Feminists will often cite ‘male privilege’ as evidence for the existence of ‘patriarchy’ or at a minimum, women’s relatively disadvantaged state in the West today. (Amp at Alas compiled one of the more notable male privilege checklists.) Most gynocentric feminists ignore the roster of equally valid female privileges.
Here is my list of such privileges, updated from a comment I left some time ago over at Thinking Girl’s.
By “privileges”, I simply mean areas of life where women in the West have it better than men. In other words, “male disprivilege = female privilege” (and vice versa). There does not seem to be universal agreement about this usage. Some people apparently draw a distinction between “relative advantage” and “unearned benefit which the group shouldn’t have.” (Daran, as usual, had an excellent review of the issue in one of his Creative Destruction posts.)
I have reservations about the term. I use it here primarily as a rebuttal to those who DO use the term and inaccurately assert that in gender, “privilege” is a one-way street.
BTW, I phrased this in the first person the same way Amp phrased his for men, although I’m not female. I believe Amp used this approach not just because he’s male, but to induce some recognition of privilege among the bearers of that privilege, and I use the device similarly here.
As a woman …
1. I have a much lower chance of being murdered than a man.
2. I have a much lower chance of being driven to successfully commit suicide than a man.
3. I have a lower chance of being a victim of a violent assault than a man.
4. I have probably been taught that it is acceptable to cry.
5. I will probably live longer than the average man.
6. Most people in society probably will not see my overall worthiness as a person being exclusively tied to how high up in the hierarchy I rise.
7. I have a much better chance of being considered to be a worthy mate for someone, even if I’m unemployed with little money, than a man.
8. I am given much greater latitude to form close, intimate friendships than a man is.
9. My chance of suffering a work-related injury or illness is significantly lower than a man’s.
10. My chance of being killed on the job is a tiny fraction of a man’s.
11. If I shy away from fights, it is unlikely that this will damage my standing in my peer group or call into question my worthiness as a sex partner.
12. I am not generally expected to be capable of violence. If I lack this capacity, this will generally not be seen as a damning personal deficiency.
13. If I was born in North America since WWII, I can be almost certain that my genitals were not mutilated soon after birth, without anesthesia.
14. If I attempt to hug a friend in joy, it’s much less likely that my friend will wonder about my sexuality or pull away in unease.
15. If I seek a hug in solace from a close friend, I’ll have much less concern about how my friend will interpret the gesture or whether my worthiness as a member of my gender will be called into question.
16. I generally am not compelled by the rules of my sex to wear emotional armor in interactions with most people.
17. I am frequently the emotional center of my family.
18. I am allowed to wear clothes that signify ‘vulnerability’, ‘playful openness’, and ’softness’.
19. I am allowed to BE vulnerable, playful, and soft without calling my worthiness as a human being into question.
20. If I interact with other people’s children — particularly people I don’t know very well — I do not have to worry much about the interaction being misinterpreted.
21. If I have trouble accommodating to some aspects of gender demands, I have a much greater chance than a man does of having a sympathetic audience to discuss the unreasonableness of the demand, and a much lower chance that this failure to accommodate will be seen as signifying my fundamental inadequacy as a member of my gender.
22. I am less likely to be shamed for being sexually inactive than a man.
23. From my late teens through menopause, for most levels of sexual attractiveness, it is easier for me to find a sex partner at my attractiveness level than it is for a man.
24. My role in my child’s life is generally seen as more important than the child’s father’s role.
There are many good links to read on the topic of male and female privilege, in addition to the ones listed at the top. Sweating Through Fog put together this female privilege list, with an emphasis on the important difference in the role violence plays in men’s and women’s lives. Interestingly, Women in Higher Education editor Mary Dee Wenniger wrote this female privilege checklist for WIHE, which prompted this somewhat off-target rebuttal by Rachel Edidin. And of course, Daran has written extensively about privilege, which you can read here and in the links listed at the end of that post.
Edidin’s response is hilarious: she takes a list which says “women don’t have everything so bad after all” and turns it into a desperate: “NO! WE DO HAVE EVERYTHING SO BAD! WE DO!! WE DO!!!” (Is it rude to suggest that a certain personality type is attracted to feminism because it provides them with endless reasons to act like an indignant, self-righteous jerk?)
And how much of Mary Dee Wenninger’s list is just an expression of female chauvinism?
“I am not ashamed to ask for others’ perspectives on an issue.” (Golly, women sure are open-minded! Unlike men…)
“I am not ashamed to admit that the decisions I make reflect my personal values.” (Golly, women sure are honest! Unlike men…)
“I am not afraid to create and maintain honest relationships with others.” (Golly, women sure are wonderful! Unlike men…)
It’s odd. Asking for other perspectives, admitting that one’s decisions reflect one’s values and creating honest relationships don’t really seem like gendered behaviors that women have a monopoly on. (Also: I can be proud of the skill I have worked to develop at stretching limited financial resources. Wha? Only women do this?)
I think she should have added to her list: “I can claim all virtues to be the province of my own sex and openly mock and bash the other sex but never be called sexist.”
But that would’ve brought-up too many ugly questions.
Firstly, allow me to state that I am impressed that you were able to mention the difference in the potential murder, assault and suicide rates against female without mocking, diminishing or denying the occurrences. It must have been very difficult to do.
That said, while I think some of the items are fair, I generally dislike such lists. It is not a matter of whether or not these things can or do occur, but that each person’s experiences are different and unique. All it takes to bring the checklist into question is for a single person not to fit into the paradigm set by the list. That is the flaw of the white privilege checklist, one of the many flaws of the male privilege checklist and the problem with female privilege checklists.
This is not to say that the items on such lists should not be addressed, only that such lists are essentially just points of antagonism. No one is going to look at such lists and think, “Oh, how true! My life is so much better than everyone else! I’m a horrible person and I should be ashamed! I’m so disgusting!” which was essentially the point of the white privilege and male privilege checklists. Granted, I do not think yours was done to inspire those kinds of sentiments, but I do think that it could make many women feel that way, and I do not want to cause any female to feel ashamed, disgusted or hate herself for any reason, particularly based on something that might not apply to her.
I hope that was not too critical, but having seen how these kinds of things can cause a lot of hurt I just really do not like them.
TS: I think most women are intelligent enough to see through these lists. Indeed, normal women do not see themselves as victims and they increasingly see most feminist rhetoric as self-indulgent, self-exonerative hypocrisy.
I mean, come on: they take the worst 5% of men and use them to make broad indictments against how destructive masculinity is, then they take the achivements of the topmost 5% of men to charge all men with having unfair privilege. Any redeeming points of masculinity are said to be human qualities which men do not exclusively possess, but any good qualities of femininity are items which men should desperately learn if the stupid lugs knew what was good for them.
What a joke.
I’ve come to disavow such lists, even the one I put together. Leftists use privilege rhetoric not for analysis and insight, but to castigate those who hold differing views. See my views here.
Still I have to admit I had a lot of fun writing my own list. My favorites are:
13. If I get slaughtered as part of some atrocity, people will be especially outraged and will call particular attention to the fact I was slaughtered. When others are slaughtered, it isn’t quite as upsetting.
…
17. If I see someone else being attacked, I’m not expected to risk my own safety to defend them. It’s OK for me to wait for others to intervene, and it’s also OK for me to criticize others if they don’t.
…
21. I can get real nasty when someone makes me mad, and call them ugly, a loser, a nerd, a geek, a disgusting creep, a revolting little worm, a worthless piece of garbage, a scum bag, a wimp, a pervert, a jerk-off, an old fart, or a fat slob. After all, I have the right not to be treated meanly at work, and the right not to hear harsh things that might make me uncomfortable. I have legal recourse if that right is not respected, and I have the right to make this perfectly clear on my job interview.
Definitely right about the reply to Mary’s list was off the mark. So hugs, people opening doors, offering to help, and not *having* to fight are actually disadvantages…right.
I’m socially anxious and I don’t perceive hugs as bad. I’m not anti-social. I perceive handshakes as formal (work, acquaintances, strangers), or demeaning (same as calling me male, usually from family who knows me from way back since birth).
Here’s a few more points.
* (Possibly UK only) I will receive far more, despite paying in far less, from the state retirement pension system, than a man.
* I can provoke arguments with strangers, knowing that if it turns violent it will not be me that gets a beating.
* If I marry, but the marriage fails, my obligations to my spouse effectively end entirely, while his obligations to me continue indefinitely.
* While in all other fields, an individual’s rights must be balanced against the rights of others, my “right to choose”, whether in the field of pregnancy or in work/childrearing, is regarded as absolute.
* If I keep my partner in a constant state of fear of upsetting me, this will not be regarded as abusive.
* If I put down, scold or insult my partner in front of others, this will not be regarded as abusive. If he objects and an argument ensues, I will not be regarded as having started it.
* If my relationship ends, I may broadcast my side of the story as widely as I can in as biased and selective manner as I wish, slag my ex-partner off in front of others and/or reveal intimate secrets, without being regarded as dishonourable. My ex-partner may not, so my version of the story will be the only one anyone hears.
* I can demand presents. If I receive a present that doesn’t please me I may express my displeasure openly and at length, while a man must be grateful for receiving any kind of present at all.
* I can end any argument by becoming upset or pretending to do so.
* If my sex is underrepresented in any field of endeavour, I can expect public campaigns to increase my sex’s representation, but if my sex is overrepresented I can expect the reverse not to happen.
TS, I confess I’m scratching my head a little at exactly how you meant this. Taking it at face value, I would just have to say that it wasn’t difficult. (Perhaps you were making a droll comment about other feminists who acknowledge how men are hurt by sexism, but whose acknowledgment seems accompanied by eye-rolling and derision?)
I understand your points about how these lists can be potentially alienating. I think there are people who wield these rhetorical devices in precisely that manner (and then will declaim, “Don’t make this all about you!” when you take offense). But I don’t think everyone involved in these sorts of discussions do this. I do think there’s merit in understanding how certain sex-related (and race-related) expectations affect our perceptions in ways we may be unaware of, and lists like these can be helpful in that manner. I don’t agree at all that if a single person’s experience diverges from the list, it invalidates it.
On the other hand, I completely empathize with your overall ambivalence about ‘privilege’ discussions. It seems to me that in most areas, the problem is not that the “privileged” group has the “privilege,” the problem is that the “disprivileged” group does not have the “privilege.” I tend to agree that framing these issues in terms of “privilege” instead of “disprivilege” is an act of rhetorical aggression, designed to puncture the complacency of the white middle class male and to unify those who are not white middle class males against a (mis-)identified “Other.” There are, in my view, some legitimate reasons to want to “puncture the complacency” of white middle class males, provided it isn’t done in a disparaging manner. But making “white males” into the new “Other” can’t help but to be divisive at a time when unity is needed to confront the intensifying assault against middle and lower class living standards and political power.
Speaking of living standards, I heard gas price was going up, like way up, its at 1.50$ a litre here, but it might go up to 2.50$ or even 5$ before 2009…I can only imagine the economic repercussions. I hope my brother was wrong.
And yes, privilege list can have uses. I also don’t think a single example disproves the list, since I didn’t fit pretty much 90% of the male privilege one, yet that didn’t disprove the list.
It was a sarcastic remark about how the author of the male privilege checklist seemed to have a little trouble writing about such issues without the “it really doesn’t hurt if you’re male anyway” tone. Of course, such sarcasm usually works best when a person typically expresses emotion, which I do not, so I am not surprised you were confused.
They may be helpful in organizing the issues a person may want to raise, but I do not think you need a list to facilitate that kind of discussion. Think of it this way: if I wanted to tell you about the flaws in your character, would it be more helpful to create a list of your flaws and simply present it you and demand that you agree or would it be better to actually discuss the problems I am having with your behavior and actions with you?
I did not say that it invalidated it, only that it would bring the list into question. The purpose of the list is to show all the privileges afforded to a certain group, i.e. a member of that group will benefit from everything on that list. However, if one person benefits from only a couple of items off the list, then it seems reasonable to ask why that occurred. What will likely happen is that one will find more people who only benefit from a handful of the items listed and that these people are in the majority.
I do not know how one would “puncture the complacency” of any group without doing so in a disparaging manner. The very notion that one group has the right to do this to another group will inevitably lead to disparaging tactics. This is essentially about deconstructing another group’s identity and I can say from experience that there is no nice way to deconstruct (i.e. destroy) a person’s identity or sense of self. It is by its very nature malicious and harmful since it nothing less than siege tactics being used on a social and psychological level.
Well, the male privilege list I saw presumes fatherhood, being in a long term relationship and/or married, being middle-class or higher (not working class or unemployed), being white, being of average looks, not being fat, not being too skinny, not looking too girly, not being stay-at-home, being heterosexual, and not being trans or intersex.
Thus it might be more accurate to say that “in near-optimal conditions” a male might benefit from many points listed there.
Being queer, celibate, childless, working class or unemployed, black, already makes nearly all the points not applying.
Just my being non-normative looking and acting made me an outcast, and an outcast doesn’t benefit much from male privilege, let me tell you (when I presented as male).
Others:
-When I get married, there is a very good chance that I will be given the option to quit my job and live off my husband’s income without having my femininity questioned.
-If I become pregnant, I and I alone choose whether to terminate the pregnancy or have the baby. As a result, I can be reasonably certain that I will never be held financially responsible for a child I didn’t want to have, and that I will never have my unborn child aborted without my consent.
-Many employers, including the government, have policies specifically designed to privilege me over male candidates.
-If my husband is unfaithful to me or abuses me, I will receive sympathy unmixed with derision.
-I am significantly more likely to graduate from college than I would be if I were a man.
-Moderately impaired social skills are not a serious impediment to my ability to achieve romantic and sexual fulfillment.
-Although I am every bit as likely as a man to allow my sex drive to compromise my judgment, I will never be accused of thinking with my clitoris.
-I can expect to pay a significantly lower premium for car insurance than a man with a similar driving record would.
-If I commit a crime, I will likely be treated much more leniently in a court of law than would a man who had committed the same crime.
-Men are expected to buy me drinks, meals, flowers, and jewelry in exchange for a chance to spend time with me.
-Because I am not expected to be my family’s primary breadwinner, I have the luxury of prioritizing factors other than salary when choosing a career path.
-I have the privilege of being unaware of my female privilege.
While I agree that it is often used in a disparaging manner, TS, I don’t agree that this is a natural consequence of the method itself (i.e. making a list). Ideally, participants in the discussion are behaving in good faith, and the list serves as evidence in support of the larger point which can be critiqued, amended, validated, rebutted, etc. An enunciated list such as the ‘male privilege checklist’ is, in a way, a refreshingly tangible alternative to playing verbal whack-a-mole with vaguely defined concepts such as “patriarchy.”
The problem comes when participants are not behaving in good faith, and are very much interested in having their views heard, but have little interest in listening to and respecting (not necessarily agreeing with) opposing views.
Is “deconstructing another group’s identity” always “by its very nature malicious”? What if Group A’s identity is partially dependent on the subservience of Group B? In the South, there were “slaves” and “slave owners” … wasn’t deconstructing the identity of “slave owner” part and parcel of human progress? In short, wouldn’t the legitimacy of any ‘deconstruction project’ be dependent on the validity of the underlying impetus for the project?
BTW, TS, you’re correct in thinking that I’m not trying to make a woman feel badly about herself by reading my list above. I’m not even trying to ‘refute’ Amp’s male privilege checklist. But I do believe that many women — even those supposedly focused on gender as a primary topic of analysis — are genuinely unaware of many of the very tangible advantages that accrue to females over males. (And others sadly do fall into the ‘bad faith’ mode and blithely ignore such advantages even though they’re aware of them.)
Schala: The non-universality of what are supposed to be universal ‘male privileges’ is indeed a significant problem with some of the items on Amp’s list. I have less of a problem with items that he qualifies appropriately (i.e. “If I’m heterosexual…,” “If I have children …,” etc.).
Like Schala says disproving a single point does not disprove the entire list. Even though there are some pretty serious errors in Amp’s male privilege checklist:
9. If I choose not to have children, my masculinity will not be called into question.
Plain wrong. It is true that a woman’s value is called into question if she does not have children but to claim that this is unique to women is just sexist. I’ve been asked countless times why I don’t have children yet (and oddly enough most the poeople pestering me were women).
24. Even if I sleep with a lot of women, there is no chance that I will be seriously labeled a “slut,” nor is there any male counterpart to “slut-bashing.”
Obviously the writer of this list is unfamiliar with the terms “giggalo”, “womanizer”, “player”, and the classic “dog”.
29. If I’m not conventionally attractive, the disadvantages are relatively small and easy to ignore.
So having a hard time getting into a relationship and low self esteem are “relatively small disadvantages” that are “easy to ignore” when it comes men but when it comes to women its a serious crisis? Yeah…
and
43. If I am heterosexual, it’s incredibly unlikely that I’ll ever be beaten up by a spouse or lover. (More).
I think this is item based on what is becoming more and more evident to be biased statistics. And if you go the link by clicking on more there is further discussion…but look at this:
* * *PLEASE NOTE* * *
Discussion on this post is reserved for feminists and pro-feminists only. If you don’t thinik you’d be considered a feminist by Amp, you’d probably be better off posting comments on the same post at Creative Destruction.
So make a male privilege checklist but then limit discussion of certain items of to feminists and profeminists only. That’s some real open dialgue there folks…
Now this by no means prove the entire list wrong (in fact there are plenty of items I fully agree with) I just had to point those things out. I don’t think this female privilege checklist was created out of spite of the many male privilege checklists out there but its good to know that someone is trying to pull all of the skeletons out of the closet and not just the ones that fit a certain ideology.
Danny: The only thing missing from Amp’s list is: “I have the privilege of being an evil bastard.”
In most instance the participants in the discussion are not behaving in good faith. In most instances the creators and supporters of the list think they are right and the subject of the list must acknowledge that. There is no critiquing, amending, validating or rebutting, at least none allowed by the subject. However, let us assume the participants are acting in good faith. Is not the situation still that the subject must accept the premise of the list, that even if most of the items lists might not be true at least some are, regardless of the subject’s experiences that may suggest otherwise? Is not the difference really just between being directly disparaging and being disparaging with class?
In other words, does the end justify the means? That is a question that I do not believe I can answer. However, I can say that when people decided to challenge slavery they did not sit down peacefully and discuss the issue at the dinner table. Amid all the other political issues of the day slavery ended up being the breaking point for the slave-owning South and this nation went to war. Granted, slavery might not have been resolved any other way, but the result was that a lot of innocent people, including white Southerns, lost their lives or had them destroyed. The Irony: it is likely because of the way the war happened and the anger the Southerns felt that led to the creation of the Jim Crow laws and the continued tense racial relations in that part of the country. So it technically did not actually address the racist sentiments that led to and perpetuated black slavery; it just stopped slavery in the South, leaving all the racist sentiments that existed before intact and ready to be further compounded by the lingering anger from the Civil War.
That is not to say that stopping slavery was not a good thing, only that it was as harmless or helpful to Southerns as people may be inclined to believe.
That may be true, however, I do not think keeping a running tally of those advantages is particularly helpful, especially since the lists rarely include any facts, evidence or explanation of the items. I am not saying that the intent is necessarily bad, just that the method does not do promote what you want it to. It would be better to simply write in detail about the issues on the list. At least that way the evidence is there to prove your point.
That may be true, but that is not the premise of the list. The premise of the list is that all males benefit from all points on the list, whether or not they personally experience them or have experienced the contrary. However, if it only takes a couple of differences to make nearly all the points not apply, then either the items on the list are too broadly defined or the premise of the list (i.e. it is a “male” privilege checklist) is likely invalid.
This discussion of privileges is closely related to the recent posts that discuss the question of whether feminism considers women morally superior.
The last privilege in the original male privilege list is really the most important one. The claim is that men have privilege, and that they are completely unaware of it. The real point that feminists are trying to make is that privilege always blinds people. It means that they have no real knowledge of the pain that other suffer. That is how feminists use privilege. The request to “check your privilege” is a request to admit that you are blind to certain realities, and should be in a subservient position in the conversation because you are blind to human suffering and injustice. Feminists use privilege as an amulet, to ward off differing ideas from the “privileged” ones.
It is all based on fundamental assumptions that leftists make about epistemic knowledge. The claim – almost never questioned – is that there is a direct relationship between privilege and knowledge of the world. The claim is that privilege always creates a moral blindness, and lack of privilege makes the truth of injustice clear.
What is never admitted is that anger over “lack of privilege” or true oppression is very often not righteous anger, but bitterness and even blind rage. Just plain hatred, in other words. They never admit that very often privilege grants one the security to feel empathy.
That is why each and every feminist dispute always – always – turns into a discussion about the relative privilege of people that differ. Its is all so silly.
@ comment #18:
Its like aych said up in comment 3 about how they take the bad qualities of the worst 5% and try attribute them to all 100% of men but when they get caught they pull out the smokescreen of, “Just because you don’t have certain privileges doesn’t mean no man has them.” or the amulet that STF mentions in comment #19 (the accusation that anyone who disputes the privilege is obviously blinded by it).
And as for whether the items are too broad or the list is invalid I think whats happening is the people that make those lists make the items so broad that they invalidate the very list they are trying to make. I mean really some of those lists out there are one maybe two steps away from listing the ability to pee standing up as a male privilege.
STF,
Well, that assertion that privelege blinds you to privelege is a real double-bind for feminists, then isn’t it? That probably explains why there was a prohibition on non-feminist comment.
Poeple can be quite blind to their privelege though. A good friend and I were talking about infidelity, and she just could not see how female infidelity in marriage is so much more serious than male infidelity. She said the risk of STDs and emotional damage was the same. My point was that that much was true, but as a woman she was unaware of the damage only a woman can inflict, the infliction of a duty of care for someone else’s child – legal obligation. She simply had no idea that husbands are legally required to provide for all their wife’s bastards. She is the sort of person who would never have had any reason to think of such a thing; she is honest and equality-minded, so fobbing off someone else’s get had never occurred to her. She was dumbfounded, much to her credit, I guess. Blindness.
But then on the other side there are those women, like Kiuku, that blame men for not wanting to care for other men’s children, in a way women are never expected to pick up the burden of other women’s children.
We are supposed to buy the idea that men are ignorant to own their privileges because they have so much of it, but women don’t have any privileges simply because they say they don’t.
Pffft. The self-serving, self-exculpatory nature of this argument is so plain on its face that one needs to be willfully blind to not see it. I know 7 year olds who would instantly spot such industrial-strength hyprocrisy.
Jim,
I’m certainly not saying that privilege never blinds. Quite the contrary. I just dispute the assertion by feminists in particular, and leftists in general that privilege always blinds, and that there is a direct relationship between a person’s lack of privilege and their access to truth. Read any discussion between white feminists and WOC feminists to see how ridiculous it gets.
There is some value to these lists – they are a nice way of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, and seeing how the world looks from their perspective. That is a good thing, but their value is limited to that.
There is no valid reason to make any claim whatsoever about the value of a person, or their opinion, or their motives, based on a claim of privilege.
aych,
“I know 7 year olds who would instantly spot such industrial-strength hyprocrisy.”
Exactly. This is one of those things that are so obviously ridiculous that only academics and ideologues can believe in them.
STF,
I totally agree that it is self-serving nonsesne to claim that privelege always blinds – it is self-serving in two ways. For one thing, it simply serves as a way to shut critics of your position up. Also it serves to ignore the dependence of the flaming visionaries on priveleged people who have for the progress they claim.
Very often it is the priveleged poeple in society, like V.I Lenin or Thomas Jefferson, that see most clearly, that are the least blind to how unjust a society is and can see what to do to change that, however much they may fail in the execution.
So if women can ignore the fact that men GAVE them the vote, they get to claim that they “earned” or “won” the vote. Douyble pay-off – they get to sound heroic, and they get to slag men for having denied them the vote without thanking them for giving the vote (See female moral superiority)
This was worked out originally in the black nationalist community, and feminists picked up on it. The Civil Rights Movement would have died in its cradle in the face of real, concerted repression. The KKK and lynching campaign are laughable compared to the Gulag or the laogai.
Aych,
You really don’t get it, do you? Write 1,000 times on the chalkboard:
“I say so, and I’m the Mommy.”
And yet you seem to think you are entitled to talk back. Such an obvious example of privelege.
Amp’s list: “9. If I choose not to have children, my masculinity will not be called into question.”
Danny: “Plain wrong. It is true that a woman’s value is called into question if she does not have children but to claim that this is unique to women is just sexist. I’ve been asked countless times why I don’t have children yet (and oddly enough most the poeople pestering me were women).”
This is a very good point. Try going for promotion at work as an unmarried, childless man in your thirties or forties, and see how far you get.
Jim:
So if women can ignore the fact that men GAVE them the vote, they get to claim that they “earned” or “won” the vote. Douyble pay-off – they get to sound heroic, and they get to slag men for having denied them the vote without thanking them for giving the vote (See female moral superiority)
That would be the selective rewritting of history that feminist love to do (I guess its a hobby kinda like knitting or something…). According to them women have had to fight valiantly against the patriarchy for every right they have because no man has helped them.
@ comment 27
And one more thing about that Jim. Back during the reign of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette they didn’t conceive a child until after several years. The court talked bad about both the king and queen. It was sexist that they prefered a son over a daughter as an heir but the stigma of being childless haunts both parents in different ways (the court thought the queen had failed her duty to produce an heir and a king who had no heir was weak and unfit to rule, which often led to attempts at taking the throne in many monarchies).
And notice how feminists will walk the tightrope of saying that the queen had it worse while not wanting to start up the Oppression Olympics (unless they think can win of course).
On the re-writing of history: I’ve often noticed that in this creative re-writing of history, men get little to no credit for things like helping to enact the Civil Rights act of 1965 which outlawed sex discrimination or helping to organize the Seneca Falls convention of 1848. The Roe v Wade decision in 1973? Celebrated endlessly as a landmark decision, no mention that it was made by a “patriarchal” Supreme Court to provide a legal basis for a medical procedure developed by the “patriarchal” medical establishment. And on and on like that.
Such revisionism steams well beyond the river of the self-serving and past the estuary of the self-deluding way out into uncharted regions of the ocean of mendacity.
I find the list fairly solid. Although I had initial doubts about #11 and 12, because they points out that violence tends to be used by men, which is one of the bad things about men, I realized that that doesn’t really matter. In my own life, I’ve had to acquiesce or back down because I’m not willing or able to fight, and I’m seen as a coward or wimp because of it. I find the expectation that I should want to fight disgusting.
The only problem I see is #2, that more men complete suicide than women. I’m not sure that’s a sign of privilege because the numbers are accounted for by the fact that men just use more lethal methods (typically firearms) than women (typically pills). It’s possible that men situations are actually worse, so they really want to die, while women are using pills as a cry for help*, but I don’t think that’s proven.
* http://www.slate.com/id/2090424/
Welcome to the blog, MaleAshley. Great link!
I agree that some of the ‘female privileges/male privileges’ are unproven, including the premise behind the ‘driven to commit suicide’ one. Given that men are eight times more likely to succeed in killing themselves in any given attempt (derived from statistics here), it did not seem unreasonable to believe that they perceive their circumstances to be more dire or hopeless (as a group) than women who attempt suicide. Not everyone would necessarily agree.
Aych,
One valid aspect of the blindness to privelege trope is that you do after a time start to take things for granted, and then forget they are anything other than “just the way nature works”. Libertarians assume people will eb law-abiding, even in the absence of any govenrment to enforce laws, or f*cking make laws in the first place, women’s groups assume that money just spontaneously arises in goevernment bug=dgets when they get hold of it for DV shelters, so men can just go get their own even if it was mostly men who put it into the budgets in the first place, and so on, civilians assume that no one will invade, or that the military will obey thier laws, and in a way, that is good, to an extent.
Jim: All the best lies have a particle of truth to them. No one’s saying that privileged people don’t feel entitled to certain things.
But if there was ever a group of people in human history who felt entitled to heightened levels of deference explicitly on the basis of the social position obtaining to the circumstances of their sex, it would probably be a lot of modern-era feminists by a longshot. They act shocked and dismayed when a man so much as cross-examines them, for crying out loud.
Very Victorian. It’s like the pathetic bitching about the way Hillary was treated – like an equal in the political process, with every vulnerability exploited. People didn’t treat this strong confident woman lie some fainting damsel – how misogynist!
I think the complaints about Hillary’s treatment by the media have SOME validity to them– but ONLY some and a lot of her supporters way overplayed the gender card far beyond its usefulness (sometimes rather thuggishly), apparently never even thinking about the implications of their own claims. (If her campaign was fatally undermined by sexism, wouldn’t this also have killed her in a general election against McCain anyway? Why didn’t Edwards defeat her earlier on? How was she elected to the Senate so easily in earlier years?) The facts are: she ran a pretty dishonest campaign, made a number of strategic blunders, and some of her enemies in the media are, frankly, hostile to the point of being crazy, and that forms the core of the “sexism” argument such as you see parroted endlessly over at Salon.com.
However, what never gets acknowledged were the advantages that Hillary faced in the campaigns on account of being a woman: Never being called a coward for failing to serve in ‘Nam, for instance (Kerry was pummelled with lies to that effect in 2004). Being more able to customize her appearance and hair to different audiences. Being able to make gender-based appeals for solidarity in a fashion that male politicans could never do (most men don’t vote for male candidates because they are male candidates. Though, feminists often DO seem obsessed with the sex of a candidate while voting. Projection, perhaps?) And, oh yes, being married to a former president and having his entire political machine at her disposal.
Lies from politicians don’t bug me. The constant gender-based scapegoating from Hillary’s base of aging white boomer women is, frankly, more disappointing. The significant strain of “It’s women’s turn, so we’re voting on the basis of genitals” is just so retrograde.
Danny at #15: You’re right that some items on Amp’s list are just plain wrong. I’m surprised that he still has this one listed:
Apparently he’s never had to shop for car insurance.
ballgame: facts and logic are optional if you want to paint women as victims.
You know, when a woman gets a diamond engagement ring, it symbolizes her subservient status as a slave or something. Even though she loves the ring and presumably wanted to accept it, she’s horribly damaged by it on some abstract level unbeknownst to her. It’s all very VERY oppressive for her, no doubt. The man, on the other hand, is so besotted with wealth that no diamonds are given to him, making him a kind of evil overlord cackling on a throne. Or something.
Oh but he’s definitely exploiting her in the transaction somehow, though. Giving a diamond on bended knee? Oppression. No mistake about that. You just have to adjust your eyes in order to see the oppression because it’s always there, even though the explanation might seem completely lame or loopy.
It’s kind of tiresome to look at the world in terms of privilege or lack thereof. I judge somebody on their character and rationality.
Jennifer in an ideal world you wold be spot on but in this day and age I’d settle for people to stop equating
male = privilege = oppressor and
female = unprivilege = oppressed.
I am not certain that is necessarily a result of blindness due to privilege. Most people assume the world is as they experience it. That seems to be rather natural, whether the person’s life is fantastic or horrible. I do the those who experience the latter have a greater awareness of the differences in society, but it does not seem to be as all-encompassing as it is usually presented. I agree though that people who shift from one position to another can easily lose sight of the fact that they did make a shift and that it occurred over time rather than happening instantly.
STF #19,
yeah, and they almost never think intersectionality to its logical end. When talking to a feminist in real life I usually state prior to a real argument that a) standpoint epistemology is an oxymoron and everything that flows from it, like privilege, is conceptually empty and only useful as a dialectic and political device a b) I’m happy to discuss gender justice, even feminist ideology, based on mutually accessible facts. If s/he keeps insisting on the truth of his/her axioms I’ll end the discussion there and then. There’s no point in talking to someone who wants to teach people feminism 101 without having down epistemology 101.
That’s also why I’ve stopped reading a lot of feminist blogs and generally lost most of my interest in feminist research – feminism is a political movement and as such needs to be approached/confronted politically, not logically.
HI Danny. I can’t seem to copy and paste to quote you here, but my view is that you do need to acknowledge the uneven dynamics of the social system, and yet not make them into the issue that dominates your life. I, as a female, have been deemed irrational, over and over again, when I tried to bring anybody’s attention to some workplace bullying I was suffering. I was forced to suck it in, and pretend that the world was basically rational, whilst at the same time knowing that a lot of people were using my gender against me to cover their crimes. Now, I could see all of this, and yet not feel contempt (or pity) so much because of people’s ‘immorality’, but due to their lack of rationality — ie, their low level of perception and logic that would enable such an obscene and ridiculous situation to be perpetuated. After all, it is clear that I am not hysterical or unintelligent — yet this is the brand they wanted to make stick. How can one not feel sorry for that?
If the privileged are blind to their privileges, then that might explain why Feminists tend to be blind to the privileges that women have.
my view is that you do need to acknowledge the uneven dynamics of the social system, and yet not make them into the issue that dominates your life.
Jennifer I think what happens is that people notice the uneven dynamics of the social system and in their efforts to “smash the patriarchy” or “prevent the matriarchy” they do allow said dynamics to dominate their lives. Kinda like how Bruce Wayne was so fixiated on stopping crime in Gotham that over time he began to spend more time as Batman than Bruce Wayne. They become so consumed by their fight that they lose perspective and in extreme cases they become the very monsters they want to stop.
Pat: like I said before, I think it is unhelpful to see things in terms of privileges. To me the question is: Does the other person act like a rational human being, or not? Could I trust them not to undermine me in an emergency? Would they make a good friend?
In answer to Danny: Yes, I think we have a real problem in society in terms of identity politics. We have replaced rational behaviour and humanism with the idea that we just need to find our “tribe” and start fighting for them. But this approach ultimately undermines human dignity and creates unnecessary stress.
My own view is that is somebody is of the other tribe or team, and treats me with respect then that is all that I could ask for. However, a lot of the time this doesn’t occur, and it boils down to the fact that it is a current cultural value to believe that so long as you are fighting for your “tribe” or team, anything goes.
I agree with you about the potential pitfalls of “team-ism,” Jennifer. It’s impossible to define a legitimate “in group” without creating an illegitmate “out group,” so any identity politics based on immutable personal characteristics is inherently problematic.
Yes. Team-ism, as you put it, is also immature — and suits an immature level of personal development. In Lacanian terms it equates to the Imaginary register (the register of ideology, associations, emotions and illusionary wholeness) rather than the emotionally mature register of the Symbolic.
Humans are naturally very territorial. They like to stake out a little ‘claim’ and then defend it against intruders.
This is a very _human_ quality; both men and women have it in spades, although they may express it differently.
The question then becomes, in my mind, which is the greater imposition? Territorialness in terms of work-environment or home-environment?
Men may disparage the competency of women; but women disparage the ability of men to ‘bond’–in other words, they don’t think men capable of doing the work of family to the same degree or, often, _any_ degree. Women have staked out their territory–family–and guard it. Often men have the feeling of being visitors in their own homes, just passing through with little impact, marginalized and somewhat unwanted guests. (I wonder if this arbitrary exclusion from the work of bonding is what gives a lot of chauvanists their passion? Being human, and territorial, I imagine they resent being excluded from the territory of family _and_ encroached upon in the territories that remain to them. Like a Native tribe, signing away even more of their way of life and identity with each treaty.)
Again, back to the question. Which is worse? Excluded from work or from family?
Since work reflects our necessities and family reflects our soul; work enables us to live, family gives us a reason to live–and because most men would give up work for more time with their families. I believe it is worse to be excluded, in a fundemental way, from family.
Excluded from work or from family? Which is worse?
Which is worse for you — if I extract each of your teeth one by one without anaesthetic, or if I set your hair on fire and stand and watch?
False options.
Jenifer,
Ref: #42 – now no one can say to you that you cannot understand what men experience when it comes to DV, or sexual harassment, or sexual assualt, or depression, or various kinds of work-related illness such as Agent Orange contamination or PTSD, or how the family law system is rigged against fahters, because you have expereinced basically the same kind of treatment.
Big wooden stake through the heart of standpoint epistemology.
HI Jim
Yeah, I understand a lot of that. Or at least see how that happens. I think people need to start standing up for themselves in a way that doesn’t blame another group as powerless or more so than they are. I think we need to start from scratch and create a society that demands human dignity.
Good luck with that last project…..check with me later for some suggections on body armor and security services. There are a lot of damaged people out there in positions of power in governmemt and academia who want exactly the iopposite of that. You can ask Ren about the shit she catches for advocating what you are talking about, or various black “conservatives” about the same thing in their community. Victimhood has paid off very handsomely for a lot of identity pimps.
Maybe dawn is breaking, and identity politics are starting to lose their power. Maybe Obama will win.
HI Jim
Yes, I was also a victim of identity politics, actually. Think about it. I’m a white person from Africa. Some Australian whites think I had no right.
So I understand where you are coming from.
This one could be a fight to the death. It is worth the fight.
You had no right, what – to be in Africa, thoough of course they have a perect right to be in Australia. i suppose they would think that I asa white person have no right to be in America, but then why would a navajo, whose ancestors got to Arizona about two centuries before the Spanish did, have any right to be there? Or the Lakota – what right do they have to be on the Great Plains, which by the way they claim as their eternal homeland, when they only got their in the 1700s, and on horses they didn’t have until the whites showed up? (Answer: the same right as anyone – armed force, permission to enter, whatever.)
Identity politics is bad enough, but when it is based on historical illiteracy, it just makes you lose all respect for the people who pimp it.
Right Jim
Unfortunately these people are not entirely culturally illiterate — they just have a weird way of figuring things out. From what I can gather, they base their obscure logic on a ratio of numbers. For example, Australia is predominantly a white country, therefore it is okay for whites to live here, but Africa is predominantly a black continent, so it is not okay for whites to live there, unless they give the Australians and Americans a very good explanation for themselves!
But the fact is, such Australians and Americans are very conceited and just want to control what other people can do. When I lived in Africa, I had a number of black friends. When I came to Australia, I was expected to immediately assimilate to this culture, with no delay, because so far as Australians were concerned I was “white”. So they have a really crude way of figuring things out. They don’t see that culture can radically change the way someone thinks. They don’t give you time to mourn what you have lost. There is no genuine interest in what you’ve been through. They just use you as an example to bounce off their own ‘anti-racist’ rhetoric. And their actual political or progressive social behaviour is often very lacking. They assume — because they were told — that I was way above having friends who were black. They think I must be squirming out of the hard facts if I tell them otherwise — but they, themselves, do not mingle with those of other colours (except sometimes in a condescending or artificial way). These people maintain, all the same, that I am their moral inferior because of where I came from.
I think this is a false analogy, personally.
To a vanishingly small minority of people, work is its own reward. To the rest, supporting a family is the reward of work.
Again, which is worse being excluded from work–or, more accurately, certain spheres of work–but not from the rewards of work or being excluded from the rewards of work but not from work?
I still can’t answer you on that TB. I think that it can be excruciatingly painful to be denied your own autonomy. A recent scientific survey has shown that being at the bottom of society can be so stressful that it undermines your intelligence.
As for myself, I have pretty much divorced myself from my family of origin, due to their abusiveness and determination to control me. This had to be done for my psychological health.
If women are at the bottom of ‘men’s society’ then can we see men at the bottom of ‘women’s society’?
It may be hard for you to see–having come from an atypical family structure in an aytypical society–but for most families in western nations, men loose their autonomy in the home. Women make the rules, as the joke goes.
It’s just that, no one has yet made this aspect of the personal, political or decided that government intervention should seek out equality for men in the home.
Finally, being seperate from ‘society’ or men’s society, rather, is not the same as being at the bottom of society. In fact the interesection between men’s and women’s societies can be very informative: when a woman in Victorian times was among men, she could expect a level of deference from men that rivals that of royalty. Even now we see echoes of this in the workplace; women must be treated better then men because they are affected more(without considering that men ‘blunt’ their emotions in the face of workplace bulling because they have less choice in the matter as primary providers.)
Hm. It is as you say, I don’t see it because of the atypicality of my situation. Actually, the culture I came from had a more similar attitude towards women to the Victorian attitude you describe. I would say that your description of things in your post above fits THAT society to a T. I was, for example, very surprised to find out that the education that the men received was not comparative to that received by the women, in their high schools. So, the men were taught basic skills, with an emphasis on developing them as soldiers and farmers. Women, however, were given a much more academic education. And yes, this was a culture that required the toughening up of men — often with the purpose of making them potential cannon fodder. Women were also toughened up but hardly to this degree.
However, I don’t see this dynamic WHATSOEVER in Australian culture. I’d say that when it comes to gender, there is greater equality here than in the US. That is so much for the homestead. However, in the workplace we have a vicious system of hystericising women (feminism is also less strong here than it seems to be in the US.)
How would a man be treated if he expressed the same concerns in the same manner as these ‘hysterical’ women?
See typhonblue everything is always worse for women at all times and for all things. Not that they want to play oppression olympics or anything. Its just that its always worse for women…
leta: I agree. In any situation, the woman is always worse-off and if the woman appears to be better-off materially, it’s a ruse to stop us from seeing how she’s worse-off on some abstract, immaterial, symbolic level.
For instance: If a man gives a pile of money to a woman, he’s trying to make her think she can’t earn money on her own– to make her easier to control!
To make her dependent!
To make her feel bad about her body!
Or something. Whatever the real reason is, it’s most certainly a nefarious one.
My comment was directed towards those who do see male/female relations in terms of privilege – particularly those who deem the privileged to be blind to their privilege, then view everyone but themselves as privileged.
That is probably be due to the difference between the imperial colony of Rhodesian which was focused on imperial control of the local population compared to the pioneering colony of Australia which was focused on survival against nature. Imperial rule requires a strong imperial presence of which the gender roles play their part. When simply trying to survive and establish a civilization from scratch, particular in a remote corner of the world, there’s little time for such social ‘niceties’.
I haven’t seen this much at all, where it is present it’s limited to the old men past their time who typically don’t hold the positions of authority. This could probably vary depending on the industry and type of workplace though.
I’m not sure less strong is how I’d describe it, but like most things political it’s certainly much less polarised.
HI Desipis
I have seen what I have said I have seen. As for the other comments here –I’m not sure that they are directed at me — but I’m not enthusiastic about a symbolic or material oppression olympics. What I want to do in life is to survive, to have a good time, to drink and spar and maybe go skydiving again (but not in winter). I see that all my old primary school friends are coming out of the woodwork, and most of them have children now. I’m not sure what to make of it. For my PhD I’m studing a black Zimbabwean who was so oppressed his brain burst (well he had a psychotic break as a teenager.) I’m married to a guy who is 20 years older than I, and who is a political radical.
Anyway, let me qualify what I have said about the seeming lack of presence for feminism for me here in Aus., that perhaps it just doesn’t serve me as well as it might because I require something that isn’t geared towards bolstering the rights of femininity?
By similar token, I am very direct in my speech, and I do hear many males gasping at me, when I speak in the same way as, I suppose, many men do. This (lack of femininity) is perceived as me overstepping my social boundaries (hence the gasps) and such overstepping is considered “hysterical”.
Ask Schala about the predjudices she’s faced in attempting to present as feminine.
When one gender tries to take on the characteristics of another, they experience resistance. People don’t like it when others play against their expectations: both women who act like men and men who act like women will experience backlash.
The question is, are women excluded from male domains more then men are excluded from female domains? Which sex experiences the greatest social flak from assuming cross-gender characteristics?
Pointing out that it’s often men who police other men isn’t useful: sometimes it’s the group that looses the most from the status quo that enforces it even more strongly–nobody wants to be a fool, so you pretend it’s a good deal and pound anyone who says(or shows) different.
I don’t know if men are excluded from female domains. Which female domains did you have in mind?
One of the things I am most grateful for, living in Australia, is that I get to learn boxing and martial arts combat. These were traditionally male preserves, and I doubt I would have had access to learning them in Rhodesia. Also, I find that the men in the gym are not macho in the sense that American male martial artists seemed to be when I met some of them online.
So, I feel pretty good about things at the level of leisure activities. However, if I had to join a typing pool, or become a nurse, or some other conventional female activity, then the women in those groups would no doubt eat me alive.
Stuff like men in nursing, that is 94% female. There is no movement, incentive etc for men to enlist as nurses. Heck, if you saw the movie Meet the Parents with Ben Stiller (aka Gaylord Focker – oh yeah they really picked the right name…), he gets shamed by everyone from his future wife’s family for not being a doctor, and being in nursing instead.
It’s a comedy, but it illustrates an attitude. Like it’s a stereotype that “no manly man” would be a nurse, actually choose to become one.
Then you have incentives in college and wherever else with programs for girls and women only, to go in engineering, construction etc any field that is majority male – and probably not of the 94% variety.
Yeah, lots of backlash and prejudice. Heck half my extended family still considers me male – after 2 full years of presenting as exclusively female, and them knowing about it, having had all this explained to them, etc.
But the most problems I had was before transition, when I was feminine, considered gay by people for my body language and appearance, and generally ignored the rest of the time, like when I wanted to discuss or something.
Bullying happened from 1st to 11th grade (there is no 12th grade here), to varying degrees. It was more physical in elementary (since it’s less regulated), it was insults all the time too, from many. Nothing about me was right, except my grades.
I wasn’t manly-looking, not manly-acting, didn’t like sports, didn’t like sex, didn’t have any romantic or sexual interest (no libodo) at the time, didn’t have strong career ambitions, didn’t have marrying ambitions, didn’t want children. Lots of reason to pick on me.
HI Schala
All the more reason to dismantle the social categories of gender. But you can see why there are no incentives for men to get into nursing — it is considered a low status occupation.
Is it? Lower status then garbage collector, sewer worker or general laborer?
I guess that status is not so clear cut as it may seem to be on the surface. A garbage collector may be low status — actually, it is stereotypically so. However, to my mind at least, it offers (for all I know) a relative amount of freedom from both hen-peckery (from the sides) and social condescension from above. When the typist is walking down the street, or socialising, if this typist is also female, nobody makes a comment about her low status. Then again, people make comments about the garbage guy, I suppose. It used to be a warning to kids not to end up being a garbage guy. Yet the garbage guys do their jobs, are relatively independent in the work (which is rather mechanistic). They don’t receive the social abuse as they go about their business.
Some people don’t have the physical strength needed to be garbage workers, miners, or other such manual labor that is rather heavy.
I certainly would be refused at the door, and would have been back then. Or maybe after I broke my back one too many times. However there is little stopping a man from being a nurse. It’s not exactly physically demanding (it can demand a certain stamina, but not a certain strength). Little except stereotypes saying that it isn’t manly, perpetuated by both men and women.
Though most men could care little what their ‘buddies’ say, as long as their girlfriend/wife is okay with it – which she might not. If masculinity was solely policed by men, it would lose much of it’s policing power.
Except I don’t see the policing stopping. I doubt it’s feasible on a grand scale in a short time (of say, 5 years). That’s because people’s identities (as women, as typist, as wife, as men, as office clerk, as husband) are based on polarities, dichotomies.
If I’m “this” then you’re “that” (the opposite). It secures people to think that way, cause there’s a clear line (well maybe a bit fuzzy), to where you ‘shouldn’t go’ behavior or thought wise.
People like to put the people who get too close or cross the line down. The least valuable, the more they can put them down. Being lesbian, you’ll get flack from it. Being gay, hope you have good tall and bulky friends, or are yourself. Especially in school, but also at work, at the local bar etc.
They put people down, in a move to put themselves up, by relativism. They’re worse than me, so I’m better than them, is the reasoning. It’s the easiest way to gain status, but also the most detrimental – because it’s detrimental to a societal-wide level in collectivity. As opposed to gaining status on your own merits and accomplishments.
Like it’s much easier for Jacques Villeneuve to finish 3rd place when there’s 3 cars left in the race, but it’s much more satisfying (and less detrimental, supposing he caused the accidents indirectly by his attitude) to gain places when there’s still 22 cars left, it’s also beneficial to everyone (or at least, not detrimental).
How to have everyone want to gain status or power on their own merits rather than by causing others to lose theirs?
I agree with you totally Schala. The phenomena you describe is exactly as I have seen it. That is why I see that there is so much subversive in the author I am studying for my PhD. He totally eschewed social status, lived on the streets and wrote — although hardly for a living.
To my mind his choice of lifestyle embodied a deep psychological insight as to the real value of status.
Also, there is something really reprehensive about somebody who eliminates the opposition so as not to win his or her position honourably, fair and square. I think we should bring out more social censure against this tendency.
Actually they do. A lot of garbage men report having abuse and objects hurled at them as they ‘go about their business.’ Garbage collector is also one of the most dangerous jobs: lots of on the job injuries and fatalities. Finally it’s a job that women can do as well, as it requires conditioning more then absolute strength.
Stereotypical ‘women’s jobs’ seem to be in the middle of so called ‘status’. They aren’t the physically dangerous, low-status jobs of poor men, nor are they the highly stressful, high responsibility jobs of wealthier men.
They also tend to be more ‘social scene’ jobs–which is a draw for women, more then men who seem to expect their social needs will be met at home and that they must choose their job based on income. So, yes, I can see what you’re saying about hen-pecking.
Jennifer,
One female domain where men are definitely excluded is teaching. Just look at the stats. And none of it is statutory, the laws all sound wonderfully egalitarian, but the reality is very different – oorganizational marginalization of men, deffierential puinishments for the same offenses, the whole gamut of gimmicks that black or other minority emloyees report in their lawsuits.
Here are a couple of examples where society constructs a bias in favor of femalles. these are not just instances of bad behavior; every group has bad adpples – no, what I am getting at is that society extends special protectiln and tolerance of female bad behavior in these two cases.
1) Divorce-related:
“On the subject of what a female sociopath might do after announcing she’s divorcing you, Sheppard and Cleary write:
Many a man has been hit with:
• A court order barring him from living in his own home.
• An injunction forbidding him to come within one mile of his home.
• A ban on all contact with his children because the way he makes his wife feel undermines her ability to look after them.
• A letter from his wife or her solicitor saying that the children no longer wish to see him because he ‘frightens’ them. Or his wife says they do not love him any more.
• A demand to support her and ‘her’ children for as many years as her lawyers can negotiate with a judge. This money may be calculated on her lawyer’s estimation of what he is capable of earning, not on what he actually earns.
• A claim that she was deceived into signing a pre-nuptial agreement. Lawyers often challenge pre-nups as a matter of course. The husband’s lawyer has to defend this and his legal bill goes up.
• A deliberate demand for significantly more in a settlement than she expects to receive, so that he negotiates it down to the figure she wanted all along.
No matter what she says, does or claims, don’t say or do anything to retaliate. Calling her names and making threats will probably prolong the divorce proceedings and ramp up your legal bill. Learn to know when to shut up. Don’t worry unduly about what she says about you because she’s going to bad-mouth you anyway. Make a decision to control how you react, whatever happens.”
http://glennsacks.com/blog/?p=2300
2) This has to do with domestic violence and abuse of power/position – http://glennsacks.com/blog/?p=2301
Note one obvious commonality – these occur in the Anglosphere countries.
Jennifer,
And here’s another – all of these are from withing the last few days; you don’t have to do even the least amount of research to find this stuff lying all over the place;
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....rape.html#
This is an example of why I say that false rape accusers should be jailed, for at least as long as a time as the rape conviction would entail. There should also be a Liar’s Register for anyone who lies on statements to the police – rape allegations, DV accsuations, whatever. No sworn statement of any kind from someone on that register should have any legal weight. Tell me how the girl who did this to this boy should not only be left unpunished, but left anonymous! Whatever blame goes to her, the real blame falls on a society that actively encourages this kind of crime by protecting the perpetrators.
From a NPC called ‘Imperious Man’ in the empire’s capital city of Archades, in the game Final Fantasy XII:
“Quite a view from up here, wouldn’t you say? Yes there’s nothing quite so satisfying as looking down on other people, is there.”
You have to earn some sort of show of nobility to be able to access this place.
Now hold on a moment. Cases collapse when it is clear that the accused cannot be proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt, not when there is proof that the complainant is guilty beyond reasonable doubt.
The news report you just cited contains no evidence of her guilt with the possible exception of his denial of the crime. I say possible, because whether it contradicts her testimony is highly dependent upon exactly what her testimony was. If all she said was that she had been raped, then she still could have been, but by someone else. But even if her testimony was wholely inconsistent with his denial, you are convicting her on his word alone. Isn’t that exactly what we complain about when it happens to alleged rapists?
Oh yeah, and about her spending time with him afterward and exchanging text message? What exactly is the relevance? Spell it out! “That’s not how rape victims behave after a rape” And you know this, how? This is a classic example of judging a complainant according to stereotypes of how rape victims behave.
You are absolutely right to object to the appalling treatment the defendant has suffered as a result of this affair, but that is not a reason to slip in a guilty until proven innocent verdict on the complainant.
I am not convicting her based on anything he says, but on the collapse of the case – she made an accusation – she accused him specifically, and it turned out to be baseless, at least according to the police. That’s whose word if anyone’s I am basing this on.
And by the way, I am not convicting – guilty until proven innocent – this particular accuser when I say that false rape accusations should be punished harshly, I am using this instance as an example of a class of instances. And in general that class of instances goes unpunished. The whole point obviously is that the boy was the one who was punished by society long before anything whatsoever was proven either way, in any case. There is absolutely zero chance that his accuser would ever be convicted or treated in the same way.
She may well have ben raped, perhaps even probably was raped, and she should report that. if the police coerced her into making an identification of the assailant, and that can easily happen, they have a natural interest in getting victims to solve crimes, then they are at fault too, but still wouldn’t absolve her.
Are oyu quoting me in your third paragraph? Did I say anything like that? Trauma victims act all kinds of ways. There is no way to characterize their behavior at all.
Accused rapists have a right to annonymous status until proven guilty. I agree with that. However, jailing a 15 year old girl who may have been raped is asinine unless one can prove she made a false accusation out of malicious intent with no “help” from police, lawyers, or other outside influences. If this young man is innocent, what has happened to him is awful, no doubt, and his life has been trashed for it which is terribly unfair…yet should her life be trashed as well…especially if she has actually been raped? I think not. I do think women who press false rape accusations out of malicious intent should be penalized, but this girl? I seriously doubt she is one such case.
HI
Unfortunately Jim and T-B, I don’t see it at all. Garbage men in Australia drive around a mechanised truck which picks up the garbage for them and tips it into the vehicle. There is a mechanical arm that does the lifting and the tipping. They are not around for long enough for anybody to harrass them — and why would they be harrassed anyway?
However, I do have to say that whilst from a male perspective the idea of working solely among women is equivalent to the idea of collapsing into a bed of flowers, it is not the same from a female perspective. And that you can’t see what I am talking about in that respect is pretty predictable.
Tearching? We have a lot of male teachers here.
Have you ever worked as a garbage collector?
You don’t have curb-side pick-up of garbage cans in Austrailia?
Why would they be harrassed? Because people are pissed of about being woken in the morning? Because people gravitate towards others they think are in an inferior position to abuse? The usual reasons.
How have you ever experienced the ‘male perspective’?
Here’s the thing. You draw generalizations about the world from your experiences–’women have it worse’; then you _make up_ an interpretation of men’s experiences based on your expectations and biases–’men have it better’.
This is what I find absurd about the mainstream, woman-centric view point. Instead of _asking_ men how they feel, woman-centrists assume. Instead of trying to walk a mile in the other guy’s shoes, they dismiss, entire, the experiences of half the human race.
They say ‘women have it worse’, but simply omit or assume that ‘men have it better.’
This is how I start. I assume that men have the same essential human nature as I do–I know this is a stretch for some people, bear with, please, it’s a thought experiment. Then I ask myself, ‘how would I like it if…’
Ten years later, viola! Here I am with my set of thoughts about the world that most people think are so darn wacky!
I guess.
typhon: I need someone else, preferably a person who has never been like me, to educate me as to what my own experiences are like.
I’m just too dumb to figure it out on my own, you see. I have to be told.
Any attempt for me to speak for myself is unreliable because I’m blinded by privilege and/or lying. I just can’t be trusted with the job of interpreting what I come-across on a daily basis.
Furthermore, a woman’s life is just so complex that I couldn’t possibly understand such a thing.
Bah, men! They just don’t get it!
I’m sorry TB– tell me about your experiences as a garbage collector. If I had known you had been one, I would have asked you to go into further details. But I couldn’t know until you told me.
You’re right, I’ve never been a garbage collector.
Nor have I ever been a man.
But I am capable of _listening_ on many, many levels. I have listened to garbage collectors and men tell me their experiences.
And, in the absense of having direct experience of being a garbage collector or a man, I tend to trust the recollections of those people who have been garbage collectors and men over my assumptions(or any uninformed assumptions.)
Hey, sorry if I came accross as santimonious. >>
Well okay. Why did you presume you hadn’t been listened to?
I’m having trouble relating your response to what I said.
I see. Sorry if I was unclear.
I’m suggesting there might be a cultural difference between Australian garbage-people and US garbage-people. You said that the job was physically dangerous and attracted abuse — however, in Australia it does not seem to. It would be the same as people abusing a bus when it came to a bus-stop. It might happen, but it would be rare — and the consequences would be minimal.
Now, on the topic of stereotypical women’s jobs, I really think the degree of stress they attract is at least partly related to your type of personality and how you experience doing them. There are certainly some women who find these kinds of jobs easy to do, and are able to co-operate in a docile fashion. I am not one of those women — for me, such a job …I could hardly imagine anything more stressful (and I speak from experience). To me, not having control over the way I work, and being micro-managed is profoundly stressful. As it happens, there have been scientific studies that show that it is actually a common human tendency to feel much more stressed if we do not have control over how we do our work. So, even though I am at the extreme end of the scale as personality who hates to relinquish their control, lack of control (taking orders) would be stressful for anyone. So feminine jobs are not the low stress jobs that they are cracked up to be, very often.
The other thing I said about “hen-pecking” was that under stress, women are not colleagues, but aggressive hens. They will often take out the stress that is put on them from above by pecking their colleagues. This adds to the level of stress at the bottom of the hierarchy.
I think some of the differential in stress that can be attributed to men’s vs women’s jobs also lies in the different amount of pressure put on men vs women to be providers.
Men don’t have as much choice or bargining power because they have greater pressures to be providers.
As for the ‘hen-pecking’–I am very aware of how difficult women can be in a group. There are endless issues of territoriality; I think mostly it’s because women don’t naturally work well together and resist being crowded. In an optimal situation, a woman has her own small territory in which she exerts complete control. Women’s social structures _are_ lateral; men are vertical. It doesn’t seem to matter how many men you cram into a small space, they’ll work out some sort of way of establishing a vertical hierarchy and working with it.
Women are competitive, no doubt about it. And this nonsense about women’s greater ‘cooperation’ and ‘empathy’ is just women’s ways of negotiating who gets what space.
It isn’t a matter of judgement, either, but simple survival. If a female animal doesn’t have her own territory, she can’t feed herself or her offspring; if she isn’t prepared to protect that territory from other female animals, she opens her offspring up to being killed by strange females.
I can see that this all would make it very stressful to work in ‘women’s jobs’, but I can’t see how men are causing this or can do anything about it.
I’m not sure I claimed that men were causing the difficulties of being in women’s jobs. Let me be more plain: I didn’t make such a claim.
I think that women are competitive because their traditional role is to compete for a man’s approval. So, it is their traditionalism and lack of perspective that makes them take this approach.
Also I think that it is a feature of human societies – especially the undisciplined ones — to pass their on sh*t down the line, making it the responsibility of those below them.
So I have no qualms about men doing whatever it is they do. When they try to pass their sh*t on down to me, just because of where I’m structurally situated, I take umbrage.
“…I think that women are competitive because their traditional role is to compete for a man’s approval. So, it is their traditionalism and lack of perspective that makes them take this approach.”
Even when there are no men around, the mere existence of men elsewhere in the world just mucks things up. All lines of command can be traced back to the same place, although the route might be elaborately circuitous at times.
I hear that lesbians who batter each other have merely internalized male values. Female leaders who started wars were just copying men. And so on. It’s pretty easy stuff, once you understand how to connect all the dots.
aych, I temporarily pulled your comment into moderation because I thought it was snide and unfair. You seem to have concluded that Jennifer was ‘blaming men’ for certain types of women’s competitiveness, but that conclusion seems strained to me.
Your comments pose a challenge for us, aych. You’re clearly an intelligent person, and many of your comments have a substantive point. I can even empathize with the not-very-veiled anger underlying many of them. OTOH those comments come off as contemptuous of the party with whom you are arguing (even if you are careful not to attack that person directly). Your comments generally presume bad faith on the part of your opponent. There may be cases where this presumption is accurate, but this blog was founded on the notion that good faith discussions with (gynocentric) feminists were possible. Your comments tend to foster an atmosphere which alienates rather entices potential feminists to participate.
Do you think it’s possible for you to adjust your commenting style so you make your substantive points without the sneering? Do you have any interest in trying this?
Aych, you can give Jennifer the benefit of the doubt; she would probably say the same about the way men compete for women – chickenhawking the heros into glorious wars; there ar emountians of letters from Southern belles to their men leading up to the (American) Civil War.
Her point was simply to say that can be hell to work among as a woman. I agree with TB’s take on it – everyone is terriotrial, but for women the terroritory seems ot have ot be physical space, where for men it has more ot do with the position withing the group – social versus physical space.
My personal experience with this diference was in the Army, and my experience wa sthat it can be overcome with resocialization, that it is a cultural rather than instinctual difference, or else that enulturaiton can overcome instinct. A typical example was the differnece in the ways women assigned to rooms with women they didn’t like kept their rooms – like a pigsty – compared to the way men in the same situation would keep thiers – liek a barren moastery. It was an easy fix because of the degree of control you could exert:
(Quoting the platoon sergeant from memory) “I am reinspecting in four hours. Y’all have unitl then to clean up this nasty-ass whorehouse or you are going out on the lawn until I get tired of having you live out there.” (Translation – pitching pups tents on the company lawn, in January, in Germany.) “And I could give a fuck less who likes who and who hates who, cause I can guaran-goddam-tee y’all that you will hate me worst of all.” And she meant every word of it.
As for the horizontarity versus verticality of when it comes to women, at least form the perspective of my experience; woemn were enculturated inot a male culturla matrix and learned the male way fo doing things, which were more suited by centuries of evolution to the particular challenge of forming militarily succesful organizations. They had to learn the proper psychological boundaries – no, you cannot treat younger male soldiers like you da momma and dey the chirren.
Jennifer,
Quantify what you mean by “a lot of male teachers here”? Any less than 50%, if that is the percentage of male students, is not a lot. It is a minority and they are then “under-represented”, I think is the current term. It may look like “a lot” because any presence of men is more than expected, I don’t know.
