I read the linked-to story about white men not being very progressive over the weekend, but leave it to Melissa at Shakesville to articulate one of those back-of-the-head thoughts a straight white male like me had when I saw it:

I’ll be a pedant, in my usual way, and note there are, in fact, not plenty of white men with progressive views, but plenty of white men with some progressive views, and vanishingly few who regard, with the same fervor they do healthcare reform or protecting social security, the importance of social justice, and the attendant need to challenge institutional marginalization.

Which might not seem like a key tenet of progressivism to a straight white cis man, but is sure as hell does to the rest of us.

This is something important with which I agree, but feel like I took a few years off from caring enough about. Shame on me.

A commenter adds:

I think there are a lot of fauxgressive out there that recognize that progressives do more for them as members of the middle class and aren’t really interested in structural change. And so many of them are just entirely unaccustomed to having their entitlement challenged in any way shape or form. I want to follow along to the male-dominated blogs that focus on political processes- they can be reasonably influential through candidate fundraising, etc, but I’m damn fucking tired of this shit. It’s so incredibly lonely-ifying. And then they will complain about not having enough women around. Um, really?

Incidentally, after six years in the UES, something must have happened recently because I find myself seeing a lot more unselfconscious privilege and entitlement everywhere – including myself, of course. Not just in the sense where so-called self-made people are enmeshed in a web of privilege they were born to, but that’s part of it. People don’t need to do everything for themselves, but no one likes people who take more credit than they deserve, you know? And western society as a whole sometimes (always?) seems spun from a lie that says we don’t stand on the shoulders of the rest of the world, but could exist in a vacuum.

But I’ll shut up now!