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.
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.