I think women are comnpetitive with each other for the same reason that men compete with each other – for the opposite sex, and they do it in exactly the ways the opposite sex in their particular society wants to see that competition. I use dot do that, I was married to a woman, but that art of my life is past, I am out and proud now, and I could give a shit less about attracting any woman’s attention or approval. But my poor straight son was born into that bondage, so it all still is my concern.
I find that women who have a tertiary education are okay to work with. They generally have a different set of ethics and know which way is up compared to women who have only a high school education. Of course, there will also be matue women everywhere who have only had a high school education, but I suspect they may be the exceptions to the rule of henpecking and backstabbing.
It is odd that anyone should think I blame men for this. Obviously there is a lot of anger here against feminists who might think in this way. Let me make it clear that I blame a social system that is not primarily geared towards guaranteeing human dignity at every level, but is rather directed towards exploitation – with those at the bottom of the hierarchy generally being those who are the most exploited.
ballgame
As of a few minutes ago, there were only the three comments in moderation that have been there for a while. So I guess you or someone else reapproved this one.
I’ve gone ahead and deleted the two by Daisy D. They were removed from display at her request, and I don’t think we have any interest in reposting them.
That leaves one comment by Aych, which if I recall correctly you felt at the time would be more appropriate for a thread you were planning to post later.
I agree with your remarks in their entirety, of course, but I think this bears emphasising, given the level of criticism of him by us in the past few days. Aych is an insightful commenter who has made many great contributions to this site. Challenges notwithstanding, he is a valued guest.
One thing about nursing and teaching is that they tend to be perceived as relatively low-income, low status professions when compared to others that require the same level of education and commitment. Becoming a schoolteacher or a nurse requires one to continue one’s education beyond getting a bachelor’s degree, yet pay much worse in money and status than many professions that do not require the equivalent of graduate school.
Nursing might be a better job than garbage collecting, but people who do garbage collecting usually aren’t qualified to be nurses and would have difficulties (financial and otherwise) if they were to attempt to become qualified nurses. Engineering and law are fields that are more relevant standards of comparison for teaching and nursing.
One thing I’d like to point out about nursing and teaching is that they have something of a nurturing element to them. I think that the dominance of women on those fields may also be partly due to the unfair gender myth that since women are more nurturing they are better suited for those fields than men. You may be thinking that from the angle of nuturing that women would make better doctors too right? Nope. When you visit the doctor who does most of the hands on work? Who is the one that ususally take measuments, samples, and readings? And finally who is the one that takes the results of those tests and comes in for about a 5 minute discussion before sending you on your way (unless you have a serious diagnosis of course)?
The doctor does…he doesn’t have a nurse in his clinic (he’s the only doc too), so I couldn’t know what you were trying to allude to.
What I’m alluding to is that often nurses are the ones that do the testing, sample taking, measurement reading, and data collection and then the docotor comes in and makes use of it.
I was trying to address the question the possible question of, “Well if its assumed that women are more nuturing then wouldn’t it make sense that more doctors would be women?” To that I answer, “If you go by the assumption that women are more nuturing then no it would not because of the fact that doctors are not as hands on and close with patients as nurses are.”
What’s a comparable female-mostly job to garbage collector?
Daycare worker?
Might a hotel maid count as female equivalent to a garbageman? They both took me with zero experience, and I made approximately the same amount of money. I experienced minimal harassment from guests at the hotel, except from this one women in her 40s who thought I was sexy and grabbed my butt multiple times. It was not particularly physically arduous or stressful even though I was grabbed to do what heavy lifting there was to be done by other workers. It was disgusting sometimes but not with any sort of regularity. I did have to shave, bathe, and apply personal hygiene that I didn’t have to working a rearloader. I am not a woman though so I was not subjected to the women vs women competition you talk about.
Jennifer the person who drives the automated sideloader is paid twice what the guys who pick up the garbage cans make. The driver has a cdl, the collector has a parole officer.
Often there is a team of two guys who ride in the rearloader and pick up extras, mailbox, and put cans on the swinger to get them dumped.
I worked as a collecter for about 5 months in between semesters and usually it was housewives or old men who were confrontational with us. I got all kinds of insults. What are you a dumbass? No wonder you pick up garbage for a living. dumb, lazy, shamed for picking up garbage, drughead, retard, white trash all called to me by the customer. It was very physically arduous with no flexibility for hours. Can you lift 100lbs? That was pretty much the question I had to answer to get the job. It was a very dirty job as well.
I worked with two men about to become LPN’s. I am one semester away from getting my double major. For garbage truck drivers it tends to become permanent, but for garbage collectors it tends to be a temp job usually to finance education or suspended license or temporary unemployment.
#23 is interesting. (female here) Do men struggle with that?, feeling that it is difficult to find women they are attracted to?
anon. (female): First, welcome to the blog. If you think you might like to participate for more than your single question, it would make things easier all around if you could choose a more descriptive handle.
I’m a little confused by the way you phrased your question. #23 refers to the way that, because women’s sexual preferences seem to skew upwards a bit more than men’s do (towards the infamous ‘alphas’), it’s easier for a woman to find a man at her level to have sex with than vice versa. Using the somewhat reductionist 1-10 scale, it’s easier for a female 6 to find a male 6 willing to have sex with her than for a male 6 to find a female 6. (Please note that I’m saying “easiER,” not necessarily “easY.”) This seems to be true for most attractiveness levels except the very top.
Does that address your question?
ballgame, Thanks, I’ll drop it at that.
Anon, I do not read ballgame’s remark as suggesting that you should identify yourself in any way, if that is the concern. Rather that you should uniquify yourself. Of course if you really do intend only to make just the two comments, then that’s OK.
To answer your question, I can find any number of women I am attracted to, but I can’t initiate or progress relationships which appear to hold out the prospect of becoming sexual.
You ask whether ‘men’ struggle with this. Men are not Borg. Many don’t. A substantial minority, like me, find it impossible, or nearly so. I suspect a large number of men find the role of initiator very difficult, but they do it anyway, because not to do so is to be involuntarily celibate, and in some cases life-long virginity.
The cost to those men of that latter condition is huge. In my case it lead to a seven year long flirtation with suicide.
The usual response of feminists to this condition is dismissal and derision. Then they wonder why men are often so reluctant to talk about their feelings.
Here’s my answer to the question posed by anon (who I hope will return):
The research shows that women are more selective than men about their sexual partners (I’m planning a big post summarizing this research). This fact suggests that if we put a random man and woman together, she is less likely to be attracted to him than he is to her. Consequently, we would expect that men have more trouble dating women who are their equals in terms of attractive qualities, and that if there are women wanting to date them, then those women will have less of those qualities.
Here’s a little story that will illustrate.
At one club I go to, I took my friends Carl and George. We both met a woman we will call Ally. Ally is a really cool person, and Carl was quite attracted to her and developed a crush on her over the course of going to that club regularly. They sat together and had great conversations, but she just didn’t seem to be sexually interested in him, which he eventually realized.
While Ally enjoyed Carl’s company, the person she really wanted was George. Carl was 19 and living with his parents while in college; at this point, he was a pleasant conversationalist, but sort of lost in his life. He was good looking and intelligent, but not exceptionally confident. Ally was a 20-year old college student. George, in contrast, was in his late twenties and has a good job. He is a sharp dresser, socially-skilled and confident. As for me, I was in between Carl and George: I was more socially-skilled and confident than Carl, but less than George. All three of us guys probably have about the same level of looks, but different body types.
Ally clearly wanted George, but George wasn’t interested. George had recently passed up a chance at marriage to a woman more attractive than Ally and who also had more in common with him than Ally did. George actually had to start avoiding Ally. Instead, he went after the beautiful Renee (who he went on a date with, but who never called him back after he failed to kiss her, leaving him almost in tears).
After her efforts with George failed, Ally became interested in me. I enjoyed her company, but I just wasn’t attracted to her that much. Just like she enjoyed Carl’s company, but she wasn’t attracted to him that much. One night, Ally and I started kissing while Carl was in the bathroom (though at this point he had already given up with her and he had cleared me with Ally).
Ally invited me to her birthday party. But she lives 45 minutes away, and I just wasn’t that into her as someone more than a friend, so I went out dancing that night to meet other girls instead of coming to her party.
When I next saw Ally, she was with Dustin, who is boring and seemed kind of strange, but who was older and more confident than Carl.
So what about poor Carl? Well, another night at the club, Carl was approached by Bertha, who told him that he looked like a Greek God (Carl is a good looking guy, but he does not look like a Greek God). She was substantially less attractive than Ally. She and Carl had a fling for several weeks, and though he was never very attractive to her, she managed to keep his attention (he reported that she was incredible at oral sex).
While all this was going on, and I was passing up my chance to do more than kissing with Ally, I met Erin. Erin and I are at about the same level of attractiveness. We had a great conversation, and parted with a goodnight kiss and her giving me her phone number. I tried calling her, but got only voicemail each time I tried, and she never called me back. It seems that similarly to how I just wasn’t that into Ally, Erin just wasn’t that into me. Erin is probably going over after some guy who is higher on the food chain than me and who isn’t calling her.
The moral of this little soap opera is that I’m seeing a pattern, which is that my male friends and I are not quite getting the women we want, but not quite wanting the women we can get. The women in this story are constantly going after guys who have some combination of more looks, more accomplishments, or more social skills. The guys in the story are failing with women who are their equals in these areas, so they are settling for less. The problem is that with the women we can actually get with, we just aren’t that into them, and are forced to reject them in various ways, such as refusing marriage, refusing a relationship, or refusing to be more than just friends.
But whereas the guys in this story are just looking for someone who is their equal in looks, accomplishments, social skills, etc…, the women seem to be looking for someone who has more than an equal share of those things, creating an imbalance.
Yes, there seems to be more competition between males for females. It’s true for so many other species; why would ours be special?
And it can feel a bit like being a sperm. There are plenty of clubs in my area that simply will not let you in if you’re a man unless you’ve got a couple of women with you. Going out with a big group of guys, I’ve been turned away from bars that you wouldn’t think would do it. (Normally the classy ones do it, but these were hole-in-the-wall types.) In one town, the only parties for undergrads were at fraternities. At the parties, the fraternities had explicit no-guy policies for non-brothers. (They would make an exception for guys who would bring multiple girls.) And the sex workers among us should know that it is considerably harder to become a porn star if you’re male. (You’re also not going to get into swinging-type places as a single man, but you might as a single woman.)
The idea that heterosexual men are less selective really shouldn’t be controversial in any way. If you go to a personals site, you’re going to see many more ads for men seeking women than for women seeking men. Just check craigslist. If people are just looking for sex, the ratio is even more skewed.
And because men typically have to make the first move, they are the ones who have to navigate through the ambiguous social rules in most situations. Sure, you can meet people in a lot of ways: volunteer; learn to dance; or join a social group at your church, school or place of employment. But if the rules unambiguously allow for dating (that is, there is an explicit written etiquette that governs behavior for dating other members) the ratio will most likely be skewed, even if the rules favor women in many ways, as they usually do. And if the rules are ambiguous, as they usually are, men will most likely be the ones sticking their necks out and testing the waters.
Hugh,
I think it’s established knowledge that in humans as in most other species, males compete, and females choose. That said, the women mating upwards bit only works if you limit the analysis to a couple of dimensions. In a complete picture of the relationship, women seem to prefer equitable relationships.
“The women in this story are constantly going after guys who have some combination of more looks, more accomplishments, or more social skills. The guys in the story are failing with women who are their equals in these areas, so they are settling for less.”
in all fairness, it should be noted that that’s a highly subjective assessment of attractivity. I doubt you’ll even be able to get a three men agree on an ordinal attractivity scale even if only looking at phsysical attractivity. And you suggest it’s possible to conclude that these women did not think of you as attractivity-equals or even more attractive? That’s quite an assumption.
My experience certainly isn’t anything to measure attractivity by either, but if I have learnt anything, it’s that female evaluations of male attractivity and male evaluations of male attractivity tend to be different.
Like I said on the thread at Ren’s place, though I think still in moderation, is that I tend to choose by personality rather than looks. I don’t need to have a Brad Pitt to feel attracted, but I also need more than looks to feel attracted. I look for particular traits, and the absence of others. I’m not so picky that no one would fit my criteria. Socially I would be willing to go for someone with ‘less good looks’, as long as they fulfill the personality criteria.
With the alternatives of
-no partner
-a less desirable partner
men will settle; women will go with no partner?
Oh no, not another J!
anon. (jz):
One thing that appears to have been missed in the analysis is the degree that women’s attractiveness to men in particular is dependent upon their age. Most women will, during their late teens and early twenties at least, be more attractive than the average women is over her entire life. Many of those same women will be less-than-averagely attractive later in their lives.
Men’s attractiveness to women seems to be a little less dependant upon his physical looks and a lot less dependent upon his age. Below average-attractiveness men are likely to be so all of their lives.
Thus I suggest that men are much more likely than women to experience being shut out of intimate relationships for their entire lives.
From my own experience of having had one long-term intimate relationship, which started when I was 32, I can say that the prospect of never experiencing intimacy again is a lot less daunting than the prospect of never experiencing intimacy at all, which is how I felt my life was going before then.
So I suggest that less-attractive women tend to be older women who may be more willing to take the “never again” route, then less-attractive men are to go “never at all”.
But in saying this, I’m mindfull of Seven‘s remark here. I really am not familiar with the position women like her find themselves in, and I don’t want to be minimising or dismissing it out of ignorance.
You might just number us. I am willing, if I get to be J1. That would “uniquify” (What an excellent neologism! – I will get a lot of use out of that one.)us enough, wouldn’t it?
I know you’re joking, but you do realise that that would deuniquify you even more?
“Deuniquify” me? The hits just keep on comin’! At some point soon I am going to liquify.
Well, there aren’t any other J1s around, so that’s unique enough. It might dehumanize me, but it’ll still be unique.
Nobody is abreviating you but yourself.
Abbreviating myself? Jim is my name, not my self.
You should read Earthsea. Your name is yourself.
I know Earthsea. I disagree. I think there is no self and that names are temporary lables on things that don’t exist.
I think there is no self, so any analysis of what is or is not essential is moot. On some level anything can be essential to something that has no essence. This applies directly to gender – something can be ultimaltely non-essential, but proximally essential to gender, and to the person in this or that gender.
If there is no self, is it a collective like the Borg hive mind? Or like the Aldian in Star Ocean 3, who are multiple-bodied, but really a single entity? Or like U-DO in Xenosaga, the collective consciousness of the higher domain?
I don’t really get what you mean by “There is no self.”
There is a self, but it is a temporary construct. it persists by the most vigorous ego defenses, but without these defenses it persists anyway as ashell – the difference being that in this new ego you are free of its restrictions and demands for protection and maintenance. It is like a hill of sand or a military unit that consists for the time that its members remain in it, that changes constantly as its members change out and new ones join. It is real to the extent that it can act; unreal to the extent that it has no self-sufficient or permanent existence.
I do believe the self has some form of permanent existence. I don’t know exactly how, but I believe it does. I’m speaking of after you die, your ‘self’ survives, or at least some of it.
So do I , in a way, but I am just being really technical when I use the term “existence”.
You failed to put all the serious legal privileges women have in various areas such as marriage, work relations, etc. Here’s a good start.
A (belated) welcome to the blog, Brian. Brandon’s additions to the list look pretty substantive.
Yes — all of those things in the list are listed as advantages to women who are happy to be feminine. You can achieve a lot more as a traditionally feminine women — but all of those achievements will be translated as achievements in the private, rather than public, realm. So they will add “feminine” value to the one who achieves them — but not public value, which translates into broader social power.
Even if you gave me broader social power, I wouldn’t want of it, wouldn’t know what to do with it. The only power I might appreciate is having a couple millions (5 is plenty) in a good placement to live on the interests. That’s mainly to not worry about poverty and homelessness.
Yes, you could enjoy those couple of millions if assertiveness did not come into the play, otherwise they would be taken from you.
Why and how would they be taken from me? I’d take a couple different safe placements. I’d do that on my own and not let anyone else touch the placements. I’m good with numbers and I could learn how placements work. I just don’t see how a lack of assertiveness would rob me of it. And of course, I don’t intend to spend the 5 millions, it’s a way to earn interests, sort of defeats the purpose to spend it.
Well in a the case where no feminism applies, so males and females are performing their gender roles each very thoroughly, women are not assertive, or if they are, it is overlooked. Therefore what you have could be taken away from you if you didn[‘t have a man to protect it.
Assertiveness is a quality you give yourself, it isn’t offered by other people.
Assertiveness may be a quality you are born with, actually. But the process of feminisation is to unlearn it, so that it is only expressed in round about ways.
It seems to me that assertivesness would..assert itself, no matter what.
Yes, assertiveness expresses itself as hysteria (in the genuine medical sense — not the insult or verbal rhetorical sense) when it has no other routes. But that is the extreme case. The rerouting of assertiveness — well you can see it in a lot of Tennessee William’s stuff with the distressed Southern Belle. That is more typical femininity.
Jennifer, are you referring to my list or Brandon’s? Many of the items on my list accrue to women regardless of their personality type, AFAICT.
Brandon’s I believe. Didn’t he admit as much himself? I thought there was a link in the message posts but I cannot see it.
I can’t really comment on your list since it doesn’t seem to pertain very much to the culture I’m in or my own experiences. I think that it is quite possible to swim within substreams of a particular (broader) culture, and so not come in too much contact with those who think in more conventional terms. So I encounter those who are academic and martial artists (where an Oriental ethic of politeness rather than the macho ethic prevails).
I apologize if this has already been mentioned in other comments, but women have the privilege to be able to bear children. I often look at this as a severe disprivilege of being male, and by the introduction to this list, this should be a valid privilege of women.
Note that the ability to bear children is different than what could perhaps be considered the disprivilege of being socially pressured to use said ability, or of having to bear the pains of such labors.
[...] favourite Female privilege is also quite funny [...]
Wow.
So, no one appears to mention that most of these advantages are synonyms. You have a dozen points about how women are moore emotional than men, and are allowed to be more emotional than men. This isn’t 12 different advantages, it’s ONE, seen from 12 angles.
Further, #3 is true only because #31 from the male priviledge checklist is true — you are assuming that rape is not a form of assault. Ironic, because if you asked men whether they’d rather get the crap beat out of them or rape, guess which one they’d choose?
And lastly, you have a bunch of disadvantages that you conveniently labeled as a privilege. I mean, number 22? REALLY? Yeah, men the world over are in tears about their inability to abstain from sex without their gender being questioned. My kids have the privilege of not being criticized by their parents when they choose not to eat chocolate, too. I bet they feel blessed. #21 is true only because most of us realize at some level that women are getting the short end of the stick a lot. That basically says “Since a lot of my existence sucks, and everyone knows it, I am allowed to complain about it.” AWESOME privilege. I want that one. Lastly, #9 and #10 are true, again, only because women have much lower access to employment and to many types of jobs. “Since I can’t really get a job as a pilot, I won’t crash a plane.” Again, SWEET privilege, sign me up.
Patrick the sad thing is while you joke about those privileges and say “sign me up” there are a lot of guys that say that same thing about male privilege lists. Hell I’d love to have #29 on that male privilege list.
Contrary to common belief men do have their masculinity called into question when they don’t have sex or children.
#3 holds true even when you call rape a form of assault (which it most certainly is). While women are more often the target of rape than men (and notice that #7 on the male privilege list has to specifically exclude prison rape as if it doesn’t count) men are more often the target of murder, various grades of assault (armed, aggrevated,…), and so on. And people thinking assault is the lesser of two evils (the other being rape) has absolutely no bearing the statistical possibility of it happening. I would rather be mauled by a pit bull than a grizzly bear but that doesn’t increase the likelyhood of my getting mauled by a put bull.
[...] to see some sort of calculation. A little web search finds a male privilege checklist and a female privilege checklist. The next obvious step is to assign point values to such privileges, so we can add them up and [...]
[...] that much we seem to agree, although my agreement is not limited just to his list. As I stated on ballgame’s recent post about female privilege, I am not fond of the idea of checklists of any type. The lists breed antagonism and minimize the [...]
[...] recent post on Female Privilege has resulted in a clutch of incoming links and a veritable tsunami of visitors. Yesterday1, we had [...]
[...] most women don’t realize (or, worse, don’t want to think about) their privileges. Oh, but then we start fighting about whose privilege “counts” more. That’s when [...]
ballgame, thanks for clearing up my misconception about your motives*. I think our viewpoints are far more alike than differing.
* for others, I am referring to this and this.
I would like to point out that this is an unfounded assumption.
There is no current, reliable, way to determine if men or women are raped more often. Assuming women are raped more is merely social superstition at play.
Short end of the stick? I suppose that depends on how much you care about the length of your stick.
*snort* Men. They just don’t get it. Ever.
Women represent fully in all of the best rated jobs out there. All of the worst jobs are almost all 100% male.
If you took wage out of the equation(us women have this slippery ability to maintain a lifestyle equal or above our income bracket), you would probably see complete female domination of all the jobs with the best working conditions.
Wow. Our lives _sooooo_ suck.
Keep telling yourself your cage is all cozy; your slave labor hours are completely reasonable; and all the compromises you make are truly your own personal decisions. Cause, MALE, you’re in there for life.
[...] Female Privilege [...]
I thought I was done with privilege lists, even my own, but I couldn’t stop without having just a little more fun with it.
So to further illustrate how ridiculous these lists are, and how self-serving their use is, I’ve written a Victim Privilege List. It is a short one – after all, victims wouldn’t be victims if they have lots of privileges! But I think some of these demonstrate why people fight for the victim flag, and how the winner of that flag gains a “privileged” position in discussions and debate. I’m hoping the last one properly conveys the weird paradox of all this nonsense.
25: I can visit strip joints of the opposite gender without being labeled in a derogatory manner. Such strip joints are considered main stream. Heck, I can even go to strip joints of the same gender.
26: I often get free drinks at bars at the owner’s volition.
27: In television sit-coms, my side always wins any battle of the sexes episode.
28: In colleges and universities, sports teams for my gender are less likely to be cut from the budget.
29: It’s never “my fault”.
30: It’s ok for me to call myself Queen of the Castle.
31: I’m supposed to be first.
32: I can physically slap/punch/hit men all I want.
33: There’s no slapstick of my gender continually getting hit in the groin.
34: I’m supposed to get the seat on a train or bus.
35: “I do” get at least half of my husband’s fortune when it becomes “I don’t” in addition to the house as well as part of his paycheck for the rest of his life. I don’t have to pay for my children’s education.
This is specific to people who own a house, and who have children (no child support without children) and who use the system to their advantages (not everyone does, given the chance, and women are no different).
If you’re pregnant, or with reduced mobility, yeah. Otherwise there’s no obligation. It’s entirely chivalry at works.
hadsil,
25 is not true.
26 is not universal. At all.
27 is casting a rather wide net. I don’t know that it’s true, but don’t know that it’s not.
28 would imply that men’s sports teams get cut before women’s in colleges, and I would require proof of that. Where I am, there are more college sports for men than for women.
29 is not true.
30 is as true for women being “Queen” as men being “King”.
31 First at what?
32 is not true.
33 is accurate. And I dislike that sort of humor, however, boob punching is surging right now. Does that count?
34 is not true. Even when I was pregnant, I didn’t get seats, doors opened, or anything else.
35 is not universal, but widespread enough to be an issue, I suppose. However, not having to pay for your child’s education is not true.
“34 is not true. Even when I was pregnant, I didn’t get seats, doors opened, or anything else.”
In Montreal’s subway system, it’s shown on the walls (inside the trains) to leave seats for reduced mobility people, and pregnant women. I don’t know if it’s respected or not.
25) Is true. Go to your place of work and talk about having a ‘ladies night’ at a strip joint. Ask your male friend to do the same. Note the different reaction.
26) Yesterday I passed a ‘ladies night tuesday’ sign at a bar. Most of the bars I pass have a ‘ladies night’. Maybe I just pass a lot of bars with that philosophy?
27) Every stupid sit com ‘war of the sexes’ I’ve watched has the women winning. I can go further with that as well; if there is ever an ad that contrasts the one competent person who’s chosen the product with the incompetents who haven’t, the competent one is always a woman; the incompetent ones can be mixed or all male.
28) It sort of falls out of Title IX; men’s sport teams will get cut because there isn’t enough interest from women to form equivalent sport teams. And in order to keep it equal…
29) It sort of feels like it’s true when I hear people like
Jessica Lynch[correction: Lynndie England -- Daran] saying ‘he made me do it’ and not getting bitch slapped by everyone around her who is close enough to do the deed. It’s moments like this that confirm my desire to oppose womanitarianism to my dying breath.30) Go proclaim, in public, that you’re the ‘queen of your castle’. Ask your male friend to proclaim, in public, that he’s the ‘king of his castle’. Note the different reaction.
31) First at sports, in career, etc.
32) It is. Partly because men won’t say anything, partly because if they do, people will laugh at them for complaining, mostly because society thinks it’s amusing and harmless.
33) Boob punches are getting more play? Where? The last one I saw was a really horrible movie about bowling. I’d like to see this actually; I have a very black sense of humor that’s been rather spoiled by my humanitarian interests–I can no longer enjoy the casual violence wrecked upon men in media. If the day ever comes that casual violence is wrecked upon women as well, I will be a very happy camper.
34) Giving up your seat for a woman is a convention that’s dying out. Boo-hoo. Us wimmins have to use our feets; we will all perish from the strain to our delicate woman-parts!
26: I often get free drinks at bars at the owner’s volition.
I would also like to add free cover charge to that. Unless Seven knows of bars and clubs where women pay full regular price and men get in free before 11pm and after 11pm still pay half the regular price.
25: I can visit strip joints of the opposite gender without being labeled in a derogatory manner. Such strip joints are considered main stream. Heck, I can even go to strip joints of the same gender.
And I have yet to hear of anyone proposing a tax on strip clubs that cater to women. But low and behold someone in Texas thought such a Pole Tax on strip clubs that cater to men might have been a good idea.
On 25, I live on the west coast. I can think of zero strip clubs where men perform where women would be welcome. I know of one strip club where men perform, but it is gay, and that particular place is not really a welcoming environment for women. I am sure that at least one exists, but I don’t know where.
On the other hand, we honestly have strip clubs everywhere with women performing. The reaction when a guy says he spent the evening at a strip club (either alone or with any number of any gender of people) is pretty blase. It is a LOT more shocking for a woman to have gone to a club where men perform. Just due to it’s rarity, I suppose.
Also, strip clubs where men perform are not considered main stream. Again, maybe only true where I am.
26, I guess I haven’t been to a ladies night. Ever. So. Sorry? I truly didn’t even know that’s what happened. Like, really, free drinks? Huh. Guess you can see that I’m not a big drinker. Or bar-goer.
27, ok. I just don’t…care? Sit-coms rarely amuse me, so I don’t really watch them. I don’t know how to say it without saying it doesn’t matter, it matters as a reflection of attitudes, but I don’t watch enough sit-coms. Which doesn’t upset me one bit.
28, ok. Not arguing, I guess I just see a more publicity for men’s collegiate sports than women’s. Maybe that skews my ideas of what is happening.
29. This is stupid. This is a defense for everyone in this age, that it’s “not their fault”. It’s not just women. It’s every asshole on the planet, male or female.
30 REALLY depends on who you are talking to. It sure will get different reactions, but you can get whatever reaction you want, just talk to the right people.
31, still don’t get it. Like letting girls win? Or women’s careers come first? Because both can be true or not true depending on the person and place. So much of this goes both ways that I just don’t get it.
32 is not. You can’t say that men won’t say anything. You don’t know all men. I have hit exactly two men in my life. One slapped the shit out of me, the other was really pissed and told me to never hit him again (while implying serious consequences).
33 Youtube, G4. In the last month, I’ve seen boob-punching in both places.
34 I wasn’t complaining. Just saying it wasn’t true.
Once again in arguing about this list of priveleges, we are talking across cultures. Seven lives on the West Coast and i can confirm a lot of her observations, and I can confirm TB’s observaitons – just hang out with Texans or go down South.
TB, you’re in Canada, right?
Yes. I am canadian. I’ve been mistaken for British, but I am not. A subject of her majesty from a lowly part of the commonwealth.
Jessica Lynch? Surely, you mean Lynddie England, right?
(Lynch, by the way, had enough class to admit her rescue story was pure propaganda.)
Oh right… sorry!
Thanks, aych, I missed that.
typhonblue, please clarify if you meant ‘Lynddie England’ or some other person than ‘Jessica Lynch’, and I will make the correction.
Just to be clear, for the benefit of those who many not be familiar with the facts, Lynch did not fabricate an account of her capture and rescue, then later recant it, as perhaps your use of the word “admit” might suggest. Lynch rebutted an account that had been fabricated by others within the military.
Yes that’s what I meant to say, Daran.
OK I made correction.
Daran: and that’s what I meant to say. She didn’t cooperate with the people who fabricated the lies, but she certainly could have.
> 12. I am not generally expected to be capable of violence. If I lack this capacity, this will generally not be seen as a damning personal deficiency.
You missed the Catch-22 part of this:
If I possess this capacity, this will generally not be seen as a damning personal deficiency, but a measure of “empowerment”.
And, near as I can see, y’all also missed Thee Big One:
x. I do not have any obligation to check the status of the toilet seat prior to use. In all cases, it will be left as I need it to be.
[...] the other side, is there a list of things that women enjoy as privileges? Yes, indeed there is and here’s an example of [...]
It looks like Glenn Sacks may have just found another female privilege.
[...] Männer haben in der heutigen Gesellschaft Privilegien, das ist kein Geheimnis. Aber auch Frauen haben welche (abgesehen von der Tatsache, dass Brüste ein unausgesprochenes Argument in einer Interaktion mit [...]
[...] example, at this website, several lists of “female privileges” are posted, presumably to silence the feminist [...]
I read the post in #168 pingback.
I don’t think this person grasps that a privilege list is actually what patriarchy imposes, not what feminism imposes.
Then male privilege lists are also fundamentally flawed for the same reason.
This person also lumps you with MRAs ‘who want the good ol’ days back’. Ain’t assumptions great, because of those first three letters (in the word assumption) it usually poses problems understanding someone’s real position.
[...] 29, 2008 at 5:01 pm (Feminism, Random) I found this a week or so ago and I’ve been thinking about it as I go about my stupid real life (which [...]
I’m kinda curious if I’m the only one who thinks that some of this has its advantages not just the downsides. I for one would rather that some of this become more imposed on women, not simply an across the board reduction in the standards.
I’ve known many women who prided themselves that they didn’t know how to cook, or perform basic household tasks because they weren’t going to do that for their husband. But I cannot understand why incompetence would be a badge of honor for anyone.
I don’t see why we cannot as a society expect that everyone is able to perform some basic tasks, or that we can accept that not everything is worthy of tears and that we can set the standard equally for men and women somewhere in between an impossible standard of stoicism and gushy waterworks.
The concept of privilege is fundamentally flawed it is nothing more then an attempted ad hominem attack. That ones opposition may have had an easier life is irrelevant to a discussion. But the most bizarre fact of the matter is that they never even attempt to establish that any of is it applicable to the individual people they’re discussing with. Since they can’t get any lazier, they may as well embrace it and simply start accusing their opponents of eating babies.
The shear absurdity of it all should have been readily apparent long, long ago. How seriously can you take a movement which descends into quibbles over who is the most oppressed every single time there is a debate. Perhaps most of them did, but they didn’t want to “show their privilege” of being able to use their minds.
The value someone places on stoicism vs. emotional expression (at least where crying is concerned) is on some level a matter of subjective preference, so I can’t ‘prove’ you’re ‘wrong’ here, TD. But I certainly disagree. I think both women and men are trained to disavow, override, or otherwise neglect expressing what they feel in ways that are ultimately damaging to their health, though this aspect of our competitive industrial culture falls far more heavily on men than it does women.
I think people are generally far more happy when they can be real and spontaneously express what they’re feeling without being shamed for it.
Sorry for the late reply as I had gotten burnt out on the sheer volume of material on this place and other like locations as of late. This is an excellent thread, and what I would consider vital reading by the majority accustomed to feminist binary thinking. I don’t know if I’ll be able to read through all 170+ posts here, but I would like to reply to this one comment:
“The only problem I see is #2, that more men complete suicide than women. I’m not sure that’s a sign of privilege because the numbers are accounted for by the fact that men just use more lethal methods (typically firearms) than women (typically pills). It’s possible that men situations are actually worse, so they really want to die, while women are using pills as a cry for help*, but I don’t think that’s proven.”
I think it’s because women/girls know their cries for help will likely be heard and offered sympathy, as opposed to the sort of scorn that often drives men/boys to suicide in the first place.
It may be taken to far in the case of men, but ime for women the standard is set so low that a woman has to carry it to the level of sheer absurdity before its really shunned.
They may be happier. However, they may do so to the tremendous aggravation of those around them who will often be forced to pick up the slack as a result. Especially when there are those who cynically manipulate other peoples good nature with the ability to cry on command.
I’ve known a number of girls who lauded their first drivers license* to their ability to turn on the waterworks at the right time.
I don’t think the solution to this is for men to emulate the behavior, and start blubbering right along side.
*As well as higher marks on tests/essays and a number of special quirks.
Here are some of my submissions, conceived from years of pain and introspection:
1. If I express negative feelings about something that is affecting me, either physically or verbally, people are more likely to see it as a legitimate problem that needs to be solved rather than a defect of my character.
2. I can rely on a greater likelihood that others will believe that a third party is the cause of my suffering rather than myself.
3. I can express my sexuality with significantly less likelihood of being seen as a threat to others.
4. I do not have to worry about my sexual attraction to others being perceived as blinding myself to or devaluing their character.
5. I can absorb aggressive, violent and/or male-dominated media and partake in aggressive, violent and/or male dominant behavior and be seen as a pioneer for my gender rather than a negative stereotype.
6. Autoerotic sexual activity is far less likely to be seen as a sign of my failure as a human being.
7. I can rely on advertisers and other media outlets proclaiming that I can be overweight and still be attractive.
8. I can rely on a greater likelihood of outcry and disdain over any negative opinions or statements or dismissal of privileges or respect regarding my physical appearance.
9. I can rely on there being outcry from a sizable section of society should someone of the opposite gender express disdain for anything pertaining to my gender or sex or any form of character assassination that relies on my gender or sex.
10. I can rely on the possibility of being granted media coverage should I ever go missing.
11. I am given less impetus to worry about growing up a social or sexual deviant based on my accomplishments in life or lack thereof.
12. I can be confident that I will be judged significantly less harshly for my sexual performance, and that such a thing will be far less likely to be used as an attack on my overall character.
13. Assertion of myself based on my gender is more likely to be seen in a positive light by mainstream society. Pride in my gender is far more likely to be as a sign of intelligence than a lack thereof.
14. I can speak on matters of gender where issues regarding my own are discussed with greatly decreased likelihood of being considered insecure, ignorant, overprivileged or insane. I can also have greater confidence that such views of mine will be accepted and, if not accepted, will be treated less harshly and result in less dire consequences.
15. I do not require as much reliance on the achievement of a significant other to prove the existence of moral character within myself.
16. My biological and hormonal makeup is less likely to be seen as impetus for a potential criminal threat.
17. I have significantly greater confidence in knowing sexist behavior or commentary committed against myself will be recognized as sexism, and that such sexism is unjustified.
18. I am given more reason to believe that someone, somewhere, outside my peer group, cares about me and is willing to look out for me and my best interests, based solely on my gender.
The above comment — I couldn’t work out if the writer was male or female right until the end. Interesting.
If those are personal experiences, it’s evident that it would be female.
Especially the latter part of point 13 is one rarely raised by a male pov.
I don’t have an accurate representation since I’ve been an outcast for so long, I’m out-of-the-loop so to say, but I do tend to think that, overall, I have lots of benefits (personally), that I didn’t have before, and a lot less drawbacks.
It’s my personal perspective on it though. Since I wouldn’t want many of the male privileges, and I benefit from many of the female ones in my real life.
They’re what I would consider female privileges, based on the hardships I’ve faced and feelings I’ve developed which, looking back in retrospect, I have come to believe my being male was at least partly involved in.
You amuse me Schala — in a good way.
NO, I am afraid that I cannot see point 13 as being especially socially poignant in a feminine sense. And certainly, women are more often taken as irrational and their departures from walking in lock step are taken as a sign of hormonal issues or whatever pops into mind.
Well I have trouble to see how Girl Power and such manifestations are seen in a negative light. Even if the Spice Girls didn’t exactly make it shine in a good light, the notion itself is pretty strong within society. I wouldn’t go say the opposite is true. At best, ‘Boy Power’ is present in sexual innuendo about sexual prowess.
Sorry then I’ll fall back to my out-of-the-loop notion then. I don’t recognize all those as personal privileges I benefit from, but certainly many on that list are.
I benefit from 2, 3, 9, 10, I don’t quite understand 11, 13, 14, 16 in modern time (it was equal in ancient times, women were hystericals and men were beasts, now only men are beasts – not that it was better), 17, 18.
I don’t personally benefit from 5, 6, 7 and am unlikely to.
1 is only partially true.
I don’t see 5 as a good thing, it condones abuse.
7 is extremely mitigated by medias propagating the notion that while fat is not ‘unattractive’, slim is better.
8 is probably untrue, from what I hear women are the most critical within their peer group about physical appearance, followed by media, so while it’s not tolerated coming from men, it’s ‘normal’ coming from women.
I don’t consider 12 to be a privilege.
14 is true within feminism, not outside of it to a great extent, though it’s a societal bias towards it (a PC thing to do).
I don’t know what 15 is, doesn’t seem like a privilege.
17 can hardly be seen as a privilege since its far from happening everywhere, even if only scanning North America for it – forget about scanning the Middle-East, or Japan.
I more or less agree with items I didn’t critique.
Schala, there are underlying dynamics of gender that you do not seem to see. If I proclaim, “yay! girl power”, that does not bode well for women. What if female society developed a fetish for boyscouts and eschewed the fully grown man? Would we call that “boyscout power” and see it as progress?
The way I understood Girl Power to work, it included all females, not just those under 18 or looking young enough. A “You go, girl!” expression can be told to a 30 or 40-some woman without any demeaning in the term meant at all, by a woman, as well.
Boy probably couldn’t be ‘fetishized’ the same way since man is considered the be-all end-all, many fathers would tell their 8 years old sons to “Be a man”, while I just don’t see it happening a girl being told “Be a woman” if she was 8. Boy is clearly seen as inferior, like a larval stage of man. Girl is not judged as harshly, and adults often use the term as an endearment (while boy would be an insult unless you were 20 years their senior, and even then).
You are arguing from the point of view of the status quo on gender as if it were eternal and immutable. The reason that “girl” is considered more politically acceptable than “boy” when referring to people of adult age, is that it is convenient to have women viewing themselves in this light, since they are more easily tameable.
And not just morte tameable, but in a better position to claim protection and provision. There is a huge incentive for women to be as intentionally helpless as possible, at least in some sections of the Anglosphere.
I would argue that predatory behavior associated with testosterone is overall more damning than irrational behavior associated with estrogen.
And of course, women have the nice little luxury of an academically-sanctioned sociopolitical movement in regards to walking out of “lock step” to fall back on. I doubt men can say the same to nearly such an extent.
Not to mention that fact that “manhood” isn’t exactly considered all peaches and cream either. There’s definitely a suspicion of immorality associated with adult masculinity that adult femininity is generally more free from.
Oh I don’t believe that irrationality is engendered by female hormones any more than I believe that predatory behaviour is engendered by male hormones. Not at all.
And, you should know, it is well and good to lament that somebody else has a social movement to fall back upon (although it is by no means universal or ubiquitous), but we are not sheep. Everyone is free to create a social movement of their own. To imply otherwise is to insult them by saying they have no free will.
For what it’s worth, I don’t believe that women are less rational than men, or that hormones have anything to do with it. I do believe that testosterone is linked to aggression.
The thing with testosterone possibly being linked to aggression is that it is not a simple matter of associating testosterone with maleness. I’m not a biologist or ethno-neurologist or any such expert, but I know that if you are going to link testosterine in a blanket way with maleness, then you will be faced with a lot of difficulties when it comes to determining how women can ever be aggressive (for instance, I am an aggressive women — how so?)
Also, I believe that tests have been conducted that show that male testosterone levels can rise or fall depending on whether the men in question have felt successful in their recent activities. Assumedly, the less successful you are, the lower the testosterone levels. So men who are henpecked should be relatively passive, by this account.
Testosterone levels vary between individuals. They are within 0~3.5 nmol/L for the average woman and between 10~35 nmol/L for the average man. But sensitivity to said hormones is not accounted for. And not tested for.
You can see it like an amplifier. If you are resistant to testosterone, you could have tons of voltage, the volume is at near-zero, you hear nothing. If you are particularly affected by testosterone, then the amp is at max volume and even a fly going near the mic is going to scare you shitless by the high decibel count it makes.
I’d also like to say that men are probably not the most affected by testosterone (like, they probably resist it more than women, on average). Women are more likely to be. Why? The phenomenon that says the body gets used to medicines, drugs, hormones, due to ‘getting used to it’. Just like alcohol can have more effect if you almost never drink, and a lot less if you have a 6-pack of beer every day.
Consider that men need 10 times the amount of total testosterone to produce effects that women with the single time amount can get (facial hair) when the small amount of testosterone is affecting them more than their estrogen and progesterone can mitigate it.
In other words, I think that if you had a woman at the bottom level of the male average, and she was not particularly resistant, she would probably get the same masculine development than a man in the mid-range or the upper range (without a significant resistance either), would.
In numbers, my last paragraph means a woman with 10 nmol/L might get the same development as a man with 20 nmol/L of total testosterone. It’s speculative, but I read some posts by an individual with XXY Syndrome, who said they were more affected by testosterone than most men or women were (since XXY syndrome is shown by a much lower-than-normal total testosterone and hypogonadism, and yet *some* develop along very masculine lines, with very little testosterone, prior to or without treatment).
It could be that some women are more sensitive to testosterone. We are, of course, speculating here. I must say that I have a problem with more than the usual random chin hairs.
I’m sort of the opposite, I’m especially resistant to testosterone. Nowhere near 100% resistance, but high enough to counter 8 years and more of testosterone production in the average total testosterone range, and only get midly affected thus.
It’s a mystery to me why testosterone is a lot more potent pre-birth than post-natally.
Social movements also take time, effort, and risk to create. They don’t magically become prevalent to the point of being optimally beneficial overnight once the choice to start one is made. That a sociopolitical movement working in the best interests of women has wider social, cultural and academic acceptance than one working in the best interests of men would then count as as a privilege women possess now.
Interesting, S.
Well, K, yes, Rome wasn’t built in a night, and in this fast food culture it can seem frustrating when everything isn’t laid on for us in a day. But that is a problem of cultural perspective, I would suggest.
Chronic exposure to estrogen impairs some cognitive functions.
Hey, I’m jus’ sayin’.
Well, I have very poor cognitive functions in some regards, but not in others. It is hard for me to forget an academic or abstract fact, but I am so not interested in little event sequences that have no emotional meaning. Although, something would really have to hit me over the head, a lot of the time, to register. That is why I say to my sparring partners, don’t just pretend to hit me and recoil — hit me directly.
Does this mean that you approve of existing men’s activist groups (MRA’S) that have been established to protect men’s interests?
I approve of anybody who fights for the further humanisation of humans. I oppose those who fight for stereotypes and dig people into ruts.
You sound a lot like me.
I do not believe that a person’s normal level of oestrogen impairs their cognitive functions.
Jennifer C;
MY QUESTION: Does this mean that you approve of existing men’s activist groups (MRA’S) that have been established to protect men’s interests?
YOUR ANSWER: I approve of anybody who fights for the further humanisation of humans. I oppose those who fight for stereotypes and dig people into ruts.
Is that a “yes” or a “no” to the question?
I do not understand why anyone would fight for the “further humanisation of humans”. Who can become more human than they already are? All of my ancestors are human, going back to the dawn of humanity. I assume that to be true of all humans. How can anyone become “more human”?
Who is fighting for stereotypes and digging people into ruts?
Maybe I need to make the question clearer….
Kuuenbu began by pointing out that there is a movement that aims to protect and advance the interests of women – the Feminist movement. He suggested that the lack of a similar movement to protect and advance the interests of men renders the Feminist movement a privilege that women enjoy. …
You responded, telling Kuuenbu that men could build a movement.
I then pointed out that such a movement is currently being built; its participants identify themselves as men’s rights activists (MRA’s).
A substantial number of feminists explicitly object to the existance of the MRA movement, as if claiming a prerogative to dictate how men may or may not join together to protect and advance their common interests.
You have identified yourself as a feminist. Your statement advising that men could build a movement to protect their interests suggests that, unlike the feminists described above, you approve of the existance of the MRA movement as a means by which men can protect their interests and aquire the same privilege as women in that regard.
Do you approve of the existance of the MRA movement, or do you object to its existance?
Pat, I’m afraid that you and I do not exist in the same reality at all.
You try to come across as logical, but I fear that you are merely a cultural robot.Given that I have this opinion of you, what does it matter whether I agree with the existence of MRAs in your country or not?
[Jennifer: Please don't call people names. —ballgame]
Which realty is the real reality?
I am the Emergency Educational Holographic Image (EEHI). Please state the nature of your educational emergency….
I was hoping to extract some encrypted meaning from your statement. I see now that your answer is that you have no answer, and that in itself is a satisfactory answer. Thank you.
Please deactivate me on your way out….
Oh, I could not resist providing a link to this t-shirt which was photographed at the National NOW convention this past month.
It so very neatly captures the hypocrisy…
Flowers: $10
Dinner for two: $40
Telling her you are a feminist: Priceless!
Expecting the man to pay for flowers and dinner? That’s free, apparently.
Jennifer: You’re a valued commenter here, and you are of course free to respond to or evade questions as you wish. As moderators, we’ve found a good step to avoid having threads degenerate into flame wars is to strongly discourage critiques of another participant’s person instead of their arguments, which is why I struck your ‘robot’ remark.
BTW, I personally didn’t think Pat’s question was mindless; I thought it was in fact very respectfully posed and intelligent, and I was curious as to your thoughts on the matter. On the blogs I’ve read, there appears to be a significant number of feminists who see feminism as a women’s movement which shouldn’t be contaminated with men concerned about men’s gender issues, and another large feminist contingent which sees the MRA movement as evil. Sometimes these contingents appear to overlap. Unfortunately, the ‘MRA’ label often seems to be applied to any man who thinks that men are oppressed by gender, leaving men in a bit of a rhetorical ‘damned if you do damned if you don’t’ position. (“It’s OK for men to focus on men’s gender issues, as long as they don’t contaminate feminist discussions with their concerns, and as long as they don’t do it outside of the feminist realm.”)
Pat: Thanks for responding to the comment with good humor.
How, exactly, can any man call himself a feminist if he’s _paying_ for her flowers and dinner?
Yuck. I don’t even know this man and I want him to exit my consciousness quietly and swiftly.
He’s, like, gross.
Well typhonblue, the way I see it, either the man insists on paying 50% or he takes turns (which is the same), or he pays 100% to not offend her. He has no option to pay 0% unless she outright tells him so (and he accepts it). Basically it would take a conscious move for the woman on the date to not get at least 50% of the date paid.
A man who insists on paying 0% of the date might not date for long unless he’s extremely attractive in some way (multi-millionaire, celebrity, looks from heaven, or known to have knowledge/experience of sex beyond mortal means). He still has chances, but they’re probably single digit if not below 1%.
hi BG. It may be an unusual approach I am taking, in giving my views of who people are, rather than in pretending to be logical about something that does not come under the purview of logic so far as I can see. However, I think I am cutting to the chase. Most people, I believe, do relate to others on the basis of their feelings regarding them, and then seek to justify those feelings in terms of some kind of overlay of rational justification. No wonder there are a lot of confused people walking around out there – people believing that there are certain deep and profound reasons for things, when there isn’t.
Now, I did give an answer to Pat, and he declined it, pressing for the Holy Grail of a different kind of answer — the kind of answer which is supposed to justify a person morally, and make them feel that they can transcend the common everyday reality of being liked or disliked. I call the urge to have that kind of answer, and no other kind of answer, robotic.
Whether I rudely decline or respectfully decline to refuse the declination of my original answer seems to me to be immaterial. The fact was that I gave my answer — that I would support any approach to meaning that enhanced the feeling of humanity we have one to the other. My answer was trivialised and ignored.
As a robot, I must protest your implication that calling someone a robot is insulting.
Not really. Your answer was un-understood (and still is). …
…OR… in robot parlance: “That does not compute … … that does not compute … … that does not compute……….”
You are not pressed for a different kind of answer, your current answer is satisfactory; no answer would also be satisfactory. I only intended to clarify an answer that I did not understand.
If my comment has offended you, I apologize.
I doubt that I can be understood. Western identity politics — that is, identity politics per se — seems to me to be a dead-end particularly for ethics, but in some ways also conceptually, since categorising people does not produce a way of understanding them, but tends to prevent this.
I call that robotic, and hopefully not robotic as an immutable category from which no person can escape. Rather, identity politics is a robotic tendency, from which we may all find some way to escape.
So my premise is that identity politics gives us false ways of knowing — false knowledge.
I see feminism as being socially and historically necessary, but I do not find much interest or value in feminist identity politics. Similarly, if MLA organisations have risen up to fight feminist identity politics, I do not see any point in them either. I would say they both deserve each other.
What I see as a useful project is the humanisation of humanity. (This will not make sense to anyone who presumes that we are already human by virtue of being born.)
The humanisation of humanity means the recognition of such things as individual self-determination, freedom from stereotypes and freedom from punishment on the basis of infringing against the coventional expectations of one’s gender. This, to me, is the feminist project freed from identity politics and its trappings.
That would be terribly lonely, but, fortunately, not true in this case. I can understand what you are saying now. Is it possible that I have been associating with humans too long and am becoming…….humanized?
Nevertheless, my superbly engineered decryption programming has detected that within your comment, you have inadvertantly included the kind of answer for which I was presumably pressing. I hope this does not mean that our association is causing you to become….roboticized.
You seem to be saying that you are averse to the aims and methods of the MRA movement but you have no particular opinion one way or the other as to whether it should exist. Am I right? If so, I consider that a forthright answer.
I also believe that I understand what you mean by “becoming more human”. You have an ideal for which you believe all humans should strive. The trouble is, no two people have the same vision of the ideal human. Self-determination, itself, could be a mere social construct, a condition that is only possible in conjunction with a modern social system. We must all be part of a culture, and cultures are made of conventional expectations; they are inescapable. Regulation is the price paid for the privilege of being part of a community. Stereotypes are a result of a propensity for the human brain to detect and analyze patterns, they, too are inescapable. They occur reflexively, most are useful, some are necessary, and some are useless and destructive.
I understand that feminism may seem necessary to you, and to others. But, it is an impediment to me, and others.
There is still one thing I don’t quite understand – identity politics.
Pat, recognising patterns and imposing stereotypes are two different things. The concept of reification is useful here. It is useful to recognise patterns, but one must realise that these patterns are. There are often tendencies in the world at large, that create and determine these patterns. However, the capacity to see patterns is a product of our own mental workings. So to some degree we also produce (invent) these patterns with our own minds. A degree of caution is therefore necessary when it comes to patterns. Exercising too little caution in our observation of patterns leads to a conceptual feedback loop that is anything but intelligent. We start to see merely what we expected to see, rather than what is there. This the beginning point of ideology. That practice is called “reification” — treating an abstract concept (ie. different formulations of patterns) as if they had concrete existence. In other words: imposing our ideologies on the world. (Take this tendency too far and for too long, and we all become roboticised.)
So identification of patterns and treating patterns as the basis for ideology and combat are two separate things. The second approach often — although not always — eschews a necessary amount of skepticism and caution that would keep us human, in my view. It is the devolution of humanity into identity politics.
Nowhere do I see this more clearly illustrated than in the perception of an ordinary rainbow, with its seven bands of color. Except…a rainbow has no bands of color. The wave lengths of light from a rainbow vary as a continuum across its width. But, the brain can’t process a continuum, so it is forced to organize the wavelengths and arbitrarily classify them into distinct (although fuzzy) bands. The process is beyond volitional control. You can know that it is a continuum, but you will see distinct bands; it is inevitable. I would refer to this process as perceptual bias. Perceptual bias is not something that we impose on the world; it is something that our perceptual system imposes on us.
Recognizing and analyzing patterns, classifying raw sensory stimuli are more than just useful they are necessary and inevitable: In this room are several chairs and tables, all of which are different from one another. Each chair and each table differs from the others of its kind to such an extent that the differences between each of the indivdual objects in the room are much greater than the minor and subtle differences that distinguish a chair from a table. Still, I can always distinguish a chair from a table without hesitating, because I have formed a stereotype (generalization) of the characteristics that make a thing a chair, and I have formed a stereotype of the characteristics that make a thing a table. I use those stereotypes to attach meaning to the word “chair” and to the word “table” when I hear or use either word in a conversation. Forming stereotypes is absolutely necessary for individuals to function as members of a human society. The formation of a stereotype occurs so easily that it practically resembles a reflex; no conscious effort is required to form one. Overwhelmingly, stereotypes are useful.
Becoming roboticized sounds similar to developing habits. Habits are also useful, as well as necessary and inevitable. Without habits it would be necessary to deliberate every movement and every act. Language itself is a habit. It would be quite impractical to deliberate every movement of tongue, lips, and voicebox each time a sound is uttered.
You understand some part of what I am saying, but I have studied this kind of stuff for years, and my words represent a submerged iceberg with further supporting concepts underneath.
I agree up to a point — that having a “culture” actually means having a shared basis for simplifying sensory data. What I am getting at is more complex than this, because I think that ideology becomes a mechanism that is somewhat independent of individual perception (but not group perceptions), which guides perception to particular political ends — ends that are not always in the interest of the viewer.
I’m not arguing against habit, though, but against the stultification of habit, due to a lack of review and critical thinking. (And it helps to have tools to think critically – this is not automatic, or something you can do without training.)
I also think that the more educated a person is, the less they tend to rely upon the crutch of stereotyping. It is those who are at the bottom of culture who proceed like this.
I believe that you are in Australia and that it is somewhere around mid-afternoon. Here in the Eastern USA it is the middle of the night. I am tired, I will respond to your last comment tommorrow.
Good nite.
I agree with this.
The stereotype of female is useful in as much as it helps differentiate from male. But once you get passed the basics of it, you don’t need the stereotype. You can still know that a butch woman is a woman for example. You don’t need to rely on 50 (unconscious) indicators of femaleness or feminity to indicate your choice, you also know that there is a continuum and can make decisions that are not automatism or habit.
The more aware a person is, the more they can individually identify people as more than categories and labels, as whole persons, without taking out the efficiency that stereotyping brought on, while conserving the individuality that stereotyping would discard away.
Right. and a person must also be open to having their categories and labels outrightly contradicted by the available evidence. But this is further than most people are prepared to go.
True though I know by experience that those people do exist. People who are able to consider me female without ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ even when they know about my intersex condition and that I was raised as male.
Well, that is great, S. People can make adjustments to the way they view things for all sorts of reasons, but I consider that most people are often afraid to see what it is that they actually see — so they go running to ideology to make them feel safe again.
To what degree can we face the world in terms of its frightening unpredictability or instability?
I’m not sure to what degree people are afraid that their worldview is wrong, but I know most people are afraid that their identity is wrong, that they are the only one seeing themselves in way x, while people see them in way y.
There may be more to internalized stereotypes when regarding ourselves than just what we were told to do or like. It probably has a lot to do with how we want others to see us, as well.
As such I dress rather femininely to be perceived as definitely feminine (and this is how I feel the most comfortable, and what I like the most). If I was told it was unfeminist to wear a skirt, a dress, any make-up at all and such, I would still like it more, and no doubt would still dress the same. Not that I want to be perceived as unfeminist, but that my comfort means more than a political cause (and that restricting yourself for a political cause is no better than restricting yourself because of patriarchy).
Being feminine is something central to my identity. At least to my child persona (who is most of me). If everything suddenly became gender-neutral (clothes, make-up, body language, speech, names, pronouns), neither masculine nor feminine, I would be at a loss as to how to be perceived as feminine. I would feel cheated of a big part of my identity.
This, in my opinion, explains why many feminine women feel compelled to follow the beauty script, not only to be attractive, but to be able to express a big part of who they feel to be. Of course there probably are other reasons; force of habit, being convinced of being unattractive if you don’t do a thing or two – most people can probably get over those factors (if they try), but not who their personality is.
Most people can’t face the world without anchors, security, knowledge that things are this or that way. Presumption that they will remain the same person and that others will, too.
Still a long way to go though, consider this:
from http://ideologicallyimpure.wor.....nd-backup/
also called trans-panic defense, is still usable in courts, medias pander to it when they report (hateful) murders, basically blaming the victim for being killed…
It’s not that far to gay-panic and how Lawrence “Larry” King got killed. Except gay-panic is more challengeable in courts.
Good morning (to those of you for whom it is morning).
It also means having a shared basis for any and all instances of personal or group interaction and a shared basis for collective effort.
Stereotyping is not a crutch. It is the result of a fundamental process – classifying – through which the brain processes raw sensory data to produce meaningful infomation and without which sensori stimuli would be nothing but a collection of meaningless chemical reactions. Stereotyping is inevitable to both the ignorant and the educated. An educated person is better equiped to recognize which ones are destructive.
You also know that she is a butch woman. A stereotype within a stereotype…
Ideology. Let us imagine a person going about his (or her) daily business, performing habitually regulated behaviors that allow the completion of necessary tasks without the impediment of undue deliberation over each act. In spite the behavioral efficiency induced through the practice of habit, life involves struggle. So, it is not surprising that our imaginary person, struggling day in and day out, week after week, month after month, year after year, always heading towards a single destination, the grave, might at some point ask himself, “Why?”. “What is the purpose of all of this?”. Since this person is not only an individual, but also a member of society, he will not only ask himself, but may ask others as well. People will exchange ideas with one another, and when they have arrived at an answer that, to them, is satisfactory, they will have developed an ideology.
To imagine people without ideology, we would have to imagine people struggling day in and day out, week after week, month after month, year after year, always heading towards a single destination, the grave, without asking, “Why?”, without having a purpose.
Indeed, a person fitting that description might be taken for a ….. robot.
Pat — a confusion of the term “ideology” with the “ideas”.
Now, I have ideas — which is why I am able to speak to you. Yet I would argue that my ideas are not merely stereotypes.
In martial arts, the person who is most prone to thinking in stereotypes is the one who is most likely always on the back foot.
Does a person stereotype me as one who always jabs with the left hand? I will switch stance on them, and they won’t see my coming from the right. (Enjoy the feeling of safety that your stereotyping brings!) Does my partner stereotype me as a kicker? I will switch modes on them and start punching. So much for the feeling of security you get from making assumptions.
The truly courageous — those who seek success in their efforts — can embrace the zen attitude of “no mind”.
Jennifer at #222:
Do not overestimate your ability to resist stereotyping, nor underestimate its legitimate uses.
And yes, as a martial artist you can eventually (with enough observation) be predicted. You will favor one side (very few people are truly ambidextrous and even those that are, are rarely perfectly proportioned in strength), you will tend to kick or punch more, or at least choose certain targets more often. You will be able to change your habits after intense practice, but you will never be aware of all your subconcious movements that might give away your intent, and will sometimes be faced with the choice of sacrificing efficiency for unpredictability.
“no mind” isn’t so much avoiding stereotypes as it is about removing distractions. On a subconscious level your mind is still sorting and classifying information, having to rely on built in stereotypes of what the motor movements of your adversary potentially mean.”No mind”, is, in short about removing impediments such as fear that will not let your body respond in the most efficient manner.
Thanks for all of your views, Clarence. I believe you stand corrected.
Fear is of course related to strategising to enable one to have a plan or two in case of disaster. So, “no mind” is related to overcoming fear — but more specifically to overcoming the tendency to set up narrow little plans to save oneself. Hence it avoids “stereotyping” or more specifically rigid thinking that will stop you from using all of your possible options.
Now, Clarence, I never claimed that I was superwoman, and could literally rise above the prospect of having a mind. That would surely not be desirable, even if it were remotely possible. So what I was getting at had to be something else then — something human. I believe I was talking about getting rid of stereotyping expectations, and learning to react in terms of what was actually coming at me, rather than what I expected to be coming at me, based on stereotypal assumptions. So your point that I thought i was superwoman with no specific preferences or human tendencies in fighting style is rather odd indeed.
I think when you refer to the value of “stereotyping” , you are really intending to refer to the value of learning — which is something entirely different. Learning is different from stereotyping in this precise sense: one learns when to accept a generalisation, and one also learns when accepting a generalisation will land one in more hot water than if one didn’t. Thus one is able to deviate from the compulsion of accepting a generalisation.
Everyone: We are starting to wander a bit far afield from the subject of the OP on what is already a long comment thread. While it’s certainly gratifiying to see the essay spark so many thoughtful responses, I’d like to suggest that future posts to this thread focus on the original topic.
Yes– let us get back to stereotyping each other — the Western habit that guarantees power for sure!
The observation that, for example, women are significantly less likely to be injured at work (in the U.S.) and far less likely to be killed at work is not a stereotype. Nor is stereotyping a habit confined to the West.
No characteristic than anyone can name is ever a habit confined to a particular group. Nonetheless, groups have noticeable characteristics. Identity politics has had a certain history in the West that it has not had in most regions of Africa or in Asia. Originally identity politics was a strategy of the New Left, and Herbert Marcuse. However, it has become mainstreamed, to the point that it has now become commonplace to assume that there is not objective ground or facts outside of stereotyping. This leads to a tit-for-tat mentality and a further deterioration of human relations. And yes — this tendency is particularly Western.
It may be true that women in the US are less likely to be killed at work — but I have trouble seeing the benefits of a tit-for-tat approach that would draw up privilege lists. If, for instance, even half a dozen women are killed in combat, that is still women being killed, and drawing up a list about supposed female privileges is likely to reinforce stereotypes that women are never killed in battle. So whilst it would pay to have some idea of statistics about this or that, I do not see any point when these stats are only drummed out to fuel a rather noxious identity politics.
It seems to that sterotyping and victimhood both seem to fall quite nicely under the hat of identiry politics.
Stereotyping: When one side is critiquing another stereotyping can somethimes happen. This where claims like “Men are rapists.” “MRAs just want the right beat and rape their wives.” “Feminists just want all rights with no repsonsibilities.” “Women lie about rape.” come from. On the flip side when someone is being critisized they may strike back by claiming that the critiques are stereotyping. This is why you get various groups who will gone on and on generalizations. Their claim is that the critiques are basing the critisizm on stereotypes (even in the event that said stereotype may be true in that particular instance) and it is unfair to apply them.
