There’s a new round of discussion of the “Male Privilege Checklist” going on, mostly on Livejournals. Usually I don’t respond to these criticisms, because usually the folks who write them are too far on the insulting and smug side.
But this time, for some reason, I found myself responding. Naturally a couple of my responses were rejected by Livejournal for being too long, and I thought “might as well put this stuff on Alas.”
ChuckDarwin (who seems to be a Kos-style leftist) posted his critique of the Male Privilege Checklist on two livejournals, here and here. I include both links because I’ll be referring not only to Chuck’s post, but also to comments left by readers in each livejournal.
Chuck writes:
This list is full of rash generalizations and woefully short on anything resembling facts, statistics or evidence. Some of the entries are patently true and hard to argue against. Other things on the list are simply untrue, unprovable, or completely based on anecdotal ‘evidence’. Some of the issues the author (B Deutsch, whomever that is) chooses to focus on are, in my opinion, embarrassingly petty and do more harm than good to the whole cause.
Regarding the lack of cites and evidence, point well taken. I’ve often thought that I should go through and add citations and the like for most of the items on the list, which would make the piece much stronger. But the staggering amount of work required – and the book-length blog post that would result – have intimidated me.
So my new plan is to gradually respond to critiques like Chuck’s, when they show up and when I feel like it :-), and to link each item on the list to the relevant responses I’ve written.
In my defense, the list isn’t intended as an argument to persuade skeptics. I do a lot of evidence-based argumentation in my other writings, as my regular readers know. But the list is not an argument that’s going to persuade anyone who isn’t already sympathetic to my view. Instead, the list is intended as a tool for feminists and people learning about feminism; a way to make visible some ways living in a male-centric society helps men and harms women, by compressing into an extremely compact form much of the research, essays and women’s writings I’ve read over the years. The list is probably read most often in college classes and on my blog – contexts in which readers will have had read enough background material to judge for themselves how fact-based and reasonable the list’s claims are.
1. Generalizations
Regarding generalizations, I reject Chuck’s contention that generalizations are necessarily bad. (I know he qualified “generalizations” with “rash,” but since he doesn’t support that description with a logical argument it seems like hand-waving). It’s true that some men get raped, for example, and on an individual level that’s 100% as awful and hideous as when women get raped. But should that prevent me from pointing out that in day-to-day life, women in general have much more reason to fear being raped than men in general?
There is almost no inequality that happens 100% to women and 0% to men. Or 100% to blacks and 0% to whites, for that matter, and so on for any other disadvantaged group imaginable. But that some inequalities generally happen more to women than to men (to the disabled than to the ablebodied, to American Indians than to whites, and so on) is something that serious people can legitimately discuss and be concerned with. Contrariwise, if we are unable to generalize, then we will be unable to discuss patterns of discrimination at all.
2. The Pettiness Charge
Further down in comments, Chuck expanded on the “pettiness” charge, writing:
We have women on this planet with REAL PROBLEMS and we’re going to fill our list with entries about our clothes and our weight issues?
Women in Iran are being sold into prostitution as children and then hanged for ‘promiscuous behaviour’… and the author of this list is going to concentrate on how long it takes to put on makeup. Shouldn’t the women with all the money and freedom the world has to offer (even if that money and freedom is fractionally less than that of their male counterparts) be trying to help the millions (billions?) of downtrodden women in China and Africa? […]
I think that, instead of focusing on little gripes (some of these 43 things are quite little comparatively), everyone needs to pull together to make sure that North Dakota and the new SCOTUS don’t overturn Roe v Wade.
2a. Not An Either-Or Choice
My reflexive response is to point out that Chuck’s implication – that because I wrote about issues he considers “petty” in a single document, I therefore don’t spend time on “real problems” – is ridiculous. It’s not an either-or choice. I compiled that list, and since then I’ve written thousands of posts on hundreds of issues, and I’ve volunteered, and I’ve given money.
Offhand, I can think of two large national US organizations whose politics are devoted entirely to reproductive rights (NARAL and Planned Parenthood), and four national feminist organizations that spend a lot of time working for reproductive rights (NOW, Feminist Majority, Emily’s List, Legal Momentum). There are probably lots more. But I can’t think of one comparable feminist organization which has given similar attention to the makeup issue, and I bet Chuck can’t either. So what is the basis of Chuck’s complaint? That if anyone, ever, in any instance, mentions a issue he has judged “petty,” that’s too much?
But that reflexive response of mine, while correct in pointing out the gross unfairness of Chuck’s assumptions, concedes too much to Chuck’s argument.
