fiftyshadesofgrabraham replied to your post “Genuinely curious - but you talk about ableism a lot on here. Is it not ableist to imply that thin people, some of which suffer eating disorders, are privileged?”

i wish ppl would get that benefiting from a certain privilege =/= being privileged. no one says thin ppl are automatically privileged all around. but they still do all benefit from thin privilege.

Having a certain privilege does make you privileged – on that axis, in that area. It doesn’t make you universally privileged. Really, the only people who are privileged on every axis are straight cis white rich thin able-bodied neurotypical Christian … I’m probably forgetting a few here, assume they’re included, too, ok? … men. A very very small portion of the population has the whole set of privileges. It’s like owning every property and utility on the Monopoly board, all of them with a full compliment of hotels. That 1% the Occupy people like to talk about? Only a fraction of those, since more than half will be women, or queer, or disabled, or whatever.

Instead, most people have some privileges and lack others. A white woman has white privilege but lacks male privilege. A black man has male privilege but lacks white privilege. A black woman is fucked on both of those, but might have straight privilege, or cis privilege, or able-bodied privilege. The only way to be completely disprivileged, oppressed on every axis, lacking all privilege, would to be a fat queer trans disabled autistic mentally ill poor etc etc etc woman of color. And those people exist. And all of their different oppressions not only stack up, existing at the intersection of basically any two or more of them ends up having multiplicative effects – being a trans woman is not just as bad as being trans plus being a woman, there’s this whole set of problems that are specific to trans women (transmisogyny, it’s called). And another set that are specific to black women (misogynoir). And another set that are specific to black trans women (I haven’t actually seen the term transmisogynoir, but it ought to exist and probably does). That’s how it works.

But “being privileged” does not mean “being privileged along every axis at once,” it means having privilege, period.

-MadGastronomer