Victimhood: When one side is critiqed by another they may often cling to victimhood status as justification of their actions/words/etc… From here you get “Women are the real victims of war.” or “The real victims of false rape accusitions are the women that are really raped but are too scared to come forward.” (and notice how its “women” and not “people” that are too scared to come forward).
I think I explained that right…
But it is acceptable to talk about men’s behavior as falling into this or that patriarchal mold?
Is it wrong to say most stars in the sky are receding away from the Earth, rather than coming towards it? Is that a foolish stereotype about stars, which, as we know are all individuals with a right to do what they want?
Is it another foolish stereotype to say that there is a land called the USA, which exists in the northern hemisphere?
Is is a foolish stereotype to count the number of war dead in world war 2?
NO. It is not wrong to determine what is happening with regard to something on a mass scale. To insist that everything is quite individual and therefore unpredictable is not the smartest thing one can do.
And just because somebody says that excessive heat can kill you doesn’t mean that excessive cold will preserve you life. Dichotomies like that are too simple to be automatically useful to us.
Critical thinking is worth learning.
It is not wrong to regard something on a mass scale, yet how do we know that the greater deaths of men in combat and in the workplace aren’t part of ‘regarding something on a mass scale?’ In other words, part of a greater pattern?
How do we decide which phenomena are ‘stereotypes’ and which are legitimate illustrations of larger truths?
This is the issue.
The observation that men are viewed as less valuable is ignored and treated as irrelevant to understanding the gender structuring of society; yet instances of men controlling women via religious edict are viewed as reflection of the gender structuring of society.
Which datum are valid and which are not valid?
Can we use the ‘stereotype’ of the overbearing mother as evidence that women rule society; or can we use the ‘stereotype’ of the controlling religious patriarch as evidence that men rule society?
I haven’t read all of this, and excuse me, if someone else already pointed this out, but: Can a man consistently admit that he has the privilege of being ignorant of his privileges?
maze; That’s a good question and I wonder how others will answer it. It strikes one as being reminiscent of the kind of thing you’d expect to find in the infamous “struggle sessions” of China’s Cultural Revolution where class enemies were paraded through the streets wearing dunce caps and publicly required to fess-up to crimes they didn’t know they did. More than a few were goaded into offing themselves.
What’s most galling about that is the people who say that men are completely unaware of their privileges will, in the next breath, claim that women have no privileges to be aware of and it’s true simply by saying-so. It reeks of hypocrisy of the most baldfaced and laughable kind. I know of nine-year-olds who wouldn’t be taken-in by it.
TB– I think we need to get beyond stereotypes which purport to tell us the truth about things on a mass scale. Psychologically speaking, the events that affect US are the ones that become the lens through which we read the condition of the whole of society,in any case. So unless we are trained in social science, we will not begin to approach objectivity. You — for instance — are under the impression that men are not considered as valuable as women. That is due to your own experiences. Others will have quite different impressions, depending on their own experiences.
Unfortunately ‘stereotypes’ are how scientific theories come about.
We have a whole spectrum of phenomena to analyze, from anecdotal evidence to statistics, to the behavior of social bodies–an understanding of which can be gleaned by observing them at random intervals–to widespread events and our responses to them.
From that we pull out patterns, or perhaps we use hunches. We create a theory, make that theory as simply stated as possible and then we develop ways to test it.
You may consider this process ‘stereotyping’ but at some level we have to accept pattern forming as fundamental to human communication.
The _honesty_ in the process for the person who generates the theory lies in a good faith presentation of the theory and possible ways to test it. The honesty in the process for people who disagree with the theory is to recognize that the epistomological process is iterative and that, when we’re dealing with uncharted territory, we may not be able to present a way to falsify in the beginning.
Yes.
I’m sure they do. But I present a theory. In the Judeu-Christian diaspora, men–as an aggregate–are treated as less fully human–valuable–then women. I distinguish valuable from _useful_. Tools are useful; humans are valuable. In those instances where, on the surface, men can be interpreted as more ‘valuable’ we find that they are actually seen as more useful. In some cases, useful precisely because they have little value.
This does not preclude the possibility that their are abusive men who treat their female relatives as value-less. Only that these men are not viewed–by the larger society–as entitled to treat their female relatives this way. Bearing in mind that everyone hates victims. They just hate some classes of victim more then others.
How could we test this? How about one potential test. Turn on the television for fifteen minutes on the top of every hour throughout the day. Note how many times men are:
1. Viewed as incompetent, particularly in activities that are not associated with their gender.
2. Subject to violence.
3. Presented as evil and unsavory.
Do the same for women.
The views presented by television are in line with what advertisers believe their target audiences–consumers–will accept. Consumption, even more then citizenship, shapes our society. An individual consumer may not have the same amount of power as a corporation, but a corporation has no power if it does not appeal to the consumer.
Another method of examining the issue is via thought experiments.
Imagine a young man terrorized by a conservative mother who believes his sexuality needs to be violently suppressed through medical intervention. A victim, yes. How is he viewed? As less of a man for complaining. Now imagine the reverse scenario–a young women with a conservative father who violently oppresses her sexuality. What would be the reaction of the average person upon hearing of this victimization? Even if the average person would view her as less of a woman for complaining(which I highly doubt), there still exist a sizable proportion of people who would not. I know, because they are quite _vocal_ on this issue.
I know even you(general you), reading both examples, see the first example as somehow less important, less impactful, less innately angrifying then the second. I know this, because _I do too_. I also know that almost everyone in the diaspora who does read my two examples believes the second is more horrific then the first because they are subject to many of the same fundamental forces as myself. (Either that or I just managed to be one of the few people, raised in the diaspora, who sees men as valueless on a fundamental level. This is also possible–I could be in a battle to the death with my own misandry and projecting it onto the rest of the diaspora, except, of course, I’m getting huge bucketsful of resistance to deconstructing said misandry, and I what I see in myself I also see reflected around me.)
You need only do it and be honest about your reactions. If you need to, really visualize it, make the abuse real. An easier one is to imagine a young man being punched in the face. And then imagine a young woman. Which is worse? Note your reaction.
Note also your reaction to the reaction. You will start excuse making: the second is worse because of the ‘patriarchy’, men are more evil, the second is worse because it’s worse on the woman, even though the severity of intervention is not mentioned, the second is worse because women are more sensitive, etc. Cognitive dissonance. Compassion is should be felt regardless of a person’s bio-group; that is a liberal value that most aspire to, and yet we are bigots on a fundamental level, so we try to justify our bigotry. Feminism is simply apologia for female-favoritism, because of that it has incredible social resonance. We want to be good people and bigots too.
That is a potential thought experiment to engage in. Simply imagine the scenarios and analyze your response. I think most intelligent people can observe their own responses. It just takes some courage to be honest.
A recent example for you, Jennifer. Your statements on rates of workplace injury and death. Even though both are well over 90% male, you insist it is ‘stereotyping’ to view them as something men suffer, overwhelmingly.
If it was women who suffered most work place injuries and deaths, would you be inclined to say, ‘that’s a stereotype’ if someone started asking, ‘well, why is that?’
Finally, I suppose you’re right. My experience of viewing men as valueless–enigmatically coupled with the personal value I place on men–have lead me to believe this is a value forced upon me by society, one in which my natural personality is diametrically opposed to.
::wangst:: Yes. I suffer. ::/wangst::
Hmm.
I don’t think you hit the nail on the head with regard to me at all. What you are saying is that from your point of view — which you argue/assert is the way the world actually is — I am conditioned to view the world in a stereotyping way.
I don’t see that at all.
For instance, I didn’t have the reaction to your two scenarios that you predicted I would have.
Then you are a better person then myself.
BTW, I argue that the diaspora is like that, not the world.
TB,
This undervaluing of men is not “Judeo-Christian” (That term is really, really odoious, but I’ll go with it for now.), it is western European. It is an aspect of chivalry, the moral code of pagan Western Europe. The Church could not suppress it it. The notion of women as frail/hysterical/dangerous is again not so much Christian as it is Greco-Roman, but it got balled up into Christianity in the early centuries when being Christian in western and Northern Europe meant assimilating to Roman culture.
Comments 233 & 234 (by maze and aych)
I’ve concluded that the “I have the privilege of being ignorant of my privilege” argument is a failsafe in case someone begins to question male privilege. In the event that someone manages to make some leeway in questioning male privilege they just fall back on this to silence them.
Notice how that is almost always the last item on most male privilege checklists?
What gets me about those checklists is this though (and maybe I don’t understand it that well because of my interpretation of privilege ): Why are there items on those lists that are things that everyone should have as well things that no one should have?
No one should have to worry about being the victim of DV right? Then why is “43. If I am heterosexual, it’s incredibly unlikely that I’ll ever be beaten up by a spouse or lover. (More).” on that checklist (and specifically mentioning heterosexual men is a whole nother conversation in itself)?
On the other side of the coin everyone should get a fair shot a job regardless of gender right? Yes and that is why “1. My odds of being hired for a job, when competing against female applicants, are probably skewed in my favor. The more prestigious the job, the larger the odds are skewed.” is on that list.
But like I say perhaps my interpretaion of privilege is mixed up.
I’m not a better person that anyone TB. I just happen to think in a more complex way than the majority do. Learning is available to everyone, though.
I have catagorized you as someone who is likely afraid of the ground and likes to keep distance. By stepping into your comfort range–towards you, rather then away from your attacks–I would likely catch you off guard, complete a successful take down and neutralize your ability to attack by sitting on your chest. (Or side mount, if you prove to be particularly intractable for a kick boxer or whatever.)
I am sure it is. Although perhaps all we can do is learn more and more complex rules.
Incidentally, the thought experiment is actually _identifying_ a stereotype. How do we know that the stereotype I’ve identified is, in any way, less valid then the ones you’ve identified? Is there a process you acknowledge for identifying legitimate stereotypes? Have you ever considered that you are stereotyping the existence of stereotypes?
If you have no way of identifying a stereotype outside of your own mind, then how do you know you’re not simply projecting your own stereotypes about stereotyping onto supposed stereotypers–as I believe you have accused me of doing?
Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is how I see it. I have caught myself engaging in stereotyping. I have offered my belief–based on inductive reasoning, accepting the potential counter-argument that I am insane or biased in an unusual way–that the stereotyping I’ve engaged in is likely engaged in by the majority of people who share my cultural perspective.
You say you think in complex ways; try to defy stereotypes. Now, tell me where I went wrong? In assuming that others stereotype as I do? Tell me how have you made your, presumably, correct assumptions about the stereotyping engaged in by ‘less complex’ minds? What is your methodology?
PS. Can men be stereotyped?
NO, you miss the point. There is an aspect of the brain which functions more efficiently if it is not slowed down by concepts. I’m not denying that concepts are useful — especially if we know when and when not to use them. However, there is also a point in trying to open up the aperture of the mind so that it can process information faster than you can think it. And yet, this is not the knee-jerk “faster than you can think” of instantly labelling someone with some adjective or other. It is, in a way, a form of prelinguistic processing, which is very accurate.
The fact that we can teach the brain to process information without “judging” is what interests me. I’m not so interested in your labels, which tell me more about how you process information than about me.
Actually, interestingly enough, TB, you read me as the opposite kind of martial arts fighter to the one I actually am. I’m very much of a defensive fighter, most of the time, so it is in my interest to draw my opponent in, rather than keep them at a distance from me. And I’m an intuitive wrestler and kicker, when it comes to working from the ground.
No matter how you slice it, men have the additional condemnation to ‘sacrifice for their wives as Christ sacrificed for the church.” Also, Christianity turned the current pagan attitudes about women on their heads; instead of condemning submission as inherently feminine weakness, it lauded it as the hight of spiritual virtue. (I don’t see Christian mythology as supporting the notion that women are hysterical/dangerous, rather it supports the _deconstruction_ of that notion. Submission to God is good, women are naturally submissive, therefore…)
Is it any wonder the early Church’s growth was supported by women?
Now chivalry may have been inherited from pagan europeans–deepening the misandry of Christianity. But if it was antithetical to Christianity, it would never have been appropriated.
What ground work have you done? (Kicking from the ground?) How would you work your defense if I were to take the superior positions I mentioned?
How do you identify a stereotype and wether or not others are engaging in them? Obviously you must have a methodology, as you have declared yourself a more ‘complex mind.’ It stands to reason that you have figured out a way to distinguish yourself from simple minds who ‘stereotype.’ You have even given a rough estimate as to how many ‘simple minds’ there are–the estimate being _most_ people.
How did you determine that you are a ‘complex mind’? If you have never experienced the process of stereotyping, have you directly observed the process of ‘simple minds’ stereotyping in order to rule out the same process in your own thought patterns?
TB– I’m afraid that you are taking offence at some of my terminology, so it might be wiser for me not to proceed here.
Also, by talking about martial arts, and using it as an example, I wasn’t intending to get into a macho posturing match with you. If you want to talk about various techniques and what I would do when — if you are genuinely interested in that — my email address is on my blog site.
So, I don’t want to use the term, “complex mind”, any more. I think you are reading it as an elite term, and that isn’t what I want to say.
Of course I have experienced stereotyping — and I have also experienced being stereotyped. Neither of them are very pleasant, in my opinion.
Oh, not at all. I rarely get offended. In fact I would consider ‘simple mind’ a complement.
The simpler my mind has become, the clearer I see and the happier I am.
I am still curious how you differentiate from what you consider to be a legitimate stereotype–one that needs to be deconstructed(by society, one assumes)–like the ones you experience as negative and the one I experienced as a negative manifestation of my own psyche.
As far as I know, I _was_ a simple mind stereotyping and yet you seemed to be saying that my experience of stereotyping cannot be extrapolated to the larger world.
How have you determined this? As I said before, you must have a way of judging the stereotyping behavior of simple minds in order to determine which stereotypes extrapolate and which do not.
I would like to learn more about the methodology you have developed. And understand the process by which you determine what stereotypes reflect larger truths and what stereotypes are simply idiosyncratic and unique to the person.
I think this could be very valuable.
I was curious about your terminology. You used the word defensive in a context I would not have. So I was curious what you meant by it; thus my question, ‘how would you defend?’
To illustrate a bit better:
You say you have been subject to stereotyping by others.
You also say that you believe stating that more men then women are subject to workplace injury and death is a stereotype.
Now, I’m sure you’ve had the experience of being subject to stereotype and wondering about how that experience relates to the larger framing of gender in society.
Lets imagine there is a man who has been paralyzed in an industrial accident. Let’s also imagine he starts researching workplace injury and fatality and comes across the statistic that the vast majority of sufferers are, like him, male. It seems that your expectation is that he should dismiss this statistical fact as a stereotype. So instead of looking into what social stereotypes exist that have contributed to his situation and the situation of other men, he is supposed to dismiss the whole issue because it is stereotypical to say that men are the majority sufferers of work place injury and death.
Isn’t it just as stereotypical to say that women are victimized more by the gender system? (Not to mention there aren’t any particularly reliable statistics on ‘gender system victimization’.) So, shouldn’t you be dismissing investigation into the stereotypes that have lead to your situation, just like our hypothetical injured man?
Again, I’m interested in the methodology behind dismissing one but not the other.
I’d also like to reiterate my interest in the criteria by which you determine a stereotype exists and can be considered to be held by the greater society and not just individuals or counter-cultural groups.
Finally, if you aren’t interested in discussing how stereotypes relate to society’s gender system, I would also like to ask why are you participating in a blog that revolves around discussing society’s gender system and one approach to analyzing it?
What I meant is that because of the nature of this site — which insists that stereotyping is the only way to process reality — statistics, too, are likely to come under this treatment. Therefore, statistics will be understood as a justification for a steretype, rather than as complex data.
Now, if you want me to teach you, please go to the bank and draw out a wad of notes and send them to me. I do not do this for free.
If you want me to leave this blog, I am more than happy to do so as well.
Just let me know.
I believe the data on workplace injuries and deaths was used to support the theory that the gender system _stereotypes_ men as disposable.
I can’t speak for the actual bloggers, but I believe the general attitude is that this stereotyping is not positive and that the stereotypes that negatively affect men should be dismantled. I don’t believe anyone has come out in favor of stereotyping, even stereotyping of women. (Aside from the various ontological discussions.)
Now, if you believe it is stereotyping to draw the conclusion that society stereotypes men as disposable based on various evidence(workplace injury and fatality being one) then what evidence is _acceptable_ to draw conclusions about society’s gender stereotypes?
If you don’t think any evidence is acceptable to draw conclusions about society’s stereotyping, then how can you agree with statements like ‘patriarchy….’ If you believe we can’t make any coherent statements on the gender stereotyping of society without engaging in stereotype ourselves, that’s fine. It sort of makes participation in a blog of this nature… well, dull, I’d imagine.
But if you _do_ think we can make coherent statements on the gender stereotyping of society without engaging in further stereotyping–then how do you judge between conclusions about society’s gender stereotyping that are further stereotypes and those that are valid?
…
If you want me to leave this blog, I am more than happy to do so as well.
Hm. Well, I don’t think my opinion matters in the scheme of things–this isn’t my blog after all.
I’m not sure if you are a feminist, but if you are, Daran has expressed an explicit preference for feminist participation over… entities such as myself. Which I understand completely; he wants to engage in discussion with feminists.
So, in light of that, I apologize if you felt I was wanting you to leave. That wasn’t my intention; my question was inspired by puzzlement, not animosity.
I think it is important to conceptually separate whatever we take to be society’s propensities to gender stereotype from the notion that it is necessary to stereotype in order to hit back or get anything done. If steretyping is degrading — which I think it is — then the correct way to hit back is to rigorously avoid stereotyping, whilst being aware that modes of stereotyping exist.
I’m not convinced that men are considered more expendable than women are. I don’t think that one batch of statistics even, can confirm this. We would need to see the conceptual underpinnings of the investigator to know even what it means to say that one gender is more expendable.
You have supplied the conceptual underpinnings regarding this phenomena in terms of Christianity. I don’t buy it. Whilst I perceive that Christianity is much stronger in America than it appears to be in the rest of the developed world, I think that it is out of fashion for men to conform to the ideology of making themselves servants of women.
Daran has written extensively on this I believe. Perhaps, if he thinks it could be useful, he can link to the relevant articles he’s written.
There is a lot more to this then ‘one batch of statistics.’
If the average person could only save one life–either the life of a man or a woman–which would he or she choose? The one not chosen is likely to be part of the ‘expendable’ gender.
The conceptual underpinnings are in how and by whom we are raised.
Simply, people value those who help them survive and offer them pleasure. For most people, they identify pleasure and survival–on a fundamental level–with their mother. They then _stereotype_ an association between pleasure and survival and women as a group.
Christianity did not set this up so much as got religion out of the way of a natural consequence.
According to your definition of value, women should value and rescue men; whereas men should value and rescue women.
How did you come to this interpretation?
Men give women pleasure and survival.
But they do not offer these things during formative stages of women’s development–when we are forming the fundamental aspects of our world-view.
They are also not the only means by which women receive survival and pleasure.
psychoanalysis would argue that they do.
So you disagree that humans have a fundamental experience of the female body as sole source of nourishment, comfort and intimacy? Does being an infant not affect us?
If there is an equivalent experience for both men and women of male bodies, then it is at a later stage of development and less likely to form instinctive responses that are neigh impossible to change.
I believe psychoanalysis would also argue that our experiences as infants have huge impacts on our later attitudes and behavior.
According to psychoanalysis, all children experience something called the Oedipus complex, which involves becoming attracted to and seeking nurture from the parent of the opposite sex. Ultimately, the identification of power evolves/devolves towards the male figure, and away from the female figure. Whereas the mother still remains identified with nurturing, she also (upon resolution of the Oedipus complex and entrance into society) is identified with dubious states of regression, with suffocation, and with the possibility of psychosis. The male, however, becomes identified with reason, with potency and so on. This all happens during our formative stages, in the first few years.
According to your summary, boys would not be identifying with men, but with their mothers.
Regardless, Freud is one branch of psychotherapy–his theories are not the end all and be all of psychotherapy; identifying with men actually requires a male figure to identify with, which many children do not have to any significant degree.
However, I do agree that children need to differentiate from their mother in order to be mentally healthy. I just wonder to what degree our society promotes, encourages and supports said differentiation.
Freud may have identified the ‘opedius’ and ‘electra’ complexes, but that does not mean _anyone_ in our society successfully navigates them.
It’s complicated and I gave an all too brief summary. The upshot of it all is that both boys and girls begin by identifying with their mothers, then have their Oedipus and Electra complexes respectively and then end up identifying with their fathers. But the point is that this all happens during their formative years — so the formative years are not merely female-influenced. Also a significant point is that the outcome of the resolved Oedipus complex is a rather negative view of the mother.
And yes, this is one theory. I tend to read it as the way in which the psyche develops under the mould of patriarchy.
I think Freud was full of it with his theory. Penis envy anyone? I’m going to pay a surgeon 20 grands for him to make a vagina out of mine…I must sure fit his theory.
I don’t think anyone takes Freud seriously anymore, what with his non-empirically-arrived-at ideas. If a modern-day psychiatrist said to his or her contemporaries that they were a Freudian, they’d probably be laughed out of the room.
A psychiatrist clinic I went to see in Montreal, in dealing with Gender Identity Disorder, had a Freudian approach. My bullshit-detector sent red flags when “How is your relationship with your mother?” was asked.
They are dinosauresque and hopefully will be replaced by people who actually care for the people who come see them…until then I’m not surprised they use Freudian ‘logic’.
I mean, it takes a LOT of thought-twisting to arrive at the conclusion that I would identify as female (or heck, that anyone would) because I (or anyone) was in good terms with my (their) mother.
Note to the administration:
I have a comment in moderation.
[Pat: I tried everything I could to rescue your comment, but its injuries were too severe and it did not survive. I am sorry for your loss. Actually, it ended up in the spam filter — you can probably guess why — and whatever I did to rescue it didn't work. If you resubmit, hopefully Daran can fish it out of the filter because I have a feeling that's where it's going to end up again. —ballgame]
Then a good place to start is how various societies approach differentiation from the mother.
Patriarchal:
The Big Samba from Paupa New Guinea.
The Samurai culture.
Ancient Greeks.
All of these male-favoring, male-focused societies–women were socially, morally, legally, physically and aesthetically inferior to men–approached the problem of differentiation by institutionalizing male homosexual behavior.
Egalitarian:
Looking at more egalitarian cultures, most of _them_ have adult-hood initiation rituals–tests of endurance for both boys and girls that are seen to turn them into young women and men. In many instances the mother’s role in these initiations is to try to prevent them and very publicly fail at doing so–showing the child that mother’s power has come to it’s end.
Western:
There is no universal initiation into adulthood for western children. Just at the point when boys usually would be initiated into adult male society, the concept of ‘heterosexuality’ takes hold and they are compelled by their social milieu to re-attach to girls and be very suspicious of too-close bonding between themselves and other boys.
Then there is the pervasive cult of motherhood, starting with Mary–the human who had the closest relationship to God in our spiritual tradition and that relationship was, you guessed it, defined by motherhood.
I know from personal experience how someone who has had a very… difficult relationship with their mother can be made to feel it is _their_ fault because many in our society truly believe mothers can do no wrong. I have also had the benefit of witnessing how mothering can cripple supposedly adult people across _generations_–GENERATIONS!
To many people in our society, why would we _want_ to differentiate from mom? She represents everything that’s good in the world!
So what? People in our society probably never successfully resolve their ‘Oedipus’ complex and get to the point of a ‘negative view of mother’.
Considering that almost every other society on our planet has a social institution devoted to differentiation, I would say that our society likely suffers from weak differentiation or a desire to ignore and stimatize differentiation.
Further, what’s wrong with having a few ‘negative views of mother’. She is your first experience of, what amounts to, a GOD. Realizing that she is human and flawed is a very important first step to becoming your own person.
(And that’s not even going too far into the role homosexual behaviors may to have in other species in the differentiation of males from their mothers. I find this concept particularly compelling when coupled with the observation that highly war-like societies with the strongest male bonds _institutionalize_ homosexual behaviors among men. It’s not an option, it’s a _requirement_.)
In our society they are _overwhelmingly_ female influenced and unless you can point to a social institution that opposes that influence, consistently and across the board, again I remain sceptical that differentiation even occurs in our society–or that our society doesn’t tactically oppose it by not celebrating it.
Which actually makes sort of twisted sense. The undifferentiated child is used to looking to someone else as a source of security and survival–an excellent attitude for a compliant and uncomplaining work force to have.
In the west, people say that ‘graduation’ and subsequently getting a job represent initiation into adulthood.
However, it seems to me that these ‘transitions’ are fundamentally different then the conceptual underpinnings of other society’s initiations.
We move from one situation of being told what to do to survive, to another situation of being told what to do to survive.
Most other initiatory rituals involve a test of personal endurance or survival–they involve creating situations where the individual only has his or herself to rely upon and by successfully completing the initiation, the individual now knows that they, themselves, are the source of their own survival.
In fact, in moving from one situation of being told what to do to survive to another situation of being told what to do to survive, the only choice we really gain is our choice as _consumers_.
Wow. It all falls into place.
Quoting again:
Another way to look at the impact of ‘differentiation from mother’ is too look at how mothers are portrayed in our society; our society’s general attitude towards motherhood. If, through the process of differentiation, we are encouraged to see our mothers in a negative way, then that effect should be noticeable in our media.
For example, are mothers often portrayed in a negative light? Are fathers portrayed much more positively? Are mothers often presented as sinister presences in their children’s lives?
Again, if patriarchal society _causes_ mother-antipathy, it should be everywhere. It should be the average opinion of the average person–that mothers are a potentially negative force in their children’s lives. That mothers need to live up to a standard of behavior that proves they _aren’t_ a potentially negative force in their children’s lives.
So, in a patriarchal society that views psychological development in the manner you stated, people believe that mothers are a negative influence on the psychological health of children–likely leading to them preferring to give children to fathers in the advent of a custody dispute; Mothers are subject to censure regarding their failings, censure which is openly vented in public and rarely challenged; Children can be seen as influenced too much by their mothers and any child displaying such influence is condemned by his or her peers, etc.
Simply, in patriarchal society mothers are guilty until proven innocent.
Makes sense. It also fits in with the conceits, mores and actions of patriarchal societies I’ve studied.
But does it relate to _western_ society?
TB: I don’t know. You are showing me a new face to Western society — one I do not recognise at all.
Aych, by the way, a lot of things are not empirical. pOlitical influence and manipulation for instance, rarely comes under the scientist’s scrutinity — yet, assuredly, it exists. And in fact what you are about to say next can in no way be scientifically predicted.
Thanks for the interesting discussion and points to think about.
These two, in particular, were very compelling:
Freud did base his theory on a Ancient Greek play. Perhaps it’s less a reflection of actual psychological development then it is of a patriarchy’s greatest fears–that a son becomes too attached to his mother and kills his father.
The Ancient Greeks felt a son could fail to be his father’s son, even when paternity was not in question, by being too attached to his mother.
They also had a lot of myths involving virgin birth that excluded women as participants–Athena from the brow of Zeus, for example, and had a fascination with reproduction that excluded mothers.
I can see how a patriarchal view of psychological development would promote differentiation and the idea that mothers are suffocating, sinister and somehow unhealthy to their own children.
I’m not seeing the same view as being widespread in the culture I currently inhabit, however.
That’s interesting about the ancient Greeks, and seems to fit. I also understand that the ancient Greeks preferred to keep women in a state of nature — untutored and barely civilised (consider the maenads). Men alone were permitted to participate in civilisation. Arguably, this view, or aspects of it, is still upheld by a number of men today, including some in politics. So, yes, that certainly seems to be the link (ancient Greece). But I also see the resonances of it today — I’ve actually experienced them!
It sounds rather fun:
http://everything2.com/e2node/Maenad
Like whom?
Incidentally, if you read Xenophon’s The Economist, you can see one opinion on the matter–that women were unruly and wild, but that they needed to be ‘tamed’ in order to make good wives.
Particularly interesting is Ischomachus’s discussion on how he trained his young wife. Amusing that, as soon as he got her over the threshold, his first thought was to articulate how the household would be run efficiently. Not the first thought most people–in our society–would attribute to an older man with a young woman at his beck and call. But I suppose it makes sense in the context of the time, the sexual spark went from man to woman, not the other way round as is today.
Actually, as an aside note, these days I am considering the patriarchal attacks on me (for that is what they were and are) as being of a rather special nature.
I think that my position in the world has been, in many ways, like that of someone who has grown up in a religious cult, without realising it, and has now left that cult. There are those around who do not want one to talk, lest one report certain things that they now feel ashamed of. So many, many people — too many to count — have taken it upon themselves to silence me, usually by using tactics that are broadly or explicitly misogynistic.
Misogyny is a good way to silence someone because it makes everybody doubt the person’s ability to tell the truth — including the person themselves. So I was told that I was effectively unschooled (despite at that time having a bachelor’s degree), that I “couldn’t even speak properly”, and that I was in various ways and measures delusional. When I reported the abuse, this was represented as further evidence of how I didn’t see reality as it in fact was.
Of course I wasn’t brought up in a cult, but within a culture that had effectively seceded from the rest of the world and its views about what was right and proper, in order to pursue a particular view of Christian righteousness and civilisation. That was the ideology underpinning the state of Rhodesia, which began just before I was born. And people shed blood for that ideal. And now they can stand no criticism (however implicit) of it.
And somehow my natural intelligence has made me appear a threat to all sorts of people — but especially the patriarchal, Christian ideologues, who still uphold the banner of the past. They have made themselves particularly noxious enemies. I guess its a fear that I’ll spill the beans in some way. But the extremity of the hostile behaviour I have faced these days strikes me as odd.
“I was watching CNN yesterday afternoon. It was All Penis, All the Time.”
“Doesn’t he feel potent when his penis is erect? It is the weapon or the tool he uses to possess a woman through her vagina….”
“Man’s discovery that his genitalia could serve as a weapon…”
“The image of the phallus as power is widespread to the point of near-universality…”
“…women, don’t let men hit the bottom or use their penis as a weapon!”
“Actually, your ‘manhood’ has been used as a weapon by several fighting groups worldwide…”
“Some men, they have so much heat and intensity in they penis, thatchu can feel it radiate through they clothes!”
“He breakin’ her down man, he is screwin’ her into subbbbMISSION!!! He’s screwin’ her into slavery by using his penis as weapon to break her ass DOWN!”
“…the penis is seen as a weapon…”
Note:
Comment resubmitted. Thank you for your effort, Ballgame.
If necessary, I can reduce the number of links; there are currently nine.
I think the sexual spark went from man to boy. The mere biological urge went from man to woman. Women were barely eroticised during that time.
Anyway, I don’t want to lecture you on American politics — there are surely enough resources online for you to have a look at if you want to see how some have certain views of the place of women.
Anyway, I don’t want to lecture you on American politics — there are surely enough resources online for you to have a look at if you want to see how some have certain views of the place of women.
I’m afraid I don’t see those views among the big political contenders. Although I’m not American, I’m Canadian. Religious politics don’t have as much traction here.
I don’t think a Republican would ever run on a platform remotely related to reducing the influence of mothers on their children.
That is distinct from believing women’s place is in the home(and that a man’s place is outside of the home)–you can believe that and also believe in ‘momism’–that a mother’s love is primary and inviolate.
I meant that women were expected to sexually desire _men_ rather then the reverse.
And you’re right, women weren’t eroticized, in Ancient Greek ‘porn’ women were ugly and lumpy compared to the idealized men.
Were women expected to desire men? Or were they expected to accept the mastery of men? — two different things.
You are right — no politician in their right mind would ever legislate against women controlling their children.
But — is that what you want from life? So little?
Desire them sexually as well.
Me, personally? No. In fact I’m rather intimidated by the concept.
But it seems to me that ‘so little’ is very appealing to many, many people.
“So little”?
JFC.
You’d think the alternatives most people were being offered were Exploration of the Galaxy, Paradise Earth, or some such.
Primary bonding in a family with children and ones spouse is often one of life’s great joys even when Doo-doo diapers are factored into the equation. As a man, I say that, and can only envy the happily married of this world, with or without children.
“So little” is often ALOT. What else should they want from life? “Fullfilling” work? In this global economy (an economy I might add about to go mechanized in a major way in the next ten years)? Now you are talking Meaning and Purpose and totally discounting human bonds (fragile as they often are) along the way. That’s a bit telling.
Not everyone has vaulting ambitions, and even for those that do the current political and economical state of things isn’t very conductive to being involved in greatness. I suppose they could find fullfilment in their local neighborhood watch.
Indeed.
I think for most people the quiet pleasure of raising healthy kids eclipses other pursuits.
Unless you are driven by the creative urge and get to be one of the lucky ones who becomes very successful (although it seems that the trade off is a healthy emotional life and sanity in a lot of cases.)
So we have these two ways of being happy. Family or running the gauntlet of success.
The gauntlet strikes me as more of a pyramid scheme, with very few happy people and a lot of very unhappy people.
By contrast family is less impressive, but far more likely to be fulfilling.
So who is the ‘lucky’ gender? The one whose access to family is secured, or the one whose access to the pyramid scheme is secured?
Add in the fact that women now have both and that a lot of men would give up the pyramid scheme for family, and the situation changes even more.
If that is what you want from life, then who am I to argue with you? As you suggest, no politician will oppose you, so go forth and multiply! There is nothing to prevent it.
I’m not particularly interested in family, personally. Like I said, I find the notion very intimidating. So much responsibility. Luckily few politicians, or anyone really, oppose what I want to do. Or at least, they don’t have the power to do so.
Regardless. There are quite a few social obstacles between men and having a family, keeping a family and enjoying a family.
Yes, it is like a magnet to you, but it’s pull is really too strong to move you an inch at this time. It’s the men who really need to worry.
[...] men can do (Askmen.com), male privilege (wiki), 21 Things Women Can Do That Guys Can’t (Cosmo), female privilege (2 3 4 5). Race: white privilege (wiki). Sexual orientation: straight privilege (2) (wiki), [...]
Says it all.
I just read this for the first time – haven’t read the thread, so forgive me if someone’s brought this up already – but it surprised me how many of those items implicitly referred to homosociality. Eg. ‘peer group’ and ‘close/intimate friend’ definitely seemed to assume same-gender company, as perhaps do ‘sympathetic audience’, ‘hierarchy’ and whoever it is who’s doing the damning in ‘damning personal deficiency’. Meanwhile, it read like ‘mate’ and ‘sexual partner’ referred exclusively to opposite-gender company.
It’s like looking at a world sundered by gender. Which I think is problematic from your POV because what you’re terming privileges does often seem reliant on each gender keeping to their own, and a) in my world that doesn’t really happen and b) if it is real, then it’s saying that there’s a female homosocial world that you don’t know how operates. (I think this is one of the holes in many feminisms, too – that the women who create feminisms rarely know what male homosociality is like, so many just miss seeing its influence on what gender is.)
So something like #11 or #12? Cuts both ways. Not shying away from fights is seen as a damning personal deficiency in a woman. I know this firsthand. But if you’re implicitly regarding a woman’s role as ‘mate or sexual partner’ rather than ‘intimate friend, peer, member of audience/hierarchy’, I guess you’d miss that.
Hey, Thene. There may be some presumption of homosociality underlying some of the items in my list, but a) there is a certain amount of gender segregation IRL, and b) I wasn’t referring to a single gender peer group in the specific items you mention. If you grew up in an environment where girls’ attitudes towards a boy were unaffected by his being bullied or intimidated, you grew up in a very enlightened environment indeed. (I notice from your blog that you’re not an American citizen; my impression is that this dynamic is a bit more pernicious in the U.S. than in western Europe or Canada, so perhaps this really is something you’re not familiar with.)
Even if girls profess to be enlightened about such things, they will often also say in other contexts that “confidence” is something they look for in boyfriends, and it’s not easy to develop confidence in adolescence if you’re on the receiving end of public humiliation or physical mistreatment.
I don’t deny that. Nor do I deny that there are areas in life where men are privileged over women.
But that doesn’t contradict anything on my list. My intent with my list was not to imply that ‘all those male privilege lists are all wrong, and THIS is how it really is.’ Nor was it to prove that ‘men have it worse than women.’ Rather, my intent was to show that gender is NOT one-sided, with men getting all the privileges and women all the disadvantages. There are a significant number of areas in life where women are privileged/advantaged and men are disprivileged/disadvantaged, and these areas are rarely acknowledged by mainstream feminists who seek to maintain the notion that ‘women are oppressed by gender and men are not.’
Regarding numbers 6 and 7, it actually benefits men to be valued on these criteria. Women are valued based on their physical attractiveness. If a person becomes well-educated and earns a lot of money, she is empowered in this society, has better access to healthcare, less chance of living in poverty. If a person spends all of her time on her appearance, she will not access the power of financial success. After her looks fade, she is left in poverty. However, if she had been focused on making money, she is left with a big pot of gold, so to speak.
Also, it seems that some people posting on this site are really out-of-touch with areas where sexism is rampant. I am in the field of chemistry, which is still male-dominated, so much so that only 10% of academic chemistry professors are female. The National Academy of Sciences published an excellent report last year detailing the discrimination that is very alive and well in the sciences. Also, the higher up the ladder a woman goes, the bigger the boy’s club that she faces. Feminism is VERY relevant today and is still necessary.
@ feminist Chemist: I see your argument about points 6 and 7. However, I think it is a rather unconventional view to say men benifit of women not having as much pressure from society to have a successful career to be considered a worthy human being. Women have a *freedom* men (in general) have not; that it can have bad consequences to “abuse” this freedom is another thing.
It seems to me that you look at powerful males: Surely, if a woman is not forced to be very successful, men have fewer competition from women when it comes to top jobs. However, if you look at unsuccessful men who do not measure up to the standard society has set up for them, you can see that they get less sympathy from society than women who do not have a career.
At the top, there may be more women-empowering feminism needed. At the bottom, it looks different, and the posters here rather focus on the bottom.
PS: One poblem with “privilege checklists” is that many (or possibly even most) points cut both ways, as you demonstrated, while others seem to me quite irrelevant (see male privilege checklist, demanding to see the person in charge most often means you are going to see someone of your own gender. So what?)
Men may make the majority of the few at the top, but they make the majority of the many at the bottom as well.
And the men at the top share the wealth with their wives and family, if they’re not celibate or widowed. So that “pot of gold” benefits the CEO’s wife almost as much as the CEO himself, except she doesn’t work 70+ hours a week to earn it (wether she works or not, her wage would almost be inconsequential compared to a Fortune 500 CEO’s).
Welcome to the blog, Feminist Chemist.
Philosophically, I think elementary_watson and Schala captured the gist of what I was thinking very well. There are two points I would add, though.
For one thing, I would dispute the notion that attractive women necessarily end up in poverty. In Britain, older women are on track to becoming a majority of the nation’s millionaires according to the British Centre for Economics and Business Research. A significant part of his appears to be due to women aquiring wealth through divorce settlements or inheritance.
Secondly, I don’t automatically assume that any gender ratio disparity in particular job fields must be exclusively due to discrimination against the minority gender in that field. Certainly I find it easy to believe that there are anti-female attitudes in male-dominated professions that have an adverse impact on women’s career prospects — this has been shown to be true (in the impact of blind “music only” auditions for orchestras which has greatly increased the hiring of women, for example).
However, I also think that women’s collective behavior contributes significantly to how well they are represented in particular fields. Women tend to gravitate towards more humanities-based degrees than men, and far more frequently have the option of stepping out of a particular field’s ‘rat race’ and choose to be a stay-at-home spouse instead than men do.
So when you talk about women comprising only 10% of chemistry professors, it’s not self evident how much of that is due to discrimination, how much due to women’s collective career choices, and how much is due to some combination.
Ballgame:
I’ve heard a similar thing will happen in the U.S. relatively soon through divorce and male death.
Good point. It’s likely a combination of both, it’s the nailing down how much of which that is the hard part. Why do more women choose to go into biomedical engineering than electrical engineering? Why are there more women going into the field of health then say computer science? Why is the gender ratio within math graduates closer to 50/50 compared to the rest of the math/sciences area? Looking at the bio-med/bio field the gender disparity isn’t as severe so is discrimination not as bad compared to other areas? If the discrimination is as bad what accounts for the disparity between bio-med/bio and other fields? My guess would be that the women are more motivated to go into bio-med/bio than other science fields.
To be honest, as a former undergrad in the hard sciences I never experienced any sort of discrimination.
If anything the men in the field went out of their way to help me. Also, if there is discrimination directed towards women in the hard sciences, it seems to be more directed at white, western women. Most of the women in my classes were of Middle Eastern or Asian origin.
Interesting since those areas tend to have the most male-focused and valuing cultures.
A personal tid-bit. I was once listening to a BBC broadcast about Malaysia in Bali; they were interviewing a Muslim mechanical engineer named Fatima about rock music.
Obviously highly patriarchal Malaysia is doing something right for its daughters if they feel empowered to go into the hard sciences!
If one walks across the college campus, away from the humanities departments, to peek inside the science buildings, one will find plenty of Indian and Chinese women in the labs who seem rather oblivious to not being welcome there.
I saw this in art school too. Asian and Middle-eastern women clustered in design, not, for example, painting or printmaking. Design was not only more academically rigorous–often incredibly so–it was also far more likely to get you a well-paid job.
I think we’re witnessing either yet another form of discrimination that manages to hurt white women more then every other woman or we’re witnessing a cultural effect that has more to do with pressure to provide.
I suspect that the expectation women from more ‘patriarchal’ cultural backgrounds will provide materially for their families is why they gravitate to more professional and hard science fields.
White women don’t have any pressure to provide so they take what interests them, not a compromise between what interests them and what will pay the bills.
Also, being a hyper-entitled white woman I sometimes travel in wealthy circles. Believe me, rich women are not as depicted by hollywood. The hollywood depiction may be how they wish to be seen, but the average woman at these functions is a paunchy, short, middle aged matron with a bowl cut and an ascot to hide her jowly chin.
In terms of statistics, being slightly obese is positively correlated with wealth for women.
Such a steaming pile of male privelege bullshit.
You just. don’t. get. it. and seem enraged that the uppity bitches dare to talk back to MEN. Well FUCK YOU MORONS.
Hi butterflywings, welcome to our blog.
To the contrary, we welcome women, uppity or otherwise (“bitch” is your word, not ours) to talk to us. That’s one of the reasons we set up this blog.
But I have to say it, just walking in and saying “FUCK YOU MORONS” isn’t really “talking” at all, it’s just hurling abuse. talk to us instead.
I think you’re wasting your time on butterflywings Daran. At least the likes of Daisy and ZoBabe would express their disagreement with some amount of decency. Hell even Kiuku didn’t start off with nonsense like that.
Actually kiuku did start out very much like that. And stayed like that for quite a while.
There’s every chance that butterflywings is a driveby and won’t even see my response. But how much time will I have wasted? About 30 seconds so far. As far as I’m concerned it’s worth it if I can get just one in a hundred to engage as well as kiuku did.
There is a danger that negative predictions can become self-fulfilling, but my main concern is that some hot-headed commenter does reply with a “fuck you too”. This means you, Aych.
Daran, to use an abusive comment by a third party as a stick to beat Aych with is petty and unnecessary. I suggest you strike that and apologise.
I do not recall aych doing anything like that before. While may be sarcastic, he is generally… civil about it.
Don’t recall doing that too often, either. Not that it matters or anything. My instinctive reaction was that butterflywings was probably something of a put-on.
Aych
Bufferflywings is real feminist alright. SHe hang around the Fword.uk
So Bufferflywings is a feminsit? That explians everything…
The silence from Daran is deafening.
I can accept that you fawn over feminist women, no matter how vicious they are, for tactical reasons, showing up their viciousness without responding in kind, and you hold non-feminist posters to far higher standards of civility because you don’t want feminists to feel picked on. But you and other bloggers relentlessly pick on Aych (with due recognition to TS for standing up for him on this thread), who is guilty of nothing but rhetorical sarcasm, and in comment 305 you crossed the line into personal abuse.
Ironically enough, the equanimity with which Aych responds to this treatment shows who is the better man.
Believe it or not, Patrick, I do have a private life and am not chained to this keyboard night and day. I have only made a couple of brief comments on the blog in the past two days, because I haven’t had the opportunity to devote more time to it.
I don’t recall whether Aych has literally said “Fuck you too” to a feminist poster. What I’m concerned about are such eruptions of hostility as this comment, directed at PG less than 24 hours after PG’s first ever contribution to this blog.
One might suspect from that first post that PG is at least feminist-leaning, if not an outrigtht self-identifying feminism. For a while now, Aych has been under an injunction not to respond at all to such guests for three days after their first post. This isn’t the first time that Aych hast breached that restriction. If my recollection is correct, it’s not even the second.
This blog is my home on the web. You and Aych are guest here. I think I have the right, in my own home, to set the tone, to decide who I particularly want to welcome, and to make them feel welcome, without other guests making them feel unwelcome. The latter would appear to be an impossibility while Aych is free to post here, so I’m settling for something less – that I get the opportunity to make them feel welcome before he makes them feel unwelcome.
Yet Aych is, as observed above, either unwilling or unable to comply with even this restriction. If he’s “unwilling”, that is to say, if he has no intention of complying with the rules we have laid out, then that’s grounds for banning.
He’s not banned, because my operative assumption is that he’s “unable”, that is, in his hotheadedness, his excitement, he forgets the standards expected of guests and the rule that applies specifically to him. Hence the reminder of that rule which you have taken such exception to.
You are free, of course, to think him a better person that me. That’s your prerogative. But to present him as the innocent victim of bullying by me is to ignore the history of his behavior toward feminists on this blog. That we continue to allow him to post is a testament to our patience. However, our patience is not inexhaustible. If he posts just one more time in violation of the three-day restriction he is under, he will be placed under automatic moderation. This is a final warning.
You’re giving Aych a final warning for something I said?
Aych posted in direct response to a post PG directed to him by name. In that post, PG accused Aych of “making stuff up”. You (or ballgame, it’s hard to tell who struck what) let that stand. But when Aych quoted that in order to respond to it, you (or ballgame) struck it as if it was something he said, even though it had quote marks around it.
And once again, post 305 in this thread is a personal attack by you against Aych. Practice what you preach, and try to be consistent.
No, I’m giving him a final warning for not waiting three days before responding to PG
Aych posted (#167) barely an hour after, and in direct response to PG’s first comment (#166). PG had not then responded to any comment by Aych, He only did so after Aych had engaged him.
Now those initial comments by Aych were actually quite well-argued, and not offensive per se. But that misses the point. He wasn’t supposed to be commenting at all.
As I said, I struck the first paragraph, up to “(Slams fist on table)”, as an unwarranted and baseless attack on PG’s motivations, and way more objectionable than the parts that ballgame struck. Setting aside that first paragraph, and the point that Aych should not have been commenting at all, I would not have struck any of the rest of his comment myself, rather I would have admonished both to tone down the personal shots, stick to the facts, and support them with links.
However, I do not countermand the actions of another moderator merely because I would have moderated differently. ballgame is perfectly entitled to consider the length of time that Aych has been a guest here, as well as his history as a moderation headache, as militating in favour of strict enforcement, just as PG’s newbieness militates against.
I haven’t personally attacked him at all. I haven’t said “Fuck you” to him. I haven’t hurled insults at him. I haven’t called him rude names.
It’s true that we discourage guests from discussing each other at all, where this operates to derail substantive discussion. That isn’t the case here. You queried my decision to remind Aych of his obligation in respect of a new feminist guest. I see no way of addressing that without reference to the patterns of behaviour which make such reminders necessary.
(SIGH) Yeah, I should’ve waited three days. Maybe PG wouldn’t have vanished after the first day.
Pat: I wouldn’t accuse Daran of “fawning”. He’s simply following-through on the fact that if feminists are going to frequent this site, they need to be treated like rare treasures. This is a non-negotiable prerequisite for debating gender issues with feminists outside of their own echo chambers.
One predictable result is that after being treated like a rare treasure, they will nonetheless continue to “work the ref” by claiming the moderators are biased against them by not suppressing the voices they don’t like. This brand of intimidation works quite well: The playing field here is never quite even enough for feminist visitors.
Yeah, so my snark is intolerable and counterproductive. Feminist snark is not only tolerable, but quite productive, even if it includes “fuck” and “shit” in every fifth sentence.
I do find it odd that in what is supposed to be a gender neutral environment an extra helping hand has to be offered to one group to get them to participate.
Apparently feminsts expect to be and have to be treated like ladies or fragile little girls here, or they flee. Or some do; Jennfire C stayed awhile, and I think Daisy Bond and ZoBabae would self-identify as femninsts. Anyway, how ironic is it that this is being discussed on a thread entitled “Female Privelege”?
Ironic that it seems, to me, that many feminists have taken on the ‘fainty, dainty flower’ role. While conservative women seem to be taking on a more ball-busting persona.
“Ironic that it seems, to me, that many feminists have taken on the ‘fainty, dainty flower’ role.”
Only when they’re on the receiving end. The language of opponents needs to be restrained with speech codes and delete functions; it’s important to not be offensive. But when dishing it out? The middle finger suddenly becomes important, as does crudeness and swearing. They’re powerless women lashing-out against oppressors you know, so they’re allowed to use any weapon near to hand.
It’s rank misoginy for a feminist to get a fraction of what she dishes-out. The patriarchy has been kicking sand in women’s faces for 10,000+ years, so feminists are entitled to do some sand-kicking of their own. A purely defensive measure, natch.
The oppressor must be taught “how it feels” to be a victim (but be careful: this isn’t a valid reason for the oppressor to start acting like a victim; a key distinction which goes without saying!) Feminists must be the ones to teach the oppressor “how it feels”. They’re self-appointed teachers, true, but somebody’s gotta do it.
Odd that so many commenters here assume that feminist = female. It’s a common mistake — I initially didn’t realize “Ampersand” was the nom de blog of a man — but it’s nonetheless a mistake. From what I understand, Daran’s policy is sex-neutral and ideology-based: if a “feminist critic” who is female comments here, there are no restrictions on who may respond, but if a feminist who is male comments here, the restrictions are in place.
Also odd is the notion that obscene language is the lingua franca of feminism. Some feminists use it, just as some feminist critics do, but I think that the degree to which some commenters here get their idea of “what feminists do” based on feminist weblogs — which like other blogs will trend particularly white, middle to upper income, and most importantly, young — is creating a selection bias in their conception of What Feminism Is and What Feminists Are Like.
Patrick Brown, I did not categorically accuse aych of “making stuff up”; I said that if a comment of his was meant to refer to the facts of the Ledbetter case, it would be making stuff up. He denied that his comment was such a reference. Therefore, in the logic of the if-then statement, I was not considering him to have made stuff up. Please quote full sentences rather than selecting a phrase that does not accurately represent my statement.
I commented on that thread in the first place because I noticed that someone in it had cited something I had blogged. When I realized that there were such fundamental incompatibilities of basic concepts — such as what constitutes “mainstream” — between myself and the other commenters, I decided there was no use in commenting further. I take seriously the quote on my blog (“The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory, but progress”), and where there is unlikely to be any progress in my understanding or that of others, I do not waste my time or theirs any further.
I hope Daran will not interpret my exit as my having been in some way intimidated by rude behavior; it would have been the same had the discussion been conducted with the greatest politeness. There just isn’t any point in talking with someone who speaks a wholly different language.
PG
Before you go, could you just point out the fundamentally different assumptions which would make your further participation here unprofitable?
Are you sure that the problem does not result rather from mutual misunderstandings? For example.
I think that everybody here is well aware that there are male feminists active on the internet. And if you identify gender-egalitarianism with feminism, then the bloggers here, all male at the moment, would count as feminist. While you may have assumed that Ampersand was a woman none of the regulars here did.
A lingua franca is a mutually understood transactional language amongst people who may not speak it as their mother tongue. A propensity to swear could never count as such, surely, nor would people be likely to believe that it might. Who, in point of fact, has said that obscenity is the lingua franca of feminism?
Yes, there is an important difference between online and offline feminism, no question – but then again, online is where we are, right? Furthermore, ideas and arguments brewed up here on the internet will find their way through to the world outside eventually: they are worth debating and critiquing. I also think that your characterization of online feminists, bloggers and commenters alike, is inaccurate as far as age is concerned: the most prominent of them seem to be in their forties to mid-fifties. Do you read I Blame the Patriarchy (pretty quiet now but all the rage for a long time), Women’s Space, Reclusive Leftist and so on?
The one who cited (or linked) would be me, per your MWMF post on the old DeNovo blog (I say old because the last update is in 2007).
By the bloggers, Tom Nolan means: TS, Daran, ballgame and HughRistik (sorry if I mispelled).
Commenters is something else. For one I’m not what most people would call male, I have an intersex condition putting me nearer the middle, and an identification putting me squarely as female.
typhonblue is also female.
Yes, there is an important difference between online and offline feminism, no question – but then again, online is where we are, right?
Not only that but when you look at offline feminism vs. online feminism, which came first? Its not the chicken vs the egg here. Yes things change when you go from offline to online and over time online can influence offline (and I think a lot of that change is to the massive dose of Annonymous Keyboard Kourage one takes when the go online) but offline definitely came first. Hell if it weren’t for offline feminism there would be no online feminism (or at least it would not have kicked off in the 70s).
During a political campaign, when one candidate is further ahead and better known than the other, the leading candidate will refuse to debate his opponent. There are two main reasons for this:
1) The leading candidate has nothing to gain by winning the debate.
2) Public awareness of the trailing candidate will increase as a result of his participation in the debate, thus he will gain votes, win or lose.
Feminism is in the position of a “leading candidate” which creates a strong disincentive for feminists to participate in a debate with their adversaries. For that reason, feminists must be enticed with incentives by those who wish to participate in public debate with them.
The basic principles of Feminist theory are fundamentally flawed and cannot be effectively defended in an even debate. Since Feminist theory is popularly accepted as correct, feminists have no reason to attempt to publicly defend their theories. Accordingly, feminists will disengage as soon they find themselves at a disadvantage.
Feminism’s adversaries, who are in the position of the “trailing candidate”, can gain from participating in debates with Feminists even if the adversaries do not “win” the debate.
It is worthwhile, for the reasons stated herein, to make concessions for the purpose of enticing feminists to publicly debate their claims.
@Pat Kibbon: You can’t say whether or not the basic principles of feminism can be defended in an open debate, since there is no open debate about them.
My guess is that basic feminist principles can neither be proven nor disproven, and are therefore articles of faith (or axioms). Which is why one of the strongest arguments for the wrongness of non-feminist world-view is the statement “You just don’t get it!”
PG – to be clear, I have problem with robust debate and don’t object to the language you used. My problem is with the moderation policy that lets it stand when someone says it but strikes it for “obnoxiousness” when another person quotes it for the purpose of responding to it.
Daran, don’t be disingenuous. Calling someone nasty names or using bad language is not the definition of a personal attack.
Pat I fully understand why feminists don’t want to actually talk about things out. I was making that comment moreso about those that operate said gender neutral spaces, like the folks that run this place. (And I would add that your reasoning in comment 325 also explains why feminists are so anti-anyone that doesn’t already fully agree with feminism when they visit a feminist site.)
Despite the fact that the place is called Feminist Critics the folks that run this place don’t to limit the critique to feminism as long as it relates to subject at hand and they also try to keep the the critique limited to what they say. I can understand that you folks want to talk things out with feminists but I also have to say that, in my humble opinion based on the relatively short time I’ve been visiting here (about 4-6 months I think), not very many feminists actually come here to talk things out. There have been a good number of driveby comments (like 302) but not many actually stick around to talk (or maybe I’m just jaded by the negativity and pay more attention to the drive-bys).
I wonder could the reason that feminist minded people don’t come here is because the very name of the site, Feminist Critics, is what makes them hesitant to stop by for meaningful conversation and possibly what prompts the drive-by comments? I know I would be hesitant to visit a site called African American Critics, especially after I looked at the site saw that it is a site dedicated to critiquing African Americans. I’m willing to bet if you called the site MRA Critics you would get plenty of feminist minded people to drop in (just make it be know that such a site would be critisizing MRAs and not a site of MRAs offering critique). Not that I’m telling you what to name your site mind you.
When the site first went online, many feminists posted here. The title probably led them to believe the bloggers here were feminist, as an adjective, critics as opposed to feminist, as a pronoun, critics. There were, however, several demands that the title and concern of the blog should change. I doubt that changing the name of the blog at this point would have any effect. Changing the topics and turning this into a feminist space probably would, although it would take a few months for it to work fully.
TS,
Please don’t. This blog is the only space that manages to be question feminist rhetoric without being over-run by conservatives(who are archaic feminists anyway.)
I like having a place that’s inclusive of gay, transexual and black non-feminists. I think their perspectives are essential to deconstructing the feminist monolith.
I don’t recall more than a handful of drive-bys.
I don’t agree that “feminists” and “African Americans” are in remotely analogous positions.
It is not a personal attack on someone, to post a reminder to them not to violate an injunction that apples to them, when they have a history of violating that injunction. Nor is it an attack on them to point out that history in order to explain why the reminder was necessary.
PG’ quoted words were struck by ballgame; take it up with him. I am done with discussing this with you.
I’ve already observed that we cannot “win” in feminist spaces where the discursive playing field is so sloped that it’s more like a cliff. It’s still worth participating, though, because you can then deconstruct the discussion, and show that their “win” wasn’t on the merits.
Here we can and do win, on the merits.
PG:
What makes you think they assume this?
Edited to add: I’ve just seen Jim’s commment #317 which I think you might have been referring to. I do not agree however that it must necessarily be construed as assuming that feminists are female, nor does a single comment support a claim about “so many commenters”.
I use the term “Feminist Critic” as a term of art to refer to a particular point of view and approach to discourse. Not every person who disagrees with feminism is a Feminist Critic.
You are correct that the policy you refer to is sex-neutral. It also applies to only one guest here.
You are mistaken as to the nature of the discussion that has been taking place in this thread. We are well-aware that feminists, like everyone else, run the entire gamut of human temperament, and there are many, including feminist guests here, whose conduct is invariably courteous. The point is not that feminists are abusive – a particularly unfair generalisation given the abusive behaviour of many of their opponents – but how we respond to feminists who do post abusively.
I agree that there is likely to be selection effects in respect of internet feminism in general, and blogospheric feminism in particular, but only to the point of influencing the prominance the various strands achieve within the whole. It would be an extraordinary claim, requiring extraordinary evidence, that offline feminism was so essentially different from the movement we can observe as to be regarded as a different thing to which are criticisms are not applicable.
That’s your prerogative, of course, though it disappoints me that you have reached this conclusion based on conversations with other guests, before there was an opportunity to have one with me or the other bloggers.
Everybody here should be able to put forward their point of view free from abuse and personal hostility. One person’s misbehaviour does not excuse or justify another’s.
How we react to misbehaviour depends upon a number of factors. Our initial response to a new arrivals will normally be to use gentle words, the assumption being that they are learning the ropes. Sterner words and action are appropriate for established guests, especially those with a history of persistent abuse. Note that this does not depend upon the person’s ideology.
Now consider the aims of this blog. Every feminist who posts here, even if it’s just to say “Fuck you!” presents us with an opportunity to further those aims if we can persuade her (or, nodding to PG, him) to engage with us instead. The likelihood of success isn’t good in the case of a probable drive-by such as butterflywings, but the cost of the attempt isn’t high either. My response took just a minute to post.
If a feminist’s initial approach is offensive or hostile, its often because she expects hostility in return. We will not get her to change her approach by confirming that expectation. We might by confounding it. But confounding it requires everybody to hold back. Just one hostile response will confirm it.
Abuse or hostility expressed toward feminists, (whether or not in response to abuse from them) does not present us with an opportunity to further the aims of this blog. To the contrary, its are likely to frustrate them. To those who complain that we do not treat these things equally, why the hell should we? Why should we treat opportunities to further our aims the same as behaviour which frustrates them?
The same reasoning would apply if I were a feminist seeking to engage with opponents of feminism, a liberal seeking to engage conservatives, a conservative with liberals, a pro-American with anti-Americans, or any other ideological conflict. In every case I’d adopt the same approach toward the target group. There is nothing specific to feminism which mandates it.
My comment at #317 was referring only to people who actively comment or have commented here, of whom all the self-declared feminists happen to be female. Ballgame considers himself a feminst and is male, but he is a blogger here and not a commenter. I don’t see any point in characterizing on who might or might not comment here, but only those who actually do.
And I don’t even want to touch the pointless-to-me question of whether males can ever be real deal sho’ nuff true feminists. That’s a position feminists take, so that right there cuts me out.
And that Jim is why I’ve really begun to care less and less about labels. I was always under the impression that a label was a way for someone to identify themselves. But now its too the point where people are spending just as much time fighting over the label itself than what they are doing. And for what? Language control. When it comes to human rights it seems to me that instead of talking about/dealing with/etc. the ideas behind someone’s lable people just try to twist the label to mean what they want so they can do with it as they please.
You have feminists who intentionaly use the title MRA as an insult in order to make it = bad. (So if you’re an MRA it doesn’t matter what you think on the issues because by simply being an MRA you’re wrong. And if I disagree with you then I’ll just label an MRA so it will be easier to deal with you.)
You have feminists who try to their hardest to make progresive = feminist (You can’t be progressive without being a feminist! And that is because the only way you to show you really care about progress is to care about the issues of women. And the only way you care about the issues of women is if you claim the title feminist.)
If someone cares about equality and they are out there doing their thing (whether you agree with it or not) do it really friggin matter what title they claim? If the bloggers her all decided to take up the title of feminist/MRA/humanist/-ist but did not change they way of doing things would that suddenly mean their points are now valid/invalid?
Danny, it’s called framing these days. Orwell was right; control of the language is real control.
I have a shut-up answer when some calls me MRA as an insult. I just say “People have called me queer in that same tone of voice (you homophobic hypocrite).” They hate that.
“…a rose by any other name…”
Over the years, there has been a handful of occasions when I participated in extensive debate in feminist space. I consider each of those occasions to have been successful.
Unfortunately, I know of only one such conversation that still appears on the internet.
I can say it, and I will continue to say it, unless I am proven wrong (which won’t happen because I am not wrong).
I might have been tempted to add that no feminist will try to prove me wrong because feminists are cowards, one and all; but, I will not yield to that temptation because I know that statement would be unacceptable on this blog.
Nevertheless, more feminists visit this blog to talk things out with their adversaries than any other discussion forum on the internet, that I know of.
