So Many Relationships

Has anyone noticed that there's an awful lot of All-But-One-Privilege going around?

For those who aren't already familiar, All-But-One-Privilege (ABOP, for short) is the condition in which you are a member of all of your culture's privileged groups except for one.  An awful lot of groups fighting against a specific oppression, at least in the US, are founded by ABOPs, and there's probably a good reason for that: if you're only oppressed in one specific way, then you have enough avenues for expression and opportunities for networking provided by your other privileges to organize and get your message out.  In fact, it's probably necessary.  But it can become a problem when the privilege you lack is the only one you see.

The canonical example is the white, heterosexual, monogamous, middle-to-upper-middle-class women who were most of the second-wave feminists.  Their work was powerful and important and I (and all modern USian women) owe them an enormous debt - but their record on reacting to other ways the kyriarchy oppresses people was mixed at best and shamefully bad at worst.  They did, eventually, grow to accept white, monogamous, middle-to-upper-middle-class lesbians, but it took too long.  While they incorporated academic class critique easily, often this faltered in practice, with working-class and poverty-class women failing to hear their voices and choices represented in the movement.  And their near-total failure to incorporate black, Native American, or Latina perspectives is still one of the great failings of feminism, even here on the third wave.  We're getting better, but it's been fifty years and there are still some massive lessons not fully learned.

Another example, a more successful one in some ways, is the gay movement.  This was all about white, male, cis, middle-to-upper-middle-class white homosexuals when it first started, and largely stayed that way, with a few bones thrown to lesbians (if they were Kinsey 6es) and an acceptance of certain forms of genderqueerness (and outright hostility to others), until the '80s.  In the reaction to HIV and AIDS, several things changed, oddly quickly from my point of view: suddenly the lesbians were full members, possibly because they stepped up and volunteered at a time when a number of the previous volunteers were no longer able to, and the movement went positively schizophrenic about its nonstandard sexual minorities.  The public face of the movement split into those who were adamant about being as "normal" as possible - lily-white, cis, monogamous, vanilla - and those who were in-your-face about their queerness - more racially diverse, campily genderqueer, everything from polyfidelitous to promiscuous, more accepting of bisexuality and pansexuality, and proudly displaying all kinds of kink.  As better treatments for AIDS became available, these two groups drifted back together, and the "we're just like you only gay" types seemed to at least internalize the increased diversity message, even if they still seem embarrassed about the camp drag and the leathermen/leatherdykes.  It's still not perfect - especially if you're bi/pan or a transperson who is serious about transitioning and not interested in playing with gender - but it's better than it used to be.  In some ways, intersectionality is making more inroads in the QUILTBAG movement than the feminist one, and that's sad.

The USian atheist movement seems to be hitting this particular wall these days.  It's largely a movement of white, heterosexual, well-educated, middle-to-upper-middle-class men.  The only privilege they lack is religious privilege.  Now, this is serious - the culture is still very hostile to non-Christians in general and atheists in particular.  I don't mean to downplay it; in fact, as a member of a non-Christian religion, I get a lot of the same blowback, and it can be very painful.  But the combination of Elevatorgate and the reactions several nonwhite, queer, trans, and disabled bloggers have gotten from the 'establishment' among the American Atheists have also made it very, very clear that racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual privilege are alive and well - and probably cutting down on the number of people willing to be out-and-proud atheists.  The Occupy movement, similarly, is united by their lack of economic privilege - and showing deep signs of failure to recognize other types, although again, some individual Occupy groups are doing much better than others.

I don't have a solution.  The outspoken presence of multiply-oppressed people in a group clearly helps, and it helps the most if they are well-spoken and can point out unfair treatment concisely and immediately, but it's not a panacea (otherwise bell hooks would have been sufficient to solve the racism problem in feminism).  A general commitment by the group as a whole to not be dicks to each other also helps, but theoretically all minority religious groups have that already, and look how that's turned out so far.  I think movements need ABOPs to get mainstream traction - poor, trans lesbians of color in polyamorous D/s relationships are more likely to get published in the Enquirer than the New Yorker or an academic journal.  Can we call on Spider-Man to help us - "With great privilege comes great responsibility"?  I don't know, but maybe it's a start.