are by male perpetrators (Tomsen 2017).

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Heterosexuality and intersections with other forms of privilege Heterosexual dominance also needs to be seen in the context of how it intersects with other forms of oppression such as racism, class elitism and ableism. Connecting whiteness and heterosexuality is important (Bruce 2015). Stokes (2005) argues that heterosexuality and whiteness are ‘normative co-partners’ and he explores the connections between sexuality and white supremacy. Other writers have explored the parallels between anti-racist struggles and gay politics (Dixon 2001). Clarke (2004) identifies homophobic statements by many Black intellectuals and argues that the Black liberation movement has not come to terms with its own sexual politics. Marxists have argued that acknowledgement of any form of gender and sexual difference would dilute the struggle against class. In the Marxist view, any movement that fosters identity beyond class will constitute a barrier to challenging class-based oppression (Wolf 2009). Marxists maintain that the economic disadvantages of homosexuals are related to the social relations of capitalism. In this view, gay and lesbian oppression is derivative of capitalist exploitation of workers and consequently struggles against heterosexism are less important than struggles against the capitalist exploitation of workers (Wolf 2009). However, Fraser (1997) maintains that gay and lesbian oppression are best understood in relation to heterosexism. She argues that capitalism benefits from compulsory heterosexuality. Thus some argue that struggles against heterosexual dominance are directly related to struggles against capitalism. In recent years, some writers have also started to explore the relationship between compulsory heterosexuality and able-bodied privilege (McRuer 2006; Barounis 2009; Inckle 2015). McRuer (2006) analyses heterosexuality and able-bodiedness as parallel sights of privilege. Kafer (2003) explores the ways in which compulsory able-bodiedness and compulsory heterosexuality work together to maintain both forms of privilege. Given that compulsory heterosexuality is experienced differently among different groups of women, Kafer (2003) examines how it impacts on disabled women. Barounis (2009) suggests that queer theory and disability studies have much to learn from each other in understanding how homosexuality and disability are regulated.8

8

See Chapter 11 for an analysis of able-bodied privilege.

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From heterosexism awareness to destabilising heterosexuality Heterosexuals need to recognise their privilege as a necessary first step to becoming involved in a struggle against heterosexual dominance. If gaysupportive heterosexual people do not address their heterosexual privilege, their capacity to pursue social justice is compromised. Evans and Broido (2005) identify five stages of increasing awareness among heterosexual people about homophobia and heterosexism. At the first stage, naivety, heterosexuals are generally unaware of their sexual orientation. At the second level of acceptance, they take their heterosexuality for granted. Third, at the level of resistance, they recognise heterosexism but believe that they cannot do anything about it. Fourth, at the redefinition stage, they establish a positive heterosexual identity that moves beyond a rejection of heterosexual beliefs. Finally, at the fifth stage of internalisation, they establish an identity that is independent of normative definitions of heterosexuality. Other educators identify similar stages of development. DiAngelo (1997), for example, identifies six stages of awareness: contact, disintegration, reintegration, pseudo-independent, immersion/emersion and autonomy. However, heterosexism training workshops continue to focus on the individual. Hopkins (2004) points out that because homophobia and heterosexism are not just prejudices, they cannot be eliminated by workshops that encourage greater tolerance and acceptance. To adequately address homophobia and heterosexism, we would have to eliminate the binary of heterosexuality and homosexuality and consequently they would have no meaning. By challenging the binary divide of heterosexuality and homosexuality, as Katz (1995) and others have advocated, we can begin to destabilise the normative basis of heterosexuality.

Reconstructing heterosexuality Given the reality that heterosexuality is a relationship of power, Seidler (1994) has asked whether it is possible to consider it as a legitimate sexual orientation. Some lesbian feminists have expressed doubt about the possibilities for reconstruction towards more egalitarian sexual practices (Kitzinger, Wilkinson and Perkins 1992). Jackson (1996) has noted that there are material constraints on establishing egalitarian forms of heterosexuality within existing gender divisions. Thus our capacity to undo heterosexual dominance is limited by the structural social relations in which they are embedded (Jackson 2005).

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Seidler (1992) believes that while heterosexuality is manifested as an oppressive norm, it should not be renounced. Many feminists have argued that heterosexuality does not necessarily represent oppression to women (Segal 1994; Hollway 1996; Beasley, Holmes and Brook 2015). A number of feminist writers have argued that heterosexuality can be reconstructed towards a non-oppressive form. Hollway (1996), for example, argues against the notion of compulsory heterosexuality because it is overly determinist. She articulates a form of female sexual desire that is able to resist patriarchal relations. Smart (1996) has suggested that we should differentiate between oppressive and empowering heterosexualities. Some feminists believe that men can resist patriarchal expressions of sexuality and that women can choose non-oppressive forms of heterosex (Richardson 1996; Van Every 1996; Hollway 1996; Beasley, Holmes and Brook 2015). Because the dominant form of heterosexuality has prioritised penetration, one project has been to problematise penetrative sex and thus there has been considerations of alternatives to penetration (Jackson 1999).9 In challenging the normative status of heterosexuality, it does not mean that we should reject heterosexuality per se. Rather, we should reposition it as simply one form of sexual expression among others. And we should avoid presenting heterosexuality as a unitary and monolithic concept. Some writers have argued that we should think in terms of ‘heterosexualities’ in the plural because there is more than one heterosexual identity (Kitzinger and Wilkinson 1994; Segal 1994; Smart 1996; Beasley, Holmes and Brook 2015). In response to the challenge ‘How dare you assume that I am heterosexual’, Segal (1994) has encouraged heterosexuals to come out and proclaim ‘How dare you assume what it means to be straight’. Carol Johnson (2002) believes that it is possible to construct nonheteronormative notions of heterosexuality that do not inevitably produce homosexuality as ‘the other’. Such expressions of heterosexuality would not privilege heterosexual identity over lesbian and gay identities and may not require adherence to a strong sexual identity. Duggan (1995) argues that heteronormativity is best understood as those forms of heterosexuality that are hegemonic, that is, reproductive, legally married, peer aged and monogamous.10 She points that many heterosexual people do not ascribe to that dominant form of sexual experience. Queering 9

10

McCormack (2018) has suggested that heterosexual men enjoying anal pleasure with female sexual partners also challenges hegemonic forms of heterosexuality. At the time Duggan argued this, few countries had introduced same-sex marriage. The ongoing debate is whether the increase in the legalisation of same-sex marriage will,

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heterosexuality would involve the validation of non-hegemonic forms of heterosexual practice, including ménage a trios, polygamy, non-reproductive partnerships and de facto relationships. Some writers have expressed concern that by pluralising heterosexuality, it may lead to the evasion of heterosexual dominance. Yep (2003) wonders whether acknowledging the differences in heterosexuality will mean that we cannot hold heterosexuals responsible for heterosexual dominance. Similar concerns have been expressed by some feminists who have been reluctant to acknowledge race, class and sexuality issues because it may take the focus of what they see as the primary division of gender oppression. Critics, however, argue that homogenising struggles erase significant differences within identity groups and this leads to a hierarchy of oppressions (Yep 2003).

Queering heterosexuality When heterosexual men get involved in challenging heterosexual privilege, their own sexuality is likely to be called into question. Most heterosexual men are afraid of being mistaken as gay. Even heterosexual men who are gay affirmative may be reluctant to take a public stand against heterosexism because of concern about being perceived as gay (Carbado 2004). This means that many heterosexuals who support gay rights are not willing to relinquish the status of their heterosexuality (Dean 2006). Consequently, they perpetuate clear divisions between heterosexuals and homosexuals and maintain the privileges associated with heterosexuality. There have been times when I have been involved in challenging heterosexual dominance that I was concerned about being perceived as gay. These experiences confronted me with my own homophobia and my former reluctance to relinquish the privileges I get from being heterosexual. Whether or not you reveal your heterosexuality is an important strategic question to which there is no easy answer. Ayres and Brown (2005) differentiate between exercising and disabling privilege. Exercising privilege involves speaking out as a heterosexual in support of gay and lesbian issues. To do so can have the effect of disrupting the assumptions that people make about the way heterosexuals are likely to view gay rights. In writing this chapter, I have made it clear that I write from a heterosexually privileged position. Disabling privilege requires heterosexuals to display ambiguity

as some critics argue, further marginalise non-hegemonic forms of heterosexuality and forms of queerness that do not mirror the hegemonic heterosexual norm.

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about their sexual identity when they are challenging heterosexual privilege, to thus allow themselves to be mistaken as gay. If people cannot tell whether you are heterosexual or not, you relinquish some of your heterosexual status. So there are situations where heterosexual people should not necessarily clarify their sexual identity. When heterosexuals speak out against heterosexism, it conveys the view that homosexual rights is an issue for heterosexual people as well (Ryder 2004). At the same time, heterosexuals need to be aware that there is a politics in coming out as heterosexual. Carbado (2004) is suspicious of heterosexuals who are quick to speak of their spouses when homosexuality is raised. We must ensure that when we point out our heterosexual privilege, we do it in ways that do not reinforce heterosexual dominance.11 Some heterosexual allies purposely blur the boundaries between heterosexual and homosexual identities. By allowing themselves to be seen as homosexual, these heterosexuals contest and subvert the norm of heterosexuality. Thomas (in Thomas and MacGillivray 2000) argues that it is more subversive of heterosexuality for him to walk down the street and hold hands with a man he was not in a sexual relationship with than it would be to have sex with another man and not disclose it.12 Some writers refer to these practices as ‘queer heterosexuality’ (Wilkinson and Kitzinger 1994), ‘straight queers’ (Heasley 2005) or ‘straight queerness’ (Thomas 2000). Wilkinson and Kitzinger (1994: 83) define queer heterosexuals as ‘those people who do what is contentiously known as “heterosexuality”, nonetheless do so in ways which are transgressive of “normality” ’. Thus a queer heterosexual is someone who does not have to be seen as heterosexual to feel a positive self-esteem (Smith 2000). Heasley (2005) has developed a typology of straight queer masculinities, detailing a variety of ways in which men can cross the borders of traditional heterosexual masculinity. He refers to heterosexual men who take public action against homophobia and heterosexism as ‘social justice queers’. Heasley identifies queer straight men as those who disrupt the normative constructions of heterosexuality and what it means to be heterosexual. They try to find ways of being men outside of the hegemonic representations of 11

12

The academic literature on heterosexual allies generally assumes that they are good for LGBT people. However, as Grzanka (2019) observes, there is little evidence of positive outcomes of having heterosexual allies and there is considerable anger directed towards allies among the queer community. Some self-defined heterosexual men engage in sex with men but still regard themselves as ‘mostly straight’. They turn heterosexuality into a more elastic category, what Carillo and Hoffman (2018) call ‘heteroflexible’ where they pursue a primarily heterosexual lifestyle but remain open to sex with other men.

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heterosexual masculinity. In so doing, they extend the boundaries of what it is to be heterosexual.13

Conclusion This chapter has problematised gendered heterosexuality. As in all forms of privilege, the question arises about why heterosexuals might want to challenge their privilege. What would motivate heterosexuals to struggle against heterosexual dominance? Also, since men’s heterosexual privileges are at the expense of women, men will be likely to have less motivation than women to challenge heterosexual dominance (Yep 2003). Some writers argue that heterosexual privilege also has a price for heterosexuals and that they do not benefit in an unqualified way (Crowhurst 2002). For Beneke (2004), since homophobia hurts heterosexual men as well, they should see it as being in their self-interest to challenge it.14 Thomas (in Thomas and MacGillivray 2000) is not so sure, however, that the privileges of heterosexuality do harm heterosexuals. He promotes social justice when arguing why heterosexuals should get involved. Irrespective of motivation, however, it is clear here that this struggle will involve some discomfort as heterosexuals confront the taken-for-granted truths about the nature of their sexuality.

13

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There are ongoing debates about the appropriateness of heterosexual people identifying themselves as queer. See, for example, Beasley, Holmes and Brook (2015). See Ward (2016) for an analysis of the problems and the suffering many heterosexuals experience, creating what she calls ‘the tragedy of heterosexuality’ and the limitations of their attempts to find fulfilment in heterosexuality without confronting the fundamental problems arising from its hegemonic status.

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9

Gender binary and cis privilege

Introduction Some months before writing the second edition of this book, I mentioned my intentions to feminist and pro-feminist colleagues and friends. Invariably, people asked what additional sites of privilege I was intending to interrogate. When I spoke about cis privilege,1 I was challenged by some about whether such privilege existed and whether this was a valid term. This challenge was often accompanied by critical views about transgender politics. I knew then that in exploring cis privilege, I was entering conversations that were controversial, including in progressive quarters. As a non-trans author,2 I face extra dilemmas associated with writing about privilege from within. A number of writers mention the pitfalls of a non-trans person writing about trans issues, which is inevitable if one is to write about cis privilege (Hale 1997; Heyes 2003; Hill 2005; Cotten 2016). I am a non-trans man, a critical masculinities scholar and a pro-feminist aspiring ally involved in challenging men’s violence against women. I am critical of practices encouraging men to adopt healthy and positive forms of masculinity as a strategy to end men’s violence and promote gender equality because I think that it reproduces the hierarchical gender binary (Pease 2019). While I have friends and colleagues who are trans women, I am not involved in trans politics.3 Notwithstanding the criticisms by some, I accept that I am writing from a privileged position as a non-trans person, quite apart from any privileges I have in relation to other social divisions. Consequently, I need to be mindful about how I engage with the writings of non-trans authors who comment critically on trans experiences and trans politics. I do not speak

1

2 3

I use the term ‘cis privilege’ here as an umbrella term that includes cissexism, cisgenderism and cisnormativity. See, for example, Cava (2016). I discuss the pros and cons of the language of non-trans later in this chapter. However, given that writing is political, I acknowledge that this chapter brings me into trans politics.

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on behalf of trans people, whose experiences are not my own.4 There are a wide range of theoretical and political perspectives and lived experiences in trans communities. I may disagree with some trans people about politics and theoretical understandings about gender. However, I make every effort to accurately chart and respect these differences. My primary focus in this chapter is to interrogate privilege from within a non-trans identity and how that privilege relates to cissexism, cisnormativity and cisgenderism. I am also concerned with what this means for potential alliances between cis people and transgender and non-binary people in challenging the gender binary.5

Interrogating cisgender privilege ‘Cis’ is a Latin term which means ‘on the same side as’, in contrast to ‘trans’ which means ‘on the other side of ’. While a transgender person’s gender is on the other side of their birth-assigned sex, a cisgender person’s gender is on the same side as their birth-assigned sex (Aultman 2014). The term ‘cisgender’ identifies how having an alignment between one’s body and one’s gender identity provides a form of privilege that transgender people do not experience. While the contrast to trans is often wrongly assumed to be heterosexual, the framing of cisgendered makes it clear that it is about gender identity rather than sexuality. In this framing, cisgender may include bisexuals, lesbians and gay men as well as heterosexuals (Pyne 2011).6 The aim of naming cisgender is to avoid the unstated reproduction of cisnormativity. Cisgender is one of a number of ways in which human beings are gendered and sexed (Aultman 2014). As Koyama (2002) puts it, the aim of the term ‘cisgender’ is to ‘decentre the dominant group’, to provide a language to name non-transgendered people as just one form of gendered identity

4

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6

The language of ‘trans people’ is a de-gendered term and it erases the specific gendered dimensions of trans experience. Trans oppression is experienced differently by trans women and trans men and I interrogate these differences in the chapter. However, I use this language when discussing cis privilege because of its widespread use in the literature and also because I discuss issues that are common across trans women and trans men. In this chapter, I focus upon cis privilege in specific Western societies, especially those in the Anglophone global North where the cultural politics of the gender binary are most pronounced. These debates play out differently in different cultural contexts. See, for example, Namaste (2009), Connell (2013), Schmidt (2017) and Saeidzadeh (2020). Although this is how the term is used, some lesbian and gay people, who have no discomfort with their biological sex but who have never identified with the gendered assumptions of the sex they were assigned at birth, do not regard themselves as cisgender (Leonard 2020, personal communication).

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rather than leaving them undefined as the norm by which transgender and non-binary people are to be judged. The language of cisgender encourages gender normative people to understand that the gender they take for granted is itself a specific form of gender identity and that people who do not conform to their assigned gender at birth are disadvantaged and oppressed (McIntyre 2018). The purpose of defining gender normative persons as cisgendered is thus to name the privilege inherent in what otherwise would be regarded as an unmarked position (Gottzen and Straube 2016). Cisgender privileges include social, political and material advantages. Cisgender people, unlike transgender people, do not face the same level of fear of exclusion, humiliation or violence based on their gender identity.7 Cisgender privilege maintains the oppression of transgendered people and reinforces the supremacy of cisgender identities within the gender binary (Walls and Costello 2014). Serano (2007) says that most non-trans people believe that their own gender has an authenticity about it which gives them the sense of entitlement that they can adjudicate over the authenticity of others’ gender identities. For her, it is not gender identity that should be problematised but gender identity privilege.8 People who do not have to question their sexed embodiment do not have to face the constant challenges that trans people encounter every day in reconciling their sense of self with the way in which they are perceived and positioned by others.9 Schilt and Westbrook (2009) draw upon Garfinkel’s concept of ‘gender normals’ to describe cisgendered men and women. They explore how such ‘gender normals’ respond to people whose gender presentation does not match the gendered expectations of the sex they were assigned at birth. In their view, gender identity and heterosexuality are related through the belief that there are only two opposite sexes and that such sexes constitute a heteronormative gender system. Overall (2012) challenges the view that cisgender people are ‘normal’ while transgender people are not. She argues that both cis and trans people are pressured to conform to normative notions of gender and gender performance and that both experience continuity and discontinuity in their gender aspirations. 7

8

9

Although, of course, cis women also face misogyny, sexism, discrimination and violence associated with their sex. Also, the vast majority of violence against transgendered people is perpetrated against male to female transgender and transsexual people (Namaste 2009). This identity privilege does not apply equally to cis men and cis women. It is thus important to gender this cis privilege to avoid any effacing of men’s gendered power. See T-Vox (2009) for a detailed list of cisgender privileges.

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Heterosexual cis men have most access to those traits that are culturally valued in a society organised by gender binaries. Heterosexual cis women, while privileged by their heterosexuality and cisgendered experience, will tend to be marginalised when they attempt to access gender privileges (Yavorsky 2016).10 Heterosexual cisgendered men gain the most from maintaining the gender binary because of greater access to the privileges of these gendered arrangements. They are also more likely to express prejudice towards trans people compared to cis women (Worthen 2016). Further, cisgender men maintain dominant forms of masculinity by distancing themselves from femininity especially when expressed by trans women. The existence of trans people may destabilise cis men’s attempt to maintain a coherent masculine identity. For most cis men, there is a natural connection between being male (as in being assigned male at birth) and being masculine. Worthen (2016) cites research which demonstrates that heterosexual cisgender men are more prejudiced and discriminatory towards transgender women than heterosexual cisgender women.11 When cisgendered people say that they don’t see themselves as privileged on the basis of the alignment of their sex and their gender identity, is this comparable to the denial men engage in when challenged about male privilege or white people engage in when challenged about white privilege? There is a taken-for-granted normalcy in the experience of non-trans people that seems similar to the sense of normalcy of other normative experiences of privilege. Many of those who are critical of trans experiences seem unwilling to transfer what they know about denial and resistance of other forms of privilege to transgender. In defining non-transgender people as cisgendered, there is the danger of a new binary of trans and cisgender evolving (Rogers 2017). Some critics of the term argue that it reinforces distinctions between trans people and non-trans people. They prefer the language of ‘non-trans’ instead (McIntyre 2018). The concept of cisgender has normalising implications because it locates normativity with cisness and affirms the supposed ‘naturalness’ of the alignment of sexed characteristics with gender identity (Aultman 2014). Enke (2018a) similarly argues that cisgender encourages an investment in the stability of gender categories rather than undermining them. The term may encourage resistance from some non-trans people who associate the term with normativity. For them, it may be more appropriate to frame themselves 10

11

Some heterosexual cis women may not regard their heterosexuality as a form of privilege in the context of the gendered and sexual violence they experience under patriarchy. At the same time, research shows that most of the clients of transgender sex workers are cisgendered men who identify as heterosexual (Weinberg and Williams 2010).

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as cissexual; people who experience their physical and subconscious sex as being aligned without necessarily being cisgendered in that they may not identify with the gender that is associated with that sex (Serano 2007). In a socially just world, all sexualities and gender identities would be equal (Risman and Lorber 2012). The question is, how do non-trans people best support transgender and non-binary people to achieve equal status to these different sexual and gender identities without at the same time undermining the reality of sex-based oppression?

From transphobia to cisnormativity and cisgenderism One way of framing transgender oppression is transphobia which is defined as the fear of, or hatred towards, people who express an atypical gender identity (Monro 2015). Levine (2018) suggests that transphobia can also be expressed in ostensibly well-meaning and seemingly positive attitudes that nevertheless pressure transgendered people into enacting normative expressions of gender. He refers to this as ‘benevolent transphobia’ that reinforces discrimination against trans people in work, education, interpersonal relationships and public spaces. While the concept of transphobia is valuable in understanding motivations of individuals, it can obscure the systemic and structural dimensions of the marginalisation of trans people which is not dependent on individual prejudice. Bauer et al. (2009) propose ‘cisnormativity’ to describe the assumption that both those assigned female or male at birth will naturally become women and men respectively. This belief is so deeply internalised to be rarely acknowledged. For them, it is cisnormativity that underpins transphobia. The concept of cisnormativity more clearly identifies the unstated premise of two stable genders which is at the heart of trans people’s marginalisation and oppression. Lennon and Mistler (2014) define cisgenderism as an ideology that pathologises people who do not identify with the sex they were allocated at birth and hence denigrates and devalues transgender people. They prefer this term to transphobia because of the focus on the fear of trans-identified people rather than the systemic and cultural assumptions that underpin the processes of discrimination and prejudice. As with other forms of phobia, such as homophobia or Islamophobia, the prejudice is seen to be based on fear of the other rather than on the cultural ideology that perpetuates prejudice and hatred. Cisgenderism is defined by Yavorsky (2016) as an ideology that marginalises not only trans people but also women and femininities. It

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combines sexism which focuses on the treatment of women as inferior to men with cissexism which focuses on the treatment of trans people as inferior to non-trans people. Cisgenderism reinforces the hierarchy of gendered identities and norms which underpin the oppression of trans people. In cisgenderism, the focus shifts from a fear-based individual attitude to a cultural discourse that is systemic and multileveled. For Kennedy (2013), cultural cisgenderism is featured by a systemic erasure of trans people, the essentialising of gender, the reproduction of the gender binary, the immutability of gender and the external imposition of gender upon the experiences of people against their own self-definition. Worthen (2016) locates transphobia in the context not only of cisgenderism but also ‘hetero-cisnormativity’.12 Both transphobia and cisgenderism are located in a system that privileges heterosexuality and gender conformity, hence the language of hetero-cisnormativity. Some heterosexual cisgender men believe they are entitled to be dominant in society and propagate the ideology of hetero-cisnormativity to reproduce their privilege and power. Non-transgender people may also experience limitations of gender norms and feel under pressure to conform to these norms and the gender binary.13 It is important to acknowledge that everyone is affected by the ideology of cisgenderism, as cis men and cis women also experience restrictions on how they are expected to behave in relation to masculinity and femininity accordingly (Kennedy 2013).14 Jensen (2016) draws parallels between his own experience of not feeling comfortable with the rigid gender norms governing masculinity and manhood and trans people’s experiences of feeling trapped in the wrong body. Schwalbe (2014) also says he experiences gender dysphoria but for him this is political because he objects to both the gender binary and gender hierarchy. Switching gender categories in itself does not subvert the gender binary. In his view, it reinforces essentialist notions of male and female. For him, it is more liberating to separate selfhood from sex and gender. However, while these views resonate personally with me, such experiences and pressures of cis men are substantially different from the oppression experienced by transgender people who face interpersonal prejudice, exclusion, physical violence and institutional discrimination for not conforming to coercive gender norms (Peters 2018). Violence by cisgender men against transgender people, especially transgender women,

12 13

14

See Chapter 8 for a discussion of heterosexism. See Migdalek (2015) for an analysis of how cisgendered men are impacted by and can disrupt the gender binary. It should be noted, however, that these restrictions will always favour heterosexual men over heterosexual women and LGBT people.

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seems to be predicated on the transgression of gender norms where persons perceived as male take on what are seen to be feminine characteristics (Schilt and Westbrook 2009).15

Transsexual, transgender, trans* and the politics of naming One of the main forms of oppression of trans people and those who are gender non-conforming is being categorised in ways that are contrary to how they identify themselves. It is important therefore, as trans academics note, to distinguish between the use of transgender as an umbrella term to describe a wide variety of people who transgress the dominant cultural understandings of gender from those who wish to affirm a gender distinct identity or take up a specific political position on gender politics (Bettcher 2014a). Many people who transgress dominant gender norms, who would be included in this definition, may not necessarily self-identify with a transgendered identity or, in fact, any form of gender identity. Transgender can mean quite different things to different people.16 As an umbrella term, transgender can include all people who challenge gender normativity, including transsexuals, intersex people, drag queens, drag kings, MtF and FtM, bigender, intergender, two spirit, pangender, genderqueer, agender, gender-fluid, non-binary and others (Johnson 2013; Bettcher 2016; Nanney and Brunsma 2017). More recently, the term trans* includes a wider range of possible trans experiences that go beyond the binary (Halberstam 2018). While trans can include people who identify as men or women, it also includes queer identified people who resist the gender binary and do not identify with any gender at all.17 People who do not identify as masculine or feminine may define themselves as genderqueer. Those who experience their gender identity 15

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It is also important to acknowledge the heterogeneity of trans people beyond trans women and trans men. Where transgender intersects with ethnicity, class, culture and age, trans people can experience multiple forms of discrimination and violence as, for example, with trans people of colour facing both transphobia and racial bigotry (Gerwe 2019). This tension means that some trans-normative people will resist both the language of transgender and transsexual. Some transsexual people resist being framed by the language of transgender as they see themselves as men or women (see, for example, Namaste 2009). These differences between trans people who identify with the gender binary and nonbinary people who see the gender binary as a problem raises questions about whether such diverse experiences can and should be linked under a shared umbrella term.