Pat, Pat, Pat. I was tempted to strike — I mean, come on, are we in grade school here? — but it reminded me too much of a certain Monty Python ‘apology’.
I tend to agree, Jim.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophasis#Paralipsis
Sorry, ballgame; I promise I’ll behave myself from now on.
As punishment I will write 500 times on Windows Notepad, “I will not express myself in Paralipses …. I will not expr….”. Not to mention…
…that you may have hit on something in the Python routine. Would it be appropriate to classify Rene’s apology as a “flying circus” apology? Should Ampersand’s approval of the California decision be called a “flying circus” approval?
Pat Kibbon:
Nevertheless, more feminists visit this blog to talk things out with their adversaries than any other discussion forum on the internet, that I know of.
You have a point.
No, it’s most likely that women don’t post here because quite a few of the comments I’ve read have seemed openly hostile to feminism, have blamed feminism for DV against males, have tried to engage in some sort of “privilege” point-scoring game (not childish at all), and a lot of them just sound completely bitter and combative. Not at all like the Evil Feminists so many people seem to revile so much!
This sort of “fighting fire with fire” approach does not seem advisable to me.
We might all actually be able to get something done if we laid to rest the petty backslapping, high fives, and “outvictiming” one another, and started listening and empathizing with all sorts of people.
There are ways in which men get the short end of the patriachy stick. There are ways in which women get it. What seems undeniable is that historically, women have had to fight very hard to be allowed into our institutions, into the workplace, out of the kitchen, and into public discourse.
Maybe some feminists are actually well-meaning people in whom you may find a valuable ally, if they weren’t so clearly seen as “the enemy.”
Isn’t this *exactly* the sort of attitude MRAs claim to have set themselves up against?
Pat Kibbon,
If feminists are “cowards”, you’d imagine they wouldn’t have had the courage to fight for the female vote when women were still considered the property of their husbands (much like slaves were), to fight for equal access to higher education for females when people still believed women were intellectually “inferior”, for the right of all women to enter the workplace if they’d like to when people still believed that women were biologically destined to be mothers and homemakers.
But feminists were highly successful in doing all these things. Not only that, but feminists have become a major voice in the political sphere in under 50 years. Those cowards!
When I look at this “female privilege” list, I can’t help but wonder:
Does the author not see that all of these imbalances he perceives in the skewed expectations society places on males, and the uneven gender norms men are burdened by, are leftovers from the days when MAN/WOMAN was still a severely limiting binary where “men” were everything that was strong, stoic, independent, smart, and sexually dominant, while women were everything that was weak, fragile, needy, frivilous, and sexually submissive?
It isn’t women who created this world, where men aren’t considered equal in matters of parental rights (because only women are feminine enough to take care of babies, duh!), where men are not only allowed, but expected to be raging promiscuous slaves to their own hormones–it’s ancient *humans*, our own earliest human civilizations. These early civilizations were “post-hunter gatherer”, agrarian societies where marriage became a legal arrangement for the patrilineal passing down of estates and the disposal of female children (who were not allowed to work on the farm and who could not make money, and who therefore could not support their parents in their elder years and were too expensive) as liabilities (as female children still are in some Asian cultures). They created this mess we’re still trying to sort out. This patrilineal form of land ownership, and the marriage institution it created, is almost entirely responsible for creating the cognitive dissonance modern humans feel when they try to live according to ancient, archaic gender norms.
The fact of the matter is that our way of living has evolved much more slowly than our social awareness has, and the “man/woman” binary that used to work so cozily now makes no sense whatsoever.
So, while many MRAs believe they’re being oppressed by a “gynocentric” point-of-view, the fact of the matter is that we’re *all* oppressed by an outdated binary from the patrilineal agrarian form of social organization.
I find the strange “ebonics-like” tone of Pat Kibbon’s “penis” post oddly telling.
I have never, not once in my life, heard someone make the claim that “all men are rapists.” Unfortunately, some men are rapists. So are some women. This is just a fact.
Although I’ve never been raped, I’ve been sexually assaulted more times than I can bother remembering, usually on the NYC subway. Each assault was in full view of hosts of people. Nobody said or did anything to help me. When I got off the train and tried to tell the MTA workers that there’s a sexual predator on the train, you want to know what they did:
Absolutely nothing. They shrugged. They didn’t take their walkie talkies, and call in the attack to central processing, and alert the conductor of the train to go kick the guy off. Nope. They shrugged. Some rolled their eyes.
So some of you might want to think twice before you try to float the bogus claim that everybody is so biased against men that everyone’s going around hysterically trying to lock up innocent men. It’s nearly impossible to get anything done about the real sexual predators!
Not many people care.
You should go see around Michigan’s Womyn Music Festival’s forums. There’s mostly radical feminists, who I hope are not representative of radfems in general, who deride men, and basically anyone not born with a vagina (this includes me, even if I’m a woman), and yes, call them all rapists.
This, all in order to protect some notion that someone born with a penis, but who never identifies as male, actively transitions to female – is still essentially male (and thus a threat) and can’t be allowed in a festival calling itself “for all women”. The controversy about this policy is 17 years old…
Are you referring to comment #278? If so, I don’t understand:
What is “ebonics-like” about it and what is it, oddly, telling you?
[Duplicate comment removed; leaving shell to minimize comment numbering confusion. —ballgame]
You are obviously an “exception” since you are participating in a discussion of the basic principles of feminist theory.
As for the women who won for themselves the right to vote, I will recognize their courage…
…right after I recognize the courage of the men who first established voting as a right.
And I will recognize the courage of women who entered the workplace…
…right after I recognize the courage of the men who established the workplace in the first place.
[Three days, aych. That means tomorrow night. —ballgame]
In 347 J you point out how women were not the ones that made the world as it is (in regards to parenthood and other thinsgs). It is correct that men are mostly responsible but what a lot of women’s advocates refuse to acknowledge is that it was men OF THE PAST that did those things. Despite that they still try to hold today’s men accountable. In what other situation is it just and fair to hold today’s generation responsible for the actions of a past one? Is anyone bringing up today’s blond haried blue-eyed German on war crime charges for the Holocaust? Should Elizabeth Bathory’s decendants be brought up on a few hundred counts of murder?
I would say that it is fair to expect today’s men to not perpetuate those things from the past but when you start trying to hold them accountable for sins of the past that is an extremely slippery slope.
I disagree. Men and women have always been co-members of every society, ever. If the default condition of society is equality of the sexes, then men would not be in a position to unilaterally impose conditions on women.
J,
Your comment about women fighting for the vote at a time when women supposedly were basically slaves is deeply, deeply offensive.
WHITE women were GIVEN the vote at a time when real slaves had risked their lives in battle, real actual battles, to gain their freedom and their citizenship, something white women had never done. Women never fought for anything, unless you want to eqaute some society dames enduring the indignity of “jail” (scare quotes because of the comforts afforded by their particular jails) with actual fighting. Fight for the vote – how many war dead did women have in that “fight”.
Your comment is especially odious because it so immediately recalls Susan B. Anthony’s odious, racist harangue asking how white women could be denied the vote when it was afforded to black men, at a time when white women were falsely accsuing black men of rape and triggering lynch mobs, at a time when black men, even war veterans, were denied the vote by terrorist organizations operating across huge areas of this country.
Odious.
The history of cultural gender views, while intellectually interesting and possibly a source of insight on how to progress foward, is of little comfort to those suffering in the present times.
It wasn’t “men” either. Gender, in a social sense, is a (bi)product of cultural evolution driven by biological and environment factors. Your inference is that the male gender is responsible which is an unfair implication. Further, the males in the current generation can not be “blamed” for the current state of gender relations, regardless of how much they may or may not be benefiting.
In a social sense that view point is quite accurate. However looking at modern institutions there is a gynocentric view point, through policies such as affirmative action or gender restricted DV campaigns.
Ballgame,
where did you move Aych’s post to?
Or did you not bother this time?
[Beste: Daran laid out a very straightforward rule to aych: do not respond to new commenters for three days. This is not the first time aych has violated that rule. His comment is in limbo. —ballgame]
Wow.
Racist.Not much more to add.
[typhonblue, you know that while I don't always agree with you, I think very highly of you as a commenter. I'm striking this comment with considerable misgivings but I think it's necessary. Calling someone a racist is an extraordinarily incendiary thing to do. It's possible — even likely, I hope — that you were not calling J a racist here, but saying that the sentiment J expressed was racist (which FTR I don't necessarily agree with). But it's ambiguous, and it would not be unreasonable for J to react and think, "typhonblue just called me a racist!" That's an unacceptable way to treat any fellow commenter, much less a new commenter who seems genuinely interested in discussing feminism. Comments should not be phrased such that another commenter could reasonably infer their person had just been rhetorically attacked in such an extreme way.
Had you said something like, "J, I think what you just said was racist, and here's why ...", perhaps you and J would have gotten into a discussion about how the situation of women was similar to and different from the situation of slaves. People may not have ended up agreeing with either of you, but at least that would have been an edifying discussion. —ballgame]
What is racist about pointing out the fact that slaves were the property of white owners?
Slaves were emancipated from the ownership of white men and successfully lobbied for and won the right to own property and vote before women were.
Desipis, I’ve repeatedly made it clear that we ALL created this world.
Danny, regarding your analogy between men now and Nazi ancestors:
I studied in Germany for a time, and the ancestors of the Nazis are actually very concerned with publicly renouncing the actions of their forebears and attempting to redress the historical wounds made by them. They are not taken to trial, of course. But they make, many of them, huge strides toward cultural “healing” because they refuse to say “that was yesterday! it wasn’t me!” and acknowledge that the acts of their parents and grandparents can never be forgotten or whitewashed away.
Jim,
It is deeply, odiously offensive that you try to claim that women were “given the vote” and that the Suffrage movement didn’t exist, nor did an early feminist political movement that lobbied for the right to vote and had to fight hard against deeply held prejudices and thousands of years of female exclusion from institutions.
In fact, the rank classism in your post, exhibited in your snide derision of the original feminists, the Suffragettes, for being largely middle class, is more hideous than anything I’ve ever said in my life. It is often the case that only the weathiest people have access to politics–even now, it is often the case that only wealthier African-Americans are able to attend universities and enter into political life. Would you snidely look down upon Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for being a wealthy civil rights activist?
All I did was state a FACT, that neither slaves nor women were allowed to vote or own property at a certain point in history. I never once, never in my LIFE, have said or even implied that the suffering of women was *WORSE* than the suffering of slaves. I simply stated a FACT about voting rights. This is historically factual. If you perceive the stating of this fact as racist, I’d love to hear why.
Nevermind–scratch that, Jim. I don’t want to hear anything more.
I’m outta here.
You’ve finally proved what most people already believe about MRAs–
That they’re more interested in stupid games of “point-scoring” and trying to assert that their own suffering is greater in magnitude than anyone else’s, and at the same time happy to accuse someone of being “racist” for pointing out that both women and blacks had to fight for the right to vote who never made a claim about the magnitude of either women’s or slaves struggle being greater than the other.
I NEVER, ever said “women and blacks had to fight equally hard to get the vote.”
I’m deeply offended that these words have been put in my mouth, and I won’t be coming back.
Have fun repping MRAs, guys!
You said:
Perhaps two thousand years ago women and slaves were in a more comparable position. But not a hundred and fifty years ago.
Women a hundred and fifty years ago were not considered property of their husbands. Wives were not bought and sold like slaves, nor could they be punished like slaves–wife beating was illegal–nor is it true that ‘women’ couldn’t own property(their husbands were responsible for their property while they were married, but an unmarried or widowed woman managed her own property), nor did slave owners sacrifice their lives to save their slaves as husbands did for their wives, nor were slave owners responsible for the criminal activity of their slaves as husbands were for their wives.
You have implied or stated that women suffer more then men on several occasions. Discussing the points you bring up isn’t ‘point-scoring’, it’s simply discussion. We all have different opinions on who ‘suffers more’ and we all have our reasons for holding those opinions.
I was calling the comment racist.
Yes, women were “bought and sold” 150 years ago, but not “just like slaves.” I never said that this was the case.
Show me where I said “women were sold EXACTLY like slaves were”?
Thanks. Didn’t think so.
There are several different forms of slavery. One of them is sex slavery.
A father was able to be the sole agent in deciding whom his daughter married, at which time a dowry (financial transaction) was passed down and the woman became legally bound to take care of her husband’s every sexual need, without any protection should she want to refuse sex.
What about this isn’t sex slavery?
I never once stated women “suffer more” than anyone, just that people all suffer in different ways.
Go ahead and put words in my mouth so you can more easily brand me an “evil feminist man hater”…that seems to be what many people here are eager to do.
You know, it’s sad. I thought this might be a worthwhile place to discuss important topics. Turns out it’s just as full of pointlessly combative ideologues as anywhere else.
Have fun being classists who dismiss the important human rights activism of people based on their tax bracket.
Yes but… the dowery was given to the husband by the father, not paid to the father by the husband. This wasn’t the purchase of a ‘slave’ but a way of provisioning a married woman for her married life. And although women and men had marriages arranged by their _parents_, they both had the right to refuse to marry.
And the husband was ‘legally bound’ to take care of his wife’s every sexual need without any protection should he want to refuse sex.
Women were sent to live with a man (who had the right to refuse a woman if he didn’t want to marry her) regardless of whether the woman wanted to live with that man, and were required to sexually gratify them whether they wanted to or not.
Whether you like this or not, this is sex slavery. No money need change hands in order for this to be legalized sex slavery.
No, men were not “legally bound” to take care of his wife’s every sexual need. Women were not allowed to demand sex. And at that time, men were not legally able to be raped, because rape was defined as a male on female act.
Women had no means of surviving if they did not stay with their husbands, so they had no choice but to stay. Men could easily leave a woman and still earn a living and survive.
You know, it’s one thing to talk about female privilege. It’s another to be so ignorant as to deny simple, universally agreed upon historical realities like the fact that women were not allowed to earn money or live independently, and were passed down in a patrilineal manner just like an estate was.
Would you like to see the marriage and divorce laws from 1850?
Men could divorce women for not satisfying them sexually. Women could not divorce men for the same reason. If a man didn’t want to have sex with a women who was pursuing sex, most men could easily physically escape her. Not so for women, most of whom had no chance of fighting off a man.
Dowries were not given to the woman for her marriage, they were paid to the potential husband for taking on the “financial liability” of a wife who could not “earn her keep” except through sex and housework.
J: I’m sorry to see that the idea of commenting here has turned sour for you. Personally, I was glad to see you join in the discussions here, and I admired the way that, when you were ‘swarmed’ by people responding to you, you gamely tried to ‘swarm back’. Some time over the next 24 hours I’m going to post something specifically about your experience here. I hope you check back in and read it.
Really? It is possible for a wife to be physically stronger then her husband. Or use weapons or drugs to incapacitate him.
I don’t think you’re giving women much credit here. Women are only 17 pounds lighter then a man… and they’re only that much lighter for a short period, for most of the thirty-odd years that they weigh less then men, the difference is more like 10 lbs. Then there is the 30 years from the 40s onward that the average woman is _heavier_ then the average man.
I’m reviewing the laws related to divorce at that time and I see that men could divorce their wives for ‘frigidity’ and women could divorce their husbands for ‘impotence.’
I think you’ll find that Dowery was originally conceived as an inheritance from the woman’s father’s household to her new household for the express purpose of setting her new household up as an economic unit of production.
Originally.
Then it became a sentimental custom.
No, “women” aren’t “17 pounds lighter than a man.” I’m 5’8″ and I weigh 105lbs. Most men at the same height weigh around 140 lbs.
But let’s say you were right–anatomy teaches us that men have much more upper body strength, due to the much denser presence of muscle tissue in their arms, shoulders, and back. Their center of gravity is usually higher, which also makes it more difficult for a woman to knock them down.
Could you link to a reliable source that states the law in 1850 regarding male “impotence” and divorce, please?
I will not “find” that dowries were an “inheritance” for women. Believe it or not, I’ve already studied and looked into these matters. Some women who were the only child or “sole heir” in their family “inherited” their father’s estate, but these inheritances were passed to the husband legally, and any goods [e.g. houses] were taxed under her husband’s name and all legal papers stated her husband as sole owner. Dowries were also legally registered and taxed under the husband’s name, whether they were in the form of money or goods/services.
This is all pointless, so really I shouldn’t bother myself.
No matter what the truth is, bogus “facts” (such as “women weight 17 lbs less than men”–wtf? uhh that’s not even close to true. unless he meant the “average” woman and man, in which case he’s still wrong) seem to take over every reasonable conversation here. Seems some would rather ignore the fact that women even at the same weight are seldom as tall or strong or muscular as a man is. I grew up with brothers and male cousins, and I’ve never been any sort of match for any of them, even when they were shorter and lighter than me. But hey, if it makes it easier for you to pretend that women didn’t used to be excluded from land ownership, denied basic political rights, and forced to perform sex without their own consent as a matter of law, then go ahead. Believe whatever sad, deluded lie that makes you feel better. It seems you’ll do that no matter how unreasonable it is.
As for “drugging” a man or hurting him while sleeping–of course, that’s always a possibility. But who would murder their only possible method of survival? I’m sure it happens today, but in 1850 it seems unlikely that this was a major social issue.
MRAs around here don’t care about human rights, they care about trying to revise history so that men were always the victims, so they can elide the truth about the institution of marriage and its origins in the patrilineal passing down of land ownership.
It really is a losing battle to try to use facts and reality. It’s all a strange “there may be one exceptionally rare case where a woman could have forced a man into sex in 1850, and this negates the fact that there was a legally enforced imbalance of power.”
PG was right, it’s not worth talking to people who speak the “I’m the biggest victim” language. I don’t care if they’re feminists or MRAs. It’s all the same brand of idiotic lie and pointless grandstanding.
Oh, do you also realize that a woman could be divorced for being “barren”, even with no medical evidence that it was her medical problem, and not her husband’s, that made the couple unable to have children?
Of anyone here, I’ve been the first one to try to listen carefully to all victims and I’ve expressed my interest in fighting hard for all victims, and for human rights for all. But apparently feminists don’t get the same consideration here, because it’s already been decided that all feminists are simply meanspirited people who aren’t interested in ensuring that women get equal access to our social institutions, and equal protection under the law, but in stripping men of their “right” to exclude women from social and political institutions, and in hysterically running around railroading innocent men in court (even though the vast majority of women do not identify as feminists, so it’s unlikely that the average woman who alleges she’s been raped does so for “feminist” reasons. In fact, research has shown that as many women blame victims unfairly, while otherwise admitting that the legal definition of rape is correct, than men do—and, in fact, that women are less likely to take a woman’s rape accusation at face value than men are!)
Happy holidays to ballgame and the blog owners!
I never denied that the man took responsibility for the woman’s dowery when they married; I am saying the argument that the dowery was somehow payment for a ‘sex slave’ is erroneous(particularly when you consider that the dowery was paid by the father to the husband). And that, regardless of the husband taking responsibility for the woman’s dowery, it was originally conceived of as a means by which she set up a new household–an inheritance from her father’s household.
Impotence:
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.c....._terms.htm
Well, presumably they would inherit their husband’s money and they could re-marry. They don’t have to murder him, however.
Shorter and lighter? You’re 105 lbs. Incidentally, you are no where near average for a female. Average is more like 155lbs.
We have no idea how prevalent marital rape practiced against husbands was in Victorian times. I doubt they thought it was an issue or concern so nothing is said about it. However that does not mean it happened. It was, after all, legal to do.
BTW, if it was possible today then it was possible then too.
I am also _not_ saying that men had it worse or better, I am merely putting forth another view of the situation.
Why should we?
Those divorce laws are for British Columbia, not the U.S. And they are not in a law journal, or a website that I consider credible, but could’ve been posted by anyone on ancestry.com.
“Why should we?”
Who said we should?
Let’s get something clear, just for the record, then I’ll leave you to yourselves: are you trying to deny that women had no right to marry whom they wanted, and were passed down from father to husband in what these days would be considered a form of “ownership” where a woman was not under any circumstances to become an independent tax entity or income earner, not entitled to own property, not allowed to vote, not allowed to work outside the home, and left entirely dependent upon the husband her father chose for her in order to live, until the feminist movement helped the law to catch up with the reality of life under industrialization and urbanization?
Given that women were excluded from social and governmental institutions, and that the laws that served to very deeply inscribe gender norms in our culture were ALL written by men at that point, it’s funny to hear people try to claim that the rigid gender norms that still exist in a nearly identical form (when it comes to male norms) are somehow the fault of feminists…good one!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....27389.html
Those BC laws didn’t state you could get a divorce for “impotence”, but that if you could prove someone was impotent, the marriage could be considered “null and void.” Unfortunately, if a woman couldn’t work for money, except as a prostitute in a brothel, most women would be unlikely to try to get a marriage rendered “null and void” due to impotence.
Look at Saudi Arabia today, or Iran, or Iraq, or any middle eastern country where Islamic fundamentalism reigns supreme. Their laws now are similar to the U.S. laws in 1850, with a severe imbalance of power afforded to the female spouse, and women are almost never awarded divorces. There, much like in the U.S. in 1850, a woman would be so socially isolated and scorned if she did get a divorce, women were effectively deterred from getting them.
See also; Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence. A book written near the fin-de-siecle that dealt with the social suicide women faced if they divorced their husbands.
Women had the right to refuse a marriage they did not want.
I am not denying that women were treated like wards of their husbands, but they were not _owned_. A husband could not buy a wife or sell her. She was not property. An unmarried woman could do all of those things except vote.
So this creates a situation where women have two choices. They can be wards of the state(like men) or wards of a man of their choosing(in so far as they can decline an offer of marriage.)
Even though women didn’t have the right to vote as a ward of the state, they also did not have to sacrifice to uphold that state in war. Even though a woman was ward of her husband, she was not responsible for his financial upkeep as he was of hers and he was also responsible, legally, for her criminal behavior.
The issue is not that there were legal negatives for women, but that there were also considerable social and legal negatives for men. Such as circumcision, conscription, expectation of providership and expectation of legal culpability for your wife’s actions. And no provision against abuse in marriage.
As for your assertion that I think feminists are responsible for creating the gender norms that negatively affect men… um, nope. That can’t be pinned on me.
No, women were not allowed to decline offers of marriage in all cases, mostly because their family’s economic stability depended on a young woman (very young, 13-15) leaving the home as soon as she received an “acceptable” (by the father) offer. It was very expensive for the average family to take care of an adult daughter. Read some novels or some social criticism from the time. I’m sure you’ll get a more accurate picture of how social norms and strict gender roles, as reinforced by the law, played out than you will from your imagination.
Again, you cite imaginary “exceptions” (which you haven’t backed up with anything but speculation) to strictly encoded, silently and legally enforced imbalances of power that were woven into the very structure of society. Look at the literature of the time. Look at the art of the time. And then try to claim that women were able to “choose” their husbands.
If men didn’t want to be “providers”, why did they exclude women from the workforce and from social institutions so that women would have to be provided for by their husbands? Women had no access to lawmaking, after all, so they cannot be blamed for the laws of the time. If men didn’t want to be responsible for their wives actions (and where did you get the idea that they were? I’m curious…), why didn’t men allow women to be fully autonomous under the law, and allow them into the laborforce?
Take a look at the humiliation involved in order for a man to prove he wasn’t impotent.
Also, women did work in more occupations then as prostitutes. Plus a woman could re-marry. Particularly if the marriage was ‘annulled’. Also, if she had any living male relatives they were expected to support her financially.
Men were also scorned for their behavior. For example, Frank Lloyd Wright’s mistress’s horrific death was considered his just deserts–by the polite society that ostracized him– for betraying his wife.
Incidentally, I have lived in Saudi Arabia. The law is quite different there; there is no point in drawing a comparison. The social situation of women is vastly different as well.
Again, there’s no reason why men couldn’t have allowed women to be drafted and to aid in the war effort on the ground. Except in their own minds, based on their own culture’s minimizing of the physical stamina and heartiness of women, and valorization of men. This separation of gender roles runs deep in both eastern and western societies. It’s certainly not the fault of the men in 1850. But if they felt oppressed by it, as women did by their lack of political/institutional access in the early 1900s, than they could’ve done something about it. The power was in their hands, and only their hands.
“Women worked in more professions than brothels…”
Which professions were those, Typhonblue? Women weren’t allowed into any of the “professions”–medicine, law, etc. Some of them worked as prostitutes. Some may have helped on the farm in some respects. Some were teachers, but only if they were single and childless.
Oh, is the situation of women in Saudia Arabia different than the situation of women in pre-modern western societies?
In which respects?
P.S. When FLW’s mistress dies, and people see her death as “just desserts” for the affair, what makes you think this is more of a social indictment of Frank Lloyd Wright than it is on the mistress herself??? Also, Frank Lloyd Wright was alive in the mid 20th century, not the mid 19th century. That was a different milieu in many ways.
What “exceptions” are you referring to?
There were elaborate courtship rituals during Victorian times. The woman’s consent was definitely a factor.
Chicken and egg? BTW, women weren’t excluded from the workforce, they were working in factories and working as servants under the governance of rich women(among other occupations).
It was rich women who didn’t work. Every other class of woman worked because she had to.
The flip side of women being ‘excluded’ from public life is that men were ‘excluded’ from domesticity and child rearing. Which is worse is a matter of opinion; if one or the other results in having less say in society is also debatable.
I think I’ve finally figured it out:
MRAs really, truly think that if you point out something that was disadvantageous for females historically, you are always doing so in a way that *denies* that men have also had to struggle in many ways.
This is a very basic fallacy. Simply stating A does not mean you are also stating A not B.
Perhaps instead of always trying to pre-emptively “disprove” that women historically were excluded from institutions, you might simply acknowledge the obvious facts regarding female human rights struggles past, and decline to define your own opinions in solely opposition to an imaginary foe who is denying that men have struggled. Just a suggestion.
You see, this is where I have a problem.
I don’t think that’s true. I think that the people who are responsible for the initial socialization of children hold considerable influence over society and thus have their own power to take responsibility for.
As for professions for women… there was nursing and I remember quoting a female doctor from the late 1900s on the benefits of male circumcision a while back. Plus there were governesses and female teachers.
Where, exactly, as I’ve asked several times before, did women “work” in 1850 in the U.S.? Brothels and schools excluded. The only other occupation I’ve ever heard being taken up by women was nursing, and even that was rare except in times of war until after 1850.
It wasn’t until the industrial revolution a few years later that women began working, anywhere, aside from the home, in brothels, or in schools.
The most striking “imaginary” example is the one where marriages were dissolved because husbands were impotent.
Find me a single documented case (hell, even one out of literature) of that law actually being used by a woman to break herself free of a marriage, and I’ll concede that you’re right about this.
You do realize that governesses weren’t paid, right? They were paid in food and shelter, like a maid.
Sure, you can raise children to think a certain way, but if you’ve effectively been brainwashed into believing that you’re too intellectually inferior to men to ever question the laws they make and the social code they enforce through their implementation of the law, how are you going to teach your children something radically different than the status quo–i.e., that women are born to push out babies and cook and maybe educate children, while men can choose from a vast array of professions (so long as he can afford his own ambitions)?
See, the problem with people is that they tend to fiercely guard the status quo. All of them.
So if one person is guilty of abusing their privilege, everyone is.
No need for the finger pointing, the blaming, the whining, the point scoring.
We should all work together to reverse the damaging gender norms we’ve inherited from our own cultures.
They saw it as just deserts for _him_. Watching your lover get axed down in the middle of a fire was believed–by them–to be what he deserved for his adultery. And I doubt the milieu changed that fast.
Perhaps it’s in response to this:
This is a denial of female agency. A denial that rich white women had any influence at all over society through their socialization of the _legally_ dominant class. You are saying, ‘well men may have had problems but it was their fault.’
A lot of them _were_ the farm.
Socially? Women are expected to abide by a list of social restrictions that, effectively, render them invisible. I lived in Saudi Arabia for ten years and never once saw the face of an adult Saudi woman.
This is quite different from Victorian social customs in which _men_ are expected to act in deference to women–not approaching them without permission, doffing their caps, waiting for the lady to acknowledge them to speak.
And then there are honor-killings that seem to be relatively ignored by the legal establishment. I have heard of a daughter drowned in a pool by her father without it ever coming to trial. In another case mutawas(religious police) shoved girls back into a burning building because they did not have their abyas(full length covering)on. Many died. Saudi Arabia is deeply theocratic.
“Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe” for the historical precedent. Find it on amazon and search for ‘impotence’.
Also ‘Trial by Impotence’ by Pierre Darmon.
Or the farm, like most men.
Okay, fair enough. However you did say:
Again this has a strong ‘scent’ of -men get the better deal-.
Which I don’t believe. I believe we are a high-parental investment species and in our natural state men do equal amounts of child-rearing, which they are instinctively and hormonally primed to do. Depriving them of equal time with their children is a form of emotional castration that having more work options does not make up for. In our natural state we work 3 hours a day and spend the rest socializing with our family and friends. In the Victorian state women work very little and spend most of their time socializing with their family and friends. Victorian men worked a great deal more–something no one really wants to do in the first place–but they get more options for something no one really wants to do in the first place! Whee! They are seen as incidental to the emotional and moral heart of the family. They have their children held ransom in exchange for work. Their only real use is providership. But they get to be ‘heads of the family’ while being effectively removed from it. Whee!
Plus, if you’re brainwashed to believe that your greatest spiritual goal in life is to sacrifice for your wife(mother), then you may not be able to break through the brainwashing enough to use the power you have to benefit yourself–even in situations where you are loosing out big time.
And:
Men are responsible for their own oppression. If they had it so bad, they had the power to do something. Well, maybe they _didn’t_ have the power to do something because of some other massive influence over society.
Aha, so it’s women who “deprived” men of their natural right to participate equally in the household. Funny, since in Christianity men are the “spiritual” heads of their households, and have final spiritual authority in all matters, and even their wives must obey their decrees.
Please just don’t start with the “no one wants to work.” I do. I love it. I’d rather die than not work.
Men certainly lived in the same households as women. And in fact, they were often considered the “spiritual” head of the household, especially in strict Christian homes. It was actually men who had the final say on financial matters, when it came to disciplining children. Are you trying to tell me men were shut out of family life? Or simply that working outside the home took away from their time with their children? Because if so, you’d have to admit women were also taken away from their children while they were out “working” (as you’ve repeatedly insisted that women did.)
See, that whole theory about it being “natural” for men to take care of their children is cast into doubt by evolutionary theory, which basically proves that people for most of human history lived in tribes where women raised children while men went out on the hunt for days and weeks at a time, only coming home to bring food. Human evolution tends to be slow. The agrarian revolution is the earliest known stage in human evolution where humans lived exclusively according to a two-parent, mother-father household form of social organization.
I’d actually rather believe you, but I think the vast preponderance of scientific evidence is on the side of evolutionary theory. Now, there’s nothing wrong with the idea that men are perfectly capable to raise children–of course they are–but there’s no evolutionary precedent for this. There are tons of reasons if you want me to cite them, but you could look up any website.
This book on “Trial By Impotence” is not available on Amazon, and in fact, is only referenced once on the internet, here:
http://www.booksandcollectible.....-0006.html
I cannot say for sure that this book is about divorce and impotence.
I didn’t bother looking up the other one.
No, Typhon, by 1850 most people were living in urban areas, the move towards urbanization was well on its way. Most people did not farm. Most people worked at small businesses.
Haha, poor FLW!!! His girlfriend gets chopped up by an axe, but it’s really Frank who’s the victim.
So in the west, in the U.S., we have no customs or gender norms that rendered females (for most of our history) politically invisible?
Mmhmmm.
No, Typhon, women do have agency. They didn’t like their situation, where they were not politically and legally equal to men in many respects. So they organized. And they pushed. And they pushed. And they pushed. And finally, after years and years of woman proving themselves in “male” fields, professions, and activities, the law began to slowly change to provide women with human rights that they’d been denied.
Don’t men have agency now? Why haven’t they redressed all of those hideous imbalances that work against them? Oh wait, that argument was illogical in the first place.
Men in modern hunter-gatherer societies spend more time with their children then in any other social system.
Evolutionary theory is fraught with anti-fatherhood bias–the same anti-fatherhood bias that we see in Victorian societies. The idea that women were ‘ideal’ nurturers.
Recent studies have found that men go through hormonal changes during pregnancy, just like women.
Incidentally, if you actually believe that women are the better parents, then why do you have a problem with a society that leaves parenting to women and has men going out to work and dealing with public affairs? Or are women better at parenting and at working? So men should do what?
Well, we will have to make some class distinctions here. Working class women, worked. Middle class women did not. Middle class women–the ones who were wealthy enough to afford a stable of servants–are the ones I assume we’re discussing when you talk about women being excluded from the professions, the vote, public life, work, etc.
In the bible it says that a man must sacrifice for his wife as Christ sacrificed for the Church. Now. A man may be the spiritual ‘head’ of his household, but if his ‘headship’ is predicated on sacrifice for his wife he isn’t dominant in the relationship, her _benefit_ is dominant in the relationship.
*deep breath* I am not saying she was not a victim of being violently murdered–I’m saying that the _RESPONSE_ to her death towards him suggested that society, at that time, did not take kindly to male adulterers.
Not socially invisible. And certainly not politically invisible either as the history of activism can attest.
Many women, as evidenced by Queen Victoria’s statements, actually opposed the political and legal activism of what was a minority of women. This pushing could easily be seen as a battle between legal reformists and social conservatives–both groups comprised entirely of women arguing how best they could be served by society. One taking the view of legal equality with men, the other taking the view that placing women at the centre of society spiritually and morally–and cultivating women’s special social status–was the way to go.
As Queen Victoria said, “What woman would unwoman herself to be the equal of a man?”
Incidentally, in societies like Saudi Arabia, or–perhaps more relevant–Ancient Rome, women did not have agency to create social change. What is this missing factor X that existed in Victorian society?
What are you trying to say here? That men have no problems?
Sort of like how people want to deny men the human right of being seen as a parent on the same level as a woman.
BTW, I never said women ‘deprived’ men of anything.
She meant averages yes, and averages are much higher than you might think. At 100 lbs (me) and 105 lbs (you), we are VERY low. My weight is at 9th percentile for average women of 20 years (I’m 26, but I was 100 lbs back then as well).
There’s an interesting debate here, but it seems people are arguing at cross-purposes.
I don’t believe that MRAs’ insistence on historical male suffering is point-scoring, or playing “oppression olympics”, as it’s often dismissed as. We’ve all grown up being told that men have oppressed women since the beginning of civilisation, that women have suffered and men have benefited, and that this needs redress. Nowhere do you hear that actually, men didn’t have it easy either.
The fact is, its feminists, not MRAs, who want the focus to be exclusively on their gender’s suffering. MRAs, on the whole, want to balance the picture. Nobody would deny that, for example, when men had the vote and women did not, men had an advantage over women based on their gender. We just want that advantage to be placed in some kind of context – for example, that men were subject to military conscription and women were not – that gives us a more accurate picture of the balance of advantages and disadvantages.
Equally, we hear about the women who died in childbirth far more than we hear about the men who died in industrial accidents. Even today, we constantly hear about the pay gap – women on average earning 17% less than men – without it being balanced by the spending gap – women control 80% of discretionary spending, which suggests that any disparity of earnings that disadvantages women is more than made up by other sources of income – on average of course.
The problem is, when we try to bring up the disadvantages faced by men – in the interest of creating a more balanced picture – feminists react like you have, insisting that they understand that men didn’t have it easy, but that any attempt to draw attention to men’s suffering is to deny women’s suffering, and in any case, men’s suffering is all their own fault because they’re the ones that had the power. Feminists want all the focus to be on women’s issues. MRAs only want men’s issues to be considered alongside women’s issues, and resent the fact that they are not.
Pat Brown: “Equally, we hear about the women who died in childbirth far more than we hear about the men who died in industrial accidents.”
It’s fair to point-out that some of the biggest advancements in reducing childbirth-related deaths were due to the misogynistic patriarchal medical establishment. Midwifing had been, for centuries, a female-dominated occupation.
I’ll quote Roy Baumeister: “What could be more feminine than giving birth? Throughout most of history and prehistory, giving birth was at the center of the women’s sphere, and men were totally excluded. Men were rarely or never present at childbirth, nor was the knowledge about birthing even shared with them. But not very long ago, men were finally allowed to get involved, and the men were able to figure out ways to make childbirth safer for both mother and baby. Think of it: the most quintessentially female activity, and yet the men were able to improve on it in ways the women had not discovered for thousands and thousands of years…
…in a relatively short time the men were able to discover improvements that the women hadn’t been able to find. Again, it’s not that the men were smarter or more capable. It’s just that the women shared their knowledge individually, from mother to daughter, or from one midwife to another, and in the long run this could not accumulate and progress as effectively as in the larger groups of shallower relationships favored by men.”
It’s relevant to point this out because if it were the case that men had been in charge of birthing children for centuries with a high rate of mother mortality– only to have the rate go-down when women entered the sphere– feminists would be carping about it constantly. It would be another example of how men ignore the well-being of women, etc etc.
Than in “any other social system.” Really, Typhon? Do you have some sort of data to back this up, or is it just another strange and absurd distraction that mitigates your own inability to admit that women were not allowed into the public sphere.
First Typhon claims that men were shut out of domestic life and child rearing, THEN Typhon claims that men in hunter-gatherer societies “spend the most time of any” with their children. Buzzzz. My “contradiction”-ometer is going off like crazy.
I’d also like to see the data that has suggested that the “mother mortality rate” has gone up since women went to work. This is patently absurd. The life expectancy for women climbed steadily from the early 20th century onward, due to advances in medicine, and only began to drop ever so slightly in the last couple of years….
Also, it wasn’t women or anyone else who “excluded” men from childbirth, they simple weren’t born with a uterus or ovaries or the sorts of organs necessary for bearing a child.
Are you really trying to equate the fact that men don’t give birth (they can now–we’e seen it!) with some sort of “exclusionary” process on the part of someone or something? More absurdity that people here draw up with a seeming “straight face”…
The reasons why we can save more birth now is modern medicine, which is a great a wonderful thing. Bravo to any and all who have participated in this.
Don’t assume that because women *couldn’t* become doctors in those days that they didn’t want to. That would be an unfair assumption. Don’t assume that women can’t understand medicine, either, or that men are “naturally” better at medicine because it originated as a male institution.
How do you know that a woman may not have discovered many of the origin insights that made modern medicine a reality, were she allowed into fields like engineering, chemistry, etc.
In fact, Marie Curie was a rare exception in the early days of modern science, having been allowed into chemistry by her husband, and she helped discover some very important principles that are used in medicine today.
Schala, what *are* the averages, then?
In the U.S., if the “average” woman weighs 155, as Typhon claims, I’m sure that the “average” man weighs something like 220 lbs. The fact of the matter is that exceedingly high obesity rates weight the averages to a degree that makes a real “average” medically safe weight for a person harder to determine.
Simply because the average woman weighs 155 (what is her height, I’m assuming 5’4″, the average height of women, where men are on average 5’8″) does not mean that 155 is a healthy weight for most women.
Boohoo! Women are “excluded” from inseminating someone by their own sex organs. This is clearly some sort of unfairness perpetrated upon women from outside themselves.
NOT.
It’s finally clear.
MRAs here are claiming that they are only interested in proposing that men were also oppressed by what’s normally termed the “patriarchal” social structures that dictated that men must be strong, fast, hard-working, successful at work, sexually aggressive.
But what some of them clearly mean is that “traditional norms were actually more *favorable* to women than they were to men.” Some telling claims are “no one wants to work anyway” (oh, rEALLY?)and “men were really the ones who had it rough because they had to earn money for their wives.”
Ostensibly some here also believe that women should never have begun a women’s movement so that THEY could fight for greater participation in science and medicine, in political life, and in our institutions–and instead they should have just sat back while the clearly superior male minds whittled away at problems like “mother mortality” for them. Women *are* just not as smart as men, just like men are naturally unable to give birth.
Yes, let’s go back to those norms that equally oppressed all of us! That would be swell.
I’m going to be pretty amused today while I celebrate Thanksgiving, thinking about this silliness.
Typhon, how can you simultaneously accuse the scientific community of “anti-fatherhood bias”, all the while praising it for being the very thing that saved women from mother mortality, and a perfect example of how wonderful the patriarchy was?
Funny that medicine didn’t start making real leaps and bounds in becoming what we know as modern medicine until after women were allowed into colleges and scientific professions, on the heels of the technological revolution.
Regardless if I can find my source again or not, something strikes me.
Framing the exclusion of women from public life as oppression doesn’t require proof that women actually wanted to be included–prior to being asked to be included–nor does it require proof that women are–in history–more inclined towards pursuing a public life then they were allowed to in Victorian England. Exclusion from the public sphere is evidence of oppression for women, not evidence of women’s disinterest and the ‘natural’ state of women.
Yet the fact is that you believe fatherhood is a less powerful instinct then motherhood and that exclusion from men from direct, involved and equal participation in child-care is simply natural. Exclusion is evidence of men’s disinterest and the ‘natural’ state of men. Exclusion is not evidence of oppression of men.
We can’t use women’s lack of involvement in the public sphere as evidence of a ‘natural’ and acceptable inequality. But we can use men’s apparent lack of involvement in child-rearing as evidence of a ‘natural’ or acceptable inequality.
Another thought. If women are ‘naturally’ better at child care and equally good at work, then what is men’s role in society?
There is only one person here upholding any trace of older norms of behavior.
What? I think you’re attributing to me something that someone else said.
An alternative view of the social structures of the time, yes.
Do I think we should go back? No.
Where do you get the idea that I think the ‘patriarchy’ is wonderful? Wouldn’t the more coherent interpretation be that I think the ‘patriarchy’ was not beneficial and socially oppressive?
Further, when I said that women’s lives were more… natural, relaxed and less onerous then men’s, doesn’t mean that I don’t think the legal and social restrictions on women that left them without adult responsibilities(in marriage) were acceptable either.
Women are adults; they should be treated like functional moral agents including all the responsibilities and risks associated with full-citizenship.
According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the average weight for an adult male in the United States is:
* 189.8 pounds
According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the average weight for an adult female in the United States is:
* 162.9 pounds
According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the average height for an adult male in the United States is:
* 69.2 inches, or
* 5 feet 9.2 inches
According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the average height for an adult female in the United States is:
* 63.8 inches, or
* 5 feet 3.8 inches
Those statistics for the average height and weight an adult female and an adult male are from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) conducted from 1999-2002.
Actually I know very few men who are simulatenously under 6’0″ and over 200 lbs. I know one who is exactly 6’0″ and 200 lbs, I used to work with one at 6’2″ and 250 lbs, but most men I know are both below 200 lbs and below 6’0″.
If the BMI is even “not-so-far-from-the-truth”, then its roughly 4 lbs per inches of height (at least in the 5-6 feet range). So a 6 inches difference means a 24 lbs difference. 26.9 lbs difference, not bad. For the same height it’s about equivalent.
They say a BMI of 18.5 is the healthy minimum. I hang around 16.2. Someone with 6’0″ and 200 lbs hangs close to 25 (in fact, exactly 27.2). BMI measurements are flawed, but they’re the best layman tool to get an idea. I know very few people with a BMI of lower than 18, let alone lower than 17.
A 9 year old (female) child who is 50 pounds and is 4 feet tall has a body mass index of 15.3,
which is at the 29th percentile (healthy)
A 15 year old (female) child who is 90 pounds and is 5 feet tall has a body mass index of 17.6,
which is at the 17th percentile (healthy)
A 20 year old (female) child who is 100 pounds and is 5 feet and 6 inches tall has a body mass index of 16.2,
which is below the 5th percentile (underweight)
An adult who is 100 pounds and is 5 feet 6 inches tall has a body mass index of 16.2.
Percentiles are dropped at this point. (underweight, below 18.5)
This is my progression.
All statistics from pediatrics dot about dot com (blog doesn’t like links).
Keep in mind that while I wasn’t always very skinny compared to everyone (this came progressively apparently), I was always a couple years behind in height. Few kids were 4’0″ in 4th grade.
I was referencing canadian statistics from the 1980s. Likely underestimating both men and women’s weight when compared to the US data.
Although the proportionate difference is similar to the US statistics.
J:
I don’t think anyone here is arguing that “traditional norms were more favorable” to women, just that things weren’t peachy for men. They are also saying that women have/had/ some benefits that men have not. Likewise men have/had some benefits that women have not.
I don’t have any problem with the idea that “no one really wants to work anyway.” I certainly don’t. That’s why I became an engineer, so that I could make products that reduce the amount of work that I have to do. In fact that’s typically what we define as technological progress, reducing the amount of work humans have to do. I work out of necessity not out of desire. The general trend throughout society is to reduce the amount of work people have to do. In the past people worked much longer than they do now. Why would people reduce the amount of time they worked, if there wasn’t a strong desire to not work?
I am willing to entertain the possibility.
But I haven’t made a solid judgement call yet.
I say this because there was some very serious downsides to being male.
However believing that society was not better for men and may, in fact, have been worse, does not negate believing that women had the right to be treated as adult citizens.
The two positions are not mutually exclusive.
Also, the fact that women got their legal concerns addressed–but men did not have their social depredations addressed–is rather telling, IMHO.
typhonblue:
While I think this could be an interesting discussion, I’m unsure of how productive it would be. The entire idea of who has it worse depends on what value system is used. How do you rank how bad a problem is?
I agree.
I wasn’t sure where to put this. It’s not exactly a female privilege per se. More of a different thing. Well judge for yourself.
http:/
/i12.photobucket.com/albums/a213/Sara_Zeal/Pressuretobemasculine.jpg
This is from a game I play, and is a quest within it.
I broke the link in two lines so it wouldn’t go as spam.
@Schala…
Monsters aren’t necessarily physical entities.
I believe you’ve conquered a couple yourself.
Yes, well the analogy only works if it IS a physical entity. In this case, an Orc Warrior. I doubt his father would put it on him for not conquering psychological monsters when he’s all about the army.
Schala,
I think it illustrates how there isn’t a male privilege, but rather a masculine privilege. That is a ‘traditional’ society doesn’t treat someone different because they are male, but rather because they act masculine. Something that is of no benefit to males who chose not to be overly masculine. I’d say there are similar mechanism in place with females and femininity.
Well I did say it wasn’t a female privilege per se.
Something that is not only not to the benefit of those who chose not to be overly masculine, but to their detriment, like in this case: parental alienation.
Isn’t it the same kind of tactic as shaming men (and even boys) in going to war with white feathers? “You’re not worthy of anything to us, if you don’t do x thing” is the message. It’s blackmail or coercion of the worse order.
Though I’m speaking at a more personal level than the first world war. Like parents, friends, girlfriends, wives, children, siblings.
The same does apply to females, and I would say it’s a male disadvantage who has its counterpart female disadvantage.
This is an issue that should be priority to work on within any gender movement. And in theory, feminism is working towards it…in practice, men are still expected to do many of the ‘macho’ things or they’re doormats/wimps and not worth their (women in general) time. Though, that men in counterpart might still expect some of the more femmy things (from their female partners) is hatred towards women.
Both groups need to change at once, not just one group, because it won’t work. Not the behavior of the groups either, but the expactation placed on them that “The guy naturally fulfills this role, he works longer, he does the outdoorsy repairs on the house, and works on the car(s) while the girl does the indoorsy chores and takes care of the kid.”
It’s fine if that arrangement suits you, it probably would suit me for one. The problem being expecting it of half the population.
In short, we need to derail the natural societal mechanism of normalization and ostracization of difference. (Making anything normal ‘great’ and anything different worthy of scorn).
@Schala…
In 95% of things 100% of people are alike. It’s the other 5%, the bits that are different, that make us interesting. It’s also the key to our existence, and future, as a species.
I’ve never been able to empathise with hatred or fear of the “other”. Those who dare to be, or simply are, different, or who dare to push boundaries are the folk I appreciate the most. In just about everything.**
In my work(tax related) I deal with thousands of clients. Over the past couple of years my town has had an influx of immigrants, many of them refugees, from Africa and the middle east. I love my work because I can get good results for virtually everyone. But most of all I love helping those immigrant folk learn about the systems that operate in our country. In return I learn far more from them.
I never could understand why so many don’t understand the honour those immigrants do us simply through wanting to be a part of our world.
I welcome them.
(** This is where my feminism lies. I come from a time when there was promise of women becoming more daring, adventurous and willing to defy the enforced norms. I believe modern feminism has retreated from this. And that such defiance that there is tends to be negative in quality.)
@Schala…
By the way, mate, you are one of the most courageous human beings I have ever known.
I’m not that courageous, I just couldn’t stand putting a false facade anymore. People keep telling me I’m very genuine. And I am. I wonder why it’s considered so special though…in an ideal world, everyone would be genuine.
Ironically, my detractors would say I’m putting a false facade now, and was truthful before, so little do they know.
It does seem to be a two edge sword: conform and get advantages the other gender doesn’t; don’t conform and get punished in a way the other gender doesn’t.
I guess it comes down to figuring out which behaviors form the basis for civilized society, and which behaviors are unnecessarily socially regulated. At some level there needs to be a form of commonality otherwise we’d never be able to interact.
Unfortunately feminism has done so much to damage these priviliges women use to be able to take so deeply for granted.
It’s nice feminists are being forced to see that list and contort themselves to the point of ridiculousness to deny its validity.
Just think, women are so priviliged feminists can take those 24 points for granted and whinge about being victims and worse.
Welcome to the blog, Francesca.
I can’t say I agree. I’m not sure feminism has done anything to significantly diminish any of the female advantages I list in the OP. Which ones were you thinking of?
Actually, there’s another version of the female privilege checklist here: http://www.the-niceguy.com/articles/Checklist.html
No.3 “i have a lower chance of being a victim of violent assault than a man”
THAT IS STATISTICALLY INACCURATE.
Whilst violence is ofcourse an issue for both men and women.Studies have shown men are more likely to be assaulted by a stranger whilst women are much more likely than men to be assaulted by someone that they know.Women are at far greater risk of violent assault in the home or date rape /sexual violence by someone they know than men are(although it can affect men too).It’s called domestic violence and it’s a significant problem! Alot of women don’t report it and it’s traditionally been considered a ‘private issue’,fortunately the law is dealing with it more seriously now than it has in past decades but it’s a fallacy than women have less chance of being a victim of a violent assault than a man!
this list is a little american-centric.In other countries in the world female genital mutilation is a widely spread practice and example of a human rights abuse.In some parts of India women are more likely to be murdered because they are seen as a financial burden on their family because of the high cost of dowries.Women are frequently objectified as sex objects by the media too.
However,a lot of items on the list about the way that women are permitted to be more emotional and intimate in friendship than men is true and it’s very sad that men are pressured not to show as much emotion and not to cry.
@Monique
Even counting DV, men are the overwhelming victims of violent assault. It’s a very high ratio on the side of men there. DV is only a small proportion of violent assaults.
Welcome to the blog, Monique.
My statement about men being more victimized by assault is based on published statistics. Men are about 20% more likely to be victims of violent assault (a category which includes rape but excludes murder and manslaughter) according to the National Crime Victimization Survey. Men are also about 300% more likely to be murdered than women.
Both men and women under-report being victimized by domestic violence to the authorities, and it isn’t clear to me which gender under-reports more. However, the NCVS is based on a survey and not on what people report to the authorities, so I consider it far less likely that its results would be as distorted as you claim, and I stand by that female privilege item.
Welcome to the blog, Trevelyan.
You are absolutely correct that the list is American-centric. I believe that much of the list — with some important exceptions (like #13) — would apply to the rest of the First World as well, but the list is definitely not intended to apply outside of that context (i.e. in the developing world).
I’m not aware of evidence that men are overwhelmingly victims of violent assaults. ballgame cites the NCVS for the proposition that men are somewhat more likely to be victimised. The National Violence Against Women Survey found that men were about 50% more likely to have been violently victimised in the survey year.
Worldwide, male genital mutilation vastly exceeds female.
In so far as this could be interpreted as a claim that, for the reason given, women in India are more likely to be murdered than men, then I am not aware of any figures for the overall murder rates for men and women in India, of which “honour” murders are a fraction.
Nor am I aware of any aggregate world-wide figures for murders motivated by (or purported to be motivated by) honour world-wide which include, for example, the murder of men in Albania under the honour code of Kanun. These murders are numerically comparable to “honour” killings of women in South Asian countries, but have received far less public attention.
Notwithstanding these observations, we do not dispute that in come countries genital mutilation and “honour” murders are significant problems which disproportionally victimise women. In general we accept the view, propounded that feminists, that there are significant society-wide systems of privilege which disproportionately harm women. Where we disagree with feminism, is that we claim that there are also significant society-wide systems of privilege which disproportionately harm men. This contrasts with the orthodox feminist position that gender unidirectionally privileges men.
Additionally, feminists try to support their unidirectionalist position through the use of a “checklist” of purported “male privileges”. Objectors have responded with a large number of checklists of their own whose items, viewed collectively, do not appear to be qualitatively different from those cited by feminists.
I haven’t read the survey you cite in detail, Daran, but I suspect at least part of the difference between the 20% (NCVS) figure and the 50% (NVAWS) figure is that the NCVS figure excludes the ‘assaults that lead to death’ (where the difference is 300%).
Unless dead people were nevertheless able to respond to the telephone-based NVAWS, that cannot be the explanation for the discrepancy.
A more likely explanation for the fact that the two surveys produced significantly different results (though not of the character or direction of those differences) is that posited by Ampersand in a post I cannot be bothered to look up right now. The NCVS is framed as a crime survey. Consequently subjects would be less likely to recall and recognise as responsive to the question, assaults which they themselves do not conceptualised as crimes. As Koss discovered, they do not always do so, even when the assaults unequivocally are.
The NVAW survey, in contrast, frame the issue in terms of personal safety. This framing would lead to the relative underreporting of assaults against people who did not feel personally unsafe.
Mmm … maybe. It wasn’t clear from the context of the part of the NVAWS that I scanned that they were only calculating the relative rates of their specific survey results, as that would obviously be a distorted number since it would exclude the most serious assaults that resulted in deaths.
I agree that homicidal assaults are the most serious. Numerically they are just a fraction of a percent of all assaults, so the effect of their omission from the statistics is negligible.
As best I can tell, both NVAWS and NCVS sample from the same population, namely adults living in households in the US. (Obviously NVAWS should be compared with the NCVS conducted in the same year.) Excluded are anyone not living in a household, including the homeless, and residents of institutions.
“Notwithstanding these observations, we do not dispute that in come countries genital mutilation and “honour” murders are significant problems which disproportionally victimise women. ”
Is there any country where FGM is practice that doesn’t also practiice MGM? Honor killings are a huge problem, but they probably don’t outnumber vengeance killings of men. The difference in tthe amount of atention they all get in the West is probably due to the gender of the victims.
Thought this article by the woman who started battered wives refuges I think is interesting
I have never been a feminist, because, having experienced my mother’s violence, I always knew that women can be as vicious and irresponsible as men…
This country [UK] is now on the brink of serious moral collapse. We must stop demonising men and start healing the rift that feminism has created between men and women.
Harriet Harman’s insidious and manipulative philosophy that women are always victims and men always oppressors can only continue this unspeakable cycle of violence. And it’s our children who will suffer.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/fem.....l?ITO=1490
That’s also the philosophy feminism purports to fight against. This philosophy has been around much longer than feminism.
That’s also the philosophy feminism purports to fight against. This philosophy has been around much longer than feminism.
Which makes it all the more sad and hypocritical that feminists claim to fight against that mindset. Apparently to them men and women are equal in every way except for being responsible for violence (or any wrong doing for that matter).
“Which makes it all the more sad and hypocritical that feminists claim to fight against that mindset. ”
This reminds me of a TV show in the US in the 70′s that were fairly culturally influential, Designing Women. DW presented its cahracters in women-going-it-alone personas, but they were all Southern belles who woldn’t hesitiate to use patriarchal shaming tactics on men and invoke every bit of patriarchal female privelege. It was disgusting and hilarious at the same time.
I would like to say say that some of these points would not apply to black women and this seems very Eurocentric in nature. For a few examples:
6. Most people in society probably will not see my overall worthiness as a person being exclusively tied to how high up in the hierarchy I rise…
With the expectation that black people are nothing but violent hoodlums, welfare queens and thugs, that DEFINITELY applies to black women. If we don’t succeed, it’s seen as a fulfillment of the stereotype, and ANY failures on our part during our rise to success would be followed with the “see, those blacks just can’t do ANYTHING RIGHT” card.
7. I have a much better chance of being considered to be a worthy mate for someone, even if I’m unemployed with little money, than a man.
Doesn’t really apply, seeing that we black women are reminded DAILY that 70% of black women are single, making us seem quite unworthy as mates; and with the unemployed bit, a black woman is deemed a “welfare queen” which is quite unacceptable.
12. I am not generally expected to be capable of violence.
Again, with the intersectionality of racism and sexism, black women are expected to be the volatile and violent Sapphire, ready to “pull off her earrings” whenever she is slighted.
16. I generally am not compelled by the rules of my sex to wear emotional armor in interactions with most people.
See explanation for #12, and also, because of that expectation of the Sapphire that we are supposed to be violent, we wear the emotional armor in the sense that we cannot legitimately get upset lest we receive the Sapphire caricaturization.
23. From my late teens through menopause, for most levels of sexual attractiveness, it is easier for me to find a sex partner at my attractiveness level than it is for a man.
This mostly applies to light skinned black women. Dark skin is NOT valued in this society because we live under a Eurocentric beauty standard. Hence, if you notice in majority of mainstream media, the black women featured are very light skinned with straight hair and more European features. Darker skinned women are not wanted most of the time, and there is a HEAVY prevalence of skin bleaching in the communities for women of color.
With Sweating Through the Fog’s point:
21. I can get real nasty when someone makes me mad, and call them ugly, a loser, a nerd, a geek, a disgusting creep, a revolting little worm, a worthless piece of garbage, a scum bag, a wimp, a pervert, a jerk-off, an old fart, or a fat slob. After all, I have the right not to be treated meanly at work, and the right not to hear harsh things that might make me uncomfortable. I have legal recourse if that right is not respected, and I have the right to make this perfectly clear on my job interview.
This most DEFINITELY doesn’t apply to a black woman. NOT. AT. ALL. One word: Omarosa. A black woman does that at any time whatsoever, and she has just become the representative of ALL black women EVERYWHERE as the ultimate Sapphire caricaturization. And you best believe, she’d be fired in a heartbeat with no regrets from management.
BlackWomanist:
Thank you for commenting so respectfully on this thread. As expected, and because of intersectionality you don’t get all the female privileges yourself.
This should be acknowledged, and it should also be acknowledged that a poor white girl would have a different set than you or the typical middle class white girl. That being said, I do quibble:
6. This depends to the degree that racism is still prevalent in society and also to the extent that cultural stereotypes of black females have separated from black males. I do think this is considerably underway. Many a news article touts the success of black women in colleges as compared to their brothers, for instance. Black women may be considered angry as you point out later, but they are often also considered smart. More to the point , as a white person who lives in Baltimore city, I can tell you the typical white person (not all) separates black folks into two types: Ghetto/thug and Suburban Bill Cosby. The Bill Cosby types, I can assure you get at least respect from all but the most die hard of racists, and this includes the ladies as well.
7. The converse of this is that a lot of poor and working class black men complain that college educated black women pass them over. A sizeable number of black women will not date white men for reasons both good and not so defensible. I’d say if there’s a stereotype floating around about educated black women its that they are too picky for their own good. Lastly, person to person – white I may be, but if you were the mother of my children, I’d never consider you “lazy” for staying home to raise them, that I can assure you.
12. Well, there’s no doubt that black women as a whole are stereotyped as being more capable of violence than white women. But are you considered more capable of violence than a white man? Somehow, I doubt that. Thus, I’d say there might still be some female “privilege” here but it is not as pronounced for you as it would be for a white or asian woman.
23. Well, you are correct, though even dark skinned black women in this society probably have it easier to find sex than dorky or unattractive white men, they don’t have it as easy as their lighter skinned counterparts. I can only speak for myself when I say that I have seen both dark and light skinned black females whom I considered sexy and would make love to proudly, however I also know that many people do not prefer the darker colors of skin shade partly b/c our “beauty ideal” is lighter skinned and mostly eurocentric with some mixing.
I’m only telling you one man’s preferences but I am being honest so I hope you don’t take offence. There was a period of time when I was a teen to a young man when I definately had a “thing” for asian women, but as I’ve grown older I’ve “broadened my tastes” so to speak to include every racial type of woman on the earth. I honestly do not know why this is, it might just be meeting people, or some process of aging.
All of the ink which has been spilled so far on comparing “male privilege” against “female privilege” can be permanently settled through a single viewing of “The Deadliest Catch” on the Discovery Channel.
The problem with making these converse lists is that it distracts from the purpose of the original list, which contrary to popular opinion on this comment thread, is not to “bash” anyone, but to draw attention to the destructiveness of androcentric society. Most if not ALL of the ‘FEMALE PRIVILEGES’ are DUE TO MISOGYNY, not Feminism. Just like all those other “well, you get good stuff, too arguments,” it ignores the fact that so-called “reverse” discrimination is a fall-out of the primary power group’s rules to begin with. The truth is that they are not “reverse” cases. They are CONverse, because they wouldn’t exist if the situation were truly reversed. For example, women would not be lumped together into one category if they were in power because they would be presumed individuals, the way men have been for centuries. Nor would men as a group be labeled “bad” in a reactionary way in CONTEMPORARY society, if women as a group weren’t routinely and historically subjugated by men.
Stating the disadvantages of being in one group by highlighting the unearned privileges of the other does not preclude the damage that privilege does to the privileged.
“I would like to say say that some of these points would not apply to black women and this seems very Eurocentric in nature.”
Not only Eurocentric, but specifically Anglocentric. Anglo culture different from “Western culture” if you include Greek and Roman and their descendant cultures as Western. And you have to take this kind of criticism a culture ata time. Big braod brush staements about the stitus of men or owmen worldwide just sound unserious and sophomioric.
Specifically with regard to female privilege and American society, quite simply black women don’t count as feminine. One of American racism’s founding principles is that black people are supposedly coarse and crude – you even see this attitude reflected in a lot of Black Power rhetoric, that’s how deeply embedded this notion is in American culture – so even women can’t rise to that adored and protected ladyhood that is at the center of modern chivalry so central to Anglophone masculinity and Anglophone feminism.
The problem is the original list, in an effort to selectively highlight only one set of damages, ignores other damages.
I personally think that the powers that be at the top are doing damage to everyone and these damages result in female and male privileges. They are committing misandry and misogyny (the willingness to mow down people of either gender) in order to maintain their power. However with the way the original list is layed one would think that the damage is completely one sided when it is not. And its interesting that attempts to show the other set of damages are met with complaints.
