how language obscures...

...privilege 

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des einen nachteil ist eines anderen vorteil, nicht?

nur: manchmal bevorzugen wir es nur über ersteres zu reden.

"wir"?

one's disadvantage is another's advantage, right?

but in certain cases we prefer to talk only about the former.

we? who we?

consider this quote from a standard text book:

"...in addition to working in hostile evironments, women have consistently been paid less then their male peers, earning about 81 cents to every dollar of a man's wage."

"...in addition to working in evironments hostile to women, men have consistently been paid more then their female peers, earning about 1,23 dollars to every dollar of a woman's wage."

"By switching the referent, this change in language shifts the center of the discussion from women’s disadvantage to men’s advantage.  Of course, there is both unfair disadvantage and advantage in this story, and we need to make both visible, but always talking in terms of the former makes women and their disadvantage the problem and hides the way that we need to be addressing men’s unfair advantage as well."

taken from 

here

.