Male Priveledge: an intro for the short-sighted
Because it never rains but it hails blood and frogs, a reference post for those who need it right now.
What do you mean 'male priveledge'? You have a job, and I live in a cardboard box in the middle of the road!
Well, congratulations for giving our first example: you get to have the view that your individual circumstances negate your inherent priveledge because society treats men as individuals and women as a kind of general mass, subject to the kind of tokenisim usually affecting minorities. You still have it better than if you were a woman living in a cardboard box in the middle of the road, and if you had a job, it would be more secure and better paid than mine.
Male priveledge is the things you can do in this society, and I cannot.
Like what?
- You can walk down the road or exist in any public space unchaperoned without strangers considering they have the right to audibly rate your body as an exhibit.
- You can use public transport without strangers grabbing your privates or covertly sneaking a crowded-train dry hump of your backside for their own amusement.
- You can go out unchaperoned after sundown without being called an idiot, and the worst thing you'll be worrying about will be getting stabbed.
- If you do get stabbed, you may just die. You won't necessarily survive to be told it was clearly your fault he chose to put a knife in your chest, that if you'd had Batman's fighting skills (like you clearly should've) then you'd never get ambushed, that a lasting wariness of all people with knives is unreasonable just because you got shanked once, that the guy who got you won't be punished even if you point the police right at him, hear friends get told they're over-sensitive killjoys when they respond to jokes about stabbing with a mild 'not funny', etc. etc. etc.
- You can open a magazine or newspaper without coming across bodies like yours used as decoration for advertising, advertising why you are not beautiful enough as you exist, and/or distraction from what the owners of the bodies are saying. Every. Damn. Time.
- You are not taught your naked face is shameful and unattractive and induced to pay to cover it up with paint.
- You can turn on the TV or go to the cinema and see people like you of all ages in leading roles of great variety, shining hero to darkest villian, with a cast made up mostly of people with bodies like yours, none of whom are induced to strip to prove it to the audience...and this won't be hailed as new and strange, or why you should go see a thing even if it's terrible.
- You can play a video game with a body like your RL one and it won't automatically be the stripper avatar.
- You can read a book about someone with a body like yours and feel free to connect to that person without wondering when they will be put down, fall into the shadow of their heterosexual love interest, or outright violated. You can even read about a hero who doesn't have a romantic partner (without frequent reassurance that he does want one really, was abused as a child to excuse his freakish behaviour, or at least jerks off frequently).
- You can go on the internet and present as your gender without automatically being assumed to be unchaperoned in a public place and thus a 19th-century whore looking to be propositioned. If you recieve rank hatred, threats of violence or pornography in which you are presented as submissive/victim, and/or your RL location is known to the perpetrators, you will not be told these people's wish to harm you is of no consequence, normal and to be ignored.
- You don't have to keep a folder of bookmarks to prove things such as the above which are self-evident with observation, inquiry or a simple Google search for statistics, because you know even those who say they're concerned about social justice won't be bothered and/or will tell you you're making it up.
- If you are hurt by injustices any human being would be hurt by, your concerns won't be dismissed as "too emotional" to be real if you show passion and "not an issue" if you are not loud and angry enough.
...and many, many more. That's just a selection of the most obvious in the world's least deprived nations. Sometimes, you the guy might experience one or two of these. However, you have the priveledge not to experience all of them, all the time, no breaks, no safe spaces, no holidays.
The thing is, society is made up of everyone. That's you, that's me - that's all men, all women, and the odd hermaphrodite. So you don't get to opt out of social problems.
When they're mostly caused by men, "I'm not one of those doing it" cuts about as much ice as it would from me sitting on a rock smoking a pipe whilst a mob of my people spitroasts your baby cousins. "I'm not one of those doing it, why expect me to do anything just because they might listen to me? Jeez."
Now, if I was a halfway decent person, I might get off my boulder and stand up to keep those remaining infants from the pain and death my tribe decided to visit on them for being there. I wouldn't claim that because I had the habit of sitting facing away from the firepit, heinious things were for sure not happening there. I wouldn't consider simply looking at what was pointed at and considering it could be a real problem for you, rather than immediately, instinctively, coming to my tribe's defense ("It's tradition! Some old guy who probably knows said we've always done it this way! Some of my people get minor burns doing it!") as an amazing act of heroisim, though it would be a good start.
I can't disown my people or shed the genes I was born with, but I can help. Not pick you up and whisk you away to where you can't see the massacre either, not speak for you without listening and get you a pile of corn in place of your cousins, but roll up my sleeves, look upon what my kin have done, and damn well go down there.
Whoever sent you to this post, that's all they're asking of you.
Disclaimer: I am going to get the inevitable slew of 'you're seeing it wrong', 'women oppress women too' and 'right on! - but what about the men? Can we talk about men now?' comments from this, but I am not remotely up to dealing with them at present, so comments will be tackled sporadically if at all. Which doesn't mean - to the leavers of such - that because you can bully me to exhausted silence, that you are right, just that I'm mortal and one person who can't, in fact, make a perfect, immediately world-changing argument for 3 billion people, (or even the few million in the First World).
