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For the last two weeks I've been writing about physical and temporal space, the connection between where we write and when we write. This whole thing was inspired by an LA Times essay called Susan Straight On Learning to Write Without a Room of One's Own. The A Room of One's Own part of that title is a reference to Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, a lengthy essay (I still have two sections to read) about women and fiction. A Room of One's Own has a closer connection to another recent essay, "Sponsored" By My Husband: Why it’s a Problem That Writers Never Talk About Where Their Money Comes From by Ann Bauer in Salon than it does with Straight's.

Why? Woolf may have used "room of one's own" in her title, but what she actually said in her essay was "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." It's quite a terrific essay, if you can get past her streaming away to discuss eating in restaurants. What she writes about is male privilege throughout history and how it kept women from even being able to put pen to paper. (She does a great sort of historical evolution of women's writing.)

Bauer talks about privilege and writing in our own time, meaning writers of both sexes who have financial support, usually through family. They, or I should say, we, don't have to generate income to provide for ourselves or others. We have the money Woolf said we needed.

Now writers have managed to produce good work without the privilege of possessing money and a room. We need a Room of One's Own type of essay about them. But putting them aside, what, exactly, does privilege do for writers who do possess it?

It buys us time.

Woolf recognized lack of privilege as the problem for women writers that it was in the past and often still is in the present. Bauer recognizes that denying that there are privileged writers today does a disservice to all the writers struggling without it.

I have a new obsession, now. This one is with Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own.

...when class is fully integrated into an understanding of the difficulty setting of the Game of Life, I think the arguments get much clearer.

The question: "I'm a poor white guy; should I fight against systems of privilege?"

The answer: "Because you'll benefit from it. The more equal things are, the better off you are."

For rich white guys who ask the same question, well, they're clearly on the other side, so they don't need an answer.

All too often, Straight White Men do not see that their setting is easier, and they assume that those struggling against bigger challenges are simply poorer players. At first this is innocent — the Straight White Men are focused on surviving the game themselves, after all. They didn’t design it. But the “easy” setting’s invisibility breeds arrogance, not the humility necessary to acknowledge that you’re “winning” the game because a. the game is easier for you and b. the game itself is designed to benefit you most. The fact that privilege robs us of empathy and humility is nearly as poisonous as the advantages it brings, because humble, empathetic people would not gleefully skip through difficulty while leaving others to suffer.

What I’d like to add to John’s and Meghan’s furthering of Life on the Lowest Setting, the metaphor of privilege as a function of how easy or difficult life is based on character aspects, is that class does indeed count.  If you’re a highborn mage instead of a lowly farmer’s son who happens to have a small knack for casting magic, you’ll receive all the best teachers, all the best training in the arcane arts, will have access to all of the materials you might need to cast a spell, which can be quite expensive.  Or likewise, if you’re a highborn knight, you’ll receive all the best armor and weaponry and training in arms and defense, whereas the pub master’s kid will mainly know how to throw a punch and will swing wild without any really access to training.

Those are material considerations–the wealth aspect, or knowledge resources–to which a person of a certain socioeconomic identity generally has little access.

But class cultural considerations can also severely restrict some people, by learning your place, by taking direction because that’s what you were rewarded for, rather than learning to plan and set goals, rather than being among peopl

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3. On Innocence and Ignorance

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By: Lisa Chellman, on 6/29/2011
Blog: Under the Covers (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags:  privilege, books, young adult, #yasaves, Add a tag

When I first read Meghan Cox Gurdon's WSJ article (more of an op. ed.), "Darkness Too Visible", there was so much clamor that I didn't bother responding to it. From the initial belief-straining anecdote about a bookstore with no YA books that weren't about "dark, dark stuff" on, there was so much to take issue with. And thousands did (e.g., #YAsaves), many more eloquently than I ever could, approaching the matter from every possible angle. Sherman Alexie, author of Diary of a Part-Time Indian, one of the books Gurdon cites in her article, wrote a particularly moving response, "Why the Best Kids Books Are Written in Blood."

Anyway, that was weeks ago, but yesterday Jen Robinson shared a link on Facebook to Gurdon's response to the kerfuffle, "My 'Reprehensible' Take on Teen Literature", in which she defends her original viewpoint. Which is fine—she is entitled to her opinion, though I feel it is in many ways misguided—but in reading it, I felt even more strongly that she just Does Not Get It. I believe that she is genuinely interested in "protecting" young people, but she seems to be coming from such a place of privilege that she sincerely (but falsely) believes that keeping dark content out of books will somehow keep dark content from young people's lives.