2b. The unreasonable double-standard
Chuck’s standards are unreasonable. Is there anyone who ignores all local issues so long as, somewhere in the world, someone is suffering worse? Pretty much anyone who isn’t concentrating full-time on the genocide and mass rapes going on in Darfur can legitimately be said to be using their time on something other than the most immediately pressing issue in the world today.
(Every time I see this critique of feminists, I’m struck by what hypocrites the critics are. I’ve never seen a “how dare feminists write about makeup” critic whose own writings didn’t include some less than earth-shaking concerns. Chuck, for example, has recently posted about the etymology of “y’all” and about what’s on the telly (he’s pissed that American Idol is so popular, and I can’t blame him). Since Chuck doesn’t write exclusively about immediate life-or-death matters, why does he think it’s fair to hold me to that standard?)
Not only is it an inevitable human condition that most people are interested in analyzing what happens in their daily lives, it’s probably a good thing. A feminist movement that considers day-to-day sexism too petty to ever discuss would be ivory-tower and snobby. A well-rounded feminism – like a well-rounded life – should include many concerns and many approaches. The demand that we ignore “petty” local issues is a demand that we stop acting like human beings.
2c. Who decides what is “petty”?
Why does Chuck imagine he has the perspective to declare what is and isn’t important? Chuck thinks weight is a petty issue, but I doubt the parents of anorexia patients would agree. If a woman spends her entire life feeling inadequate and wrong because of her weight, that’s not Rwanda, but neither is it nothing. Makeup seems less like a petty issue when you consider that women have been fired from their jobs for not wearing it. And so on. Similar responses could be made for most of the other issues Chuck considers “petty.”
My favorite example of Chuck’s parochial view of “petty” is when he dismisses the wage gap as whiny first world women being paid “fractionally less.” It’s so easy for someone whose sex or race places them on the happy side of the wage gap to say that; but I bet if Chuck got a 5% or 10% or 20% pay cut, he might find that “fractional” amounts matter.
Even seemingly small problems can build up over time, and cause significant distress. A small wage gap can build up to enormous amounts of money over many paychecks; the endless social pressure to put on unwanted makeup or heels or to cover up or to expose can, for some women, build up into significant sources of stress and distress. Do these issues bother everybody? No. But they harm some people, and are therefore worth discussing.
2d. The so-called “petty” issues and “important” issues are interconnected.
Finally, Chuck is assuming a clear separation between “petty” and important that is not always clear in real life. In Chuck’s comments, Rougewench did a wonderful job discussing this question:
But you know, saying that women in Western culture have it “so much better” than the downtrodden women in China and Africa does not mean that we do not still deal with what remains of gender based discrimination still endemic to Western culture. Making that argument is literally saying, “you should be happy with what your getting because at least you are not being whipped or sold into prostitution or forced to wear a Burqua, or gangraped and given AIDS, etc.”, even though the various things listed do limit perceptions, behavior and choices for women in this culture.
None of it, at any level, is alright. […]
It is worth noting that the endemic sexism in western culture, the conglomeration of all those seemingly little things, is what allows us to be in a place where Roe v. Wade is in danger of being overturned.
Zing, pow – totally on target. (And in comments, Chuck seems to concede that Rougewench may be right). One of the most important – perhaps the most important – trait of a male-privileged society is that in such a society, boys and men are the norm, and male lives are the default. This is visible in many seemingly harmless things, such as the language that we use (chairman, mailman, “he” and “man” as generics, etc), the overwhelming predominance of male characters in children’s entertainment, and the expectation that women take on husband’s last names.
I think the view of male lives as the default is harmful in and of itself. But it’s also harmful because it is the context which supports many other harms – such as the ongoing attacks on reproductive rights, the wage gap, and the high prevalence of rape.
But he’s right about one thing
There is one legitimate critique Chuck touches on; the list is extremely US-centric. (I’ve been trying to decide if it’s white-centric, as well; so far I don’t think it is, but I may be missing something important). I don’t think that it’s wrong for Americans to write individual works which focus on US society, but I should have acknowledged the US-centrism in the introduction. I’ve corrected this error in the current version of the list.
Finally, I’d be remiss not to plug Tekanji’s excellent post Debunking The Myth of Frivolity, which covers many of the same issues I discuss here from a feminist pop-culutre critic’s perspective.
UPDATE: And check out this terrific related post by Amanda at Pandagon, too.
UPDATE 2: And this related post by Chris at Pandagon, too, too.
