Default

The thing with privilege is one who has it needs to learn privilege exists and is real. In this usage I refer to privilege as having qualities congruent with the English speaking world's most desired qualities. I'll refer to this as the societal default state.

I'll also posit that the English speaking world's default is an athletic white male. Male privilege is hardly restricted to anglophones, but for the purpose of this musing I'll draw my lasso around the English world and concentrate there.

You're white? White privilege. You're male? Male privilege. You match up with het male sex (for women) or power (for men) fantasies? That's another privilege.

Straight privilege, wealth privilege, power by election/appointment privilege. The list goes on.

The default is largely invisible to those who fit into these defaults.

The default is much like wearing motocross armour wherever you go. Bump into someone else with the same armour, neither of you are likely to notice. Bump into someone without the armour, they will notice while the one fitting the default might not.

Bump into someone and they say, "Hey, dude, watch the elbows?" a reasonable response would be, "Oh, sorry, you okay?" "S'cool." And life goes on, a little more aware of elbows for awhile until they're forgotten about and then another bump in a crowd. Rinse, repeat.

Replay that in the context of race/gender/other privilege:
Bump into someone and they say, "Hey, dude, watch the elbows?" "No I didn't." "Uh, yeah, you did. Just watch the elbows, k?" "I did not, I didn't feel a thing." "With the armour you're wearing, it's no wonder. Just watch the elbows. Please." "I am not an elbowist, how dare you accuse me of such a thing." "wtf..."

Now, with sane reasonable people in a social context:
Say a borderline offensive joke. Someone with or without the privilege says, "Dude, that was kinda rasist/sexist/otherist." A reasonable reply would be, "Oh. Sorry about that." Another reasonable reply might be, "Oh, what? Sorry I'm a bit unclear here, elaborate?" An unreasonable response might be, "No it wasn't, you're just being a wuss." Casual dismissal. Cute.

One of the things that led to the motocross armour analogy:

Please watch that, it'll make you a better person.

And remember, they're just elbows. They can be used with intent, or by accident. And it's up to us to behave like reasonable adults.

Edit to add: The job of the people with 'privilege', then becomes to cultivate a safe enough place that when the elbows give some bumping, that the bumpee can feel secure that their protest will be taken seriously and not dismissed out of hand, ridiculed, or attacked.

Life Cycle of a Pure Roleplay Area

Yay! Started!
Have fun for awhile, then some joker shows up wanting to be Spiderman.
Drama ensues. Spiderman gets banned after a loud scream fest on general chat.
List of sim rules turns into a five page legal document.
Play continues, 2-3 regulars stop coming as much, people suggest less for fear of being shot down.
Spiderman comes back with an alt, this time wants to be Batman.
Drama.
Rules turns into a twenty page legal document.
5-6 players remain.
Recruitment drive begins, someone sets the sim 'group only'.
Week later, someone discovers parcel is group only, changes it back but ups up a 3000m high skybox with notecard/LM giver by the TP down node.
Sim languishes mostly empty for about six months.
Sim owner's wife discovers the credit card statements.
Sim's plug gets pulled.

Fun Picture Series

The year 2000 as imagined in 1910.

And after that giggle, here's the horror that is that was.



:)

I Aspire

I'm a little drunk but not too far out, I'll admit, and hoping this doesn't make little to no sense, but I had a momentary glimmer of observation.

Watch this, and when he says 'brick', you hear 'prim'.



What does a prim do? It aspires. I've had my first rezzed prim in my Port Caledon Cathedral for awhile now. The object name is, 'I Aspire'.

This, this is a principle roadblock I encountered when trying to develop content for Blue Mars. When working in SL, I am present. It's a computer emulation, an avatar, yes, but when I rez a prim, it is there, at my virtual feet, asking me to make it into something great.

When working in Blender, there's a drab backdrop of a grid, and I'm not there, in the work, handling it out of love. Importing into the upload environment, that's not me either, if I'm working on a clothing item. That's someone else. I'm not invested in the work. It's not personal.

Missing The Point

Bacon sushi. I suppose it was only a matter of time.

Jesus Harold Christ

All the way to infinity.

I was surprised by my contacts list getting tossed wide open by Google Buzz, but I think I shut it down correctly. I hope. I don't have anything particularly horrorsome in there to hide, but maybe I'm just old school about privacy and the privacy of others.

THIS, however, takes the cake.

Blunt Language and To The Point

On social media. [Edit: Link Dead at last check.] I liked this post, but then I'm a sociology nerd. YMMV.
For myself, the strongest point in the article is this:

• That’s not to say the average college student is a bad writer. It’s saying there’s a handful of college students who are shockingly good. They were able to learn because they were given an open forum, then told repeatedly how stupid they were until they matured.

It's not that in Caledon it's often needed to be said someone's a moron or being a moron. Most newcomers, the ones who stay, pick up the societal nuance and "grab a brain". I know it took me awhile. :)