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differently in different situations are often defined as gender-fluid, while people who experience their gender as both masculine and feminine may define themselves as being bigender. People who do not experience themselves as having a gender may define themselves as agendered individuals (Halley and Eshleman 2017). The term ‘intersex’ refers to people who are born with physical sex characteristics that do not align with social and medical norms for male and female bodies (Admin 2013).18 Heyes (2003) uses the term ‘transgender’ to describe any person who does not identify with the gender they were assigned at birth.19 In contrast, she defines ‘transsexual’ as someone who undergoes, or intends to undergo, physical interventions to align their sexed body with their gender identity.20 While Stryker (2006) defines a transsexual as someone who changes their genitals to enable membership of a gender different from the one assigned at birth, she defines a transgender person as someone who changes the public presentation of their gender without undergoing genital surgery. Bettcher (2016) suggests that by subsuming transsexual persons under the umbrella of gender diversity, the metaphor of people being ‘trapped in the wrong body’ changes to one of being ‘trapped in the wrong culture’. Bettcher (2014b) defines transsexuality as the ‘wrong body’ model where there is lack of alignment between the sexed body and gender identity. She identifies two versions of this model. In one version, transsexuality is a medical condition which is addressed by genital reconstruction surgery enabling the person to become a man or a woman. In the other version, a person’s ‘real sex’ is determined by their gender identity. In both versions of the model, one is a man or a woman trapped in the wrong body. Ekins and King (2005) argue that the medical approach to trans retains a binary notion of sex and gender, that reinforces stereotypes of masculinity and femininity and confirms their links to male and female bodies respectively. The concept of transgender was developed to challenge the assumptions of pathology implied by transsexuality, gender identity disorder and gender dysphoria that were defined within the medical profession. For some, transgender represents a political position that aims to challenge

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All of these terms continue to be revised and contested. The difficulty with this definition is that some gay and heterosexual people do not identify with gender norms but would not describe themselves as transgender or nonbinary. They have no discomfort with their biological sex but do not identify with the gendered assumptions of the sex they were assigned at birth. Although I use the language of transsexual because it is the term used in the literature, I am aware that because of the medical and pathologising connotations, one should not refer to someone as a transsexual unless they explicitly use that term to refer to themselves.

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what is regarded as the medical pathologising of trans people’s experiences (Johnson 2013). However, there is a concern that transsexual voices may be silenced under the language of transgender, as it suggests that transgender is subversive because it challenges the gender binary and transsexuality is conservative because it reinforces the binary (Lane 2009).21 Transgender studies as a field of scholarship has emerged partly because of the rise of queer theory, especially the work of Judith Butler (1990). The experiences of trans people confirm Butler’s notion that all gender is performative. In this view, rather than transgender people becoming what they perceive to be ‘authentic’ women or men, they are really performing and enacting another version of gender. Performativity holds out the promise of being able to transgress and disrupt traditional categories of gender and sex. Post-structural approaches to transgender are valuable in promoting gender diversity, but they need to be alert to the lived experiences of transgender people (Hines 2006). While Butler defends some forms of queer behaviour, she is criticised by some transgender scholars for neglecting the experiences of those trans people who replicate traditional gender norms because they endeavour to behave as traditional men and women (Bettcher 2014a). Connell (2012) argues that subverting gender identities does not address the everyday realities of hate-based violence and discrimination in employment that trans women face. Namaste (2009) also considers that queer theory does not address the violence and discrimination faced by trans people. There is a danger that in focusing on these issues of gender identity, the daily experiences of harassment, discrimination and violence which trans people experience will be marginalised.22 Furthermore, if gender is only a cultural construction, it is at odds with the lived experiences of some trans people who believe that gender is authentic and beyond culture. Many trans people see themselves as authentic men and women and they do not identify with notions of beyond the binary. Such individuals are more likely to self-identify as transsexuals to distance themselves from the politics of transgenderism. The politics of ‘beyond the binary’ is thus in tension with the politics of people who want to locate themselves within the binary (Bettcher 2014b).

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I return to this issue more fully when I discuss gender and the sexed body in a latter part of this chapter. Connell (2021) also notes that the focus on identity in trans politics does not address the consequences of state violence, corporate power or structural racism on trans people.

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The politics of transgender and the sexed body It is important to ask the question about how transgender politics impacts on feminist theorising. How does the expansion of the concept of woman through self-identity impact politically on cis women’s concerns? There is clearly a fraught and troubled relationship between some forms of feminism and some forms of transgender theory. There are philosophical debates about the different conceptions of the relationship between gender and the sexed body. There are also philosophical challenges in framing a theory of gender oppression when transgender people are perceived as being oppressed through the gender binary and cisgenderism and women are perceived as being oppressed by sexism and gender hierarchy, rather than recognising that these are not two different systems of oppression. Raymond (1979), in an early radical feminist critique of transsexuality, argued that to belong to the category of woman, there needs to be a shared history of embodied womanhood. If being a woman is linked to biological reproduction, then trans women will be excluded from the category of woman.23 In Raymond’s view, transgender women are actually men, as chromosomes determine sex and gender. For her, transsexuals internalise patriarchal stereotypes of masculinity and femininity and are prepared to undergo surgical transformation to enable them to become the gender they aspire to. In contrast, Raymond argued that they should analyse the sources of their oppression and challenge the gender system which created such stereotypes. This particular radical feminist perspective denied the agency and subjectivity of trans people (Peters 2018).24 The question of who is a woman is central to debates between feminism and transgender theory.25 The authenticity of sex and gender is premised upon the idea that sex involves the biological dimension of the person, while gender is an identity derived from one anatomical sex (Hird 2002). From a ‘gender-critical’ feminist position,26 a woman must have female sex organs and a female reproductive system and she must have a history of social, economic, political and sexual oppression on the basis of her embodied position. From this point of view, while trans women deserve to be treated 23

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In this reasoning, cis women who are physically unable to bear children would also not satisfy the criteria for womanhood. It is important to note that this early radical feminist critique of trans did not represent radical feminism as a whole. Enke (2018b) has traced a high level of feminist support for trans people in the 1970s. The question of who is a man is less of a contentious issue in feminist and transgender politics. Gender-critical is the preferred term used by feminists who are critical of trans.

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with respect, they are not women on the basis of their biology or a history of oppression (Smith 2018). From a metaphysical position, however, women’s reproductive capacities, or even reproductive organs, are not essential for being a woman. Smith (2018) argues that making reproductive capacities essential to womanhood fetishises body parts because not all women have such capacities.27 In a social constructionist view, one becomes a woman or a man through the experience of oppression and privilege (Bettcher 2016). Part of cisgender women’s resistance to including trans women in female-only spaces is their antipathy towards those who were raised with male privilege (Jeffreys 2003).28 Trans women are accused of denying their previous male privilege that comes out of being raised as male. Trans women will certainly have previously passed as men and they will have experienced the socialisation that trains them to be assertive and confident (Koyama 2003).29 Research demonstrates that some trans women maintain some of the previous cisgender masculine traits after they transitioned (Kelley 2017). The concern is that a masculinist mindset will remain following transition out of previous experiences of living as a man. Many feminists do not accept the notion of an innate gender identity which is implicit in some forms of transgender politics. This is because a so-called natural gender identity has been the source of women’s oppression (Bettcher 2014a). At the same time, a social constructionist view of sex and gender is likely to be threatening to those trans people who believe that they are in the wrong body. While some cisgender feminists want to denaturalise gender, some transgender activists want to naturalise their gender. One of the problems with the dichotomy between sex as biology and gender as social construction is that features associated with biology are seen as not being malleable. Cultural understandings of gender are unable to address the corporeality of many transgender people (van Midde 2019). Some scholars suggest that feminist new materialism opens up new ways of understanding trans that go beyond social constructionist approaches that regard the body as fixed and passive and pre-existing the social. If the body is dynamic and in process,

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Otherwise, women who have had hysterectomies would be excluded from womanhood. It should be noted that not all trans women want access to women’s-only spaces. See, for example, Peters (2019) who says it is important that women feel safe from the presence of anyone they think of as being or having been a man, even if that person considers herself a woman. Although many trans women prior to transition may have already been gender nonconforming men and this will have limited their access to male privilege.

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non-binary experiences are not a pathology or disorder but are part of human variation (Lane 2009; Jagger 2015).

Trans men, masculinity and beyond Masculinity studies have largely neglected trans masculinity and transgender. The premise of some masculinity scholars is that masculinity is only enacted by those assigned male at birth. Trans men are the least studied group of men in critical masculinity studies (Green 2005). A renewed focus on trans issues by masculinity scholars highlights the importance of not assuming that masculinity is solely to do with male bodies and men (Gottzen and Straube 2016). Increasingly, it is being recognised that cis women can also do masculinity. Halberstam’s (1998) concept of female masculinity, or masculinity without men, was an important departure point for challenging this often unstated premise. The value of Halberstam’s concept of female masculinity is that it destabilises the relationship between masculinity and cis male bodies. Masculinity and femininity are not necessarily connected to sex assigned at birth, gender positioning or sexual orientation. In making masculinity more available to women and girls, Halberstam hopes that men will also be more open to exploring forms of female masculinity for themselves. Liberal forms of transgender politics, especially in relation to trans men, seem to regard masculinity as a desired expression of a gendered self. Is the expression of gender simply a free choice? For Green (2005), critical masculinity scholars are so invested in analysing masculinity as a form of socially constructed power that they do not value it as a legitimate and natural form of an individual’s expression of gender. Some masculinity scholars and activists argue that masculinity is not inevitably oppressive or connected to male supremacy and that some forms of masculinity can be progressive (Migdalek 2015). This is only possible if masculinity and manhood can be separated from patriarchy and men’s dominance of women. The issue is whether masculinity can be anything other than a system of power. While it is possible for cis men and trans men to practice softer and potentially more healthy and caring masculinities, these forms of expression do not challenge patriarchal social relations.30

30

I have written previously about the limitations of the framework of healthy and positive masculinities for addressing men’s violences. See Pease (2019).

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For many feminists and profeminist men, gender is not simply a freefloating category that anyone can express. It is relational and interconnected with patriarchy and other systems of oppression. There is a tension between the view that gender is simply something that anyone can express in their own way and the feminist recognition that some forms of masculinity are abusive and violent towards women, while some forms of femininity encourage women to accept poor treatment by men. Schwalbe (2014) argues that masculinity is inherently about domination because it is substantially about the capacity to control. Any attempt to construct a sense of self that is masculine would seem to involve the affirmation and expression of dominance. It is hard to imagine how the promotion of manhood and masculinity can avoid controlling others or reinforcing patriarchy.

Reinforcing or challenging the gender binary? Constructing masculinity and femininity as opposites reinforces the biological determinist position of male and female sex as a binary. This binary is the basis of the gender hierarchy between men and women and between the notion of stable normative gender categories and those that are gender non-conforming. Serano (2007) differentiates between traditional sexism and oppositional sexism. The former believe that males and masculinity are superior to females and femininity, while the latter believes that males and females are two distinct and exclusive gender categories. For Serano, the term trans-misogyny captures the discrimination and oppression specifically experienced by trans women. From this perspective, deconstructing the gender binary addresses both the oppression of women and the oppression of trans people. One of the key debates is whether transgender deconstructs sex and gender or whether traditional gender categories are reinforced. From the former perspective, transgender people subvert gender categories, while from the latter they give expression to what are believed to be authentic gender categories of man and woman (Hines 2006). In Anonymous’ (2019) view, the gender expression of individuals does not challenge patriarchal culture or subvert the gender binary. Switching gender roles or choosing to be non-binary, she31 argues, does not challenge the exploitation of women.32 31

32

Anonymous’ preferred pronoun is evident from the article. I have made every effort to ensure that authors’ preferred pronouns are used throughout this chapter. Although it does challenge the normative superiority of dominant masculinities.

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Trans people who are seen to reinforce the gender binary, along with those in the lesbian community who practice butch/femme roles, are upsetting to many feminists (heterosexual, lesbian and bisexual). For Jensen (2017) transgenderism is a medicalised response to the rigid gender norms of patriarchy and its politics are liberal and individualistic. This is because, in his view, liberation is framed as allowing people to move between patriarchal gender roles rather than transforming them. However, this criticism is only valid when Sex Reassignment Surgery is an aspiration. Many transgender scholars acknowledge that the medicalisation of transsexuality perpetuates sexist and heterosexist norms and practices and they express concern that transsexuals may take up sexist stereotypes (Stone 2004; Bettcher 2014a). Serano (2007) challenges the view, however, that transsexuals and transgender people necessarily conform to traditional gender roles. For example, in response to the view that trans women present themselves as hyper-feminine, she cites research which demonstrates that their style of dressing and other gendered traits are as diverse as the wider population of women. She argues that trans people are neither necessarily conforming or subverting of traditional gender roles and the heteronormative gender order. Consequently, the validity of trans people’s lives should not be determined by whether they demonstrate a commitment to abolishing patriarchy. Similarly, Heyes (2003) argues that transgender people are not as politically suspect as some feminist critics claim. While some trans people seem to support gender dualisms, this is not any more the case than cisgender people’s support for the gender binary (Halley and Eshleman 2017).33 Koyama (2003) encourages trans women to refuse sexist forms of gender expression. However, she acknowledges that trans women are often pressured to take up traditional forms of gender if they want access to medical technologies and also if they want to pass to avoid transphobic violence. Trans people can access conditional cisgender privilege if they do not disclose their trans identity and they successfully ‘pass’ (Serano 2007). When transgender people become ‘gender outlaws’, they face greater discrimination in employment and transphobia and violence in public places (Johnson 2005). One of the consequences of people living their lives in a gender they were not assigned at birth is that their very existence may disrupt the 33

What is more problematical, however, is the advocacy of some trans activists to de-gender sites of discrimination against women. To talk of people rather than women, to be inclusive of trans women, has the political consequences in some contexts of denying a gendered analysis of sites of women’s oppression.

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belief that gender identity is an inevitable outcome of biology. Whatever political views trans people express, in relation to support, or otherwise, for forms of gender essentialism, their very existence represents a challenge to essentialism (Williams 2016).34 Whether they set out to do it consciously or not, trans people complicate and challenge the assumptions underpinning the gender binary and its premise of gender being derived from an assigned sex (Yavorsky 2016). Politics ‘beyond the binary’ frames the oppression of transgender people as a response to the gender binary that negates gendered positioning outside the categories of man and woman (Bettcher 2016). Gender pluralism celebrates gender diversity and is not concerned with widening the definitions of male and female. Nor does it attempt to eliminate gender. In this view, there is a wide spectrum of gender identities including, for example, masculine, feminine, intersex, androgynous and gender plural (Monro 2015). One of the strategies to further the acceptance of gender pluralism is to ask people what their preferred gender pronouns are. ‘Ze’ and ‘hir’ are two suggestions that have been encouraged (Monro 2015) but ‘they’ and ‘them’ are currently the two most commonly used gender-neutral pronouns. However, where gender pronouns are only seen to be an important matter for transgender people, it again reinforces gender normativity as cisgendered people are generally not asked what their pronouns are (Levine 2018).35

Towards transfeminism? Is there an inevitable conflict of interest between cisgender women and transwomen? At times, the politics seems to suggest so with some trans activists referring to some non-trans feminists as TERFs (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists). Although the term was originally developed by cisgendered feminist women to describe their political position, over time, it has become a slur used by some trans women against feminists who are critical of trans politics and many such women experience it as offensive (Hines 2019). Williams (2014) says that the term currently refers to a feminist who uses the language of feminism to frame anti-trans bigotry. It seems unlikely to enable a dialogue between competing views about transgender.

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I would add here that trans people challenge homonormative beliefs as well, as there is a similar prejudice against transgendered people from some gay and lesbian cisgendered people. See, for example, Robinson (2016). Although some workplaces ask all people what their pronouns are and some people (both cis and trans) add their pronouns to their email signature.

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‘Gender critical feminists’ say that when they raise questions about transgender politics, they are dismissed as transphobic (Anonymous 2019). The conflict between some cisgender feminists and some trans activists seems at times to be a form of ‘horizontal violence’. Freire (2003) used the concept of horizontal violence to explain antagonism between oppressed people because of their oppression in the class hierarchy. Perhaps it has value in understanding antagonism between cisgender women and trans women in the gender binary. Is there necessarily a divergence between feminists and pro-feminists who aim to abolish the gender hierarchy between men and women and transgender activists who want to abolish the hierarchy which privileges fixed gender categories over genders that are more fluid and multiple? Is it possible to formulate a theory that encompasses both modalities of oppression? On what basis might there be alliances on a shared position? Williams (2016) sets out to reclaim what she calls a ‘trans-inclusive radical feminism’ in contrast to the accounts of how some forms of radical feminism are critical of transgender politics and experiences. She documents various historical moments when radical feminists supported trans people and argued against the notion of women as a biological group. For some radical feminists, women are a political group and on that basis, anyone who presents and lives as a woman is a woman. Koyama (2003) developed a transfeminist manifesto which encourages transwomen to see their liberation linked to the struggles of all women against patriarchy and encourages non-transwomen to support the struggles of transwomen. The challenge is to make transgender people’s experiences accessible to feminists, while at the same time affirming transgendered women’s lived experiences (Connell 2012).36 Transfeminism draws upon intersectionality to interrogate the intersections of transphobic and sexist oppressions. The concept of intersectionality (Crenshaw 1989) is important in exploring alliances between trans women and non-trans feminists. Gender beyond the binaries offers some promise for intersectional politics because of its focus on how transgender people are positioned in problematic ways in relation to the binary (Bettcher 2016).37 36

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This may also involve asking transwomen to consider the experiences of non-transwomen and their gendered relationships with men and other women. Generally, cis feminists are not necessarily opposed to abolishing the gender binary but while we continue to live in a patriarchal world, gendered categories may still be necessary to provide evidence of discrimination and oppression. See Plutaro and Ortega-Arjonilla (2016) for an encouraging illustration of feminist and trans alliances in Spain.

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The focus of much transgender politics emphasises the notion of rights within the existing gendered arrangements (Connell 2012). The aim of a lot of transgender activism is to be treated equally with non-trans people (Monro 2015). Rahar (2017) describes the individualism of some forms of transpolitics as ‘transliberalism’ which she says fits comfortably within neoliberal capitalist society. For Connell (2012) a progressive transgender politics will move away from individualism towards more collectivist transformations of unjust gender orders. In her view, feminist social science is a necessary resource for understanding transgender and for developing a progressive politics.38 As noted earlier, there is a tension between undoing the gender binary system that is built upon gender inequality and encouraging a wide range of choices to adopt a variety of different gender and non-gender identities (Martino 2012). There is also a tension between the project of ‘gender democracy’ that aims to equalise genders and the strategy of degendering or abolishing gender (Connell 2009). Moving beyond gender means that all signifiers and codes in relation to gender are removed as far as possible. This is Lorber’s (1994) idea of degendering society. Risman and Lorber (2012) argue that classifying some human attributes as feminine and some human attributes as masculine oppresses all gender identities and sexualities. This degendering movement is taken up by some trans scholars, such as Bornstein (2016) who argues that we should remove the categories of men and women to encourage greater acceptance of trans people. While some trans scholars argue that degendering would deny corporeality and the experiences of those who identify in a sexed way (Monro 2010), this is only so if we accept the binary of sex and gender. In a degendered world, sexual difference would be acknowledged but it would have no cultural or gendered meaning.

Conclusion The gender binary not only oppresses transgender, non-binary and intersex people, it limits cisgendered people as well. Many cis men, myself included, have engaged in a political refusal of patriarchal manhood. However, while I do not conform to many traditional notions of masculinity and I exhibit 38

In a latter publication Connell (2021) notes that the politics of transgender was developed in the United States and was imported to other parts of the world. She notes that postcolonial perspectives on trans issues and trans experiences in the global South have had little impact to date on transgender studies.

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some traits that others may deem feminine, I also have a firm sense of myself as a male. As a non-trans person, it is much easier for me to focus on how gender is socially constructed rather than embodied. But what if subjectivity was both social and natural? What would it mean if it was okay to be biologically male and socially a woman? What would it mean if there were no social identities of manhood or womanhood at all? Would cis women and trans people face the same challenges as they currently do? Would trans and cis lose their meaning? Perhaps if cis people were able to acknowledge and face the gender contradictions in their own lives, it may provide some political traction and a capacity to listen to the experiences of trans people (Connell 2021). Progressive transgender and non-transgender people have political choices to make about alliances and strategies. We need to theoretically move beyond binaries of gender and sex. Initially, we do not need to relinquish our gendered subjectivities so much as to make our gendered experiences less significant than that of our moral and political values, while at the same time embracing our embodied sexual differences. Becoming less gendered as we become more embodied will enable us all to move beyond many of the limitations of sex and gender that polarise feminist and transgender politics.

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Christian hegemony and religious privilege

Introduction I write about Christian privilege as a non-Christian, albeit one who was raised Catholic. However, although I do not identify as Christian, my socialisation into Christianity through Catholic schools, church attendance and family life nevertheless means that I benefited from Christian privilege throughout my life. While I have transitioned to a non-faith identity, I also acknowledge that the religious socialisation that was part of my childhood and education has influenced my sense of self. Consequently, even though I no longer call myself a Christian, I nevertheless possess elements of Christian privilege through those cultural experiences. Also, white Anglo people such as myself are able to pass as Christian and hence are also able to gain some of the benefits of Christian privilege even if we do not have Christian beliefs.1 When I broke with the Catholic Church and Christianity, and as I moved in politically progressive social justice circles, in which many others had also rejected religion, I developed an anti-religious view. Like many political progressives, I did not fully understand how my rejection of religion was still shaped by Christianity and, notwithstanding my role as an activist scholar, I did not give much attention to the marginalisation of non-Christian religions. In expressing a bias against the Catholic Church and religion generally, I also came to devalue spirituality and I did not have a sense of awe about the beauty of the natural world and the cosmos. My consciousness of the role of organised religions in the oppression of marginalised communities also meant that I was not open to the possible progressive expressions of spirituality or religion. I would now locate myself in the ‘spiritual but not religious’ category with a keen interest in how spiritual (and in some cases non-institutional religious) perspectives can inform politically progressive politics. This means

1

Here, I follow Edwards (2018) in arguing that as a culturally Christian atheist, I cannot just choose not to be influenced by Christian socialisation. While I can decide that I no longer believe in the tenets of Christianity, I retain Christian socialisation and privilege that I have developed over my lifetime.

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that I am in an ambiguous position in challenging Christian hegemony and privilege. I am both part of the dominant perspective and not situated solely within it. The focus of this chapter is on religious privilege in specific Western contexts. As I write in Australia, where Christianity is the dominant religious identity, as it is in many Western countries, my focus is on Christian privilege and the implications of Christian hegemony on the lives of those who do not adhere to the Christian faith. In writing about Christian hegemony, I do not suggest that other religions cannot be oppressive. In other parts of the world where another religion is state sponsored or hegemonic, for example, Islam in many countries of the Middle East, Hinduism in India, Judaism in Israel and Buddhism in Cambodia (PEW Research Centre 2017), many of the issues raised about Christianity here may well apply to other religious beliefs if they take on the same hegemonic and normative influence in these contexts.2 Furthermore, state-based anti-religious policies in other parts of the world could also have similar hegemonic influences as dominant religions.3 It is important to separate Christian hegemony and privilege from Christian beliefs. In analysing Christian privilege, I distinguish between the belief system from the policies and structures that have come to be associated with that belief system in specific geopolitical contexts.4 The aim of this chapter is not to criticise Christian spiritual practices or beliefs, except where they diminish the lives of others. As I am not a religious scholar, I do not engage in textual analysis of Scripture to make an argument against Christian hegemony and privilege. I acknowledge that some progressive Christians will find inspiration in different interpretations of Scripture and different understandings of God to

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Although Christianity has historically played a very specific role in many other axes of oppression because of its alliance with European empire. See Anidjar (2006) on how today’s secular regime is simply the latest version of Christian empire. An example here would be China where the government officially espouses state atheism. In an atheistic fundamentalism, all religious beliefs are condemned as a refusal of science and human rationality. Such proponents encourage greater secularisation and increased separation of religion and state (Helly and Dube 2014). There is a difference between rejecting a belief in God and seeking to eliminate all religions. Some atheists prescribe intellectual intolerance of all religious faiths and argue that atheism is the only sustainable position to hold (Nall 2008). It should be noted, however, that any fundamentalist attitudes of individual atheists do not compare with the structural and institutional hegemony of particular religions in religion-dominated societies. It is important to separate Christianity’s institutionalised power structures from Christian theology and the faith of individual Christians, many of whom would want to distance themselves from the exercise and abuse of political and social power. This also means acknowledging that individuals may be culturally Christian without necessarily adhering to Christian beliefs.

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take a stand against oppressive practices in Christianity. As a non-Christian, I make my argument outside Scripture based on a political analysis of Christianity’s structural hegemony and power.5

The rise of Christian fundamentalism and evangelicalism Most discussions about the role of Christianity in public life in Western countries are focused on the impact of Christian fundamentalism on government policies, backlash movements, right-wing populism and anti-immigration, anti-Muslim, anti-homosexual and anti-reproductive choice debates. 6 Christian fundamentalists believe that the scriptures and interpretations of them are infallible, that God is all sovereign and that all human beings need to be converted to Christianity to be saved (Kincheloe 2009a). Christian evangelicals and conservative Christians played an important role in the election of Donald Trump in the United States (Du Mez 2017), were instrumental in the Brexit outcome in the UK (Smith and Woodhead 2018) and significantly influenced the Liberal Party vote in Australia, with the election of the first Pentecostal prime minister, Scott Morrison (Seccombe 2018).7 A debate persists about the role of Christianity in the rise of populism, with some commentators arguing that populists have hijacked Christianity (e.g. Marzouki, McConnell and Roy 2016) and others arguing that Christian fundamentalists have actively aligned themselves with populist movements and political parties (e.g. Roose 2021). The concept of Christian fundamentalism itself is contentious because of the pejorative and extremist connotations of the term (Bendroff 2017).8 5

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I acknowledge also, however, the importance of progressive Christian scholars and activists addressing the interpretive and normative ways that the Bible is used to legitimate Christian privilege. Christian fundamentalism and evangelicalism are often used interchangeably; however, they are not the same. A fundamentalist takes a literal reading of scripture as the foundation for their beliefs. Whereas evangelicals, whose primary focus is preaching the gospel, can be fundamentalists, but are not necessarily so. Both groups, however, have been associated with right-wing conservative Christians. While there are similarities in these three countries, there are important cultural differences between Christianity in the United States, the UK and Australia. The evangelical subculture in Australia is not as strong as it is in the United States, for example. While historically the fundamentals of the Bible, as those tenets considered fundamental to Christian belief, were the underlying premise of fundamentalism, contemporary Christian fundamentalism, especially in the United States, goes beyond

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As more Christians who believe in the fundamentals of the Bible endeavour to make the case that they are mainstream rather than extremist, there is an increasing imperative to critically interrogate the wider influence of Christianity on public life. There is evidence that the increase in Christian fundamentalism leads to higher levels of harassment, discrimination and violence against people from minority religions (Roose 2021). Some Christians believe that it is their responsibility to bring their religious truth to non-Christians. Proselytising Christianity can be experienced as harassment and delegitimising alternative religious beliefs. Non-Christians and many Christians are aware of the oppressive aspects of Christian fundamentalism. However, the more subtle ways that Christianity influences our lives in popular culture, the academy, politics and everyday life are less evident. Focusing solely on fundamentalist Christians leaves the mainstream influences of Christianity uninterrogated. Consequently, engagement with Christian privilege must extend beyond populism, the farright and evangelical Christianity.

From Christian normativity to Christian hegemony Christianity is the dominant religion in a country where the majority of citizens identify as Christian. Christian normativity involves the privileging and normalisation of Christianity as the dominant religious culture. It marginalises other religious minorities and non-religious people, while providing advantages and benefits to those who adhere to Christian beliefs (Ferber 2012). When people identify as Christian and adhere to institutionalised Christian norms, they are likely to regard other faiths and religious practices as less legitimate (Adams and Joshi 2007).9 Much of Christian normativity is not recognised as such, as so many dimensions are pervasive and unquestioned.10 They are mistaken as secular or non-Christian (Kivel 2013). Normative Christianity means people do not need to understand the assumptions underpinning institutions founded on Christian principles.

