Irish White Privilege......Yeah

It's not all just about things that give you an advantage, but it's also negative experiences or perspective that you don't face. Talking about gender for example — there are clear examples of issues faced by women in particular. Women are more likely to face sexual violence, domestic abuse against women remains a serious issue, women face far greater stress and risk in the simple act of trying to make their way home from work or a night out than men, women bear the greater risk in sex, women bear the risk in pregnancy and physical/psychological issues that can accompany it, women contend with the problems presented by menstruation, women face a shorter timespan than men for the ability to have children. Etc.

All this is doing is acknowledging the challenges and negative experiences faced by women. It's not patting their head and saying "poor woman", nor is it bashing males. Some of the things mentioned are not really anyone's fault, some of these things society (and men) have taken leaps and bounds in dealing with better, and it's obvious that the vast majority of men are by and large not violent towards women and would never dream of attacking a woman.

Accepting that other people face things that you don't face on account of a particular characteristic is not self-shaming. There are problems faced by men too — not least among them the higher rates of suicide etc. Acknowledging this isn't bashing women.

Indeed, in the modern world many fathers for example miss out on the joy and bonding time with their newborns with less time off to do it — not to mention rolling into work having barely slept.

The firm I work for rolled out a new paternity policy a while back which offered better initiatives for fathers to take a bit more time off and flexibility has improved with remote working options.

DEI not always the scary straight-man-hating concept it's made out to be!

Whilst yes women face issues that men never face simply due to their physiology, one can also argue that men often don't fare too well either.

For all the supposed advantages men face, they live shorter lives in comparison to women, they are statistically more likely to be murdered or be a victim of violent crime, have higher incidents of suicide, often have more ill health, they fair less well in education, work in some of the worst and most dangerous jobs.

I hate this idea that we have to have hierarchies.

We have it in terms of victim hood, in terms of those deserving of support and now we must start pedaling this white male privilege shyte that was dreamed up in some US university.

US society and history and the concepts applicable to it have fook all to do with Ireland.

Fair point. Fcking mothers and fathers. They need to check their privilege. Anyone else we need to guilt? Im sure we've missed a few.

Extremely privileged person tells other people that they are privileged.

I dont understand why more people dont see that for what it is. Pure bullying. Trying to muster up a gang to pick on people they dont like themselves.

The thing is though, there are plenty of people out there who can happily determine that what that lady from the Childrens Rights Alliance said was over-baked hot air while also having their own nuanced views as to the existence of certain privilege in society. You refer to "an ever lengthening list of cool/trendy sacred cows these days that can't be questioned supported by a band of disciples prepared to jump down peoples throats . . . .

But the inverse applies equally — there also seems to be an ever lengthening list of scary bogeyman reactionary terms and attitudes to anything which is considered liberal/woke/lefty. So if someone has a nuanced view on privilege which asserts that there may be certain privilege at play in society but they believe it operates in such a multifaceted way that everyone regardless of race etc is both privileged and not privileged in certain ways? OMFG THIS GUY SAYS WHITE PEOPLE ARE INVARIABLY PRIVILEGED AND HE SHOULDNT BE ALLOWED NEAR KIDS.

Look at this thread, look at some of my comments and responses to them. Who was getting their throat jumped down? The problem is that there are proper lefties who want to shout people down, and people who want to shout back at them — not realising they are both as bad as each other for it.

I wouldn't agree that it's privilege though: if we really want to make all our citizens just into units of production, then we're going to go the same way as South Korea and Japan, where it's basically impossible to reconcile parenthood (motherhood, actually, let's be honest about this) with being part of the workforce.

It's in society's interests not to do that.

However tough it is to deal with aging parents and their medical needs (and being a mother doesn't actually stop that from happening either by the way), it's a different question from a certain tendency to treat young parents as parasites. We need people to have children, if only to look after the rest of us when we're old and sick, and unless we're going to pay stay-at-home parents a salary (which I'm not suggesting is possible) the alternative is to accept that employees with children have extra constraints. I'm all for granting that to fathers as well as mothers, by the way.

What the heck is a "mungo"?

I'd guess @smokingman wants to say mongol but has just enough self awareness to realise that this makes a mockery of his self-image as "one of the good guys", but not quite enough self control not to say it anyway.

The paper-thin disguise of the word is meant to fill the gap between those two points.

Well, indeed.

Alternatively, we could just decide that the means always matter, and that the saying you reference there has been used throughout the 20th century and since, as a way of justifying all sorts of human rights abuses.

So when someone feels entitled to disrespect other people, or worse, because of being "one of the righteous" - that should be a big red flag IMO.

Which is why I said that the means do always matter. Because if you turn out to be wrong, but have always respected the law, and your opponents’ rights generally, then no matter how extreme your views, you won’t have harmed anyone by your acts on the grounds that your intended “end” justified using illegal means. No matter how good you may feel that end to be for everyone. That’s how people were starved in Ukraine or re-educated in China etc.