FEM 1100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Race Condition, Mansplaining, Gender Binary

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Women's Studies
• Course: FEM 1100
• Professor: Shoshana Magnet

Document Summary

Defining privileged forms of explaining: we can define privileged explaining as condescending explanation by members of a socially, culturally, or legally privileged group in their interaction with those who don"t hold the same privileges (nithya, 2014). It"s characterized by men ignoring and invalidating women"s lived experiences with situations that these men just don"t have. Straightsplaining is when a person with straight privilege condescendingly explains something to a person who is not heterosexual, or offers their opinion on, for example, how queer identities are active choices. In general, if you"re a privileged person and you"re trying to explain the intricacies of a marginalized group"s oppression to a member of that marginalized group, you are probably privileged-explaining. Also, we must remember that power and privilege change with context. Since we have more than one identity, we are most likely to find ourselves oppressed because of certain identities, and privileged because of certain others.