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JoshuaZ comments on The Craft And The Community: The Basics: Apologizing - Less Wrong
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Well, in the sane version this isn't about vulnerability or conversation point scoring/status but actually trying to make an observation.
And in the sane contexts, most of them aren't going to be relevant. If for example, one discussing say voting rights issues, I don't think (sane) people are going to argue that sexual orientation matters, even as race and income might.
Although, if you do want to focus on how narrow it can get, I've also seem to the term in the context of people who are Christian not realizing how uncomfortable people from other religious backgrounds can easily be in parts of the US, and especially how that applies to atheists. But again, I don't think the argument would be made that all the issues are relevant at the same time.
So, maybe, make it? There is, of course, the trivial point that for any issue there are people who had personal experience with it and people who had not, but "check your privilege" is very much not about personal experiences but about treating people solely as members of a certain class.
There is a reasonable way to put what you're trying to say -- it would go along the lines of "You are making assumptions X, Y, and Z and they don't work in this situation because of A, B, and C and so what you expect to happen doesn't". But "check your privilege" is not that -- it's a shorthand for "sit down, shut up, and feel guilty".
Or it can be shorthand for "You are making a long list of implicit assumptions, and it will take time to go through all of them, but you can conclude from someone who has actually been in the relevant situation that you are wrong about the actual situation on the ground." That's a common enough sentiment in many different contexts where inferential distance matters, and it may help to think in terms of this thread which tried to expand most of those issues in other contexts.
It helps to not try to interpret every statement people who make as the most irrational possible just because you already disagree with them or have seen other irrational aspects that particularly irk you.
It can. But for me to accept this requires me to grant A LOT of credibility to the speaker.
Well, we can talk empirics, then. I've had "check your privilege" card pulled on me numerous times. In the great majority of the cases it was done to shut me up and shame me. In the great majority of cases people saying that had zero idea about my personal experiences and were just assuming what it was convenient for them to assume. In most cases this card was pulled when people were badly losing a rational argument.
So while in theory "check your privilege" can mean various things, I am pretty certain about what it means in practice.
Inferential distance issues is actually very high on the list of things that can make someone think that someone else is "badly losing" an argument. On at least one occasion I've had someone who was insisting that .9999... !=1 come away from a conversation with me convinced that they had "clearly won".
But your point does have some validity, and if you look back at the original comment you replied to, I agreed with Nancy that it can be used in irrational ways. My point was about the more rational ways people can and do use the term. So what precisely are you trying to argue here?
My feeling is that the term is irretrievably tainted. I see its use as an ideological marker.
I accept that what it tries to express can be a useful point but this particular phrase by now carries way too much baggage.
This sounds then like an assertion not that people don't use the phrase more rationally, but that you or others are unlikely to treat it as having a more rational meaning even when it does, because it has a history of being used more often in a more irrational fashion by people you politically disagree with. Is that a fair summary?
It is an assertion that in my personal experience people do not use the phrase rationally. YMMV and all that, of course.
This personal experience leads me to consider this particular phrase as an indicator of certain characteristics of people who us it, both with respect to their ideology and their rationality.
Does it matter who they use that phrase to? Because some of us know how to speak "social justice-ese" to those who respond well to it, and "rational-ese" to those who respond better to that - but it can sometimes be frustrating when talking to a mixed audience. Whichever language one chooses, the other half will sense a betrayal.
Correctly, too. Few like being manipulated and "two-faced" is not endearment.
If you have interesting examples of such a relatively positive use of "check your privilege", I'd like to see them.
My experience is the same as Lumifer's - I have only seen this phrase used to shut down unwanted opinions or unwanted participants. Theoretically, it could stand for what you said, and I'd love it if it did, but in practice it doesn't seem to happen.
(Interestingly, the same seems to be true about the obnoxious -splaining family: "mansplaining", "cissplaining" etc. That is, I can well imagine their uses that, while rude, seem somewhat justified. But I don't think I've ever actually observed such a justified use; all the uses I've seen were always as a way to attack an opinion based on race/sex/identity of whoever offered it).
FWIW, in my social circle it's often used in the first person. As in, "my first response was to dismiss X as completely unnecessary; then I checked my privilege and reconsidered what X might offer to groups G1, G2, and G3." I don't necessarily claim that these sorts of uses are interesting or positive (that's a discussion I don't choose to get into here), but I don't quite see how it involves shutting anyone down.
As for "-splaining", I more often see it used as a way to attack a conversational strategy than directly to attack an opinion... though of course many people will choose to attack a conversational strategy as an indirect way of attacking the opinions being expressed using that strategy, or the individuals expressing them.
Similarly, many people will choose to attack word choices in such an indirect fashion, as well, in order to indirectly attack the opinions being expressed using those words or the individuals expressing them, but that doesn't mean it's inappropriate to challenge inappropriate word choices.