Reflections on Vampires and Privilege
by Toby Davis, senior trainer
Vampires can’t see themselves in mirrors and it makes them seem inhuman. When a person moves through the world without seeing their experiences and identities reflected around them, they too can feel not-quite-human.
Every time an employer’s health care plan excludes medical care a trans or disabled person needs: dehumanizing. Every time a formerly incarcerated person is barred from voting, every time a person of color watches a movie featuring only white people, every time someone wishes a non-Christian “Happy Holidays” at a time of year when their religion has no holidays: dehumanizing.
In order to feel fully respected as humans, we must see ourselves reflected at every level of society. Our laws, policies, jobs, and cultural customs must be designed (and then redesigned) with and for people from all backgrounds.
We live in systems which consistently reflect only one face in their mirrors: the face of a white, heterosexual, cisgender, able-bodied, wealthy, thin, Protestant man. This guy is not a vampire: he sees himself in all the mirrors.
In a lot of ways I am this guy. Even though I am trans, I transitioned decades ago, so people who meet me assume I’m cisgender. After transitioning, people got nicer, things got easier, and I saw myself reflected more.
To the other white men out there: I’ve noticed a pattern in Think Again trainings and consultations. For many male executives, it seems that the idea of not seeing their reflection in every mirror (policy, scenario, story) is profoundly unsettling. It can even feel like a loss or a snub. Men react with defensiveness, silence, hostility, frustration, or sharing unrelated information to try to recenter the conversation on them.
I’ve felt this too. As a teenager, I felt confused and even a little offended that Black Entertainment Television (BET) and Telemundo existed for specific groups of people who weren’t me. I didn’t question then how every other channel I got was focused on telling white stories. I had been taught that my experience was normal and universal and that stories about people unlike me didn’t matter as much.
I ask myself and my fellow white men: Why do I feel invisible when one mirror in a thousand doesn’t reflect my face, but 999 do?
Part of it is that white men created policies, media, holidays, laws, cultural practices, even things like the height of doorknobs, to center their needs and preferences, and then taught their sons (and all the rest of us) that these things are right, natural, and normal. If no one has ever questioned your rights to be at the center of things and always have your needs met, you may be disoriented when confronted with the vast numbers of people who rarely or never have that experience. If you have a sense of yourself as a good and moral person, you may feel uncomfortable realizing your behavior might have harmed or excluded others, even unintentionally.
I’ve challenged myself to sit in that discomfort, to listen to people with different experiences than my own, and to open myself to change, even if that change makes things more complicated for me. A little discomfort is worth it if someone else finally gets to see themselves reflected as fully human… rather than as a vampire with no reflection.
(image credit: "i'm starting with the man in the mirror" by Inha Leex Hale is licensed under CC BY 2.0.) (image description: a fractured reflection from multiple overlapping mirrors shows what appears to be a white man with short brown hair looking at himself through a manual camera)