(Chuck also criticized several specific items on the list; I’ll address those criticisms in upcoming posts. I’ve created a Male Privilege Checklist category to make it easier for anyone interested to locate list-related posts).
* * *PLEASE NOTE* * *
I sometimes heavily moderate discussion threads on “Alas.” If you’d like to avoid this, you can post a comment on the identical post on Creative Destruction.
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What, no plug for my post on Debunking the Myth of Frivolity? I’m hurt, Amp. Truly hurt. :(
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Okay, maybe not. But I couldn’t resist plugging my post again :P Because it needs to be seen. And read! And especially linked!!!111
Major thanks–you have cleared up bigtime why it sounds so bogus (as well as painful) when people supposedly on my side dismiss some complaint of mine, and you’ve started the process of countering that.
The “little” issues are interrelated with the big ones, all right–but how? Will they lead to stuff like that here, or are they relicts of it from the past? If someone would go into that and show just where the causal connections are, that would help.
Case in point–as I sit here nursing an unnacountably bum knee I have a couple of books at hand about knee injuries, and they have a special chapter about the special vulnerabilities of women, but these books at least don’t say anything about where women conversely might be more fortunate. If they would just find that detail, they then could stick in a chapter on men’s weak spots, you know, balance it out. It’s like men are not only the norm but the naturally favored all through. That’s just for knees, but a while back someone else was going on about how women shouldn’t be in combat because a, b, c, d, e, f, but they never found any advantages, not even in some case where small size or fat might conceivably be useful. I got cynical way-long-far-back, but you’ve got to wonder what this sort of stuff would do to a young person. Especially when it isn’t just one book or subject, but crops up everywhere.
Is this sort of unintentional (?) insult a legacy of past/distant worse inequities, or a possible diathesis for future ones? Or both? Yes, yes, and yes, I suspect, so keep at it, all who want something better.
Tekanji, I’ve corrected the omission. :-)
Angiportus, I don’t really have a substantial response to your comment, but I want you to know I read and appreciated it – thanks for posting.
Yes, you’d be completely remiss in not linking it, but I forgive you :) Okay! Enough silyness, time for bed.
PS. Because I forgot to say it last time, this was a great read. I look forward to your upcoming posts.
Oh, God, Amp, you know what you’ve done?! You’ve unleashed the inevitable tedium of the ‘Female Privilege Checklist’—-which assumes that only fuckable women exist and that such women are just delighted to be fought over by guys.
Little things, as you say, accumulate. But consider this: if you’re shooting at something, and you deviate slightly, by the time your round has gone the distance it will miss the target. That little deviation at the start sends the bullet astray. Little things matter.
The argument that feminists are petty has been around forever, and you have done a wonderful job debunking it.
And, by the way Chuck should have said, “B Deutsch, WHOEVER that is,” not “WHOMEVER that is.”
Yes, I know I really am being petty now but I just couldn’t resist.
Great post on the pettiness question. There was a story circulating regularly about the late, great Betty Friedan: when a more radical than thou woman got up an said “How can you talk about housewives when there are people starving” she said “my dear, don’t hind behind the poor.” I think the pettiness thing also has to do with avoiding the everyday things in our lives we COULD change in favor of distant issues on which it’s easy to take ‘brave’ stands that won’t do much . . . .kind of like not criticizing the US because somewhere some country is doing something worse, ignoring the fact that we have a particular responsability to what our country is doing . .. .
The Kos-storm and more recently the kerfuffle on AmericaBlog illustrate how many men just don’t get how unexamined details of language and behavior enforce a sexist and heterosexist society. Markos and Aravosis (blogowners) got that “but I am not ….., so you have no business speaking” (fill in blank: racist, sexist, heterosexist, etc) reaction common to many white male liberals, rather than saying, well, that reader reaction is interesting, I never thought about this from your viewpoint, here’s a new thread, let’s discuss (and keep old thread for its original purpose). The point of all such checklists is to encourage self-examination and empathy. People who don’t feel a need for occasional humility or who are too weak to express that they might be wrong generally get the most offended by the privilege checklists.
It, thanks for clearing it up about the things-we-can-help-here vs. things-far-away-we-can’t angle. I missed that one. ALthough I have in past been known to say, how about cleaning up one’s own house before setting out to change the world.
Ginmar, good point about little deviations resulting in a missed target…b/ patriarchy is a damn big target…and if all these “petty” things are related, then maybe you haven’t missed by that far.