And this goes to show that the criteria for that “power group” isn’t what people want to think it is. It’s real easy to blanketly say that men are the power group (because that saves one the trouble of actually thinking about things like how despite Average Joes outnumbering Elite Joes the Elite Joes are still held up as the representation of all the Joes) but to do so totally ignores that simply being male is not the key to the kingdom that many people want it to be.
Also the I agree its not “reverse” discrimination but rather just simple discrimination or better put sexism.
Then it could be done better than by citing individual advantages that some people MIGHT have, somewhere, and saying it’s all “group X” that has it.
You can do a white privilege list and it already sounds a lot better as well, because it definitely IS one-sided. The few disadvantages racism do to whites are not even to be noted, and are not systemic (the only advantages of being a person of color might be “having a unique, more precise culture” and “being more free to bash whites than the reverse” – but this doesn’t even compare to advantages of being white).
Similarly the advantages of being a cissexual person are tremendous and beat any day the advantages of being a transsexual person. The only advantages to being a trans person might be in the area of self-understanding (you do a lot more introspection before and during transition than most people in their life, about who they really are).
Then male privilege are due to misandry. You can easily turn that out on its head.
Example:
1. Men are working outside the home and not expected to work at home/with children.
Caused by: Assumption that they are bad caregivers.
2. Men assumed more stoic and strong in the face of hard decisions.
Caused by: Assumption that men have no emotions (and no right to voice any, including anger).
3. Men assumed to be less victims of crimes (assault, theft, murder, rape).
Caused by: Assumption that men can’t be victims (or are unworthy victims, not worthy of empathy).
See, caused by misandry.
I don’t think men are considered individuals any more than women are. A bank considers me an account number, 7 digits. Not a name. And I doubt it considers men any more individual than that.
If you meant a woman “belonging” to her husband in the 19th century and earlier. Well it was true women were not considered wholly as persons. Though if you ask feminists, the situation has barely changed and women are still ‘property’ or something. Meaning the ‘patriarchy’ is just as strong now as 300 years ago. 300 years ago, the West was still a lot more ‘good’ towards women than the Middle-East is nowadays. Now it’s ridiculous to say the West is a patriarchy. The Middle-East definitely is, Japan is to an extent, and probably other countries, but not Canada or the US, France, England, Germany etc.
Yeah the reason men get arrested everywhere for taking pictures of their *own* children is because they oppressed women. And the reason men are considered extremely violent by default also is. And the reason men are considered to not be able to resist their sexual urges for even one second is because they oppressed women.
/sarcasm
Not sure I understand this.
Well, anyways, men have certain advantages, women have other advantages. At this point in time, in the West, they cannot be compared to say one comes out on top in the definitive.
You can say one has advantages in area A and the other in area B, but wether one is superior to the other mainly depends on the focus you put on each area.
A male caretaker in childcare is disadvantaged. A female trucker is disadvantaged. Wether you think it’s better for you depends if you prefer childcare or trucking, it’s a personal thing. Because fundamental rights are about equal (not completely, but again, not one-sided).
And a final point:
A true patriarchy wouldn’t have chivalry, have a slogan like “women and children first” and even listened to feminists.
“The problem with making these converse lists is that it distracts from the purpose of the original list, ”
The problem with that is that the purpose of the list is completely irrelvant; what is relevant is the effect and the explicit meaning of the content of the list. That list lies by ommission. That is the point of the second list.
“but to draw attention to the destructiveness of androcentric society.”
Well, the point of the second list is to refute the notion that this is an androcentric society in the forst place, so your statement puts the cart before the horse. When it is proven that this society is androcentric in anything other than superficialities, and that is impossible, then it will be time to compile lists of characteristics of that androcentrism.
In order to admit to this entire swath of racism, we’d have to admit that femininity has power today and historically.
By refusing to even entertain the possibility an entire group’s culpability for racist oppression is disappeared.
“In order to admit to this entire swath of racism, we’d have to admit that femininity has power today and historically. ”
That would mean that American, mainly Southern, white women would have to own their part in the culture of lynching and in KKK terror, and then what would happen to the doctrine of “rape culture?”
Doubleplus ungood. Kill.
Jim:
When it hurts to be a man…
When my fat-fingered man hands ruin the whole effect of my gown and wig……
I nominate this for comment of the week.
Jim:
And jepordize their ally street cred with black people especially black women? No no no they have to keep the responsibility of white Southern women down to a minimum in order to ensure that black women will side with them in everything else and to make sure black men will appreciate their efforts in anti-racism.
But as for “rape culture” even without the racism aspect of it they would find some way to keep it alive..
@Danny
They already jeopardized their street cred with black people. That’s why Womanism exists. That’s why people like Renee claim a distinctive organization from Feminism.
The same happened between the radical feminists and other feminists, which led to the creation of Pro-Sex Feminism.
And again with radical feminists leading to the creation of Trans Feminism and Queer Theory (which isn’t necessarily feminist).
Shhhhh…..
Schala if you keep talking like that the feminsits will realize that maybe, just maybe, they are not the one stop shopping location for all social injustice. And in addition to what you list I have to say that MRAs are finally coming into their own (because despite what feminists think occasionally spouting off “patriarchy hurts men too” nowhere near covers the male experience).
You would think they would catch on to that but…
I don’t know where you people are getting off the with the whole “There’s no REAL disadvantages to being white”, bull crap.
Yeah maybe affirmative action (government mandated discrimination no matter what “larger context” you put it into) doesn’t affect the upper classes (middle middle through rich)of white people once but try being a lower middle or working poor white person like me and you will quickly see it cuts down on your opportunities to start your own business and enter the governmental and lower end of the private sectors. In other words, it makes your life harder. And all for something you had nothing to do with.
If you want an example of “intersectionality” there it is. the “pc” driven changes that benefit everyone except white men are the things that take a toll of lower middle and working poor class white men and no one gives a crap- because all white men all have equal amounts of white power.
@cib
Well, affirmative action for people of color really IS righting a wrong and leveling the playing field for them, so I’m not against it, even if for white people its a net minus from before.
I think equality between races in opportunity is more important than my little person’s losing a single employment opportunity.l
Fictive example:
White person applies to 50 places, 10 call, 10 interview, 3 want you for the work.
Person of color applies to 50 places, 5 call, 5 interview, 1 wants you for the work.
So yeah, whites do have unearned privileges relative to people of color.
Oh and note that I’m below working class wage. Since I’m unemployed. Even when employed, I never got above working class wage, ever.
cib
I can understand this and in fact this is why I’ve always been on the fence about affirmative action. As much as supports of claim its just an attempt to level the playing field (theory) when you get down to it (practice) what cib says does happen.
Same thing with gender. When you get down to it these actions, regulations, laws, measuers, etc… are holding the son responsible for the sins of the father under the guise of repaying the daughter for the crimes against the mother.
Schala:
There’s one small problem with that example. How can you be certain that outcome was actually caused by racism? Things like AA don’t (and can’t) bother with looking at a case by case basis of examples like this so in the end it is just assumed that racism is the cause. That’s not to say it doesn’t happen for it most certainly does but assuming that racism is always the cause to me is just as bad as assuming racism is never the cause because both assumptions are wrong. In fact for AA to work in its current state one pretty much has to believe what cib said here:
Pretty much put all white guys up on the same pedastal so people won’t feel bad when they are knocked down. Thing is most of those white guys aren’t up on a pedastal but are actually already on the ground so when that knock comes they are basically being kicked when their down.
This similar to contention over the wage gap. Feminists just point it yell sexism even when supposedly (I haven’t gotten around to looking this up myself but I plan to soon) the majority of the gap (like all but 5 cents of it) is attributed to other factors and in some markets women actually outearn men.
I have a question about this:
I’m sure you would (but I doubt others would) but I wonder if you would hold this opinion no matter who that single person is? Black, white, latino, asian,etc…. Would it hold for gender as well regardless of the gender of the person left hanging?
Well, as a trans person, my minority status is not subject to affirmative action, actually quite the contrary, I can be refused jobs, on the spot for either:
1) Saying I’m female when it’s not the case legally. And being thought as a fraud.
2) Saying I’m male legally, then coming to an interview normally (dressed as a woman) and being refused the job for that.
My name change might mitigate that, but only to an extent. Still I’m not against affirmative action per se. It could be improved granted, but it’s better than the status quo of no improvement at all.
If you want it improved, elect someone who will. And if no one presents as a deputy with that idea, present yourself with it, or a friend who’s more charismatic if politics isn’t your cup of tea. That’s how they made a republican democracy work.
“I don’t know where you people are getting off the with the whole “There’s no REAL disadvantages to being white”, bull crap.”
There’s always an advantage to belonging to the
minoritymajority*. By the way, it’s interesting that there’s never any mention of “Protestant privilege’ in the US, even though we all know that dr. Martin KLuther King Jr. got a lot farther along than Fr. Martin Luther King Jr. ever would have.There’s always an advantage to being in the majority. There is very little white privilege in Japan or China, althoug in China there really is a big advantage to being white over being black.
But I think the real sticking point is the loaded semantics of the word “privilege”. It includes a lot more than simple advantage, and using it is a disingenuous attempt at framing.
“And jepordize their ally street cred with black people especially black women?”
I nominate the “women and people of color” trope for the Sleaziest Ploy Of The Last Half Century Award.
*[Edited as per Jim's subsequent comment. —ballgame]
My name change might mitigate that, but only to an extent. Still I’m not against affirmative action per se. It could be improved granted, but it’s better than the status quo of no improvement at all.
I agree that some method improvement needs to be done but blanketly presuming that all the people in a certain are enjoying some advantage is unfair.
I would say something like, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” but the problem is most people that support AA either don’t see or refuse to acknowledge the wrongs of Affirmative Action as it is practiced currently. People like that think there is only one wrong going on that needs to be corrected.
“There’s always an advantage to belonging to the minority”
Change that to belonging to the majority. Sheesh. Someone was talking in my ear at the time.
OTOH, come to think of it, the elites who run societies are in fact minorities. How to they contunue to pull that trick off so well?
Welcome to the blog, karamel. I appreciate your comment and I know there are many people who would agree with you, but I substantially agree with Schala’s response (at 2:30 p.m.).
I’d also like to extend a belated ‘welcome to the blog’ to BlackWomanist as well; sorry I’ve been too tied up with RL to have responded earlier. I agree that the list of female privileges may not be as generally true for women of color as they are for white women, but I think if you hold race constant — that is, if you compare black women to black men — many of them are still applicable.
Jim:
I’m still trying to figure out how is it that the few elites can be fair painted up as representative of the the entire group. And to make the matter worse this seems to only apply to males and whites, with white males being the ultimate example of how despite the Average Joes outnumbering the Elite Joes by a massive amount the Elite Joes are still the measuring stick that all Joes are held to. (That is unless someone really wants to aruge that there are more George Bushes than random white guy garbage collectors whose names we’ll never know.)
Jim.
“It includes a lot more than simple advantage, and using it is a disingenuous attempt at framing.”
Could you expound on this a bit? I feel like I’ve read this point here before, but I tend to find it really difficult to go back and locate things I’ve read on this site months or years ago.
It comes down to the semantics of the words ‘disadvantage’, ‘privilege, ‘right’ and so on. Advantage is the semantically lightest of these; it says merely that you have some power, wealth or whatever more than someone else. “Right” says that you enjoy some power inherently, through no one else’s agency or choice. “Privilege” means that oyu enjoy these things by grant, form and outsuide agency, not by oyur own merits, and by extension this can be an unfair grant.
So when it comes ot male privilege, it plays out like this:
Accusation: “Men were privileged over women in the past because men could vote while women were denied that.”
Response: “Men invented the vote and earned it and protected it by risking thier lives in war to protect the political systems in whjich votes even exist. Where were you women in all that? Henny Penny asked the same question; do you remember how that story turned out?”
Here is a classic example of how privilege assertions are used as a rhetorical club. Take a look at this comment:
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/a.....ent-403130
The commenter assumes the author was blinded by privilege. The commenter assumes – solely based on her gender, and her correspondingly clear-eyed absence of male privilege – that she is correct in seeing something sinister and threatening in an encounter. She is even presumptuous enough to assume that because the author has privilege he doesn’t appreciate his own experience!
So the arguments about relative privilege are often not about who has things easier in life, but rather who sees thing more clearly. And you get people like this who somehow imagine they are making a coherent argument.
I think you’re on to something STF. Among feminists it seems like they do carry the presumption that they and they alone can see any situation clearly and any who don’t see it their way is blinded by some sort of privilege.
About a year or so ago Jeff Fecke expressed his concern over a man that self identified as a feminist that has sexual assaulted a woman and how it would affect the reputation of male feminists. Reaction from other feminists? Attack him. His conclusion? Oh he must have been blinded by his male privilege and thus needed to learn not to make it all about him. Okay despite him writing that hypocritical piece of shit MRA Explainer I really don’t think he deserved to be treated that way for being concerned about about an identity that he claims and is pretty much on thin ice all the time.
I don’t know but for some reason its like they think that being a feminist brings a clarity to a situation that would otherwise be forever wrapped in darkness without it.
Danny: “I don’t know but for some reason its like they think that being a feminist brings a clarity to a situation that would otherwise be forever wrapped in darkness without it.”
Blaming everything on men does have a certain simplicity to it. Not to mention that it’s emotionally-satisfying and you have the satisfaction of thinking you know all the answers while everyone else is wandering-around in a perpetual fog. That more than makes-up for its lack of intellectual rigor and honesty.
Danny: I mean, it’s really the same kind of clarity of vision and gigantic intelligence that makes them harshly criticize men for failing to do 50% of the housework, but when women soldiers in Iraq make-up only a tiny percentage of all casualties they demand that “women’s contributions” to the military be recognized. Feminists are brilliant enough to miss the double-standard for some reason.
Danny, in reference to the use of privilege rhetoric, you have tha t wonderful thread on femela-on-male rapefrom Feminste you linked to your blog. I say wondeful because the privilege card was played and several commenters denounced the ploy and the commnets in the most vehement terms possible, from a feminist POV. The denunciations started so immediatley in repsonse ot the post itslef that th blogger had ot jump in and defend herself by clarifying that she was merely posting someone else’s writing. One poster said that give the SYSTEMIC nature of silencing of rapes on males, and the fact that women were allowed to commit it on men without it even being defined as rape, that it was probable that women raping men by the consent defintion was more common than the reverse!
it was a very encouraging display of logic and honesty. A lot of commenters quoted others, switched the genders, and pointed out the utter offensiveness of those comments. A trans woman recounted her rape experience, which some commenters swooped in and tried to redefine for her, and otjhers picked up on thta and denounced it in erms that would never be tolerated here. Very edifying and encouraging.
There were posters who expi
I realize in commenting that I am late to the game. But I came across this post recently and I wanted to mention a few things. First, in the run-up to Amp’s Male Privilege list, he states: “In many cases – from a boy being bullied in school, to a soldier dying in war – the sexist society that maintains male privilege also does great harm to boys and men.”
I mention this because rather than invalidate Amp’s Male Privilege list, this Female Privilege list simply reinforces Amp’s point. Everyone – both men and women – are harmed by living in a society where sexism still exists and gender roles are strictly enforced.
Unfortunately we do live in that society, and it is a society dominated by men. Men take up the vast majority of powerful positions in business, government and religion. In many careers where women are the majority, men are still more likely to hold managerial positions. Men have the most ability to influence and control this society.
This Female Privilege list bears this conclusion out. For example, #1: “I have a much lower chance of being murdered than a man.” This is true. Of course, men are much more likely to be the murderers as well.
#4: “I have probably been taught that it is acceptable to cry.” It’s true that women do not have to be as closed off in their emotions as men. But who is teaching men not to cry? Their fathers, brothers, uncles, coaches. In other words: other men and the male-dominated society that reinforces strict gender roles. For numbers 6, 8, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 21, 24, the same point can be made. For the most part, it is not women calling a man’s worth into question if he chooses not to fight, shows affection, etc. It is other men, or the stereotypical man our society promotes.
Numbers 7, 17 and 20 are truly only because women have been forced by society to play the role of housewife and mother for so long. Women who put career first, don’t care for children (for cooing after other people’s children or having their own) are chastised for being unfeminine. Similarly, women who don’t want to dress in clothes that signify playfulness or vulnerability have their sexuality/personal taste/femininity questioned.
And, again, while #22 “I am less likely to be shamed for being sexually inactive than a man” is somewhat true, women who turn down men who hit on them are frequently called frigid, bitchy or both. On the other hand, women who show the wrong kind of sexual interest (ie: any kind of sexual interest or activity that someone nearby finds offensive) is called a slut.
In most of the examples in the Male Privilege list, it is specific men or the male-dominated, strict gender role reinforcing society that is the cause of the problem. The same is true for the Female Privilege list. By posting this list, you simply strengthen Amp’s point by showing the other side of the coin. When we allow society to grant one gender privilege by demanding members of that gender to adhere to strictly defined roles and behaviors, everyone loses.
Women, always the victims.
As a woman I say, fuck that.
Anne:
I would urge you to read the rest of this thread wherein many of the points you raise have been asked or asserted and answered.
I really have no heart to go over this again and it does get rather tedious explaining thatmales in power have absolutely nothing to do with the lives of an average man and often work at his disadvantage to the advantage of females. And then there’s the influence on the average man of his mother..well, you get the picture. Society isn’t constructed solely by one sex.Your whole argument boils down to “patriarchy harms men too”. We’ve had whole threads devoted to this.
If you choose to hang around, perhaps rather than thinking the people on this blog haven’t read Finally Feminism 101 you might wish to re-evaluate your position, or at least get better arguments.[Clarence, you've made many insightful comments at FC — and some of your points here are valid — but this is NOT the way I want new commenters here to be greeted. We bloggers at FC (Daran, Hugh and I) greatly value our commenter community, but the goals we have don't always match those of commenters such as yourself. The fact is, thoughtful new feminist commenters (such as Anne) who take the time to respond to one of our posts are exactly the kind of people we want to participate here, even if we don't agree with them. They provide us all with an opportunity to either learn or teach. In the future, please don't use phrasing that someone (particularly someone new) may interpret to mean you're setting the agenda, and that they're unwelcome. —ballgame]
@ Clarence:
To the males in power the average man reminds them of threatening competition they need to crush; the average woman reminds them of dear mom.
They legislate accordingly.
Does it never occur to feminists that the very masculine programming they decry (homophobia, extreme competition between men, stunted male relationships) is exactly the reason why men _don’t_ help each other. I mean, how can you simultaneously see a profound weakness in the fraternity of men(the humanity of man _to_ man) _and_ posit it as the most powerful force in culture?
Anne: So after exhaustive research, weighing all possibilities and scrutinizing every possible angle to the matter… everything is men’s fault.That’s a handy idea to keep in mind. It’s pretty simple, too. I’ll have to remember that one.
typhon: Well, come on, nothing says “patriarchal privilege” more obviously than a doctrine of “women and children first” on a sinking ship.
And men are primarily murdered by other men because men _favor each other_ so much.
[This kind of snark is an unacceptable way to respond to new commenters, W. Please don't make me put you on moderation; it will be a pain in the butt for both of us. —ballgame]
@ W:
You know… the patriarchy I grew up in… Saudi Arabia… had more of a doctrine of ‘men first, second, third and women and children last if there’s anything left.’ (Not that it doesn’t have its own bullcrap that men have to deal with.)
Again, I’m struck by how vague and meaningless the word ‘patriarchy’ is if it can refer to a male dominated system that believes ‘women and children first’ _and_ a male dominated system that believes ‘men first’, simultaneously.
It seems to me that there needs to be some finer gradations somewhere in there. Particularly since there hasn’t been a single society in the history of humanity that wasn’t a Patriarchy.
@typhonblue, I think you misunderstood Anne’s point, it’s not that she believes that women are always the victims… it’s that she believes that it’s always men who are the perpetrators. This kind of thinking is often summed up as “the patriarchy hurts men too” in which they acknowledge that men may have problems, but they basically should blame the “patriarchy”, which comes damn close to mean themselves.
About this, let me just clarify my understanding of the situation:
1- Gender roles are oppressive for those who do not conform to them. To “traditional” men and women, these roles are probably comfortable. To illustrate the point: if only black cars are available, those who would want black cars don’t feel they are missing anything, but those who would prefer other colors will be frustrated.
2- Society tends to reward those who fit the role they are assigned and punish those who don’t. Women acting in masculine fashion may be resented, but men acting in feminine fashion will also be seen negatively. For instance, often studies pointed out that aggressive and assertive women in business environments are seen as bitches whereas similar men are seen as strong and decisive. Feminists love to underline this, but a recent study also studied the other way around, self-effacing and friendly men were seen as weak where women like that were seen as nice and cooperative. We have to realize that this goes both ways.
3- The enforcement of gender roles tend to be first and foremost the duty of the same gender. Generally, men police men and women police women. For instance, women’s body image problems are propagated by women magazine written by women authors. Studies have shown men do NOT like the ultra-thin models and prefer a bit of meat on their women.
4- … however men are the ultimate enforcers since it belongs to their gender role. The more aggressive and violent role attributed to men means that they are the “go-to” guys when the policing of other people’s conformity to gender roles needs a good head-bashing. Hence why criminal acts tend to be perpetrated by men. For instance, the Salem witch trials started with girls’ accusations against adults who had slighted them, basically using men as tools to do the girls’ petty revenge.
5- The idea of “privilege” and “patriarchy” are divisive. They basically say men are always advantaged and are responsible for everything that is wrong. Reality is more complex than that and we have to understand this and tackle the issues with more balance than that. I can hardly see worse thing to say to a man who may have been bullied from his childhood because he didn’t fit expectations of masculinity, who may never have been intimate with any woman because he was shy and “nerdy” (a way women police men’s behavior BTW), than “You are privileged and are supporting the patriachy in oppressing women”. That’s not his experience at all, he has been a victim of gender roles since his childhood and it puts the blame of it squarely on his shoulders because of his sex.
@ JustAMetalhead:
Let me clarify my position then. I mean that women are defined by their victimhood and that men are defined by being perpetrators. Even if their victims are sometimes men, but hey, so what, men are such perverse violence-loving creatures aggressor/agressee likely switch up for kicks and thus it evens out in the end. Or male victims are complicit in their own victimization because they support the patriarchal system. Or maybe men have such a fetishistic love of violence–due to the patriarchal programming that ultimately benefits them, don’t forget that–they’ll even be violent to themselves if they can’t find a woman to aggress all over! Thus the higher rates of male suicide! QED. Can I have a cookie?
(The sad thing is that this isn’t even a parody of feminist thought. #1 & #3 method of reasoning away men’s victimization are more radical feminist; #2 was a rationale used by a feminist who said she was an _advocate for male victims_. *shudder*)
Welcome to the blog, Anne!
The Female Privilege list was not meant to invalidate Amp’s list, or to imply that women are free from gender impression. The Female Privilege list WAS intended as an important corrective to the erroneous idea that only men are privileged in the U.S.
As others here have noted, there is a very big difference between the statements, “All rulers are men,” and “All men are rulers.” It’s true that most of the very small number of people who wield a lot of power in this society are male. It is NOT true that most males wield a lot of power in this society (i.e more power than females wield).
You correctly point out that in many cases it is men who enforce gender rules against other men. However, this does not mean that men so oppressed are somehow responsible for their own oppression, or somehow wield ‘collective male power’ through the ‘patriarchy.’ At the moment, I don’t have time to go into this in any greater length, but I agree with many points that ‘Just a metalhead’ made in his response to you.
Well, the point of my list was that, contrary to mainstream feminism, people of both genders get privileges and disprivileges. The notion that ‘everyone loses’ might have some cosmic theoretical validity, but I think a more compelling case could be made that the gender system as it stands makes some men and women ‘winners’, and makes other men and women ‘losers.’
Anyway, Anne, I hope you stick around and explore some of the other posts. Some commenters here are frustrated with mainstream feminism and they tend to let their negative feelings towards it come through pretty strongly in their comments. I empathize with their feelings, and I frankly think many of them have valid points, but our goal at FC is to engage in respectful dialogue with people — particularly feminists — about issues related to gender. I’m sorry if the initial responses here made it seem as if you were unwelcome.
Hi Anne, welcome to our blog. Like ballgame, I hope you’ll stick around. Please don’t be daunted by the (inevitable) firehose of reaction your remarks are likely to elicit.
We have no disagreement with the idea that “Everyone – both men and women – are harmed by living in a society where sexism still exists and gender roles are strictly enforced”. Our dispute is with the notion of unidirectional “male privilege”, a theory which contradicts that idea.
The gravamen of Amp’s post is the advocacy of the second of those notions, the contradictory truth buried within it notwithstanding.
There’s a well-known logical fallacy, where an ambiguous term takes on different meanings at different parts of an argument.
When feminists say that men are privileged they mean that men as a class – half the world’s adult population – are privileged. However your argument is only true if by “men” you mean “a small fraction of all men”. Your argument supports the notion that a small fraction of all men are privileged by gender, which we do not dispute.
It’s true that those who “have the most ability to influence and control this society” are mostly men (but are not most men). It’s also true that those who have least ability to influence and control this society – prisoners, the homeless, and (in other societies) conscripts – are also mostly men. “Male privilege” is a grotesque denial of how these men experience gender.
Exactly how does this observation supports the idea of male privilege?
Are you saying that murderers are privileged and more of that murder privilege goes to men?
Or is your point that people who have a relatively high risk of being murdered by someone of the same sex are privileged by this over those who have a low risk of being murdered by anyone?
Whatever your argument is, would make the same in respect of race? Black people are more likely to be murdered than whites, usually by other black people. Would this fact “bear out” a conclusion that black people are privileged over white people?
I co-run a kids club. In my experience mums are as likely to play the “big boys don’t cry” card as are dads.
I think you seriously underestimate the influence that women have on these matters.
This is a common and curious aspect of feminism. Feminists complain that society fails to recognise women’s agency, yet all to often feminists themselves fail to recognise women’s agency.
While men have been forced by society to play the role of breadwinner and protector, which brings its own set of disadvantages, for example, greater risk of illness, injury and death.
Sure, but there is a second narrative for women who turn down men – that of the virtuous madonna.
There is a similar dual narrative for promiscuous men – stud/predator.
Anne:
If that’s the case then why do many feminists so vehemently deny female privilege? If man and women are both harmed by the strict gender roles that society imposes on us then why is it that women need help but men need to take responsibility?
The guilty by gender association argument. Since average Joes share gender with elite Joes the harms suffered by the average Joes are somehow less than (or some may say non existent) the harms suffered by the average Janes and elite Janes are just let off the hook (and no the fact that there are few elite Janes does not let them off the hook). Oh and for the bonus feminists somehow manage to make such arguments without somehow invoking one of their own favority sliencing tactics, Oppression Olympics.
But most of the people that go on and on about male privilege outright refuse to believe there is an other side to the coin or at best actively ignore it as its not an issue that needs to be dealt with (and I think some believe that by only addressing male privilege female privilege will magically disappear). According to them the benefits that women get and the harms that men suffer are side effects of a system that is meant to hold men over women. If you haven’t already by all means go to a feminist discussion on male priviledge, point out female priviledge, and see if they just tell you “its the other side of the coin”.
ballgame:
Nor does this give women a free pass on the oppression they carry out on men. But that doesn’t stop folks from declaring things like men can’t be oppressed or women cannot commit sexism against men. Both of which depend on the guilty by gender association argument.
Feminist critics? I hope you mean you are feminists,w ho are critical of society, rather than thinking that list is a rebuttal to feminism.
One of the principals most feminists try to keep in mind is “The Patriarchy Hurts Men, Too.” Most of the items on the list of female privilige come from ‘toxic masculinity’, the way our culture denies men the chance to show emotions, acknowlege vulnerability, or in anyway show traits that have been gendered feminine by social expectations. Likewise, homophobia (which is an issue most feminists fight against) is involved with many of those points, like not being able to hug friends.
Feminism is your friend in changing these things. So I hope you aren’t listing these problems to fight strawfeminists. Feminists want for men to be able to hug male friends, talk about their feelings, see doctors for their annual check-ups, etc.
Although #23 on your list– do you have any sources you can cite for that?
Samantha:
While one of the mods here does identify as feminists as well as some of the regulars this is by no means a “feminist site” as many people would think it is. And besides are you trying to say that feminism is above crituqe?
Unfortunately there is more to how the system harms men than that simple and frankly overused line that’s pretty much devolved into a catchphrase that a lot of people use to silence critics of feminism. You are more than welcome to keep using that line as if it properly details how the system harms men but there are those who want to go into actual detail about men are harmed. I understand that many feminists don’t want that to be part of the conversation or to dominate the conversation. That’s fine but don’t act like you have it all figured out with that one line.
Toxic masculinity? Even when women engage in those exact behaviors? This is just an attempt to turn the blame for everything bad onto men.
While I do see feminists openly speaking against homophobia I do have a small problem with the way some of them frame their arguments. Some of them tend to frame the problem of homophobia (against gay men at least) as “homophia is a problem because it equates gay men with women for their attraction to men”. See how nicely how that makes women the victims instead of the framing of, “homophobia is a problem because because its a violation of a man’s freedom to date/fuck/marry whoever he wants”.
While there are feminists out there that do embody this there are oh so damn many of them that will say this in one breath then say something that directly contradicts it the next.
While there are feminists who engage in these behaviors this is not meant to attack feminists but an attempt to shed more light on how damaging society can be. Because frankly when feminists talk about it they spend the vast majority of their time an effort talking about how women are harmed by society. Now given the name of their movement this makes perfect sense. The problem is it seems they have decided in that relatively small about of time they do talk about the damages to men they have covered everything there is (and I really think that “patriarchy hurts men too” line is an an attempt at a summation of that small bit of time, condensing it even further).
Now like I say if feminists don’t want to talk about men that’s fine by me. But I have to ask why is it so important to feminists that those of us who do join their movement? I mean by definition I’d be joining a movement that has the main goal of giving women a space to work in. In all seriousness what good is it for me to join that movement when I am talking about things that they don’t want to talk about?
I would like to see those things too but as far as I can tell my motives differ from those of some feminists. Let’s take that part about hugging male friends. Feminists seem to want men to be able to do this in order to get over the notion that hugging another man is “gay”. True but more importantly than that I want men to be able to do this because (even as much as I myself hate hugging) hugging is part of bonding and male bonding is not a bad thing. In fact it can be a great thing that is sometimes related to the next thing you mention about feelings.
Again feminists seem to think this is something men should be able to do in order to avoid the “gay” thing (for some reason they don’t seem to be able to support the idea of something positive for men simply becuase they are men but have to come up with a way to link it to women) in addition to relieving women of the burden of bearing the emotions of the men in their lives. True and great but at the same time sharing feelings is good coping mechanism and tool of bonding and as I say there’s nothing wrong with male bonding.
Feminsts seem to want those things because they have benefits for women too. I want those things because they benefit men. There shouldn’t be a difference but in the minds of some people there is.
I don’t recall if you’ve commented here before but if this is your first comment I hope you stick around.
Samantha, feminist critics mean that this site is criticizing feminism, but criticizing it as per the more academical definition and not the “Rush Limbaugh is a critic of the Obama Administration”-definition of the term.
As to “The Patriarchy Hurts Men, Too”, all here have heard that, and it’s not at all helpful, because it still puts everything right back on the men. Using the term “patriarchy” is blaming men, because the term is directly linked to “paternal” or “fathers”. It also reinforces a fallacy, the idea that “men ruled/rule society”. Though the rulers and the powerful might have been mostly men, that doesn’t mean that all men ruled, because their loyalty was not to all men, but only to their elite class and they have historically taken decisions that often affected negatively men as a whole. It also ignores the fact that often women had influence behind the scenes, and that sometimes male leaders may actually act in the interests of women.
That’s why I and others much prefer talking of “gender roles”, a much more neutral term that doesn’t attribute blame to anyone in particular.
You also do something that is criticized about feminism in your post, redefining the problem to exclude the possibility of men suffering as men. Thus, men being socially punished for showing emotions isn’t about men’s role forcing them to be the unemotional provider, but it’s about a bad opinion of “women” (even though women are not judged harshly for doing it). Men not being able to hug friends (depends on society, Continental European culture tends to allow men hugging men more than anglo-saxon culture which is very prudish) is not a limitation on men, but merely a facet of homophobia (never mind that outed homosexual men may do it without much reaction nowadays). Another common example that isn’t found in your post is when feminists denounce the harsher sentences black men get, and focus only on their race, when studies indicate that in terms of sentencing, gender/sex is more important than race in terms of sentencing disparity.
It’s all about denying men’s repression into a very strict gender role and instead interpreting it away as just facets of the oppression of more acceptable or worthy “victim groups”.
Still, I know that feminism can have positive effects, but I know that the main focus of the movement isn’t really helping society to break out of gender roles, but the promotion of women’s interests. Weakening gender roles is just a means to an end and not an end in itself, and feminism sometimes even reinforce certain aspects of them when it is convenient (ex: the perception of men as abusers and women as victims). So I cannot see feminists as “friends”, only as sometimes strategic allies when their goals and mine converge.
That being said, there are a lot of variations between feminists and some I think are much more open to analysis of society that are more balanced and are not focused on attributing blame. Them I can see as friends, but in general, I go to feminist sites and what I read there often forces me down two paths: one is anger and questioning what I read, the other is accepting it unthinkingly and self-disgust. Don’t even get me started on the “men are a necessary evil due to reproduction, but hopefully we can find a way to keep their numbers down” feminists like Mary Daly.
j.a.m.:
Oh they’ll talk all day and all night about the bad things Daly endorsed….as long as they can control the conversation and keep it only to her transphobia. Its a rare feminist indeed (as in the only ones I can count are ballgame, Sungold, and April and maybe some of the crowd at Amp’s place) that will bring up her misandry (and again even hearing a feminist use that word, I think they don’t want to use it because it implies a systematic hatred of men and that’s the last thing they want to admit exists, in an actual serious tone so scare quoting doesn’t count) much less call her on it and denounce it. While at the same time simply being a man means I’m just as responsible as every man that does commit sexist acts against women…somehow.
Point being there is just too much negativity in that movement for them to want to declare that feminism is the friend of men. Oh there are feminists that are friends of men and there are feminists who just don’t talk about men’s experiences that much and there are feminists who seem to want to be able to work with men. But as long there are also feminists that are enemies of men and there are feminists who actively deny the experiences of men and there are feminists who want men to work with them at the cost of denying the experiences of men, “Feminism is your friend in changing these things.” is a generalization that simply does not hold true.
Funny thing is women’s advocates attack MRAs for doing the opposite (meaning accusing MRAs of focusing only on the gender and erasing how race plays into it) while expecting to get a free pass for doing what they do.
Correct me if I’m wrong, Danny, but I haven’t seen MRAs denying the influence race has on sentencing.
Samantha: Maybe this was the wrong day to make a claim like “Feminism is men’s friend”, as I saw today a feminist reaction to the decision that joint custody shall be the default for children of unmarried mothers – it was criticized as a step back to heteronormative nuclear family. Legal equality for men isn’t too high on the list of priorities for this blogger …
“Most of the items on the list of female privilige come from ‘toxic masculinity’, ”
They are just as much due to “toxic femininity.” I don’t see much analysis or condemntaion fo that in the femisphere.
“Some of them tend to frame the problem of homophobia (against gay men at least) as “homophia is a problem because it equates gay men with women for their attraction to men”. See how nicely how that makes women the victims instead of the framing of, “homophobia is a problem because because its a violation of a man’s freedom to date/fuck/marry whoever he wants”.
In other words, it’s all about teh wimminz. Equally misandruist and offensive is the assertion that homphobia is really just misogyny in another package. it’s not only patently false – homphobes often adotre feminity and pay good money to enjoy it, but it also erases gay men and puts – you guessed it – women back center stage.
You’re right EW usually when I’ve seen MRAs talk about it they usually promptly add in the fact that it mostly affects men of color. But like I say that is what women’s advocates accuse them of doing.
But I will say that while MRAs do mention race its often a small note while spending most of them time talking about the sentencing disparity mostly being about men. The f’d up part is that women’s advocates do almost the exact same thing in reverse a lot of times (check out how they talk about boys and education for another example). But we’re supposed to admonish MRAs while giving women’s advocates a free pass for the exact same behavior.
Actually Jim let me rephrase this: ““homophia is a problem because it equates gay men with women for their attraction to men”. ”
into:
“homophobia is a problem because it equates gay men with women for their attraction to men thus the problem with homophobia is that gay men are punished for “acting like women”‘.
In short if you look at the various types of men (fat, gay, men of color, disabled men, poor men, etc….) as far as some feminists are concerned there is no intersectionality between our gender and our other characteristics. (But they can barely talk about the things that harm women these days with intersectionality coming up.) This is how you end up with people acting like being a man had nothing to do with Sean Bell’s murder. That’s how you end up people acting like Matthew Winkler being a man had nothing to do with his murderer getting off pretty much scott free. That’s how you end up with people acting like being a man has nothing to do with why Carnell Williams is buried under a mountain of child support interest that unless he wins the lottery or has a rich relative die he will never get out from under (in short his payments add up to $5220yr while the interest being added is $8550yr).
Welcome to the blog, Samantha.
While I think the commenters responding to you here make a number of valid points, I sometimes think feminist commenters (especially new ones) get a ‘fire hose’ worth of response when a ‘glass of water’ approach would probably be more conducive to the dialog we want to promote. I think you raise some good points; I hope the length of my response here doesn’t contribute to the ‘fire hose’ effect!
I’m a feminist, but the two other co-bloggers here (Daran and HughRistik) don’t self-identify as such (though I think their views are largely ‘gender egalitarian’). The blog, though, is dedicated to critiquing both the good and bad about feminism, with an emphasis on analyzing the ways in which it fails to live up to its egalitarian aspirations.
I agree.
I somewhat agree. Feminism has certainly been instrumental in questioning an enormous variety of gendered behaviors that would otherwise be treated as being ‘just the way men and women are’. However, in my experience, most mainstream feminists have only a rudimentary understanding of the social dynamics involved in the construction of ‘toxic masculinity’.
The list is not intended to ‘fight strawfeminists’; the list is intended to rebut one very important fallacy held by most mainstream and gynocentric feminists: the notion that only men are “privileged.”
We’re definitely on the same side about that.
You’re astute to question that item. The phenomenon of feminine hypergamy has been insufficiently studied. Personally, I’m confident that point #23 is accurate, but there isn’t a single specific study that addresses its point directly.
However, there are some interesting studies that substantiate the notion of feminine hypergamy. One online dating site found that while men’s assessments of women’s looks resulted in a standard ‘bell curve’ (that is, men found most women to be ‘average-looking’ with equal numbers ‘below average’ and ‘above average’), women rated the majority of men (over 80%) as below average. Women have also been shown to find attached men more attractive than single men, all else being equal.
“as far as some feminists are concerned there is no intersectionality between our gender and our other characteristics. ”
If that means to say that they are splitting gayness from being a man, that puts them into Fred Phelps’ league when it comes to homophobia. That is Exhibit A on why that particular type of feminist has less than nothing useful to say on masculinity. Disgusting.
“While I think the commenters responding to you here make a number of valid points, I sometimes think feminist commenters (especially new ones)’
I have a new personal policy. Unless I am greeting a new commenter, and that’s only if you two happen to so tied up that you don’t get to it; it’s not my blog to welcome anyone to – then I have stopped responding to to new commenters’ comments. I wait until they respond to something I have said. That’s not to be stand-offish. It’s intended to let them have some say in the pace of the conversation they have entered.
Jim:
That is precisely what I mean. And Exhibit B would be that post from Womanist Musings I mentioned a week or so ago when Renee somehow turned a story about how a young man of color was arrested for doing what he thought was right into a rant trashing all MRAs and actively dismissing the idea that his gender had anything to do with what happened to him. According to her the ONLY reason he was treated that way was because of his race and because the mom was “scared” (which I can believe the mom was scared but its gonna be a tough sell to convince me that the fear would have been the same if it were a young woman of color). Oh and she also managed to decide that men caring about their children is a brand new phenomenon.
I can understand your stance however when someone starts off as strongly as Samantha here has (somewhat presuming that critquing feminism is wrong, using tired catchphrases, trying to lay all the blame for everything at men’s feet, and de facto telling us that our experiences either don’t matter or didn’t happen because feminists are “our friends”) then I think a firm but non-hostile response is totally called for.
Now if I wanted to get dismissive and hostile then I would have made some comment about Samantha getting a bingo for pulling out the usual feminist defenses. But as I say that would be hostile and dismissive.
“According to her the ONLY reason he was treated that way was because of his race and because the mom was “scared”
Welol of course – how else is she going to appropriate this to herself and her agenda?
“(which I can believe the mom was scared but its gonna be a tough sell to convince me that the fear would have been the same if it were a young woman of color). ”
Diffenrent circumstances, difenrent fears, but here os somewhere somebody adduced stats shwoming that WRT the criminal system, female privilege wipes out the effects fo race privilege – black women get the same sentences for the same crimes.
“Oh and she also managed to decide that men caring about their children is a brand new phenomenon.”
Two things here – a woman appropriating parenting – this is the femisphere version of mommy blocking – and also the dishonestly selective use of history, oh and three – total cultural parochialism, spun into a universal observation.
Assao, the claim is based on the belief that feminism offers the only analysis of gender roles and relations. Feminism calls the traditional order Patriarchy and when men say that this order harms us too, we are told that Patriarchy Hurts Men Too (PHMT), but it’s still Patriarchy and feminism is the only thing going to analyze and deconstruct it. That happens to be false, since there is more than one strain of the Men’s Rights Movement that does exactly this, only without demonizing men and calling us all potential rapists, demonizing men as warmongers, demonizing testosterone as the source of all evil in the world. The marriage strike is one manifestation of this. The campaign to denounce all forms of chivalry as exploitation of men’s work and devaluing of men’s emotions, well-being and lives is another.
That does not mean that there are not feminists who strawman the MRM as really wanting a return to the patriarchal order. I don’t know if it’s simple, honest unawareness or the need to borgify and slander a rival movement, but it doesn’t matter.
Jim:
and doesn’t give women a free pass on their participation in maintaining the oppressive system.
I have to disagree with you on this a bit. The difference is going be if said person at least opens their mind to the possibility that they don’t have it all figured out and the actively dismissal of men’s experiences because they’ve decided borgifying and slandering is the way to get rid of “the enemy”. I don’t mind talking to the former but the latter is a vile poison that must be dealt with.
Here’s a real prime example of female privilege for you – a feminist (?) chickenhawk using shaming language against men:
http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/.....man_2.html
The commenters make all the usual good points – one says right out that she is trying to pick and choose which pieces of the patriarchy she wants to keeps. She basically breaks it off because she runs out of anything to say.
Note also her venue – Forbes magazine. The real threat is on the right.
It’s not hard to notice that many topics are not “privileges” for women, but excuses to accept the consequences of the well-known MALE privilege.
What should be taken more seriously is the fact that our dominantly patriarchal society disempowers women, while overestimating men.
This doesn’t mean men are naturally bad or manipulative – it exposes why they are allowed or even stimulated to act like this.
For every topic on how women are “allowed” to be more sensible, i.e., what actually happens is that they are not “allowed” but driven to be like this.
Add to this the fact that acting like anything besides the expected female role is not well accepted. A strong or even violent woman does not have place in your list…
It seems like “hey, men do have privilege over women, but look for the bight side! You can be cute and sensitive and less likely to die at work”(even if you would like to have a risky job, or demand the right to have one without contrary pressure)
That only holds if you maintain the idea that the system at work is working to privilege men over women and that’s not the case at all. Its not about keeping men over women its about keeping those at the top over those at the bottom regardless of religion, class, gender, etc. If you look at those male privileges and actually acknowledge that there is a bad side to most them you will see that its not as great to be male as women’s advocates would like for everyone to think.
No what should be taken more seriously is that fact that those at the top favor themselves over everyone at the bottom. When you try to frame it as “Its about favoring men over women.” you ignore A LOT of the damage that’s being caused.
If you want to talk about why men act that way then let’s really get down to it rather than just trying to stop at “men are privileged!”
And acting like something other than the expected male role is well accepted? (And note that I’m not saying this to try to disprove what you say about the female role. I’m saying because you sound like you’re trying to say that being male is all sunshine and rainbows.) And actually items 11, 12, and 20 do cover violent women. But a more direct mention of them (which I think might be a worthy addition to the list) is the female sentencing discount.
No its saying “Hey men do have some privileges over women but there is more to it than that.”
You seem to want to think that the only gender imbalances at work are the ones that favor men over women. That is so not the case. In fact check this out:
hey, men do have privilege over women, but look for the bight side! You can be cute and sensitive and less likely to die at work”(even if you would like to have a risky job, or demand the right to have one without contrary pressure)
Prestomagicochango!
hey, women do have privilege over men, but look on the bright side! You can be tough and less likely to be the primary caretaker for children”(even if you would like to care for your children, or demand the right to do so without contrary pressure)
Just as women are expected to pick child care (internal work) over external work men are expected to pick external work over child care (internal work). To try to act as if only one of those forces is at work is a serious disservice to all of us.
Welcome to the blog, anna.
I’m not sure I quite understand what you mean about some of the items being “excuses”; perhaps if you picked an example from the list and explained how it functions as an excuse, I’d understand what you’re getting at.
I agree, Danny. There are a couple of important items that I ought to add to the list, and that’s definitely a good one to add. At some point I’ll update it to include them.
Not only adding the female sentencing discount but I think a few modifications may be in order.
12. I am not generally expected to be capable of violence. If I lack this capacity, this will generally not be seen as a damning personal deficiency. If I have this capacity chances are I will be shown more sympathy than a man committing violence.
Because let’s face it when a high profile violence case comes up depending on the gender of the violent person the court of public opinion (and of activists) seems to change.
11. If I shy away from fights, it is unlikely that this will damage my standing in my peer group or call into question my worthiness as a sex partner or my worthiness as a member of my gender.
Usually when it comes to fight or flight men are expected, nigh demanded, to fight while women are expected, nigh demanded, to fly. Unless there is a wide spread example of women being teased and having them gender called into question for NOT fighting.
In the anti-war efforts of the 60s and 70s it was men who had to escape to Canada to avoid going to war (and wasn’t draft dodging a war crime?). Let’s not forget the hypocricy of women in Britain during WW1 who gave white feathers out to men who did not enlist to fight (which according to the wiki which got so out of hand that they were even giving them to local civil servants and men who had already served and were discharged due to injury/illness. And hell to this day (in the States) only males over 18 have to sign up for Selective Service under threat of imprisonment, fine, automatic rejection of college applications, automatic denial of financial aid, and/or possible loss of citizenship status of those who immigrated.
But no we’re supposed to believe that being male is a cake walk of lap and luxury…
“No what should be taken more seriously is that fact that those at the top favor themselves over everyone at the bottom. When you try to frame it as “Its about favoring men over women.” you ignore A LOT of the damage that’s being caused.”
In fact what it is a ploy to erase a lot of rich or privileged women’s oppression of poor or disprivileged men. It’s a way to decry chivlarly as a patriarchal trap and still to enjoy al the benefits.
“Let’s not forget the hypocricy of women in Britain during WW1 who gave white feathers out to men who did not enlist to fight ”
This is still going on in the discussion over Afghanistan – see the controversial use of the picture in Time of the woman with her nose cut of. If the Americans (men) leave – stop patrolling and fighting the Taliban – whatever will become of the poor, defenseless Afghan women and their rights? Flutter, flutter, bring me the smelling salts. Notice the complete unwillingness of Western feminists to form a Lincoln Brigade and go fight for their sisters. No mention at all of any such thing. And why should they? They “have people for that sort of thing.”
I strongly disagree with your phrasing here, Jim. “Ploy” implies this is being consciously done, and while this may be true in some instances, there’s no reason to presume this attitude is predominant among mainstream feminists (and indeed, such a notion is explicitly rejected by the tenets of this blog). Moreover, a great many mainstream feminists are progressives who would enthusiastically endorse increasing tax rates on the rich and increasing social welfare programs for the poor, which would of course adversely affect rich women and benefit poor men.
Once again, I strongly disagree with what you’re implying here, Jim. It is not feminists who are pimping the war in Afghanistan, it is right wingers and the corporate media machine. They are trying to hoodwink people who are sympathetic to women’s plight in Afghanistan — either out of chivalraic impulses or out of feminist ones — into thinking (incorrectly) that the American presence in that besieged country is somehow significantly improving the situation for a majority of women in that country. (In a recent episode of CounterSpin, Sonalik Kolhatkar reports that the leading feminist women in Afghanistan now feel they are fighting three enemies: the Taliban, the warlords, and the American occupation.)
Moreover, there is an important difference in focus between the white feather movement — which was about shaming men — and the war propaganda pimped by Time, which does not focus on shaming any particular gender. Women are fighting and dying in the armed forces these days (though at just a tiny fraction of the rate that men are), and that is due to the efforts of feminists. Time’s war pimping is wrong, but it’s wrong to imply that feminists are somehow responsible for it.
ballgame:
Even as mainstream feminists act as if their analysis alone are the start, middle, and end of gender discourse? Supposedly they have an airtight understanding of how gender works and to disagree with them is grounds to be call all sorts of names and possibly ostricized from the movement. According to them chilvilary solely exists as a system to give men a sense of entitlement to women. Anyone who has lived as a man will more than likely know full well that the pains of chivalry are not that one sided but why let the experiences of actual men get in the way of mainstream feminist ideology?
In short ballgame I’m all for making sure not to make unfounded accusations but at the same time there comes a point when people the claim to have the inside track on gender liberation need to be called when they say and do things that contradict that claim. If the mainstream of feminism is genuinuely unaware of such things then why do they so vehemently oppse those who bring them up?
I absolutely agree with you on that, Danny.
I can think of a large number of reasons why they would react that way without their necessarily realizing that (some of) what they say is wrong. One of the biggest would be they may feel ‘under siege’. Some of that may be exaggerated — there are elements of feminist ideology that would encourage them to feel that way — but some of it isn’t. There are groups that do actively seek to roll back women’s rights, particularly in the arena of abortion, for example.
I do think there are individual feminists who are ‘criminally indifferent’ to evidence that contradicts the notion that ‘women are oppressed, men are not.’ (Although I suspect most of these would more properly be labeled ‘radical feminists’ than ‘mainstream feminist.’) However, I don’t think the majority of mainstream feminists are that way, and the assumption that they are undermines the goal of having good faith, evidence-based discussions with them.
BG, I failed to make clear, because I thought it was obvious, that there is no real diffenrnece between lifeboat feminism and all the traditionalists you corectly identify as pimping the war in Afpak. My bad.
And you are quite right, the numbers of women in US forces in that war at real risk of the kinds of injuries men ar esuffering is small – i happen to knw form professinal experience – so that makes your statement wrong that Time is not targeting only one gender for shaming.
““Ploy” implies this is being consciously done, and while this may be true in some instances, there’s no reason to presume this attitude is predominant among mainstream feminists ”
For the most part mainstream feminists reject the benefitrs of chivalry *when they are clearly identified as such*. They are much less likely to make this connection on thier own. The discourse around rape is one example, when feminists say that it’s up to men to stop rape – that either menas that men have a repsonsibility not to rape, and by using the inclusive plural that says that all men are rpaists – really want to revisit that? – or else it menas that men and men only have a special responsibility to protect women (and women only in the standard discourse on rape).
So mainstream feminists have the first part right – saying the right things – but fail on the second part – renouncing the benefits. Because it really isn’t a matter of this or that individual’s professed beliefs; it’s a structural feature of this society, and it requires concrete action, not statements. Privilege is structural. I can’t just identify, confess and denounce my white privilege and then sit back all absolved.
OTOH:
“I strongly disagree with your phrasing here, Jim. ”
I agree there. Substitute “mechanism”. It functions on its own below the consciousness of those using it, something like a feature of the grammar of one’s native language.
ballgame:
Pretty much a part of the old wound argument that’s been mentioned here before a few times. Yes there are indeed those who would like to roll back women’s rights and such people need to be dealt with. Problem is their fears, no matter how justified before, have gotten out of hand to the point where one could be accused of such things when there is no proof other than someone saying they don’t agree with a feminist.
About abortion. I’ve heard the following quote a few times that goes, “If you don’t ovulate stay out of the debate.” Pretty much telling anyone that doesn’t ovulate to GTFO. Fine. There was a post here recently about how Melisssa McEwan decided that men who feel hurt over their partners getting abortions only feel hurt because a sense of male entitlement. So on one hand you have people telling men they have no say so in a woman’s choice while at the same time telling men that not only they don’t have a right to feel hurt over their partner getting an abortion but that the only reason they’ll feel hurt is because an abortion means they don’t get to turn their partner into an incubator. What I’m getting at here is that while the fear may be real (people wanting to take away a woman’s right to choose) in some cases there are way too many examples of when that fear goes too far (men have no say so in a woman’s choice but women have the final say so in analyzing a man’s reaction to said woman’s choice and don’t get me started on custody).
Oh and then on top of that you have some of the very same people that support a woman’s right to choose and want men to “step up” so badly either go mysteriously silent when it comes to the women and courts that bend reality to keep men out of their kids lives or twist the argument into making it all men’s fault. You know for as much as feminists rag on MRAs I’ve almost never seen a feminist speak positively about a man that’s being pushed out of his kid’s life unfairly. No they usually just assume he deserves to get treated that way then declare that the mom is the real victim. And that’s from people who have taken upon themselves to say that they are the ones that want to help men be there for their kids.
So by “criminally indifferent” do you mean “actively dismiss” or “explain away” or “twist”? Because if so yes there is a big difference between April (ethcofem) saying something like, “Hey I never thought about it like that before.” and tigtog (of finallyfeminism101) saying something like, “But that’s not female privielge. Its benevolent sexism.” And which of those two gets referenced more often? (Speaking of female privielge denial if you look back in this post you’ll see that most of the people that came in disagreeing did so based on the premise that there is no such thing as female privielge followed by something to the effect of “men created all of this” thus absolving women of any responsibility for anything bad that’s ever happened.)
On an individual basis I’ll agree that assuming that someone is that way is not fair but after constantly seeing your larger sites either support such ideas or at the least let them go unchallenged I have to disagree with you on the larger scale. Maybe not a majority but a good lot of them.
I would love to have an evidence based good faith discussion with them but when all of my evidence is dismissed as patriarchal whining, blind emotion, or assumed in the worst faith I have a hard time presuming good faith on their part. Hell ballgame part of the reason I come here is because I got tired of being dismissed for silly reasons like me not being a feminist, being told that I didn’t read something properly because I questioned the basic foundation, having my responses dismissed because I “just misunderstood them”, and/or being subjected to selective moderation policies.
“I’ve heard the following quote a few times that goes, “If you don’t ovulate stay out of the debate.” Pretty much telling anyone that doesn’t ovulate to GTFO. Fine. ”
Its. Not. About. Your. Goddamned. Body. all the time. Get over your self-serving framing. We see through it. It’s about parenthood and some kind of regard for another person’s human dignity.
“(Speaking of female privielge denial if you look back in this post you’ll see that most of the people that came in disagreeing did so based on the premise that there is no such thing as female privielge followed by something to the effect of “men created all of this” thus absolving women of any responsibility for anything bad that’s ever happened.)”
Class Woman as Eternal Bottom. Utterly Victorian. Is this the same mentality that makes bodice-rippers so hugely popular and lucrative?
ballgame:
I’m glad you do. Now ballgame allow me to point out two observations.
1. Why is it that many feminists think that they are immune to being called out by outsiders? Its like they, folks who pride themselves on calling out teh patriarchy and “telling it like” it really is, can’t handle it when they are on the recieving end. Sure two feminists might get into a little spat over something but most of the time the first one says something, the second calls them out, they pat each other on the back for being so “progressive, and ride off into the sunset together.
2. While you do acknowledge and agree with my point here I think its worth pointing out that you are pretty far from the mainstream of feminism. Why else do you think that most of the feminists that visit this place turn tail and run after having their ideology challenged?
ballgame:
I disagree. As Danny noted, on plenty of evidence demonstrating that many, if not most, “mainstream feminists” either support the notion that women are oppressed while men are not or they do not challenge it. One can consistently find that attitude among feminists, and it often occurs whenever anyone mentions men’s issues. The notion that feminists may feel under siege gives them an unreasonable benefit of doubt that is contradicted by their own words and actions.
I think that one should be careful of assuming that people who hold stringent ideological views always or predominantly do so without an element of conscious bias. That they believe what they say, or claim they do, does not mean they are not engaging in intellectual dishonesty.
Aren’t what we consider to be privileges and the hierarchy we put them in social constructions in of them selves. We value freedom of speech and the right to vote greatly, yet societies gone past and some today place them low on their list.
Or are there privileges that are “Cultural Universals”? My sense is there probably are, but not many.
Well, that’s the $64,000 questiion Gwyn. Those cultural universlas are probably not really cultural at all. They probably fall inot the mosh pit known as evolutionary psychology.
One that does seem universal, cultural or not, is that the female sphere is indoors or at the homesite and that the male sphere is outdoors and dealing with outsiders, such as customers, the government, God or what have you, so men do and control commercial endeavors, political systems and religion.
Probably a lot or most of both sets of privilieges flow from this.
Sorry to post again so soon, but here is a perfect example of why it’s a fallacy to point to the preponderance of men in positions of power as proof that women are therefore disempowered:
http://www.the-spearhead.com/2.....boyfriend/
Now it’s quite possible to say that in this case the women has less power than the DA, but disingeuous, since that does not adderess the real power imbalance in the situation. It is clear that the women is leveraging her sex for power over her boyfriend.
Exactly Jim. What good does simply sharing gender with the DA do for the boyfriend? As we can see in this case none and in fact its actually working against him (presuming the DA is heterosexual). How long with it take for feminists to get it through their heads that SHARING GENDER DOES NOT EQUAL SHARING POWER!!!
Jim:
It’s nitpicking perhaps, but I don’t agree with the above statement. At best one could say that she had ample oppurtunity to leverage her sex for power over her boyfriend. The way I read the article it seems like the DA was the instigator and that the women then turned over the text-messages from the DA to the police.
In fact the following quote from the article Spearhead refers to:
clearly makes this a really bad example to use to try to point out that this women was leveraging sex for power over her boyfriend. To point out that there is potential for such abuse, sure, but that doesn’t seem to actually be the case here.
I actually find it appalling that this behaviour from the DA doesn’t seem to have any impact on his career and I am astounded to learn that attorneys and DA are allowed to have relationships with clients (and victims in the case of DAs).
Edited to add that Danny’s observation that sharing gender with the DA didn’t help the accused (now convicted) ex-boyfrined certainly is true. However, there is no lack of such examples. One need only look at the staticstics for violent crimes. The majority consist of male victims of male perpetrators – the sharing of gender with the perpetrator is of no help and no comfort for those victims and to even suggest such a thing is frankly disgusting.
You’re probably right on this not being a strong example but as you say this phenomenon does exist. Just look at violence by proxy. There are many cases in which women get other men to kill their husbands for them rather than do it themselves. And as we see this usually ends up being a “scandal” whereas when men just straight kill their wives its “DV/murder”.
I recall an example over at Glenn Sacks’ place several months ago about a woman (in Florida I think) who hired hitman to kill her husband. Fortunately the hitman was an undercover cop.
“clearly makes this a really bad example to use to try to point out that this women was leveraging sex for power over her boyfriend. ”
Actually no, it’s a very good example because it shows that her privilege is structural and not something she sought or constructed herself.
As you point out:
“At best one could say that she had ample oppurtunity to leverage her sex for power over her boyfriend. ”
That opportunity is the structural advantage she had and retains, however distasteful she might find it.
And something else that is structural is the uncoscionable way this piece of shit DA can gat away with this kind of thing, that there are no mechanisms in place to prevent this or repercussions after it occurs.
“(presuming the DA is heterosexual).”
Here’s the basic conundrum for feminist theory: In a male dominated society, as feminism posits this one is, full of heterosexual men, as we all observe, women are born with a meal ticket between their legs. This is an inherent advantage that non-kyriarchal women have over non-kyriarchal men.
The combination of male power and heterosexuality gives women a crucial bargaining chip.
Jim, just nitpicking again, but to me the verb leverage implies intent, and it just felt wrong saying that she leveraged sex for power when the underlying article suggested no intent, rather the opposite, from her. hence my protest. English is not my first language so I might be wrong about the leverage implies intent thing…
This I don’t disagree with.
Where I live there are laws against starting a (sexual) relationship with people who are your client or are in some other way dependent on you because of your job – whether you’re a prison guard, lawyer, physician, psycholog, teacher, clergy and whatnot. I thought this was the standard and was flabbergasted to learn that according to these articles attorneys in the US have successfully managed to lobby away any such previous laws there.
We have similar laws here – people lose professional licenses and all that – but this woman is not the client of this lawyer. He is the prosecuting attorney in that county. The scandal is that there is a conflict of interest when he is in any kind of personal realtionship with a concerned party in a matter he is prosecuting, and that is the situation in this case.
I think you are basically right in saying that “leverage” implies intentionality – the technical term is that it is an unergative verb. And that may aplpy in this case. May. It may be that the DA’s attentions are unwanted. It may be that she did not initiate contact. But considering that the woman has plenty of motive to welcome these advances, her lack of welcome is the assertion that requires proof.
Well, you’re certainly more uncharitable against that woman than me. Yes, there is a conflict of interest there, but it may swing both ways. Assuming the ex-boyfriend was quilty and thus a real threat to her (he was convicted of trying to strangle her) she was very much dependent on the DA to manage to get him convicted and put into jail to be/feel safe.
Interestingly enough I see that the article at SeattlePI is changing all the time:
http://www.seattlepi.com/natio.....xting.html
and
http://webcache.googleusercont.....38;ct=clnk
and the one I read when I submitted my first comment were different than both these two.
Anyway, the fact that he sent 30 text messages to her in two days,
no mention of her replying to themand the fact that she turned them over to the police and claimed that she felt she was being pressured into a relationship and that she feared that not entering such relationship could jepordize the case against her ex-boyfriend all suggests to me that she did not welcome these advances – the clincher being that she reported the advances to the police.A much better, or at least in my view, more ambiguous example could for example be this woman: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-50.....04083.html
Here it seems pretty clear that she directly or indirectly threatened to yell rape if the cab driver didn’t drive her where she wanted. Luckily he was smart, much smarter than the usual asshole commenters on the article who thinks he should’ve banged her. But then again, there are no lack of examples.
