Check Your F#cking Privilege, Please & Leave Your Opinion at the Door.

And consider it's all relative.

Dear Readers,

Apparently after my long silence, I suddenly have a lot to say. And rather than filter myself back into the void, let’s have it at. Shall we?

I’ve been considering privilege and what it means to us at various levels, personally and in social context.

Somewhere along the way we seem to have conflated the concept that the right to exist (unmolested) breathe air, drink clean water, and have shelter (actual human rights) with the idea that everyone should see the world as we see it, and agree with our opinions regardless of their own values, preferences, lived experiences, or actual biological needs.

Though, I do not think that having our opinions validated is a basic human right, I do think that being able to think for ourselves and express what is inside of us is.

The truth is: You have a right to your opinion. I have a right to mine. And neither of our opinions actually make us right.

“Opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one, and they are often simply full of shit.”

I have a lot of opinions, and I know I can be full of shit. I am also recognizing how utterly privileged I truly am. 

A few months ago my Facebook account was disabled; my personal account, my business page, all my messages, and my Instagram account in a moment—gone. It was a shock and it certainly caused my business to take a hit. Suddenly my access to my more than 2,000 “friends” simply vanished. It was a solid reality check, as in: social media is not reality, it is not a basic right, and participating is actually a privilege.

What I had taken as a basic right to post and blab about whatever I wanted was suddenly removed.

What occurred over several weeks of social media silence was the awareness of just how intrusive everyone’s opinions coming at me all the time really was. Previously, my FB feed had been filled with coaches I had acquired aquaintanceship with over the years because we were all in the same industry. After about a week of silence from the echo chamber I had built for myself, I began to notice more sensations from my own body, a richer timbre from the voice of my intuition, and a lot less performance anxiety.

When I finally bit the bullet and started a new account, I got a fresh start. No coaches yelling catch-all advice into the void, just a few people at a time who I, with great discernment, added back. And a lot of cooking and cat videos.

Sizzle, sizzle…Meow, meow. (Fortunately nobody is actually cooking cats because… ew.)

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Since I have been back on (FB), I have noticed more and more people complaining of “shadow bans”, (totally a real thing, by the way), as well as accounts being “restricted”, and people going to FB “jail”. My comments on these posts are always the same: “As someone whose entire account was disabled, cool your heels for a bit and the algorithm will forget you.”

Do I have compassion for those being stifled by Zuckerberg and his little AI concubine? Yea, a little, and a lot, in some cases, as it has quite deliberately made it harder for us to share information. It’s annoying, but it also lands solidly in the realm of “first world problem”, and first world privilege. And so many things we take for granted are.

We yell “Censorship!”at the slightest indication that our opinions are being stifled, but I invite you to consider these are all private platforms. Censorship, in legal terms, only applies to the public domain.

What should actually concern us—if we are paying attention at all—is that the public domain is rapidly disappearing. We live in a corporatocracy. Nearly everything is owned by “somebody”. And whoever owns whatever platform you are attempting to utilize is most likely going to gear it towards their own perceptual biases, and that is how echo chambers are made.

Should we just stop sharing, stop talking about stuff and stop having opinions?

Hell no! 

Though having our opinions validated as if they are some sacred truth is, by no means of stretch of imagination, a basic human right—we absofuckinglutely do not want to capitulate any further to the thought police’s control. And there are plenty of control mechanisms in place.

A successful police state is one in which it requires very little police presence, as the citizens willingly police each other. This may seem like a good idea when it comes to all of us holding each other accountable for certain behaviors, but becomes dangerous when it reaches into the realm of us shaming and “canceling” each other for having different social outlooks and opinions.

A case in point on this matter is Joanne (JK) Rowling, the now infamous author of the Harry Potter series. Her insistent opinion that there is a difference in the biological reality of women and trans-women (something that I agree with), has literally earned her death threats. She is not saying trans people should be killed, harmed, or maimed, in any way, but that women have the right to have “women’s only” spaces and that right should be determined by biological reality. This is a tender and nuanced conversation as safety should be a basic human right. And some women simply do not feel safe around men who identify as women. For expressing this opinion, in some places, her books have been banned, and she has (by some) been “canceled”. Now some would say that she is acting like a bigot, some would say that she is acting privileged. I would argue that we, women, do have the right to feel safe in women’s only spaces as is defined by our actual biology. That is my opinion. I’m not a bigot. And I am grateful that I feel at ease in my identity and in my skin. Does that make me privileged? Maybe a little, but I have also worked through layers of body dysmorhphia to arrive in this space. Neither is JK’s story lacking trials and tribulations, and is peppered by trauma.

If you’re curious about JK’s journey I would highly recommend “The Witch Trials of JK Rowling” sponsored by The Free Press (also on Substack).

In other news, just because you prefer something, it doesn’t make it right!

Recently I went and involved myself (on Facebook) in a thread on veganism. The original post posed the question: “What level of cruelty is acceptable to you?”

False equivalencies such as: “Eating meat makes you a cruel person.” are gross perceptual distortions at best, and can become dangerous cultural schisms when applied in broader terms. They lack nuance, and do not take into account individual variations and needs.

I can’t do it, be vegan, I mean. My body shuts down, my hair becomes brittle, I develop anemia, and it affects my anxiety when I don’t eat meat fairly regularly. And I will not be shamed for needing it. In the comment thread I justified my consumption of meat by painting myself as a conscientious consumer, which I am when possible. I spoke of fields of cows that are just happily living their best little ungulate lives until the day they are slaughtered.

In the midst of my own self-justifying monologue—as to what a wonderfully conscientious consumer I am—it suddenly occurred to me just how fucking privileged I sounded.

I go to a small grocery store that is locally owned. I tend to buy as much local meat and produce as I can. I live in a lush valley that, though temperatures hover below freezing for several months out of the the year—it is not a food desert!

According to Google:

“New analysis from the Association of American Medical Colleges and USDA shows that 54 million people are food insecure and 23.5 million live in food deserts.”

It’s pretty sobering to remember that millions of people do no actually even have access to food; and that these starving people could give a fuck less if their chicken nugget is organic—they just need something to eat. Suddenly my point of view about how conscientious consumption makes me a better person than someone who is eating beef off a feedlot, while arguing with Tofu Jerry about whether my occasional enjoyment of a cheeseburger makes me psychopath (seriously) takes on a whole other level of asinine.

It’s not that the the various opinions or social crusades that we take upon ourselves are invalid. They’re not. It’s more that we need to explore nuanced perspectives rather than adhering to what can become rigid and fixed ideologies.

We are complex—that is what it is to be human. We are also simple in that all of us respond quite well to respect and care.

I will leave you with these thoughts: the fact that you have the internet, that you are able to read these words, that someone once showed you how to read, that you somehow have access to a device that allows you to connect with this media is a privilege.

And for me, it is more than a privilege, it is a deep honor to be connected to you. 

Lotsa love,

~Justice

Images: Reddit, FB, Vinicius "amnx" Amano/Unsplash.