Another thing I have noticed is that there’s a peculiar elasticity in the treatment of some of these issues by those who uphold the status quo. If you protest, they treat your protests as trivial, but if you act, for instance using non-sexist pronouns, they squawk loudly, for their status quo is apparently not trivial. It’s like a rubber band that they manage to make snap in your face both ways. Someone needs to blow that syndrome apart too, and recognizing it is a start, and someone making it clearer than I have would be a big help. Related paradox–how can [insert oppressed group of choice] be trivial, weak, etc. and yet be so threatening as to need to be kept down so forcefully?
Keep this thread going, branches and all. I feel like we’ve just started.
On the other side of the coin, and because I’ve mentioned similar issues in other places, I think concepts like “The Male Privilege Checklist” are critiqued because men are, in general, unfamiliar with the concept of “privilege”. Also, because any kind of “Checklist” is going to be taken as a whole, rather than a census or buffett. I suspect there is also a growing concern among men that some of the items, for example
3. If I am never promoted, it’s not because of my sex.
are false. One doesn’t have to look too far in the corporate world to see programs aimed at bringing women further up into the corporate world. Now, we can say (and rightly so) that these programs exist to correct imbalances, but that doesn’t mean men aren’t going to form the opinion that
3. If I am never promoted, it’s not because of my sex.
is wrong because in their corner of the universe, it’s very much correct.
Others, such as this
9. If I choose not to have children, my masculinity will not be called into question.
aren’t, so far as I can tell, the fault of men, and I think men aren’t going to relate to this as a “privilege” because I don’t think men are the ones, by and large, questioning why women aren’t out having children. My impression and my experience is that women pressure women far more about having children. For example, despite my inability to have children (for reasons some here are aware of …), when I was in my 30’s I was asked if I was planning to have more children and the vast majority of people asking that were women.
I’m not sure this one is true as a whole
16. As a child, chances are I was encouraged to be more active and outgoing than my sisters.
in part because while there’s a concept of “Miss Congeniality” the concept “Mr Congeniality” is less popular (as evidenced by Googling the two terms and looking at hits). Indeed, I suspect that most boys are socialized to focus on “stuff” more than “people” and I think that women’s domination of the social science and caring professions is proof that boys are socialized to be “active” and girls are socialized to be “outgoing”.
This seems to be patently false
22. If I’m careless with my driving it won’t be attributed to my sex.
if one looks at, for example, insurance rate differences between males and females. There isn’t, so far as I know, any age bracket in which male automobile insurance rates are lower than female automobile insurance rates, and my guess is that all men are aware of this. Back in the day I had a policy which wouldn’t cover any male driver under 25 in the event of an accident, but would cover a married female driver between 21 and 25.
All in all, and despite the shortcomings I listed above (and more that I could list), I think that this
45. I have the privilege of being unaware of my male privilege.
is both true and probably the single greatest male privilege going. Even if 22 out of the other 44 privileges are wrong in whole or in part, the fact that men can be oblivious to the 22 that are spot-on is a huge privilege on their part.
Re: “It’s all interconnected”
This point really hit home last Mother’s Day when I heard two speakers from Kenya talk about their organization that provides reproductive health care to women. Someone asked them “what is the best way that people in the U.S. can help?” and they said we should do what we can to change the policies that our government promotes internationally (i.e. the whole abstinence-only thing)
Upon hearing that it occurred to me that the unwillingness of many in the U.S. to come to terms with issues regarding sex and sexuality is holding us back from preventing millions of AIDS orphans, etc. These blog conversations about such things are critically important!
Besides, if U.S. (or generally, Western) women have more power in their individual lives, they start having more power in government, and then they start having the power to change the more serious problems in other countries. Part of the reason that there are millions of downtrodden women in Africa and China is because the current men in power do not see this as a high enough priority.
FurryCatHerder, your comment about the driving privilege illustrates the rift between reality and cultural perception. Insurance rates are based on real-world statistics. But when’s the last time you heard a comic make a joke about “teenage male drivers”? Also, there are probably *more* incompetent elderly male drivers than female ones, but the jokes are always about “little old lady drivers”. Men, on either end of the age spectrum, get what amounts to a free pass… unless actual financial issues are involved.
FurryCatHerder, regarding #9: I don’t quite understand your objection. Privilege doesn’t have to be conferred upon the privileged by the privileged to BE privilege. It’s not a matter of who is doing the dirty, but who is receiving the brunt of it.
I certainly believe that higher insurance premiums for teenage boys is a case of unfair discrimination against boys, and that would certainly be something I’d mention if I made a list of unfair, sexist discrimination against males.