Tamen:
Jim, just nitpicking again, but to me the verb leverage implies intent, and it just felt wrong saying that she leveraged sex for power when the underlying article suggested no intent, rather the opposite, from her. hence my protest. English is not my first language so I might be wrong about the leverage implies intent thing…
How about this? If you’ve paid attention to how feminists go on about rape culture then I’m sure you’re familiar with how even though there are many individual men (in fact I’d say most) that would never rape a woman many feminists have no problem saying that all men, regardless of intent, benefit from rape culture.
If that is the case then would that same logic also say that even though the woman in this story didn’t want the sexual attention from that DA she at least benefitted from being a woman?
(Personally I think this is a crock of shit. A man that has no intention to rape a woman doesn’t benefit from the fear generated by rape culture. Hell I’d say it actually hurts him because if he doesn’t intend to harm said woman then her fears are ultimately harm the situation. I’m just trying to think from their perspective.)
I find that to be faulty logic/crock of shit either way – thus my initial protest.
It seems the Male Privilege checklist will not die, even after death. Here’s a recent take-down:
http://thedamnedoldeman.com/?p=1444
What a wonderfull topic. I know it is a old thread im writing in here, but im whery pleased not only from the topic in question (good to know im not the only one who is critical toward the privilege doctrine) but also from this website.
Super kudos to yall
And thank you whery much for this formative and intelligent topic.
ciao
ps excuse my poor english, but try to understand im not from a english speaking country.
Just thought I’d respond (I’m female, by the way) to the “privileges” listed, many of which seem to rest (and this probably also applies to many of the “male privileges” listed by various people) on assumptions that are so reductive as to make the statements fairly meaningless. (One problem, I think, is assuming that all or even most individuals grow up in “normal”, non-dysfunctional ways, with supportive, rather than damaging/abusive primary care-givers.)
4. I have probably been taught that it is acceptable to cry.
– Nope. In the case of my family, my sister & I were taught to repress everything except cheerfulness & infinite (unearned) gratitude towards (abusive) parents (“You have such a pretty smile, you should smile more often” were the milder type of messages we got in relation to this – how we *looked* was important, how we *felt* wasn’t).
5. I will probably live longer than the average man.
– This is not necessarily a desirable thing to every individual. Quality of life needs to be considered. (Wouldn’t most people prefer short & happy to long & miserable?)
6. Most people in society probably will not see my overall worthiness as a person being exclusively tied to how high up in the hierarchy I rise.
- In my family job-related status was of absolute, defining importance for everyone, and circumstances were such in the way we were raised (abnormally) that any outside society’s values weren’t relevant (we were moved around constantly & kept isolated).
7. I have a much better chance of being considered to be a worthy mate for someone, even if I’m unemployed with little money, than a man.
- Not if it affects my self-esteem (which it does, absolutely). (This also raises the question: “being considered” by whom? The average majority? Gold-diggers?)
11. If I shy away from fights, it is unlikely that this will damage my standing in my peer group or call into question my worthiness as a sex partner.
- “Call into question my worthiness as a sex partner” for whom? I wonder if even the majority of people would form this type of judgement. Most women I know respect men who have the ability to resist/avoid engaging in violence and see men who don’t as weak and compulsive.
12. I am not generally expected to be capable of violence. If I lack this capacity, this will generally not be seen as a damning personal deficiency.
(see 7 – “seen” by whom? The general population or tough-guy bullies? Surely not by the majority of women.)
17. I am frequently the emotional center of my family.
- Unfortunately, in dysfunctional families this is likely to mean being put in the role of receptacle for undesirable, projected personal traits.
18. I am allowed to wear clothes that signify ‘vulnerability’, ‘playful openness’, and ’softness’.
- Depends entirely on the circumstances (especially place and time), as well as whether or not the woman has the confidence/self-esteem/desire to dress this way. “Misjudgement” (wearing “inappropriate” clothes) can mean being labelled a slut, and “asking for” unwanted sexual attention/activity. (Also “allowed”? There are no laws against men dressing this way in most countries. “Allowed” by whom? Oneself, if one is male?)
19. I am allowed to BE vulnerable, playful, and soft without calling my worthiness as a human being into question.
- Assuming you’ve grown up in a safe, supportive environment. Also who is calling men’s worthiness as a human being into question for behaving that way? Tough-guy bully types, maybe. Not the majority of women (at least not the majority of sensible women)(or probably sensible men for that matter). Definitely not the majority of people I associate with. (Sounds like there are some real dickheads out there though.)
20. If I interact with other people’s children — particularly people I don’t know very well — I do not have to worry much about the interaction being misinterpreted.
- “have to worry” is very dubious wording – who is forcing you to worry? Also, women who have had damaging/abused childhoods also often experience these types of worries, whether or not there is any external perception of anything being wrong about it. (There’s also an expectation amongst many people of women that they should always show enthusiastic interest in, and interact in a relaxed, confident way with young children and babies when not all women are actually interested in young children & babies. Such women can be very marginalized due to these expectations.)
23. From my late teens through menopause, for most levels of sexual attractiveness, it is easier for me to find a sex partner at my attractiveness level than it is for a man.
- If a woman’s self-esteem has been chronically undermined, this can be either untrue, or ultimately very self-destructive (i.e. just being able to “find a sex partner” isn’t always such a great thing in terms of consequences).
24. My role in my child’s life is generally seen as more important than the child’s father’s role.
- “my child’s life”? We don’t all have children (or want them) (Yes, even women!).
Just my personal responses in case they’re of any interest.
Welcome to the blog, Kenshiroit, and thanks for the positive feedback.
Welcome to the blog, Blobby, and I appreciate the time you took to contribute your thoughts.
In many cases, you seem to be pointing out that the female privileges I list are not universal. I don’t disagree with that; however, the point is that they are statistically true, i.e. an American* woman is either much more likely to have the privilege listed than not have it, or much more likely to have it than a typical man would. If you think this makes the assertion “reductive” and “meaningless” then I would have to categorically disagree. They’re every bit as valid as statements about “male privilege.”
As for some of your specific points:
I’m not quite sure what you’re saying here; you’ll have to help me out a bit if you want my response.
The whole role of ‘violence privileges’ could use a couple of posts all on their own, so my responses here will be unavoidably pretty ‘reductive’.
First, I’m not entirely sure I buy the notion that ‘most women respect men who avoid violence.’ Even your own phrasing implies a certain amount of ambivalence and/or victim-blaming, with the phrase “ability to resist” suggesting that it is the man’s responsibility to stand up to violent threats.
Moreover, what people tell themselves about their values does not always coincide with what is evident from their behavior. I agree that the majority of women do not say to themselves, “I value men who are capable of violence.” What most do say, though, is “I value men who are confident and manly.” High-status, dominant males tend to be much more sexually successful than low-status, non-dominant males of equivalent looks.
Attaining confidence and dominance as a male is strongly associated with one’s ability to handle violence, as most boys encounter male dominance hierarchies of some kind growing up and there’s a strong cultural predisposition to ‘let boys be boys’. (This mindset is only slowly beginning to change.) Getting bullied or beaten up in these developmental encounters can be devastating to one’s confidence and thus one’s ability to convey the ‘manliness’ that most women explicitly state is desirable.
Like many women, Blobby, I think you’re simply unaware of the very real hazards that confront males who are not extra cautious in their dealings with children.
* I think many of the privileges would also apply to women in Europe and Canada as well.
Thanks for replying, ballgame.
First off I’d like to remind you that I did mention (in my first sentence) that (I think) the lists of “male privilege” (at least the ones that I’ve had a look at) also (in several of their points) rest on assumptions that are so reductive as to render them meaningless. However, since I’m not male, I can’t respond to them from a male viewpoint. So I responded to this one.
Perhaps I should state that I’m not a statistically typical person. However, I don’t believe that views held by the statistical majority are any more valid, worthwhile or interesting than those held by others.
“7. I have a much better chance of being considered to be a worthy mate for someone, even if I’m unemployed with little money, than a man.
- Not if it affects [the woman's] self-esteem (which it [can], absolutely).
I’m not quite sure what you’re saying here; you’ll have to help me out a bit”
Well, “being considered” by whom? One’s self assessment should count, it seems to me. And, assuming that to some female individuals, job status and income matter psychologically & emotionally (to themselves) in the context of finding a partner, then this will affect their “chances” (unless they are the type of person who can “sell” something they don’t really believe in). (This may not apply to the majority of female survey respondents, I’m not sure, I’m just trying to relate my own experience. Actually, the more it’s discussed the more obvious it is that these matters are way too complex to be at all helpfully addressed with simple gender “privilege” lists.)
“First, I’m not entirely sure I buy the notion that ‘most women respect men who avoid violence.’ Even your own phrasing implies a certain amount of ambivalence…”uggesting that it is the man’s responsibility to stand up to violent threats”
No, “my own phrasing” was actually not “most women” but “most women I know”. I simply don’t associate with people who engage in violent behavior. I was certainly not making any statements about “most women”. My social circle is not large (maybe because my standards are not low).
As for “suggesting that it is the man’s responsibility to stand up to violent threats”, I don’t believe I suggested this at all. I do not see this as gender-specific, I see it as simple good sense for any *person* to learn how and do their best to avoid getting into situations where they might have to directly confront or evade someone physically violent. (I don’t know about other women, but watching men – or women – fight holds no appeal for me or anyone in my social circle.)
“the ‘manliness’ that most women explicitly state is desirable.”
Well, as I said, I’m not statistically typical, and I really posted in order to give my personal, honest, though non-typical viewpoints. What I and the people close to me find “desirable” is a real connection based on probably hundreds if not thousands of factors too tiny and nuanced to mention, not a list of abstract “traits”. I think it’s a bit sad when people are essentially looking for a list rather than a person, in this way. “Womanliness”, “manliness” – I find both these constructs – and the intense gravity with which some people take them – pretty laughable. This sort of fetishistic essentialism is a source of much laughter amongst me and my friends, so I guess at least it has comedy value (for us). I can’t imagine taking it as seriously as some do.
“I think you’re simply unaware of the very real hazards that confront males who are not extra cautious in their dealings with children.”
No, not unaware, just wanting to express my angle on this. (These gendered lists of “privileges” really seem to reduce extremely complex matters quite absurdly.)
As an acceptable heterosexual mate, thus by the targets of such: heterosexual men. In other words, you’re not summarily rejected as a possible girlfriend because you’re unemployed – unlike most men.
You’re also not considered a gold digger unless you go for a really rich or unattractive guy. Hugh Hefner, the founder of Playboy magazine, is re-marrying (his 3rd marriage) to a girl named Crystal who is 24. Heffner is 84, and the characteristic people know him for is that he’s a good connection to get in the magazine, and he’s rich. He’s not exactly attractive to people in their 20s. So people will think she’s with him for his money, yeah.
As a woman, I’m not expected to defend myself or my honor with my fists. Either someone will propose to stand in for me, or there will likely not be any fight. My social status will remain unaffected.
Pre-transition, the fact that I wouldn’t physically retaliate when teased or hit was seen as a sign that I was a pushover you could toy with. Hence low-status.
Also note that most men are raised to not hit a woman. So I’ve had no physical bullying issue at all since I transitioned. No one tried to hit me or goad me into a fight, even if I may have annoyed them mildly.
No law against men, but severe physical and psychological retribution for daring to dress a certain way, unless your neighborhood is extremely genderqueer friendly (which most are not). Men can wear tights, feminine-styled high heels, skirts and dresses right? They can also wear make-up, without a problem right? And if they get beaten up, you can be sure they’ll be accused of having asked for it. It also lessens their social status in the eyes of many (including women), which makes their dating prospects much worse.
They don’t need to visibly call their worthiness in question. They can simply assume he’s gay and thus uninterested and uninteresting to you. It’s funny how the “I assume you’re gay so seeing me undress won’t do a thing for you sexually, and going shopping with me you will think is fun” are memes in recent movies, like Kick Ass.
Not only is being perceived as slightly unmasculine or slightly feminine seen as grounds for assuming someone is a gay male, but it’s also grounds for assuming he likes stereotypically feminine things as well (like shopping). The better policy is simply to ask.
The media, parents etc are forcing you to worry. Or you are at high risk of arrest…for the crime of being near children. Women are not at risk of arrest for such, unless they truly abuse said children and it gets known or seen.
You might surely be expected to eventually bear a child and raise it, but being childless is not considered a crime (except by the Pope maybe). You’ll probably be asked to babysit more than men, since they’re *hardly ever asked at all*, they’re assumed to be “statistically more likely to be pedophile/violent with children” hence, people doubt them before they even do anything. Being asked to babysit more than men (and you can easily refuse because of mundane reasons) is an artefact of men never being asked, not a ploy to force women in caring roles. Note that women (mothers) do the asking a lot more, too.
I babysat my brothers in my teen years, because I was:
1) Significantly older than them (9 and 11 years younger)
2) Considered responsible
3) Living in the same house
4) Could be paid cheaper (5$ for 3 hours, 15$ for 10 hours). No cooking to do, we ate leftovers.
So no female babysitter came (I was considered male back then) during all those years I babysat, and I didn’t need one before either. It was nice pocket money since I didn’t have (and couldn’t take) a real job then (12-17 or so).
Well, sometimes its someone insulting his girlfriend, and his girlfriend insulting the guy who insulted first back…that guy wanting to fight, and said girlfriend waiting for her boyfriend to go and defend her honor against him. It’s considered a funny situation by many I guess, but it’s not funny on the moment for that boyfriend. Especially if said girlfriend says something along the lines of “My boyfriend will beat you”, which puts him on the spot.
Schala: Very well said, as usual.
Blobby: I appreciate your pointing out you were just explaining your own perspective (and your frustration with privilege lists in general) and not necessarily contesting the statistical validity of some of the privileges being discussed. I agree that there are individual women and individual men who — for whatever reason — don’t always benefit from the privilege that others see as attaching to their gender.
I do hope, though, that if your comment here is motivated primarily by a skepticism towards the whole concept of privilege lists (and not just a desire to scoff at female privilege), that you post similar comments doubting the validity of privilege lists at the far more numerous gynocentric feminist sites that constantly discuss “male privilege”!
(And I can think of a couple of places to start.)
Schala: There’s something wrong with “girlfriends” like that. Seriously. Don’t be with an idiot is all I can say.
ballgame: I actually don’t frequent lots of “gynocentric feminist” sites, and honestly don’t particularly want to
Stating my personal perspective on your “female privileges” list was not meant as any kind of support of “male perspective” lists elsewhere. As I said before, not being male, I don’t feel I’m in a position to make truly informed comments on such lists. (I can see why people get the urge to write them, but it might be better and more honest if the women & the men wrote their own “privilege” lists) (p.s. your links didn’t go to specific pages containing “male privilege” lists and honestly I don’t have the time or motivation to search through material I’m not interested in in any way – I was hoping to have a discussion here between human individuals, not a locking of horns between members of two diametrically opposed “isms” or camps or whatever.)
Actually, to be fair, any list about the other gender’s perceived privileges should really be called “As a [gender of which the writer is a member] this is what seems to me might be some systemic privileges experienced by the other gender”. When they’re stated as if it’s a fact, that’s when it gets all pernicious-like & blamey.
I am getting the impression, though, that a lot of the issues coming out of this stem from socio-cultural pressures, and possibly specifically American ones (I’m assuming this a US-based forum). I get the very strong impression that society and culture in general over there pressures people pretty intensively to have lots of sex and/or be in intimate relationships, and that being single (and/or, heaven forbid, celibate) in the US, one would be seen as a freak. (Is that right?) It just sounds like there’s incredible pressure to conform, to have a partner or be a “player”. (And then there’s the violence thing, I wonder if the fact that guns are legal kind of escalates that?) Combine this with the brainwashing (as well as the biological imperative) that urges most women to breed, and it seems to me that this type of environment leaves most individuals (of both genders, of course) with little to no chance of developing really crucial personal skills (assuming these people are like the majority of people and weren’t lucky enough to grow up in very stable, supportive homes with completely well-adjusted primary care-givers) like self-awareness, emotional self-regulation, mindfulness, a substantial sense of self, ability to think & act independently despite external pressures, and an ability or desire to act with integrity in all aspects of their lives. (And I’m not attacking the US in general here – I lived there as a child, having an American parent – and it was beautiful and great in many ways. And some of these problems probably – “probably” because I haven’t personally encountered a lot of the situations/issues/concerns that seem to come up on sites like this and also on the more extreme MRA ones – exist where I live, too, but not to that degree, it seems to me.)
Blobby, you’re right that this site is sort of US-centric (Hugh and I are in the US of A; Daran is in Scotland). I suspect the majority of commenters are from the US. (I’m curious where you are now.)
I think the US is significantly more violent than much of the rest of the industrialized world, and many female privileges are connected to the culture not expecting women to be violent, so you may very well be right that this phenomenon is more severe in the US than, say, in Canada or Europe.
ballgame, I’m in Australia (though I lived overseas as a child & am a dual national).
Schala – I just want to elaborate on my previous comment a bit. I can’t understand why someone (well, someone sane, that is) would choose to be with anyone who showed such obvious lack of care for their partner’s well-being. Please, enlighten me. (Is it some kind of a similar dynamic to the battered wives/spouses thing, but without the marital commitment and direct physical abuse from the partner? It seems like a very strange choice to me, to be or stay with someone like that. Honesly, that isn’t love. That is weird foolishness. Such partners need (1) to be left immediately, and (2) psychotherapy, at least.)
Schala – just to reply to some of your earlier comments on my post:
“…I’m not expected to defend myself or my honor with my fists. Either someone will propose to stand in for me, or there will likely not be any fight. My social status will remain unaffected.
Pre-transition, the fact that I wouldn’t physically retaliate when teased or hit was seen as a sign that I was a pushover you could toy with. Hence low-status.”
I really question, in general, the use of phrasing like “not expected to”, and “was seen as”. They beg the questions “by whom?”, “how did they demonstrate this?” and (possibly most importantly) “do you yourself agree with, or do you contest these kinds of judgments & values?”
And if the people around you really are expecting and perceiving these things, I strongly recommend not validating and buying into it, and questioning them on it. This also applies to your comments on status – they really beg the question: “in whose eyes/mind does this status exist?” Usually there is no real ‘consensus’ on such *completely* subjective matters. And, more importantly, do you personally agree with (or validate) (either in your own mind or by your behavior) these status-related judgements, expectations & behaviors? Because that is a hugely important part of these dynamics (for anyone).
(ballgame – p.s. I really don’t think the tone of my initial post indicated, as you wrote, “a desire to scoff at” the “female privilege” list; certainly taking issue with some of its generalizations & assumptions, but that is quite different from “scoffing at”.)
Well, it’s never happened to me (and I don’t date girls now), but it’s more than anecdotally happened to guys I heard of. And I’m not sure how easy it is to “detect” such behavior pre-emptively.
It’s not being stalker-like or clingy etc. It’s more part of being within expected gender roles (wanting to be protected by a stronger man), so normative women are likely to fall within this.
For sure, I won’t insult someone even insulting them back and then ‘sick my boyfriend’ at the insulting party. I’m likely to just ignore that person.
You might me thrown in this situation long before knowing this person enough. A 2nd date maybe. And I guess guys could accept sub-standard stuff like this because they don’t want to be alone. Or think (in a misguided way likely to be young) that it proves their worth as a mate to do this. It’s likely the girlfriend in question thinks it proves his worth, or that it’s his duty.
Battered husbands often stay in relationships, especially if they have children, because they have nowhere to escape with them to. It would be considered kidnapping, and leaving the children opens them to possible abuse. At best they can report the abuser and hope to have them removed, if they are believed.
In the context, this is
“…I’m not expected to defend myself or my honor with my fists. Either someone will propose to stand in for me, or there will likely not be any fight. My social status will remain unaffected.”
I’m not expected by others, peers, family, friends, or just bystanders, to defend myself. I’m assumed to be weak, uninterested in fighting, and probably unable to fight (given my size, it’s not really a misjudgment – people rarely factor martial arts in, which don’t require a big size to be efficient – for the record, I’m not a martial artist either). But since I’m female, it’s seen as normal and nothing bad.
The status which remains unaffected, is for: people who’ve seen me, friends, family, acquaintances and potential mates. As in, a potential boyfriend won’t think to himself “Meh, she can’t even fight to defend herself, what a wuss”, while a potential girlfriend would be condoned societally for thinking so of a potential mate of hers. Doesn’t mean she will, but she won’t be reprimanded for thinking such, even if he’s physically weak.
As for this:
“Pre-transition, the fact that I wouldn’t physically retaliate when teased or hit was seen as a sign that I was a pushover you could toy with. Hence low-status.”
This was seen as a sign that I was an easy target, and being seen as male, I was an approved target. Men are told not to hit women, women are not told to not hit anyone. In a strongly-male environment, men will see nothing bad about hitting another man. The workplace will see something bad about fights period, though. So it would rarely be shown with fists in a workplace, it would be shown with little things, like throwing away my can of Coke in the trash, putting my winter coat in the trash, or belittling me for the slightest thing.
In a school environment before tertiary education, it would be shown with fists, showing, pushing etc. Because the consequences are not that dire for doing so (school suspension isn’t that bad for many, while losing your job is really bad financially).
Wether I accept those judgments and values is immaterial, I get the consequences of being considered low-status first-hand, and complaining is seen as proving their point (unless they get dire enough consequences). You’re seen as “going to run to mommy” if you tell the boss for minor incidents.
Both men and women in general, especially in younger ages (before 25 or so) are more or less ONLY after status. Trophy girlfriends and boyfriends abound, to combat loneliness and getting better self-esteem. Trophy girlfriends are the hotties, and trophy boyfriends are the high-status (high in the hierarchy) guys.
I completely avoided all this crap in high school, and people thought I was gay for not dating. See catch-22. What’s funny is that few people would tell me outright they thought I was gay. But when I transitioned, it came as a surprise to most of my family, who thought I was gay, but not trans. That’s when I figured everyone thought I was gay in my family.
Well, they can’t expect it of me now. I’m not seen as a guy-dressed-up by anyone but the most stuck-up stupid who know personal information through HR department stupidity or someone else telling them directly (behind my back). I legally changed my name now, so it should be lesser chance of anyone knowing.
Nobody expects me to “defend my honor”, they expect someone to take my place, or me to shrug it off entirely. I like the second option. One I wasn’t afforded pre-transition.
All “questioning them on it” would have done is make me more of an outcast, with the added label of whiner. I didn’t accept it back then, but I could only cringe and take it. Income beats dignity or something. Thankfully, no one required I cut my hair, or this would have been grounds for me sueing or quitting. There were jokes about my long hair though (15 to 25 inches during that work).
Mainstream society.
And yeah, I eschewed mainstream society for most of my social and community needs. I go into BDSM, gaming, geek, trans and equality communities. Yet, I have little choice but to interact with mainstream society if I want housing, work, groceries. So I fight the government who has a way to at least diminish the discrimination.
If I went to Singapore, I’d likely be detained for the crime of having a M on my passport, when my name and appearance are female. And that’s because of Canada’s passport policy (yes I live in Canada).
If it’s mainstream, people assume there IS a consensus. For example, that story today (or a few days back) about a high school basketball male player being asked to cut his hair, refusing and thus being discharged from the team. It’s in Indiana state, US.
The female basketball team can have ponytails or headbands, and keep long hair. The male team has rules about collar, ears and eyebrows – no longer than that. Yet the comments on those stories are that “boys shouldn’t have long hair, or if they do, then they just don’t play the game” and “rules are rules, and there for a reason”.
Sure, it’s no consensus that boys should always have short hair or be sanctioned, but it sure is widespread. Prisons have double-standards regarding hair length. Canada’s army (at least) lets women keep certain hairstyles that men can’t have (always short for them). The US army requires extremely short nails for men, but allows for painted long natural nails for women. And corporations and companies who don’t necessarily deal with the public have been judged by most courts in the US to be able to legally have discriminating double-standards about dress codes. Like requiring make-up for females and forbidding it for males. There’s precedents for this.
Male bus drivers here have petitioned to be able to wear shorts in summer (instead of full-length pants), since female drivers can wear knee-length skirts. The administration didn’t back down, so as a way of protest, some male bus drivers wore skirts.
I’m against all double-standards, especially such blatant ones. But what can I do except avoid those businesses and not join or support the army?
Hi, Blobby, welcome to our blog.
I think ballgame’s list has value in two respects.
Firstly, it’s a rebuttal of the feminist concept of unidirectional male privilege by holding a mirror to one of the more commonly cited expositions of that concept. From this perspective, any problems or flaws in the FPCL, that are replications of problems or flaws in the MPCL are just the mirror doing its job.
Secondly I think gender does harm and disadvantage women (some women, or women generally) in certain ways, and men (some or generally) in other ways. And I think individuals who do not experience these harms themselves very often are oblivious to the impact they have on those who are affect. Feminists have done a lot of work to raise awareness, both within and beyond the feminist movement, of the disadvantages (some) women suffer. By contrast there is a lack of awareness of, and sometimes outright denial of gender-related harms suffered by (some) men. I think ballgames list goes some way to remedy this.
Schala,
Well, I’m sorry to hear that you’ve faced so much bullying & pressure and things growing up. It sounds to me like there’s a terribly strong and damaging culture of conformity where you grew up (can I ask where, generally?). Imagining growing up in such an environment makes me almost thankful that I grew up so isolated (though the bullying – verbal and physical – at home from my parents I could’ve easily done without, and it was very difficult being moved around constantly, but it did make me read more books & stuff and ultimately not be so completely concerned with what the people around me might think, though I have certainly struggled with that too, it has taken decades for me to get to where I feel independent of most of the crap I grew up with).
“Well, it’s never happened to me … but it’s more than anecdotally happened to guys I heard of. And I’m not sure how easy it is to “detect” such behavior pre-emptively.”
No, but it should surely be possible to respond to it when it happens.
Changing/resisting a culture of violence & conformity like that requires individuals who can see it to be strong (mentally, that is) and not accept but question it. Complicity won’t change things. And feminism is really on your side on this one, by the way (in that it discourages physical violence, and would also never teach girls to find boyfriends to act like pit bull terriers for them).
The “normative” behaviour you’re talking about is extremely primitive. It must be horrible for anyone to have to grow up in such a context, especially someone not built like a big tough guy. (I wonder, what do the nerdy, low status girls tend to do in this hell-scape you describe?) I really hope that somehow the young people there who do see how insane, unevolved and screwed-up the current behavioural norms are there can do something about it. Is there no sign at all of things improving?
(p.s. can an admin please teach me to do those fancy quote marks?
)
hmm, something went wrong with my posting. could an admin please delete the first 2 posts above (but leave the 3rd)? I’m unable to edit or delete now for some reason.
& sorry for the apparent spam
thanks
(Done. And no problem. — Daran)
Because of the domain issue Daran is dealing with, Blobby, there may be a delay in ‘cleanup at aisle four.’
Hi Daran,
Thanks for the welcome.
I do think there’s a bit of a problem with looking at one particular site’s list (and there *are* different ones around, of course) as *the* “feminist concept of [whatever]“. Feminists (like masculinists) actually differ quite dramatically in terms of various views, beliefs and approaches. It’s probably more accurate, and even (I would think) more helpful to your cause (assuming I understand what that is), to say “*some* feminists’ concept of [whatever]” (thus acknowledging that not all feminists agree with one particular list, statement, view, etc). “Feminism” (like masculism) really isn’t one big united, single-minded force. And universalizing like that just tends to lead people into inaccurate assumptions (which I notice are absolutely rife on the EMRA – extreme MRA, that is – forums & sites; they tend to justify this type of thing with tit-for-tat “logic” like “feminists do it, so why shouldn’t we?” Totally ridiculous. It just becomes a spiral of stupidity. It would be a shame to fall into that pointless way of thinking, i.e. “the most extreme & unhelpful of our opponents do x therefore we’ll do it back at all of them, and anyone we think resembles them or speaks like them”. Sorry, I’ve recently spent too much time trying to reason with people who take that “approach” and it has been SUCH a waste of time, so I’m kind of venting now.)
Also, I’m not really clear on what you mean by “gender does harm and disadvantage…[whoever]“. Do you mean certain gender-related norms of behavior or something? (Since mere gender itself doesn’t really “do” anything, it’s not an agent.)
Thanks
I grew up in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Which isn’t that bad. There was no gang running with knives or guns (guns are extremely regulated in Canada compared to the US – and our crime rate is that much lower).
Doesn’t change the normative climate. If anything, I’m thankful it wasn’t directly backed by religious argument (fell out of favor 50 years ago, Catholicism that is).
And while I wouldn’t say Montreal is better than San Francisco in relation to LGBT, it’s pretty enlightened. There is a “gay district” right next to downtown, and there’s even a drag club (both drag queen and king) right at the cross of the two largest streets of the city.
Blobby:
I think it’s a bit more than “one particular site’s list”. According to its author “It’s probably my most widely-read piece; as well as floating around on the internet, it’s been used in dozens of high school and college courses.” It’s also one of several expositions linked to from the finally feminism 101 piece on the concept, which site has been repeatedly endorsed by feminists as a good 101-level introduction to feminism. Other expositions use different words to get at the same idea:
Brown Betty:
Peggy McIntosh:
McIntosh is specifically talking about “white privilege” here, but she explicitly analogises it to male privilege, which she clearly views as essentially the same social dynamic operating acoss the axes of race and gender respectively.
tekanji quotes a dictionary definition:
The other thing that all these text have in common, besides defining “privilege” in essentially the same way, is that they assume that gender privilege unidirectionally benefits men. Often the concept of female privilege is explicitly rejected on a variety of pretexts.
I don’t agree that this would be more accurate or more helpful. Dissent from this orthodox view of male privilege is negligible among accepted feminists. Feel free to prove me wrong by citing some dissent.
OK, so you’re venting. But what has this got to do with us? Has anyone here “do[ne] it back to” you?
Comments here are open. Consequently the standards of discourse we the bloggers would like to see in the comments are not always adhered to. That said, we, through our moderation policies and practices have created a culture of thoughtful and courteous discussion as good as any in the blogosphere on such a hot topic, and better than most.
Yes, that’s what I mean. “By” as a preposition can indicate a vector as well as an agent.
Thanks
Hi Daran,
Ok, I don’t really agree with your idea of “accepted feminists” (accepted by who?). I’d be more likely to think of people who write these unhelpful lists as extreme feminists, myself. (It’s a question of how one chooses to characterize – and to an extent, validate and give power to – people.)
“OK, so you’re venting. But what has this got to do with us? Has anyone here “do[ne] it back to” you?”
Well, generalizations about “feminism” or “feminists” do tend to carry (for me anyway) a simplistic, blaming, personally bitter tone. And of course, this would apply equally to generalizations about “men” and probably even “patriarchy” on EF (extreme feminist) sites, etc. (Honestly, though, I don’t really read that type of thing, and to me, people who write that way seem very old-fashioned in their feminism; it’s like they’re still in the 1970s or something.) I have always thought of myself as a feminist, but I wouldn’t write an obviously speculative list of the other gender’s “privileges” (as I personally imagined/believed them to be) and present it as fact (maybe I would’ve when I was an angry teenager, but it’s not a very mature move on anyone’s part, really). Really, anyone presenting their opinions as if they’re facts should not be taken seriously.
Maybe all this makes me not a feminist, I’m not sure. (Maybe when I read “feminism” in other people’s posts on here I should mentally edit in “extreme”. Hmmm…) Most of these posts do contain a certain element of venting, I was just trying to be up-front about it.
About the word “gender” used as an agent (and this will probably seem like gratuitous nit-picking but I have training and interest in semiotics, psychology & textual analysis, and wording reflects beliefs, so it’s pretty important) your words were:
“Secondly I think gender does harm and disadvantage women (some women, or women generally) in certain ways, and men (some or generally) in other ways.”
(I’m not sure why you’ve brought up the word “By” in your reply, since it didn’t appear in your sentence, by the way.) I think it’s really worth trying to be aware that thinking of/talking about gender as if it’s an agent could reflect a belief that it’s something in relation to which individuals have no power or choice (this lack of choice/powerlessness theme keeps coming up, too – it’s sad because people don’t seem to be talking about ways to try & fix these problems, it seems mostly that there’s just irresolvable, escalating conflict & bitterness and that’s really, really unfortunate). I’m totally on board with the idea that in many/most parts of the world gender-related norms can damage people (of both genders, of course), but the word “gender” primarily refers to a biological/physiological state (or did you mean that the biological aspects of gender harm people?) This isn’t meant as any kind of attack, by the way, I’m actually trying to clearly understand what you meant.
I wonder if it wouldn’t be more interesting & informative for individuals of both genders to write lists of pros & cons of being the gender they actually are? That would be a lot more honest & helpful, I would think. (Imagine that instead of retaliating with a “female privileges” list, this site chose to reply to that by asking people about the pros & cons of being the gender they actually are? That would be showing a much greater level of maturity and desire to improve thing than the “other’s privileges” list-writing, tit-for-tat type thing, which doesn’t seem to me to be going anywhere positive. Not that I don’t understand the urge to respond in that way, but is it really helping?) I suppose I’m really saying that I (as a self-described feminist – maybe “moderate” or something?) think that the women/feminists/whatever who wrote these “male privilege” lists & presented them in the way they have, have (in doing that) made a very stupid move, and they should certainly have known better. I can’t imagine what they were thinking, such lists, containing such offensive generalizations as they inevitably do, are obviously not constructive in any way and should probably not be validated by being taken particularly seriously.
In feminist, queer and trans community speak, Gender doesn’t mean Sex. Gender means gender roles, gender expression or gender oppression (the latter especially for radical feminism, who disavows the first two definitions).
That doesn’t help – at all – to get the concept of gender identity to be correctly understood (and its a misnomer). They mean sex identity, but its shrinks, and early attempts at explaining transsexuality that borked and backfired to me.
The concept of gender identity, to many (mostly uninformed people), IS about gender roles, gender expression – wearing dresses, raising the kids at home. But to transsexual people, it’s not! It’s about having a body configuration that fits. So radfems attack the strawman of gender roles as if that’s what transsexual people meant, and no amount of saying it’s about body and comfort within it (as in, like gloves, jeans, shoes – if they don’t fit, you’ll know soon enough – nothing about roles) will make them back off. That’s why I’m for the term sex identity. It’s clearer that it’s NOT about roles.
Gender as used by more mainstream feminism refers to what is typically understood as feminine and masculine, and the peer pressure to conform to those ideals or suffer consequences. Unfeminine women and unmasculine men suffer sometimes hefty penalties for eschewing the roles or expressions judged as valid by others.
There’s still debates about long hair on boys in schools (especially in Texas) and many siding with the “rules are rules”, but ultimately thinking that its right for schools to enforce such rules (and probably wouldn’t be for rules that say that girls should all have short hair).
Mothers who don’t tend to their children are seen as bad mothers and bad women more easily, but that’s also an artefact of fathers being seen as optional, secondary, at best teaching discipline, at worst simply being walking wallets. If they take care of children, they’re seen as potential predators because “why would they want to do that, if not for an ulterior motive”, thinking that men are not nurturing and as inherently violent, beastly-sexual. Some are praised as good male examples for doing less than mothers (who would be praised), though that’s because they have lower standards for men in childcare.
It’s like expecting a mentally challenged person to barely be able to read at 25, and they can read a more or less normal book (standard size characters, couple hundred pages), it’s seen as an achievement. Other people doing the same wouldn’t raise an eyebrow, and not being able to do that would have them shunned.
Expectations that hurt men: That they’re all strong, violent, dominant, hypersexual by default, uncaring, unemotional (except for anger), that they’re physically ugly (or at least not pretty on the same standard as women), that anything feminine or unmasculine (interest, expression, clothing) could rob them of their maleness, that they’re unworthy of attention as victims, that they’re bad with children or generally housechores that aren’t considered “manly” (lawnmowing, gutters, carpentry). Probably more.
Expectations that hurt women: That they’re all weak, passive, submissive, have no sexual desires of their own, or sex drives (or if they do its weird or atypical), hyperemotional, that being too feminine makes people underestimate you and lose respect some, that being too masculine makes them unattractive, that they’re incapable of violence, sexual or otherwise, that they’re bad with manly chores or activities (mechanics, carpentry, racing, cars in general), are vain (all about looking pretty), that they’re more suited towards “women’s jobs” (nursing, teaching at elementary/kindergarten level, secretarial jobs).
Expectations that hurt gender-variant (employed loosely to mean people who obviously go against norms, intentionally or not, visibly or not) people of both sexes: That they’re rebelling, not really like this (faking, fakes), trying to get undue attention, perverts, predators, unproductive members of society, meriting death, not meriting basic human rights.
“Changing/resisting a culture of violence & conformity like that requires individuals who can see it to be strong (mentally, that is) and not accept but question it. Complicity won’t change things. And feminism is really on your side on this one, by the way (in that it discourages physical violence, and would also never teach girls to find boyfriends to act like pit bull terriers for them).”
What does it say about women and girls who harass and bully men or boys, hit them and all? Do they strongly discourage girls from this behaviour and speak out against the ones who do?
My story is rife with the same ostracization as Schala’s. Only, girls and women levied their equal share of ridicule and contempt, some going so far as to berate me for not behaving like a “Normal” person.
Caregivers, tutors, teachers. Even some of the bullies in high school were women. Though I’m not transgendered.
I’m glad you’re skeptical about feminism as much as you are about lists like this one. That’s a comfort.
Hi Schala,
I hope you know that there are lots of people in the world who constantly and actively reject those expectations/values you’ve listed.
Who do you mean is “seeing” these people this way when you write “Mothers who don’t tend to their children are seen as bad mothers and bad women … fathers being seen as optional, secondary, at best teaching discipline, at worst simply being walking wallets.”
because it’s certainly not “everyone” or “society” – that would be far too broad & negative a generalization.
(Though of course any parent who doesn’t “tend to” their children is probably being irresponsible & possibly a bad parent, depending on exactly what you mean – if we’re talking about total neglect, then obviously that bad parenting.)
Some fathers may *feel* like they are, or even act as “optional, secondary, at best teaching discipline, at worst simply being walking wallets” – it may not be someone else “seeing them” that way. But in healthy relationships fathers can be as nurturing and involved as they want and aren’t “seen by” anyone in this way.
Obviously there have always been multitudes of bigots, bullies, and other varieties of moron in the world, and there (unfortunately) probably always will be, but how can we think about making things better?
I just really think that focusing on or obsessing about (and thus, to an extent, validating) the viewpoints of the profoundly unevolved goes nowhere. Of course they suck – but let’s try to do something to change it.
“What does it say about women and girls who harass and bully men or boys, hit them and all?”
Feminism has always been a non-violent movement. It’s not a movement that says that anything a girl or woman does is right. Surely no-one thinks it’s that.
“Do they strongly discourage girls from this behaviour and speak out against the ones who do?”
By “they”, you mean “feminists”, right? Feminists, and any sensible adult, should, if it’s happening around them. Of course.
“My story is rife with the same ostracization as Schala’s. Only, girls and women levied their equal share of ridicule and contempt, some going so far as to berate me for not behaving like a “Normal” person.
Caregivers, tutors, teachers. Even some of the bullies in high school were women.”
Well, that is terrible, and I’m sorry to hear about anyone going through that type of thing. Of course that shouldn’t happen. Children should, of course, be treated with care by everyone who chooses to be in a position of caring for them (and I think people – men and women – need to be a lot more careful about having kids, because a lot of the time people become parents and they find out too late that they’re not equipped psychologically to do a decent – i.e. non-damaging – job; I guess this applies to the teachers, etc, you mention as well).
Do you blame feminism for all of this though?
Unfortunately, power (physical power, positional power) is something that often gets misused, no matter who holds it. There will probably always be struggles over it.
“I’m glad you’re skeptical about feminism as much as you are about lists like this one.”
I’m not actually skeptical about what I believe to be feminism, but that (not overwhelmingly negative) picture of it doesn’t seem to be shared by anyone here so far. (Feminism means different things to different people.)
I am, however, skeptical when people make unbalanced, unfair generalizations and show no inclination or ability to admit their own subjectivity in the process.
“Do you blame feminism for all of this though?”
Let me tell you a story that has also affected me so much that I’m now hesitant to tell any feminist about what I’ve been through regarding girl and women bullies/abusers.
Weeks ago, I was speaking with a feminist (who also happens to be my writing tutor) about an incident that occured in high school.
I had a crush on a girl in my computer typing class. Helped her out with assignments, talked with her a lot, and we hit it off well. She had a boyfriend, but that was okay. Being friends was fine with me.
Anyway, I was enraptured by her friendlieness and caring mind. Thought I’d found the perfect friend.
Until one day she engaged everyone in a game of “Show me your underwear”. Wanted me to participate. I refused. She insisted as everyone smirked at me. I said “No!”. She grabbed my pants and proceeded to goad me on, trying to reach in to pull out my underwear. I shook her off. She stopped and stared at me, then laughed along with the others.
Our friendship was over as far as I was concerned. Felt betrayed by the whole thing after all I did for that little…
…anyway, I’m wondering the halls afterwards, few days later, and I’m shoved against a locker, held against my will. Her boyfriend stood there, looking into my eyes and threatening to kick my ass if I ever spoke to her again.
My former friend was right there beside him, grinning. Just grinning as it all unfolded.
You know what this feminist said to me?
“You really should be blaming the boyfriend.”
I was aghast and sternly told her that she sicked her boyfriend on me. If not, then she didn’t help by standing there and letting it all happen. Getting her rocks off like that. NO EXCUSES! SHE WAS TO BLAME AS WELL FOR BETRAYING ME, FOR THE MASOCHISTIC THRILL SHE GOT OUT OF HER MAIN MAN THREATENING A HARMLESS PERSON LIKE ME!
“But he was the one that threatened you.”
I just…couldn’t believe it. Instantly, at that moment, I felt such a deep searing pain inside my mind I dropped the subject and decided never, EVER to speak about anything related to girls and women bullies ever AGAIN!
If all feminists thought like she did, forget it. I’m never ever going to reveal a story like this again, in person, to another feminist AS LONG AS I LIVE! Nor do I have to.
Well, except for you. However, I sense an understanding. Though I don’t trust you completley, to be honest.
Female priveledge: If I ever hit a boy, bully or harass a man, get someone to threaten violence on another man, I can comfort myself that I’ll get off scot free. Even given empathy when I don’t deserve it! Society will ensure my needs are met while the victim is blamed or told how to feel. If it’s a feminist, bonus points.
I apologise for the level of snark in the final paragraph, Blobby. No offense.
Welcome, Blobby.
I think this is a fair point. Personally, I try to be careful with my language, and specific whether I mean all, many, some, or a few feminists when making an observation. For example, I think it would be unfair to say something like “feminists hate men,” even though there are a minority of feminists who seem to have hateful attitudes towards men.
However, I do think there are some generalizations that are true: the vast majority of feminists (at least online and in academia) seem to believe in “male privilege” (but not “female privilege”), and the concept of “patriarchy” (as opposed to a gender system that oppresses both men and women in different ways). I once took a look at the archive of a Woman’s Studies email list full of big names in feminism, and discovered that nearly all of them think that women are oppressed, and men are not oppressed on the dimension of gender.
If you spot a generalization about feminism that you disagree with here, feel free to point it out, and we’ll talk about. It could be that we experience biases, but it’s also quite possible that we make the generalization simply because we’ve never, or virtually never, encountered any counter-examples to it. In that case, counter-examples would be welcome.
In ballgame’s original post, he stated reservations about the term “privilege,” and he just wanted to show that it isn’t a one-way street. I think that his list helps reveal the ridiculousness of privilege lists. I’m really not sure whether it’s helping or not, but the post has been quite popular, and I hope it’s gotten a lot of people thinking.
What is your picture of feminism?
Hi Eagle33,
I’m not sure about posting things on here either, it’s all such personal material & often really loses touch with anything really political.
I’m flattered you sort of trust me a bit
Look, the girlfriend (your ex-friend) and the boyfriend both sound like total dicks to me. I blame them equally.
Regarding the tutor who told you you should blame the boyfriend, is she pretty young? From her reply, she sounds pretty young. Not that young people can’t sometimes be helpful, but what she said sounds pretty immature (to me). Of course, just because one person who calls themselves(?) a feminist (or even a Buddhist/Christian/masculinist/whatever) says one thing about a situation doesn’t (of course) mean that everyone who calls themselves a proponent of the same belief system will agree with them.
(This is a side point, but a habit of thinking/mental compulsion I’ve noticed that a lot of people have is that they often unnecessarily think they need to rank things in a hierarchy – maybe this was *partly* why she said you should blame the boyfriend more? I dunno, it’s just that I’ve so often observed people hierarchicalizing unnecessarily and it leading to problems. Sometimes one thing is exactly as bad or as good as another – it’s like there’s a fundamental problem in some people’s minds with the basic concept of any two things being equal… Weird.)
It can be very difficult to find people to give you good advice, and when people don’t try (or aren’t able) to understand it really sucks. I’ve had that experience over and over, myself – of not being understood & being told something dismissive and thoughtless instead of helpful, so I know how bad that feels. I think people don’t take the time, or haven’t had the training to listen properly, or something.
I’m sorry it’s so difficult to find good friends. Due to being moved around constantly while growing up I didn’t have any long term friendships (and the internet wasn’t around then – that’s how ancient I am – not that the internet would have solved it necessarily) so it wasn’t until my twenties that I started to form good friendships. Luckily I really like to read & am pretty of independent, socially (i.e. don’t need to be around people too much) which I now know is a great blessing.
This is a big generalization, but the way (North American?) society seems to have changed for the worse over the last few decades (from my observation of it from a huge distance, anyway) has probably *partly* been due to unforseen negative effects – as well in some cases probably of abuse – of certain systems & public policies (and most systems & policies end up being abused in some way) influenced by “feminism” (of an earlier decade). But *also* there are influences like increasing gun ownership, population density & all the resulting stresses from that, and the growth of the pornography industry (especially with the internet). These are also major factors totally at odds with (or unrelated to) feminism that need to be looked at. It’s like an overall depersonalizing, brutalizing of culture and individuals. I don’t know for sure, not living there, but do you think those things contribute?
Maybe in the underwear showing situation (I don’t know, this is just a suggestion) you could have said something like “I’ve got much better things to do right now than play baby games – see you”? Just a thought. I can imagine how difficult that situation would’ve been. (Sometimes I find it helpful to imagine how, if you could re-live a situation like that, how you might’ve handled it differently. I’m not trying to excuse the girl, though, at all – she sounds like a manipulative, pathetic brat to me.) Feminism, when it’s done right – the way *I* do it, obviously
– is not about saying that everything that all women/girls do is right. Far from it.
This girl, your ex-friend, and her boyfriend, if they ever develop any personal integrity (and I suppose it’s not completely impossible that they might one day) they will surely look back on this behavior and feel bad about it.
(For me, feminism is mostly about being aware of harmful gender roles & expectations and systems that support them, and rejecting them as much as possible. Easier said than done, I know.)
Hi Hugh,
Thanks for your post & question.
Luckily I just happened to describe my idea of feminism in the last paragraph above.
I still think of myself as some kind of feminist. I studied it (and philosophy and semiotics) at university. But I certainly don’t hate men. My best friend is a man and I love him very much. I have had many close male friends and they have been fantastic friends. (And this is despite the fact that my father was physically & emotionally abusive to me and my sister, so I’ve been able to move on from that, though of course, the worse the abuse, the harder it would probably be to forgive. Of course I know mothers can be abusive too, I’m just saying how it was for me – I can’t help anticipating that people will write back with “not all fathers are abusive! Mothers are abusive! etc, etc, – you know how it can go… Just talking about my personal history here, everyone,
I do argue that men & boys are hurt by stupidly restrictive, narrow, draconian societal gender norms. I absolutely see and accept and am with you on the obvious fact that it can & does negatively affect men too (I’ve thought this was obvious for a long time and when I studied Feminism this was part of the teaching). My idea(l) of feminism is that it was supposed to be something that would liberate men as well. And there *are* men who are pretty liberated, as I feel I am. (I must be quite lucky, I guess.) Surely there are liberated men in the USA as well?
I’m interested to know about your picture of feminism, too.
Blobby: “Look, the girlfriend (your ex-friend) and the boyfriend both sound like total dicks to me. I blame them equally.”
Thank god. Thank the lord! I swear, it feels so refreshing to finally find a feminist who can look past this stupid “She’s a girl. Totally blameless.” mentality and call it like it is: She was stupid, irresponsible, and downright disgusting for stabbing a helpful spirit in the back.
Blobby: “Regarding the tutor who told you you should blame the boyfriend, is she pretty young? From her reply, she sounds pretty young.”
She’s in her late forties. Besides, I promised myself never to bring anything like that into our sessions. Just let her do the job I pay her to do.
Blobby: “It can be very difficult to find people to give you good advice, and when people don’t try (or aren’t able) to understand it really sucks. I’ve had that experience over and over, myself – of not being understood & being told something dismissive and thoughtless instead of helpful, so I know how bad that feels. I think people don’t take the time, or haven’t had the training to listen properly, or something.”
Or they’re indoctrinated into the “Girls and women are harmless” myth and refuse to budge. Either way, it’s not the fact I can’t find help that bothers me. It’s more of finding people to trust, who would, like you did, call it like it is and blame the girls and women equally for what they did. That’s an extremley rare thing over in my part of the woods.
Blobby: “Maybe in the underwear showing situation (I don’t know, this is just a suggestion) you could have said something like “I’ve got much better things to do right now than play baby games – see you”?”
No offense, Blobby, but it was me against her and a herd of them. The teacher never came to my defense, no one did. Telling them something like that, someone who is not physically built to knock a person’s teeth out saying it, would’ve made it worse. Besides, she never backed down. No one did. They zeroed in on me.
Trust me, when the “Herd” are dead set in doing something, no amount of dark sarcasm, joking around, or defensive ability is going to stop them. What’s done is done.
Great, I’m feeling sad again.
Blobby: “This girl, your ex-friend, and her boyfriend, if they ever develop any personal integrity (and I suppose it’s not completely impossible that they might one day) they will surely look back on this behavior and feel bad about it.”
Phhbt! I doubt it. They’re long gone now. Let them rot for all I care.
Anyway, I don’t mind feminism. Except for when segments of it excuse girls and women from wrong doing. That’s what triggers me. The fact this element exists has made me distance itself from it. I don’t want to be around that element because, frankly, I’d rather live my life on an even keel than get those experiences triggered.
Blobby
I used to be a pretty convinced feminist as well. Believing that feminism would liberate us all. But I really lost faith in the movement when I saw how the feminists were more occupied about school girls being verbally harassed by males than me being physically assaulted by my bullies.
Also I suffer from ADD, so when I went to school I had to have fixed structures and peace and quiet in order to function. This was completely ignored by my teachers who found it more important to listen to the wishes from the girl’s in my class. Once again I lost faith in the feminist movement.
Now a days I still struggle to understand why it is that the feminist movement want total market economy on the dating market (everyone for themselves, and everyone has the right to preference without criticism), yet in all other field it seems the movement wants socialism.
Hey Eagle33,
If the people where you are think that feminism means assuming that girls never do anything wrong, they’re getting feminism very wrong. (Maybe they hear “women’s rights” and they thinks “womens is right!”. Haha… Ha?) Though their actual “rationale” (though that’s probably an overstatement) could be something more “pre/anti-feminist”, like “girls are too weak & helpless to do anything wrong”.
As far as I understand it, feminism means – unless physiological sex differences are directly and overwhelmingly relevant (e.g. in extremely complex medical matters such as reproduction) people should be treated equally. It’s hard for me to believe that anyone would interpret feminism as meaning “women & girls can do no wrong”. That’s insanity. I suspect these people haven’t studied and/or understood it properly (though I never thought it was *that* confusing a concept).
Hi NewBreed,
Maybe part of the problem is that men (and boys) need to figure out ways to liberate themselves, as women have been struggling & working to do for so long – over 200 years now – from the negative effects of a lopsided power structure. There are lots of feminists around who want men and boys to be liberated as well.
Maybe schools or classes need to be segregated?
As far as your comments about the dating “market” (which, frankly, is not something I involve myself in, but thinking of it as a ‘market’ is something I’d avoid – if you see it as an exchange of goods & services, well, I believe that’s referred to as prostitution, not dating)
I don’t know why you’d think that approaching political systems and intimate relationships (or the search for one) in the same way is a good idea.
I don’t agree that feminism wants socialism, either, but then you’re probably talking about what you see in your part of the world, which presumably differs significantly from mine. (We’re not scared of a little light socialism over here but I know that it sounds more or less like satanism to many Americans.)
“Maybe part of the problem is that men (and boys) need to figure out ways to liberate themselves, as women have been struggling & working to do for so long – over 200 years now – from the negative effects of a lopsided power structure. There are lots of feminists around who want men and boys to be liberated as well.”
Yes, but what kind of liberated? That is the question. I don’t want to participate in a movement that wants my liberation to consists of shame and anguish over what gender identity I chose.
“Maybe schools or classes need to be segregated?”
I would say the solution is to start discussing what the purpose of education really is. It seems today education has mostly been reduced to containment.
“As far as your comments about the dating “market” (which, frankly, is not something I involve myself in, but thinking of it as a ‘market’ is something I’d avoid – if you see it as an exchange of goods & services, well, I believe that’s referred to as prostitution, not dating)”
The way I see feminist rhetorics, men always have themselves to blame when women reject them. Either the men are “Nice Guys ™” or Entitled, or invading on the female right to preference, or “Feminism isn’t a dating service”. From this I conclude that the attitude is that dateless men are supposed to blame only themselves, and figure out how it works on their own, and solve it on their own. From this I conclude that feminists take a neo liberal stance on dating.
“I don’t agree that feminism wants socialism, either, but then you’re probably talking about what you see in your part of the world, which presumably differs significantly from mine. (We’re not scared of a little light socialism over here but I know that it sounds more or less like satanism to many Americans.)”
I don’t live in America. I live in a country were such things as tax-financed public health care is all ready implemented. However, when I start seeing suggestions such as that corporations should maintain quotas on women in executive positions and that universities have to solve the shortage of women in engineering programs, this is what I call wanting socialism.
“Feminism has always been a non-violent movement.”
With some rather violent rhetoric, and as we have just seen, there is not a lot of distance between rhetoric and loners who it incites. I honestly think that in the case of feminism’s violent rhetoric, the louudmouths – Gloria Steinem, Solanas, Mary Daly – were indulging in hyperbole and felt free to do it because they were misogynist enough to think that as women they could get away with saying anything because even they didn’t take it too seriously.
” It’s not a movement that says that anything a girl or woman does is right. Surely no-one thinks it’s that.’
Plenty do – well not any large percentage, but a viable community. If you have the stomach to go onto those sites, you find sites where rape is discussed with all kinds of hedges – no one can even suggest that woman may lie about rape, no one can even suggest that a woman is primarily responsible for her own physical safety, that it is inconeivable that any woman should ever defend a man accused of rape. (Here they show what an age ghetto they live in – plenty of women havbe sons or brothers or husbands who are accused of rape, but apparently parenthood is outside these people’s mentla universe.)
Blobby: “If the people where you are think that feminism means assuming that girls never do anything wrong, they’re getting feminism very wrong. (Maybe they hear “women’s rights” and they thinks “womens is right!”. Haha… Ha?) Though their actual “rationale” (though that’s probably an overstatement) could be something more “pre/anti-feminist”, like “girls are too weak & helpless to do anything wrong”.”
I’m afraid it’s not as simple as that, Blobby.
Blobby: “As far as I understand it, feminism means – unless physiological sex differences are directly and overwhelmingly relevant (e.g. in extremely complex medical matters such as reproduction) people should be treated equally. It’s hard for me to believe that anyone would interpret feminism as meaning “women & girls can do no wrong”. That’s insanity. I suspect these people haven’t studied and/or understood it properly (though I never thought it was *that* confusing a concept).”
They have. And they understand it. That’s what’s scary about them; they don’t give a damn. Right or wrong, moral or immoral, heartless or not, these feminists are relentless in enforcing their world view on society, especially men.
Some believe men also need to fulfill a quota of suffering as women had in order for them to care. You mention male victims or survivors of bullying, abuse, violence from women and on many an occassion they’ll tell you “Until men start suffering at equal levels, women need it more.” or “Well, now they know how it feels.”
Hence how they always deflect with arguments like “Male Priveledge” and their associated lists. Telling a male survivor that “Partiarchy hurts men too”, when in their worldview Partriarchy means a system of oppression that benefits men, is reprehensible to the extreme. But no, they’ll cover their ears and refuse to listen.
There are feminists who aren’t young, you know? Some are in prominent positions in academia and with influence. And they also believe in “Women can do no wrong”. Even when they hide it, it comes out subtly in their speeches and writings. My tutor would have people who vouch for her indeed. Look up “Harriet Hartman” or even feminism in Swedish Government for some examples. You can even look up Andrea Dworkin and Marlyn French. No, don’t look her up. Read this 2006 interview with her. http://www.guardian.co.uk/book.....ion.gender.
My tutor also believes in “Women are the missing Peace” slogan on the T-shirt one of her other students wear. In other words, “Men make war, women make peace.”
It’s enough of the key people involved with custody and child services to matter for all parents. Lawyers, judges, and feminist associations against the presumption of shared equal custody (50/50). They mostly go back to Victorian notions of women as nurturers, and men as not. Best interests of the child are forgotten, even if it’s THE ur-argument brandied about.
I think the ratio of custodial parents here is 91% women (mothers) 4% men (fathers) and the rest is grand-parents, adoptive parents, foster parents etc.
Complaining that men don’t do their share of childcare as some feminists do, is being blind to a system that is against men doing so.
And sure, the stats above don’t count unequal shared custody arrangements (2 days every 2 weeks), but let’s say that seeing your kid 4-5 days in a 30 day month isn’t much.
Women get default custody, unless it can be proven they are unfit (prostitution, drugs and other addictions that could negatively affect children profoundly). Men never having a chance to prove they are just as fit as the mother. They’re the 2nd, or even 3rd, option.
I’m so glad to be permanently and innately infertile. Not needing to pay for the right not to bear or sire children. I never could cum. And I’m uterus-free.
Mothers who rely on daycares and nannies could be seen this way. Their children are not necessarily materially neglected, but have little contact with the mother. Some think this is bad. Personally, I think daycares are ill-equipped to raise children, but that a nanny could do a decent job (it’s human 1-on-1 contact after all).
I’m all for that, but so far, what I saw feminism try to do about it, was to tell fathers to be more involved and to consider men wanting child custody to simply be wanting to get out of child support payments.
Nothing is done to address mommy-blocking (where the mother wants to prevent the father from getting involved in childcare or household chores by saying he’s ‘doing it wrong’ because he does it his own way, or simply preventing him from being in the kitchen), and most femnists I read about (many being mainstream ones) would say paternal alienation (following a separation, the custodial mother saying bad things about their father) is bullshit made of by misogynists, and not an actual problem.
Hey, folks, instead of just making bare assertions that feminists say this and claim that, how about some links to feminists actually saying this, and claiming that?
http://www.physorg.com/news205221046.html
http://www.now.org/issues/family/050307pas.html
I’d say more than 1% is interested, and that this is potentially mommy-blocking at the root (amongst other factors, like considering he is less masculine for it, or being considered less masculine by the mother for it)
Note that South Korea has 48 million population. 5000 stay-at-home dads is nothing. Even counting that only 30 million are probably adults and 15 million are parents (I make those up), 5000 would represent 1/3000 of families with a child.
And the survey saying a third of married men would accept the role, in a very strict nation such as Japan regarding gender roles, just confirms what I said about Australia.
2.7% of stay-at-home married parents…meaning 97.3% are women or another parent (grand-parents, which is rare).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stay-at-home_dad
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_movement
http://boards.askmen.com/archi.....80120.html
And if you want proeminent accepted feminists (even if not mainstream) who held anti-egality beliefs, there is Janice Raymond (wanting transsexual women wiped off the planet), Germaine Greer (calling all transsexual women and intersex women as ‘failed men’), Sheila Jeffreys (considering a lived experience as a girl – and treated as such – is necessary to be a woman – raised the wrong way, or getting the wrong job, and you’re just an invading male).
Schala –
“It’s enough of the key people involved with custody and child services to matter for all parents.”
You’re clearly talking about your local region, which is different from mine. Also, I’m not a divorce lawyer and not involved in any custody issues, so it would be pointless me trying to discuss them with you, but (obviously) in general, people disadvantaged by unfair laws & policies need to do things to fix them. Blaming various feminists on an online forum isn’t going to change unfair laws. Are you doing anything constructive to try to change things?
It sounds to me like the word/idea of “feminism” has been so corrupted & hijacked in your region/mind that it’s no longer even able to mean anything positive.
“I’m so glad to be permanently and innately infertile…”
- As far as I’m concerned, that is great and you’re lucky. (The planet is now overcrowded with humans anyway. We need less breeding, not more.) I wish I too had been born innately fertile. Fertility for women is often a huge trap. (As is being brought up in a culture that brainwashes most girls into thinking that “every little girl’s dream” is to get married – heterosexually, of course – in a big white dress – what a nauseating load of crap.)
Re. all the quotes you posted, I really don’t have the time to read all that material, sorry. There is endless material that could be quoted, written by feminists, anti-feminists, etc, etc. I’ve already explained that calling myself feminist doesn’t mean I agree with (or take responsibility for) every other person who does the same. Just like any MRAs in this forum probably wouldn’t be expected to take responsibility for everything said by other MRAs (e.g. those who advocate raping women to get back at “feminism” – do you agree with this?).
Anyhow, you haven’t answered my questions about ideas to try to improve things. Because this discussion doesn’t really seem to be going anywhere at the moment.
Schala I asked you cite examples of feminists saying and claiming the things you assert they say and claim. I did not ask for examples of feminist saying things vaguely related to the topic. The first of your claims about feminists is that “feminist associations [are] against the presumption of shared equal custody (50/50).” None of the extracts you quoted said anything at all about the presumption of shared equal custody.
You also said “most femnists I read about (many being mainstream ones) would say paternal alienation (following a separation, the custodial mother saying bad things about their father) is bullshit made of by misogynists, and not an actual problem”. OK, you supported that. Having read the first report, in what appears to be a scientific news site, my tentative conclusion is that PAS is bullshit. Now what?
Why do I think it’s bullshit? According to the report:
On the other hand:
So who is Reigier? Who is Bernet? According to the article Reigier is ‘vice chair of the task force drafting the manual’ and he ‘directs the APA’s research division’. Bernet on the other hand is ‘a psychiatry professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.’ He ‘is among the speakers at this weekend’s conference, which organizers bill as the largest ever on parental alienation.’ and he’s a ‘lead author of the proposal submitted to the psychiatric association to recognize parental alienation either as a “mental disorder” or a “relational problem.”‘
In other words, Reigier is a high-status research director with the APA, who has been tasked with the job of representing scientific consensus on the matter. Bernet is just a professor with an opinion.
