Anglo Male Cisgender Privilege is a Poisoned Chalice

Trigger warning: Physical violence.

Ben Debney || Louis CK once pointed at white male cisgender privilege: you can take a time machine anywhere, and expect to get service at a restaurant. He cites the 1890s pretty much anywhere: “Well of course sir, yes right here mimicks pulling out chair please sit down.” White male cisgender privilege means you don’t even think about this until it’s pointed out to you: of course anyone black or indigenous or not a white man would want to go back in time in a white man’s world, why wouldn’t they?

The internal narrative doesn’t get any better from there, take it from yours truly.

As a case in point: I’m about a month shy of 50. When I was about 18, I was living in college in Melbourne. I had dropped out, but was then installed in college to help ensure I stayed. I really wasn’t okay, but at the same time I had to be. I didn’t even know how to name depression as the black dog breathed down my neck day and night. There was no mental health awareness; you just made faggot noises and people stopped talking to you until you started acting normal again seemed more the norm.

I had deeper problems as well, which was no doubt increasingly obvious as well to everyone except me. Why does it make faggot noises so. As things transpire in the fullness of time, though, apparently I had caught a nice dose of identity disturbance, and a spot of dissociation mixed in with some attachment disorder, and then the black dog to say howdy-do champ feeling helpless yet.

I was in a lot of pain, and boy was I sitting on a fire-keg of rage.

I made friends around the college; there were other skaters, so we piled into someone’s car and went checking out local skateparks from time to time, in-between gaps between the lectures we were skipping maybe. I helped a girl down the hall with an assignment and she got an A. I had dinner with a top and a bottom one night getting a lesson in making stir fries. I’m pretty sure I got some kind of invitation to more. I had to diplomatically decline tbh; like have you met women.

I can remember my state of mind at that point so clearly: I was so, so lost. I wasn’t yet 20, but already I felt like I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas. Apparently I had a bunch of C-PTSD triggers as well, which for all the anti-woke edgelords is another way of saying raw feels from stress overload and burnout (ableism isn’t woke but).

These were exacerbated by alcohol consumption to really heinous consequence. It bears emphasising that alcohol was a significant factor in the reason you’re reading about any of this now.

One night a group of maybe 10-15 kids from the college walked over to a botanical reserve on the other side of campus with bottles of red. We lit a fire. People broke off into smaller groups around the various campfires. The atmosphere was chill. I was anything but inside. I had two or three glasses of wine, I think I was okay. I had a fourth and a fifth, and as I was sitting by the fire something inside me just slumped. I got up and walked away from the fire and into the darkness. In the darkness I just exploded into tears.

After however long, I heard someone approach, and a pretty, dulcet voice said to me: are you okay?

To my ears, it sounded like pretty, dulcet voices saying much the same from within social cliques and playground wolf-packs, when it was pretty obvious to everyone else you weren’t, and they were letting you know (I wasn’t already aware of not being okay myself, apparently).

I just flipped. There was no higher-brain functioning involved at all. I went into auto-mode psycho. I lashed out and I hit her. She screamed and ran away. It destroyed festivities and I immediately just left and lurched all the way back to my room.

Inexplicably, that kind of pretty, dulcet voice asking if I’m okay when I’m really not has never resurfaced long enough to be able to answer, quite genuinely, “no.”

But here is the rub in what happened in the days afterwards, and this is why anglo male cisgender privilege is a poisoned chalice: No one ever pulled me up for hitting a young woman. I assaulted someone. I can’t even remember who it was. I didn’t even have to remember a name or a personality because I got a free pass.

In the fullness of time you get to thinking: what would have happened if anyone had pulled me up? Don’t hit women! What’s wrong with you? No one did. Maybe the fact I had tears pouring down my cheeks was a tell in not looking actively to assert patriarchal dominance. Maybe no one wanted to know. In any event, I violated a boundary with an abuse and no one ever said boo to me about it, but in failing to confront me or hold me to account, neither did anyone try to help me by suggesting I get psychological counseling–which at that point would have been completely appropriate, much less needed.

Personally, I didn’t lurch my way into a shrink’s office until the tail-end of my 20s. People who are younger than me have grown up with mental health awareness and, I’m pretty sure, assume that what they know has always been true. It hasn’t.

By my calculation then, because of some white-boy solidarity at a particularly unfortunate moment in my development, it took me another decade to find my way to the help I needed. A very long time after that I found my way into EMDR therapy for Complex PTSD, 3 or 4 years ago, and have been in repair since.

If that isn’t a poisoned chalice, what is.

What’s the lesson: know a devil’s bargain. We always pay in the end. There is no honour amongst thieves. The master race turns the knives on ourselves when we’re not ganging up on everyone else; as an anglo cisgender male, you notice how quickly you stop being one as soon as you start manifesting psycholical symptoms of all the knives in your back.

To that young woman I hit: I’m sorry. I never got to hear your pretty dulcet voice again, so believe me when I say I could not be sorrier.