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this understanding. This opens up the question, among Christians, of how much the harassment, discrimination and violence flows from Christian fundamentalism and how much they are a product of distortions by Christian leaders for other purposes. People do not have to consciously adhere to Christianity to have these prejudices. If they are socialised into a culture where a Christian world view is normal and institutionalised, these prejudices may also be present. For example, words like breakfast come from break fast and holiday from holy day.

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In the United States a Christian ethos permeates university campuses and shapes university policies and structures (Seifert 2007; Blumenfeld 2012; Burke and Seagall 2017). The academic calendar is a prime example of the influence of Christian culture and consequent Christian privilege. Christian holidays are synchronised with university holidays, whereas in non-Christian religions, key days of religious observance may clash with university exams and lectures. Public holidays in most Western countries coincide with Christian days of religious observance, which means that Islamic, Buddhist, Jewish and Hindu days of religious observance are accommodated to the Christian calendar. Burke and Segall (2017) set out to ‘denaturalise’ Christianity’s influence in education in the United States, by making visible the ways in which it has permeated educational policies and discourses. They illustrate the religious aspects of academic calendars and the ways in which teaching pedagogies and curriculum design are shaped by the religious beliefs of teachers.11 Discrimination and prejudice against minority religious faiths are fuelled by Christian hegemony.12 When people who do not share Christian beliefs live in a Christian normative society, they often see themselves through the eyes of the privileged religious group, which in turn may impact on their identity and sense of self (Blumenfeld and Jaekel 2012). Christian normativity perpetuates and endorses public resistance to other religious beliefs and practices, including Indigenous faiths (Clark and Brimhall-Vargas 2003).13 Christian hegemony operates when Christian attitudes, individuals and institutions are dominant throughout society and where everyone is assumed to be Christian. It perpetuates the view that all people should be Christian, or comply with Christian hegemony, and it devalues and marginalises other religious and non-religious practices (Blumenfeld and Jaekel 2012). This is especially so if there is an unwillingness to learn about other religious beliefs (Simpson 2008). Christianity is a monotheistic religion and, like all such religions, the belief that there is only one God and only one correct version of God means that those who do not share those beliefs may be viewed as sinful. This perpetuates a moral absolutism that pits Christianity against various 11

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While the same exclusions occur in the Australian context, the traditions associated with traditional Indigenous spirituality, especially in relation to connections to land and sea, are also not generally acknowledged by universities or schools (Mikhailovich and Pauli 2011). Christian hegemony is maintained by the Church as an organisation, the clergy, practicing adherents and those culturally affiliated with Christianity. In some countries, this may also mean that atheists are also discriminated against. Although, as I have argued earlier, atheists often benefit from Christian privilege.

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others who need to be brought into the Christian fold. The adherence to a conversion narrative encourages some Christians to try and convert nonbelievers so that they can be saved (Kivel 2013). Christian hegemony means that Christian beliefs, expectations, mores and scriptures are often endorsed as ‘regimes of truth’ (Joshi 2020). When you believe that you have the truth, it can legitimate the abuse of others because it is seen to be in their interests. It can lead to arrogance and disrespect of other cultures and beliefs.14

From Christian hegemony to Christian privilege When Christian hegemony is in place, all Christians gain benefits, irrespective of how they express themselves. Christian privilege occurs through the normalisation of customs and practices that are informed by Christianity (Markowitz and Puchner 2018). The concept of Christian privilege indicates that Christians have access to a wide array of benefits and advantages stemming from their Christian beliefs that are not available to religious minorities, atheists and agnostics. In the context of Christian hegemony and Christian privilege, non-Christian religious groups and atheists which represent a minority are likely to experience discrimination and oppression resulting from their membership of those groups (Schlosser 2003). Christian privilege operates at multiple levels. The personal level of Christian privilege is manifested through an internalised sense of superiority and entitlement. When Jesus Christ is believed to be the only Son of God, other religious beliefs may be seen to be based on ignorance and consequently, this can potentially encourage a sense of superiority over people of other faiths (Ronan 2018), even among theological liberals.15 Todd (2010), for example, says that because she was politically progressive, she consoled herself by thinking that she was ‘better’ than many other Christians. She disassociated herself from her own sense of righteousness in relation to non-Christians and was not encouraged to challenge her belief in the inherent superiority of Christianity. At the interpersonal level, Christians may express their beliefs in ways that discriminate against those who do not share them. Christian privilege is also structural and embedded in cultural norms, making Christian values essential to national identities.16 Hence, Christian privilege, Christian 14

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I do not suggest that all Christians would necessarily adopt this morally absolutist perspective. Of course, this sense of entitlement is not unique to Christian religions. It can also apply to atheists whose belief in science and rationality can lead to feelings of superiority. Christianity is institutionalised through such practices as parliamentary prayers and oaths of office and the use of the cross as a symbol of mourning. Structurally based

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normativity and Christian hegemony are related and mutually reinforcing (Joshi 2020). It is important not to present Christian privilege or all Christians as an undifferentiated unitary bloc. There is a significant divide between Christians undertaking interfaith work and those Christian churches that make exclusivist claims to the possession of truth. Christian privilege occurs within specific sociocultural contexts and Christian norms cannot be assumed as universal across all contexts (Edwards 2020). Blumenfeld and Jaekel (2012) identify a number of factors that influence access to Christian privilege, including history, the number of practitioners and the degree of social power held by practitioners. There appears to be a hierarchy of Christian denominations. Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists, Greek Orthodox churches, Amish communities and Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints, for example, experience prejudice and exclusion within mainstream Christian churches, especially those dominated by white Protestants (Markowitz and Puchner 2018).17 Also within Christian denominations, race, gender and sexuality influence access to Christian privilege. People of colour, women and queer and trans people are not fully accepted in many Christian churches.18 Despite the divisions between and within Christian denominations, all Christians to varying degrees benefit from Christian privilege.19

Christianity and intersections with other forms of privilege and oppression An intersectional approach to Christianity focuses on how Christian privilege intersects with other structures of privilege, including class, gender, race, sexuality and anthropocentric privilege. There is a Christian power elite consisting of white upper-class Christian men who wield considerable social, economic and political power. Christian conservativism fosters a hypermasculinity which encourages Christian men to subordinate women as they are encouraged to subordinate their will to a male-dominated church

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financial advantages flow from Church land ownership and tax concessions. See Schlosser (2003) for a detailed list of Christian privileges. It should be noted that the notion of a hierarchy of Christian denominations will differ depending on the geographical context. There is certainly challenge to discriminatory practices in some churches by progressive reform movements. It is also important to acknowledge that some Christians will have also experienced discrimination and violence by other Christians.

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(Hedges 2007). In the 1990s, Christian men who felt their masculinity was under threat from increasing gender equality and minority rights formed the Promise Keepers and used Christian theological beliefs and the authority of the Bible to shore up men’s leadership and power in the home (Everton 2001). All Christian churches are patriarchal and this is reflected in the dominance of male voices in liturgical and organisational leadership in Christian communities (Purpura 2018). It is white Christians who represent the normative version of Christianity.20 White Christianity is produced and maintained by marginalising both nonwhite Christians and non-Christians. White supremacy has always been entangled with Christian privilege. Fletcher (2018) locates the origin of the ideology of white supremacy with the theology of Christian supremacy. Many Christian theologies are racist and draw upon theological arguments to support racism, as was the case with the religious justification of slavery and apartheid. Consequently, if we are to embrace religious pluralism and diversity, we need to be wary of selective fundamentalist use of scripture to legitimate oppression. The understanding and meaning of some Christian scriptures and traditions will thus need to be revised. Christian theologians need to consider whether and how their theology may have reproduced systems of racial oppression.21 Furthermore, transforming the structures and systems of white supremacy will require the undoing of Christian supremacy and vice versa.22 Christian privilege exists alongside homophobia and heterosexual privilege. Gay, lesbian and transgendered people are subjected to Christian religious beliefs and policies that deem non-heterosexual and non-genderconforming practices as immoral (Schlosser 2003). Anti-gay and anti-trans Christians often cite the Bible as the basis of their views on homosexuality and gender identity (Voelker 2018). Christian heterosexists will sometimes argue that they are called upon by God to provide ‘tough love’ to gay and lesbian people. As noted in the introduction, while I do not myself draw upon Scripture to challenge oppressive practices by Christians, some Christian theologians interpret Scripture in non-heteronormative ways. Jung and Smith (1993), for example, challenge heterosexist approaches to Scripture and drawing upon the authority of Scripture and their Christian faithfulness

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Although this is being challenged in some congregations, with increasing numbers of non-white immigrants, most churches are still controlled by white men. Some African American Christian theologians have begun this important task. See, for example, Carter (2008) and Jennings (2020). It is also important to note that the European history of colonialism and empire was interconnected with Christianity. See Joshi (2020).

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to doctrine, they make a Biblical argument to confront heterosexism by framing it as a sin. Christianity is connected to Anthropocentrism where humans are considered to be the superior species over non-human animals and the planet.23 White (1967) argued over fifty years ago that Christianity supported and encouraged an anthropocentric approach to nature by claiming humanity was made in the image of God and, consequently, humans had the right to dominate and exploit nature for humanity’s ends. Recent commentators acknowledge that some of Christian doctrine is anthropocentric (Green 2014 Simpkins 2018; Edwards 2020), although they differ on whether one can reinterpret Scripture and reframe doctrine in light of new interpretations or whether to develop an ecological Christianity outside of Scripture.

Christian privilege and anti-Muslim oppression There is a symbiotic relationship between Christian privilege and religious oppression, in that Christian privilege perpetuates oppression towards non-Christians (Blumenfeld 2012), including those people who identify as ‘non-religious’ (Nixon 2020). In different parts of the world, religious minorities are on the receiving end of violence and systemic discrimination for holding non-Christian religious beliefs (Roose and Turner 2019).24 Such discrimination and violence is informed by the association of Christian beliefs with Western epistemic privilege, as it characterises non-Christian knowledge as inferior (Grosfoguel 2010). Islamic philosophy, for example, is considered inferior to Western Christian philosophy.25 In this Western Christian centric view, Muslims will more likely be accepted if they embrace Christian religion and Western knowledge.26 Religious bigots sometimes state that they separate their critique of a person’s religion from a critique of them as individuals or as members of particular ethnic groups. People are condemned for their faith rather than for their ethnic or racial characteristics. Consequently, religious bigots 23 24

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See Chapter 3 for an analysis of anthropocentrism and human privilege. In other parts of the world, Christian minorities may experience discrimination and violence. This is also the case with Buddhist, Hindu and various Indigenous philosophies. I focus here on anti-Muslim oppression as one example of the impact of Christian hegemony on religious minority groups. There is an extensive body of literature on Muslims converting to Christianity. See, for example, Keri and Sleiman (2017).

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believe that Muslims can convert to Christianity because their religious beliefs are seen to be a matter of choice. This is expressed in the anti-Islamic proclamations of ‘We are not against Muslims, merely against Islam’ and ‘We accept Muslims as long as they integrate’ (cited in Lauwers 2019a, pp. 323–4).27 Some Christians consider religion to be a choice and an individual faith, and that Muslims can be persuaded to relinquish their faith and adopt a Christian outlook (Mahmood 2009). However, religious identity for many is not just a matter of personal choice, it is also a product of socialisation from family members, educators and others in the faith community that one was born into and raised. When Christians understand religion primarily as a matter of freely chosen individual beliefs, they fail to see how this in itself constitutes a form of religious bias, as some religions do not involve specific religious beliefs (Edwards 2018).28 Islamophobia has become the main framework for interrogating anti-Islam and anti-Muslim hostility. The concept of Islamophobia implies the fear of Islam as a religious faith. However, Bleich (2011) says that this does not capture the negative stereotyping of Muslims as a people. Halliday (2000) argues that while Islam as a religion was attacked in the past by Christians, anti-Muslim prejudice is now more focused upon Muslims as a people. In this view, there is a racialisation of religions that encourages people to associate Islam with particular ethnic groups. Grosfoguel (2012) refers to Islamophobia as a form of cultural racism against Muslim people. Framing of Islamophobia as racism is common in contemporary scholarship. One of the consequences of framing Islamophobia as cultural racism is that it neglects the expression of it as a form of religious bigotry. Lauwers (2019a) explores the differences and similarities between anti-Muslim bigotry and anti-Muslim racism. A key difference is while anti-Muslim racism assumes that Muslim identity and characteristics are unchangeable because they are innate, anti-Muslim religious bigotry is premised upon the view, noted earlier, that religious belief is an individual choice, and consequently is open to change. When Islamophobia is fuelled by religious bigotry, the focus is more on particular Muslim practices and

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This attempt to separate religious bigotry from racial vilification is difficult to sustain in the context of beliefs about the superiority of Christianity and beliefs about the inferiority of non-white people. Such proclamations are often made to obscure anti-Muslim racism which is socially less acceptable. For example, Eastern religions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism, and also many Indigenous religions are more practice-based than faith-based (SpinnerHalev 2005).

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specific aspects of Islam in contrast to understandings of racist prejudice where the whole of Islam and Muslims is denigrated.29 There is increasing criticism of the term ‘Islamophobia’ in both antireligious bigotry and anti-racism (Halliday 2000; Kivel 2013; Lauwers 2019a; Roose and Turner 2019). Islamophobia could convey the impression that there is only one Islam, thereby obscuring the diversity within (Halliday 2000). Islam, like all religions, is not monolithic. Even some open views about Islam can fall into the trap of failing to recognise its diversity (Tamdgidi 2012). One of the problems with the language of Islamophobia is that it is directed mainly at individual attitudes rather than the wider social context in which such attitudes develop. Consequently, Kivel’s (2013) term ‘anti-Muslim oppression’ which captures the institutionalised and systemic forms of discrimination and violence against Muslims is a more useful language. Human rights violations are often justified on the basis of religion. One of the dilemmas is how to challenge reactionary ideas within minority religions without reinforcing racism and religious bigotry. It is important to be able to criticise discriminatory and oppressive practices such as sexism, homophobia and animal abuse within particular religions without being labelled as a religious bigot. This can happen, for example, when all such criticisms of religious practices in Islam are labelled as Islamophobic (Nixon 2020). When global and nationalist conflicts are posed in terms of ‘good versus evil’, as, for example, in the War on Terror, the issues are presented as theological clashes. It is important to untangle political, ideological and cultural bases of conflict from religious dimensions. It is clear that religious justifications can be used to further political and cultural objectives (Adams 2007).

When religious freedom becomes religious privilege to discriminate The concept of religious freedom, which is expressed as the right of people of religious faith to practice their faiths without interference, has been an issue of considerable debate in many societies in recent years. For example, in Australia, The Religious Discrimination Bill 2019 has recently been passed 29

From a Muslim scholar’s perspective, it is the religious framing of Islamophobia rather than the racist underpinning that is experienced as most important. Muslims respond more strongly to what they perceive as an attack on Islam rather than an attack on Muslims (see Gabsi 2019).

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by the Australian Parliament to enact legislation to further protect various religious freedoms. The understandable concern is that such legislation may be used to negate laws that currently protect the rights of women, gay and lesbian people and others from religious-based discrimination. There is certainly evidence that under the guise of religious freedom, various civil rights associated with employment, housing, health care and marriage have been removed. Doctors, pharmacists, employers, government officials and businesses have made use of religious freedom laws to deny services to various people whose lifestyles they disagree with. In many such cases, religious freedom laws have overridden civil rights protections (Luchenitser 2016). There are currently no restrictions on religious freedom in Australia in terms of the freedom of people to express their religious faith. However, there are faith-based exemptions to discrimination laws that allow religious organisations to discriminate against non-Christian people in terms of access to Christian-based education, health and social services. Such exemptions are examples of Christian privilege in what is claimed to be a secular society. There are ongoing debates about whether hate speech is part of free speech or not. For some conservative Christians, religious freedom seems to mean the freedom to deny the rights and beliefs of others.30 LGBTQI people have experienced aggression and harassment on social media and public demonstrations by people espousing Christian slogans (Finn 2009). Some religions are more tolerant of different religions than others. When one believes that their beliefs alone are true, then it is more difficult to tolerate the existence and expression of alternative beliefs. When Christians see their religious beliefs as constituting the Truth and as a loving message to convey to non-believers, they often fail to understand how their religion is experienced by others (Fairchild 2010). It is often said that we are living in an increasingly multifaith world. However, most of us do not live in a world that values different religious and non-religious belief systems and allows and encourages different values and opinions about religious matters. The concept of religious pluralism acknowledges religious diversity but does not necessarily address issues of social justice (Joshi 2020). Religious pluralism and diversity that celebrates multiple choices of religions is mythical in that religious choice exists within a narrow range of possibilities (Beaman 2003). As Masuzawa (2012) observes, the claimed 30

It has been argued that the framework of religious freedom itself furthers Christian hegemony. This is not because Christians take advantage of it but because the framing of ‘religion’ and ‘freedom’ is biased by Christian history. See, for example, Sullivan (2018).

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religious pluralism of world religions has historically reinforced Christian hegemony by universalising Christian values. For example, ethical behaviour and human virtues such as decency, generosity and humility are coded as exclusively Christian virtues rather than universal human values (Seifert 2007). The influence of Christianity on the wider culture is so pervasive and unexamined that it is often not recognised at all. Christian dominance is so normalised that it is regarded as secular or non-Christian.

Secularism and the promotion of Christian privilege Australia (where I write) is a secular country in that it cannot impose particular forms of religious observance and it cannot legally establish a religion. However, while a religious test is not required to stand for public office, over 40 per cent of the Liberal Coalition Government Parliamentary members are Christian (James 2017). Also, given that the majority of Australian citizens identify as Christian (ABS 2016), it can be argued that, at the level of everyday life, Australia is a Christian nation.31 Sunderland (2007) argues that Australian secularism is premised upon a Judeo-Christian ethic and that there is no formal separation of church and state in Australia. The so-called ‘common values’ of Australian society that are espoused by conservative politicians are claimed as universal but a closer reading reveals them to be Christian values given their Judeo-Christian foundations (RandellMoon 2006). A previous Liberal prime minister (John Howard) publicly maintained that Judaeo-Christianity was the main moral underpinning of Australian society (cited in Sunderland 2007). However, the phrase JudaeoChristian can be a cover for Christian normativity (Joshi 2020).32 As such, the claim of secularisation perpetuates white Christian privilege over other religious faiths and traditions. A number of scholars have pointed out that many conventions and cultural norms which are considered to be secular are embedded with Christian values and standards (Clark and Brimhall-Vargas 2003; Blumenfeld and Jaekel 2012; Lauwers 2019b). This raises questions about the extent to which religion and the state are separate in Western Christian-dominant societies. 31

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It should be noted, however, that Christian identification and participation in Australia, while still in the majority, has declined since the 1960s. Furthermore, there is an age dimension here, as older generations are more likely than younger generations to identify with the Christian tradition (ABS 2016). This is a highly problematic term that has historically been used to assert Christianity’s superiority over Judaism and is currently used to exclude Muslims from a Western identity. See, for example, Nathan and Topolski (2018).

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In a secular state, it is presumed that no one faith group will be privileged over others. However, in most so-called secular states, Christian religious organisations are funded at significantly higher levels than other religious organisations (Lauwers 2019b). Many so-called secular traditions continue to privilege Christian faith over other faith traditions and non-religious views (Clark and Brimhall-Vargas 2003). Non-Christian religions are often perceived as intruding into secular spaces when there is no recognition of the level of Christian religious intrusion in the public sphere. Political secularism is influenced by Christianity and accordingly privileges the Christian religion over other religions. Christianity, especially through Catholicism and Protestantism, has adapted to secularism unlike nonChristian religions which are seen as incompatible with secularism (Lauwers (2019b). Some postcolonial critics (Asad 2009; Mahmood 2009) reject the notion that secularism is completely independent from Christianity, arguing that secularism works to exclude non-Christian religions. While the stated premise of secularism is that the state should be impartial towards religions through the separation of church and state, these critics demonstrate that secularism is a peculiarly Western construction that is grounded in Christian ideas and values. We have a form of Judeo-Christian secularism rather than a form of secularism where religion is removed from the public sphere. While on the one hand, this form of secularism sets out to restrict the influence of religion in public life, at the same time it reinforces Christian values that underpin secularism. Consequently, secularism can be understood as a Christian project that contributes to Christian privilege.33

Acknowledging Christian privilege Like other forms of privilege, Christian privilege is usually not evident to those who gain benefits from it. When Christian privilege is experienced as normal, any challenges to that privilege will be felt as a threat. Ferber (2009) documented her experiences as a Jewish woman being bombarded by Christian messages and greetings over the course of a Christmas period in the United States. There seemed to be little awareness among Christians about how she as a non-Christian might experience the Christmas tradition. In raising this issue with Christians, she received many defensive responses, some suggesting that she wanted to do away with Christmas. When ‘Happy 33

This is not to deny that in so-called secular societies, there will be more opportunity for the practice of other faiths than in societies where particular religious practices are enforced.

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Holidays’ was introduced, instead of ‘Merry Xmas’, as an inclusive greeting so as not to offend non-Christians, many Christians were angered by the change of greeting (Markowitz and Puchner 2018).34 In the context of Christian privilege and hegemony, when non-Christian groups challenge discrimination and ask for equal rights, they are often accused of wanting to eradicate the existence of Christianity (Nave 2015). Research undertaken by Blumenfeld and Jaekel (2012) in a Midwestern University in the United States with Christian pre-service teachers identified resistance by participants to the concept of Christian privilege. Some participants challenged the definition of Christian privilege in the study and emphasised that for them, their faith was a privilege, as they had the privilege of knowing God. The majority of the participants were unable or unwilling to recognise the material privileges accorded to them by society from their Christian faith and how such privileges subordinated other religious groups. The inability to recognise Christian privilege and religious oppression may have been related to the assertion expressed by most participants that there was only one way to religious truth. Fairchild and Blumenfeld (2007) in the United States document numerous levels of resistance to the concept of religious privilege in the university and college classroom. These forms of resistance range from denial and deflection through to belief in absolute truths and a reversal of victimhood to portraying themselves as victims because their values and religious beliefs were being criticised. Like other privileged groups, many Christians experience challenges to their privilege as prejudice and discrimination against them. One of the defensive responses is to argue that Christianity itself is under attack and that Christians are being limited in their ability to practice their religion freely, in spite of it being the most practised religion in those countries where Christian privilege exists. This is related to how Christians who are heterosexual white politically conservative men maintain that they are being victimised as women, gays and lesbians and people of colour gain some progress towards gender, sex and race equality (Kincheloe 2009b).35 The feelings of victimisation by members of groups who possess power and privilege is a common defence. White Christians who feel that they are losing ground and under attack for their religious beliefs often fail to understand their hegemonic power,

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Joshi (2020) notes that ‘Happy Holidays’ provides a veil of inclusivity that in many ways upholds Christian supremacy by suggesting that December is a universal holiday season. It ignores those for whom their holy days are not in December. It should also be acknowledged that some Christian anti-gay and anti-gender equality activists are from the Indian subcontinent and Africa.

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the normativity of their faith and the consequent privileges. This is not to deny that some Christians may experience hostility towards them in some situations. On those occasions, it is important that they contextualise these criticisms and understand that these hostile responses do not negate the reality of Christian privilege (Joshi 2020). While Christians may be on the receiving end of acts of interpersonal discrimination and hostility, this is not the same as institutionalised and structural oppression. One of the defences offered is the proclamation that there are many good Christians. This is similar to the defensive posture about patriarchy and white supremacy, that there are many good men and many good white people. Putting aside the danger of progressive members of privileged groups exceptualising themselves as ‘good’ people and hence not part of the problem, the existence of ‘good people’ does not negate the institutional consequences of structural oppression. Larson and Shady (2012) argue that Christians are both privileged and marginalised and describe this position as ‘social status ambiguity’. They make this claim on the basis that while Christians have privileged status, they feel like a marginalised minority. So while Larson and Shady acknowledge that Christian privilege exists and many Christians do not recognise their privilege, because they feel under attack, there is a paradoxical complexity in relation to Christian privilege. This argument is very close to Warren Farrell’s (1993) view about male privilege, although he took it further, arguing that because most men did not feel privileged, then they were not privileged at all. One can acknowledge that if Christians believe that their religion is under attack, then they are less likely to recognise their own Christian privilege when it is raised.36 However, this is a challenge for how we engage with resistance and denial rather than a confirmation that Christians are marginalised as well as privileged. In educational settings, educators who are interrogating Christian privilege need to be mindful about supporting students who feel threatened by conversations about the privileges associated with their Christian faith (Seifert 2007). Markowitz and Puchner (2018) use the framework of structural ignorance to explain Christian denial of religious privilege. In a study of school administrators in the United States, they found all participants were unaware of the existence of Christian privilege and how Christian norms were embedded within public schools. They emphasise the importance of religious literacy to understand how religions intersect with political, social

36

Defensiveness may also be connected to the fact that congregations in mainstream Christian churches are shrinking.

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and cultural life. One strategy for fostering religious literacy is interfaith dialogue. Interfaith dialogues usually involve Christians, Jews and Muslims meeting together to learn more about each other’s religious beliefs.37 These dialogues have arisen out of religious conflict, hate crimes and violence. It is thought that increasing religious literacy through dialogue will lead to greater religious harmony between different faith groups (Edwards 2018). It seems that the premise of much interfaith dialogue is that misunderstanding each other’s theology is the source of religious conflict. Ho (2006) observes that such dialogues tend to ignore the ways in which Christianity shapes public life in Western societies. The assumption is that there are no inequalities in power and privilege between the different religious groups and that racism and religious bigotry are a product of misunderstanding and individual prejudice that interfaith dialogue can address. Edwards (2018) also notes that most interfaith dialogues fail to examine the differences in power and privilege between different religious groups. While interpersonal prejudice and discrimination is one of the manifestations of religious oppression, such oppression is situated in the context of the structural domination and privilege of Christianity. It is difficult to have an interfaith dialogue when Christianity is accepted as the norm and other religious beliefs systems such as Judaism, Buddhism and Islam are marginalised. If such dialogues are to be meaningful, it is necessary to name and interrogate Christian privilege at the outset (Watt 2009). Interfaith dialogue is only likely to be successful when Christianity ceases to be the dominant religious norm in Western societies.

Conclusion In discussions of Christian privilege, it is important to acknowledge that there are a diversity of views within Christian religions. Christian dissidents have challenged oppressive traditions within mainstream churches. Historically, Christian theologians have spoken out against the witch trials and the Inquisition and challenged slavery. Many Christians are inspired by their religion to work for social justice. We see this historically in Jesuit Catholicism (Cosacchi 2019) and in Latin America with the development of liberation theology (Gutierrez 1988). Feminist theologians challenge

37

Although sometimes other faiths are included, in practice most interfaith dialogues only involve these three religions (Edwards 2018).