In the outpouring of response to my essay, I've been told that I fail to understand the brutal realities faced by modern teens. Adolescence, I've been instructed, is a prolonged period of racism, homophobia, bullying, eating disorders, abusive sexual episodes, and every other manner of unpleasantness... I also don't believe that the vast majority of American teenagers live in anything like hell. Adolescence can be a turbulent time, but it doesn't last forever and often—leaving aside the saddest cases—it feels more dramatic at the time than it will in retrospect.

"A turbulent time" that "doesn't last forever"? I get the impression that Gurdon believes most adolescents' biggest worry is a zit, a chemistry test, and who's going with them to the prom. If things are really heavy, maybe their parents are getting divorced.

A counterexample (or ten): I grew up in a largely white, working and middle class community. My friends and I were "normal" kids. I personally had a fairly sheltered life within a loving, nuclear family. Yet within my social sphere, there were kids dealing with just the things Gurdon seems to believe are rare "manners of unpleasantness." One of my friends self-injured by rubbing at her arm with a pencil eraser until it wore spots off her skin. One had an eating disorder. I had friends who got pregnant, had abortions, gave the baby up for adoption. I had a friend who was raped by her older brother. Friends (and I) struggled with sexual and gender identity in a homophobic climate. Friends watched their parents die or helped care for disabled parents. Friends dealt with suicidal feelings. Friends dealt with racist remarks from classmates. Friends had alcoholic parents.

And those were just some of the things I knew about. I don't know anyone whose biggest problem was whether they could borrow the car Friday night.

Yet would any of us have said we lived in hell? I doubt it. As I said, I think we considered ourselves to be more or less normal kids. Yet nor were these merely anecdotes from a "turbulent time." These events were formative. They'll affect us the rest of our lives.

It wasn't hard for me to think of people who faced these "brutal realities," either, which is what makes me believe so strongly that Gurdon is living in her own protective bubble, t

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4. You Don't Have to be Posh to be Privileged - Charlie Butler

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By: Charlie Butler, on 2/23/2010
Blog: An Awfully Big Blog Adventure (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags:  race, Charlie Butler, privilege, fatness, Add a tag

MRSA looks like a ball. Bacilli look like a rod. You can tell the difference between them using 100x magnification – the ‘Edu Science Microscope Set’ at Toys’R’Us for £9.99 will do the job very well (if you buy one, with the straightest face in the world, I recommend looking at your sperm: it’s quite a soulful moment).

This passage is taken from Ben Goldacre’s fascinating, important but occasionally smug book, Bad Science (page 282, to be precise). I quote it here merely as the most recent example I happen to have noticed of a widespread phenomenon – the assumption by writers that their readers are, in every way that matters, rather like them. Here, Goldacre is clearly addressing an audience of adult, fertile men – much like Ben Goldacre, in fact, though less well informed about microbiology. Women, children, and vasectomy veterans amongst others will not be in a position to carry out his suggested experiment, and if Goldacre had stopped to think for a moment I like to imagine that he would have realised this, and edited his sentence. However, he didn’t stop – he didn’t have to stop – and neither his editor nor anyone else involved in the book’s production seems to have brought it to his attention. Perhaps they were all men too?

Now let's look at another book. Malorie Blackman’s Noughts and Crosses is set in a world in which white people are considered inferior to blacks. At one point her (white) hero Callum has to put on a sticking plaster. But all the sticking plasters in this world are brown, to match the skin colour of the dominant group. It’s a neat way of bringing to the attention of Blackman’s white readers the fact that, in our own world, the situation is exactly reversed, with plasters coloured pink to match the skins of white people. But how many white people have noticed this

20 Comments on You Don't Have to be Posh to be Privileged - Charlie Butler, last added: 2/25/2010

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Elen Caldecott said, on 2/24/2010 12:36:00 AM

Brilliant post, Charlie. Thank you. I had it pointed out to me once by a wheelchair user that one is not 'confined to a wheelchair', but that the wheelchair is actually a useful tool to give you more mobility. It was an eye-opening moment for me.

Nick Green said, on 2/24/2010 1:46:00 AM

A few years ago I was part of a social circle that included someone with a lot of deaf friends, and from time to time we all went out together. It was then that I noticed the occasional advantages that they had. In noisy bars, drinks could be ordered by sign language from across the room (mobile phones often didn't work) and, even more frustratingly, the signers could carry on long, in-depth conversations while us poor ear-dependent ones had to sit and shout ourselves hoarse to say a few banal things. I found that reversal highly amusing.

Brian Keaney said, on 2/24/2010 1:46:00 AM

Really good post.

