(I initially wrote this as a comment re: someone’s update titled “stfu.”)

I hear this often from certain people. “Both sides are as bad as the other.” “So-and-so group is as big a Fundie as the worst religious extremist.” “*Insert minority* need to stop being so sensitive to *insert brand of casual bigotry.*” Whilst these folks like to think of themselves as champions of equality, freedom of speech, and all that jazz I find this line of debate rather shallow and cliched. It’s a tiresome argument I like to call “Privilege Bitching.”

Over the past 100 years in the Western World we have seen society reach the stage where it is OK to be a woman and vote, to be Black and vote, to inter-marry among races, for sexual harassment and domestic violence to be taken seriously as crimes, to be Atheist, Agnostic, Gay/Bi/Transgender, etc. without being imprisoned, socially-ostracised or beaten to death. But these are very recent developments, historically-speaking. And in parts of the world you can still be executed for being gay. In parts of the world not adhering to the tenants of the dominant religion can get you put in hospital. In parts of the world declaring you don’t believe in God can lose you your family and so-called ‘friends.’ When we speak of certain minorities what we are talking about are folks who, for most of human history, could be ridiculed, exiled, harassed, attacked and beaten to death for being who they are or not believing the same thing as the majority. What we are talking about are folks who still can be ridiculed, exiled, harassed, attacked and beaten to death for being who they are or not believing the same thing as the majority, depending on where they live. 

Yet it doesn’t take 5 minutes for the privileged majority to start whining and moaning about how “Atheists/Agnostics are just as bad as Fundies” the minute someone says “believing in God is stupid” or to bitch on about “freedom of speech” when an LGBT group starts campaigning for people to stop using “gay” as a synonym for anything undesirable or contemptuous. They are almost always people who have never been part of an ostracised minority and have never truly experienced actual oppression, actual rights violations in their run-of-the-mill little lives. The problem with this Privileged Majority is that they are so used to being catered to, so used to having things their way, so used to the wheels of society turning with them and not against them, they conveniently overlook, downplay or fail to appreciate centuries of abuses towards the group they’re not part of, the groups they now like to hysterically and ignorantly compare to groups with long and documented histories of oppression. The minute someone says something minutely unpleasant, perhaps slightly out-of-line to them, they bitch and whine and cry bloody murder, insisting they’re being “persecuted as much as an *insert actually persecuted minority.” What’s more simply because a minority is asking for a little consideration, a little respect, a little equality, after centuries of inequality, because that act rocks the little boat of Majority Privilege, because in their righteous indignation and frustration some minority-group campaigners do so in a somewhat vindictive and poorly-expressed fashion, these things do not instantly make them comparable to the bigoted, persecuting, murderous, oppressive, lynch-mobbing and hateful history of The Tyranny Of The Majority

I do not, and would not, approve or condone bullying or disrespectful language towards any group for simply holding an opinion or belief different to mine. But I get really tired of seeing this “both sides are as bad as each other” cliche rolled out time and time again when the record of human history in no way shows that both sides are as bad. The dominant race (white,) gender (male,) religion (Christianity) and sexual orientation (heterosexual) of any given nation (in my example, Western Nations) has enjoyed exceptional privileges for centuries, privileges which extend to persecuting brutally those who were different to them, those who now may criticise them. And maybe they criticise them in a rather unpleasant, ungracious and hypocritical fashion at times. But “Lynch-mobbed And Beaten To Death For Being Gay” VS “Some Atheist Being A Bit Of A Douche About Christianity.” They’re hardly comparable. Neither are attitudes to be encouraged. Neither are attitudes to be tolerated. But if you see them being of equal severity, of being “just as bad as each other,” then your values need a serious, serious rethink.

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