However, I don’t agree that it’s the same thing I was talking about in #22. I’ve simply never heard anyone say “men drivers!” with expasteration the way I’ve heard sexist people use the phrase “women drivers!”
I certainly believe that higher insurance premiums for teenage boys is a case of unfair discrimination against boys
Why? They wreck more cars.
Celine:
Higher insurance rates for men aren’t necessarily inconsistent with women being worse drivers in general. It could be that a small minority of overly aggressive male drivers cause a disproportionate percentage of serious accidents, whereas women tend to make more frequent but less serious mistakes that result only in annoyance or minor damage.
I have no idea whether that’s true, though.
…From here it looks like both boys and girls are trained to focus on “stuff”, just different stuff. Cars and guns vs. cosmetics and clothes. If women are more “people-oriented”, as some think (socialized or natural), then how come it is they who love to go shopping(supposedly) (and won’t let you walk on their rugs), while men go in for team sports and so on? Not that simple!
Not sure of any data on frequency of fender-benders vs. bad smashups for men vs. women. The other year a storefront in my town was pulverized when an old man tried to park inside it, but it could have just as well been an old woman. Or someone who was young but high on something. I only know I was glad not to have been in the path of that car.
But it’s all boys (or their parents) who get charged the extra premium, not just those who wreck cars.
But it’s all boys (or their parents) who get charged the extra premium, not just those who wreck cars.
Yeah. That’s the way insurance works. You pool risks into identifiable groups, and then you collect data and refine what group a particular person ought to be in. When they’re 16, the insurance company has only two pieces of data to go on: age and sex. As time passes and the boys create a track record, the insurance company is able to more fairly assess each individual driver’s record.
I suppose that in the interest of egalitarianism, you could require teenage girls to pay more in order to subsidize the boys. If you’re going to do that, though, there’s no logical stopping point – everyone should pay the same rate, since it’s apparently unfair to make mathematical predictions (which reliably pan out) and charge bad drivers more.
Amp said: certainly believe that higher insurance premiums for teenage boys is a case of unfair discrimination against boys, and that would certainly be something I’d mention if I made a list of unfair, sexist discrimination against males.
Not to side track the thread, but why is it discrimination?
From various sites:
If young men are more likely than young women to be in, or cause accidents, why shouldn’t they pay more? Why is it discrimination? If both young men and women had accidents at equal rates, but young men were charged more than young women, that would be discrimination. But the statistics seem to say that young men are more likely to have accidents than young women. So I don’t see why having to pay more in insurance is discriminatory.
Why do you think it is discrimination?
the motor vehicle death rate for male occupants age 16 to 19 was nearly twice that of their female counterparts
It’s female privilege! Women get to drive more in the knowledge that they are safe(r). Oppressors.
The real question is this.
There are identifiable statistical patterns in the world. Properly evaluating and analyzing those patterns, among other benefits, lets us rationally allocate costs to the generators of those costs.
Is acting rationally in this fashion morally permissible?
Sheeesh, Amp. Go through and create a thoughtful list like this and all people can do is quibble over statistics on teenage male drivers?
Sounds like a winner to me. After all, even when I was just getting my driver’s licence, my friends were amazed at how low my insurance rates were. But seeing as how I’ve now gone over 15 years without a single at-fault accident (And only one speeding ticket. Only one not-at-fault accident, and that was a result of a hit-and-run DUI going through a red light.), perhaps my insurance agents were prescient.
Good list, dude. And the quibbler you mentioned over on that other blog you mentioned? Blah to him.
Robert and mousehounde: it’s discrimination because, while the insurance companies are perfectly happy to charge everyone in the 25-and-under class higher rates based on statistics, they DO NOT in fact make any adjustments to the premiums based on the individual’s driving record. I wouldn’t have any problem with them starting everyone out at the same high rate and then making adjustments down for those who don’t get into wrecks, but that’s not how it works. What they do is “profiling”, and it’s just as inexcusable for this as it is when a cop pulls someone over for DWB.
And y’know… if it were legal for them to do so, I flat guarantee you that they’d jack up the rates for young non-white drivers even further — and for non-white drivers in any age group over white ones — and justify it the same way.
Then call it something else, because I think that if a group wants to make itself miserable it’s wrong to take someone else to task for it. “Male Privilege” isn’t something that’s value-neutral, and I don’t think men are responsible for the way that I perceive women pressuring other women on the baby thing.
