Christian Privilege

[paulpablo]

It's really the opposite case with me.  I believe that unearned advantages are so abundant that it's mostly over simplistic to attach some adjectives to the word privilege and make a phrase up.

The average person you talk to in day to day life didn't earn having a functional brain, their height, attractiveness, lung capacity, healthy bones, a lack of countless terminal diseases and cancers, their parents, their birth place, their race, their hair, their metabolism, eyesight, the time in history they're born, their voice, body proportions, body fat percentage, fast twitch muscles, financial inheritance, the list goes on....

I am very very privileged.  Even if I have a terminal illness I'm not aware of or something that will kill me in the next month or so, I still have the privilege of having lived to be 33 and that's a longer lifespan than I imagine the majority of humanity has had so far.  In terms of happiness being an advantage I'm probably parts of thousands of groups/demographics you could slot me into who have had an advantage in achieving being happy.  Being alive in a western country, with money, in the year 2018 is pretty good. I've had all kinds of sex, all kinds of drugs, and I can watch netflix while sitting at my desk in work.

Yet, it seems to me that this is just a different way of denying the existence of privilege by saying almost everyone is privileged anyway in some way, so what's the fuss? Well, the fuss is it's very dismissive and doesn't acknowledge that certain groups of people are systemically disadvantaged across various domains due to lack of privilege.

It seems like a conclusion based on circular logic to say people are systematically disadvantaged because of a lack of privilege.  Being disadvantaged is a lack of privilege.  Saying people are systematically disadvantaged because of a lack of privilege is kind of like making the point that people are short because of a lack of vertical height.

Saying almost everyone is privileged in some way is true, and is the exact opposite of denying privilege exists. It's the opposite of being dismissive, it's acknowledging the vast variables that privilege consists of.

Whatever fuss is made I think should be in proportion to someone's experience is in relation to a particular unjust prejudice.  No one really makes a fuss over privilege in and of itself unless the cause of it is seen to be unjustified prejudice.

It wouldn't really make much sense for me to make a fuss over Muslim privilege that happens in Muslim countries or Christian privilege that happens over in Texas.  My background is working class northern England.  Whatever religious prejudice I've encountered has been minor and very variable from situation to situation.  If they were major than those individual instances of religious prejudice is what I would make a fuss over, but not some vague overall notion of Christian privilege that has had very little if any detrimental affect on my life as an atheist.
I suppose that's very specific to my own situation, I don't have much power in terms of persuading people in other parts of the world how to act, making a fuss over the unjust privilege I see around me is pretty much the extent I can affect unjust privilege in the world.