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sexism and patriarchy in Christian churches (Ruether 2011) and postcolonial theologians set out to decolonise white Western Christianity (Bradnick 2011). Many Christians work in social change movements challenging racism, global warming, gendered violence and the rise of militarism. Just as Christian scripture and traditions have been a source of domination and oppression, they have also encouraged liberation and resistance movements (Todd 2010). Joel Kovel (1991), a Marxist psychoanalyst, was so inspired by the Christian presence in the then Sandinista Nicaragua that he broke with his anti-religious materialism to address what he saw as the profound spiritual crisis in Western societies from a radical spiritual perspective. Robert Jensen (2009), while acknowledging the dangers of religious fundamentalism, sought to deepen his radical politics through Christian theology. What has been largely neglected, however, by Christian progressives is the hegemonic influence of Christianity itself and the unearned privileges associated with it in Christian normative societies. Just as men have been slow to challenge patriarchy and white people have been slow to challenge white supremacy, it is perhaps not surprising that most of those challenging the dominance of Christianity have come from outside the Christian churches. Kivel (2013), a Jewish social justice and anti-violence activist, has written about what Christian allies can do to challenge Christian hegemony. He encourages Christians to learn the history of Christianity and how it has impacted on other people; to notice the operation of Christian dominance in everyday life; to examine how they have internalised feelings of superiority in relation to those from non-Christian groups; and to understand and acknowledge the benefits and privileges they gain from being Christian in Western societies.38 The time has come for progressive Christians to interrogate religious privilege and hegemony from the inside. As in other forms of privilege, Christians cannot relinquish their privilege through simply changing their Christian identity. In fact, as noted, even those who have relinquished Christian beliefs are potentially complicit in maintaining Christian hegemony. However, if they are attuned to issues of privilege and oppression, it is hoped that they will be able to see themselves as implicated in both religious oppression and Christian hegemony and work to understand and address it. The aim of this chapter has been to provide a starting point for that critical interrogation.

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For further guidelines for Christian allies, see Kivel (2013). See also Edwards (2020) for a framework for understanding the role of Christians as allies for religious minorities.

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Ableist relations and the embodiment of privilege

Oppression and privilege are not simply manifested in differential access to resources; they are also embodied (Shilling 2003). As noted in earlier chapters, many forms of privilege are legitimated on the basis of a belief in naturalist views of social stratification and inequality. That is, gendered, racialised and class-based social relations are seen to be a result of our natural bodies rather than being socially constructed. Privileged groups often justify their dominant status on the basis of claimed inferior biological characteristics of the oppressed. They do so because if the causes of social divisions are located in biological bodies, then attempts to transform these inequalities can be seen as misguided. Human bodies can then be used to legitimise privilege and oppression. We need to give attention to the physicality of privilege in relation to class, gender, sexuality, race and especially disability. Bodies are implicated in the reproduction of privilege because they are granted social value on the basis of their socially constructed class, gender, race, able-bodied and sexuality markers (Tangeberg and Kemp 2002). It is thus important to become aware of how marginality and privilege are experienced in the body. For if the body is a site for doing privilege, it has implications for how we undo it. Cassuto (1999) raises the question of whether you can talk about disability without addressing your own ability/disability status. All of those involved with this field need to reflect upon their own positionality in relation to disability and to consider the impact it can have upon their research and teaching (Campbell 2009).1 My own experience of being a temporarily ablebodied man shapes this chapter. Even though I am seventy-one at the time of writing, and acute back pain periodically plagues my life, along with the

1

See O’Toole (2013) for ways in which non-disclosure of one’s relationship to disability avoids discussion of ableism and privilege.

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health scares I’ve had and my impaired vision, I write as a man who has not experienced oppression through disability.2 This means that I do not speak as a disabled man or on behalf of disabled people. I am writing at a time when there is a growing interest in the body. From features on body image in popular magazines and newspapers through to the fitness and weight loss industry, many people regard the body as a project to be developed as part of their identity. Concerns about obesity and preventable illnesses add weight to this agenda. We are all encouraged to take responsibility for maintaining a healthy and fit body that is free of excess fat and cholesterol. Physical beauty in Western culture is equated with health, fitness and youthfulness and there is a moral imperative towards achieving these characteristics.3 Images of the perfect body are continually highlighted in fashion and media representations of the body. It is said that one attains a beautiful body by engaging in exercise and diet control. Jogging and gym membership are an integral part of many middle-class people’s lives. While of course exercise can be healthy and good for us, Murphy (1995) argues that zealotry about fitness has emerged. The current preoccupation with slimness and the self-regulation of fitness often leads to aesthetic qualities of the body being promoted above those of health and resistance to disease. Simonsen (2000) refers to our interest in health and appearance as an ‘obsession’ which leads to eating disorders and other psychological illnesses. The struggle to mould and shape the perfect body through exercise and fitness regimes has class dimensions. Those who have the financial resources, time and knowledge to work on their bodies already belong to an elite group. Health, slimness and beauty have now become equated with money, power and control (Simonsen 2000). Maintaining the body is thus a way of emphasising your occupational success and social status. When people in subordinate groups fail to achieve these privileged bodily norms, they are judged as lacking self-discipline and moral standards. If you believe that being fit and healthy is totally within your control, you are also likely to judge those who are ill or disabled as not taking care of themselves (Wendell 1996).4 Disability and illness then are framed as forms of individual 2

3

4

This is notwithstanding an accident two years ago that resulted in six broken ribs and over two months of painful confinement. In this chapter my focus is on the representation of able-bodiedness and disability within Western culture. I acknowledge that these constructions are culturally specific and that we must be careful not to impose a Eurocentric framing of disability on non-Western societies. The same judgements are made of people who are defined as ‘overweight’ or ‘obese’. See, for example, Amsterdam (2013) and Mollow (2015).

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failure rather than society failing the individual. Understanding the ways in which bodies are implicated in maintaining social difference is therefore crucial. Cultural views on attractiveness and beauty negate the potential for a disabled body to be regarded as attractive. Those who adhere to the dominant social norms reject disabled people’s bodies because they are unable to attain many of the qualities associated with beauty (Gordon and Rosenblum 2001). Because their bodies will never meet the cultural ideals, the idealisation of the body has a significant impact on disabled people (Wendell 1996).

Embodied privilege as physical capital Bourdieu’s concept of ‘physical capital’ can be utilised to understand how the body reproduces privilege and various forms of social inequality (Shilling (2003). Physical capital is part of cultural capital and can be converted into other forms of capital. Socially valued body markers influence not only social status but also life opportunities (Imrie 2001). Depending upon one’s social location, one can manage the body to acquire further status and power. Beauty and sporting prowess are good examples as both are socially valued and they enable people to use their bodies to accumulate other forms of capital. Research demonstrates a link between those regarded as beautiful and those in highly paid careers (Habibis and Walter 2009). In this view, the body can be used as a resource for economic and social gain. Not everyone has the same opportunity to acquire physical capital. Edwards and Imrie (2003) believe that the concept of physical capital is also useful in understanding the marginalisation of disabled people. Physically disabled people are unable to attain bodily prestige or corporeal value because their bodies are designated to be abnormal and abject. They are unable to acquire physical capital because of the perceptions and reactions by non-disabled people to their non-normative body status. Bourdieu’s concept of physical capital can thus be used to describe the embodiment of privilege and power.5

5

Increasingly, fat studies scholars identify links with disability studies as fat people are also subject to oppression on the basis of their bodies. Again, as noted earlier, see, for example, Amsterdam (2013) and Mollow (2015) on fat politics.

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Revisiting the body in the social model of disability In response to disabled people’s critiques of the medical model of disability, Michael Oliver (1983, 1990, 1996) developed the social model of disability in the early 1980s. Informed by materialist and Marxist perspectives, the social model posits disability as a form of social oppression similar to sexism, racism and class domination. It is contrasted with individual biomedical models of disability that locate disability within the biological body.6 Oliver (1990) refers to the traditional model of disability as ‘the tragedy model’. Underpinning the tragedy model is the view held by most able-bodied people that disabled people cannot enjoy an adequate quality of life and that they all desire to be ‘normal’. This personal tragedy theory of disability is most evident in the charity response to disabled people. The social model distinguishes between impairment and disability.7 In the social model, people are not disabled by their bodies but by society. Oliver (1990) argued that disablement did not have anything to do with the body. The focus thus shifts from disability as a deficit of the body to understanding it as a product of the social relations of capitalism. From a materialist perspective, we cannot understand the oppression of disabled people solely on the basis of discriminatory and prejudiced perceptions and beliefs (Gleeson 1997). The social model challenges the emphasis on changing the negative attitudes of able-bodied people towards people with impairments. By giving too much attention to negative attitudes as a source of disabled people’s oppression, the concern is that attitudes may be seen as the only cause of disability oppression and structural barriers will be ignored (Tregaskis 2004). In Chapter 8, a similar concern was raised about homophobia. 6

7

In this chapter I use the term ‘disabled people’ in preference to ‘people with disability’. Titchkosky (2001) argues that people-first language of referring to ‘people with disabilities’ rather than ‘disabled person’ obscures the social and political understanding of disability. While the intent is to avoid the objectification of people on the basis of their disability, it ignores the sociopolitical understanding of people being disabled by their culture. With the emphasis on disabled people as people first, it inhibits our understanding of disabling processes and practices in society. In this view, ableist practices and processes produce disabled people. While it is primarily able-bodied professionals working with disabled people who prefer people first language, I acknowledge that some disabled activists also prefer this language. There is immense difficulty in defining disability and dispute about whether it should include all forms of impairments. Many people with cognitive, psychiatric and sensory impairments do not consider themselves to be disabled. Many people who experience chronic forms of illness do regard themselves as disabled. While I address these definitional issues in the chapter, my focus is on physical impairments and physical disability because this chapter is concerned with the embodiment of privilege.

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If the economic and political relations of capitalism shape disability, changing prejudiced attitudes will be only a small part of addressing disabled people’s oppression. The focus will need to shift to transforming material structures that marginalise people with impairments. In this view, social inclusion of disabled people will only be achieved when we move towards a more egalitarian social order that provides equal access to and equal rights to social, political and economic goods (Tregaskis 2004). The social model has contributed significantly to the rise of the disability people’s movement because it validated the intellectual and practical contributions of disabled people. However, the social model has also come under contestation and criticism from within some segments of the disability movement and by some progressive disability studies academics. Many of these critics have challenged the emphasis on the capitalist economy as the main cause of disability and argued that it has failed to acknowledge the critique of modernity (Tregaskis 2002; Shakespeare 2006; Owens 2015). The social model has highlighted the role of disabling barriers, institutional discrimination and excluded physical spaces in producing disability. However, the experiences of impairment in the oppression of disabled people have been given limited attention. The experiences of chronic illness and pain, which are often connected to impairments, are also ignored in the social model (Price 2015). Progressive critics of the social model point out that in emphasising that most of the problems faced by disabled people are located in the social context of their lives rather than in their own impaired bodies, they end up denying that disability has anything to do with bodily impairment. Disabled people not only experience social oppression; they also experience compromised physical functioning. Morris (1991) says that many disabled people downplay their experiences of bodily distress because they do not want to reinforce able-bodied people’s views of how awful disabled people’s bodies are. Those who are disabled are likely to experience their bodies as being more constrained than those who are able-bodied. If disability is defined as a social category and impairment as a biological category, there is the danger that impairment will always be framed within the biomedical model. The social model’s emphasis on the social and political causes of disability oppression can sit alongside the biomedical view of impairment that is concerned with missing limbs and/or defective mechanisms of the body (Turner 2002). In this view, the body is conceded to medicine. The social model inadvertently contributes to the reproduction of the individualistic perspective because there is no sociological framing of individual experience (D. Marks 1999b).

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We need to develop a social understanding of impairment as well as disability. From a post-structural perspective, it is not possible to separate disability that is caused by social restrictions from impairment that designates aspects of the body (Thomas 2007). Paterson and Hughes (1999) put it simply: disability is embodied and impairment is social.

Disability and intersections with other forms of oppression The social model has also been charged with ignoring gender, race, sexuality and age oppression within the disability movement. Vernon (1999) criticises the social model for ignoring experiences of difference among disabled people due to the focus on the common experiences of disability and the need to reinforce the common humanity and shared identities with nondisabled people. As with all other social groupings, disabled people are not a homogeneous group. Gender, race, class, sexuality and age also shape their individual experiences. Understanding the intersections of disablism with other forms of oppression is important (Thompson 2006). An approach that recognises only one form of oppression is not likely to acknowledge that able-bodied people can also be oppressed by class, gender, race and sexuality as well as disabled people (Swain and French 2000). As already noted, feminist disability writers have drawn attention to the gendered nature of disability (Fawcett 2000; Coleman, Brunelly and Haugen, 2015; Shinall 2016). Disabled male activists have failed to engage with the issues facing disabled women. Vernon (1999) links the social model’s emphasis on structural oppression to the masculinist viewpoint of disabled men. While feminists have addressed the experiences of disabled women, in recent years, male writers (sometimes in collaboration with women) have focused on the intersections of masculinity and disability (Shuttleworth, Wedgwood and Wilson 2012; Goodley and Runswick-Cole 2013; Barrett 2014; Goggin 2020). In relation to class, disabled people are more likely to be located in lower socio-economic groups (Oliver 1990). They are both more vulnerable to war, violence and occupational health hazards and when disabled are more likely to be trapped in poverty.8 Vernon (1999) points out that disabled people who

8

See Sherry (2016) for a discussion of the intersection of disability and masculinity during and after disasters.

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do have access to financial resources can afford to pay for personal assistants and taxis and will not face the same experience of structural discrimination. Some disabled people with financial resources can pass as non-disabled (D. Marks 1999b). Disablism is linked with ageism, racism and heterosexism. Older age groups are more likely to experience impairment (Thompson 2006). While disabled people of colour have to struggle against disablism and racism in the able-bodied community, they also experience racism and marginalisation within the disability movement (Vernon 1999). Queer disability writers have focused on the relationship between disablism and heterosexual dominance (McRuer and Berube 2006; Leng 2019; Martino and Schormans 2021). Morris (1991) has pointed out that disabled people can be as racist, heterosexist, sexist and class elitist as able-bodied people. Disabled white straight middle-upper class men are not likely to think of themselves as having privilege. However, Vernon (1999) points out that male privilege applies to all men irrespective of other social divisions. The same can be said about heterosexual, white and class privilege within the disability movement. Disabled people must also reflect on their respective privileges to ensure that other forms of oppression are addressed within the disability movement.9

The cultural construction of disablism and ableism In contrast to the materialist emphasis on capitalist social relations in the social model, critical post-structuralists and post-modernists focus on the cultural construction of disability and emphasise the importance of discourse and language in sustaining disablism and the role of cultural beliefs, attitudes and prejudices in shaping disability (Hughes 2005; Thomas 2007; Sheldon 2007; Kikabhai 2018; Mijatovic and Filipovic 2018). Disablism refers to ‘the social beliefs and actions that oppress/exclude/ disadvantage people with impairments’ (Thomas 2007: 13). Campbell (2008a: 152) defines disablism as ‘a set of assumptions (conscious and unconscious) and practices that promote the differential or unequal treatment of people because of actual or presumed disabilities’. Disablism forms the ideological dimension of disabled people’s oppression and should

9

See Nocella II, George and Schatz (eds) (2017) for an analysis of the intersections between disability studies, animal studies and environmentalism.

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be regarded as a form of social oppression similar to racism, ageism and sexism. Thompson (2006: 123) defines disablism as ‘the combination of social forces which marginalise disabled people, portrays them in a negative light and thus oppresses them’. For Thompson, disablism operates on three levels. At the structural level, public policies and inaccessible buildings discriminate against disabled people. At the cultural level, dominant cultural norms privilege the able-bodied and construct disabled people as victims of personal tragedy. At the personal level, individuals express prejudice against disabled people through a range of attitudes from patronising concern through to dismissiveness and revulsion. Beyond explicit forms of prejudice, many non-disabled people also have specific investments and identifications in their own able-bodiedness that perpetuate structures that are disabling (D. Marks 1999a). Much of the prejudice that disabled people experience is subtle rather than overt and thus less easy to identify. Deal (2007) uses the language of ‘aversive disablism’ to describe the subtle forms of prejudice towards disabled people. The distinction between blatant and subtle forms of prejudice can be understood through differentiating between prejudiced views that break the norms of acceptable behaviour and forms of prejudice that are socially legitimated. The latter may take the form of simply affirming nondisabled behaviour as opposed to expressing explicit prejudiced views about disabled people. Campbell (2008b) challenges the interchangeability of the terms ‘ableism’ and ‘disablism’, arguing that they involve a different understanding of the status of disability in relation to the norm. While disablism relates to the production of disability, ableism is associated with the production of ableness and the perfect body. Ableism is defined as ‘an attitude that devalues or differentiates disability through the valuation of able-bodiedness’. It is concerned with practices and beliefs that construct an image of the perfect able body where human worth and value are equated with ability (Hughes 2007). From an ableist perspective, impairment is inherently negative and devalued. The existence of impairment is something to be tolerated and accommodated but never celebrated as part of human difference. Ableism can also be internalised by disabled people and then used to reinforce their own lack of self-worth. Many progressive non-disabled people have come to accept the premises of the social model because it does not in itself challenge their own ablebodied privilege. However, non-disabled people have more difficulty in accepting that disabled people may be satisfied with their lives (Swain and

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French 2000). Evans (cited in Morris 1991) identifies various prejudiced attitudes that non-disabled people hold about disabled people, most of which assume that disabled people want to be normal. Swain and French (2000) argue for an affirmative model of disability that emphasises the positive experiences of being impaired and disabled. They talk about the greater level of empathy with the oppression of others and the release from many of the expectations of having to conform to able-bodied society. Critical post-structural approaches to disability are consistent with a social oppression approach to disability. The social model should be strengthened rather than abandoned as Shakespeare (2006) argues. Materialist and poststructural perspectives are both relevant to understanding disability and that they should not be polarised in an either/or fashion (Boxall 2007). In this regard, Fraser’s (2003) work on integrating redistribution (the social model) and recognition (the cultural model) offers some promise. In previous chapters I have argued that the oppression of working-class people is rooted primarily in a materially unjust social order and that the oppression of gay and lesbian people is more related to misrecognition. This is not to deny that the experience of both of these groups is both cultural and economic. Furthermore, I have argued that the experiences of women and people of colour are shaped equally by political economy and by the dominant culture. The experiences of disabled people are similar in this regard to women and people of colour (Dandermark and Gellerstedt 2004), so both realist and post-structural perspectives are important in challenging ableism.10

The construction of able-bodied privilege Ableism is so deeply embedded within our culture that we are often unable to recognise it. That is why we should focus our study on the production of able-bodiedness rather than disability to learn more about how ableism is practiced. Campbell (2008b) talks about the notion of ‘compulsory ableness’ to describe how the ableist viewpoint is sustained.11 The sociological literature on disability has typically focused on how disability oppression is produced by the attitudes of able-bodied people and

10

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In recent years, new materialist perspectives on disability explore ways to consider material and embodied aspects of disability without becoming essentialist. See, for example, Freely (2016) and Bend (2020). McRuer (2006) refers to this process as ‘compulsory able-bodiedness’. These notions are informed by the concept of compulsory heterosexuality. See Chapter 8.

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the environmental and social barriers that restrict their social participation and mobility. Disability is predominately investigated from the perspective of able-bodiedment. We need to consider what our understandings of disability tell us about the production of able-bodiedness (Campbell 2008b).12 It may be more important to examine the production of a non-disabled identity in challenging disability oppression than to continue to explore disabled subjectivities. This is a call to interrogate the assumed normality of the able-bodied. Campbell (2009; 2019) provides an epistemology and ontology of ableism to shift the gaze away from disability to the processes which produce ableist regulatory norms. For her, the disciplinary field of disability studies should be replaced by studies in ableism. Such a project has implications not only for the rethinking of disability but also for understanding the nature of all bodies within our culture. We might start this project by asking how able-bodied status contributes to progressive politics. Kafer (2003) has noted that feminist theorists outside of disability studies do not address disablism in their work. Nor do they reflect upon the status of being ‘non-disabled’ and investigate the implications for their feminist politics.13 This charge may be levelled at other progressive activists as well. On the whole, able-bodied activists have not been critically reflective about their own non-disabled privilege. Alan Johnson (2006: xi) refers to ‘non-disabled’ privilege as ‘the privilege of not being burdened with the stigma and subordinate status that go along with being identified as disabled’. Like other forms of normativity, ablebodiedness is culturally presumed. If you are not clearly marked as disabled, you will be assumed to be able-bodied. This has particular implications for people with invisible disabilities in terms of their access to services and their inclusion within relevant disability communities (Kafer 2003).14 Able-bodied privilege allows able-bodied people to maintain experiences of superiority, perfectability, security and comfort. May-Machunda (2005) reminds us that we have not earned our able bodies. We take for granted our able-bodiedness and the privileges that go with it. Shilling (2003) refers to ‘the privileged body’ to signify the practice of equating an individual’s status with their body. One can thus say that someone 12

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Schalk (2013a) prefers to talk about ability rather than able-bodied because the latter term ignores those with non-physical disabilities such as those of a mental, cognitive, emotional or behavioural nature. Price (2015) uses the terms ‘able-mindedness’ and ‘mental disability’ to address cognitive, intellectual and psychiatric disabilities. See also Schalk (2013b) and Liebowitz (2019) for further analysis of ableism in nondisabled feminist politics. See also Santuzzi et al. (2014) and Kattari, Olzman and Hanna (2018) on the challenges faced by people with invisible disabilities.

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is privileged by their embodiment of the cultural ideal of the perfect body. To be able-bodied is to be strong, attractive, fit and healthy, all of which comprise the notion of a normal and beautiful body. Gerschick (2007) refers to this privilege as being ‘bodily normative’. You may be positioned by ‘degrees of normativity’, which in turn are shaped by your class, race, ethnicity, gender, age, body size and able-bodiedness. Such judgements locate people within further systems of stratification. Your body can be regarded as a form of ‘social currency’ designating your worth. The less normative your body, the greater one’s vulnerability to experiencing misrecognition. Those who are designated as ‘disabled’ will be furthest away from the normative ideal and will be subject to the exercise of power by those with more normative bodies (Gerschick 2007). Able-bodied privilege is impossible to sustain over one’s lifetime. Even if we are lucky enough to avoid serious accidents or illnesses, we will all experience some level of impairment as we reach old age. Thus it is more appropriate to use the term ‘temporarily able-bodied’ (D. Marks 1996) or ‘temporarily nondisabled’ (Gerschick 2007). Since many of us will be subjected to accidents, injury and chronic illness along the way, the boundary between able-bodied people and disabled people is better seen as permeable.15

Beyond the binary of able-bodied and disabled? As in other arenas of identity politics, the disability movement is faced with the dilemma of how much to emphasise respect for their difference and how much to challenge the binary divide of able-bodied and disabled. Poststructuralists argue that reinforcing an identity of being ‘disabled’ relegates them to the category of ‘the Other’ because the normative status will always be superior (Thomas 2007). The distinction between disabled and non-disabled people is certainly unclear.16 Many disabled people’s impairments fluctuate over time and some people’s impairments are invisible (Gabel and Peters 2004). Some people who experience chronic illness experience some form of disability flowing 15

16

With reference back to able-mindedness, there are similar debates in relation to autism and other neurological conditions. In contrast to the concept of autism as a spectrum disorder, different neurological conditions in people are understood as just difference and natural variations among humans. Members of the neurodiversity movement are finding inspiration from critical ability studies. See, for example, Jaarsma and Welin (2012) and Runswick-Cole 2014). Increasingly, writers use a slash as in dis/ability to illustrate that ability and disability are closely entangled. See, for example, Mackert and Marschukat (2019).

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from it (Wendell 1996). People, whose impairments fluctuate, sit somewhere between the identities of disabled and non-disabled (Ducket 1998). Also, many of us who are considered able-bodied experience physical limitations and barriers. Since non-disabled people experience impairment and physical limitation, and since many aspects of disability are transient, Shakespeare and Watson (1996) argue that able-bodied people cannot be easily distinguished from disabled people. Because people’s embodied experiences change over time, they advocate a normalisation of impairment. ‘Non-disabled’ may be an oxymoron because it does not acknowledge the fluctuating experience of impairment for most disabled people and because few people can be classified as totally healthy (Harris no date). While Harris resists the label of non-disabled, perhaps because it implies an oppressor role, the refusal to acknowledge able-bodiedness can be used to avoid examining one’s own able-bodied privilege. The benefit of framing impairment as part of the human condition is to encourage able-bodied people to recognise aspects of ‘the other’ in our own lives (Hughes 2007). When we emphasise the similarities between disabled and non-disabled people, we blur the boundaries and reduce the otherness of those who are not able-bodied. Able-bodied people who reflect upon their own mental and physical limitations are more likely to identify with the struggles of disabled people. The disadvantage is that by extending the category of disability to include everyone because of human limitations that we all face, we underestimate the suffering and the struggle of those whose lives are significantly more constrained. It cannot be a stand-alone strategy because it does not, in itself, challenge the dominant paradigm of compulsory able-bodiedness (Wendell 1996). So how do able-bodied people acknowledge their lived bodily experience without oppressing those who are different?

The pathology of non-disablement For non-disabled people to understand the experience of disabled people’s oppression, we need to understand the way in which disabled people experience the able-bodied oppressive gaze. The able-bodied gaze is similar to the male gaze and the colonial gaze that feminist and postcolonial writers have written about. Dominant groups are able to see without being seen. Disabled people, like other subordinate groups, report what it feels like to be subject to the gaze of the other and of how it disempowers and wounds them (Hughes 1999). The challenge for able-bodied people is to allow ourselves to experience what it is like to be seen.

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Since the social model’s focus on the elimination of the economic sources of oppression does not acknowledge the intercorporeal relationships reflected in the able-bodied gaze, Hughes (1999) considers it a ‘pathology of non-disablement’ because it contains a deficit. The able-bodied gaze is pathological because able-bodied people mostly think of it as being neutral. Failing to recognise the damage it does, able-bodied people remain ignorant of their own assumptions in relation to beauty, perfection and normality. They are unable to identify how their perception of the disabled person is itself disfiguring. If we are to effectively address ableism, we must unsettle this perception. Garland-Thomson (2009) explored ways in which disabled people can turn the gaze of the able-bodied back on those who stare. Different forms of staring are distinguished, from benign and attentive staring to malign domination staring, as she encourages able-bodied readers to reflect upon how they gaze at others. It is an important practice for all those concerned with dismantling unearned able-bodied privilege. Non-disabled people often fear physical difference. Acknowledging the legal and social rights now available to disabled people and the antidiscrimination legislation to prevent the expression of prejudice in employment, Shildrick (2002 maintains that bodily difference still creates unease among many able-bodied people. This is because disabled people’s bodies threaten normative embodiment. Many non-disabled people are troubled by the frailty of the human condition and such people experience a deep fear of the possibility that they may become disabled themselves (Hughes 2005). For them to suffer a major impairment would be a tragedy that they hope they will never have to experience. People with normative bodies are also loath to be reminded how fragile their bodies are. This is even more evident among men who adhere to hegemonic notions of masculinity because they want to view their bodies as indestructible (Hughes 2007).17 As a result of this refusal to recognise and come to terms with this frailty, there is an uneasy ambivalence in the experience of able-bodied people in their relations with disabled people (Murphy 1995). This ambivalence is what fuels disabling attitudes and prejudices because it buys into the ableist paradigm. Aronowitz (2004) attributes this unease about our own fragility to the illusion of eternal youth that he believes has pervaded our culture. Our own physical and mental well-being is historically specific, a point that many 17

Able-bodied men, whose masculinity is shaped by the need to present themselves as competent, strong, independent and invulnerable, deny their own vulnerability and are often unable to recognise the vulnerability of others. See Pease (2021).

