[Solumina]

Okay I'm not sure exactly how much sense this will make as I currently have a fantastic headache and I know that this is far from covering everything but I think it is a good starting place.

Just having an open dialogue would make a huge difference and that is something that must be done on the individual level. Up to this point just about everything that I have seen has been very much a closed discussion, things are explained away or excuses are made, this is not helpful, this only invalidates the experiences people have had. What needs to happen is that if someone comes forward with a negative experience it needs to be embraced as something valid and something worth consideration, because if you validate their experience you are validating them, if you invalidate their experience then you invalidate them. Occupy does not need you to defend it, the people who want to discredit it already have a huge fucking arsenal and have no qualms about straight making shit up, don't worry about them, worry about this person who is telling you that they feel repressed, who feels like they are being treated as worthless.

There also needs to be a discussion with people outside of Occupy, on message boards, facebook, twitter, and every single site for social networking that admits that this shit is going on and that it needs to stop, not "there is a problem with people not realizing their privilege but (excuse)", it needs to just be "there is a problem with people not realizing their privilege, every one of us is part of this problem and we need to dedicate ourselves to fixing it". You need say "I am Despanan and I have privilege" you need to take a hard look at every single interaction you have with people and realize that some of those would be very different if you were a woman or a person of color. I know that there are already people doing this but they are few and far between, I also know that there are a lot of people who think that they are aware of their own privilege but who really only have a general idea of how it affects them which leads to things like them behaving in a privileged manner and then getting all defensive and dismissive when someone calls them on their privilege.

Saya kind of joked earlier about having a privilege confessional but that honestly isn't such a bad idea. Saying that you have privilege is extremely easy but admitting how and when you enjoy the benefits of that privilege can be really hard but it needs to be done. For me, personally, the hardest to recognize is my straight privilege, because I'm not straight, I'm queer, I identify as being queer, I'm open about being queer but I'm married to a man so in all of my interactions with strangers there is an assumption that I am exclusively heterosexual so I enjoy the benefits of being a part of a group that I'm not even in.