So well — articulated. Apologies are something I think should be taught (and practiced) more often.
(This post is a bit of a ramble. I’m thinking out loud here.)
Call-outs. They’re anxiety-provoking. They’re rage-inducing. They can break friendships and communities. A lot has been written on how to call out privilege. We have detailed analyses of power structures, derailing tactics and why they are broken, the tactics of choosing your battles and how it’s not a requirement, determining trust levels and how they affect one’s likelihood to educate, the responsibilities of the privileged, why recognizing privilege is hard because of the experience of power loss.
I’ve been on both sides of the call out. I’m queer, trans, disabled, poor, dyslexic, dissociative, and a survivor of extreme childhood abuse. I’m also white, mostly-binary-identified, have sporadic cis privilege/passing privilege, and while the home I grew up in was filled with abuses that most people are only exposed to in works of fiction, that home was still upper-middle-class. In other words, I have a very broad mix of privileges and oppressions. I don’t just have a little privilege, I have quite a bit. On the other hand, the same can be said of my oppressions. One doesn’t cancel the other out, however, and the mixture has been confusing and difficult for me to parse.
I quite easily go on the defensive, which can probably be attributed to both extremes of experience I’ve had. I have a shitload of ignorance because of my privileges, and in arguments I sometimes reflexively defend myself as if being attacked by my abusers. On many occasions, triggers have put me in a Bad Place where I start lashing out. Long story short, I have failed quite regularly at handling the situation appropriately when being called out.
