Balkinization  

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

Managing Information (and Privilege)

Ian Ayres

My coauthor, Jennifer Gerarda Brown, explains what we're about in our new book in the following post:

Let me take a stab at mapping out what Ian and I are going to try to accomplish over the next week. As Larry mentioned, we've just published Straightforward - which makes the argument that mobilizing heterosexual support is crucial to making progress on securing equal rights for gay, lesbian, and bisexual citizens. The book is
packed with advice about what people can do - on personal and public
levels.

But what we really want to stress here over the next week are a series of informational innovations that can promote equality in the military, in the boy scouts (and other discriminatory organizations), in marriage, and in the workplace. The Fair Employment mark fits right in with the theme of informational incrementalism. By certifying one piece of information - that a business does not discriminate - we
might be able to induce a substantial number of employers to privately opt into
ENDA, a proposed federal statute that Congress has been unwilling to
enact.

The first chapter of our book discusses how we might set out to manage heterosexual privilege. We highlight three approaches: exploiting, renouncing, and disabling privilege. We also suggest informational strategies for implementing each
approach. We'll try to suggest factors that counsel allies to speak out specifically as heterosexuals, and others that suggest it's better to leave sexual orientation ambiguous.

Over the next week, you'll see the way our proposals attempt to harness the support of heterosexual allies, and the important role that information plays in that process. It shouldn't surprise the readers of this blog that managing information turns out to be a powerful way to manage privilege.


Comments:

Post a Comment

Older Posts
Newer Posts
Home