Sheenagh Pugh said, on 2/24/2010 2:10:00 AM

It's fascinating when you can use these markers to monitor social change. In C S Lewis's Prince Caspian, good dwarves smoke pipes, bad dwarves are non-smokers. Non-smoking=unsociability for Lewis, as does vegetarianism.

Dianne Hofmeyr said, on 2/24/2010 3:42:00 AM

An abolutely fascianting post Charlie... with lots for writers to think about. I like your challenge... can we at ABBA be part of the solution. And I'm going to be searching shelves for dark plasters from now onwards:)

Nicky said, on 2/24/2010 3:45:00 AM

I have fallen into the fat unfit girl transforms to an athletically built fit one one trap in one of my own books though I don't think it was about fat being a signifier for worthlessness. Actually I am not sure I see fat/thin as being quite the same as the black/white, male/female,
differently abled/abled axis in any case. Fat/thin has different resonances depending on culture and thin people are often villains too thin = cold/meanspirited, miserly, frigid etc while plump/fat = generous, voluptuous warm. cheerful. I don't think the privilege issue is quite so straight forward in that case.

Charlie Butler said, on 2/24/2010 4:36:00 AM

If you mean, Ursula in Warriors of Alavna, Nicky, I think you're right that in her case it's not a simple case of fat=worthless. And yes, fatness can have different connotations in different cultural circumstances: in *The Secret Garden*, for example, when Mary is called fat it's always a compliment! I also agree that there are some negative stereotypes associated with thinness - Aunt Spiker is as mean as Aunt Sponge, for example.

Nevertheless, thinness in general simply isn't denigrated in this culture the way that fatness is, and although there are stories in which an anorexic girl, for example, struggles to achieve a healthy body weight, these are usually framed in terms of illness rather than moral failure or general inferiority. So, while I agree that it's not entirely straightforward, I think it's clear that fat-prejudice is far more prevalent and corrosive than prejudice against thin people.

Nicky said, on 2/24/2010 5:34:00 AM

I think there is some fat prejudice, though I think it is part of a wider body image/sexuality issue in our particular culture. I don't see that as being about privilege in the same way as your other examples.
In my writing I want to avoid stereotypes about how women or men should look but I'd be loath to suggest that being dangerously thin or clinically obese is not a problem. As a Mum I am acutely conscious of the crazy messages we are sending our girls and, increasingly, our boys about body weight.

Gillian Philip said, on 2/24/2010 5:40:00 AM

Yes, Nicky, that's so. God forbid we should poke fun at fat children in our work, however subtly, or send out messages that any faults they have relate to their fatness. But nor would I want my own kids to get the message that excessive thinness or excessive fatness are anything to admire for their own sake. There's too much of both around. My little girl had a difficult, hungry start, and has been thin ever since, but I have to watch her like a hawk for hints she's thinking of 'dieting'. (She's eight.) But I wouldn't want her to be overweight either (I am, by the way). It's not political incorrectness; it's a health thing.

Charlie Butler said, on 2/24/2010 6:33:00 AM

Every case is different, but I do think it's about privilege, in so far as prejudice against fat people has the same kind of invisibility as I was describing in those other examples. This is hard to demonstrate without playing oppression Olympics, but for the sake of argument let's say that DWJ (or someone else) had written "the blackness of stupidity" or "the Irishness of stupidity" or "the campness of stupidity", etc. I think it's fair to say that all these casual associations of stupidity with a particular appearance or manner would have stuck out far more. The fact that "the fatness of stupidity" passed unnoticed by me (and, I assume, by others) says quite a lot about how ingrained that association has become - and not least as a kind of literary shorthand for use by writers, which is where our particular responsibility comes in.

Gillian, I agree that there is too much concentration on body image generally. However, if we take an average group of girls - or women, or men for that matter - it is unlikely that many of them will be found wishing that they were heavier, even if they are actually underweight. The cultural pressure in our society is pretty much one-way.

Gillian Philip said, on 2/24/2010 6:44:00 AM

I do understand what you're saying, Charlie, but I do think fatness is qualitatively different from those other things you mention. It's a controllable thing. Of course with children you can argue with absolute justification that it's down to their parents and in some ways not controllable, so fair enough. But I'm not fat because I'm some kind of victim. I'm fat because I eat too much and I'm hugely greedy. If I know what's good for me, I'll try to take some more exercise and lose it. I don't think that's a negative message!

Katherine Langrish said, on 2/24/2010 7:27:00 AM

Very interesting and thought-provoking post, Charlie!

