In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Where There’s Smoke

Jay

My dad quit smoking cigarettes in public in 1964, but he still smoked cigars (and snuck cigarettes at home) when I was a kid. My mother smoked cigarettes, publicly and a little defiantly. I’d been dating John for six months – most of my junior year of high school – before I found out he was smoking (he hadn’t exactly lied to me about it, but he’d never lit up around me, either). I didn’t know until his mother told me.

I thought of that today as I walked past a man in the hallway at work and smelled the residue of his cigarette smoke from about four feet away. How was it possible that I had been physically intimate with someone and not realized he smelled of smoke? It was possible because I was used to it. Smoke was in the air I breathed, it clung to my clothes, it permeated the car I was learning to drive. I’m sure my hair smelled like cigarettes (as well as Clairol Herbal Essence shampoo. Hey, it was the 70s). I never smoked, but you wouldn’t have known that.

My mother was always very proud of the fact that her house didn’t smell of smoke, but the first time I returned to college after break and opened my suitcase, I realized I couldn’t take my laundry home – I had to bring dirty laundry back to to college and wash it there, or it reeked. And three months after my mother finally quit smoking, she replaced all the carpets and had the house repainted – because of course it did smell of smoke. She just hadn’t noticed because she was used to it.

Privilege is like smoke. When we’re living with it, you don’t notice it. It’s in the air. It’s all around us, invisible, ubiquitous. We don’t notice the privilege we share with others; we only notice what surprises our senses and our brains – the way I could smell pot smoke on someone, even when I was living with my cigarette-smoking parents.

As I unpack my knapsack, a task I will continue to work at for the rest of my life, I can feel my senses opening up – and once I’ve started to notice a piece my privilege, it’s as if I’ve opened that suitcase again back in my freshman-year dorm. It’s startling, and disturbing. Some pieces are more obvious to me than others – my class privilege often remains invisible to me. I’d like to wash it off, but it’s more complicated than that.

Cigarette smoke is harmful even to those who don’t smoke (I had ear infections twice a year until I moved out of my parents’ house); privilege is more harmful to those who don’t have it, but the existence of the kyriarchy harms us all. We’ll have to work together to kick the habit.

17 thoughts on Where There’s Smoke

  1. My apologizes for having nothing significant to add but I just wanted to say that I really like this.

  2. Wow. That’s an excellent metaphor, and has led me to unpack my knapsack a little more with the realization.

  3. The post started so well but then slipped into a string of self-congratulatory statements about the favorite hobby-horse of today’s quasi-liberals: privilege. This whole concept of privilege is nothing more than a way for people to condescend to those they choose to brand as less fortunate, while at the same time feeling appropriately self-righteous.

    I’ll never forget a friend who, seeing me try to fit into a size 14 dress, slipped into a wide-eyed rant about how important it is for people like her to be aware of their “thin privilege.” I will also never forget how humiliated I felt every time a colleague whose father is an investment banker would drawl about the need to examine her “class privilege.”

    I’m still sorry that I didn’t explain to these privilege-obsessed individuals that most people find my size 14 way more attractive than the skinny ass of the thinly-privileged and that everybody I know considers being born in a family of an investment banker a misfortune rather than any kind of a privilege.

    So whenever you start pitying and condescending to those that you have decided to consider underprivileged, stop and think: are you so sure that what you so self-importantly consider a privilege is not seen as a handicap by them.

  4. Great post – I really like the smoke analogy. I actually just posted about my privilege this morning, after having a bad day yesterday, but realizing that even when I was frustrated, tired, and cranky, my circumstances and reactions were largely shaped by my privilege as a healthy white woman in Cambodia.

    Jay, thanks for sharing here – all of your posts have been thought-provoking and fun to read!

  8. Clarissa-
    You’re right that often people use the concept of privilege to just say, “Oh, I’m lucky and have advantages. Isn’t that nice.” and move on. Or condescend to people who don’t share those privileges. But, there IS privilege in being thin. Even if you’re not at lack for suitors at a size 14, most people look at my body and think that it’s grotesque. Not all, and I have dated successfully (now married). But thin privilege means that I am more likely to get passed up for jobs. Thin privilege means it was freaking hard to find a doctor to treat me for asthma or PCOS without a prescription for Weight Watchers. Thin privilege means that far more of my time and money has to be spent on everyday things than those of “normal size” (travel, clothing, etc.). So you may not feel marginalized by your size, but please don’t speak for all of us fat folks. And I’m sure many people who are struggling to meet basic requirements while holding down multiple jobs would be more than happy with a job as an investment banker.