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of us would prefer to deny. Disabled people bring us face to face with the arbitrariness and the temporal dimension of our current able-bodiedness. While men do not worry about becoming women and white people do not worry about becoming Black, many non-disabled people are concerned about the possibility of becoming disabled (Deal 2007). Swain and French (2000) argue that the tragedy model thus says more about the deep fears of non-disabled people about their own vulnerability to impairment. When non-disabled people refuse to contemplate the possibility of disability, they maintain a strong sense of differentiation from those who are disabled. Fear of disability then is often projected on to the subjectivity of disabled people. Not coming to terms with prospective impairment in the lives of able-bodied people is the real tragedy. Able-bodied people need to reclaim their own physical vulnerability and understand how it relates to their responses to bodily difference (Shildrick 2002). They need to shift the focus to study the pathology of non-disablement because it is so destructive to the lives of disabled people (Hughes 2007).

Role of non-disabled people in challenging ableism Is there a role for non-disabled people in disability politics? Early formulations of the social model did not posit a place for non-disabled people. Branfield (1999) says that most non-disabled allies do not understand either the experience of disability or the impact of disablism. Many able-bodied people have taken a charitable rather than a political approach to disability. That is why many disability activists and academics will be doubtful about the possibilities of able-bodied people developing non-oppressive alliances with disabled people.18 Exploring the contributions that non-disabled people could make to the disability movement, Drake (1997) suggested that the most legitimate focus for non-disabled people is to interrogate the disabling aspects of social policy. Branfield (1998) acknowledged that non-disabled people needed to remove the disabling attitudes and barriers that discriminate against disabled people. However, she argued that being non-disabled inevitably carried with it domination and appropriation. She emphasised the dangers of non-disabled people co-opting the disability movement for their own ends.

18

In recent years, there has been a debate about whether non-disabled people can identify with a crip perspective. Schalk (2013b) suggests that this is more possible if the nondisabled person is marginalised by some other form of domination.

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Ducket (1998) challenges the view that non-disabled people have no place in the disability movement because it sets up a binary opposition between disabled people and non-disabled people. He also challenges the view that all disabled people are oppressed and all non-disabled people are oppressors. As we have seen, disabled people are not free of enacting oppression, as the experiences of older, Black, female and working-class disabled people can attest. Non-disabled people play key roles in the lives of disabled people, as parents, as carers, as professionals, as support workers and as researchers (Shakespeare 2006).19 Such experiences may provide the impetus for them to become allies in support of disabled people. Shakespeare (2006) explores the possibilities for them to play supportive and non-oppressive roles in the lives of disabled people. He points out the irony that in putting disabled people in the foreground of disability studies and disability politics, the role of non-disabled people in reproducing or challenging disability oppression has not been considered. Space is needed to understand more about how ableist practices may be challenged. A renewed and extended social model of disability could help.

Conclusion While disabled people will have experiences of the world that are different from the able-bodied, it is possible for able-bodied people to generate a nonableist standpoint as a counter-discourse from which they can challenge disablism and ableism. Such a project will involve making visible the ableist culture and the power and privileges flowing from this. It means moving beyond disability awareness education. Disability awareness programmes heighten people’s awareness of what it might be like to experience some form of impairment. However, such programmes reinforce an individual deficiency model of disability and fail to capture the most difficult aspects of disability (Griffin, D’Errico and Schiff, 2007). Even disability equality training in the social model, which aims to educate non-disabled people about the ways in which environments can be disabling (D. Marks 1999b), have failed to promote an awareness of ableism as a form of privilege. Evans and Broido (2005) also question what it means to be a disability ally. The first step, they propose, is awareness among non-disabled people that

19

Some proponents of the social model of disability regard the term ‘carers’ as problematical because it is embedded with power imbalances.

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they derive privilege and power from their able-bodied identity. Challenging ableism and the dominant cultural norms about what constitutes the normal body is part of the work, as is redefining body normativity and accepting their own fragility. Those of us who are able-bodied need to learn how to engage in dialogues with disabled people in ways that value differences. Very few people are able to fully embody able-bodied norms. Inahara (2009) says that the perfect body is an unattainable ideal that even most able-bodied people fail to achieve. Instead we need to develop another discursive frame that recognises the multiplicity and fluidity of bodies to encourage a respect for bodily differences. As with many attitude change campaigns, some advances in the recognition of disabled people’s rights also promote the interests of non-disabled people. While win–win outcomes for all are not in themselves problematic, it raises the question about how non-disabled people will deal with advances for disabled people when they conflict with their own self-interest (Deal 2007). While non-disabled people will vary in terms of their active involvement in the forces that sustain disablism, non-disabled people still benefit from disablism. Furthermore, while they may be actively engaged in challenging disablism, it does not mean that they are free of disabling practices in their own lives (Branfield 1999). It is important for all progressive activists that we critically reflect upon our own position within the framework of able-bodied privilege and take action against it.

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Generational order and adult-centrism

Introduction An anonymous reviewer at the proposal stage of this second edition recommended that I reconsider adultism and the oppression of children and young people as the sole focus of this chapter on age-based privilege. They pointed out that intersectional analyses are increasingly incorporating both adultism and ageism directed at old people. Initially, I agreed with this advice. However, as I began to research and write the chapter, I decided that the age-based oppression experienced by children and young people and that experienced by old people are substantially different. While both are part of the age-based social order, I felt that conflating them together under age-based privilege and oppression would not do justice to the differences between them. It may also be that as I turned seventy-one at the time of writing, and am considered old myself, writing about age privilege more broadly might mean that I would focus more on the impact of ageism on myself as an older person than on the impact of my privileged adult status on children and young people. It has been argued that discrimination and prejudice against children and young people is a form of ageism because it involves the oppression of a group of people based on their age. While ageism has been confined to the description of prejudice against old people, Willems (2012) believes that it equally affects young people through the process that he calls ‘juvenile ageism’. In this view, broader ageism is any form of discrimination against a person because of their age. Such a framing would address the similarities in the oppression of older adults and children (LeFrancois 2013). This is seen to be a basis for developing a common anti-ageist project involving older people and young people. However, framing adultist behaviour as ageism can itself be seen as a form of discrimination against young people. Scholars in childhood studies note that older people and children are positioned into conflict with each other in ways that most often disadvantage children (Sundhall 2017; Wall 2019). In this view, intergenerational oppression is likely to be perpetuated

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by encompassing children’s oppression under the frame of ageism, when it is usually only used to refer to prejudice against older people.

Oppression of children and young people Children and young people are on the receiving end of considerable violence and abuse by adults. They experience physical and sexual abuse, neglect, punishment and threats, discrimination, a denial of legal rights, and they face negative media portrayals and negative community attitudes and prejudice (Bell 1995). Negative media portrayals of children and young people, and negative attitudes towards them, impact on their capacities to flourish and to become more active in public and political life. Increasingly, children face online and social media abuse and online grooming by sexual offenders (Williams, Elliott and Beech 2013). There is considerable research on child abuse and violence against children, especially in the fields of social work, psychology, criminology and gender studies. However, such research has not generally been informed by analyses of children as an oppressed group.1 Children’s experiences of subordination illustrate Young’s (1992) five faces of oppression, manifested as exploitation, marginalisation, powerlessness, cultural imperialism and violence. DeJong and Love (2015: 536) further define youth oppression as ‘the systematic subordination of younger people as a targeted group, who have relatively little opportunity to exercise power, through restricted access to the goods, services and privileges of society and denial of access to participation in the economic and political life of society’. This subordinate status is a result of adult supremacy where adult attitudes, beliefs and practices frame adults as superior to children and young people. Such a premise legitimates the authority of adults to make decisions that affect the lives of young people. The family is one of the key sites for the oppression of children and young people in the West.2 In the family, children are involved in relations of domination and exploitation. Parents are the basic model of authority and, in infancy, the child is fully dependent on them. Parents make many decisions 1

2

For analyses of children as an oppressed group, see Gross and Gross (1973) and Clark (1975) in the 1970s through to Godwin (2011) and Biddle (2017) in more recent years. One of the few scholars in social work who brings insights from the sociology of childhood into research on violence against children is Eriksson (2008, 2012). Hearn (1988) was an early contributor to analyses of the links between child abuse and the structural domination of young people by adults. See Lancy (2015) for an anthropological approach to childhood and child rearing in non-Western family forms.

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that impact on children and young people. The physical abuse of children that is framed as ‘smacking’ and ‘spanking’ as forms of ‘corporal punishment’ are perceived in many countries as less serious when they are directed at children.3 The circumcision of baby boys and the cliterectomy of girls are still prevalent in many countries and cultures. Parents have the authority to deny immunisation and some forms of medical treatment to their children for religious-based reasons. Child abuse and neglect, child maltreatment and violence against children are generally acknowledged and addressed but are rarely seen as forms of discrimination and prejudice against children (Willems 2016).

Age and generation as axes of inequality and privilege The concept of age is generally understood to mean the length of time a person has lived.4 While age is a continuum from birth until death in all species, it is the clustering of people into specific age groups that is unique to human societies. In Western societies, children are usually grouped from birth to eleven and young people are grouped from twelve to eighteen. Adults are designated as those over eighteen until they reach senior status which usually starts at sixty-five (Fletcher 2015). These age groupings have specific consequences when social institutions use them to organise policies and societal responses to these different age clusters. Although there is a wide range of ages from birth to adulthood and childhood studies and youth studies are frequently conceptualised in different ways, for the purposes of this chapter, I combine children and young people, and I use the terms interchangeably to interrogate the binary between children and adults which creates the subordinate status of children in relation to adults. Alanen (2020) refers to this age binary as a generational order analogous to Connell’s (1987) concept of a gender order. The concepts of generational ordering illuminate the structural dimensions of childhood and adult–child relations. It demonstrates how age-based phrases on an individual’s life are normalised, standardised and institutionalised and how these impact on the 3

4

Government policy responses to ‘corporal punishment’ vary significantly around the world. Research evidence demonstrates that physical violence against children decreased dramatically in Sweden when the government banned corporal punishment in 1979 (Eriksson and Pringle 2019). While aging is a biological process, if we move beyond biomedical discourses of age which focus solely on the body, we recognise that what it means to be ‘young’ or ‘old’ is socially constructed.

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experiences of children (Alanen 2011). The concept of the generational order as a social structural category is less theoretically developed than the gender order and it has not had the same level of influence in the social sciences as other social divisions (Punch 2020).5 Consequently, when we use an intersectionality lens to analyse privilege and oppression, we must include age as an axis of inequality alongside other social divisions. Bringing children’s experiences into the foreground is not only important for the children themselves but also in asking important questions about other systems of inequality (Wall 2019). If children and young people are to be recognised as an oppressed group, it is necessary to interrogate the taken-for-granted construct of adulthood. Adulthood is the normative benchmark against which childhood is measured. One attains full personhood by becoming an adult which is usually marked by marriage, parenthood, work and independent living (Blatterer 2007).6 While adults are understood to be self-possessed, independent and autonomous, children are understood to be in a state of ‘becoming’. While adults are seen to be mature and rational, children are seen to be immature and irrational because they have not attained the end state of adulthood (Johansson 2011).7 The oppression of children and young people is not only a product of their age. When they are members of communities marginalised by race and class, they also experience intersecting forms of oppression (Bautista 2018). Marginalised young people such as Aboriginal, Muslim and African young people in Western countries are especially on the receiving end of negative comments and judgements. The political and social marginalisation of children will sometimes be even more evidenced in developing countries (Savahl 2010). Many children and young people also experience poverty and economic deprivation arising from class-based oppression (Glaser 2018). While feminists draw attention to how patriarchy produces gendered subjects in the family, Marxists identify the role the family plays in reproducing classed 5

6

7

Narvanen and Nasman (2004) and Eriksson (2007) prefer the concept of ‘age order’ to describe childhood as a social and structural condition. However, I find generational order more useful because it acknowledges intra-generational relations as well as the variety of ways in which generational orderings take shape (Punch 2020). It is important to note the heteronormative dimensions of adulthood here where it is assumed that children will grow up to adopt heteronormative sexualities and binary sexual identities (Dyer 2017). Queer theory has an important contribution to make towards disrupting adult/child binaries. The National Youth Rights Association has constructed an adult privilege checklist to heighten awareness of adult privilege. See The Adult Privilege Checklist, http:// rightsforchildren.pbworks.com/w/page/53433613/adultprivilegechecklist.

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subjects who are required to fit into capitalist relations of production. In working-class families, parents and children live in the context of poverty and inadequate housing and parents attempt to juggle sometimes impossible demands of wage and domestic labour or face unemployment and welfare dependency. The physical and psychological costs for parents and the material pressures they face will inevitably impact on the experiences of children in these families. These children, along with their parents, will consequently not realise their full human potential (Leonard 1984). The family is not only a place of unequal gender relations. It also involves unequal power relations between adults and children (Thorne 1987; Therborn 2004; Gruber and Szoltysek 2016; Zehavi 2018). Gender inequality, through rule of the husband, and age discrimination, through rule of the father, are two basic dimensions of patriarchy that reinforce each other. Consequently, patriarchy involves both the domination of men over women and the domination of older people over younger people. The authority that parents have over their children is a key dimension of patriarchal gender orders. As Willems (2012) notes, patriarchy does not only refer to women as the possession of men but also children as the possession of adults. While the adult will always be a man in traditional patriarchal societies, in more genderequal patriarchies, this generational dimension will include women as well as men. Willems refers to this more ‘enlightened’ society as a parentiarchal society.8 Hence, we can talk of this transgenerational oppression where adults wield power over children as a form of patriarchal discrimination or, as Hood-Williams (1980) expresses it, as a form of age patriarchy. Eriksson (2008) usefully conceptualises power relations in families as an intersection of age, gender and kinship. She emphasises the importance of analysing gendered inequalities in families in relation to age and other social inequalities (Eriksson 2012).

Constructing childhood and child development The distinction between childhood and adulthood is often presented as if it were a natural and biological division. Age is not only biological; it is also socially contingent, as it requires social and political context to make sense of particular age groupings (Godwin 2011). Policies and practices in relation to children are thus premised upon particular conceptions of childhood.

8

In such a society, women’s rights are acknowledged but children remain the possession of both men and women (Willems 2012).

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Aries (1962) has pointed out that there is no transcultural or transhistorical concept of childhood. Childhood is not just a biological fact but is also a social institution with a history. Aries notes that childhood is a relatively recent phenomenon, as medieval societies had no concept of the child. As there was no intermediate stage between infancy and adulthood, children mixed with adults as soon as they were not dependent on their mothers or caregivers. Consequently, there is no universal or natural childhood. Rather, there are multiple and diverse experiences of children across a wide range of cultural contexts (Wall 2019). The naturalisation of childhood is embedded in developmental psychology which purports to identify universal processes and phases that all children pass through as they evolve into adults. Developmental psychology frames the developmental stages of children and young people as normal, biological and natural (DeJong and Love 2015). It is based on functionalist, naturalist and positivist premises and purports to uncover universal processes of childhood development. Burman (1994) noted in the early 1990s how these developmental stages fail to acknowledge the influence of gender, class, race and cultural diversity on children’s development and that they are based upon white Western male and middle-class children. She demonstrated how so-called normal development is disconnected from social and material circumstances of children’s lives.9 This means that childhood is not homogeneous and universal but is constituted by specific dynamics of class, race, gender, sexuality, disability and geopolitical location. Developmental psychology’s premise of a universal and linear biological progression of all children through natural stages is still influential.10 A number of writers have noted that universal developmental theories of human development have been used to justify ideological control of children (Savahl 2010; Sundhall 2017). Adults maintain that developmental reasons associated with brain development impacting on the emotional, social and intellectual abilities of young people justify treating them differently (Fletcher 2015). Children are viewed as under-developed and in need of adult control,

9

10

Burman’s book, Deconstructing Developmental Psychology, first published in 1994 has gone through three editions (2008 and 2017). While subsequent editions have addressed the changing material and discursive dimensions of childhood and children’s lives, the political critique of developmental psychology discourse as natural and inevitable is still as relevant today as it was in 1994. This is evident not just within developmental psychology as an academic field but also in social work, youth work and education. It is perhaps more relevant to talk about a discourse of child development.

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and are not considered to be fully human. Consequently, adult dominance and supremacy is legitimated (Sundhall 2017). Adolescence is also a social construction (Bautista 2018; Glaser 2018). Adolescents, usually located between the ages of twelve and eighteen, or between puberty and young adulthood, are said to be controlled by raging hormones grounded in biology and are seen to be developing outside of any social and political context (Lesko 2001). Positing young people as lacking control and being immature and irrational is part of the stereotype of adolescence. When young people are essentialised and reduced to their physiology and cognitive processes, they are able to be isolated from cultural and structural processes. Consequently, these age-based concepts function to perpetuate adult-centred power and dominance while reinforcing children and young people’s oppression (Gordon 2007).11 Physical differences between adults and children reflected in brain development and physical development are important (Fletcher 2015). Children, especially at a very young age, are usually physically weaker and are likely to have less developed intellectual abilities and cognitive skills and less knowledge and experience to draw upon in response to life’s challenges. We cannot escape the fact that early childhood involves a level of dependency. Although developmental age-based stages are socially constructed, clearly, babies and infants need total care, love and nurturance from parents and caretaker adults. Differential treatment of children on the basis of age can be viewed as either protective or oppressive (Phillips and Love 2007). How do we distinguish between adult discrimination from what is appropriate and respectful protective behaviours for a particular age? I return to this question later in this chapter.

Adultism and adult-centrism The systemic mistreatment and disrespect of young people because they are young is understood as adultism. Adultism is premised upon the belief that adults are more valued than children and young people and this belief is perpetuated by customs, laws and institutions (Blumenfeld 2014). Adultism

11

See also Keddie (2003) for an analysis of how developmental psychology informs the framework of ‘developmentally appropriate practice’ in schools which is premised upon the discourse of childhood as innocence. In such discourses, the aggressive behaviour of boys towards girls is constituted as a normal part of their development and hence not challenged because boys are positioned as being unable to understand gendered power relations between young people.

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can be understood as a continuum from extreme violence and abuse through to more subtle forms of disrespect. Because children are viewed as adults in the making, they are seen to be less deserving of respect. These beliefs lead to the disengagement, discrimination and marginalisation of children and young people. Adultism is internalised by people of all ages and is part of the process by which children are socialised into other relations of privilege and oppression (Bettencourt 2018). Because adults are likely themselves to have been subjected to various forms of adultism as children, they often regard the control of children as normal and not as oppressive. At the same time, however, because adults were once children themselves, they may also remember what it was like to be a child and empathise with children if they allow themselves to get beyond the threats that childhood poses to idealised adulthood (Thorne 1987). Young-Bruehl (2009) argued that there was no concept that is comparable to the language of ageism to describe discrimination and prejudice against children and young people. She coined the term ‘childism’ to address this perceived gap. For her, childism is expressed in child abuse and neglect. As Wall (2019) points out, however, this concept of childism is unable to grasp the potential of children to construct their own meanings and to have agency to address their oppression. The premise seems to be that children need to be saved by adults. In critical childhood studies, childism is a term of empowerment for children in the way that feminism is for women (Peters and Johansson 2012; Wall 2019). Consequently, adultism and adult-centrism are more useful concepts for understanding children’s oppression.12 Adultism, like other forms of privilege, operates on multiple levels from the individual level of prejudice, abuse and violence through to the systemic level of adult-centric policies, legislation, rules and cultural practices embedded in age-based social structures (LeFrancois 2013). Fletcher (2015) differentiates between attitudinal adultism (internalised beliefs, assumptions and feelings about children and young people), cultural adultism (shared beliefs, attitudes and customs that promote the view that adults are superior to young people) and structural adultism (historical and institutional dynamics that privilege adults at the expense of young people are normalised and legitimated). These interpersonal, cultural and structural dynamics intersect with each other.

12

In spite of Young-Bruehl’s (2009) claim that there was no concept to describe discrimination and prejudice against children at that time, Flasher (1978) first published on the concept of adultism in the late 1970s.

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At the individual level, adultism manifests itself as authoritarianism towards children and adult-centric views about children. Fricker (2007) identifies ‘epistemic injustice’ occurring when someone’s capacity as a knower is marginalised. This is well documented in relation to race and gender privilege and subordination, but less well recognised when it comes to adult-centric knowledge.13 While maturity is seen as synonymous with adult masculinity, immaturity is equated with childhood. Children are said to lack moral responsibility, emotional independence, rationality and cognitive ability. Because children are seen as vulnerable, they are deemed to require the surveillance of adults. Consequently, they are not listened to because they are unable to make knowledge claims due to their so-called under-developed capacities (Murris 2018). Children and young people also internalise adultism when they accept adult views about themselves. Internalised adultism describes the process where children and young people perceive themselves as helpless and accommodate to experiences of powerlessness (Hall 2019). When children internalise adultist attitudes within themselves, they are likely to conclude that the relations of domination and subordination they are embedded in are natural and just the way things are (Savahl 2010). Adult-centrism describes how societal institutions are premised upon the view that young people are of little value in society. The media plays a role in reproducing adult-centrism through its portrayal of young people as violent, incapable and pathetic. The systemisation of adultism throughout organisations, community and society reproduces adult-centric cultural norms (Fletcher 2015). Adultism is systemic when it is embedded in structural policies, practices and legislation that disadvantages children and young people (LeFrancois 2013). These systems of adultism are evident in the community, families, the economy, government, culture, the law and educational and health care organisations. Adultism is further complicated by different class, gender, ethnic, religious and cultural approaches and how these different locations intersect with age-based inequality. These other social divisions exacerbate the ways in which adultism impacts on the lives of children and young people (Phillips and Love 2007). We cannot think of children separate from class, ethnicity, gender and other social divisions.

13

For an exception, see Knezevic (2017) who draws upon Fricker’s epistemic injustice to illustrate how the moral authority of adults is used to exclude the possibility of thinking about children as moral agents.

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Children’s rights and the Children’s Rights Movement The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) is the key legal document that addresses children’s rights and it is seen as an important starting point in bringing children’s rights to the forefront. There have been significant achievements in relation to children’s rights in relation to, for example, public education, child abuse and neglect legislation, health care, laws preventing sexual abuse of children and child labour laws. However, the global standards set by the UNCRC are culturally bound and shaped by Western discourses of childhood. Although it is locally specific and resides in Western scholarship, it is universalised and largely ignores scholarship from the global South (de Castro 2020). The concept of children’s rights as represented in the UN Convention is thus too focused on Western practices and institutions and insufficiently oriented to other cultural contexts (Peters and Johansson 2012). Certainly, there are different levels of commitment to it among different countries. Consequently, there is no guarantee that extending children’s rights in principle will necessarily address the oppression and structural inequalities that children face around the world (Josefsson and Wall 2020).14 Children’s rights and the Children’s Liberation Movement were closely associated with progressive social movements in the 1970s (Gross and Gross 1973; Holt 1974). Rollo et al. (2020) argue that the children’s liberation movement of the 1970s was premised upon the integration of children into existing political and economic institutions. Similarly, Fletcher (2013) maintains that the free schooling of that time was adultist in that it was premised upon the expressed will of adults who argued that children should have the ability to do whatever they wanted to do in the name of freedom. It was adults who determined the importance of freedom for children rather than the children themselves. Fletcher (2013) is opposed to elements of the liberationist argument that children should be free of adult control, arguing instead that it is the responsibility of adults to raise children to be fair and just rather than to allow them to be unhindered by adult control. Westman (1991) argues that to treat children as if they are adults is itself a form of ageism. This is when children are required to assume adult responsibilities and independence prematurely at the cost of their development needs. It has been noted that ignoring age

14

See also Lee (1999) who draws attention to the ambiguity built into the UNCRC where the generalising voice of the UN Convention is often unable to address the specificity of children’s rights violations in particular cultural contexts.

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and encouraging children and young people to undertake certain tasks on their own without adult support can itself be a form of adultism (Hall 2019). Oppression of children and young people is not necessarily a result of maliciousness on the part of adults. It can be motivated by adults’ views about what they perceive to be the best interests of children. The issue is whether paternalism in relation to children is ever justified. Adults and parents are charged with the responsibility to protect children from harm and teaching them how to live within society (Blumenfeld 2014). Because there are actual differences between adults and children, adults can argue that they have responsibility to make decisions on children’s behalf for their best interests and to keep children from harm. Some level of paternalism can be accepted in situations where children and young people do not possess the moral or intellectual capacity to make decisions to serve their own interests.15 In many situations, adults will have more wisdom and experience in relation to some specific issues resulting from the longevity of their lives (Fletcher 2015). Some critics also argue that the application of a rights discourse to children is problematic because while it aims to protect children by giving them particular rights, it can also obscure some of their protection needs by attributing a level of responsibility to them that exceeds their capabilities and state of independence. Benporath (2003) argues that the most relevant aspect of childhood is vulnerability and that it is this vulnerability that creates the unequal relationship between adults and children. In contrast to the view that children should have the same citizen rights as adults, Benporath makes the case that children deserve equal respect as children. For her, rather than abolishing paternalism and giving children self-determination rights that adults have, the focus should be on their vulnerability associated with their physical size, motor skills and sensitivity to bodily harm. In this view, children are less autonomous and less rational. These rationalisations, however, can obscure discrimination and mistreatment of children by adults. The paternalistic justification for adults having power over children has also been advanced by other privileged groups to legitimate the subordination of those with less power (Godwin 2011). The main argument against children’s liberation is that rational autonomy is a prerequisite for self-determination and that adults are rationally autonomous while children are not. Consequently, only adults have the right to be selfdetermining. However, such a stance is premised upon a liberal notion of autonomy (Glaser 2018). Rational autonomy is itself a liberal concept of the subject that abstracts individuals from their social context and is at odds with 15

Although paternalism is usually presented in a gender-neutral way, many legal scholars draw attention to the gendered meaning of it as being characteristic of men.

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feminist and posthuman critiques of autonomous selfhood (Pease 2021a). Even adults are not fully autonomous in the liberal conception of the subject. Children’s differences need to be acknowledged. To take a liberationist position on children’s rights is not to argue that there are no natural differences between adults and children. Few children’s rights advocates would argue that children should have the same rights as adults in all spheres of life, as, for example, in relation to paid labour, driving motor vehicles, drinking alcohol or getting married. Rather, it is argued that the biological and cognitive differences between adults and children should not be used to legitimate a sense of entitlement and authority that adults have in relation to children (Biswas 2019). Kennedy (2019) distinguishes between adultism and age-differentiated engagement. While adultism is premised upon prejudices and stereotypes of age as a basis for discrimination, age-differentiated engagement is concerned with holding what are deemed to be appropriate expectations of the capacities of a person according to their age. There are unresolved tensions here between protectionist approaches that assume childhood is a natural state characterised by children’s vulnerability and their physical and mental immaturity, and child rights advocates whose framework is premised upon a notion of a competent autonomous child that does not require support from adults (Reynaert, Bouverne-De Bie and Vandevelde 2012). The notion of an autonomous adult subject, for which children are found to be wanting, may not be best addressed by emphasising children’s autonomy but rather by questioning the vision of freedom that is premised upon a notion of autonomy.