If the “Male Privilege Checklist” is a tool for getting men to think about things men create, and getting men to make changes in their behavior, I think #9 just doesn’t belong there.
FCH, male privilege is not about saying “men do it” or “it’s men’s fault.” It’s about the different way society treats men and women (and girls and boys, as well).
I agree that the term “male privilege” is problematic and subject to misreadings.
I agree with what you’re saying here completely. My only (I don’t know if you would call this a detraction since it’s sort of orthogonal to the point in some ways, but that’s probably the closest word I can come up with at the moment) would be to note that all too often, those percentages are used to silence the people on the short end of the percentage. This, of course, can work both ways. Nonetheless, I can’t even begin to count the number of times even recently that I’ve been told by people that because the number of men raped is so small compared to the number of women raped, rape of men is completely unimportant and even on several occasions that it *should not be discussed* (because it takes time and mental energy away from the issue of rape of women). Similarly, I’ve run into numerous statements that “real” men “know better” than to discuss issues of difficulty that they’ve run into in their lives because of their gender, because women get short shrift so much more often. I believe that this is not only a real problem for the issue of recognizing the damage that our society can do to men (as well as to women), but a real problem for the whole concept of equality.
What’s wrong with being ‘white-centric?’
If you are white and that is your experience, how can you help but be that way? For god’s sake, it doesn’t mean you are racist unless proof of non-racism is total denial of your own being.
Lists such as this are important in raising consciousness of one’s membership in a group.
They are bad to the extent that they deny individuality and reinforce the fascist idea that you only exist as a member of a group.
I have a hard time with this list…not because it doesn’t point out a lot of inequalities, but because many of the points are not “privileges”.
For instance (pulled at random):
29. I can be loud with no fear of being called a shrew. I can be aggressive with no fear of being called a bitch.
The point behind this one is valid: women have a harder time being aggressive or loud than men do. But is this a male _privilege_? I’d say No. It is a female disadvantage. Many of the other points are in the same vein. I’m sure I’ll be accused of nitpicking, but it was distracting while reading the list. Just because women have it harder in certain areas does not make it possible to turn that disadvantage on its head and call it a “privilege”.
Maybe it is just that the language is so prejudicial. I would have less of a hard time if it was phrased differently, like:
29. Aggression is often seen as a positive male trait.
I took the loud part out…but that’s because being loud isn’t rewarded for men either.
In general, I think the list is just way too long. Many of the points feel like they are “reaching”, and the list as a whole is lessened by their inclusion.
Privilege to me is the flipside of disadvantage. You see, if someone has to waste time dealing with idiots who call her a b*tch for being mad and you don’t have to, you have an advantage as you can spend that time and energy somewhere else.
It is perhaps petty to point this out, but this statement is simply not true. Indeed, it is perhaps contradictory on its face: by not sending any particular message, one is sending a message. But even that, I think, is not true. Every article of clothing a man (or woman) wears sends a message. Not everyone may get the message, or understand it in the same way, but the message is there nonetheless. Describe an outfit – any outfit – and anyone giving it thought can easily point out its message(s).
Perhaps this is better phrased “25. There are clothing options available to me that many people will perceive as value-neutral; it is possible for me to choose clothing with no regard for what message the world will perceive from my choice.”
Ampersand,
Like your writing. Your blog is always worth visiting.
Critics who complain that this list is petty seem to be misunderstanding its purpose.
(Ampersand, correct me if I’m wrong)
This is not a list of the top 40 issues feminists should be concerned about. If it were, then issues such as trafficking in women or honor killings would certainly be on it.
This is a list of the manner ways in which male privilege manifests itself in OUR society. To paraphrase Peggy McIntosh, in this list Ampersand is identifying some of the daily effects of male privilege in his life- emphasis on “daily” and “in his life.”
In modern America, it is not an effect of male privilege that men don’t have to worry about being forced into prostitution or murdered by their parents for having sex. American women don’t have to worry about these things either (generally speaking). Thus, these issues don’t belong on this list.
Noting that one does not have to suffer from some of the horrible things that happen in other countries is not relevant to exploring ways in which men (or white people) continue to experience privilege in OUR society. I am not saying that things that happen in other countries are not important- I’m simply saying they are not relevant for this exercise.
Couple of driving points: These days, anyway, you’re likely to hear more accounts of “road rage” than of “women drivers.” This doesn’t invalidate point #22 though it might create a couple of corollaries since “road rage” sounds less humiliating than “bad driver.” It’s also worth pointing out that most contemporary geriatric drivers came of age when women tended not to drive. Actuary tables for Boomers and subsequent generations may not look like current tables.
