The document lists binary categories that are used to otherize or privilege certain groups in Western societies. It contrasts privileged identities like being white, male, heterosexual, able-bodied, employed and educated with less privileged or "other" identities such as being a person of color, female, immigrant, gay, disabled, poor or unemployed. The binaries are presented as false and overly simplistic representations of social groups.
1. The false binaries of Western privilege
Privilege
White
Male
“Australian”
Heterosexual
Monogamous
Adult
Able
“White” collar
Wealthy
Employed
Educated
“Other”
People of colour
Female/intersex/trans*
“Immigrants”/Indigenous peoples/tourists
Gay/lesbian/bisexual/asexual
Single/Polyamorous
Child/elderly
Disabled/differently abled
“Blue” collar/”pink” collar
Poor/non-capitalist
Unemployed/unpaid worker
Uneducated/unrecognised expertise
CC BY-NC-SA, Dr Cathy Cupitt, Curtin University, 2010. Email c.cupitt@curtin.edu.au
Editor's Notes
These binaries are “false” for two reasons.
First, many of them are not actually direct opposites, they are just presented that way in Western narratives which tend to reduce everything to binaries reflecting privilege. “Child” for instance is not a true opposite to “adult”. A child is on the age continuum which leads to adulthood. A child is the same person as the adult, but with less access to power.
Second, they are false binaries because there are usually many identities in each category which have been erased and reduced in order to create just two positions – the privileged category is produced as a normalised monomyth, and all Othered possibilities are mashed together into the “opposite” position. In reality, the Other is a complex web of possible identities, rather than a single opposite identity. Even a category most people assume is a biologically fixed binary, like sex/gender, is not limited to two options in nature, with people who are naturally intersex, such as XXY, in addition to women and men. That’s not even taking into account the alternative gender presentations expressed through culture, such as transgender people, or the understanding that not all cultures define gender via a strict binary.
