Allan G Johnson Privilege Power And Difference Analysis
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The book Privilege, Power, and Difference by Allan G. Johnson is an eye opening novel that I’m happy I had the chance to read. It brought light to issues that I would have otherwise overlooked probably for the rest of my life. The fact that it is written by a privileged white male shows to me that not all people in the world are shadowed and oblivious to these pressing issues in our society. I enjoyed how the author reiterated time and time again how he is considered a white, male, nondisabled, middle-class, heterosexual and other terms like this. Three main points that were the most personal and appealed to me the most were the issues dealing with women dealing with being alone, the controversy with whether someone is disabled/nondisabled,…show more content… The language used to describe these “types” of people not only describe their disorder or disability, but they also seem to shape who they are as a person in our society. “Reducing people to a single dimension of who they are separates and excludes them marks them as “other” as different from “normal” people and therefore as inferior” Johnson 19. This quote from the book, really stood out to me because people who are grouped in the “other” will never be able to live a normal life because they will always be labeled as, for example, part of “the blind” or “the disabled”. An example of this that is personal to my own life is that I have two autistic cousins. They are precious little girls at the age of 5 and 7. Neither of them are verbal yet and the only way they can communicate with us is to point or make noises and we can’t always understand what they’re asking of us so therefore they get frustrated and throw fits. This obviously draws attention when we’re out in public and they get judged looks. Before my cousins were born, I probably never would have taken notice to this issue in the world, but now I’m a lot more sensitive to it because it affects my family and hurts my Aunt to know that people look at her children that…show more content… From what I understood that the book was trying to say, heterosexual men fear anything different from themselves. They feel threatened that by other peoples sexual orientation and how that makes them question their own orientation themselves. Gay men and lesbians get the worst of heterosexism. Males tend to always look for control and show that they’re better than everyone else or superior. They take control in relationships and I believe that’s what leads to sexual abuse, rape, and harassment. I know a friend of mine who was in an abusive relationship. She said that all her boyfriend at the time wanted was power over her and her life, he wanted to control every aspect of it. He would control who she talked to, who she hung out with, and he always monitored her phone to see who she was texting. He would monitor her snapchat best friends list to see who her top people she talked to were. It even got to the point that he would watch the number that would go up every time you sent or received a snapchat and ask her who she had been talking to. He was always convinced that she was cheating on him even though she never gave him a reason to believe so. I just find it so crazy that someone can be that insecure that they need to monitor and control the person they claim to love and care