Youth-led social movements An important issue that is not addressed by the UNCRC is the expansion of children’s rights to participate in policy forums that impact on their lives. Young people need to create spaces where they can reflect on and discuss their experiences of age-related oppression (DeJong and Love 2015). Youthled movements provide opportunities for young people to reject adult-led forms of political socialisation (Gordon and Taft 2011). Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) is one form of youthled community activism. In YPAR, young people take leadership with the support of adults. The aim of YPAR is to empower young people and to disrupt adult-centric power relations. However, Keddie (2019) demonstrates that when the democratic and anti-adultist focus of YPAR comes up against the institutional power and hierarchy in schools, young people experience backlash from adults in authority.

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Children’s parliaments around the world provide opportunities for children to influence adult decision making. In children’s parliaments, children between the ages of five and seventeen elect representatives (Wall 2014). For some, however, children’s political participation is best addressed by expanding children’s rights to vote in government elections (Josefsson and Wall 2020). The argument against children having voting rights is the presumption that children lack the capacity for independent thinking and are not yet able to be fully rational and autonomous (Wall 2010), which as noted earlier is a problematic premise for adults as well. An emerging issue of intergenerational justice is climate change, as children will have to face the problems of adaptation in the future (Sanson and Burke 2019). For a society to be intergenerationally just, the present generation must ensure that new generations both locally and globally are able to avoid harm. With respect to intergenerational justice, present generations have a duty to future generations (Thompson 2009). While adults are responsible for addressing global warming, they have failed to act. This failure by world leaders to act on climate change is an expression of intergenerational irresponsibility and an assertion of adult power that ignores that children have a caretaker role into the future. Increasingly, children are active agents in organising against climate change. Greta Thunberg was fifteen years old when she told adult political leaders that if adults will not take responsibility for addressing the current climate crisis, then it is up to children to do so (cited in Su and Su 2019). She organised a student strike outside the Swedish Parliament in August 2018 to put pressure on countries to abide by the Paris Agreement on climate change. School strikes now occur globally, out of the dissatisfaction young people have with adult responses to climate change. Biswas and Mattheis (2021) identify the adultist premises of many of the critiques of Greta Thunberg ranging from adult manipulation and questions of competence through to paternalism, defamation, malice and depictions of her as maladjusted and mentally ill. It is claimed that Thunberg is being used by adults to promote views that are not her own. Further, she is naïve and so does not understand how the world works and is overly emotional about the issues (Biswas 2019). All of these critiques operate to deny Thunberg’s political capacity because of her age.

Adults becoming allies There is an important role for adults who awaken to their adult privileges in challenging adultism. As for other forms of privilege, adults need to understand

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adultism and adult privilege before being able to address it. However, most adults do not acknowledge the effects of adultism on either young people or themselves (Ceaser 2013). When adultism is internalised by adults, they are unable to recognise the way they were treated as children as oppressive. An important place to start then can be to encourage adults to reflect upon their own devaluation and mistreatment when they were children (Checkoway 1996). Young-Bruehl (2009) notes that adults find it difficult to see how they are implicated in the oppression of children due to their own previous suffering as children. It is important for adults to overcome what DeJong and Love (2015) call ‘historical amnesia’ that encourages them to forget the feelings of powerlessness that they experienced as young people. Some argue (Eaton and Fox 2006) that adultism is derived from adults repressing their own inner child. Adults need to learn how to be allies and to take responsibility for challenging adultism in themselves and in other adults. This involves understanding how it is perpetuated through ideas and institutions and how it is manifested in individuals, families and the wider society. When adults understand the harms and prejudices that result from adultism, they need to educate others about the impact of it on young people and how to address the causes of it. Getting societal recognition of the extent of adult prejudice against children is important in challenging adultism. Reimagining the place of children and young people in society provides adults with visions of what non-adultist institutions might entail. This is part of the process of challenging cultural dimensions of adultism. A number of commentators also note that children and young people bring a unique perspective to decision making (Glaser 2018; Biswas 2019). Murris (2013) argues that social constructionist approaches to age can underestimate the differences between children and adults, especially in relation to children’s capacity to use imagination and fantasy to engage with the world. Biswas (2019) set out to discover what education and philosophy can learn from children and young people. She encourages adults to learn how to blossom philosophically by seeking inspiration from children by entering their worlds of imagination and play. Murris (2018) suggest that adults need to learn how ‘to child’, which is to tap into the repressed child within themselves. Adults have much to learn from children, especially their hopefulness and sensitivity. They should thus learn how to foster a child-like perspective on the world (Benporath 2003).16

16

This needs to be differentiated from Eric Berne’s (1964) notion of the Child Ego State in transactional analysis.

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Conclusion There is much focus in children’s rights and youth participation literature on the adults hearing the voices and experiences of children and young people. Giving children and young people a voice allows them to communicate their concerns to the wider world. However, while the goal of student voice work in schools, for example, is to disrupt hierarchical relations of knowledge and power, the discourse of student voice often reproduces these power relations because they do not move beyond symbolic representation.17 How do we as adults hear children’s voices without filtering them through our own adultist frameworks (Spyrou 2011)? As Rollo et al. (2020) point out, the child’s voice is often interpreted by adults in the context of a neoliberal individualistic framework. When children’s views are mediated by adults, they are often accommodated to adultist perspectives and their expression of views is the limit placed on their participation and active involvement. It is one thing to create spaces for children’s views to be heard. It is another for adults to develop the capacity to listen to and learn from children (Biswas and Matteis 2021). If adults are unable to do this, they will be left behind. Young people are increasingly forging ahead as they know they do not have the time to wait for adults to change or to re-educate them. Ideally, politically progressive social movements should be intergenerational where there is a form of communion between children, young people, adults and older people. For this to occur, adultism will need to be challenged at all levels including internally, interpersonally, ideologically and institutionally. Only then will adults find ways of creating intergenerational solidarity with children and young people.

17

See, for example, Keddie (2014) and Mayes (2019).

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Challenging the reproduction of privilege from within

The various forms of privilege examined in the previous ten chapters have distinctive dynamics and institutional forms. Nevertheless, there are sufficient similarities across the domains of privilege to warrant an outline of common strategies and processes for challenging privilege. Some of these strategies may play out in different ways in relation to different groups as they intersect each other in complex ways. Just as systems of oppression operate at personal, cultural and structural levels, we have seen that the reproduction of privilege occurs at these three levels as well. If the eradication of oppression requires us to transform material conditions, demystify the dominant culture and empower those who are oppressed (Mullaly and West 2018), then complementary strategies need to be developed to address the reproduction of privilege by those in dominant groups. It has been the argument of this book that structural and discursive levels of privilege are sustained and reproduced by the conscious and unconscious beliefs and the habitual practices of individuals in privileged groups. In focusing on what individual members of privileged groups can do, I am not suggesting that privilege is predominantly an issue facing individuals. Privilege is located in institutions, policies, laws and professional knowledge, as well as normalised cultural practices. Therefore, changing people in privileged groups will not in itself abolish privilege any more than empowering the oppressed will eliminate oppression. We need to engage in processes that will challenge the institutionalisation of privilege within political, economic, religious and educational systems. Dorothy Smith’s (2005) concept of ‘relations of ruling’ usefully captures the way in which social relations and forms of social organisation are constituted by professional, bureaucratic and academic knowledge. These forms of knowledge lead to textualised concepts and categories which frame people’s lived experiences. Relations of ruling are reproduced by the subjectivity and consciousness of privileged groups and the dominant ideologies that naturalise

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privilege and entitlement. Dominant groups use ruling relations to regulate subordinate other groups. Understanding how our practices in the world either challenge or reproduce these relations of domination helps us to realise how changing our participation in these relations can impact on the wider structures.

Challenging the normalisation of privilege Oppression and privilege are located within the context of ‘social practices’ (O’Connor 2002). Social practices are practices governed by principles and rules that frame what we say and do. They enable us to make sense of our lives. As I have shown, oppressive actions by individuals are legitimated by these wider social practices. The issue of responsibility for oppressive acts then is not just in relation to individual actions but also in relation to the practices which shape them. In this view, responsibility moves beyond the individual to collective and shared responsibility (May 1993) or what Card (2002) calls ‘relational responsibility’ where the wider community of individuals need to address their support for those practices. Young (2011) similarly identifies the limitations of the liability model of responsibility whereby specific individuals are held to be legally or morally responsible for isolated instances of wrongdoing. The most common understanding of responsibility is that based on the assumption that society consists of individuals who are unconnected to their historical and social contexts. In this view, perpetrators of racism, or violence against women or other abusive practices, are prejudiced and ignorant individuals. The approach focuses on the mind of the individual perpetrator. We need to develop new forms of responsibility that are less focused on the acts of individual perpetrators and more able to identify the contribution that members of privileged groups make to the structural patterns of privilege and oppression (Applebaum 2013). The question arises, however, as to how conscious individuals are of supporting oppressive social practices. If some oppressive attitudes and actions are habituated to the extent that individuals are not aware of holding or expressing them, to what extent can individuals be held responsible and culpable for them? Calhoun (1989) observes that social acceptance of oppressive practices often prevents individuals being aware of the harmful consequences of their practices. If individuals are not responsible than we cannot defend our use of moral reproach when challenging such practices. The notion of an ‘oppressor’ does not seem to equate with ordinary people simply going about their lives who are unaware of the implications of their everyday practices for the reproduction of oppressive regimes. We have

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witnessed throughout history, however, it is ordinary people’s participation in the routines of life that enable oppression and exploitation to take hold. The premise of this book is that there are millions of people of goodwill who are aware of inequalities but do not see themselves implicated in them and consequently do not feel that they are responsible to do anything about them. It is their inaction that enables privilege to be sustained (Johnson 2017). Individuals will need to acknowledge their responsibility for oppression that occurs at the level of social practice if they are going to be able to listen to moral reproach for their actions (O’Connor 2002). Individuals can come to recognise these practices and the role they play in reproducing oppression. It is possible to interrupt these oppressive practices and form moral social practices. My hope for this book is that it may contribute to that awareness. Whether individuals will have the moral courage to act in light of this awareness is another question.

Towards a pedagogy of the privileged What is the role of the privileged in working for social change? Can enlightened members of privileged groups be effective allies in combating oppression? The premise underlying much progressive politics is that only the oppressed can address oppression. Many writers have portrayed the oppressor as being incapable of either personal change or activism in relation to social change. Little attention has been given to how we might develop a pedagogy to transform the oppressors and the privileged. Challenging oppression from below should be the foundation for social change movements, yet such movements can be complemented by developing strategies to engage and address those who hold power that stand in the way of these movements. Many members of privileged groups are already involved in progressive social movements in relation to violence prevention: Black Lives Matter, refugee support, the anti-war movement, environment politics, international solidarity movements and human rights-based work. However, the privileged status of many of these activists is often not problematised. How do we move oppressors towards a critical consciousness of their oppressor status? In recent years, we have witnessed the emergence of a pedagogy for the privileged (Curry-Stevens 2004, 2007; Case 2013; Cornwall 2016) and a pedagogy of the oppressor (Lee 2002; Breault 2003; van Gorder 2007; Frueh 2007; Pease 2014; Chang-Bacon 2015).1 These developments 1

Pedagogy of the privileged is inspired by Paulo Freire’s (1970) ground-breaking work on pedagogy of the oppressed.

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provide us with a conceptual and pedagogical framework for engaging members of privileged groups about their unearned entitlements. Much of this work also takes these strategies out of the university classroom and into government and community-based forums where privilege holders can be challenged about their advantages. Curry-Stevens (2007) identifies six steps in educating members of privileged groups about oppression and privilege: (1) Developing awareness of the existence of oppression (2) Understanding the structural dynamics that hold oppression in place (3) Locating oneself as being oppressed (4) Locating oneself as being privileged (5) Understanding the benefits that accrue to one’s privileges (6) Understanding oneself as being implicated in others’ oppression and acknowledging one’s oppressor status She notes that the latter stage is perhaps the most difficult task to take on because it requires acknowledging one’s culpability in the oppression of others.2 The starting point is to acknowledge that oppression and privilege exist because it is privilege that blinds many people in dominant groups to the realities of oppression, so we need to awaken our sense of injustice among those who do not experience the pain and hardship that is the basis for developing a critical consciousness among the oppressed. Under what conditions might we be able to encourage members of privileged groups to engage with the knowledge of oppression and open themselves to hearing the voices of the oppressed? Some approaches to engaging people with privilege focus on acknowledging their experience of oppression from other positionings. For example, it may occur when working with gay men, non-white men and working-class men in relation to gender privilege. The premise is that acknowledging men’s experience of oppression in other social divisions will create openings for extending the analysis to encourage them to see links with sexism and patriarchy.

2

Critical pedagogy with members of privileged groups has not been without critiques. A number of commentators (Leonardo, 2004; Smith 2013; Margolin 2015) argue that white privilege pedagogy, for example, distracts attention away from structural forms of racism and white supremacy. Their concern is that it individualises privilege instead of understanding it as a structural phenomenon. However, I argue that if we keep the focus on complicity with systems and structures of inequality, we avoid this danger.

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According to Bishop (2015), all oppressors have personally experienced oppression, otherwise they would not allow themselves to become oppressors. For her, you must be engaged in challenging your own oppression before you can become an ally to the liberation of others. She also believes that members of privileged groups can only be effective allies when they work for their own liberation and address their own oppression. This is a contentious issue that is the subject of heated debate. Not all of those who occupy oppressor roles have themselves been oppressed. Also, it is much easier for those who occupy both oppressed and oppressor statuses to concentrate on struggling against their oppression and to ignore the privileged statuses they occupy. As Magnet (2006) reflects, it is easy to neglect our own participation in the maintenance of the oppression that we are struggling against. In focusing on one’s own oppression, we need to be careful we do not ‘race to innocence’. This occurs when members of privileged groups discount their privilege and frame themselves as oppressed (Fellows and Razack 1998). To effectively challenge privilege from within, one must come to accept their oppressor status. This is crucial, given how privileged readers with a social justice consciousness have a tendency to read books about oppression from the standpoint of one who is oppressed (Lee 2002). Experience of oppression can filter the reading experience and consequently make us less likely to acknowledge our own acts of domination. As a white man from a workingclass background, I can always use my experience of class-based oppression to locate myself among the oppressed rather than acknowledge my white male privilege. I have endeavoured to construct a narrative in this book that contests this reading orientation.

Developing emancipatory interests It is important to reflect on why those of us in privileged groups engage in social justice so as to be clear about our motivations (Reason and Broido 2005). A key question here is whether it is in the interests of the dominant group to change. Lichtenberg (1988) argues that those at the top of an exploitative relationship are also miserable. Wineman (1984) says that equal relations are more rewarding and fulfilling than hierarchal relations. Hierarchy dehumanises people and denies our capacity for emotional connectedness. Others have written about the damaging effects of privilege on those in dominant groups. Goodman (2001) identifies a number of costs to privileged groups as a result of oppression, including: psychological costs

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where privileged group members are unable to develop their full humanity; relational costs where members of privileged groups experience barriers to authentic relationships and isolation and lack of trust by those who are different; moral and spiritual costs associated with the inability to live up to principles of fairness and justice; and physical costs associated with illnesses associated with dominating behaviours. If systems of oppression harm members of privileged groups as well as those who are oppressed, we could cultivate the self-interest of the privileged in involving them in social justice campaigns. Goodman (2001) believes that an awareness of these costs can lead people from privileged groups to regard their privileges as not necessarily being in their self-interests. They may be motivated to change to improve their interpersonal relationships and their own sense of integrity and authenticity.3 These self-interests need to be seen alongside empathy for those who are oppressed and adherence to moral principles and belief in human rights and social justice for all people. People can develop ‘ethical resistance’ to challenge relations of domination (Hoy 2004). This requires making these exploitative relations visible and encouraging the privileged to see their ‘real interests’ as being furthered by challenging oppression. For some, these motivations are seen as suspect and controversial. Appealing to self-interests may lead to trivialisation and co-opting of the issues to fit in with the needs of privileged groups (Goodman 2001). At the same time, appealing to ethical and moral arguments on their own may not engage members of privileged groups to overcome their material interests in defending their privilege (McMahon 1999). I have previously argued in relation to male privilege that men can move beyond their socially constructed patriarchal interests to develop emancipatory interests (Pease 2002b) and I believe that this argument can be adapted to other privileged groups as well.

Constructing a traitorous identity For oppressed groups, reconstructing one’s identity is a positive and affirmative project. Members of oppressed groups need to gain a sense of self-respect and pride associated with their identity (Mullaly and West 2018). 3

This is most eloquently expressed in a quote attributed to Lila Watson, an Indigenous visual artist and activist in Australia. ‘If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your own liberation is tied up with mine, then let us work together.’

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However, for those in privileged groups, the process by which people become conscious of their internalised domination and react against it involves the construction of a ‘negative identity’. Developing a negative identity involves challenging one’s internalised moral superiority and rejecting the sense of entitlement that so many of us are socialised into. This entails refusing part of who we are and constructing a traitorous relationship with our dominant subject position (A. Ferguson 1998). Many writers have described the process of coming to oppose the dominance of our own group as becoming a traitor to our own identity group (Bailey 1998; Lee 2002; Jungkunz and White 2013). Traitorousness involves being disloyal to the parts of ourselves that are privileged and rejecting the expectations that having such privilege entails (Heldke and O’Connor 2004). Bailey (1998) discusses traitorous identities as developing an awareness of privilege and refusing to be faithful to the world views that members of privileged groups are expected to hold. Harding (1995) believes that members of privileged groups can reinvent themselves by learning about their own social location and by taking responsibility for their dominant subject positions. Privileged traitors can develop liberatory knowledge by being critically reflective of their privilege rather than being oblivious to it. The aim for traitors is to search for ways to disrupt the process of coercion into dominant subject positions. Bailey (1998) regards the process of becoming traitorous as similar to Aristotle’s idea of acquiring moral virtue.4 While the point of view of men in dominant groups has represented Western thought as universal, it too is socially situated and partial (Harding 1995). We all need to recognise the multiple subjectivities we inhabit and to locate ourselves in relation to privilege and oppression in our lives. Those of us who are most unmarked, white heterosexual middle-class able-bodied men need to understand how our subjectivities are constructed through the marking of others (Fellows and Razack 1998). Those who are privileged across a number of different domains have greater responsibility to address privilege and domination than those of us who experience privilege in fewer domains of life.5 As someone who is 4

5

I have argued elsewhere (Pease 2021) that men, for example, need to foster a nonanthropocentric vulnerability that involves a relational and embodied sense of self and empathy and compassion not only in relation to people but also in relation to nonhuman others and the planet. Young (2011) argues that the burden of responsibility to promote social justice should fall more heavily on those who benefit most from their complicity than on those who are non-beneficiaries.

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close to the top of the matrix of privilege and dominance, I find it easier to address those readers who share all of my privileged statuses as I believe these readers have the greatest responsibility to examine their privilege. It is also important, however, that I challenge those readers who may possess some oppressed statuses alongside their privileged statuses. All people with relative privilege must take responsibility for their intermediate structural location in relation to privilege as well as their oppressed positioning (Lee 2002). For those who are both oppressed and privileged, it will mean having to construct both affirmative and negative aspects of one’s identity at the same time (A. Ferguson 1998).6 To develop a traitorous identity, one must become a ‘world traveller’ to learn about the lives of those who are oppressed (Bailey 1998). ‘World travelling’ is a metaphor developed by Lugones (1987) to describe the process of locating oneself outside of one’s comfort zone and immersing oneself in other worlds where our privileged identities will be challenged.

Engaging in dialogue across difference and inequality Many members of privileged groups are often disconnected from the lived experiences of people who are oppressed. Thus another strategy for the transformation of the privileged is through critical dialogue with those who are oppressed (Lee 2002; van Gorder 2007; Gormley 2011). Curry-Stevens (2004) argues that dialogue groups can bring about changes in relations of ruling. Critical dialogue is seen to offer the promise of respectful and responsive engagements about difference and inequality. However, it is not inherently liberatory and at times those engaged in critical dialogue have not always been sufficiently aware of the impact of power relations and privilege on the interactions of participants (Barbules 2000). Cross-cultural dialogue is very difficult to do well because privileged voices can easily come to dominate the communication and operate against the necessary conditions for an emancipatory process. Certainly, inequalities can create obstacles to constructive dialogue. Dialogue may be difficult, if not impossible, where there is resentment, suspicion and hostility arising from years of oppression and suffering (Singh 2001). Yet, some people believe that ‘any attempt to establish reasonable and consensual discourse across difference inevitably

6

Those who occupy both privileged and oppressed statuses are likely to be more responsive to educators and activists who share their particular statuses.

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involves the imposition of dominant groups’ values, beliefs and modes of discourse upon others’ (Burbules and Rice 1991: 401). If equality is predicated on participants being equals first, a non-oppressive dialogue between oppressed and dominant groups will not be possible. This precondition for dialogue can be paralysing, because no action can take place before the precondition is met. The only way forward is to enter into the dialogue and grapple with the contradictions in the unequal power situation. As Grob (1991: 141) puts it, ‘there is no way to dialogue, dialogue is the way’. Even so, it is important for members of dominant groups to earn the right to dialogue. Different opinions exist in relation to how this right may be earned: for Pheterson (1986) it involves the identification of ‘internalised domination’; for Harding (1993, 69) it means listening to marginalised people and critically examining ‘dominant institutional beliefs and practices that systematically disadvantage them’; for Ellsworth (1989: 324) it means dominant groups understanding that their knowledge of marginalised groups ‘will always be partial … and potentially oppressive to others’. To enable dialogue to occur, we must recognise the obstacles to it. Members of privileged groups need to demonstrate an understanding that their knowledge and perception of the world is socially situated and only partial if they are going to avoid oppressive practices in their encounters (Ellsworth 1989).7 Some writers have attempted to identify the best conditions to frame dialogue and rules to guide it (Alcoff 1995; Singh 2001; Sue 2015). Habermas (1987) developed criteria for determining an ideal speech situation where the power of participants was equalised. Curry-Stevens (2004) suggests that if the privileged problematise their own dominant subject position, they could contribute to the conditions for an ideal speech situation. The privileged need to acknowledge their structural and discursive positioning of dominance if they are going to be able to counter some of its damaging effects.8 In the context of multiracial dialogue, for example, such encounters must involve a critical engagement with whiteness (Rodriguez 2000). Whites must problematise their own social location in any cross-cultural dialogue.

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If this does not happen, cross-difference dialogues risk placing too much responsibility on oppressed groups to dismantle privilege. It should be remembered that the mechanism of dialogue, through speaking, can privilege certain people and marginalise others. Some groups have very different ways of speaking, while others might ‘speak’ better through art, music, drama, poetry or storytelling. It may be more subtle, circular and indirect than what we assume when we talk about ‘dialogue’. It does not have to be serious verbal exchange and if it is confined to this, it will inevitably privilege the most articulate in Western terms. I am grateful to Jim Ife for alerting me to this issue.

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Whites also need to confront their prejudice and develop the ability to understand others’ perspectives. In the Australian context, whites will need to acknowledge the dispossession of land and the ongoing colonisation of Indigenous people. As part of a project on exploring pro-feminist men’s subjectivities, I organised dialogues with feminist women and gay men to explore male and heterosexual privilege respectively (Pease 2000). The men listened to the women’s suspicions about their work, their doubts about how men could overcome their dominant subjectivities and why men would want to change. They also heard from the gay men about their reluctance to engage in an open dialogue with straight men because of their reluctance to acknowledge their heterosexual privilege and the concern that straight men’s gay affirmative stance may marginalise gay men’s voices. Due to the issues of lack of trust and power inequality, these dialogues were difficult to conduct, but charting our way through them left me with some hope for the future of such conversations.

Listening across difference Young (1997) challenges the suggestion that we can fully understand the experiences of others by imagining ourselves in their place because it obscures the differences between us. This involves simply a projection of our own perspective on to others, what she calls ‘symmetrical reciprocity’. In contrast, Young proposes the notion of ‘asymmetrical reciprocity’ whereby those in dominant positions in relation to gender, race and class acknowledge and take account of the other without taking on their perspective. This involves adopting a position of moral humility on the part of the privileged. It also entails, for those of us who are privileged, learning to see ourselves as others see us (La Caze 2008). Much of the focus on developing conditions for dialogue across difference is about how oppressed groups can find their voice and speak up about their experiences. Little attention has been given to the responsibility of the privileged to listen and hear about these experiences. Dreher (2009) talks about the right of oppressed groups to be understood and to have their experience comprehended, which entails a sense of obligation for members of privileged groups to listen to those who are oppressed in ways other than those they already understand. We need to find ways to facilitate the hearing of these experiences of the oppressed. Lloyd (2009) refers to listening as a necessary condition for democratic dialogue and believes that it entails an ethical responsibility on the part of the

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privileged. Listening across difference and inequality requires an attention to privilege and a preparedness to undo it. Dreher refers to this as ‘ethical listening’. This involves not only the ability to understand the other but also to be receptive to one’s own complicity with systems of privilege. Listeners from dominant groups need to be challenged. Perhaps best known for her practice of locating herself in public places in different cities of the world with a sign that says ‘American willing to listen’, Peavey (2003) formulated the concept of strategic questioning as a way to facilitate listening. She suggests asking questions that open our thinking to new ideas that arise within ourselves. Listening attentively to the experiences of people who are oppressed is often not easy for members of privileged groups. In part, this is because it means relinquishing our perception of ourselves as knowers rather than as listeners (O’Donnell, Lloyd and Dreher 2009).9 It can be quite destabilising to have our dominance, knowledge or expertise contested (Fellows and Razack 1998). It requires us to listen to the pain and suffering of others and to allow ourselves to feel that pain in our heart (Peavey 1997). This fits with Rowan’s (1987) belief that men need to allow themselves to be wounded by the challenge of feminism if they are going to be able to heal. This does not mean that we only need to teach better listening skills. Rather, we need to ensure that more responsive listening on the part of the privileged leads to challenges to the structural inequalities within which listening and dialogue take place (Lloyd 2009).

Moving beyond allyship towards solidarity In the first edition of this book (Pease 2010), I said that increased awareness of the injustice of one’s privilege will hopefully lead to members of privileged groups to become allies alongside oppressed groups. At the time of writing, becoming an ally or becoming an aspiring ally was the main exhortation for members of privileged groups to support the struggles of oppressed groups. Ayvazian (1995: 1) defines an ally as ‘a member of a dominant group in our society who works to dismantle any form of oppression from which she or he receives the benefit’. Similarly, Borshuk (2004) discusses ally activism as ‘outgroup activism’ where those involved are not direct beneficiaries.

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Russo (2019) refers to this as disrupting speech as entitlement and learning how to listen in embodied silence. This means undermining the sense of entitlement that comes from being the centre of the conversation. The listener must be willing to rethink their own assumptions and be able to recognise themselves as being implicated in the relations of domination that oppress others.