Charlie Butler said, on 2/24/2010 8:06:00 AM

Well, Gillian, I agree that to encourage healthy eating is always to be encouraged, of course! But there are two assumptions embedded in what you say that I'd at least question. One is that weight is controllable, and the other is that it would generally be better to lose it. Putting those two together is what forms the underlying logic of the attitude that sees fat people as somehow lacking in willpower and moral fibre generally. If they had any gumption they'd pull their socks up (supposing they could reach them) and become thin!

But are these ideas actually true? It is generally the case that if you eat less you will become thinner. But the lived reality of millions of people is that lost weight comes back, and this isn't necessarily because they are deficient as people: it may be that their body shape doesn't match up to the ideal body shape prescribed by this particular society. (There are all kinds of reasons for distrusting the procrustean measure of BMI as a one-size-fits-all barometer of health.) Maybe it matches up the ideal prescribed by Rubens's society instead!

Which leads to the other point, which is the association of thinness with health. I'm not expert enough to have this debate with any authority, but I'd recommend anyone reading this to look into the Health at Every Size (HAES) approach to healthcare, which has shown impressive results in terms of sustainable improvements in health outcomes - and rather better than that obtained by dieting.

Gillian Philip said, on 2/24/2010 8:23:00 AM

Oh, I know very well how ill-thought-out and exploitative many weight loss programmes can be! And I'm well acquainted with the phenomenon of putting it all back on, and then some.

I also agree some people are not built to be skinny; it's not their natural size. But no-one's natural size is 'clinically obese' - there's a difference between that and Rubenesque. And honestly, Charlie, I'm not trying to make moral judgements on anyone here. If someone doesn't want to lose weight that's fine. It's a choice. But on the whole it is a *choice*. (In reality there are very few people who have a health issue that means they literally can't lose weight). I simply believe in personal choice and personal responsibility, where it can be fairly assigned. Yeah, I know dieting is hard and weight loss often reversible. I also accept my responsibility for the fact I have other things to do and think about, so sometimes I don't want to do it.

Of COURSE we should not mock people or do people down for their weight. But nor should we turn them into powerless victims. That wouldn't give them a lot of credit for independent thought, would it?

Nicky said, on 2/24/2010 8:58:00 AM

I agree with Gillian on this. Weight/body size is a complex issue and I don't know that the thin are actually privileged (unless they are also young and beautiful too.)
I completely see that published writers of colour are in a minority as women scientists once were and that there is a unseen benefit in belonging to the pervading cultural elite as it might be defined by race, colour, class, education etc Perhaps when we write we do tend to assume that we are writing for 'people like us' and that this inevitably produces a bias. However, as writers we come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. I think there is a case for saying that we need to think about how we represent body shape in fiction, and avoid lazy stereotyping but I'm I'm still not buying the privilege argument for this case. I think the concept of 'privilege' is enormously useful but it is in danger of being rendered meaningless if we attribute every writerly oversight and unwitting manifestation of prejudice to it.

Catherine Johnson said, on 2/24/2010 9:47:00 AM

Shapely prose is fab. Great post Charlie x

catdownunder said, on 2/24/2010 11:58:00 AM

As I was reading this I remembered my mother saying, of me, "If she gets a typewriter she will never learn to write." She did not see the 'wheelchair' in the terms that I did or the person Elen was talking to did. I had to wait for years before I was actually allowed to have the thing I needed in order to write! If you can turn the thinking around or upside down then you are halfway there. I recommend it.

Another Damned Medievalist said, on 2/24/2010 3:44:00 PM

What a wonderful post. One thing I think more people would also think about is that power can also, and often does, equal privilege as well. This is something that I notice many academics* don't see, or perhaps are unwilling to admit, especially when we may not have privilege in other aspects of our lives. Power dynamics, and the privilege attached to them, are often very contextual, and I think it does us all good to remember that.


*mentioning academics because they are the group where I see this most, and where the issue of unexamined privilege is especially striking, given that we are supposed to be good at critical thinking.

Andrew Strong said, on 2/25/2010 12:05:00 AM

Excellent blog. Making any judgement becomes risky, and suspending judgement almost impossible, especially if we consider ourselves involved in the business of creating a character. How can we create a character with a few brushstrokes, if, at the same time, we know it is morally suspect to expect the reader to draw conclusions from those few marks?

Charlie Butler said, on 2/25/2010 4:19:00 AM

Andrew - yes, I think that's a really important consideration, from a writerly point of view. Mostly, I think that we simply have to be aware of the baggage is carried in whatever words we do choose. A particular person I know might with equal accuracy be described as "athletic, tall and lean," "bespectacled, donnish and hesitant" and "hook-nosed, swarthy and in need of a haircut". Different strokes - same bloke!

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