Another trivial point: Kos was born in El Salvador and came here as a refugee. I’m not sure about Aravosis. Still, if people imagine or assume they’re white then I suppose they’re still benefiting from white liberal male privilege.
Now a non-trivial point: FurryCatHurder objects that some male privileges are privileges by default, saying, for instance, that women tend to be much harder on other women about reproductive priorities than men are. The source of harassment is irrelevant since it’s still a privilege not to be subject to it, and in that sense it’s appropriate to include in your checklist.
His objection does raise the point that “the patriarchy” is a thoroughly co-ed institution so another privilege you might add might be that being a man means the burden of maintaining your privileges does not fall exclusively on you. (Anecdote: In the early 60’s, when I was a child, my sister bragged that she could be a school cafeteria lady and I couldn’t. My mom consoled me by saying that chefs were all men so I could be a chef instead… and added that chefs were always more important cooks than cafeteria ladies. Thus I became a beneficiary of male privilege thanks to my mother’s very-well-intentioned but oppressive-to-my-sister participation in the patriarchy.)
Oh yeah, about the pettiness thing. While there probably are breakdown points, it’s important to distinguish evidence from direct affront. For instance I happen to think the “you poke it, you own it” beer ad is more of an affront to men than women — it taunts cubicle-class men’s powerlessness more than it asserts they can meaningfully “own” women by penetrating them. However, even taunting references are evidence that claims of ownership still have resonance and that’s not a petty issue at all.
It’s a good food-for-thought list, Ampersand. Thanks.
figleaf
This also has a flipside, which I call the “But what about MEN?” phenomenon; it happens a lot onfeminist blogs. Let’s say that a discussion has been started specifically about rape issues as they apply to women. Almost invariably within the first 20 or so comments, someone will try to change the topic to either “but men get raped too” or “but what about men who are falsely accused of rape?” — and no amount of saying, “Yes, that happens, but it’s not what this discussion is about,” will get them to return to the topic.
It doesn’t just happen with rape discussions, either. No matter what the topic, if the discussion starts out being about women and women’s issues, pretty soon someone is going to make a “But what about MEN?” comment and try to hijack it. It’s one of those things that, once you notice it happening in the first place, quickly becomes glaringly obvious.
I suppose it could be argued that this is also an aspect of male privilege — the expectation that any substantive discussion of social issues will focus on men rather than women, even if the number of men actually affected by that issue is vanishingly small.
Thanks very much for posting this, Barry.
I really never understood why people are so hung up on “petty” vs “important”. Here’s my version of it:
Patient: Doctor, I’ve broken my arm.
Doctor: Big whoop. The person before you broke her spine. You have no right to complain about a pitiful little arm break. You can still walk.
Patient: But, but the bone is sticking out at the elbow.
Doctor: Out of my sight, whiner!
“One of the most important – perhaps the most important – trait of a male-privileged society is that in such a society, boys and men are the norm, and male lives are the default. This is visible in many seemingly harmless things, such as the language that we use (chairman, mailman, “he” and “man” as generics, etc), the overwhelming predominance of male characters in children’s entertainment, and the expectation that women take on husband’s last names.”
Wow. I can’t even begin to imagine how those things qualify as the “most important” traits of a chauvinist society. Frankly all of those seem like such minor issues that if that was really the extent of women’s problems in america I think feminism could securely call it a day. Which of course is part of the problem. You see those as important issues. To me they are so laughably minor as to be not even worth the time discussing.
The problem for feminists on issues like this is that whether they are right or wrong they lose. If they are wrong they lose because they have devoted energy to trivial matters (and despite what you think yes there is a finite amopunt of time anyone and everyone has to devote to these issues). If they are right they still lose because they come off as, frankly, nutters. If somebody told me to my face that the use of “he” as a generic was the most important thing to change I’d be hard pressed not to laugh at them.
It’s a no win situation for you, so your best option by far is simply to refuse to get sucked into these things.
Raznor:
“I really never understood why people are so hung up on “petty” vs “important”.”
It’s called triage. If you have one doctor who gets treated first? The person with the broken arm or the spine injury?
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Brandon, you suggest-
Heard some interesting observations from a college professor friend which seem to confirm this pattern. He’s been teaching math and computer science for about thirty years, and says that in his classes, it seems like the top one or two students have nearly always been male, but then the next dozen or so best students are females.