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Many models of ally identity development have been presented and explored (Aveline 2004; Reason and Broido 2005; Jip 2007; Bishop 2015). Providing support to oppressed groups and advocating for change are central. The main focus of much ally-based work is challenging other members of dominant groups about their behaviours. I talked about my own involvement as an ally in challenging men’s sexism and violence against women. I co-founded Men Against Sexual Assault (MASA) in 1991 to encourage other men to take responsibility for combating men’s violence against women (Pease 1995) and I have conducted numerous Patriarchy Awareness Workshops to examine the impact that patriarchy has on the lives of women and men (Pease 2007). When I talk to men about women’s agency in struggling against sexism and men’s violence, I also talk about the historical role of pro-feminist men in feminist politics. I noted that acting as allies to women, pro-feminist men face a number of challenges. When men become involved with women’s campaigns, they often move into positions of authority (Luxton 1993: 352). There is a thin line between being a constructive ally and taking over another group’s struggle. Even when men are sensitive to these issues, their involvement is more likely to be acknowledged and praised for taking part.10 I also acknowledged that in spite of their best intentions, allies sometimes perpetuate the oppression they are challenging. It is inevitable that allies will sometimes ‘get it wrong’. They must overcome this fear by being willing to learn from oppressed groups and committing themselves to challenge their own internalised domination. Ongoing challenges allies face include figuring out when to speak, when to listen and when to remove themselves from the activist space. It should be remembered that members of oppressed groups should be the ones to determine who constitutes an ally or not (Edwards 2006). Returning to this discussion eleven years later, I am now more uncomfortable with the language of allies. While I noted the dangers of becoming allies above, I didn’t question the premises upon which much allyship rested. Indigenous Action Media (2014) highlighted these issues in their critique of what they called ‘the ally industrial complex’, whereby self-proclaimed allies have developed careers out of their allyship work and have turned allyship into an identity that is disconnected from mutuality and solidarity with oppressed people. McKenzie (2015) similarly talks about ‘ally theatre’, whereby ‘allies’ perform their allyship on social media and other public spaces where they have an audience for their performance of activism. Kluttz, Walker and

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See Pease (2017a) for a more in-depth discussion of the dangers of involving men as allies in violence prevention movements.

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Walter (2020) emphasise the importance of decolonising and unsettling our assumptions about allyship to enable us to recognise colonial privilege. In spite of these critiques, the terminology of allies and allyship is still commonly used in social justice work, although more so in the academy than among activists (Carlson et al. 2019). Russo (2019) identifies a number of alternative terms, including co-strugglers, collaborators, co-conspirators and accomplices. The latter term, usually associated with complicity in a crime, in the social justice context means cooperation and sense of community with those who are oppressed (Clemens 2017). McKenzie (2015) talks about ‘acting in solidarity with’; the concept of solidarity and willingness to take risks in working alongside people rather than on their behalf is what distinguishes accomplice work from allyship (Powell and Kelly 2017). The language progressive members of privileged groups use is important in acknowledging their relationship to power and the ways they are implicated in systems of privilege and oppression.

Forging coalitions against oppression and privilege Many social change theorists have argued that multi-issue coalitions aimed at addressing all forms of oppression are fundamental for social justice and political change (Bystydzienski and Schacht 2001a; Cole 2008; Post 2015; Carroll 2017). Coalition politics challenges identity-based social movements that are focused on single issues. Burack (2001) identifies coalitions as operating on three levels: 1. where groups from different social locations come together to focus on a particular issue; 2. where differences are addressed within groups; 3. where multiple parts of the self are engaged. Bystydziensky and Schacht (2001a) have compiled a collection of practical accounts of ‘forging radical alliances across difference’. They emphasise the importance of recognising multiple identities in making dialogues across difference work (Bystydiensky and Schacht 2001b). This means that oppressed groups will also need to engage with their own privileged subjectivities within their own ranks (Cole 2008) and deal with some of the contradictions between espoused positions and enacted behaviours that so often ensue. In addressing differences in coalitions, it is important to remember that each individual also embodies many of these differences within themselves. BarvosaCarter (2001: 21) expresses it as ‘identity differences within us enable radical

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alliances among us’. She argues that the more people acknowledge multiple parts of themselves, the more they will be able to identify with different positions. For coalitions to work, we must find ways of addressing power differences within them. Bystydzienski and Schacht (2001b) emphasise the importance of creating shared spaces that can assist participants to engage in dialogue without domination. They identify three stages for effective coalitions: 1. an acknowledgement of the impact that social identities have upon the participants; 2. a recognition of how privilege based on class, race, gender and so on is played out in their relationships; 3. the goodwill to find common ground by honouring perspectives that are different from their own. Schacht and Ewing (2001: 200) identify six criteria that pro-feminist men need to address if coalitions with feminist women are going to be forged. These criteria could be adapted to all privileged groups. 1. acknowledge and give up their male privilege; 2. be willing to apply feminist principles to their personal lives; 3. affirm that the elimination of oppression against women and people in general is a central priority; 4. advocate for social and institutional change; 5. learn non-hierarchical forms of communication and decision making; 6. demonstrate respect for women and women’s spaces. For members of privileged groups, coalitional work will involve an emotional commitment to process. Reagon (1983: 196) says that privileged members of coalitions will ‘feel threatened to the core’ most of the time. If they do not, it is unlikely that they are emotionally committed. The attempt to form coalitions across difference will constitute specific sites where oppressive relations are likely to be enacted. When illuminated and challenged, they will become microcosms of the larger struggle against privilege.

Developing models of accountability My experience in the men’s violence prevention sector in Australia has been that many men who work with violent men have been reluctant to make their work accountable to women who work with the survivors of men’s violence. When we organised campaigns against men’s violence in Men Against Sexual

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Assault, we always engaged in consultations with feminist groups. Similarly, when we facilitated Patriarchy Awareness Workshops, we invited and paid feminist women to observe the workshops and offer critical feedback on their observations. Because oppression and privilege are more visible to those who are oppressed, they must always be the leaders in social movements for change. The extent to which the privileged have been able to transform themselves will need to be evaluated by the oppressed (Lee 2002; van Gorder 2007; Amato 2013). Tamasese and Waldegrave (1996) at the Family Centre in New Zealand developed a model of cultural and gender accountability to enable people from different cultures and men and women to address cultural and gender bias in their work. They reversed the traditional mode of accountability where white people and men control the decision making. In this model, those in privilege need to be able to listen to the experiences of those who are marginalised. In the Family Centre model, dominant and dominated groups form into separate caucuses who meet on their own prior to and after dialogue group meetings. The dominant group needs to discuss what the dominated group have raised and work out how to best respond to their concerns. Hall (1996) at the Dulwich Family Therapy Centre in Adelaide outlined how this model of partnership accountability was operationalised in relation to an issue raised by women workers about men’s practices. In the context of emancipatory participatory action research, Wadsworth (2016) has argued that research should be accountable to critical reference groups comprised of people whose interests are to be served by the research. This transforms the role of professionals and activists from experts to participants who work alongside the oppressed as partners to address the issues they identify as important. In these models of accountability, the more privileged group has to hear the concerns of the less privileged group and together they must find a way to resolve the issues. The premise is that dominant group is committed to shifting their attitudes and practices towards equality with the dominated group. For this process to work, the dominant group must privilege the views of the dominated group above their own.11

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In Men as Allies in Preventing Violence against Women: Principles and Practices of Accountability (Pease 2017), I explore a number of political dilemmas associated with accountability, including engaging with many feminisms, engaging with the social divisions between men, taking moral responsibility for actions and prioritising the reshaping of men’s identities at the expense of challenging privilege and oppression.

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Relinquishing privilege? Some radical critics will see a project such as this as fitting within a neoliberal agenda and will question the potential for privileged activists to contribute anything meaningful to progressive social change. I take these criticisms seriously and, as noted above, I write about the dangers and limitations of involving men as allies in men’s violence prevention (Pease 2008; Pease 2017a). Nevertheless, I maintain that there is a place for this work within a wider social change-oriented movement. Many social activists will question whether the privileged can step out of their dominant subjectivities and transform themselves (Curry-Stevens 2004). They will certainly not expect the privileged to do so. One of the forms of privilege is the ability to ignore calls for involvement in social justice campaigns. Those who do make a commitment still have the privilege at any point of changing their mind and allowing their commitment to wane. Awareness of privilege can always be reversed, but my experience in campaigns tells me that there comes a point of no return for those who commit themselves to be in solidarity with oppressed people. Significant reconstruction of subjectivities can occur to the point where turning away from activist involvements is no longer viable. Furthermore, if oppressed groups continue to maintain pressure on privileged groups to transform themselves and to take responsibility for action against their privilege, they will not be taking this course of action solely from internalised motivations (Curry-Stevens 2004). So, if one is sceptical of the ability of the privileged to transform themselves and relinquish their privilege, how might they respond more positively to the demands of the oppressed? We need to understand their resistance to change and how they can be encouraged to lessen the obstacles they create that work against change (Pease 2008). If those with privilege do not yield power then the gains achieved by the oppressed can be more easily co-opted (CurryStevens 2004). Anyone brought up in a patriarchal, racist, class-elitist, heterosexist, ableist Western society is not likely to eliminate oppressive attitudes and practices entirely, just as the privileged cannot fully relinquish privilege. While the structural relations that advantage the privileged remain, unearned benefits will follow. Knowing that they cannot get rid of their privilege and they cannot use it without perpetuating the dominant– subordinate relations to which they are opposed is not an easy thing to live with (Bailey 1999). Since privilege cannot be completely abandoned by those on the receiving end, some activists argue that we should focus less on giving up privilege

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and more on mitigating the harmful effects of privilege (Bailey 1999). Here, privilege is used for progressive rather than exploitative and dominating purposes. McIntosh’s (1992) two types of privilege discussed earlier are worth remembering: unearned advantages that all people should have but are restricted to dominant groups and conferred dominance where one group of people is given power over another group through claimed superiority. The former privileges should be spread throughout society and would become the norm in a just society. It is the latter form of privilege that reproduces hierarchy that needs to be challenged and rejected. While some aspects of privilege cannot be renounced or given up because they are structurally conferred, a socially just society would restructure so that this no longer occurred. Privileged groups will experience this as a loss. When members of privileged groups say that they want everyone else to have privilege but do not want to relinquish the privileges they have, they often want to hold on to their conferred dominance.

Conclusion Over forty years ago, Therborn (1980) outlined three modes of ideological justification for defending a given social order. They are our perceptions of: 1. What exists and what does not exist 2. What is good, right and just 3. What is possible and impossible Defenders of the social order can argue that privilege and oppression do not exist. If they are acknowledged as existing because of the overwhelming evidence of inequality, they can argue that such inequalities are justified because those with privilege have earned their entitlements and those who are marginalised are to blame for their situation. If this can be demonstrated to be untrue then the final line of defence is to acknowledge the injustice but to maintain that there is no possibility for being able to bring about a more equal and socially just world. The logic of social change requires the antithesis of this position. We must acknowledge that privilege exists, that it represents unearned advantages and conferred dominance and that it can be changed. Eisler and Loye (1990) have developed a partnership model of social organisation to stand against the dominator model that governs most societies. I have previously argued that the partnership model provides a valuable way

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to frame alternative visions for society (Pease 2002b). We can use this model to analyse dynamics at institutional, cultural, interpersonal and individual levels. Many of us at the individual level may espouse partnership principles but be unaware of how deeply embedded the dominator principles may be in our psyches. We are not short on analysis and strategy for social change and yet we seem to lack the political and personal will to undo the relations of domination. It is now an axiom that those of us who pursue social justice at the public and institutional levels of society need to ‘walk the talk’ in our personal lives. We need to live out the changes we want to see in the wider society in our own relationships and ways of life (Mullaly and Dupre 2018). This is an admirable exhortation. However, those of us in privileged groups who have endeavoured to make the political personal in our own lives know how difficult it can be. As we come to terms with our complicity in the reproduction of privilege and oppression, we will need support as well as challenge as we experience the distress that is necessary to shatter our complicity. I have mounted a case for rebellion against privilege from within. I have argued that members of privileged groups do not have to maintain their dominance, that they can be responsive to the claims of the oppressed and that they can loosen their connections to dominant subject positions. In this book I have introduced various intersecting systems of privilege. I hope that it will encourage activist readers to extend their reading beyond the particular sites in which they struggle against their own oppression. I encourage members of dominant groups to set up reading and study groups to interrogate privilege similar to that organised by the Dulwich Centre (Raheim et al. 2007) and the Reconciliation circles in Australia (Patten and Ryan 2001). They can provide spaces for critical self-reflection and collective conscientisation for privileged and oppressed identities. Writing and talking against privilege on its own is insufficient to undo privilege. However, there is a place for analysis and critical reflection as well as mobilisation and collection action. While I began the book with some level of understanding about the workings of privilege, it took me to new places and taught me about aspects of privilege that I had taken for granted. I hope that it performs this function for many readers. Unsettling unearned privilege is difficult because it is the privileged who make the rules and construct the norms that govern our actions. It would be utopian to suggest that the structures of privilege can be dismantled solely by actions from within. Challenging privilege has to be a project from below as well. We also know how the struggles of the oppressed can be co-opted and that new oppressive systems will replace old ones if those in dominant groups

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are not challenged to relinquish their privilege. Meaningful and lasting change in the world, at personal, cultural and structural levels, will only occur through the combined efforts of the oppressed and those willing to forgo and challenge their privileges. I hope that this book makes a contribution to that necessary transformation.

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Index able-bodied people and disabled, binary of 201–2 negative attitudes of 194 non-disable identity 200, 206 oppressions 196–7 and racism 197 self-reflection on mental and physical limitations 202 understanding of physical vulnerability 203–4 able-bodied privilege 149, 205–6 and compulsory heterosexuality 149 construction of 199–201 at cultural level 198 ableism 23, 198, 205–6 cultural construction of 197–9 definition of 198 and heterosexuality 149 recognition of 199–200 role of non-disabled people in challenging 204–5 able-mindedness 200 n.12, 201 n.15 accountability models 238–9 Acker, J. 18, 89, 90 Adams, P. 14, 124 adolescence 213 adult-centrism 214–15, 218 adulthood 209, 210, 211–12, 213, 214 adultism 23, 207, 213–15, 219–20, 221, see also children and young people adult privilege checklist xi, xii, 210 n.7 adult privilege in challenging 219–20 adults becoming allies 219–20 and age-differentiated engagement, distinguishes between 218

at attitudinal level 214 at cultural level 214 at individual level 214, 215 internalisation of 215 intersection with other factors 215 at structural level 214 systemisation of 215 Afrocentrism 17, 62, 64–6 age-based privilege/oppression 207, 209–10, 213, 214, 215, see also adultism; children and young people ageism 207, 214, 216 adultist behaviour as 207–8, 216 and disablism 197, 198 juvenile ageism 207 agender 161, 162 aggression advantage, of men 117 agricultural subsidies 59 Ahmed, S. 21 n.5, 110, 112 Akbar, N. 66 Akinyela, M. 66 Alanen, L. 209 Alcoff, L. 27, 112 n.14 allies in challenging privileges 227, 229, 235–7 adultism allies 219–20 class allies 73, 76, 84 gender allies 240 heterosexual allies 153 non-disabled allies 204–5 religious allies 190 Alloun, E. 48 n.14 Amin, S. 51, 55 Anderson, M. 100 androcentrism 39, 44 Angus, I. 43 animals, see non-human species/ animals

304

304 anthroparchy 40 Anthropocene/anthropocentrism 37–9, 50 and androcentrism 44 beyond 43–4 and carnism 45–6 and Christian privilege 181 ecocentric ethic as an alternative to 39 feminist and decolonial engagements with 44–5 food politics in 45–9 and geopolitical and social divisions reality 43 locavorism 46 and rights of nature 42 and vegetarianism and veganism 47–9 anti-colonialism 63–4, 67, 68 anti-gay Christians 180 anti-gay homicides 148 n.7 anti-gay prejudice 140–1, 148 anti-gay violence 144 anti-globalisation 52 anti-homosexual prejudice 139, 175 heteronormativity 142–3 heterosexism 141–2 homophobia 140–1 anti-Muslim oppression 181–3 anti-Muslim racism 182–3 anti-speciesism 39–40, 46, 47, 48, 49 Applebaum, B. 30 Aries, P. 212 Arnot, M. 66 Aronowitz, S. 80, 81, 84, 89, 203 Asante, M. 66 asymmetrical reciprocity 234 attitudinal adultism 214 Australia Aboriginal communities 45 Labor Party 79 secularism 185 Australian Association of Social Workers 98

Index Ayres, I. 152 Ayvazian, A. 235 Bahl, V. 63–4 Bailey, A. 5–6, 8, 26–7, 231 Bakari, R. 65 Barajas, S. 8 n.4 Bar-On, A. 65 Barone, C. 91 Barounis, C. 149 Barrett, M. 122 Barvosa-Carter, E. 237–8 Basow, C. 148 Bauer, G. 159 Beasley, C. 145 n.4 Bella, L. 141 Beneke, T. 140, 142, 154 Benporath, S. 217 Bettcher, T. 162 bigender 161, 162 Bilge, S. 21 n.6 Bishop, A. 229 Biswas, T. 219, 220 Blaut, J. 55 Bleich, E. 182 Blum, L. 31 Blumenfeld, W. 179, 187 body, see also able-bodied people; ableism; disabled people; disablism body image 192 fragility of 203–4 normativity 201 Borshuk, C. 235 Boulet, J. 70 Bourdieu, P. 24, 76, 83, 193 Branfield, F. 204 Brickell, C. 143 Brittan, A. 124 Brod, H. 24–5 Broido, E. 150, 205–6 Brook, H. 145 n.4 Brown, J. 152 Bulbeck, C. 70

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Index Bunch, C. 143 Burack, C. 237 Burgmann, V. 79 Burke, K. 177 Burman, E. 212, 212 n.9 Bush, M. 108 Butler, J. 163 Bystydzienski, J. 237, 238 Cafaro, P. 38 n.1 Calhoun, C. 226 Calvo, E. 40 Campbell, F. 197, 198, 199, 200 Canaan, J. 116 Canagarajah, A. 69 capitalist class 75, 84, 86, 87 n.10 Carbado, D. 153 Card, C. 31, 226 Carillo, H. 153 n.12 caring activities, dependence on 29–30 Carlton, E. 7 carnism 37, 45–6, 47–9, 50 Carter, B. 76 Carter, S. 84 Carver, T. 147 Cassuto, L. 191 caste 63, 82 n.6 Caviola, L. 46 Chang, H. 59 Chesney-Lind, N. 126 childism 214 children and young people 207, 221 ageism 207–8, 214, 2166 childhood and child development, construction of 211–13 climate change, and intergenerational justice 219 immaturity of 215, 218 liberation movement 216 maturity of 215 negative media portrayals of 208 oppression of 208–9 parliaments of 219

305

paternalism 88, 217, 219 rights movement 216–17 rights of 216–18 self-determination rights 217 views of 221 vulnerability 218 China 56, 174 n.3 Christianity beliefs 174, 177–8 denominations 179 fundamentalism and evangelicalism 175–6 hegemony 174, 176–8, 190 influence in education in the United States 177 institutionalisation of 178–9 n.16 institutionalised power structures and theology, distinguishing between 174 n.4 interfaith dialogues 189 normative 176–8, 180 religious identity 174 supremacy 180 Christianity privilege denial of 188 Christian privilege 173, 174, 178–9, 189–90 acknowledgement of 186–9 and anti-Muslim oppression 181–3 and Christian beliefs 174 at interpersonal level 178 intersections with other forms of privilege and oppression 179–81 at personal level 178 political influence 175 and secularism 185–6 cisgenderism 23, 159-160 cisgender men heterosexual 158 masculine identity 158 violence against transgender people 160–1 cisgender people 171–2 aim of naming 156–7

306

306 cisnormativity 159–61 definition of 156 and gender normativity 157–9 identities 157 non-transgender people as 158 and transgender, comparison between 157 and transphobia 159–60 cisgender privilege 155 interrogation of 156–9 supremacy 157 cisgender women feminism, and transsexuality 164 heterosexual 158 and transwomen, conflict of interest between 169–70 cisnormativity 159 civilised oppression 11 Clarke, C. 44, 111, 149 class 32–3, 73, 92–4 and access to material resources 79–80 analyses, decline in 76–8 author’s personal narrative of 73–5 -based oppression 90–2, 93 and Christian privilege 179 contradictory class locations 84 cross-class alliances 87–8 decline in social analysis 77–8 and disabled people 196–7 divisions 80, 119 and economic prosperity 79 entitlements 92 fluidity 80 gendering and racialising process 89–90 inequality, school system 80 interests 76, 80–1 membership determination 75 meritocracy and social mobility 78–81 middle-class privilege 86–7 New Labour’s third way 79 new sources of opposition 81–2

Index professional-managerial class 84–6 redistribution and recognition 81–2 and social exclusion 79 and social movements 81–2 theorisation 75–6 in the unconscious 80 working-class and middle-class masculinities 119 classism 91–2 class privilege 15, 73, 75, 81 and activism 81–2 and cultural capital 89 differences among white people 104 and disability movement 197 intersections with other forms of oppression 88–9 middle-class privilege 86–7 and racial supremacy 88–9 unearned 80 climate change 37, 40, 61, 62, 219 climate debt 61 n.6 coalitions against oppression and privilege 237–8 Coates, J. 67 Cobb, J. 74, 80 coercive control 124–5 Collins, P. 17, 18–19, 21 n.6 colonialism 12, 43, 49, 55, 63, 101–2, 202, 237 colour blindness 97–8 communism collapse of 77, 78 and Marxism 77–8 complicity complicit masculinities 118–19 in oppression of others 30–1 compulsory ableness 199 compulsory heterosexuality 33, 142–3, 145, 149, 151 conferred dominance 241 Connell, R. 14, 65, 68–9, 79, 81, 117–19, 125–6, 128–30, 133–4, 163, 171, 209 corporal punishment 209, 209 n.3

 307

Index counter-hegemony 57, 70–1, 93, 113 Covid-19 pandemic 43 n.7, 52 n.2 critical dialogue 232 cross-class alliances 85, 87–8 cross-cultural dialogue 232, 233 Crutzen, P. 37 cultural adultism 214 cultural capital 76, 92, 111, 193 cultural cisgenderism 160 Cuomo, C. 110–11 Currie, D. 29 Curry-Stevens, A. 228, 232, 233 Danaher, K. 52, 59, 70 Dandermark, B. 22 Daniel, A. 7 Deal, M. 198 deep ecology 39–40, 44 degendering society 171 DeJong, K. 208, 220 demarcationalists 25–6 Dennis, R. 60 DeRosa, P. 99 Derrida, J. 123 Desaulniers, E. 46 development definition of 58 and Eurocentrism 58 failures of dominant models of 58–9 and imperialism 58 as an industry 58 modernisation theories 58 poverty of 57–8 dialogues critical dialogue 232 cross-cultural dialogue 232, 233 dominant groups’ right to dialogue 233 engagement across difference and inequality 232–4 interfaith dialogues 189 multiracial dialogue 233 DiAngelo, R. 110 n.13, 150

307

Dick, A. 66 differential oppositional consciousness 6 disability allies 205–6 awareness programmes 205 critical post-structural approaches to 199 difficulty in defining 194 n.7 fear of 204 and illness 192–3 social model 194 tragedy model 194 disabled people 193, 205–6, see also able-bodied people able-bodied gaze 202, 203 experiences of impairment in the oppression of 195 and non-disabled people, similarities between 202 disablism 198, see also able-bodied privilege; ableism aversive disablism 198 cultural construction of 197–9 at cultural level 198 definition of 197–8 intersections with other forms of oppression 196–7 link with ageism, racism and heterosexism 197 at personal level 198 at structural level 198 discrimination 3 ageism 207, 209, 213, 214, 217, 218 classist 75, 77, 91 disablism 195, 197, 203 gender 121–2, 159, 160, 163, 167, 168 other side of 4–6 racial 89, 97, 104, 110 religious 176, 177, 181, 183–4, 187, 188 sexist 124, 136, 140, 142 sources of 9

308

308

Index

speciesism 39, 40 against women 121–2 distribution of wealth, global inequalities in 61 diversity acknowledgement of 67 awareness of 98–9 and intersectionality, differentiated from 21 n.5 and religious pluralism 184–5 within whiteness 104–5 doing gender 133 dominance 31–3 internalisation of 23–5 matrix of domination 19 social dominance orientation 25 traitorous identity of dominant groups 26–7 dominant groups right to dialogue 233 Dominelli, L. 25 Donaldson, M. 83 Drake, R. 204 Dreher, T. 234, 235 Ducey, K. 87 n.10 Ducket, P. 205 Duggan, L. 151 n.10 earth rights 41–2 Easterly, W. 59 ecocentric ethic 39 ecofeminism and deep ecology 39 on oppression of women 44 ecological footprint 61 ecology of knowledges 62 Edwards, C. 193 Edwards, S. 173 n.1, 189 egalitarians/egalitarian societies 25, 26, 133 heterosexuality 150 response to global injustice 71 social order 86, 195 species egalitarianism 40, 48

Ehrenreich, B. 82, 83, 84 Ehrenreich, J. 82, 83, 84 Eisler, R. 241 Ekins, R. 162 elite studies 7–9 Elliott, K. 130 n.16 Ellsworth, E. 233 emancipatory interests, development of 229–30 Enke, F. 158 epistemicide 62 epistemic injustice 215 epistemological humility 70 epistemological privilege, deconstruction of 62–3 Eriksson, M. 208 n.1, 210 n.5, 211 essentialism gender essentialism 169 and sexuality 136 Esteva, G. 70 ethical listening 235 ethical veganism 47, 49 Eurocentrism 22, 23, 26, 45, 53, 54, 58, 64, 70, 71 and Afrocentrism 66 bias in North America 65 as a form of prejudice 55 and globalisation 70 moving beyond 55–6 and Western ideology 53–4, 65 Evans, N. 150, 199, 205–6 Everett, J. 46 Ewing, D. 238 exclusion, blaming the victim for their own victimisation 5 Faber, N. 46 Fairchild, E. 187 false consciousness 5 false universalism, promotion of 45 family and classism 210–11 gender differences in 120, 126, 127, 210

 309

Index and oppression of children and young people 208–9 power relations between adults and children in 211 Family Centre model, 239 Farrell, W. 188 fat politics 193 n.5 Feagin, J. 87 n.10, 91 n.13 female masculinity 166 feminism 115, 133 and Anthropocene/ anthropocentrism 44–45 cisgender women 164 and class analysis 89–90 ecofeminism 39, 44 and gender identity 164–5 and heterosexuality 144–5 intersectional model 16–17 posthumanist feminism 44 pro-feminist 115, 128, 131, 133, 134, 155, 170, 234, 236 radical feminism 170 transfeminism 169–71 and vegetarianism and veganism 47–8 view on transgender people 164–165 western feminism 129 n.15 feminist standpoint theory 26 Fennell, S. 66 Fensternmaker, S. 32–3 Ferber, A. 186 Ferguson, A. 82 Ferguson, I. 80, 85, 89–90 Ferree, M. 11 Flagg, B. 105 Flasher, J. 214 n.12 Fletcher, A. 214, 216 Fletcher, J. 180 Flood, M. 142 Foer, J. 46 Foley, D. 68 food choices 49, 50 food politics 50