    It seems like you need to check your own privilege. And, seriously, stop on the body snarking. It doesn’t help anyone.

  9. I’ll disagree with Clarissa’s ideas here and will also add that I love this metaphor.

    It’s important for us all to attempt to be aware of our privilege, but that problem I often come up against is that it seems difficult to explain to people who are not accustomed to thinking about such ideas. I think this metaphor will be helpful in getting people to think about and understand privilege, so thanks for sharing it!

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  11. @Clarissa: I have been in similar situations with thinner women and with richer people. I think those people have a different understanding of the word, and are using it in the opposite manner that it’s intended to be used.

    For one, I don’t think it’s appropriate to examine your privilege aloud in front of someone who doesn’t share it. Droning on about “thin privilege” was probably just your friend’s way of being self-congratulatory and masking it as self-deprecation.

    When Feministe writers and commenters use privilege, we are trying to make a larger point about ACTUALLY examining it and being accountable for it, not making people who don’t share our particular privileges feel like we think they are less than. The whole point of the concept is that you are no better than anyone else, but that you just happen to have fallen into some circumstances that, in general, are given big-ups by society over other circumstances.

  12. I’m glad you all find the metaphor meaningful.

    I agree with what Tawny said about the value of unpacking and examining our privilege. To me, “being accountable” means working to dismantle the ways in which oppression is institutionalized, thus reinforcing and preserving privilege, and also acting as allies for those who don’t share our privilege. Both of those are best done within our own group. I don’t talk with POC about my white privilege, unless I think acknowledging it would feel supportive to a friend. I talk about it with others who share white privilege, because we’re the ones who have the power to dismantle it.

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  15. I really liked your post. The smoke analogy struck me as being spot on. One note, the link doesn’t work.

  16. I really like this metaphor, especially coming from a house where my parents smoked. While they took care to do it away from us in the basement, it still permiated the house. I had the same experience of realizing I had to wash my clothes after staying there. I’d beat it by washing them within hours of leaving but it didn’t always work. I never would have noticed it if I had stepped outside of that environment. Recognizing our privilege can be a lot like that. The catch is there aren’t always easy answers about what to do about it.

    I agree with Clarissa that some respond to notions of privilege in a condesending way, but I don’t think that’s a fundamental flaw of looking at things that way. I’ve been on both sides, and I think genuine introspection on such issues can be very valuable. I would agree, though, that such introspection is better done than simply talked about. Musing about the need to examine one’s privilege is rather pointedly NOT examining one’s privilege. Its just advertising it.

  17. Very thoughtful post. Interesting analogy. But what might be privilege in one context might be a disadvantage in another. Or temporary. I’ve always been kind of sensitive to smoke, but would still go to bars where there was plenty of smoking. After a while you would stop noticing. Until you left. And it’s sort of amazing how the smell sticks to people. I work in a building that is smoking free. I have been surprised on a number of occasions to get on an elevator where the other rider absolutely reeks of smoke. Yeah, they might have just been out on a cigarette break, but you know that you’re not smelling just one cigarette, but probably years worth of cigarette smoke on their clothes.

    Re actual smoking: My grandfather smoked a pipe. Not a bad smell, kind of pleasant in some ways. I don’t remember how old he was when he had to have his larnyx removed. He had chemo, but the cancer came back, tongue and mouth. Now one of my aunts has developed COPD. Caused by my grandfather’s smoking? We’ll never really know.

    And finally, and perhaps this can apply to privilege as well, there’s secondhand smoke. Privilege by association? (Or guilt?) Most people are aware of that, but there are now reports about the dangers of “third-hand smoke.” Smoking apparently can leave a nicotine residue that reacts with compounds in the air to form nitrosamines, which are apparently very strong carcinogens. I think that perhaps privilege sometimes leaves a residue (as can resentment at privilege). And this third-hand smoke can be found in dust, just like lead and other toxic chemicals, where it is easily ingested by children. And there, too, one might find another metaphor. Kids ingest stuff that is unseen and in the environment all around them. And often you don’t become aware of their exposure (whether to chemicals, behavior, or whatever) until they start showing symptoms.

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