So in terms of classroom success rather than car accidents, students at either extreme of excellent or very poor perfomance have tended to be male, while the females have been more tightly distributed along a narrower and taller bell curve, and less likely to have stood out. (You wouldn’t believe how he’s kicking himself for throwing out old gradebooks that could have provided data for checking the accuracy of this observation…)
But Robert reminds us that having that data doesn’t let us off the hook:
This is a very very interesting question. I’ll venture the beginnings of exploring it by noting that rational analysis is just the quantification of observation and instinct. We need some basis for making decisions and shaping interactions in the lived world, though unexamined instinct can of course descend into acting on blind prejudice.
Maybe one of the biggest dangers in depending on “reason” is thinking that just because we can count something, it is therefore an absolute truth that may be depended on without fear of bias. It’s entirely possible that my professor friend has unconsciously given more help to male students who perform well than to female students at the same level. And of course, there are questions of who gathers and controls the data, who decides its accuracy and applicability, what decisions are suggested by statistical findings, etc.
(There’s my two cents, or two bits, in the kitty. It seems like it’s ok to leave long comments here, but please do let me know if I’ve violated formatiquette.)
So, I intend for this comment to be a friendly critique of your male privilege checklist, though it also applies to the non-trans privilege checklist (in fact, even the name of the non-trans privilege checklist). It isn’t particularly related to any of your categories, so I thought I’d post it here; it’s the closest fit.
My beef is: your male privilege doesn’t really say all that much about being male–mostly, it’s statements about not being female:
All of these “not”‘s and “never”‘s are there to indicate: you do not have the experience that women have. To the extent that this list serves to alert people to the continued prevalence of sexism, this is fine. But to the extent that this list is really about trying to get men to see not only the oppression of women, but also their own privilege and the ways their experience is shaped by misogyny, the ways that they benefit from sexism, the list is unsuccessful. 30, for example, is not so much a statement about men’s experience, but a statement about women’s experience with a “not” on the front. Since the concept of privilege is really about trying to get the beneficiaries of oppression to see that they are beneficiaries, to be conscious of the ways their own lives are shaped by oppression, this list is problematic. One might say, instead of 30 (with some extra elaborations): “I expect to be treated with respect even if I am loud, aggressive, or dominant within a conversation. I expect few serious consequences from being aggressive or interrupting others. In general, I feel allowed or encouraged to take up enough space to assert my needs/viewpoint within a conversation.”
This general pattern is true of many, if not most, of the items on the list, though far from all. 27 and 29, for example, are “positive” statements–statements that are actually framed from a privilege-POV.
Also, statements like “am likely to” “likely, I was”, etc aren’t really “I” statements for a privileged person unless they are projective (e.g. in the future–things one might actually be guessing about). They imply that even men who do *not* have this privilege, or did *not* have this experience, still need to say “yes, I did.” It certainly goes against the grain of many of your less-clued-in commentors, but to say “As a child, chances are I was encouraged to be more active and outgoing than my sisters” asks for men to say “well, even if I wasn’t treated this way, I still got this privilege, somehow,” rather than to say “well, even if I don’t remember it, I had this privilege.” or “well, actually, my parents left me at home alone most of the time, but my sister was given many social opportunities, so I *don’t* have that piece, even though I have other pieces of male privilege that are still just as significant.” It comes with understanding that one does not *have* to fit neatly into a category in order to get the privileges ascribed therein–e.g. my partner is a POC who passes as white, and has a lot of white privilege, but not all of it.
The lists, to the best of my knowledge, aren’t meant to include everyone in a certain class as experiencing everything in a list. It’s a list of things you’re more likely to experience, not a list of things everyone in the class will no doubt have experienced at one time or another. And it looked like most people complained about the trans list with “..but I have that happen, too!” The difference, I think, is how often the non privileged group has the crappy stuff happen on the list when compared to their opposites.
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“the endless social pressure to put on unwanted makeup or heels or to cover up or to expose can, for some women, build up into significant sources of stress and distress. Do these issues bother everybody? No. But they harm some people, and are therefore worth discussing.”
To expand on this, it is also a source of great economic disparity for working-class women, who are generally forced to spend much more on cosmetics than their male colleagues if they want to keep working at all, yet cosmetics themselves are a significant expense that limits their ability to save and invest. Even right-wing capitalists should be concerned about this, because it undermines the notion that their system can provide for everyone’s needs on a strictly meritocratic basis, let alone with any measure of compassion or in a way that upholds political stability.
BTW, http://ec.gayalliance.org/articles/000762.shtml is broken (specifically, ec.gayalliance.org cannot be reached).