What do you mean 'male priveledge'? You have a job, and I live in a cardboard box in the middle of the road!
Well, congratulations for giving our first example: you get to have the view that your individual circumstances negate your inherent priveledge because society treats men as individuals and women as a kind of general mass, subject to the kind of tokenisim usually affecting minorities. You still have it better than if you were a woman living in a cardboard box in the middle of the road, and if you had a job, it would be more secure and better paid than mine.
Male priveledge is the things you can do in this society, and I cannot.
Like what?
- You can walk down the road or exist in any public space unchaperoned without strangers considering they have the right to audibly rate your body as an exhibit.
- You can use public transport without strangers grabbing your privates or covertly sneaking a crowded-train dry hump of your backside for their own amusement.
- You can go out unchaperoned after sundown without being called an idiot, and the worst thing you'll be worrying about will be getting stabbed.
- If you do get stabbed, you may just die. You won't necessarily survive to be told it was clearly your fault he chose to put a knife in your chest, that if you'd had Batman's fighting skills (like you clearly should've) then you'd never get ambushed, that a lasting wariness of all people with knives is unreasonable just because you got shanked once, that the guy who got you won't be punished even if you point the police right at him, hear friends get told they're over-sensitive killjoys when they respond to jokes about stabbing with a mild 'not funny', etc. etc. etc.
- You can open a magazine or newspaper without coming across bodies like yours used as decoration for advertising, advertising why you are not beautiful enough as you exist, and/or distraction from what the owners of the bodies are saying. Every. Damn. Time.
- You are not taught your naked face is shameful and unattractive and induced to pay to cover it up with paint.
- You can turn on the TV or go to the cinema and see people like you of all ages in leading roles of great variety, shining hero to darkest villian, with a cast made up mostly of people with bodies like yours, none of whom are induced to strip to prove it to the audience...and this won't be hailed as new and strange, or why you should go see a thing even if it's terrible.
- You can play a video game with a body like your RL one and it won't automatically be the stripper avatar.
- You can read a book about someone with a body like yours and feel free to connect to that person without wondering when they will be put down, fall into the shadow of their heterosexual love interest, or outright violated. You can even read about a hero who doesn't have a romantic partner (without frequent reassurance that he does want one really, was abused as a child to excuse his freakish behaviour, or at least jerks off frequently).
- You can go on the internet and present as your gender without automatically being assumed to be unchaperoned in a public place and thus a 19th-century whore looking to be propositioned. If you recieve rank hatred, threats of violence or pornography in which you are presented as submissive/victim, and/or your RL location is known to the perpetrators, you will not be told these people's wish to harm you is of no consequence, normal and to be ignored.
- You don't have to keep a folder of bookmarks to prove things such as the above which are self-evident with observation, inquiry or a simple Google search for statistics, because you know even those who say they're concerned about social justice won't be bothered and/or will tell you you're making it up.
- If you are hurt by injustices any human being would be hurt by, your concerns won't be dismissed as "too emotional" to be real if you show passion and "not an issue" if you are not loud and angry enough.
...and many, many more. That's just a selection of the most obvious in the world's least deprived nations. Sometimes, you the guy might experience one or two of these. However, you have the priveledge not to experience all of them, all the time, no breaks, no safe spaces, no holidays.
The thing is, society is made up of everyone. That's you, that's me - that's all men, all women, and the odd hermaphrodite. So you don't get to opt out of social problems.
When they're mostly caused by men, "I'm not one of those doing it" cuts about as much ice as it would from me sitting on a rock smoking a pipe whilst a mob of my people spitroasts your baby cousins. "I'm not one of those doing it, why expect me to do anything just because they might listen to me? Jeez."
Now, if I was a halfway decent person, I might get off my boulder and stand up to keep those remaining infants from the pain and death my tribe decided to visit on them for being there. I wouldn't claim that because I had the habit of sitting facing away from the firepit, heinious things were for sure not happening there. I wouldn't consider simply looking at what was pointed at and considering it could be a real problem for you, rather than immediately, instinctively, coming to my tribe's defense ("It's tradition! Some old guy who probably knows said we've always done it this way! Some of my people get minor burns doing it!") as an amazing act of heroisim, though it would be a good start.
I can't disown my people or shed the genes I was born with, but I can help. Not pick you up and whisk you away to where you can't see the massacre either, not speak for you without listening and get you a pile of corn in place of your cousins, but roll up my sleeves, look upon what my kin have done, and damn well go down there.
Whoever sent you to this post, that's all they're asking of you.
Disclaimer: I am going to get the inevitable slew of 'you're seeing it wrong', 'women oppress women too' and 'right on! - but what about the men? Can we talk about men now?' comments from this, but I am not remotely up to dealing with them at present, so comments will be tackled sporadically if at all. Which doesn't mean - to the leavers of such - that because you can bully me to exhausted silence, that you are right, just that I'm mortal and one person who can't, in fact, make a perfect, immediately world-changing argument for 3 billion people, (or even the few million in the First World).