309

carnism 45–6 vegetarianism and veganism 47–9 foreign aid 52, 57, 59 Frankenberg, R. 97, 98, 100, 104, 111 Fraser, N. 21–3, 149, 199 Freire, P. 170 French, S. 199, 204 Fricker, M. 215 Garland-Thomson, R. 203 Gavey, N. 14, 124 gay and lesbians 4, 5, 144, 152–3, 234, see also homosexuality and Christianity 180, 184, 187 and class 20 and heterosexual privilege 142, 143, 150 and heterosexuals 138, 142–3 homophobia 140–1 oppression by 19, 20 oppression of 16, 22, 144, 148, 149, 199 politics 147–8, 149 rights of 136, 147–8 sexual identity 136, 137, 151 violence on 31 Gellerstedt, L. 22 gender 32–3 binary 167–9, 171–2 binary, beyond 170 at cathexis and emotional attachment level 125, 127 and Christian privilege 179–80 as cultural construction 163 cultural understandings of 165 and disability 196 division of labour 127 gender-fluid 162 gender regimes 125–8 as performative 163 phallocentrism 123–4 pluralism 169 and sexed body, relationship between 164

310

310 as a structure of social practice 125–8 structures of 133 at symbolism level 127 gender identity(ies) 157, 161–2, 163, 169, see also cisgender people; transgender people cultural understanding of 165–166 and domestic work 127 feminist view 164–5 and heterosexuality 157 natural gender identity 165 social constructionist view 165 gender normals 157 gender order 125–6, 210 gender privilege 115 aggression advantage 117 male dominance and men’s privilege 119–22 masculinities 116–19 gender queer 161–2 generational order 209–10, see also adult-centrism; adultism; children and young people geographical borders 52–3 George, K. 48 Gerschick, T. 201 Gibert, M. 46 Giddens, A. 83 Gilbert, R. 86 Gillborn, D. 111 globalising privilege 52–3 global justice movement 62, 70 global warming 43, 46, 49, 61 n.6, 62, 190, 219 Goldberg, S. 117 Goodman, D. 229–30 Gormley, B. 97 n.1 Goudge, P. 59, 62 Graeber, D. 83 n.8 Gramsci, A. 5 Gray, M. 67 Grear, A. 38 greenhouse emissions 61

Index Griffin, C. 116 Grimes, S. 98 Grob, L. 233 Gronemeyer, M. 59 Grosfoguel, R. 182 Grosz, E. 121 Grzanka, P. 153 n.11 guilt, and privilege 46, 109, 132 Habermas, J. 233 habitus 24 Halberstam, J. 166 Hall, K. 110–11 Hall, R. 239 Halliday, F. 182 Hamilton, C. 60, 142 Hanscombe, G. 138 Harding, S. 26, 231, 233 Harris, J. 202 Hartwick, E. 58 Harvey, J. 11 Hawthorn, S. 70 Hayward, T. 40 Hearn, J. 116, 119, 208 n.1 Heasley, R. 153 hegemonic masculinity 29, 105, 118–19, 121, 123, 130 Held, D. 59 Helms, J. 105 Herek, G. 141 Hess, B. 11 hetero-cisnormativity 160 heteroflexible 153 n.12 heteronormativity 22, 47, 139, 140, 142–3, 147, 148, 151, 157, 168, 210 n.6 heterosexism 22, 23, 26, 66, 140, 141–2, 144, 240 awareness of 150 and Christianity 180–1 and disablism 197 heterosexuals against 152, 153 and homophobia 141–2 heterosexual cis men 158

 311

Index heterosexual cis women 158, 158 n.10 heterosexuality 135 and Christian privilege 180–1 and gender domination 144–6 and homosexuality, opposition between 146 and intersections with other forms of privilege 149 naturalisation and normalisation 137–40 reconstruction of 150 theorisation of 136–7 heterosexual masculinity 148, 153–4 heterosexual privilege 135, 144, 152, 153, 154, 180 costs of 144–5 and equal rights 147–8 gay and lesbians 142, 143 and gender 144–6 recognition of 150, 234 Heyes, C. 162, 168 Hicks, S. 140 hierarchal relations 229 Hill, M. 111 Ho, C. 189 Hobgood, M. 108 Hobson, J. 54 Hochschild, A. xi Hoffman, A. 153 n.12 Hollway, W. 151 Holmes, C. 145 n.4 homophobia xi, 6, 15, 23, 139–41 and Christian privilege 180, 183 and class 20 and heterosexism 141–2, 144, 148, 150, 153, 154 and heterosexual masculinity 148 internalisation of 5 and race 20 homosexual identity 136, 146 homosexuality 66, 136–7, 138, 140, 143, 146, 148–51, 153, 180 Hood-Williams, J. 211 hooks, bell 88, 89, 111

311

Hopkins, P. 148, 150 Horan, D. 38 horizontal violence 170 Howard, J. 32, 33 Hughes, B. 196, 203 human chauvinism 38, 39 human hierarchies, impacts of 38 human interests 40 humanism 11–12, 39–40, 41 human rights xi, 42, 54, 227, 230 human rights violations 183 human supremacy 38, see also Anthropocene/anthropocentrism in masculine anthropocentrism context 44 and ontological veganism 48 ideology 5 Ife, J. 11–12 Ignatiev, Noel 106 ignorance, and irresponsibility 30, 97 n.1, 179, 188 impairments 194 n.7, 195–6, 203, 204 ableist perspective of 198 biological model 195 and disability, distinguishing between 194 and disablism 195, 197, 205 normalisation of 202 in older people 197 as part of human condition 202 social model 195–6 temporality and invincibility 201–2 imperialism 43, 47, 51–2, 58, 63, 64, 67, 68, 135, 208 Imrie, R. 193 Inahara, M. 206 India, post-colonial 63 Indigenous Action Media 236 Indigenous cosmologies 42 n.6 Indigenous knowledge 66–8 Indigenous people 45, 109 colonisation of 101–2 food practices 48

312

312 innate gender identity 165 institutional heterosexuality 141–2, 145, see also heterosexuality interfaith dialogues 189 intergenerational oppression 207–8 intermediate classes 75, 83 internalised adultism 215 internalised dominance and privilege 23–5 internalised oppression 4–5 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 52, 60 international trading system, for poorer countries 59 intersectionality xiii, 16, 19 n.4, 170 additive analyses of 17 differentiated from diversity and inclusion 21 n.5 of oppression 16–18, 210 of privilege 18–21, 210 and the social divisions between men 128–30 and transfeminism 170 and whiteness 104–5 intersex people 161, 162, 169, 171 Islamophobia 159, 182–3 Jackson, S. 136, 137, 145, 147, 150 Jaekel, K. 179 James, O. 60 Jefferson, T. xi Jensen, D. 48, 50, 160 Jensen, R. 108, 168, 190 Johnson, A. 9, 90, 122, 148, 200 Johnson, C. 151 Jolly, M. 53 n.4 Joshi, K. 187 n.34 Joy, M. 45 Judaeo-Christianity 185 Jung, R. 180 juvenile ageism 207 Kafer, A. 149, 200 Kagan, S. 40

Index Katz, J. 136, 138, 150 Kaufman, M. 130 Kaya, A. 59 Keddie, A. 213 n.11, 218 Keith, L. 48 Kelly, R. 147 Kendall, D. 77 Kennedy, H. 218 Kennedy, N. 160 Khader, S. 53 n.3 Kim, C. 104 Kimmel, M. xi Kincheloe, J. 112 King, D. 162 Kitzinger, C. 145–6, 153 Kivel, P. 183, 190 Kluttz, J. 236–7 Knezevic, Z. 215 n.13 Knights, D. 44 knowledge systems 62–3, 67, 70 Knowles, C. 100, 106–7 Kovel, J 190 Koyama, E. 156–7, 168, 170 Kristeva, J. 124 Lakritz, A. 27 land, spirituality and harmony with 67 Larson, M. 188 Lasch-Quinn, E. 99 Lauwers, A. 182 Lawrence, S. 96–7 Lee, N. 216 n.14 Lennon, E. 159 Lenski, G. 7 Lensmire, T. 103 Leonard, P. 121 Leondar-Wright, B. 80, 87, 88, 91 Levine, E. 159 Levine-Rasky, C. 30–1, 102 liberal humanism 41 liberalism, and sexuality 143 Lichtenberg, P. 229 Lieu, C. 85 n.9 Lindblom, M. 113

 313

Index linked oppression thesis 47 listening across difference and inequality 234–5 Lloyd, J. 234 locavore movement 46 Loomis, C. 75 Lorber, J. 11, 171 Love, B. 208, 220 Loye, D. 241 Lugones, M. 27, 232 Mackinnon, C. 20 Magnet, S. 229 Maldonado, L. 32 male domination 15, 116, 119–22, 128, see also men, privilege of discursive analysis 120 psychoanalytic theory 120–1 manhood 33, 125, 126, 160, 166, 167, 171, 172 Mansbridge, J. 5 marginalised groups, challenging oppression 5 marginalised masculinities 119 Marina, D. 44 Markowitz, L. 188 Marks, R. 53, 54 Marx, Karl 83 Marxism 15, 83, 93, 149, 210–11 on capitalism and class divisions’ role in racial hierarchy 104 class theories 75–6 and communism 77–8 and professional class 86 masculinity(ies) 115, 116–19, 203 and Anthropocentrism 44 complicit masculinities 118–19 construction of 119–20 in crisis 130–1 crisis tendencies 131 dimensions 117–18 hegemonic masculinity 118 and heterosexuality 148 marginalised masculinities 119

313

and meat eating 47 subordinate masculinities 119 trans men 166–7 Masuzawa, T. 184–5 Mattheis, N. 219 May, V. 19 n.4 May-Machunda, P. 200 Maynard, M. 124 McClintock, A. 63 McCormack, M. 151 n.9 McEwan, C. 63 McIntosh, P. xii, 8–9, 10, 102, 103, 241 McKenzie, M. 236, 237 McLaren, P. 111 McMahon, M. 119 McRuer, M. 149, 199 n.11 meat paradox 46, 49 Mederos, F. 124 men, see also male domination labour, materialist analysis of 119–20 power and privilege, unintended consequences of 130–1 privilege of 16, 24–5, 119–22, 126, 197 resistance to change 131–2 violence against women 126 Men Against Sexual Assault (MASA) 236 Meneses, M. 62 mental disability 200 n.12 meritocracy 78–81, 92, 110 Messerschmidt, J. 32 Messner, M. 129–30 Michels, R. 7 middle class 73, 78, 81, 84, 86–7, 88 Midgley, J. 67 Mills, W. 7 Milner, A. 80–1 Minow, M. 24 misogyny 49, 121–2 misrecognition 21, 22, 199, 201 Mistler, B. 159 Mitchell, J. 121

314

314

Index

modern capitalist societies 3, 73 modernisation 53, 54, 58 Mohanty, C. 53 n.4, 129 n.15 Moore, J. 43 Moreton-Robinson, A. 99 Morris, J. 195, 197 Morrison, S. 102 Mosca, G. 7 Mosmiller, T. xi Motter, V. 147 Moyo, D. 59 multinational corporations 51, 52 multiracial dialogue 233 Murphy, R. 192 Murris, K. 220 Mutua, A. 66 Mutua, K. 67 Namaste, W. 163 Narayan, U. 54 Narvanen, A. 210 n.5 Nash, J. 21 n.5 Nasman, E. 210 n.5 naturalisation of childhood 212 of heterosexuality 138 natural order 45, 95, 110, 117 nature rights for 42 rights of 41–2 negative identity 231 neoliberal capitalism 57 neoliberalism 42, 51 new imperialism 51–2 NGOs 58 Noble, D. 84 non-anthropocentric perspective 41, 50, 231 n.4 non-disabled people 193, 197, 203, 205–6 acceptance of disable people 198–9 and disabled people, distinction between 201–2 fear of physical differences 203–4

identity of 200 and impairments 202 role in challenging ableism 204–5 social model 198 non-disabled privilege 200 non-disablement, pathology of 202–4 non-elites 8 non-human species/animals 38, 39–40, 49–50, 181, see also Anthropocene/anthropocentrism in Aboriginal communities 45 carnism 45–6 deep ecology 39–40, 44 ethics of eating 37 and human supremacy 38 rights and liberation of 41, 46 in scientific experiments 40 speciesism 38, 39–40, 45 and vegetarianism and veganism 47–9 non-West, construction of 56–7 non-Western countries 53 non-Western intellectuals, influence of Eurocentrism on 55 normalisation of able-bodied 200 of Christianity 176, 178, 185 of heterosexuality 137, 142 of impairment 202 of male privilege 126, 128 of meat eating 45, 46 of oppression 11 of privilege, challenging 226–7 Nunnes, J. 62 O’Brian, J. 32, 33 Occidentalism 57 O’Donnell, P. 111 O’Grady, C. 104 older people 207–8, 211, 221 Oliver, M 194 Omi, M. 111 ontological veganism 48

 315

Index oppositional consciousness 5–6, 19, 20, 64 oppression 4–5 centrality of 15–16 challenging from below 227, 242 complicity in the oppression of others 30–1 of gay men and lesbians 144 impact on privilege 20 intersectional model 16–18 responding to 25–6 single cause theories of 15 Young’s five faces of 208 oppressions of able-bodied people 196–7 age-based oppression 207, 209–10, 213, 214, 215 anti-Muslim oppression 181–3 of children and young people 208–9 civilised oppression 11 class-based oppression 90–2, 93 coalitions against 237–8 complicity 30–1 of disabled people 195–7 of gay and lesbians 16, 22, 144, 148, 149, 199 intergenerational oppression 207–8 internalised oppression 4–5 intersectionality of 16–18, 210 linked oppression thesis 47 normalisation of 11 and patriarchy 115, 122, 126, 129 n.15, 170, 211 reproduction of 226–7 responsibility for 226, 232 of women 44 organised religions 173 Orientalism 56–7 other, the 112, 202 othering 12 race as 98–9 O’Toole, L. 126 outsiders 27 Overall, C. 157

315

owning-class 86–7 Oyebade, B. 66 Pakulski, J. 76 Paranjape, M. 57 parents, and oppression of children and young people 208–9 Pareto, V. 7 Parker, R. 78 partnership model of social organisation 241–2 paternalism 88, 217, 219 Paterson, K. 196 patriarchy 6, 12, 18, 90, 117, 166–7, 168, 236 abolishment of 168 across cultures 128–9 advantages of the concept 31, 127 awareness of 236, 239 challenging 26–7, 133–4 and children oppression 211 and Christianity 180, 188, 190 and coercive control 124–5 and control 124–5 costs associated with 130 criticism, men’s take on 132 dimensions of 122, 211 and ecological damage 43, 47 and gender relations 117, 120, 125, 168 and heterosexuality 145–6, 147, 148, 151 institutionalised patriarchal system versus personal patriarchal system 124 male-centred 122 male-dominated 122 male-identified 122 overcoming of 128 patriarchal dividend 128, 130 patripsyche 121 and sexism 228 and systemic domination 122–3

316

316 and women’s oppression 115, 122, 126, 129 n.15, 170 Pease, B. 126 n.9, 133 n.18, 236 n.10, 239 n.11 Peavey, F. 235 pedagogy of the privileged 227–9 Peet, R. 58 Pelizon, P. 42 Pennycook, A. x People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) 49 Perkins, R. 145–6 Perry, B. 11, 12, 17, 32 personal privilege 28–9 Peters, J. 165 n.28 phallocentrism 122, 123–4 Pheterson, G. 4–5, 23, 233 physical beauty 192, 193 physical capital 193 physical fitness 192 Pickering, M. 12 Pickett, K. 71 Pincus, F. 91 plant sentience 48–9 Plummer, D. 141 Plumwood, V. 48 Pollan, M. 46 positionality, and privilege 25–8, 96, 191 post-colonialism xii, 63–4 posthumanism 40, 41, 44–5, 218 posthumanist feminism 44 power relations 32, 133, x in families 211 gender 126 impact of 232 and othering 56 patriarchal 131 reproduction of 88, 123, 221 unequal 56, 62, 70, 143, 211 Pratto, F. 8, 25 prejudice 4, 23–4 anti-gay prejudice 140–1, 148

Index anti-homosexual prejudice 139, 140–3, 175 blatant and subtle forms 198 Eurocentrism as 55 racism as 96–7 Price, M. 200 n.12 Primack, R. 38 n.1 privilege xi, 4, 225 able-bodied privilege, see ablebodied privilege age-based privilege 207, 209–10, 213, 214, 215 allies in challenging privileges, see allies in challenging privileges and anthropocentrism 37–9 benefits of 8 Christian privilege, see Christian privilege cisgender privilege, see cisgender privilege class privilege, see class privilege coalitions against 237–8 conferred and earned 8–9 damaging on those in dominant groups 229–30 defence of 25 definition of 8 elite studies 7–9 epistemological privilege, deconstruction of 62–3 gender privilege 115, 179–80 globalisation of 52–3 and guilt 46, 109, 132 heterosexual privilege, see heterosexual privilege ignorance of 30, 97 n.1, 179, 188 impact of oppression on 20 internalisation of 23–5 intersectionality of 210 intersectional model of 18–21 invisibility of 9–11 male privilege 197 men’s privilege 119–22, 126, 128 middle-class privilege 86–7

 317

Index naturalisation of 13 non-disabled privilege 200 normalisation of 226–7 normativity of 11–13 pedagogy of 227–9 personal privilege 28–9 and positionality 25–8, 96, 191 religious privilege 183–5 relinquishing privilege 240–1, 243 reproduction of 225 and the sense of entitlement 14 of silence 28 as structured action 31–3 unearned 11 unearned privilege 242 white privileges 55, 95–6, 100, 102–3, 180 privileged groups 9, 23 complicity in the oppression of others 30–1 complicity of 30–1 defence of their position 25, 27, 28 and domination 6 inherent characteristics 14 intersectionality theory 21 norms 11, 12 responsibility of 3–4 sense of entitlement 14 speaking for others 27–8 unearned privileges 11 unmarked status 9–10 privileged irresponsibility 29–30 pro-feminism 115, 128, 131, 133, 134, 155, 170, 234, 236, 238 professional elitism 83, 84–5 professional imperialism in social work 67 professional-managerial class 82, 87 class elitism 84–5 contradictory class locations 84 and Marxism 83–4, 86 and middle-class elitism 84 new middle class 85

317

professionals in the service occupations 85 radicalism 82–3 theorisation 83 working class 85–6 professional–working-class relationships 83 proletarianisation of professional work 85 Puchner, L. 188 queer identities 137, 161 queering heterosexuality 151–154 queer theory xiv, 146, 163, 210 n.6 race 32–3, 95 being white and being whitely, distinction between 107–8 biologically based theories of 95 cognisance 100 diversity awareness 98–9 doing and undoing whiteliness 106–8 facing whiteness 108–9 as the ‘other’ 98–9 race making 107 whiteness and intersectionality 104–5 white privilege 95–6 white privilege, recognition of 102–3 Race Traitor 106 racism aversive racism 98 challenging 108–9 and class privilege 88–9 and colour blindness 97–8 experiences of 112–13 as prejudice 96–7 and racialism, distinction between 95 as tourism 99 whiteness 99–102 radical feminism 170 radical professionalism 82–3

318

318

Index

Rahar, N. 171 Rahman, M 147 rational autonomy 217–18 Raymond, J. 164 Razack, R. 10, 19, 20 Reagon, B. 238 redistribution and recognition theory 21–3, 93 Rees, W. 61 Regan, T. 41 relational interests 134 relational responsibility 226 relations of ruling 225–6, 232 religious freedom 183–5 religious literacy 188–9 religious pluralism and diversity 184–5 religious socialisation 173 reproduction of oppression 226–7 reproduction of privilege 225 research epistemologies 67 respectability 87 responsibility, for oppressive acts 226, 232 Rich, A. 145 Richardson, D. 138 rightfulness of existing social inequalities, belief in 4 Rigney, L. 67 Risman, B. 171 Roberts, S. 130 n.16 Robinson, M. 48 Rochlin, M 138 Rollo, T. 216, 221 Rosenblum, K. 9–10, 14 Rowan, J. 121, 235 Rowbotham, S. 122 Rudd, K. 102, 109 Russo, A. 235 n.9, 237 Ryde, J. 109 Ryder, B. 135 Sacks, M. 113 Said, E. 56, 57

same-sex marriage 147, 151 n.10 Sandoval, C. 6 Santos, B. 62 Sayers, A. 93 Schacht, S. 237, 238 Schalk, S. 200 n.12, 204 n.18 Schatz 128 n.12 Schiele, J. 65 Schiffman, J. 126 Schillmoller, A. 42 Schilt, K. 157 Schwalbe, M. 53, 160, 167 Scott, J. 83 Scott, S. 136 Searling, H. 76–7 secularism, and Christian privilege 185–6 Sedgewick, E. 141 Sefa Dei, G. 98 Segal, L. 121, 151 Segall, A. 177 Seidler, V. 150, 151 self-interests 25, 26, 154, 206, 230, x semi-vegetarianism 48, 49 Sennett, R. 74, 80, 87 Serano, J. 157, 167, 168 sexed body 162, 164–6 sexism 122, see also heterosexism and coercive control 124–5 overcoming of 128 traditional sexism and oppositional sexism, differentiates between 167 sexual division of labour 119 sexual identity 153, see also heterosexuality Shady, S. 188 Shakespeare, T. 199, 202, 205 Shildrick, M. 203 Shilling, C. 200 Shiva, V. 59–60 Shohat, E. 63 Showden, C. 146 n.5 Sidanius, J. 8, 25

 319

Index Simoni, J. 141, 144 Simonsen, K. 192 Singer, P. 39, 40, 41, 59 single cause theories of oppression 15 Skeggs, B. 81, 87–8, 92 Slater, D. 54 slavery xi, 58, 180, 189 Smart, C. 151 Smith, D. 225 Smith, L. 67 Smith, R. 180 Smith, T. 68 Smith, W. 165 social capital 76 social constructionism, and dominance 23–4 social dominance orientation 25 social exclusion, as replacement of class 79 socialism, class analysis in 77–8 social mobility 78–81 social model of disability 194–6, 199, 203 social movements 19–20, 81–2, 227 social order xi, 26, 81, 86, 195, 199, 207, 241 social practices 23, 125, 140, 146, 226–7 social status, valued and devalued 12–13 social structures 24, 32, 33, 76, 91, 93, 100, 107–8, 143, 214 social workers 76, 83, 85, 98–9 Sokoloff, N. 91 solidarity 58, 87, 89, 98, 221, 227, 235–7 Southern theory and Northern dominance 68–9 speaking for others, dangers of 27–8 species egalitarianism 40 extinction, lack of concern for 38 n.1 speciesism 38, 39–40, 45

319

Spelman, E. 27 spirituality 65, 67, 173 standpoint theories 17, 26, 68, 111, 205, 229 Stark, E. 125 Steinberg, S. 112 Stoermer, F. 37 straight queer masculinities 153 strategic questioning 235 structural adultism 214 structured action, privilege as 31–3 Stryker, S. 162 subordinate groups 5, 18, 19, 21, 25, 26, 28, 29, 111, 192, 202 subordinate masculinities 119 Sullivan, S. 107–8 Sunderland, S. 185 Suri, M. 70 Swadener, B. 67 Swain, J. 199, 204 symbolic order 123–4 symmetrical reciprocity 234 systemic classism 91 n.13 Tamasese, K. 239 Tappan, M. 23 Tatum, B. 96–7 temporarily able-bodied 191, 201 temporarily non-disabled 201 TERFs (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists) 169 Thandeka 101 Theodore, P. 148 Therborn, G. 241 Third World 51 Thomas, C. 153, 154 Thompson, N. 198 Thorne, B. 33 Thunberg, G. 219 Tillner, G. 13, 23 Titchkosky, T. 194 n.6 Todd, J. 178 Tolson, A. 119 Towns, A. 14, 124

320

320 tragedy model, of disability 194, 204 traitorous identity, construction of 230–2 trans* 161 transexuality 162 transfeminism 169–71 transgenderism 168 transgender people 160, 161, 162–3 and cisgender, comparison between 157 feminist views 164–5 gender normativity 157–8 identity 161 and non-transgender people, distinction between 158 politics of 164–6 politics of naming 161–3 post-structural approaches to 163 transphobia 159–60 transgender politics 170–1 transgender women 164 trans-inclusive radical feminism 170 transliberalism 171 trans-misogyny 167 trans people 158, 161 heterogeneity of 161 n.15 trans men 166–7 trans women 164–5, 168 transphobia 159, 160 transsexuality 162, 163, 164 medicalisation of 168 as the wrong body model 162 Trapara, K. 47 Travis, T. 9–10, 14 Tronto, J. 29–30 Tucker, V. 58 Turnbull, M. 102 Turner, B. 57 Uluru Statement from the Heart 102 unconscious bias 99 n.3, 107 n.11 unearned privilege 242 anthropocentric privilege as 38 white privileges 100

Index United Kingdom, Labour Party 79 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) 216, 218 unmarked status 9–10 vegetarianism and veganism 47–9, 50 Vernon, A. 196, 197 Wackernagel, M. 60 Wadsworth, Y. 239 Waite, L. 19, 20 Waldegrave, C. 239 Walker, J. 236–7 Walker, P. 236–7 Walkowitz, D. 85 Wall, J. 214 Walters, K. 141, 144 Ward, J. 154 n.14 Warner, M. 142, 147 Warrienius, R. 61 n.6 Waters, M. 76 Watson, K. 140 Watson, L. 230 n.3 Watson, N. 202 Weber, L. 32–3 Weber, M. 83 Websdale, N. 126 Weinberg, G. 140 Wellman, D. 109 West, C. 32 West, the 53–4, 88, see also Eurocentrism conspicuous consumption in 60–2 and the East, interconnection between 54 global dominance 51 imposition of worldview on to nonWestern nations 70 over-consumption in 60–1 portrayal of 57 predominance of white culture 55 superiority 62 supremacy 54

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Index Westbrook, L. 157 Western feminism 129 n.15 Western interventions policies of 60 in poorest countries 57 Western social work 65, 67 Westman, J. 216 White, L. 181 white domination 107 white double consciousness 112 n.14 white fetishism 111 Whitehead, S. 120, 122, 130 white identity 110, 111, 113 whiteness 113 defences to 109–10 diversity within 104–5 and intersectionality 104 invisibility of 99–102 politics of 110–12 as a process 106–7 transforming or disowning 105–6 white privilege 55 white supremacy 113 and Christian privilege 180 structural concept of 107 Wilkinson, R. 71 Wilkinson, S. 145–6, 153 Willems, J. 207, 211 Williams, C. 66, 169, 170

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Willis, P. 74 Wineman, S. 15, 229 Wise, T. 108 Wittig, M. 145 Wolf, S. 147 womanhood 164, 165, 172 Woods, M. 7 working class 73, 75, 78–9, 83, 84, 88 working middle class 85 World Bank 52, 60 World Social Forum of Porto Alegre 71 world systems theory 51–2 Worthen, M. 158, 160 Wright, E. O. 84 wrong body 160, 162, 165 Yancy, G. 109 n.12 Yep, G. 152 Yeskel, F. 80, 91 Young, I. 70, 208, 226, 231 n.5 Young-Bruehl, E. 214, 214 n.12, 220 young people, see children and young people youth-led social movements 218–19 Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) 218 Yunkaporta, T. 68 n.11

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