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Discussions about privilege (White privilege, heterosexual privilege, male privilege) tend to infuriate me because they are generally filled with overgeneralizations and faulty reasoning, and they tend to divide people, rather than unite them in finding solutions to real problems.
The discussion of the "Male Privilege Checklist" (with 50-plus replies as of the time I'm posting this) over at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
novapsyche's journal
http://novapsyche.livejournal.com/1301923.html
is a good example.
I think the replies are really thought provoking, but it devolves into personal slams at times, and accusations of men trying to "derail" discussion of women's perspectives. Well, I thought the list was ridiculously one-sided, biased, and over-generalized, and I'm a woman and a self-identified feminist. I thought the list was also heterosexist and largely blind to how class and race intersect with gender issues.
I don't think you can discuss privilege without context. Privilege doesn't occur in a vacuum. There's a huge web of biological and social factors that affect how women and men are treated in this society, and I think men often get a raw deal, just in ways that are less visible than many women's issues.
For every little girl who is discouraged from pursuing math and science, there is a little boy who is ridiculed for playing with dolls and wanting to be a nurse. For every woman who is raped, there is a man who puts himself in danger of being beaten to a pulp or killed because he’s living up to society’s ideals of "how to be a man."
For every woman who is objectified as a sexy piece of meat, there's a man who is objectified as being a mindless fuck-machine who isn't a real man if he can't get it up and keep it up. For every woman who is forced to "act like a man" and is dismissed as hysterical and soft for crying at work, there's a man who was a little boy who was called a fag and a sissy and was beaten as a child for expressing emotion.
Dismissing that reality by saying that men may have a hard time in interpersonal issues but women are dealt the rawest deal in "really important" areas like politics and business, to me, is being purposely blind to all the ways that men are suffering (early heart attacks? Male-on-male violence?) from trying so hard to live up to our culture's ideals of masculinity.
I'm not saying that the tide has turned and that women now have the upper hand in every area. I'm not saying that there aren't places were women still get the short end of the stick. I'm saying that making vast overgeneralizations, dismissing men's pain and bewilderment over gender issues, and accusing any man who raises an objection to these overgeneralzations of dismissing women's concerns is NOT the way to reach understanding or equality between the sexes.
The discussion of the "Male Privilege Checklist" (with 50-plus replies as of the time I'm posting this) over at
novapsyche's journal http://novapsyche.livejournal.com/1301923.html
is a good example.
I think the replies are really thought provoking, but it devolves into personal slams at times, and accusations of men trying to "derail" discussion of women's perspectives. Well, I thought the list was ridiculously one-sided, biased, and over-generalized, and I'm a woman and a self-identified feminist. I thought the list was also heterosexist and largely blind to how class and race intersect with gender issues.
I don't think you can discuss privilege without context. Privilege doesn't occur in a vacuum. There's a huge web of biological and social factors that affect how women and men are treated in this society, and I think men often get a raw deal, just in ways that are less visible than many women's issues.
For every little girl who is discouraged from pursuing math and science, there is a little boy who is ridiculed for playing with dolls and wanting to be a nurse. For every woman who is raped, there is a man who puts himself in danger of being beaten to a pulp or killed because he’s living up to society’s ideals of "how to be a man."
For every woman who is objectified as a sexy piece of meat, there's a man who is objectified as being a mindless fuck-machine who isn't a real man if he can't get it up and keep it up. For every woman who is forced to "act like a man" and is dismissed as hysterical and soft for crying at work, there's a man who was a little boy who was called a fag and a sissy and was beaten as a child for expressing emotion.
Dismissing that reality by saying that men may have a hard time in interpersonal issues but women are dealt the rawest deal in "really important" areas like politics and business, to me, is being purposely blind to all the ways that men are suffering (early heart attacks? Male-on-male violence?) from trying so hard to live up to our culture's ideals of masculinity.
I'm not saying that the tide has turned and that women now have the upper hand in every area. I'm not saying that there aren't places were women still get the short end of the stick. I'm saying that making vast overgeneralizations, dismissing men's pain and bewilderment over gender issues, and accusing any man who raises an objection to these overgeneralzations of dismissing women's concerns is NOT the way to reach understanding or equality between the sexes.
