What follows is a comment I wrote to a Facebook thread but did not post. This particular thread involved a number of mothers of white boys defending their use of the term “white male fragility” to another mother who objected to the way the term implicitly undermined the legitimacy of any white male’s sensitivity.

Labeling someone’s personal emotional reaction as merely the negative consequence of the group identity you assign them is inherently delegitimizing. That, obviously, is the point. Try switching the race/gender words out and see it how rings in your ears.

The counter argument to that point is that ‘white male fragility’ is a real thing, and therefore deserves to be named. Fair enough, except that it leaves an extraordinary amount of power just lying around for anyone to use. It’s a label virtually certain to be abused, as it comes in such handy as a tool for establishing social power.

There, as the saying goes, is the rub. The now denigrated Anglo-American patriarchy had at least one thing right: an abiding skepticism about power, particularly as exercised by groups of people when organizing socially and politically.

The point of deprecating generalizations based on race, gender, and class is not that such generalizations have no objective correlate, but that such generalizations are certain to be abused. Generalizations about white males are no different in this regard. It doesn’t matter one bit that you’re intentions are good. What matters is how normalizing the use of delegitimizing generalizations actually plays out in a society of flawed human beings.

If no other negative consequences leap to mind, consider at least the certainty of backlash. Generalizations based on race, gender, class (etc) were in the process of being ruled out of bounds. It was a long arc, but it was bending toward justice. To normalize terms like “white male fragility” will certainly encourage the playing of other race and gender cards. It’s like releasing a technology into a population. You don’t get to decide how it will be used.