Professors with opinions are ten-a-penny. You can always find professors who dissent from scientific consensus in their field. That’s a good thing, because sometimes the dissenters are right. But 90% of the time the consensus is right and the dissenter wrong, (and of the remaining 10%, 9% they both wrong). This is because to become the consensus, ideas have to survive a winnowing process. Dissenting views tend to be either new and untested, or old, discredited, and only embraced by partizans and diehards.
The article cites several other people for their views both pro and against:
In other words, a professor with an opinion.
A lawyer with an opinion. And a vested interest.
A psychologist with an opinion.
NewBreed -
“Yes, but what kind of liberated? … I don’t want to participate in a movement that wants my liberation to consists of shame and anguish over what gender identity I chose.”
Who *would* want to participate in such a thing? And your definition of liberated is really up to you. I don’t see any need to “choose a gender identity”. What about developing oneself as a person, minus the (apparently widespread) fixation on gender difference & essentialism?
“I would say the solution is to start discussing what the purpose of education really is. It seems today education has mostly been reduced to containment.”
Sure, as long as you’re looking for a solution, I’m happy.
“The way I see feminist rhetorics, men always have themselves to blame when women reject them … the attitude is that dateless men are supposed to blame only themselves, and figure out how it works on their own, and solve it on their own. From this I conclude that feminists take a neo liberal stance on dating.”
What’s wrong with “feminism isn’t a dating service”? That’s completely true. One person rejecting another rarely has anything to do with politics. Would it make sense to you if women & girls blamed masculism (or socialism, or capitalism) if they’re rejected sexually?
Dateless men don’t have to “blame” anyone. Why is there any need for blame? This sounds like something that should be explored with a good psychotherapist (and that’s not an insult, psychotherapy can be very helpful & doesn’t mean a person is abnormal or wrong in any way. You’ve raised a very personal, sensitive & complex matter, one that anyone is unlikely to find any solution to in an anonymous internet discussion with people who are both unaccountable and – most likely – untrained).
“I don’t live in America. I live in a country were such things as tax-financed public health care is all ready implemented. However, when I start seeing suggestions such as that corporations should maintain quotas on women in executive positions and that universities have to solve the shortage of women in engineering programs, this is what I call wanting socialism.”
Thanks for explaining what you meant. So you’re talking about gender socialism in institutions? I still don’t agree with trying to draw parallels between socio-political/educational/corporate policies and something as different, separate and personal as sex (the non-professional kind)/dating.
Don’t you think that the psychology of human attraction & intimate relationships is a different thing from the attempt to govern a country?
I don’t see this on the list so…
Womens’ reproductive rights extend as far as being able to rape even boys, let alone adult men, with near impunity, deny them any say in their reproductive future AND collect money from them for decades with the assistance of the state. How cool is that? Is that not privilege?
My local region might be Quebec province, Canada, but it seems applicable to both Canada and US. Couldn’t say for UK or other European countries.
Well, here, the main opponents to DV shelters for men, spear-headed by local-region MRAs, is feminists – who say there is no need for it, that it’s a made up problem.
There are over 400 shelters for battered women in the province alone. And a few associations for violent men. No services AFAIK for battered men or violent women. And MRAs don’t have the benefit of a Council of Women Status, or a Minister representing their rights and needs. Their voices are unheard except on the net, where they still get bashed by feminist sites.
Though feminists have reason to bash them often (very aggressive snarky tone sometimes), they mainly bash the arguments (saying what MRAs say regarding DV is bullshit for one) without addressing them.
Those MRAs have a few privately-funded 100% services for male victims of various things, but no government funds. Guess who does the gatekeeping of funds at the government level? Certainly not a neutral party. Government-funded feminist entities have brought scaremongering statistics about DV that defy all logics, like that 300,000 women each year are beaten by their husbands (in 1980 no less – the population NOW is 7.5 million, back then 5.7 million – married women represented 2.7 million – they simply estimated 10% and rounded up).
That statistic has been used to get more funding to DV organizations (for women only) throughout the 80s, 90s and early 2000s. Until a local MRA group demanded the source of the statistic in 2004, and got it refuted as completely made up. They got written proof that it was “only an estimate” (author of said stat said as much).
People here generally do think women are more advantaged than men overall, women included. It’s the most feminist-friendly state of North America, so the US are a bit behind for that. Yet politicians would commit career suicide if they pursued interests that benefit male victims of DV. So until it’s as obvious as the Sun in the sky, they won’t recognize male victims are in any significant number or in need of help.
It cites feminists. Written by the Globe & Mail or by NOW is the same, if the source is good. I recommend you overlook the comments on my last link. The point is the original post above the others, which cites a recognized feminist who wrote books pertaining to it.
I’m not accusing you of being the same as them. I’m accusing the movement of feminism as a whole of not purging those unwanted elements that make it look awful and who go against their ethos of equality.
I will gladly disavow a trans person who is misogynyst, misandrist, of the “I’m trans because I like pink and dresses” variety, or who wants to “dissociate from those people over there (usually transgender non-transsexual people who they fear make a bad name for them)”, considering those others as “weirdos who don’t deserve rights (unlike them who do, because they’re ‘properly normative’)”. I will consider those trans persons to be unrepresentative and speak up against their ways.
As for MRAs, there might be some of them here, but the bloggers, I and most of the commenters are more of the pro-equality gang, without necessarily taking a camp. The blog here is to criticize what feminist got wrong (which is far from all of it), because few people within feminism are allowed to criticize the movement without being judged as anti-feminist, MRA, misogynyst, deluded, ad nauseum – criticism isn’t accepted from within. It’s not accepted from without either I guess, but at least it can be heard, and we have little to lose.
1) Speaking here on this blog can change minds about how derailed feminism went as an equality movement, and what problems could be fixed to put it back on the road of true equality.
2) It speaks against inequalities either condoned (through silence, inaction, minimizing, ignorance) or opposed to being fixed (shouted down as really being misogyny in disguise without proof), because it’s ‘not on the list’ of things feminism wants to fix (isn’t about women), or possibly destroying part of their ideology (like patriarchy, privilege being unidirectional, DV being all about MALE control and power), and for people who make a living working for feminist organizations – their livelihood.
3) Organizing at the grass roots or a higher level is beyond what most people can do. Participating is more in reach of people. At least more people.
Remember the meme:
Extremists right and left will get people voting…but centre people who are reasonable are the independant parties, who get ignored.
A movement for true equality without partisanship men vs women, will need to go over that. And it seems to be a long way.
I think participating in this blog is helping towards that goal, albeit slowly.
Eagle33 (January 11, 2011 at 9:09 am) -
Blobby: “If the people where you are think that feminism means assuming that girls never do anything wrong, they’re getting feminism very wrong…Though their actual “rationale” (though that’s probably an overstatement) could be something more “pre/anti-feminist”, like “girls are too weak & helpless to do anything wrong”.
“I’m afraid it’s not as simple as that, Blobby.”
Eagle33, neither my treatment, nor the situation I was talking about are “simple”. You don’t seem to have understood what I’m saying.
Your subsequent comments seem to express a belief that “all feminists are evil” and “feminism is responsible for almost everything bad in the world” which is very simplistic, and like I’ve tried to point out before, unlikely to get you anywhere. But obviously if endlessly blaming feminism & feminists is what you feel like doing, that’s your choice.
Blobby:
<blockquote>Like this</blockquote>
(Now if I could only figure out how to make angle brackets appear as angle brackets.
)
Typo? Did you mean “infertile”?
No, but I don’t see Schalla arguing that you do. On the other hand, when you say things like:
and
and
I don’t think it unreasonable for people here to want to test those assertions again feminism generally.
Alas, a blog, Feministe, Feministing. I can’t recall or go fetch the posts. The fact that the latter two close comments after less than 2 weeks irritates me and I don’t save it in bookmarks then (I save stuff I actually replied to). I guess the post on Alas about child support payments might have a mention in the comments.
So is Raymond Blanchard on the DSM task force for “sexual disorders”, and he’s a grade-A asshole. Come on, the most hateful anti-trans bigot to draw stuff about gender identity disorder? And his hateful buddy Kenneth J Zucker is on the same task force, as head. They work in the same place, and have similarly bigoted beliefs about trans people.
Zucker is a proponent of ex-trans therapy, very similar to ex-gay. He makes little boys who are too feminine refrain from seeing/drawing/owning anything pink, doing anything feminine, playing with dolls, having female friends, dressing up as girls (princesses and stuff, for fun), toy kitchens, and forces them to do “manly” sports, estimating that he’s “converting trans people to not being trans”, while he’s mostly traumatizing children for normal gender expression. His “clients” are unlikely to be trans at this age (he says as much), because they come for gender-nonconforming behavior, not statements that they want to change sex and want hormones. They’re very likely to be gay, lesbian or bisexual.
So…being on the DSM task force means all of nothing.
Yeah, that’s why Ray Blanchard was able to put his own mostly-rejected theory in the DSM at 302.6 and 302.85, asking for the sexual orientation of ‘patients’ with gender identity disorder, because his faulty research from 1989 says they’re very different (peer-reviewed I think once). It’s IN the DSM-IV-TR right now. And it’s mostly rejected. Consensus has taken vacations.
Though I do agree that PAS might not be a mental disorder. It’s still worthy as a term to discuss the phenomenon as it occurs. My younger brothers were actively discouraged from visiting my father, at some point they’d give all sort of excuses not to go with him once his custody time came up – without much reason. I was living with them and my mother (but was adult), so I saw it firsthand. My father has faults, he’s nagging on some things, and has higher discipline than my mother, but he’s not ever beat or traumatized them in any way. He’s a so-so parent, not that good, but not bad either. My mother lacks discipline, so she’s not better.
And lastly, the argument NOW puts forward that it’s only about protecting male abusers is just as unfounded. They attack the court defense as much as the attempt to formalize it in the DSM.
I can accept that it has no place in the DSM, but not that it’s a useless concept.
No, because as I have repeatedly pointed out, of this view haven’t been able to cite more than a handful of cases where this, anywhere in the world, ever, in history.
Any alleged social dynamic with that many orders of magnitude less chance of affecting anyone than they have of being killed by lightning is one that can be summarily dismissed.
Schalla:
Then don’t. Then your bare, unsupported assertions about feminists remain bare, unsupported assertions.
In respect of your remarks about transphobic bigotry of various other members of the panel, what has any of that got to do with whether Reigier is accurately representing scientific consensus on the issue of PAS?
In fact, they rather suggest that we should be suspicious of the acceptence of this or that syndrome, rather than being suspicious of their rejection.
Blobby: “Your subsequent comments seem to express a belief that “all feminists are evil” and “feminism is responsible for almost everything bad in the world” which is very simplistic, and like I’ve tried to point out before, unlikely to get you anywhere. But obviously if endlessly blaming feminism & feminists is what you feel like doing, that’s your choice.”
So talking about the element that I’ve mentioned, that does exist by the way, means “Feminists are evil” and “Feminism is responsible for almost everything bad in the world”? Where specifically did I say those things? Not seem to say it, where does it “Explicitly” say it?
I repeat, I’m talking about the extremist element that does exist in the movement and I’m not comfortable around it. Somehow, they’re still allowed free reign. Did you look up “Harriet Hartmen” and that Maryln French article I mentioned? Those are other examples of that extremist element. I found Maralyn French’s article triggering and hurtful. And she’s been allowed to walk alongside the more eglitarian portions of it all due to the fact that “Feminism is not a monolith.” Well, if it’s not a monolith and it allows the element to prosper, count me out. I’d much rather avoid it.
It’s a matter of personal health for me, really. Especially with what I’m going through now.
No, I don’t think feminism is evil and is responsible for all the world’s ills. However, it does have that extremist element I’d rather avoid. Last thing I need is being reminded “Women are the missing peace”.
Woah, woah, wait a minute. I never said your situation was “Simple” nor what you went through. It hurts you think that.
It has to do with the fact that “representing consensus” is not needed to be on the DSM panel. I bet they do have pressure to do so, but will nonetheless want to push their pet theories if they have one. No one is completely objective.
You started commenting on Alas before I even knew what blogs were and came interested in some (in 2006 or 2007). You’ve probably seen those posts (and especially comments) yourself on Alas if anything.
Eagle33 (January 11, 2011 at 9:10 pm)
“So talking about the element that I’ve mentioned…means “Feminists are evil” and “Feminism is responsible for almost everything bad in the world”? Where specifically did I say those things? Not seem to say it, where does it “Explicitly” say it?”
The tone of your paragraphs I referred to seems to express this (i.e. “ they don’t give a damn. Right or wrong, moral or immoral, heartless or not, these feminists are relentless in enforcing their world view on society, especially men”, “always deflect with arguments like…”, ” they also believe in “Women can do no wrong”, “men … need to fulfill a quota of suffering as women had in order for them to care”, “Women are the missing Peace” slogan … In other words, “Men make war, women make peace”, etc)
It’s obvious that you’re annoyed, but you seem to be directing that anger at me, and as I’ve tried to explain a few times now, what you describe around you is *not* how I practice feminism, and I can hardly be held responsible for how the people around you are behaving. Venting at me is not particularly constructive. I have read your posts and sincerely tried to show empathy for your situation. It feels like, because I’ve called myself a feminist, you are trying to make me responsible for something with which I have no real connection. What can I possibly say in response to what you’re writing about these people? For one thing, I’m not witnessing it for myself. For another, even if I was, I couldn’t change them. They sound like dickheads to me, and people who don’t understand what feminism is supposed to be about, if that helps. Further than that, there is absolutely nothing I can say or do, sorry. I don’t have magical powers.
“I repeat, I’m talking about the extremist element …”
I can’t find any place in your previous posts where you said you were talking about an “extremist element” – can you please point it out?
“Woah, woah, wait a minute. I never said your situation was “Simple” nor what you went through. It hurts you think that.”
Eagle33, you have misread my post.
Eagle33, you also didn’t answer my question about influences on North American culture a few posts back.
Blobby
“Who *would* want to participate in such a thing? And your definition of liberated is really up to you. I don’t see any need to “choose a gender identity”. What about developing oneself as a person, minus the (apparently widespread) fixation on gender difference & essentialism?”
That seems to be what feminism’s take on male liberation amounts to. Men should change so that they are less violent, less egotistic and less self-absorbed.
“Sure, as long as you’re looking for a solution, I’m happy.”
Great, of course my solution to educational problems would allow for a lot less ‘building of self-esteem’ and ‘developing social skills’ and a lot more on developing academic skills.
“What’s wrong with “feminism isn’t a dating service”? That’s completely true. One person rejecting another rarely has anything to do with politics. Would it make sense to you if women & girls blamed masculism (or socialism, or capitalism) if they’re rejected sexually?”
So then, why do I read so much feminist discourse on how bad the dating situation is for obese women? How women who are not ‘conventionally attractive’ are at a disadvantage and so on? It seems ‘feminism isn’t a dating service’ applies only to disadvantaged men.
Dateless men don’t have to “blame” anyone. Why is there any need for blame? This sounds like something that should be explored with a good psychotherapist (and that’s not an insult, psychotherapy can be very helpful & doesn’t mean a person is abnormal or wrong in any way. You’ve raised a very personal, sensitive & complex matter, one that anyone is unlikely to find any solution to in an anonymous internet discussion with people who are both unaccountable and – most likely – untrained).
I have attended psychotherapy. But that is not the point here. The point is why feminists claim that feminism isn’t a dating service, all while it is a feminist problem that obese women aren’t included in the dating pool. That older women aren’t deemed attractive. That women who are not conventionally attractive are not visible and so on.
“Thanks for explaining what you meant. So you’re talking about gender socialism in institutions? I still don’t agree with trying to draw parallels between socio-political/educational/corporate policies and something as different, separate and personal as sex (the non-professional kind)/dating.”
I see at least one parallel. That suddenly ‘fight for yourself, not our problem’ suddenly stops applying when women are at a disadvantage. Then suddenly it isn’t raw untethered market economy any more. Then suddenly it is the state’s problem.
“Don’t you think that the psychology of human attraction & intimate relationships is a different thing from the attempt to govern a country?”
I am not discussing the psychology of human attraction. I am discussing the ethics of the feminist movement, and the when ‘not our problem, everyone fends for themselves’ stops applying.
Blobby: “It’s obvious that you’re annoyed, but you seem to be directing that anger at me, and as I’ve tried to explain a few times now, what you describe around you is *not* how I practice feminism, and I can hardly be held responsible for how the people around you are behaving. Venting at me is not particularly constructive. I have read your posts and sincerely tried to show empathy for your situation. It feels like, because I’ve called myself a feminist, you are trying to make me responsible for something with which I have no real connection.”
If so, I apologise. You have made it clear that you’re not about the “Women are helpless and harmless” myth that some feminists push.
It’s just that talking about this portion of my past is very painful. Even typing it out again causes me to just go into a deppressive, angry state. As I recall, I relive.
I just want justice for what happened to me with both genders. And I get so disheartened to the point of suicidal thoughts sometimes when NOONE bothers to acknowledge that women and girls can be cruel as the next misoganic jerk of a man. Everything that occured against me was serious and there are very few outlets for working through what the women and girls did to me in my past.
Yeah, sure. I’m successful. I’ve got a steady job, roof over my head, friends, family. Only this pain just won’t go away. This injustice. I want it gone. But with so few outlets, where do I turn to apart from my psychiatrist?
Didn’t help at all that the feminist tutor of mine had to invalidate everything and trigger me with her “Blame the boyfriend” bullshit when the girl was equally responsible for everything. Don’t get me started on that article on Maralyn French as my favorite, influential author Alan Moore thinks of her philosophy as worthy enough to include in his “From Hell” graphic novel. Even when she had a fictional character say “All men are rapists and that’s all they are.” in her book. I felt like I lost a wonderful mentor because he was inspirational enough to get me writing. I still read his stuff, just with an extra skepitcal eye.
But I digress. It’s another reason discussions of privledge trigger me as well. I certainly don’t experience priveledge. Never have, never will.
Anyway, call this as something to make up for getting a little too hot-headed.
As far as your “North America” question, I thought it was addressed to Schala. Thanks for letting me know.
Yeah, there are many factors that contribute to the enviornment we’re in now.
Gwallan, I’ve pulled your last comment into moderation.
I’m aware I’ve cut Schala a lot of slack in respect of her opinions about individual DSM panel members, but I think they’re clearly on the “opinion not fact” side of the line, and therefore not potentially defamatory. Your comment crosses that line into “defamatory if false” territory. Consequently, before we can allow such claims to stand you need to 1, cite a verifiable reliable source that the supported person has admitted, or been convicted (not merely charged or prosecuted) for the offense described, or otherwise found legally liable, and 2, cite a verifiable, reliable source that a feminist organisation has supported this person in the way described.
“You’re clearly talking about your local region, which is different from mine. Also, I’m not a divorce lawyer and not involved in any custody issues, so it would be pointless me trying to discuss them with you, but (obviously) in general, people disadvantaged by unfair laws & policies need to do things to fix them. Blaming various feminists on an online forum isn’t going to change unfair laws. Are you doing anything constructive to try to change things? ”
YES YES YES! Blobby you nailed it.
Feminists did not create these laws or this situation. White knighting men did. Feminism’s complicity lies in the way its women’s advocacy aspect, in conflict with its gender eqaulity aspect, gave cultural andploitical cover to these white knights’ chivalrous impulses. where early feminists would have been in full shriek about this kind of pedestalization, later feminists found it aided their woman’s advocacy agenda. That still doesn’t make them responsible for these inequities, just complicit.
You ask the right question – what constructive things are people doing? The answer is that they/we are beginning to neutralize the white knights either by removal from office, prevention from getting into office, and also by a general delegitimatization of the white knight through ridicule and – pedestalization of women as women, protection of women, provision for women, when this is a gendered expectation of men, and that is what I mean by white knighting. “A real man would…..’
“Furthermore your requirement for a conviction to have occured defies the reality that they can rely on significant prejudices which they, themselves, have a part in creating and maintaining.”
According to statistics, almost no black women everr got raped in the South during Jim Crow. The presumption that the police faithfully and respectfully take crime reports from victims and then faithfully report them higher so that reliable statistics can be compiled is more than a little unworldy. The same goes for basing an assessment of social reality on the results of jury trials in which juries are pulled from the very same oppressive society as is being criticized.
Gwallan, I’ve just pulled another comment into moderation, for making a similar allegation about Oprah. The claim that she “celebrates” is non-factual opinion and so non-actionable. That she has the guests you describe is a factual claim. I don’t watch Oprah, so you will have to cite something which is authoritative, or at least reliable, which proves the fact about the guest (for example a vidclip from her show in which the guest admits facts sufficient to found your claim), and which is accessible to me, (i.e., not behind a paywall, not blocked in my country on copyright grounds, etc.)
If you don’t wish to do this, then I’ll happily approve your comments, with the specific remarks deleted. I think your point will still be clear to readers. The only reason I didn’t do that in the first place is that I want to give you the opportunity of having then posted as written, if you can meet the verification requirement.
No I don’t think there’s any chance that NOW will sue, but there are litigious individuals on the net. I want us to have one clear standard on this issue, not one for the litigious, and another, more relaxed one, for those we don’t think will sue.
Also I want Feminist Critics to be a place where the presumption of innocence is respected, and I do not want it to be a vehicle for false allegations. To be sure that allegations are not false, I need to be able to satisfy myself that they are true.
On the requirement for a conviction. That’s not an absolute requirement. A civil judgement, depending upon what its actual findings were, might be sufficient. Another example: “Mangum is a false accuser” is an allegation against Mangum. AG Cooper’s report, though not a legal judgement, is sufficiently authoritative support for the statement.
But yeah, in most cases a criminal conviction will be required. I’m well aware that biased juries and biased processes result in convictions where an unbiased person would find reasonable doubt, and acquittals where an unbiased person would find none. Nevertheless, despite their flaws, I think a jury which has heard all the evidence deemed admissable according to process, and charged with the responsibility for making that decision, are in better positioned to do so that than a bunch of unaccountable blog participants.
Many times over the years, I’ve criticised feminists for presuming the guilt of alleged rapists who have not been convicted. It would be hypocritical of me not to apply the same standard here.
Daran,
That’s a fair call. A biased jury is unreliable, but an uninformed commenter is even more unreliable.
There was a similar discussion about evidence and conclusions over at Language Hat awhiel ago, where the question was how to determine when a word ha come into a language. hat insisted that the first appearance in writing was necessary, others pointed out that that could hardly be when the word actually first appeared. The final consensus was that written records were the first *reliable* proof the word had entered. Not the same thing, buut the relevant thing.
Ref Gwallan’s point, there may be a post waiting to be researched and written on this specific aspect of misandry in the women’s movement, larger culture, whatever, and feminists’ reactions and responses. I have a sense that you will find that while there have been loud endorsements of this, that there have been equally loud denunciations and usually mostly from feminists. I bet it wasn’t feminists who were howling their approval of Lorena Bobbitt. I am basing this on what I see on threads on MGM – usually you can count on feminists to make the connection with FGM or body autonomy in general if they don’t like to equate the two, and to denounce both. It’s mostly the trads that resist.
German feminist Alice Schwarzer was euphoric when reading about the Bobbitt case ( Wikipedia, the paragraph “Gewalt gegen Männer” ).
It could be possibly triggering to read what she wrote.
To translate: “She disarmed her husband. (…) One did it. Now each one could do it. The dam has bursted, violence is no longer taboo for women. One can strike back. Or stab. American housewives no longer think only of chopping persil when seeing a kitchen knife. (…) There’s nothing else a victim can do but act herself. And there has to be female joy when one strikes back. At last.”
EW, that’s different. No it’s not. S’okay. Well, that’s one.
@Daran…
Let it go. New govt in my state and I need forty eight hour days. Jim’s on the right track I think. That project goes on my future agenda.
But Jim…
A biased jury is unreliable, but an uninformed commenter is even more unreliable.
Ask yourself…would you prefer to be on the receiving end of uninformed commentary or a biassed jury?
I know what I’d prefer.
I’m not uninformed. I just didn’t realise teacher expected me to take notes at the time.
Hmmm….forty eight hour days. Which minister could I lobby for that? Infrastructure? Environment? Tricky.
Maybe I’m thinking of the wrong type of minister.
I was commenting on another post and decided to actually read the comment that birthed it.
NewBreed already mentioned this, but Blobby’s line “Would it make sense to you if women and girls blamed masculism when they’re rejected sexually?” is extremely problematic. If masculism means patriarchy (aka “The status of White men before the 1960′s was perfect”), then it makes perfect sense for women and girls to feel that way and feminism consistently supports that idea. To the untrained eye, feminism shelters fat and socially awkward women from accepting that they need to change to get more dating options. Should this be the case? Debatable. IS this the case? Semi-debatable.
Women blaming masculism (when masculism means supporting patriarchy) isn’t a parallel to men blaming feminism. I know feminism is about ending patriarchy rather than replacing it with female supremacy and I assume that Blobby does as well. It’s unfortunate that Blobby didn’t come back to this, but understandable given the other things that were posted.
For the record, this thing is crawling with disturbing comments about feminism being evil and causing men’s dating woes, but I only came here to check Blobby’s comment.
Guestina: “Women blaming masculism (when masculism means supporting patriarchy) isn’t a parallel to men blaming feminism.”
Masculism is not defending the patriarchy. Masculism celebrates the masculine and calls to attention the issue of male disposability amongst other concerns that impact men. “Defending the patriarchy” is a knee-jerk reaction.
And I don’t like dubbing Patriarchy as “benefiting white men at the expense of women.” I’d prefer to call it a system that treats gender as absolute. The former meaning is offensive to me because I’m a “White man” who has been mistreated by girls and women as well as boys and men.
Guestina: “For the record, this thing is crawling with disturbing comments about feminism being evil and causing men’s dating woes, but I only came here to check Blobby’s comment.”
Some of these people, such as myself, have been hurt by misandric feminists. Dismissing it as disturbing only sweeps aside their concerns. Granted, some take it to the extreme. But I’m not one of them. Please don’t lump me in with someone who thinks feminism is evil, please.
Eagle, what Guestina is finding disturbing about those comments may not be that people are condemning feminsim, but that the substance may be true – not as in feminism being evil, but as in feminism truly having injured those commenters. There are two ways to read her formulation of that sentence.
Oh. Interesting take, Jim
It can be hard to discern the meaning reading only text on a screen.
I read it as meaning that she does not consider feminism to be evil, and is disturbed that many people in “this thing” (whatever that is) do (according to her.)
Guestina, could you clarify what you meant?
Daran has it right and “this thing” is this particular discussion.
Eagle33,
A simple Google search of “patriarchy” reveals that the definition I provided is what is generally accepted. You used the phrase “I don’t like dubbing patriarchy as…” I don’t like dubbing punk music as a British creation. Whatever. But here’s the kicker in all of that, I actually specified “when masculism means supporting patriarchy” because I didn’t know what was meant by masculism in the context of that particular post and I expect SOME people to use masculism almost interchangeable with patriarchy. I ignorantly thought it could be used that way, so why wouldn’t other ignorant people?
I have not done a simple Google search of masculism (I don’t think it’s as popular of a term as patriarchy), but am being told that it is separate from patriarchy. OK; edit: Blobby’s statement is problematic because feminists do allow women to blame their lack of dating success on… capitalism. It turns out feminists have a slew of things to blame for the lack of dating success that certain types of women experience. Though I believe Blobby’s statement is problematic, and though I have mixed feelings about feminists blaming X for a lack of dating success, I agree that blaming capitalism makes (slightly) more sense than men blaming their lack of dating success on feminism. Well, men who are very much into captive and submissive sexual targets probably do have a lot of issues with feminism ruining their success with women; I don’t think we need to get into that…
When I first read your comment about being offended by the statement that patriarchy is “benefiting White men at the expense of women” I was offended and thought the conversation couldn’t go anywhere. Then I calmed down and realized that I never even said that. For one, it’s far too exclusive and ignores men and gender fluid persons of color. However, there are plenty of reasons for me to feel sorry that you feel offended, and I truly am. I wish we could talk about many things, particularly patriarchy being its actual definition, without you being offended.
Furthermore, why would you assume I was dismissing your comment when I said that the comments about feminism being evil disturbed me? Is it the causing men’s dating woes part? If that is the case, the actual group that the two sub groups are being lumped into is called “people who have a negative view of feminism”. The group’s title is much longer than that but hopefully you see how the two do go in the same group. If someone claiming to be a feminist hurt you (that’s unfortunate) because of their interpretation of feminism, that probably wasn’t feminism. It’s the same as someone claiming to be a PUA or a member of the seduction community physically hurting women without their consent. They did something most of that community wouldn’t do because of the community’s beliefs. Or if someone says they are a masculi(st?) and espouses beliefs that are more in line with patriarchy then they aren’t following masculism
. Real feminists are not out to hurt men as a way to promote feminism. How would something like that even catch on in the 1800′s? Just like real people following the manifesto of the seduction community aren’t out to shoot women so that women know they have to respond to men’s approaches or they will get shot.
I am aware that some men have been hurt by individuals calling themselves feminists. But if you’re saying that the entire goal of feminism is to hurt men… damn, I just wasted an entire post.
I don’t think feminism is out to hurt men…not all of it anyway. That’s why I ask the question, do you believe there is subset whose goals are out to promote female superiority? That’s what my target is.
I’m offended with the generally accepted term of patriarchy because it throws my really painful experiences underneath a bus. I want to talk about patriarchy to, but not the exclusionary general definition accepted by the likes of google.com. You want to know about my experiences, I’ve stated a few of them to Blobby. They’re no joke and nothing to ignore because everytime I talk about them, it hurts. Badly. These are REAL feelings and the last thing I want is absolutes when tackling them.
Guestina: “I wish we could talk about many things, particularly patriarchy being its actual definition, without you being offended.”
Like I said, my own negative experiences from women and girls were as painful as the ones from boys and men. I got support in one arena and am struggling to find an outlet for the other. Guess which one I got support in? Yeah, boys and men. Apart from that, I’m on my own and have found jack squat for what happened to me with the girls and women.
So, no, I’m not ever going to talk about patriarchy as it is defined because it’s exclusionary according to the situation I’m stuck in now. “The status of White men before the 1960’s was perfect” doesn’t apply to my own life. I was never born before the 1960′s and I’m a white man who has, as mentioned earlier, been through really rough periods in the past that I’m lucky to have not taken a gun and blown my brains out when things escalated beyond personal tolerance.
Guestina: “Real feminists are not out to hurt men as a way to promote feminism. How would something like that even catch on in the 1800’s?”
Here’s my second problem. What is a “Real Feminist”? Because the majority deflecting point when challenged with this is some feminists will say “There is no real feminism. Feminism is not a monolith and encompasses a variety of views”. But when identifying that specific subset of feminist (Ie, the one who just blantantly tried to re-direct my anger, triggering me for the umpteenth time) suddenly this feminist isn’t a “Real Feminist” to them.
So which is it? Is feminism not a monolith or is there such a thing as a “Real Feminist”?
Guestina: “I ignorantly thought it could be used that way, so why wouldn’t other ignorant people?”
Now you found out it can’t be. Because that’s not what masculism means. And I’m not really a masculanist myself nor a feminist. Just someone into human rights, an equalist.
Guestina: “They did something most of that community wouldn’t do because of the community’s beliefs.”
Again, this goes back to my question about feminism actually being about one thing or about so many viewpoints under one banner, including the feminist that hurt me. If this community believed the opposite of the subset existing under the umbrella, that they’re not real feminists, why is that subset still speaking for feminism without getting ostricised and disowned from the movement? Why were the likes of Andrea Dworkin, Maralyn French, and the like praised for their work if there’s such a thing as a “Real Feminist”? This is really baffling to me and I’m tearing my hair out whenever a feminist insists “They’re not real feminists” then turns around and says “Feminism isn’t a monolith. It encompasses a variety of viewpoints”. Then they paint Men’s Rights Advocates with the extremists label by listening to the wacko fringe and judging everyone of them for the rantings of the few.
Seriously, I’m not into twisting my mind into a pretzel just to understand something.
A vanishingly small one.
There’s a much larger subset, whose activism and advocacy has the effect of promoting female supremacy. They’re not mustache-twiddling villains secretly plotting how to bring about the Matriarchy. They’re just blinkered.
And here’s why I’m constantly on and on at you all: Don’t speculate about feminist’s motivations and goals. Talk instead about what feminists say and do, and what effect this has.
This is much better argumentation. Firstly you are focussing on the only thing that matters. Secondly you’re not giving your opponent-in-debate an opening to rebut you: They can no longer dispute the intent*, resulting in the discussion focussing on intent – the very thing that doesn’t matter. Thirdly it’s less persuasive. If you tell someone that they’re causing harm, there’s a chance that they will listen. Tell them that their goals are different from what their goals actually are, they’ll just dismiss you.
*If they introduce intent themselves, you can just dismiss it. Intent doesn’t matter.
Exactly. And it’s not just the evil mustache-twiddling female supremicists who do that. It’s also those feminists who genuinely think they’re reaching out to men when they invoke the “Patriachy hurts men too” trope.
I want to talk about the gender system. the word “Patriarchy” carries too much theoretical baggage to be a useful term.
Yeah, me too. Yet we keep coming back.
Just reading that brought tears to my eyes. There are odd moments when I find myself collapsing into wordlessness. I’m close to that now.
OK, deep breath: I never put a gun to my head: too difficult to obtain here in the UK. I did, however, fill my belly with rat poison.
Daran: “Exactly. And it’s not just the evil mustache-twiddling female supremicists who do that. It’s also those feminists who genuinely think they’re reaching out to men when they invoke the “Patriachy hurts men too” trope.”
But then they’re stereotyped as the evil, mustache-twiddling female supermacists you mentioned from the other feminists, they’re not “Real Feminists”
Daran: “I want to talk about the gender system. the word “Patriarchy” carries too much theoretical baggage to be a useful term.”
I’m only appeasing Guestina’s point of view. “Patriarchy” carries baggage, yes. But somehow it’s still used, even by non-feminists.
Daran: “There’s a much larger subset, whose activism and advocacy has the effect of promoting female supremacy. They’re not mustache-twiddling villains secretly plotting how to bring about the Matriarchy. They’re just blinkered.”
That’s also my target.
Daran: “Yeah, me too. Yet we keep coming back.”
Pain hurts. Even worse is when you know there’s little resources out there for you.
Daran: “OK, deep breath: I never put a gun to my head: too difficult to obtain here in the UK. I did, however, fill my belly with rat poison.”
Ouch! How did you manage to survive something like that?
Guestina:
The definition you provided was:
“The status of White men before the 1960’s was perfect”
That’s not any definition of Patriarchy I recognise.
A google search turns up many definitions, but it’s only feminist definitions we’re interested in. The first clearly feminist source is this essay (the site appears to be a spammy aggregation of other people’s work, but the essay itself appears to be legit):
Next is this one:
here’s another definition, recommended to me by a feminist:
If you read what Eagle33 has said in this thread, and elsewhere, he has been the victim of a complex of social dynamics which are basically the opposite of the above descriptions.
What so many men at the bottom of the social ladder experience is that they’re not elevated above women, they’re brushed aside in favour of women, and not just by feminists. This is a traditional gender norm, but once which feminism simultaneously denies and embraces.
That’s what Eagle33 is getting at when he says that “Patriarchy” as a feminist concept throws his experiences under a bus.
It’s not the definition of “masculism” which is the problem, but the definition of “patriarchy”, and the whole feminist social theory which comes with it.
I wish we could talk about “Patriarchy” too, without you being offended. But given that comments are open, do you think we could try to have that conversation whether or not we see things which offend us?
I’ll talk about “Patriarchy”, that is to say I’ll discuss the theory and explain why I think it is flawed. I’ll also talk about the Gender System. What I won’t do is talk about Patriarchy. I won’t accept a term which requires me to accept a theoretical framework which erase and denies the experiences of men like Eagle33 and myself.
Um, it’s not just a single feminist. We experience these hurts over and over again from feminists. What do you think feminism is, if not what feminists say and do?
Misogyny is rife within PUA and MRA communities. The PUA communit is also the primary repository of accurate and usable information about what actually works and what doesn’t for men in our situation.
Masculism is what masculists say and do.
No True Scotsman would either. But yeah, I agree that very few feminists are “out to hurt men”. They do hurt men. What they’re “out to do” AKA their intent, doesn’t matter.
You invite that when you impute malign motives to them. Any feminist who doesn’t have such motives, and doesn’t think her friends have such motives, is going to think 1. What you’re saying only applies to the small number of evil ones, and 2. That you’re unfairly tarring those who don’t have such motives, including them.
Using that term is like trying to argue that Big Brother is ungood:
In this case the unavailable word is one which describes traditional social dynamics which marginalise men and centre women. Orwell was wrong in his conjecture that this would be achieved by stripping words of meaning. Rather it is achieved by loading them with theory.
Dunno. Eating the stuff was horrible: Try eating dry rabbit food for the experience. But once inside it had as much effect as water. Either the ferocious warnings on the packet were bogus, and the stuff was really not that harmful to humans, or I have an iron liver. Not sure which.
Daran:
What shocks me is that feminists seem to be able to simultaneously throw people like Eagle under the bus and drive it over them. They claim to want to help people like Eagle while at the same time erasing his experiences by creating this image of “Patriarchy” that only includes the men who are in charge.
As for definitions:
What feminists either don’t realize or don’t want to admit is that those four items only encompass a rather small portion of the male population. Yet and still simply sharing gender with them somehow grants us power that amazingly we are ourselves are blind to (yeah we have some massive amount of power and we just don’t see it) and only feminists can see it.
Damn straight. And that in and of itself is another flaw. Feminists expecting men to just accept a flawed definition of a system without question and then start working from there on how to “fix it”. You may as well say that the Los Angeles Lakers lost their game last night because the cheerleaders weren’t cheering enthusiastically enough and center their strategy around winning tonight’s game by making the sure the cheerleaders really put their hearts into it.
That is what I call selective banding/disbanding. When a feminist does something good the entire movement gets credit for it but when its something bad and hurtful we are supposed to “just know” that that person doesn’t count as a feminist.
Guestina:
And feminists tend to show their own hypocrisy (and this usually happens with PUAs or MRAs). If you look at the thread here “Did a PUA shoot a woman?” go look at how some of them have taken this as an opportunity to badmouth the entire PUA community even though if you look at what actually PUAs are saying about this you will find those who are giving this guy a free pass (which makes them just as much scum as the shooter in my book) and those who are condemning him and his actions. But according to them this one guy somehow represents all PUAs?
I can’t speak for anyone else here but I have no problem talking about the system that’s in place right now. My problem with the system is not the same as the problem with the way feminists describe it. I have problems with the system in so much as how it treats people according to certain characteristics (such as but not limited to gender). I also have a problem with the way feminists describe this system namely with how they seem to go out of their way to delegate the things that seem to mainly harm men to the back burner and then only bring them up with its useful to them (such as when they are trying to tell men that feminism is the one true way for gender equality). My main example of this is “Patriarchy Hurts Men Too”. I often read this as “(Oh yeah) Patriarchy hurts men too (there I said it now shut up)”.
For the most part I really don’t think most feminists mean harm. I just don’t like the way that they will in one hand expect me to change to their liking but on the other will totally shut out dissenting voices (especially if those dissenting voices are from outside the movement like most of the folks here).
[Danny, I noticed you were missing a close blockquotes tag, which I fixed and then added blockquote tags for your other quotes as well. Let me know if I got something wrong there. I don't insist that folks use blockquotes, but if you don't use blockquote tags, I do think it's important to use quotation marks (even if you're italicising). Oh, and good comment, BTW. —ballgame]
Good phrase.
Daran @January 11, 2011 8:33 pm…
“alleged social dynamic”? I know more than one bloke who wouldn’t see anything “alleged” OR “social” about it.
It’s only a numbers game then is it? Where have I heard that before?
We have legislative systems which enable or even force it to occur. We have government agencies which will enforce and administer the collection process regardless of any legal or punitive measures which may have been taken against the culprit – which in my country almost always amount to nil. Our social welfare systems automatically trigger child support action for any participant mother regardless of the means of conception. It is an option available to any woman. It’s “for the child” don’tchaknow.
I’ve pursued this matter with politicians and government departments in Australia – it has happened here – and been stymied at every turn. I’ve been blocked before but never with the vehemence I encountered on this question. I know some of those folk well and they actually seemed frightened by the prospect of dealing with it. Certainly something wasn’t right.
I wrote in part here about a circumstance in which a woman – my sister – committed an alcohol enabled act which is legally defined as rape in order to get pregnant and to force another into marriage. Are you willing to bet your life savings on that being a one off, killed by lightning, event? If so I hope you’re prepared for the poverty line.
I am told I am the recipient of many gender based privileges which in actuality only extend to a miniscule handful of men and to all practical purposes are way beyond any opportunity I could ever dream of. How is that different?
Here:
That sucks. But as far as I can see, he was pressured by family into the relationship, not forced by the state. So not an example of what you raised above.
It isn’t, and I routinely dismiss feminist claims of purported “male privilege” that demonstrably “benefit” only a tiny minority of men. Not being a hypocrite, I apply the same analytical standard to claims by everyone else.
Danny:
This dynamic makes me think of the stereotypical “toxic boyfriend” who tells his parter he loves her even as he punches her in the face.
They’d argue that they do acknowlege this, that they do recognise that non-white, lower-class, or otherwise disprivileged men are subjugated, deprecated, deleted and marginalised relative to white higher-class or otherwise privileged men and sometimes even relative to privileged women.
What they won’t acknowlege is that all too often at the bottom of the social pyramid, its often men who are subjugated, deprecated, deleted and marginalised relative to similarly situated women. When you try to point these dynamics out, feminist resort to a range of evasive tactics.
And yes, Blobby and Guestina, I said “feminists”, not “some feminist”. The number of feminists we have met who don’t do this are vanishingly small, and I’m not about to blunt my criticism of the vast majority of feminists, to spare the feelings of a handful of individuals who have, lets face it, chosen to identify with the movement which overwhelmingly does this. If you don’t do this, then hats off to you, and I don’t mean you. But if you invoke concepts like “Patriarchy”, then you do do this, and I do mean you. That doesn’t make you bad people. I’m not here to condemn you. I’m just trying to explain to you what’s wrong with feminism.
The penis as induction coil theory.
“We are silenced and powerless” chant the feminists, so loudly that governments and international organisations march to the rhythm.
Daran:
They’d argue that they do acknowlege this, that they do recognise that non-white, lower-class, or otherwise disprivileged men are subjugated, deprecated, deleted and marginalised relative to white higher-class or otherwise privileged men and sometimes even relative to privileged women.
Yes. One of my favorite examples is when talking about the prison population. According to them the fact that the largest portions of the prison population is the US are black and latino men has absolutely nothing to do with their gender. In fact I’ve noticed time and again that when it comes down to it feminists tend to try to avoid acknowledging gender when it comes to the way the system harms men, until it suits them. This is how they will talk about violent masculinity when talking about violence against women but will then claim that gender has nothing to do with the way boys are performing in schools.
“We are silenced and powerless” chant the feminists, so loudly that governments and international organisations march to the rhythm.
I know right? Its funny that men have all this power but the ones that are trying to speak up about how the system harms us because of our gender have such a damn hard time being heard. You know if I had all the power the feminists tell me I have I’d be able to make some serious change rather than being shunned by the system and some of the very people who claim to want to change it for the better.
Danny,
My reply to Guestina: Three links to feminist sources illustrating my point.
Your response to me: No links
My reply to you: No links
Your reply to me: No links.
Finally the comment I’m now writing. No links.
Four consecutive comments with complete agreement between us and no supporting references to things that feminists have actually said. This isn’t argumentation; this is mutual grooming. I’m not blaming you for this; obviously we’re both doing it. But this is the kind of discourse I prefer to avoid. Agreement is fine, but let’s try to pitch our preaching, not just at each other, but also at non-choir members who may be listening in.
Since you say that this is an “example”, a supporting link (and, if necessary, an explanation of how the cite illustrates your point) would not go amiss here.
To reiterate. I know what you’re getting at, and I completely agree with you. I’m not asking for a link for my benefit, but for the benefit of non-choir members.
Rebadging in my vocabulary.
Good point Daran. It burns me that I can’t find that example of what I was talking about (I’m certain it was on feministe though).
While not about prison populations this link about boys and education does a little bit of that “its not males, its minority males” redirect.
Note the link that’s in “not exactly the picture painted” link in that post. A lot of the folks that talk about boys needing help in education usually do start off pointing out that boys underperform girls in nearly every demographic. While that picture is not accurate I wouldn’t think anymore ill of it than the way that for a long time the image of feminism really meant white, upper class, educated, women (and if you look at the description under that magazine cover actually says, ” “The Boy Crisis” looks at why boys — in every demographic — are falling behind by almost all societal and academic benchmarks.”)
Oh and Daran, many thanks for being able to ask for links in a civil manner.
@Daran…
You miss the point somewhat.
Had my brother in law’s family not forced him to take responsibility the state would have done so at least to the extent of financial responsibility. Automatically and regardless of the manner of conception OR IT’S LEGALITY. By the way when you refer to a “social dynamic” that would include pressure on a young man to “do the right thing”.
I’ve described here a rape that had extraordinary power and control motivations behind it. It was performed with the knowledge that either, or both, of the prevailing social requirements or the state would compel his compliance.
I think you also under-estimate the taking away of any say in one’s parental destiny.
Gwallan. I agree that familial coercion into marriage is a real problem. Arranged marriages are a recognised feature of some societies, though they appear to have largely died out in the West, with the possible exception of the emergency “shotgun” variant.
It looks to me like both sexes can get screwed over by the institution. It’s certainly not clear that one sex is privileged over the other.
You said:
You didn’t say anything about this being after the man had been coerced into marriage by his family. Since one of the norms of marriage is that both partners commit to supporting their children, its not unreasonable that the state, which might otherwise have to support them, require that both partners do so. I’m sorry that, in your sister’s husband’s case, that commitment was coerced, but familial anecdotes notwithstanding, I know of no evidence that this is a widespread social dynamic.
Arranged marriages in Asian countries leave the choice to the people involved AFAIK. Much like setting up a blind date and seeing how it goes. Though they might still not marry for love reasons.
I would just like to say that from your accusations, I don’t think you have any idea what you’re talking about when it comes to feminism. Feminism isn’t about blaming every single man for what is taken from us, it is about demanding equality and trying to erase gender roles, including the ones you just listed. It’s not about just helping females, it’s about allowing men to be stay at home dads and to cry also. Just because you can compose a list doesn’t mean that that justifies everything that happens to us. I thought about going through and arguing everything we have to deal with, but that doesn’t solve anything, because the problems men deal with are no greater or lesser than ours.
But before you go reiterating the stereotypes of feminism, why don’t you actually talk to real, down to earth feminists, instead of spewing stuff that you don’t understand at all. Those stereotypes were started by backlash that wanted to avoid looking at the actual issues. Just because you’re more likely to be killed doesn’t mean I’m not more threatened by the fact that as a college student, I’m likely to be raped before I graduate.
Next time, do your fucking research right and avoid pig-headed comments on who the hell I am, and I might actually respect what you’re saying.
Jessica: I’ll respond in a little while.
Everyone: Please do not respond to Jessica until I’ve had a chance to.
Jessica: It’s not clear exactly who or what you’re addressing here. I’m going to assume that you’re referring to the original post, but if you meant one or more of the other comments, you’ll have to be much more specific. We are talking about a thread that’s literally hundreds of comments long, after all.
The only “accusation” I made in the OP was that “most gynocentric feminists ignore the roster of equally valid female privileges.” I stand by that. If you have evidence that any of the major feminist bloggers (at Feministe, Feministing, Shakespeare’s Sister, Jezebel, Hugo Schwyzer, Alas, Pandagon, etc.) acknowledge the reality of female privilege — much less that ‘many’ or ‘most’ of them do — by all means post the citations and I’ll stand corrected. Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog explicitly denies the existence of female privilege, and that is a blog that these other blogs have often referred others to for learning about the ‘basics of feminism.’
I’m glad you believe this, Jessica. It’s what I believe as well. I don’t agree that’s the way the majority of mainstream feminists think, though (at least as far as can be determined by the discussions that take place in the blogosphere) … which is why I use the adjectives “egalitarian” and “gynocentric” to differentiate between those that believe what you and I do, and those that deny that men are oppressed by gender.
I completely agree. I’ve never implied otherwise.
I don’t know that ‘men’s problems’ and ‘women’s problems’ are exactly equal, but I certainly am not making any claim that one gender’s is worse than the other. I imagine it varies enormously depending on the individual in question. But I am greatly encouraged that you appear to be acknowledging that both men and women are harmed by gender.
My OP does not refer to any “stereotypes of feminism.” It looks at the ongoing ways that gender privileges women/disprivileges men. As I’ve said repeatedly, I fully acknowledge that gender also privileges men/disprivileges women. My list does not negate that fact, nor was it intended to. I’m merely rebutting the gynocentric notion that gender privilege only goes one way.
Of course it is true that men’s likelihood of being killed does not negate women’s likelihood of being raped.
FTR, I’ve seen no data that says that a woman in college has more than a 50% chance of being raped. I have seen assertions that the chances may be as high as 25%, though I believe that figure is contested. I have no opinion as to the correct figure. I don’t want this thread to derail (further) into discussions of rape (simply because too many threads here turn to this potentially triggering topic). If you have links to studies you’ve seen that bolster your position, though, feel free to post them and I’ll move the comment to a new thread devoted specifically to this topic.
I’m sorry you’ve taken such an oppositional stance, Jessica, given that — judging from what you’ve written — we in fact agree on a great deal. I believe I’ve done a lot more research than you give me credit for. I’ve made no comments — pigheaded or otherwise — about who you are, having never encountered you before.
We value mutually respectful discussions with people — particularly feminists — with whom we may disagree, though. (By “mutually respectful” I mean that our patience with commenters who are insulting is limited, though we cut newcomers a great deal of slack.) If there are specific assertions that I’ve made that you take issue with, and you’d like to dispute them with a rational argument and/or evidence that shows I’m wrong, please do so.
Everyone:
Comments from the bloggers and Jessica, only, for the time being.Thread is now re-opened to all.[Originally posted Feb. 16. —ballgame]
“In this case the unavailable word is one which describes traditional social dynamics which marginalise men and centre women. ”
The term that seems to be emerging in the MRM is chivalry. Used in this way it understandably is galling to feminists, since they define it also as a system of restrictive control over women. However it can be both at the same time without contradiction. It is also galling perhaps because in the early 2nd Wave chivalry and pedestalizing were denounced quite loudly. How times change.
“Womens’ reproductive rights extend as far as being able to rape even boys, let alone adult men, with near impunity, deny them any say in their reproductive future AND collect money from them for decades with the assistance of the state. How cool is that? Is that not privilege?
No, because as I have repeatedly pointed out, of this view haven’t been able to cite more than a handful of cases where this, anywhere in the world, ever, in history.”
Daran, seriously – really? Name one jurisdiction in either the UK,the US, Australia or NZ where rape of the father, regardless of age, obviates CS obligations. is that structural enough?
And it is no good to ask for numbers of rapes prosecuted, since we know that women’s rapes of men are only very rarely prosecuted; indeed in some jurisdictions there still is simply no such category of crime. that sounds pretty institutionaland structural to me too.
We do know however what attitudes prevail in child rapes by women, because more and more of these particular rapes are finally being prosecuted. The attitudes are sickening, the leniency of the sentences is sickening, and the leniency of both police and prosecutors on second ofense is sickening.
[Everyone: I would like to avoid having this thread focus specifically on the issue of rape, although I can certainly understand that topic's relationship to the OP. (I'm not claiming that Jim erred in posting this comment.) If there are further responses to that topic specifically, I'll probably move them to a different thread dedicated to the topic. —ballgame]
Everyone: Thread has been re-opened.
And it is taking longer and longer to load. And has revived form a moribund state.
” I’m not claiming that Jim erred in posting this comment.)”
Jim? Jim? I was responding to Daran! I brought it up?
[I wasn't blaming you or claiming you were bringing the topic up, I was specifically absolving you of blame, Jim! I'm not going to re-read 600+ comments, but FWIW I suspect the topic was raised in more than one comment on this thread. I just want to keep this thread from constantly Going There. —ballgame]
“But before you go reiterating the stereotypes of feminism, why don’t you actually talk to real, down to earth feminists,…”
Cessen was just saying yesterday what a hige difference he finds between interent and real-life feminists in person.
I’ve seen no one do just that.
Saying “This is bad” and then saying “This is also bad” doesn’t make it equal 0. It makes it bad + bad, not bad – bad.
Okay, BG! Sorry. No shit about the length of the thread. There are probably seven or eight comments here that could be turned into posts with their own threads here.
Here’s a feminist arguing that gender privilege doesn’t exist. Via.
Daran, that’s the post of here that made me bookmark her. I was already favorably impressed, but that one did it for me, as well as the way she handles opposing comments.
She posted the list from here, on that very post in a comment, too.
Thanks, Schala, for pointing that out. I hadn’t looked at the comments.
http://clarissasbox.blogspot.c.....abuse.html
Read that post, and the comments to it.
She sets up a bunch of strawmen and then doesn’t even bother defending them them instead resorting to insults and petty grammar picking as well as online psychoanalysis.
I’m not impressed.
I found a swedish blog (in english) were they are discussing almust the same thing.
http://www.pellebilling.com/20.....mment-5523
I also commented there.
PS in the name of heaven I swear im not spamming. I just want to show you a almust similar thread in a swedish mens network.
ciao
about the lenght of the thread, it could not be a idea to divide it in part one and two? it will be much easyer to follow and less heavy to load.
Someone mentioned:
“If I become pregnant, I and I alone choose whether to terminate the pregnancy or have the baby. As a result, I can be reasonably certain that I will never be held financially responsible for a child I didn’t want to have, and that I will never have my unborn child aborted without my consent.”
I recently found this one out firsthand. When I tried to find a way to save my child legally I was told “You’re a man, you have no rights in this.”
I can’t get over how if a man chooses not to provide financial support he’s a deadbeat, but if a woman chooses not to provide life support she’s some kind of brave hero.
Morghan
Is she really a brave hero? I have more experienced that she is seen with indifference.
“I’m not impressed.”
Clarence, I’m impressed by that post – very unfavorably impressed. In that post she comes across as a rape apologist. She just brushes the whole issue of the rape aside even after it has been brought up over and over again. She insists that both participants in sex take responsibilty for the child, and whn one comenter points out that “participation” is precisely what is at issue, she just ignores that point, central to her argument, and drives on.
Jim, I don’t think that particular post was linked here – though I’m pretty sure I know which one you meant, as I was (at least one of) the commenter(s) who pointed out the issue with “participation”.
Honestly, I stopped reading the comments after posting that one, feeling that Clarissa’s anger at non-paying biological fathers was too ferocious for me to handle. Glad to know I didn’t miss an agreement/convincing counter-argument.
“Honestly, I stopped reading the comments after posting that one, feeling that Clarissa’s anger at non-paying biological fathers was too ferocious for me to handle. ”
That and her unexamined assumption that of course that [alleged] rapist should be the one to raise the child and get the CS in the first place.
Too bad. She had promise.
“Maybe part of the problem is that men (and boys) need to figure out ways to liberate themselves, as women have been struggling & working to do for so long”
hahaha
“Maybe schools or classes need to be segregated?”
lol and who created that? Perhaps they were different kinds of feminists?
Women’s “liberation” meant walking into men’s institutions. Women haven’t built anything of note for men to do the same, the only recourse is to built anew and exclude women, or to take back what was taken off them cunningly. Either way, it’s misogyny!!
http://www.indiebride.com/kvet.....7bae10240b
Even though feminists regularly decry about sexu..erm, gender stereotypes in the classrooms, what better way to do away with it by segregating the genders?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/educ.....gender-gap
i.e. if you believe they won’t have problems with a reality where females comes out better than males and hence the stereotype is justified.
I followed a link to that Clarissa page and I was disappointed to see how (and this is a trend I’ve noticed) how it’s just more college aged women bashing on parents.
http://clarissasblog.com/2011/.....-children/
I was skimming through the thread and One thing that might be worth noting as the original posts were from 2008-I wonder how much things have changed in employment due to the “mancession” ie jobs like healthcare and teaching have been more stable and perhaps might be seen as more desirable than even a few years ago. I’ve worked jobs like delivery driver-its seen as low status work that any “idiot” can do however, while “autonomy” isn’t quite the word for it, there is something about being outdoors and having some flexibility in breaks. That being said, managers, other employees and customers could be really abusive.
Hello folks it’s been a while for me. Not to beat a dead bug, but, i took the liberty of transposing in my head some of the comments by inserting specific details about said groups rather than the usual misleading perjorative we hold so dear in America and the results were interesting. I can say i absolutely agree with Jim’s feeling that White women, because of their relative privilege, had a completely different set of problems and obstacles to overcome than say the slaves. However, because we fail to be specific in our language, we also fail to hold people accountable. This is how white mainstream feminists have been able to co-opt the experiences of of others as their own and have people believe it. Again, as a man of color, it is difficult to be a part of something, iike a “mens” movement when you have to fight for basic inclusion. In this way the it is no different than the mainstream feminists. Somebody, please tell me which “men” are you talking about?
amusing none the less
Beste, where are you quoting that from and why are you quoting it? Are you endorsing kika’s views, or posting them because you think they’re self-evidently invalid?
FTR, some of her (I assume kika is female) objections aren’t completely wrong, they just miss the point. (For one thing, I was most definitely NOT “blaming feminists” for the existence of female privilege!) I saw a similar response over at reddit, and just found the endless “deny, deny, deny” too tiresome to deal with.
Morghan:
I can’t get over how if a man chooses not to provide financial support he’s a deadbeat, but if a woman chooses not to provide life support she’s some kind of brave hero.
I wouldn’t say she’d be universally thought of as a brave hero. However given that she would be thought of as brave by some and derided by others, versus men who pretty much are universally scorned for not wanting to support a child regardless of the circumstances I’d still call it a female privilege.
The fact that some sections of society would scorn said woman does not invalidate this privilege. Unless proof of the contrary is sudden enough to deny privilege. If that’s the case then I demand a reexamination of the male privilege checklist…
Kika’s answer to the checklist illustrates again a double standard. One of feminism’s rallying cry is “the personal is political”, which means, if I understand correctly, that personal problems often have roots in large social or political systems. So solving these problems may require social or political action.
However, for some feminists, it seems that the personal is political, but only for women’s problems. When men are considered, then the personal is personal and personal only. In other words, a woman’s problems is society’s problems. A man’s problem is his and his alone, let him solve it on his own and not pester others about it.
She says that men live less long because they take care of their health less… why do they do so? Could it be that it’s because they have been taught that their lives had less intrinsic worth than others’ and so that their health matters little? She says that the reason men suicide more frequently is that they don’t talk about their issues. Why don’t they do that then? Could it be that they are raised by society to be stoic, that when they do try to talk their issues when they’re young that they are mocked and ridiculed for it?
Note that that the feminists who do this actually perpetuate traditional gender roles. It is traditional that women be able to seek help from the community as they were considered vulnerable and weak, whereas men were expected to solve their problems by themselves, and those who sought the help of others were considered as feeble and “less than men”. Men were the provider, women the provided.
How is it different than the attitude Kika and others demonstrate, where they consider that only women deserve to have their problems taken care of by society and telling men that they alone are responsible to provide for their needs?
“In this way the it is no different than the mainstream feminists. Somebody, please tell me which “men” are you talking about?”
Mario, sorry I missed this a month ago. i hope you come back.
Which men? Actually since the problems white men have or are waking up to are basically the same problems black men have had all along and to a greater degree :
False rape accusations and general demonioization of their sexuality? Check
Disparate patterns of sentnecing and general discriminaiton in the legal system? Check
Educational inequalities and restricted employment opportunities? Check
Marginalization in family life? Check
So there is a lot of common cause. The nub will be dealing with racism which was the nub with white feminists. For decades lip service was considered solidarity enough. Time will tell with the men’s movement, and considering the right-wing affinities of a lot of MRAs the prospects look dim, but maybe that’s a hidden opportunity. Less self-satisfied lip service, more confrontation and clarity. Who knows, this time maybe the nation as a whole is a little closer to pulling its head out of its ass and there will be a little less denialism.
Ballgame,
It’s in the comments section
http://www.thepunch.com.au/art.....ct-ladies/
I do not endorse her views. Just found the whole thing pretty amusing
Hmmmm,
There’s something missing from your checklist: “I am loathe to ask my employer for time off to care for my family”
That’s VERY telling.
An Non, your comment is cryptic to me. I find I can read it in completely contradictory ways. I strongly suspect that you did not phrase your comment the way you intended, but I will respond to it assuming that you said exactly what you wanted to say. (Feel free to correct me and/or your comment if needed.)
Remember, this is the female privilege checklist, written from the perspective of a woman. So the “I” in the list refers to a woman. You’re saying that women are more reluctant to ask their employers for time off to care for their families than men are. I don’t have a citation at hand, but I strongly suspect the opposite is true. Do you have evidence to show otherwise?
Yep, that should go on the *other* checklist, shouldn’t it?
OK, here’s another one to go on both checklists:
I feel physically safer in the company of unknown women, than I do in the company of unknown men
I wonder how many people can honestly answer that question with “No”? Not saying that those who can don’t have a valid reason why….
Oh look, a battle of “let’s see who is more oppressed.” This is basically derailing bullshit, needless and stupid. I like how you put patriarchy is quotes, as if it isn’t an actual problem. As if men having problems means we are in a matriarchy, sorry, but it doesn’t work that way. All of these problems could be fixed if patriarchy was gone, and number 5 is biological, not social. Female privileges are generally rewards females get for playing the role of submissiveness and being pretty. Male oppression comes from men having to play the part of dominant and more finanacially competent. I would love for all of these supposed privileges to be gone, as long as male privilege goes away too.
j.k it’s hard to see how a thread topic can derail itself, but okay.
I think most commenters here agree with the substance of your comment – and that’s not obvious from this thread but they have said things in other threads over the years that lead me to say that – that these privileges, both female and male, come from “playing the role”, which is oppressive as well as rewarded. You say it about female privielge and then you go on to make the same point about male oppression and privilege. I think that’s insightful and correct on your part.
Hi J.K, welcome to our blog.
