There's been a lot of talk here lately about "privilege", so it may be useful to define it ...

[cinnabonbon]

19. This is a fascinating discussion. :)

I agree with your first paragraph. One side of being privileged is having the luxury to be blissfully ignorant about how unfairly people are treated, because it doesn't happen to someone they know. I mean, why should it cross a person's mind to seek out knowledge about something they doesn't even know exist? It's when people tell them that it exists that it's important for them to listen.

I think you can argue that NF can fall under both, too! It simply depend on your point of view. But even so, ableism and the more specific definition you used earlier have the same goal in common. I think there might be a possibility to find very good allies on the ableism movement if you'd ever need it. There's more about ableism vs disablism vs lookism on wiki, if you're curious. (I personally have a hard time telling them apart sometimes.)

Anyhow, when it comes to talk about who is privileged in society and who isn't, what it boils down to is trying to put words to a certain oppression. People with NF and similar conditions have historically been treated like second class citizens, right? Hell, I think that the US had "ugly laws" for a long time that said that people with disfigurements weren't allowed in public. So no matter how you spin it, I think you can safely say that people who aren't conventionally attractive or suffer from something like this is definitely treated differently in society. Most of the reasons for that is because people are ignorant about the condition, I think. That's where some of the stereotypes come from too. Like the one that implies that people with certain issues can't do a job, which is clearly based on bullsh*t.

Thank you for the interesting discussion, Chaz. I am always interested in knowing more. It sucks that it's hard to find doctors who are up to date on the condition. I am sad to say that it's not uncommon to have ignorant doctors. My mother has a rather rare problem too, and whenever she needs to go to her doctor, she feels like she has to 'educate' him instead of him doing his research first. Very annoying!