There exist degrees of what might be called “privilege”. A not so controversial example would be the varying degrees of privilege associated with various levels of airline frequent flyer status. Regarding “male privilege”, context can affect how much it actually affects a given person or matters in a given situation.
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But you call that status. There are different degrees of status (and it’s not seen as a particularly loaded term, especially when it’s “earned” by flying). An airline would be laughed at if they called their tiers “gold privilege”, “platinum privilege” etc.
So why the choice of the word privilege (rather than say status) as definitional in the context of male privilege? My guess is that whichever academics or authors first wrote about this concept wanted to choose a bold, controversial term to get attention.
Throughout history, we have tried reconciling the results in our lives. Many tend to take credit for their successes, and cast blame elsewhere for their failures. The truth, of course, often lies somewhere in between – we are at least partly, if not wholly, responsible for our results, be they good or bad or middling.
My initial reaction to a group being castigated as “privileged” is to wonder whether this is at least partly a projection of the failures of the complainants: “I failed because I’m not privileged.”
To that end, it can stunt personal growth, as the focus is taken away from analyzing and improving one’s own actions/results, and tossed like a very large blanket onto a very large group of people mostly unknown to the accuser.
The truth is, none of us will ever know all the factors that go into our successes and failures. But I don’t think we help ourselves improve by blaming others for our negative results. Conversely, we should be aware that while we may be captaining our own ship, we do not control the wind or the waves.
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I think every term that progressives come up with or use (this one came from academia), ends up being a term that many will take offense at. I can’t say much more at the risk of getting political, but I think that there are a lot of concepts that originally were pretty simple and got deliberately twisted to seem much worse than they were. (And to be fair I think some of this also happened, that young people in particular, sometimes seem to me, a die-hard knee-jerk liberal to have gone off the deep end!)
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Except I made it crystal clear that I was ready to pull the trigger, had already been test driving, did my research, etc… I had my check book with me (it was back in the day).
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In that case, the salesperson was a chauvinistic jerk.
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Possibly. But I can just as easily see it being chosen because it’s the obvious contrast word to underprivileged. The term underprivileged has been used without controversy for decades as in when talking about “underprivileged youth.”
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The formal US government term (with legal meaning) is “disadvantaged youth”. I’m not so convinced that “underprivileged youth” isn’t a relatively recent term that has tended to displace the original descriptor (not least because it doesn’t have a legal definition so can be applied as widely as someone chooses):
Definition: disadvantaged youth from 42 USC § 12511(13) | LII / Legal Information Institute.
Here is how I would describe male privilege. (And the concept should be discrete from the idea of “privilege” meaning wealthy or educated etc)
You walk on to an airplane at the start of a cross-country flight. You glance in the cockpit and see a Black female captain. You are unable to stop an internal thought of “Oh, gee, well I guess all pilots have to pass tests and be evaluated, I’m sure it’s fine.”
If the pilot had been a white male, you would have just kept boarding and not even paid much attention to him. Because for decades, all you saw were white male pilots. They are the default in your mind, you assume they are qualified.
A second scenario - you come into the ER and the doctor is a Black woman. Unconsciously your first thought is, “I wonder where she went to med school?” If a white male doc had attended you, you’d just proceed with the exam and not given any thought to his med school, undergrad school. Even if he might have had a father who was a doctor and arranged lots of shadowing, or MCAT prep etc. You’d automatically assume the white male doc was there on his own merits. Because white males have been the default.
Male privilege is not just assuming that women or POC are DEI hires, it’s the assumption that (white) men are the default in most positions of power or influence.
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Now I feel the opposite - I assume professionals who are not White male likely worked harder to achieve their position and are smarter and more dedicated. I’d like to believe that is not the case as has been through much of my life, but am dubious.
When seeing a new doctor, I always look up where they went to school. My current PCP happens to be a Black female, but I was mostly interested that she got her medical degree at U of Illinois, did her residency at U of Washington, and fellowship at Stanford.
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Lol, I was recently on a bush plane in Botswana and was glad to see that the pilot was young and seemingly fit (no co-pilot). Gender and licensing took a back seat to whether the pilot was at risk of a medical issue.
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I really like your post. Otherwise the concusion seems to follow that…
• When a disparity of outcomes disadvantages men (death rate, incarceration suicide etc.) it is because of the choices men make
• When a disparity of outcomes disadvantages women, it is also because of men.
And further……
• When a disparity of outcomes provides an advantage to women, it is because of the grit, intelligence, wisdom of women……
• But, when a disparity of outcomes provides an advantage to men, it is because of “privilege”.
Blaming others for negative results doesn’t help. Why cede your power and angecy to others?
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Hmmm, “underprivileged” has been in use since at least 1896.
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I found this to be an interesting read in the context of this thread: Detailed Timeline - National Women's History Alliance
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I see what you’re saying and don’t disagree, but I’d put it a little differently.
I’d say that I have a higher degree of privelege than someone who doesn’t have all of my unearned advantages:
Being born in the richest country on earth
Being male
Being 6’ tall and inherently slim
Being white
Being raised in an upper middle class household where education was valued.
There’s the line about the guy who was born on 3rd base and thought he hit a triple. I’m not that guy. I feel I won the genetic lottery.
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I think when discussions around privilege(be it gender or race) occur now what people don’t take into account is history and what has happened leading up to now. If you don’t think what rules or laws that were in place 30, 50, 80, 120 years ago doesn’t affect what is going on today then you are in denial. There are women on this board that couldn’t have a bank account. You can say well we fixed that now so women you should be fine now, but what happened in the past just doesn’t disappear.
And there are still tons of people around that have a bias on things that was built because of history. It doesn’t just go away overnight.
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I’ve been reluctant to weigh in because it is hard to articulate exactly how I view male privilege. To me, male privilege is that men aren’t disadvantaged because of their gender (although they may be for other reasons). They don’t face additional barriers and petty indignities just because they are men.
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I think there’s a difference with respect to thinking of things on an individual basis or on a collective basis.
Individually, I totally agree with you with respect to not focusing on one’s disadvantages (earned or unearned) that one needs to overcome. Focus on the positive and focus on what steps one can do. Nobody is interested in promoting a victim mentality which ends up being one of the worst possible outcomes for someone with unearned disadvantages.
That said, I think it is vitally important for organizations and people in a position of power (whether power to vote, change company policy, lobby others) to be aware of the collective unearned disadvantages that exist. The goal is to make sure that nobody has unearned disadvantages. To have that happen, society needs to be aware of what those unearned disadvantages are to figure out ways to eliminate them.
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This is scary. Society needs to remove unearned advantages? So no attractive people and everyone is under 6’? No thanks.
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Thats not what he said.
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