As an initial matter, I assume that you’re replying to the post. If you’re responding to the comments, it would help if you could identify which one(s).
ballgame did not discuss the issue of who is more oppressed. Gynocentric feminists typically assert the women are more oppressed than men (or that women are oppressed by gender while men are not) without evidence or argumentation. They appear to feel entitled to have their bare assertions accepted because they say it.
This is another expression of feminist entitlement. Contrary to your apparent belief, feminists are not entitled to speak uncontradicted. They have the right to forward their narrative. We have the right to put forward a counter-narrative.
Nobody is claiming that we are in a matriarchy. We disagree that typical gynocentric definitions of patriarchy (example) are a complete and accurate description of the society in which we live. ballgame has, however formulated his own.
Feel free to cite some evidence to support your claim that 5 is biological. In fact there is some evidence that differential life expectencies are largely or entirely social.
Your statement that these problems could be fixed if patriarchy was gone misses the point. Firstly, the list was compliled to rebut feminist claims that men are universally privileged and women universally oppressed by gender. (Notice that there is nothing in that sentence about who is oppressed more.) This rebutal stands whether or not the root cause is patriarchy.
Secondly, some of these problems directly contradict gynocentric conceptions of patriarchy. For example, item 6 would not be an issue in a culture which elevated men socially simply because they were men.
That’s an oversimplification.
So would we, but while they continue to exist, we would also like to be gone, the presentation of men as universally privileged when they are not, as evinced by your use of the word “supposed”, by implication applying to female privileges only.
The use of quotations around terms in the initial post is problematic. It is one thing to argue that the truth is greater than others typically portray it as—it is another to challenge that their points are untrue. Attempting to explain the faults of another typical worldview by describing their mistakes and flaws, then parodying their methods, risks seeming condescending. Pointing to the benefits that different people get is a poor method of fighting for equality, for feminists, humanists, or any other group who seeks it. I realize that this article was written more than three years ago; I hope things have changed since then.
With regards to the bulleted list, I see a common theme to numbers 4, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, and 22. Culture makes different demands of women and men, where reproduction influences our choices. The majority of the points that can be made about male or female privilege are the results of heteronormativity, homophobia, and the expectation that people will join in mating pairs, reproduce, and split the tasks of raising the family in a recurring pattern.
The points I referenced could be summed up as “men are pressured to not appear homosexual or feminine.” Who exerts that pressure?
-Edit- For clarity’s sake, I have only very lightly skimmed the comments that make the majority of this page. I intend to read them at greater length, especially if my question is responded to.
This… is stupid. “Privilege” has nothing to do with random advantages.
Welcome to the blog, Ky.
Could you be more specific? Just because a phrase has quotes around it doesn’t mean those quotes are ‘air quotes.’ Most of my use of quotes in the OP was along the lines of indicating I was referring to a phrase as a phrase (or as a phrase invoked by certain others), and that I was not using that phrase to invoke a universal or contextually clear meaning.
Are you referring to the OP here? The only ‘mistake/flaw’ of the gynocentric view I was criticizing was its omission of the important points I subsequently listed. The female privileges I listed were not parodies; if you thought they were, you’ve misconstrued the post.
Really? I don’t think many progressives would agree with you. Explicit recognition of unjust treatment seems to me to be a prerequisite for developing a more equitable society.
“Really? I don’t think many progressives would agree with you. Explicit recognition of unjust treatment seems to me to be a prerequisite for developing a more equitable society.”
Why do you assume that the benefits that Ky is referring to are due to unjust treatment? They quite are, they equally often aren’t. In fact in some instances disparate outcomes are very clearly due to just treatment. Certainly there is nothing progressive in denying any of that.
Jim, your comment was number 666. I can’t trust you anymore.
I don’t disagree, Jim. However, to make that determination, you first have to assess whether there is a disparity in treatment between two groups, an assessment which Ky appeared to be opposing. (Ky can certainly clarify.)
Yep, and for as many times as all that is moot there are as many times when it’s pretty easy and prety obvious.
I was just thinking about how my life decisions kept me from becoming a Wall Street bloodsucker and deprived me of the wealth I really needed to support the lifestyle I wanted.
If I was born in North America since WWII, I can be almost certain that my genitals were not mutilated soon after birth, without anesthesia.
I can’t help but laugh a bit at this one…
the mutilation was probably daddy’s idea since he wants his son to look like him…
and mommy probably just wants payback.. cause that baby didn’t rip himself from the clouds to be born. He ripped himself from that poor womans vagina or stomach.. yea payback sounds right and since daddy wanted his kid to look like him I’m sure there wasn’t much convincing involved… haha
I don’t have time to read this whole thread, but I think your list is missing a crucial point. That point is that the gender roles that create all the male suffering you have listed were instituted by men and for the most part are still maintained by men. Instead of going after feminists and women, why don’t men’s activists have a serious conversation with other men (especially with the most powerful men who are usually the ones reinforcing these kinds of roles) about dismantling gender roles and normative masculinity? I’m genuinely curious. Many if not most male disadvantages are a result of pressure from other men, and not because of some systemic or structural kind of female privilege.
The other thing of course is that merely having disadvantages doesn’t mean you are structurally oppressed. The word “privilege” is thrown around pretty cavalierly these days; just because women may have certain advantages (and some of them are quite dubious in my opinion) over men in mainstream culture, doesn’t mean that men aren’t still better off in from an overall, structural, birds’ eye view.
I am actually highly sympathetic to a point of view that I read on the NOMAS website once, that patriarchy is a dual system consisting of male-female dynamics and a parallel system of male-male dynamics. I think those male-male dynamics have a much greater potential to explain male issues, in my view, than the notion of some kind of systemic female privilege. Here is that article:
http://www.nomas.org/node/176
Ned,
one thing I think that is very problematic in that article is that it denies women agency….
that being said, I do feel powerless more than not and I hate my job. I am not pursuing the traditional role of breadwinner-only supporting myself but my “work” is soul crushing….
Ned, this type of claim needs to be substantiated and as it stands, the evidence is largely against you. If you take any one issue, let’s say for example child custody, it has been feminism in the West which has awarded automatic child custody for women. Prior to feminism, children would usually go to the father on the basis that he had enough financial resources to raise them. So if men are being deprived of their children today, it is as a direct result of feminist action. To say that men caused all the problems for other men is simply flat out wrong.
Who says that this doesn’t happen? Have you heard of the MGTOW movement? It’s about changing men to remove themselves from damaging gender roles. Have you not seen the way men’s activists tackle anti-male men and the sheer level of scorn that exists for such men? And why can’t they tackle both? Especially since this is a complex dynamic – you can’t change men without changing women. And how do you really know that men are the bigger problem, anyway? Within gender discourse, women reign supreme. We’ve had women’s studies for decades and men’s studies is only a fledgling field. Women have criticized male behavior for over a century, reaching a fervent pitch within the last 40 years in Western cultures. Yet they haven’t ever turned the lens back on themselves in all of those years. You’d think that with all the attention that feminists have lavished on the bad deeds of men, all of our problems would be solved by now! Yet, what has feminism achieved for men? And why is it that feminists have been allowed to go after men for decades, but when men start their own movement, you admonish them to look at themselves in the mirror rather than decide on their own how they wish to tackle the issues facing men?
@ned,
I don’t know if you’re still around to read this, or even if you are that you’re not just a drive-by commenter. But your objection comes up a lot so I’m going to write it out so I have a reference (or a copy-and-paste source) when it inevitably comes up again.
We could start with, that a lot of what men face is the fault not of “normative masculinity” but of those who attack what they see as normative masculinity, which often crosses over on an attack on normative men. That women play a much bigger role than you’re willing to acknowledge and by the same standard that you’re using to conclude that male suffering is mostly reinforced by men, beauty standards for women is mostly only an intra-gender issue because it’s policed more by women. (For that matter, female genital mutilation is mostly administered by women too.) Female expectations of men play a huge role in nearly everything on the OP’s list. Women also enforce it explicitly as well as implicitly, as any number of men can tell you.
There are areas where “men as a class” are hit across the board worse than “women as a class”. On issues such as assumed sexual deviancy and for a given offense the propensity to be arrested, and then convicted, and then given a longer sentence (each and every step of the process), nearly all men have it worse than nearly all women. The latter is especially important; there’s a reason why so many of the original ten rights on the Bill of Rights deal with police and custody issues. Based on it alone one could make a damn good case for female privilege.
But even leaving aside all that, the type of men who suffer most from misandry, and the most powerful men, are not the same type of men. Often you can tell who’s who by thirty seconds of observation alone. Categorizing this as “men oppressing each other” or “some men just lose the intra-male lottery” makes as much sense as saying Friedan-Steinem type sexism is “white people oppressing each other” or blacks who suffer from poverty and racism are “Americans who just happened to lose the intra-American lottery”. And abused Connecticut housewives or those stuck in ghetto poverty in Detroit need to show deference to the anti-white and anti-American victimization claimed by a visiting Turkish businessman – but he in turn is not obligated to acknowledge their experiences, can treat them as if there’s no difference between them and old rich white male CEO’s and Senators, because that’s not his fault as “white people/Americans need to go sort that out themselves”. He can complain about her but she can’t about him until and unless she “takes it up with the whites/Americans in charge”. After all, don’t all white people/Americans benefit on some level from the fact that globally powerful business and political leaders tend to be disproportionately white or American? That is what the feminist position on sexism against men, which you are regurgitating, sounds like. The idea that different axes of privilege exist but no significant one exists within men (except for the easy one, oppression against effeminate men, because it allows certain women to claim that even suffering not borne by them is really all about them) is a mere self-serving assertion that won’t be unchallenged or taken on faith anywhere where those of your ideological ilk don’t have the power to simply ban any who disagree. “Men as a class” is an arbitrary delineation that only enables people to attack men with little power for the sins of men with a lot of it, and feel righteous for it.
I agree that men’s advocates should not camp out on feminist boards complaining that they’re not doing enough for men, particularly if that’s the sum total of their activist efforts for men. But men’s advocates have no more obligation to ignore women and only go after the top men than feminists do for ignoring non-CEO/Senator men and only going after the top men. While we all have a common interest in taking down certain apex groups, many of us may focus more on things that happen on our “level” because we’re closer to it, we live it everyday, and resolving the everyday indignities therein could improve our lives more immediately. If we’re going to play by that standard, why is there any feminist material at all denouncing sexism in video games or children’s cartoons, while billionaire bankers and political big shots are still out there?
Hey, I just posted a comment, but a little re-edit caused it to shatter into a bunch of gobbledygook. What’s going on?
@pocketjacks
Your comment is still fine – FC sometimes does that on edits, where hitting the edit button makes your post appear weird – but if you reload the page separately, it appears normally.
@pocketjacks, comment came out fine and it was a good one!
Nicely put, pocketjacks, and good comment.
@ballgame, you guys need to put a call unescape() on the comment after making your AJAX call to keep it from confusing people
“Male privilege is a sociological term that refers quite generally to any special rights or status granted to men in a society, on the basis of their sex or gender, but usually denied to women.”
Health and life expectancy are not rights of statuses granted to females in society.
Disparities seen between suicide rates is as a result of the means each gender tend to choose. Women are more likely to attempt suicide but men are more likely to complete it. Men are also more likely to use firearms to commit suicide, arguably more lethal than many of the more common methods used by women (for example, overdose). Women often consider what they will look like after death, leading them to choose different means.
Looking over data from the Bureau of Justice, women were in fact more likely to be victims of violent crime. Are we only considering aggravated assault as a violent assault? In that case, yes it is true that males are more likely to be victims of assault. However, in the case of simple assault, there is statistically no significant difference.
Other items on your list are more accurately described under homophobia than female privilege.
Items on your list pertaining to likelihood of finding a mate can be understood by gender differences in mate selection which is more likely to be rooted in biology rather than society.
Just because women have it better in some areas does not mean it’s privilege. Under your definition, having lower rates of certain cancers would be female privilege. Basically, your understanding of privilege seems to be incorrect. Privilege, in sociological sense, is something that institutional.
Kaia, welcome to the blog. I believe a number of your points are incorrect, but I’m willing to be persuaded otherwise. However, you’re going to have to substantiate your claims.
First, who are you quoting in your first sentence?
Second, I emphatically disagree that “Health and life expectancy are not rights of statuses granted to females in society.” If women are accorded protection from certain physical risks that men are generally not accorded protection from, and live longer as a result, then their superior health and longevity are damn well female privileges.
As for the issue of suicide, it is a simple fact that men are driven to commit suicide more than women, while women are driven to attempt suicide more than men. I’m open minded as to explanations that would account for these facts, but such explanations are speculative. I think there may be some merit in your explanation, but I also think there’s merit in the idea that men — who are trained to be self-reliant and emotionally “independent” at a very young age, and taught that weakness is shameful, and who often have far fewer social resources available to them than women — are also very possibly more genuinely hopeless (as a group) than suicidal women are (as a group), therefore select more lethal means of suicide. Women may subconsciously hold out more hope that someone somewhere will help them if those potential helpers could only understand what a dire situation the woman is in. I’m positing a speculative explanation, but my explanation is no less plausible than yours.
Show your work with specific figures and citations, Kaia. That isn’t what I found, but like I said, I’m willing to be persuaded if you can make your case.
Whether or not a social dynamic is an example of homophobia in no way reduces its reality as a female privilege.
The extent to which mate selection is affected by biology (as opposed to acculturation) is unknown, Kaia.
I’m using the term in the same way that compilers of male privilege checklists use the term.
While the proportion of male suicides which are by poisoning is less than that of females, the number of men who use poisoning to commit suicide is still larger than the number of women who do so.
According to this site:
http://www.suicide.org/suicide-statistics.html
In 2004, 3,200 men committed suicide by poisoning, compared to 2,600 women. In 2005, 3,112 men committed suicide by poisoning, compared to 2,632 women.
The gap by hanging, strangulation, and suffocation is larger, and by firearms larger still.
I’ll finish writing what I had in the morning but Ballgame, I find it interesting that you want citations when you couldn’t provide the same in your original post. I’ll gladly provide citations with a detailed response in the morning but I’d like to see your sources as well.
I agree the OP would be much stronger with citations.
@Kaia,
Emphasis mine. In its most logical interpretation, this means that “privilege” refers to only formal, institutional biases, and the word no longer applies in a world where we’ve reached equality on paper. “Privilege” theorists don’t actually limit the term like that and I suspect you don’t either – at least when it comes to men.
Rather, informal, personal attitudes that may lead to unconscious biases in favor of men are counterintuitively but self-servingly referred to as “institutional”. As ballgame said, there sure as well are informal attitudes that lead most of us to save the damsel in distress, and prioritize a woman’s suffering (especially from physical danger, but by no means limited to that) over a man’s.
You can re-define and contort the word “institution” to support the conclusions you want, but no one’s obligated to be impressed by such circular arguments.
You could be saying one of two things here. (Or both, as one doesn’t preclude the other.) One, that men suffer more from things that you could plausibly re-frame as being “really” about homophobia, is not a female privilege because it’s men being hurt, not women being helped. This is the more literal interpretation. Or two, the same above but because since it’s “really” about homophobia, you can’t look at it from a male/female perspective but only from a straight/gay one. This is what’s nearly always being said whenever feminists are confronted with a broad-scale male disadvantage. If not homophobia, then anything that particularly hurts minority boys is all about race because it affects minorities more than whites, it’s not at all about gender though it affects boys more than girls, etc.
For the first, an argument could be made that merely not suffering from something is not the same as benefiting from it, which is actually what’s required to be termed a privilege – but again, “male privilege” theorists don’t limit themselves likewise when trying to pad their lists. Consider the idea that it’s a male privilege to not be raped. This list wasn’t made in a vacuum. It was made, if I’m guessing correctly, as much as to critique male privilege compendiums by mirroring them as to stand alone on its own merits. I didn’t write the list nor was I even active in gender issues at the time of the OP, but I think the writer will agree with my assessment.
And for the second, a lot of things that the average man suffers from could be construed as also being about something else, including homophobia. Just like how such and such racial disadvantage is really about class, not race, says the white person. Yes, there’s going to be overlap – between class and race, homosexuality and gender, class and gender, etc. etc. But if a particular social imbalance is gendered against men, we’re going to talk about that genderedness.
Isn’t it a feminist rule to reject all sociobiological/evo psych explanations to the modern dating market? Or does that only apply when they upset or disadvantage women rather than men?
The disproportionate focus on women’s bodies and youth can also easily be attributed to biology, but that doesn’t stop feminists from railing against it. Does something being biological mean we shouldn’t adopt social norms to counteract it? I suppose you could argue that you’re not saying we shouldn’t counteract it, just that we shouldn’t call it a “privilege” while doing so – though I suspect that you don’t really support counteracting it either, unlike with those maybe-biological-maybe-not inequalities that disadvantage women rather than men. But again, those who bandy about terms like “male privilege” do consider it a male privilege to not be saddled with as much expectations of youth and beauty.
It’s a general hypocrisy. A lot of women accept antiquated, folksy justifications for a given man’s duties or relative place in the sex/dating game that veer damn close to sociobiology in tone and content, while crying “evo psych”, unmodern, unscientific, when similar justifications are applied to a woman. (Not that men don’t have their own hypocrisies, of course.) Feminism didn’t invent this, but it doesn’t exactly fight it either.
Life expectancy is similar. The “biology” handwave is accepted here, in lieu of any actual hard evidence, when it’s never accepted elsewhere. “Elsewhere” meaning where women are suffering the disadvantage.
Finally, everything I’ve written above has been humoring the word “privilege”, as if the distinction between “privilege” and mere “[having] it better in some ways” is even universally meaningful and all that’s left to discuss is where to place it. The social sciences are not the natural sciences, it doesn’t describe immutable universal laws, and decrees from the former do not merit the respect we give to those of the latter. The word “privilege” carries teeth to it that merely referring to something as an “advantage” or “[someone having] it better in some ways” lacks. If enough instances of women having it better in some ways feels unfair to enough men, we’re not going to cede the best word to describe the situation in common parlance to suit the preferences of academic writers who certainly have not been free of their own political biases.
[Blockquoting added. In the future, please try to be a little clearer with your quotes, pocketjacks; see this. Otherwise, nice comment. —ballgame]
I’d like to point out, not nastily or sarcastically, that most of the things mentioned here deal with a man acting feminine.
I’d also like to point out that a lot of feminists are misguided: feminism is not about women getting equal rights or what have you. It’s the idea that a woman or man can act/look either masculine or feminine and not be judged based on their actions and appearances because of this.
However, it is more socially acceptable for a woman to wear a suit than for a man to wear a dress, so the idea of feminism currently is to make the idea of being feminine not include preconceived notions of weakness.
I look at it very differently, Mia. I don’t see being ‘soft, vulnerable, and playful’ as being feminine traits, I think they’re human traits that we associate with women because men aren’t allowed to have them. (Or, to be more precise, men are required to participate in a violent male dominance hierarchy that women are not required to participate in, and the human qualities that we misleadingly label as ‘feminine’ are huge liabilities when trying to compete in that hierarchy.)
What feminism is “about” varies greatly with each feminist. The notion that feminism is about equality between men and women is generally found in most dictionary definitions of the word, so I don’t think you can label feminists who embrace that definition as “misguided.”
This seems to be a somewhat idiosyncratic definition of your own, Mia, though I guess it has echoes in a lot of feminist analysis. I kind of agree with it and kind of disagree. I certainly think everyone should be able to embrace a persona that feels most comfortable to them and still be respected (assuming, of course, that they aren’t violating others’ rights or whatever). But I wouldn’t say “not be judged based on their actions and appearances” because we judge people of all sexualities all the time on this basis. We like or dislike people all the time based on their personae; I don’t think feminism is trying to stop that. (If so, it’s definitely a ’tilting against windmills’ endeavor.)
Welcome to the blog.
I really appreciate this list but I would like to discuss more tangible examples of female privilege.
1. An education system that benefits girls at the expense of boys.
2. A court system that on average punishes women only 60% compared to men.
3. VAWA which turns the male into the criminal in any accusation of violence by a woman, whether he was attacked or whether no violence occured is irrelevant.
4. ACA which provides women with many health services for free but doesn’t provide an equal list of free services for men.
5. The lowered standard of evidence on college campuses which means if a female student accuses a male student of assault, he is guilty by default.
6. The ever changing definition of “rape” which denies that men can ever be rape victims.
This is just a short list of institutionalized female privilege. The list is growing and I would like more discussion of these issues and how feminists think this constitutes “gender equality.”
Jimmy9, I appreciate your comment here and agree with it in parts, but some of your points are inaccurate. My experience is that gynocentric feminists tend to focus on such inaccuracies and ignore the valid points, so I think it’s more persuasive to eliminate such problems as much as possible.
Good point; this is one of several significant omissions from my original list.
The inequities of criminal punishment are another significant omission from my original list. However, I question whether the discrepancy is quite as large as you claim here. At any rate, when suggesting figures like this, it’s always best to substantiate so people can evaluate the basis of your assertion.
I’m not an expert on VAWA, but from my understanding this is just inaccurate. You need to substantiate this. It’s certainly true that men are often arrested in cases of domestic violence, even when they’re the victims, but this is due to police policy and gendered expectations, and not due to any specific directive contained within the VAWA (which I understand is fairly gender-neutral aside from the noxious title).
Once again, this is not accurate. The lowered standard of evidence is ‘preponderance of evidence’ — i.e. if there’s an assessment that the accused is more likely to be guilty than not, he should be found guilty, which is a much lower standard than ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ but is still not “guilty by default.” (FTR, I think using a “preponderance of evidence” threshold is an outrageous affront to our civil liberties and should probably be found to be unconstitutional.)
The problem is NOT the “ever changing” definition of rape. The problem is the insufficiently changing definition of rape. Most old definitions of rape never considered men who were coerced into penetrating others as rape victims. That needs to change.
Hi Ballgame. You’re right, I should have been more accurate.
1. Agreed.
2. 60% is the number I have heard quoted, but admittedly I do not know this for a fact.
3. I am also no expert on VAWA but it is my understanding that the “predominant aggressor” stems from this legislature and is taught to police officers who then use it to assess culpability in domestic disputes.
5. You are correct here, I am guilty of hyperbole. However we are in agreement that this is an attack on civil liberties.
6. A bit of gallows humor here but obviously too understated. It is good that the definition of “rape” is changing but outrageous that the updated version still does not include male victims.
Thanks for the feedback.
Most or all current definitions too, at least those with with institutional force. For example the 2010 National Intimate Partner & Sexual Violence Survey, which is essentially an update to the 1998 National Violence Against Women Survey, counted incidents where men are forced to penetrate, but did not classify them as rape.
Here, we do call it rape, but our definition does not have institutional force.
That you see a figure quoted, even quoted widely, is no indication that it is valid. The internet is a distorting echo chamber, with the distortion invariably in the direction that most suits the echoer’s political agenda.
Daran, excellent point. As evidenced by the continued gender wage gap myth.
http://time.dufe.edu.cn/jingji.....09.web.pdf
“One important result from Table 6 is that females receive even shorter sentences
relative to men than whites relative to blacks. The discrimination literature generally argues that females are objects of discrimination and receive worse outcomes. In sentencing, however, women receive better outcomes, consistent with women’s being treated paternalistically in court. Although some contend that the sentencing guidelines harm women, studies have usually concluded that females are sentenced more leniently than males.”
That’s female privilege staring you in the face. Those big doe eyes filled to the brim with crocodile tears.
Thanks for substantiating, Jimmy9.
Did he substantiate? From what I can see in that paper, after controlling for offence type, criminal history and other relevant factors, women’s sentences are about 90% of men’s, not 60%. You did not dispute the existence of sentencing disparities favouring women, just their magnitude. Looks like you were right to do so.
Yeah, I think he substantiated the basic point, Daran (that women receive a sentencing discount). He conceded that he did not know if the 60% figure was factual, so I didn’t see that as still being ‘on the table’ so to speak.
Right. To be honest I can’t make heads or tails of those charts and admit that the figure I mentioned earlier could be false for all I know. Hell this study could be false for all I know. So I guess all I can say is that I watch female pedophiles get gentle slaps on the wrist. I watch women who murdered their husbands in cold blood walk away Scott free. I watch women who kill their kids blame it on depression. And I feel this is injustice.
Because that’s not equality, and feminists don’t seem to have a problem with it.
This has most likely already been said, but I don’t feel like going back through all the comments:
Almost all of these examples of “female privilege” are NOT privilege but are, in fact, another form of dominance-through-protection of the patriarchy (and of the assumption that women are less capable than men). In a truly equal society without the West’s rigid dichotomy of gender values which stem from a long history of patriarchy, men could be more emotional, could take jobs traditionally seen as women’s jobs, and women would be equally responsible for work, and held as equally culpable for crimes (not to mention that the definition of rape would include the rape of men, i.e. being forced to penetrate someone without full and sober consent). Rape in the case of “date rape” would be just as difficult to prosecute as it is for the preponderance of victims (who are women) because of the whole lack-of-evidence, shadow-of-a-doubt, he-said she-said thing, but if you think that expanding the definition of rape to include male rape would be ONLY a victory for men, and men’s rights, think again. The whole idea that a man must always “want it” goes along with all of the other crap the patriarchy forces down everyone’s throats in terms of notions of masculinity and virility versus emotionality and vulnerability.
ALL of the supposed female “privileges” are merely the flip side of female disadvantages (i.e., being a second-class citizen, being weak, seen as needing protection, etc. etc.), and the only “privileges” men are denied they are denied BY THE PATRIARCHY. Which is not to say, they are denied this by other men, but by a male-centric institution participated in by both men and women. However, due to the fact that these “privileges” come at the expense of true equality, they cannot be seen as such, so the whole list is moot.
In terms of violence against men, sorry to say but the preponderance of violence against men is committed by other men. Again, being in a gender-imbalanced society, a cult of masculinity which glorifies all that is testosterone-laden and about action rather than reflection may lead to these higher levels of violence (not to say aggression/action IS necessarily THAT much more of a masculine trait biologically, but certainly social conditioning exerts powerful forces to persuade us so, compounding any natural biological leanings. Biology as an excuse is bullshit, as humans regularly overcome their biology in the name of progress).
We live in an imbalanced and patriarchal society. Period. This list is like making a list of POC’s privileges and going after Affirmative Action, etc. , an exercise which I think almost any reasonable person would conclude is racist. This list is reactionary and entirely misses the point.
Also, FYI, the list of “male privileges” left off an extremely important point concerning safety: “Being able to walk at night alone, jog in the park, go out to a club, travel alone, go on a date with a new person, join the armed forces, or even hang out with those I know without fear of being sexually assaulted.” This is a woman’s reality all the time, and again, NOT biology but a product of, yep, you guessed it, the patriarchy.
There’s also the whole “Being able to be funny,” “Being able to be heard and considered by the opposite sex without being dismissed out of hand or patronized,” and “having my work taken seriously without consideration of my gender,” etc. etc., but maybe they were covered in the post and I just don’t remember. I do remember the conspicuous absence of the threat of sexual assault that is much lower for men, who may only get a taste of what constant vigilance feels like in prison (an atrocity that again is not addressed due to shame about male-on-male sexual assault that goes hand in hand with patriarchal myths about what it means to “be a man”).
@athena
Read the CDC, near parity on rape between men and women in the last 12 months. Men are told to not fear. Not that they have no reason to (every time they are out they have much higher chance of being the victim of violence against them…no one cares). They should man-up and not fear though, says society.
Male privileges, by your reasoning, are also not privileges, because they’re the flipside of being considered unemotional violent oversexual cannon-fodder tool-to-be-used-until-it-breaks people.
This world isn’t male-centric by a long shot. Apex fallacy if you think so. We could say it’s rich-people-focused, that narrows the range a bit…rich people aren’t 50% of the population. The rest people get bread and games and whatever minimum it takes so they don’t riot. Only prized and valuable elements of society (who have rare skills or who are too valuable not to overpay, by the people above them) get their fair share of the pie, or more than it. The rest all suffer.
Saying penis-bearers suffer less is neither here nor there, it’s a distraction. It’s also not quantifiable.
I can’t say I’ll trade my not being seen as a pedophile in the presence of young children with the chance of my work being taken more seriously by biased people. It doesn’t work that way. You can only measure it by what you value, and quality of life.
Thanks for your comment, athena; I understand your perspective is pretty common among some feminists, but I find the whole ‘they’re not really female privileges, they’re really just examples of roundabout male domination’ meme to be completely unpersuasive. I pretty much agree with Schala’s response to you here, and am not inclined at the moment to add anything more. (Although you can also check out this exchange I had with tigtog over at Finally Feminism 101 on essentially the exact point you’re making here.)
Actually, on second thought, I will add this: I am actually opposed to ‘patriarchy’ (though I define it a bit differently than many feminists) and the many ways gender roles damage both men and women. So we may agree on more than you might think. However, I categorically reject the notion that gender privilege only goes in ‘one direction’ in the same way that white privilege does.
(Schala, thanks for posting your response.)
As this thread predates our NoH/RP system, I’m going to suggest that NoH rules ought to apply for the time being, at least in respect of replies to athena.
schala:
This requires a lot more explanation. The recent National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS) by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) asked both male and female subjects about their experiences of being forced to engage in PiV sex against their will by a member of the opposite sex. However it only classed as “rape” those incidents where the victim was female. Men forced by women were given a different categorisation, that of “forced to penetrate”.
We do not agree with this discriminatory classification. (Imagine a survey which called incidents of forced PiV “rape” if the perpetrator was black and the victim white, but gave such incidents a different name if the perpetrator was white, and the victim black. We would have no difficulty in recognising such a survey as being egregiously racist.) If you combine the figures for “rape” and for “forced to penetrate”, and call it all “rape”, then about the same number of men were raped as women in the previous year. Lifetime rates for men were lower than for women, but as tamen argues in this thread, it’s likely that men are underreporting relative to women abuses they’ve suffered in the more distant past. (Sorry I can’t link to tamen’s specific comment. Disqus is playing silly-buggers with me just now.)
I am not sure how the odds of a woman’s being raped (1 in 5) could be construed as “near parity” with the odds of a man’s being raped (1 in 71), reiterated again by the CDC in 2012. Only if you factor in prison rapes does anything even resembling “near parity” start to occur, and I think it’s a testament to prevailing cultural values which dehumanize women that to be a woman is to be akin to being a man in prison (a place designed to dehumanize). Obviously I don’t like either of these dehumanizing institutions–the patriarchy or the prison.
I don’t think I would ever be arrogant enough, as a white person, to be so dismissive of the experiences of people of color. Somehow it is okay for people to be dismissive of women’s experiences, though. Not sure why that is.
And yes, the kind of women who perpetuate the patriarchy may feel “privileged” by some of the protections afforded by traditional notions of womanhood, but I don’t. I make it a point to try not to have traditional expectations of what my partner should be (i.e., that he should pay for a meal, buy me gifts all the time, do the “hard work” of chores and fixing things around the house, bring home the bacon, or even jump in like a hero to my rescue if someone is hassling me). I don’t expect him to do these things because he is a man. However, I would do these things for him, as a woman; so I hope he would do them too, as part of the give-and-take of a relationship.
Similarly, I try to be open-minded about what kinds of jobs I would do, and to encourage men to be themselves, not what they think they should do to “be a man.” At an individual level, apart from community activism, that is the most any of us can do: try to be the change.
Studies have repeatedly shown that societies with gender equity are societies in which both genders are happiest. I agree that male privileges–while DEFINITELY privileges–come at the expense of true happiness. Power and domination do not happiness make. Similar things could be said about class privilege. More responsibility, more logic, more reason, less empathy, less emotion, etc., are not recipes for a “happy” life so much as a life defined as “successful” by others who view success through a lens of consumerism. Oligarchy, aristocracy, feudalism, and big-business capitalism are all variations of the apotheosis of a patriarchal worldview (one that stresses the so-called masculine values of “power” and “domination”). Those at the top have very little incentive to change the patriarchal values that trap the lower classes in misery (no matter how much you might try to tell them “money and power can’t buy happiness”).
Imbalance–whether it be in gender roles, race relations, or class structure–is always going to cause those at the top to reap the benefits and those at the bottom to suffer.
Of course it would benefit men immensely to give up on fundamentalist notions of “masculinity.” But they would give up many of the “privileges” listed as women began to enjoy some of the roles previously occupied by men (something which has been happening increasingly and which has been accompanied by a huge backlash against feminism and a sense that men are giving up “their rights” when in reality they are only giving up unearned privileges). True gender equality would also mean women giving up some of what you list as “privileges” especially as regards work-related accidents, violence, etc. (although I think a more balanced world would be less violent). The other “privileges”–of openness and trust–would be enjoyed by both sexes.
I’m not sure when feminism became construed as “women’s rights” rather than “human rights.” Of course the oppressed class is the class that must struggle for rights, but they struggle for the rights of all, and point out how the oppressor is also oppressed by the societal values that dictate his worldview.
Sexuality is the main controlling factor in the West now, and comes into play in most male-female interactions in the public sphere, a phenomenon which is relatively new (the phenomenon of women being active as a group in the public sphere). Women being “the sex class” is a handy way to subjugate them, although I don’t think of it as any vast conspiracy, just a modern version of the way women were defined by their relationships to men in the past (wives, mothers, sisters, daughters), rather than their roles as individual contributors to society. This is just the latest chapter of a very old way of looking at women that may have its roots in biology but which has lost relevance in the modern age, and is being reinforced by the stereotypes of the patriarchy. All of this could change with a more balanced approach to gender education.
Studies have shown that societies that have a healthy attitude toward sex in adolescence and beyond have not only lower incidences of sexual violence, but lower incidences of all other kinds of violence. “Healthy attitudes” means societies that don’t demonize it, push abstinence, and value sexual “purity” (or even have a concept for it) while simultaneously glorifying its opposite, hypersexuality–a paradoxical situation which is bound to occur, what with the frustration of repression and all. Societies that don’t set up these kind of dualistic constraints or give judgmental labels to different ways of being sexual are less violent (for an interesting monkey study that reflects this–and also demonstrates the difference in primate matriarchal/patriarchal societies–take a look at chimps and their cousins bonobos, two species separated by a river who developed in utterly different fashions).
So imagine a society in which men and women are both encouraged to be anything they want to be–so women can grow up to go into trade schools and men to care for children (just as one example)–and what are now viewed as “masculine” and “feminine” traits are not only valued equally but not gendered–and sex is neither some unholy act nor an an act of hedonism without regard for the other being involved, but always an act, no matter how serious or casual, of mutual respect–correct me if I’m wrong but I think both genders would be happier. In such a society gender might be a fluid concept, and attraction to different genders as okay as attraction to only one gender.
Of course this would not work ALL of the time–people are people–but it’s a model we could strive for, and one which would probably cause men, as well as women, to breathe a sigh of relief.
That said, there definitely are different values placed on “masculine” and “feminine” gender roles/gender traits as they are now perceived, and though women may have some privileges in this regard, the vast majority of respect goes to men.
I never said gender privilege only goes in one direction (although it is overwhelmingly unidirectional). Only that the above are bad examples.
Violence against women is seen as worse than male-on-male violence because (statistically speaking) women commit less violence than men and (biologically speaking) women are less able to stand up for themselves in a fight. Ideally, we would not want gender equity in murder rates, but rather for murder rates to drop to a negligible sum, so rare it doesn’t even really matter the gender of the victim or the perpetrator (and who knows, maybe one day it’ll happen. I’m not holding my breath though).
Men being free to be in tune with their so-called “feminine” sides (really, with the human capacity for empathy and forgiveness) might help with that…as well as a society that is not so screwed up sexually. Seriously. Check out bonobos. They’re awesome.
In terms of modern Western sexism–which, though insidious and damaging, is obviously far less damaging than the sexism of many other countries (like Afghanistan and the Congo)–I think both men and women are harmed by the rampant objectification of women. It is a shame if individual men are taught to see women as conquests, or if women are ashamed of their bodies, or resentful of men. None of this is good for meaningful communication or a deepening of gender awareness.
Anyway, all this aside, Susan Faludi’s “Stiffed” wrote all about the disadvantage to men engendered by the patriarchy quite a long time ago. I’m sure others did before her, but “Stiffed” was bestselling and pretty well-written and comprehensive.
And, if you just wanted a meme (oh, a word that I hate in its modern context): But what about da MENZ? lulz
Athena,
“And yes, the kind of women who perpetuate the patriarchy may feel “privileged” by some of the protections afforded by traditional notions of womanhood, but I don’t.”
You’re feminist, so you know that the privilege (as a feminist concept) is not something that’s decide by how the privileged person “feels”. I think that’s the part about checking and examining your privilege. So whether you feel that way or another is not really relevant, what’s relevant is if smaller chance of being victim of physical violence due to sex is a privilege or not. If it is – and it’s pretty obvious that it is, and significant one at that – you have that privilege by virtue of belonging to that group.
And who does that violence doesn’t really matter. After all, FGM is done almost exclusively by women on women and it doesn’t change our attitude towards it.
“Similar things could be said about class privilege.”
And they were definitely said. I recall something about Orwell, India and being a sahib and how that’s really a prison.
(damn. what’s going on with my comment? it keeps getting warped…)
All: A couple of comments here were specifically focused on the topic of rape. They’ve been moved to a discussion thread devoted to the topic.
This move should not be seen as any kind of criticism of the comments in question; they were thoughtful comments that adhered to our commenting guidelines and worth reading.
This discussion thread is now re-opened (although comments specifically discussing rape should be posted to the linked-to thread above).
athena:
We’re pretty used to having our own experiences dismissed by feminists. I’m not sure how your remark relates to this particular discussion, though, which has been about statistics. No person experiences statistical truths. That’s why we need surveys to determine them.
Nor am I privileged by traditional notions of manhood.
Good on you for not having gendered expectations of your partner.
I do not have a partner now, have not had one for most of my life, and have no expectation of ever having one again. The reasons for this turn out, on analysis, to be highly gendered – most (almost all?) of those who have similar difficulties to me are male.
From my perspective, what you’ve just said does look like an expression of privilege. I realise that you will not see it that way.
I haven’t been employed in over twenty years, again for reasons that are highly gendered. Specifically, I was bullied to hell in childhood, to which I was essentially abandoned by my adult carers (I was told to “fight back” and to “stand up for” myself. See anything gendered in that?) The effect of this torture was that by the time I reached adulthood I had been driven mad. I didn’t realise at the time that I was insane, but looking back on it now, I can see, very clearly, that I was.
I was insane for the first decade of adulthood, which was followed by another decade of recovery from insanity. I have, I guess, been sane for a decade. But those decades of insanity and recovery put paid to any chance I had of furthering a career.
Can you not see how much of a dismissal of my experience that statement is?
Another dismissal. I have not been unhappy because my male power and domination has failed to make me happy. I have been unhappy because I have never experienced anything arising from being male other than powerlessness and subjugation.
See my reply in the other thread.
It’s a controlling factor. I don’t agree that it’s the main one.
I don’t agree with that either. There is a tendency for women’s activities in the public sphere to be invisible, but women are not, and have never been inactive.
Men being “the violence class” is a handy way to subjugate them.
This I agree with, with the exception of the word “patriarchy”, which, as I have explained previously, comes loaded with a lot of theory with which we disagree.
If you’re going to say that, then you should probably cite. I would also question how much primate studies can tell us about human cultures. That said, I don’t think you’ll get much disagreement here that sexual repression correlates with violence overall.
Nor will there be much disagreement with the general proposition that gender-assumptions suck and we’d all be better off without them.
There’s no disagreement that there are different values placed on masculine and feminine gender roles. I don’t agree that vast majority of respect goes to men. One of the earliest lessons I recall learning about gender was in nursery school:
Puppy-dogs tails was OK, but the overall message was clear: Girls are nice; boys are vermin. That did not leave me feeling particularly respected.
Saying that it is overwhelmingly unidirectional does not seem to be a vast departure from saying that it is exclusively so. The various privilege lists are little more than lists of some of the ways some members of a group in some circumstances have some advantages over non-members. ballgame’s list is no different. What you’re doing here is the same as what many feminists do, which is to deny that these are privileges citing grounds that could just as well apply to male privileges.
The advocacy of excluisivly (or overwhelmingly, it makes no difference) unidirectional privilege is basically another way of saying “the bad things that happen to men don’t count” for no other reason than that they’re bad things that happen to men.
There is nothing progressive about saying this. We’ve heard it all our lives. When my adult carers did nothing to protect me from the violent bullying I suffered throughout my childhood, I knew who didn’t count. When people talk about rape as though it only happens to women and girls, we know that whose victimisation doesn’t count. When a news report refers to a massacre of women and children, and we find out that in fact most of the victims were men, we know which ones didn’t count. And when feminists call for an end to violence against women, we know which victims of violence don’t count.
There’s a non sequitur right there. Why should the fact that Peter is violence cause us to view the victimisation of jane as worse than the victimisation of joe?
Moreover the same reasoning is not applied to other groups, such as black people, at least, not by those on the left. In the US, per capita, (statistically speaking) black people commit more violence than do white people. There are also people who think this means that violence against white people is worse than violence against black people. We call those people “racists”.
Nobody can stand up for themselves when unarmed and up against multiple armed attackers.
“I’m not sure when feminism became construed as “women’s rights” rather than “human rights.” Of course the oppressed class is the class that must struggle for rights, but they struggle for the rights of all,…”
This is revisionist nonsense and bourgeois sentimantality. the point of class war is for one clas to overthrow another class, not to liberate that other class. Fine words and fair promises do not change that.
And that is why feminism came to be seen as “women’s rights”. In fact I remember when this happened, back in the mid-80s, I think it was. I seem to remember Gloria Steinem, and I cannot find a citation, sayng that feminism was no longer going to be about gender equality, it was going to have to become a women’s advocacy movement. And that is indeed the path it has taken..
Athena:
And yes, the kind of women who perpetuate the patriarchy may feel “privileged” by some of the protections afforded by traditional notions of womanhood, but I don’t.
1. How many times have men been told that just because they don’t have certain male privileges doesn’t mean they aren’t male privileges?
2. Quote marks? On the real? This is pretty much how many feminists regard female privilege. Try to say that it’s kinda like a privilege but it really isn’t. Well at least you didn’t try to say that it was really benevolent sexism.
Found this discussion of about male privilege at racism.org (http://racism.org/index.php?op.....Itemid=165). The paragraph was provided to show support as to why it’s important to talk about white privilege:
I think it becomes clear just how much it applies to female privilege as well if we just swap a few words (altered words italicized):
====
If men and women equally believe, for example, that men are by their very nature predatory towards women, then gender oppression seems natural, inevitable, timeless. If you can design structures of oppression which are invisibile, which seem natural, they will be more effective than structures which are visible. If you can convince everyone, but especially members of the oppressed group itself, that the way things are is natural or inevitable or unavoidable, people will be less likely to challenge the way things are
====
If we likewise adjust a previous paragraph in Kendall’s discussion of white privilege, we find another enlightening passage:
====
Why is it important to define “female privilege” so carefully? Because, in part, many people want to deny that it exists at all, especially in response to other people’s assertions that it is at work in some particular situation, that it exists unjustly and so should be dismantled. This pattern of assertion and denial is itself genderized: for the most part, men say that women enjoy female privilege, while women for the most part deny not only that they have it, but that such a thing even exists. I have been assured countless times by women that there is no such thing as female privilege and that the very idea is nonsensical.
====
I would like to add as a disclaimer that I do NOT believe that female privilege is anywhere near as skewed as white privilege. I just find the denials of female privilege by women to be so strikingly similar to denials of white privilege by white people.
While I agree that there is a strong impulse among many gynocentric feminists to deny the existence of female privilege, Pellaeon, I think it’s rhetorically self-defeating to compare it to white privilege, even if you’re trying to limit that comparison to a single dimension (i.e. similarities in the way the existence of the privilege is masked). It’s too likely that a reader — particularly one who is not predisposed to give her or his rhetorical opponents the benefit of the doubt and presume they’re arguing in good faith — will simply recoil at the upside down (to them) nature of the gender privilege/racial privilege analogy.
It’s pretty much gynocentric dogma that male privilege is like white privilege, and that women are the oppressed class. Anyone who even appears to suggest that women are the ‘whites’ in the equation, and that men are the oppressed class is likely going to be dismissed and not be given the opportunity to explain the more limited, subtle point he or she is trying to make.
That said, I appreciate your disclaimer and I do understand your point about the ‘mechanisms of denial’ being similar.
That makes a lot a sense.
And now that you highlight gynocentrism, I see that I’ve fallen into the ‘monolith’ trap with my quick and generalized word swaps.
This is exactly as relevant as saying that the majority of the murder and violent crime that black citizens face in America is overwhelmingly committed by “other blacks” – which is also technically true.
And yet anyone who couldn’t hear a statement like “the average black youth living in an inner city has had to brave dangerous and trying circumstances” without reflexively having to, just having to, always say that “well, the violence they may suffer would almost certainly come from another average black youth living in an inner city”, almost any reasonable person would conclude is racist. But that is how most feminists are with respect to men.
You were responding to the claim that it was a female privilege. Men suffering a disproportionate amount of violence mainly from other men is not an example of women oppressing men, but it’s an example of a significant disadvantage of growing up male in our society. Not having to live with that is what the female privilege is. It’s my understanding that many putative, listed male privileges work the same way.
Affirmative action is a top down, fiercely controversial governmental measure started decades ago. Special female protection from violence or physical hazards goes back centuries, is taken for granted by most people even today, and has a ubiquitous bottom up cultural wellspring of support. The average hoary old white conservative man is likely to oppose affirmative action, “oppose” being a very mild term here, while he is likely to support special protection of women. Yes, that protection was a double-edged sword and for most of history the downsides may have outweighed the benefits, but it’s hard to think of POC getting even the benefit of “double-edged swords” (except perhaps in certain circumstances with well-off minorities like Jews or East Asians).
There simply is no comparison between the vast and varied protections and privileges (as well as discrimination and prejudices) one gets for being female, to the paltry few advantages there are to being in a disadvantaged racial minority.
You take it for granted that women are to men as blacks are to whites. But gender is far more bidirectional, such that it’s not hard to think of instances where men are the blacks in the scenario, and women the whites. Men are the ones more likely to be oppressed by the justice system. Men are ones against whom violence or danger is normative. (See “missing white women” syndrome.) Men are the ones who are assumed to be aesthetically lesser, or more violent by nature, they’re more likely to fall behind from being harshly disciplined or held back in grade school, etc. etc.
Raising awareness of male suffering is not being dismissive of women’s experiences, though I’m aware some feminists will take it that way.
Also, this forced race/gender equivalence is curiously one-way. It always seems to be white women insisting upon it, rather than minority men. (Minority women fall under both and so can’t be compared here.) There’s probably a reason for that.
No, we don’t agree with this self-serving framing. Many men are unhappy in the gender system because they have been disempowered and dominated precisely because they are male and don’t live up to preconceived notions of masculinity. These men need more power, not less. Perhaps it is college-educated white women of middle class of above who need to be “liberated” from the psychological “burdens” of presumed, unearned social power.
Examples of the former type of men include:
(1) Any man whose life has been railroaded by America’s borderline fascist criminal justice system, which has the highest percentage of its population in state custody out of any country in the world right now.
(2) Any man who’s just really short, skinny, or both.
(3) Any man who’s been the victim of a non-sexual violent crime.
(4) Any man who is cripplingly shy or socially awkward.
(5) Any man who is psychologically gender-dysmorphic.
These all hurt women too, of course. But a man is either more likely to be affected by it, or if they are affected by it suffer greater consequences for it, or both. And this is by no means a complete list, just the ones that immediately popped into my head. I’m sure others could supply more if they want to.
According Mustard (2001), the most authoritative study published so far on this subject, women get sentences 12% more lenient for the same offense as men. This is the weighted figure, adjusting for the fact that the average male felon is more likely to be a repeat offender and his crime is likely to be at least a bit more severe. (The unweighted figure is 278.4%.)
Of course, this only looks at incarceration sentences. Women enjoy at least some privilege at every stage of the process, from the likelihood of arrest, to a case going to trial rather than ending with a plea bargain, to likelihood of conviction, to likelihood of incarceration once convicted (rather than softer methods such as extended probation), to length of incarceration if and when it has been decided upon. (There’s also the fact that crimes against women tend to get longer sentences than the same crimes against men, but I don’t where that could fit in here.) Wilbanks (1986) is a much older study but it has the benefit of looking at the whole process from arrest to conviction, and found that being male increases the chances of eventual incarceration by 165% over the whole process. Rodriguez, Curry, & Lee (2006) find that men are 2.15 times more likely to receive any prison sentence at all in the first place for the same crime. They also controlled for offense type and prior history.
There are a lot of studies on this topic and figures and study design tend to vary significantly, not to mention the stage of the sentencing process that they focus on. No one researcher has streamlined all these figures into one general, methodologically sound “General Female Perp Leniency Factor”. The workable consensus seems to be that the male-female gap exists and that it’s equal to or a bit greater than the racial disparity. On the whole, though, adding up the cumulative effect of all the significant biases at each stage of the process, 60% seems like a conservative estimate.
Alternatively: that men are inescapable inculcated to be predatory towards women.
Most feminists argue against the proposition that gender differences arise from men’s and women’s inherent nature, arguing instead that they arise from our different experiences of being raised in the Patriarchy.
Which usually is still a fancy twisted way of claiming its not essentialist, but claim universality, thus making it essentialist.
For example, radfems often use this “raised this way” argument to claim that trans women are more oppressive than cis women – because they were raised with male privilege and entitlement (which means that any trans woman being assertive is also her being oppressive – while a cis woman isn’t – because the trans women supposedly learned assertiveness from patriarchy, while cis women learned it from you-go-girl encouraging, which is totally different and not oppressive).
They also claim that not being raised as female when young, makes one unable to identify as a woman – because it would NECESSARILY include a childhood’s lived experience – which is apparently universally similar for all women (and universally dissimilar to trans women’s childhood in a difference of kind, not degree).
I call it neo-essentialism.
On the domestic violence issue, I would really like to see an honest discussion on relativity. A woman smacking her boyfriend or husband certainly falls under “domestic violence.” However, getting the crap beat out of you seems to be something that happens more to women in adult situations.
(And yes, women abuse kids. Why the hell do you keep leaving us alone with them?)
(That was snarky, but an honest question. I don’t hit or abuse my child, but I also make sure that I’m not the only adult she knows. If I totally went off my rocker, and became an unstable threat, she’s got like five other people she could call.)
To the point of going to the hospital maybe, but male-on-female DV is 27% with a weapon, while female-on-male DV is 83% with a weapon. Weapons can be a great equalizer (depending on the weapon).
“Getting the crap beaten out of you” counting DV and society in general, including as a kid – happens way way more to assigned-male-at-birth people, including trans women not-known-to-be-trans at the time (ie me).
Because part of the male gender role is that being able to take a fist’s damage, and dish it out, is necessary as a skill, even for people who work with their brains. So bullying against boys (by whoever, but even more so by a girl) is seen as “character-forging” unless it results in grievous injury (think broken limb bones such that you need a wheelchair or miss 2+ weeks of school – anything less is “minor injury”).
Even if it results in huge psychological issues in the future, in large part due to a “stop whining and man up” attitude about it. It REALLY doesn’t foster more empathy.
Another factor which can affect things is when studies use ” injuries which required medical attention” (academese for crap-beaten-out-of-you) as a marker of judging severity. As a general rule men are less likely to seek medical aid for just about everything.
Honest discussions of relativity we can have, accurate ones are a more complex matter
Accuracy of the discussion aside, the standards for discussing domestic violence haven’t been set here or by anyone who brings up male victims of domestic violence.
They have been set by those institutions which want to discuss female victims of domestic violence, such as Women’s Aid. They are the ones who have set the standard for conflating the various severities; surely the “1 in 4” claim rings a bell? Feminists who use the ‘relative’ argument seem happy for Women’s Aid to not look at things ‘relatively’, yet when men are included suddenly it’s of vital importance that the “beatings” are separated from the “slaps”.
So ZoBabe, when I see your email exchanges with Women’s Aid, or a similar organisation, making the same point you raise here I’ll believe your desire for an ‘honest discussion of relativity’. Until then I’ll see it as another diversion tactic.
P.S I’ve just had a cursory look at the various statistics put out by Women’s Aid. Ignoring the dubiousness of some of them, I can’t find ANY instance of where they separate ‘smacking’ and ‘getting the crap beat out of you’ (or sensible equivalents). I’d put a challenge out there for anyone to find them but even if someone finds them buried on some obscure webpage my point is kinda proven anyway.
Adiabat, overall I think you make some good points with your comment. However, I am uncomfortable with this:
This comes awful close to being a personal attack. I certainly understand your point about gynocentric double standards; ideally that point would have been made in a more general manner … maybe something like this:
Something like that would make your point without the personal cred challenge. I’ve often seen cred challenges used in social justice arenas to undercut someone making a valid critique. I’ve gotten hit with it once or twice, as you can imagine. Cred challenges are rarely issued to someone in alignment with the consensus of the participants.
Though are comment threads aren’t as busy as they used to be, we still aspire to engage with mainstream feminists with the goal of persuading them (or having them persuade us) and want to avoid creating the impression that if they wade into discussions here they’ll be attacked.
Ballgame: I agree. It’s actually a challenge to anyone bringing up “relativity” only in certain circumstances ie when male victims are mentioned. ZoBabe was just the closest “whipping boy” I suppose. Sorry ZoBabe.
I hope it’s clear from my post that I do accept that “relativity” may be an important framing for the discussion, but that such framing needs to be across the board, not just in relation to male victims as apposed to female victims.
ZoBabe:
The point isn’t who is attacked more often. The point is regardless of who gets the hell beat out of them more or who gets slapped more those numbers should have no bearing on whether or not female against male violence should be acknowledged.
From what I’m seeing now its not that men are dumping children off on women its that PLUS women that fight tooth and nail to keep dad away. I would ask instead why the hell don’t you leave the children with us and share the responsibility?
@Danny, this is purely anecdotal, and mostly based on what I’ve read online, so take it with a grain of salt.
In addition to women fighting in court to keep the father away, I feel that one thing I’ve seen in countless articles, profiles, etc that are about single mothers is that in many cases the father tried to be involved in the kid’s life, even if he isn’t no longer romantically involved with the mother, but that the mother eventually tells him to leave because “he is just another burden, and he isn’t happy anyway”. Now, that strikes me as women telling men trying to be responsible to be “deadbeats”.
Does anyone know of any good surveys on “deadbeat dads”. I’m curious as to what percentage of them were never told they had a child (one night stand, or conception right before a breakup), were driven away through the legal system, or told to leave, and what percentage did, in fact, just abandon their children?
Kaia, men not being allowes to cry, etc has NOTHING to do with homlphobia as you implied. It is the result of GENDER EXPECTAIONS in human culture. It results in women having certain PRIVILEGES that men do not, and the sooner you admit that the sooner feminism will be taken more seriously by society, because few things are hated these days as much as hypocrtical cognitive dissonance. We could thank political candidate commercials for that, I think.
I came across this story in my news browsing this morning, and I thought it might belong here. Interesting that there is a mention of the “thieve’s code” of not targeting women and children, as well as that “men” are being blamed for not protecting women in the current spate of violence.
Interesting story, dresq. I doubt there was ever such a code among muggers. Demanding that men expose themselves to additional risk to protect women is entitlement. I’m not sure what the point of a demonstration would be. Do they think the muggers will change their minds?
Daran:
I don’t suppose so. But then marches like Take Back the Night suffer from a similar logical infirmity…
[…] Our very own ballgame. […]
While all of the things you listed are valid concerns for men, the majority of them seem to have more to do with how you are perceived by other men, not women. This list should be titled “inequality amongst men” not “female privilege.” And do not get me started on women’s right to choose her partner and your desirability being based on income or “manliness.” Get with the program. Women run a little bit deeper than your pockets. If that has been your only experience with women, you are hanging around the wrong women.
I appreciate your comment, tessa, but I strongly disagree with it.
First, I disagree with your premise that it matters to what extent these female privileges arise from male perceptions or female perceptions. As a woman, I still benefit from the fact that many men have been raised with the maxim, “never hit a girl.” As a man, I have little control over how my brethren are raised, and my ability to shift the overall culture is pretty tiny, so if that culture teaches men that it’s OK — even desirable — to physically dominate other men, and I’m physically threatened or abused by those men, that is still a disprivilege that I suffer from that women do not. I see no reason not to label that “female privilege” other than to protect the tenuous ideology of gynocentric feminism.
Secondly, I’ve never seen a list of male privileges that explicitly states that only those cultural norms enforced by one gender are relevant. For example, I’ve seen references to studies that apparently found the whole “slut” phenomenon was a social mechanism primarily wielded by other women as a means to shame sexual competitors. I don’t know if this is true (it seems plausible), but if it is, does that mean being respected while being sexually active would no longer be considered a male privilege?
Finally, you seem to be coming from a ‘male>hyperagency, female>hypoagency’ perspective that seems to permeate both traditional culture and much of gynocentric feminism.Women do, in fact, enforce a great many of the gender roles that disprivilege men, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly. The shaming of men for being sexually inactive, for example, is something that a large portion of women are guilty of to a greater or lesser extent. Though I think that feminists (as a group) are somewhat more aware of the appalling reality of male circumcision than the (American) culture at large, overall I don’t see a great deal of difference between male and female perceptions on this issue.
Many of them do, I agree, but then I never claimed otherwise. Women are very much drawn to socially dominant men, however, and wealth does operate as a ‘social dominance signifier’ for more than a few. Many other women say they value male “confidence” in their potential mates, and the simple fact is it’s damned deadly difficult for a male in this society to have confidence if you’re poor.
I’ve talked very little about my personal experience with women here, so I don’t know why you’re jumping to conclusions.
Here’s an example of how inequality among men equates to female privilege. This is a DV case where the victim, a male, was arrested for the incident in which he was injured, mostly because of entrenched attitudes but probably also because of explicit policy at some level. Note how his past is turned against him in lieu of actual evidence. This by the way is a good example of the institutional misandry and discrimination against men we are always hearaing doesn’t exist.
http://www.avoiceformen.com/me.....-hits-you/
Patriarchy is female privilege. Benevolent sexism is, point for point, female privielge, and calling it sexism is a very good start to eradicating it – but so far it has been a false start.
Just to add to this, we now know that the dating passivity privilege that females experience is potentially worth around $15,000 a year in “in-kind” un-taxed income:
http://www.themarysue.com/woma.....e-dinners/
I know it’s an old article, but it’s still particularly relevant.
Interesting link, Pellaeon. We focus a lot on feminists doing/saying anti-male things here; it was refreshing to read a woman criticizing other women for taking advantage of men.
tessa:
If that’s the case then does that mean women who have bad experiences with men are just hanging around the wrong men?
Its funny. Women have experiences with men and men are expected to change in the form of treating women better. Men have bad experiences with women and men are expected to change in the form of find different women to hang around.
I can’t be the only one that sees the issue here….
“I can’t be the only one that sees the issue here….”
Danny, enough of us see it that there’s a name for it – the hyper/hypoagency dyad. And it’s tradcon to the core, like so much other supposedly progressive stuff.
@Pellaeon
That article was interesting, though I found the top comment a little awkward “Can we just all agree that what she did was reprehensible, without accusing her of making women everywhere look bad? When men live up to negative stereotypes, we don’t accuse those individuals of making their entire gender look bad.”.
From my experience, generalizing the actions of some men to all men happens all the time – all genders do it to all genders, it’s common. And it’s really sort of sidestepping the larger issue the article was bringing up – not only is that kind of behavior reprehensible, but the fact that it’s even possible is the result of a lot of cultural attitudes.
[…] another slant, and I quite like the preamble in this one, […]
1. I have a much lower chance of being murdered *by a man* than a man.
Joking there, but most of these advantage are partly a result of expectation and gender roles, stereotypes of masculinity, thoroughly criticized by feminists.
Many feminists admitted “patriarchy” oppressed men as well.
Welcome to the blog, Antome.
True, but FTR, both men AND women are more likely to murder men than women. Also, the gender of the attacker does not negate the existence of privilege (or disprivilege) for any particular demographic class. African Americans are more likely to be murdered by other African Americans than they are by whites, but it would be a mistake to claim that this means there’s no white privilege involved in the relative risk of being a victim of violence.
I agree that many of the advantages are at least partially the result of gender roles, and that there are times when these roles are critiqued by feminists. I would tend to disagree that these things are “thoroughly” criticized by feminists; I would tend to say that that popular mainstream feminist analysts occasionally provide useful insights about gender dynamics which adversely affect males. More often, though, I think their analysis is misleading or even harmful in the way female privilege is obscured through odious reframing as “benevolent sexism” or through conceptual frameworks that imply that men are oppressing ‘themselves’ (as alluded to by your initial tongue-in-cheek comment).
Actually, I have found very few popular mainstream feminists that will concede that men are “oppressed” by gender. Instead, the most they will do is note that men are “harmed” by it, which seems to be their way of maintaining control over gender discourse. (Privileged groups are supposed to cede rhetorical space to oppressed groups, so acknowledging female privilege and/or male oppression would apparently jeopardize gynocentric feminist dominance over progressive gender discourse.)
Sorry for the delay in my reply.
“Joking there, but most of these advantage are partly a result of expectation and gender roles, stereotypes of masculinity, thoroughly criticized by feminists.”
Yes – and then insisted on. Any man failing to perform all this, failing to grant this privilege, is instantly branded misogynist. Any woman decrying this female privilege is instantly branded misogynist. Ask Karen Straughan. She has personal experience of it.
The only critique that seems to get any traction with feminists – white feminists – is black womanists who point out that almost all this female privilege is white female privilege. That’s not totally true, but there is a lot of that that is true. Good for them.
Well that because white feminists would rather admit to white privilege that female privilege because white privilege doesnt shake the core of their ideology.
Ob the other hand copping to the existence of privilege that is based on being female goes against most of their ideology that is largely based on being entiry disprivileged for being female. And benevolent sexism is just an escape hatch for when they cant twist female privilege into actually being male privilege.
And the next time someone wants to say female privilege doesnt exist show this http://latino.foxnews.com/lati.....-husbands/
(Broken URL fixed — Daran)
Mutilates husband in his sleep and still treated like a victim.
I partially agree with you as our common objective is equality. The very name “feminism” seems inactual to front this, it was, when men were actually privileged in some areas and women needed more rights. Still in some areas of the world.
I agree we can’t talk about an absolute privilege of either sex now.
“Yes – and then insisted on. Any man failing to perform all this, failing to grant this privilege, ”
Clearly wrong, but most “feminists” would not say that.