I think, regardless of the vocabulary we use to convey difficult, abstract concepts …the point is we’re asking you to have genuine curiosity to understand and empathize with women’s experiences that are different from what you can expect as a man/assume as automatic as a man…without having the urge to shut the conversation down, imply that those experiences are irrelevant to you, not of interest and maybe not true because you didn’t have to experience them.
Precise words understood the same way by the people in the conversation is important.
But if somebody is wanting to sidetrack a conversation it’s easy to divert attention away from the the core point by nit-picking over the lexicon.
I believe everyone here has good intentions, but as someone who has not read the literature, it wasn’t clear to me that there were implications to the terminology beyond the logical joining of those two words.
Setting aside the complications of gender constructs and fluidity, my understanding is that she is correct. Male privilege is bestowed on males by nature of their being male. This doesn’t mean there aren’t burdens associated with being male, or that some will benefit more/less than others, or that other burdens/privileges based on other factors exist, or that other groups don’t have privileges. (Some refer to positive and negative privileges, but don’t know if that is standard.)
It is a rather obvious observation that males hold a privileged position in many aspects of society simply because they are male. Why such an obvious and undeniable proposition gets so much blowback from males is fascinating to me.
Now hopefully back to reading the thread, rather than participating.
In our family, I am the one who taught my daughter about the dangers she would face at college, most acutely during her first term, and the concrete steps she should take to minimize risks. Please don’t suggest again that violence towards women is something I don’t care about.
That’s not what I was doing at all. As background, I was doing modeling of various systems (physical, financial, behavioral) for most of my adult life before retirement. I have a lot of experience as to what goes into various models, so I was very surprised that this model only included immutable characteristics.
At this point, I will accept the definitions given.
But would you work toward a world in which your daughter and other young women have to think less and less about those dangers instead of accepting the status quo….in how you vote, who you vote for, how police in your area respond to rape victims, how you respond to demeaning talk toward and about women (especially, right now, women in the public eye that threaten the egos of powerful men). How the physical infrastructure of communities and workplaces are designed to work for women as well as men? I’m not saying that you, personally or any one person should or can take it on. Or take it all on. I’m just not finding many men who make it a priority since it’s not in their own faces every day. Change won’t take place if we just protect the immediate security of our immediate loved ones.
I will start the process. Please send me a link to a primer via PM about the most critical issues with regards to violence towards women. As with this topic, there might be things I think I understand, but don’t.
Thank you for caring and sticking with this, couldn’t have been fun. I got little sleep last night, turning in early tonight (and I’m not an academic in women’s studies, I admit) so won’t be able to dig up anything tonight, so bear with me. Maybe somebody else here will be happy to do that in the meantime…I got about three hours of sleep last night and not feeling very coherent!
I’m older than Kelsmom and agree that workplace environments were, for the most part, much worse than today. I worked with a few women a decade or so older than I was and they shared stories that made me even more determined to succeed, if only to spite my worst male bosses.
It’s to my regret and disappointment that my own daughter fails to acknowledge the work of those who went before her in another male dominated field. She has, sadly, become one of those who attributes her own success solely to her hard work and innate abilities, and not in any way to the assistance, mentoring, opportunities, and plain good luck that she’s had. She also does not believe that there’s any such thing as “privilege” due to gender, race, family education and/or finances. We’ve only touched on that subject once recently, very briefly. H and I now avoid anything that might remotely devolve into a political screed. So that’s one example of a female who denies male privilege. Given her father’s outlook, it’s even harder for us to understand.
If the topic does come up again, tell your daughter about my experience in high school typing class when we were working on our assignment to make a resume:
-the girls (only) in my class were trained that we needed to include height, weight, marital status and number of children. (Becauseyou know, at the time, that generally WAS relevant information to the hiring managers)
Oh, D has heard plenty of stories from me. She discounts them or seems to think I’ve exaggerated or doesn’t think they’ve been applicable for the last 15+ years. Her mindset about this is the same as her mindset about certain other things, often wrong but never in doubt.
You know, you never know what realizations she’ll come to in the future. Sometimes it just needs to come from someone other than mom. All this stuff you’ve been saying is still in her brain somewhere, and when anyone other than you brings it up, she might say, interesting, I hadn’t thought about that.
Our younger son used to be so positive about everything, he’s a far left Bernie bro, and he would immediately shut me off if I disputed anything he said. I finally hit my limit and told him that he was not a feminist like he thought he was, instantly shutting off conversation with his mother as soon as she didn’t agree with something. It really changed his attitude with that realization, and he is much more responsive to listening to me and not being so certain of himself. Amazing what a couple of years will do.
I find I learn better by doing both (learning on my own and getting pointers from those who know more than me). After all, isn’t that what we do regularly on CC, offer our hard-earned wisdom to high school students?
The salesman was assuming that you would not buy the vehicle without your spouse there. It’s pretty rare when a husband or a wife comes in, without the other, and pulls the trigger on a deal.
Men especially – they’ll come in, spend an hour with you, and then when it comes time to “pop the question” (would you like to buy it?), it’s “Oh, no, I need to show it to my wife.”
Never mind that they’ve been researching and talking about it for a month – she has to be there.
Circling back after a lot of discussion. I think you nailed most of the issue, Sherpa. After all of the discussion of the past few days, I’d add or expand on these points.
Language. The term male privilege stops some people short of actually looking at the concept.
Defensiveness. Some people’s self-worth is inextricably entwined with their accomplishments, and if anyone appears to even slightly discount those people’s accomplishments, they feel personally attacked. They cannot separate who they are from what they have done.
Fear. I think we see fear in so many arenas. Fear that X people are taking over, are pushing out others. If one sees life as a pie, then the idea of giving up any crumb of one’s share can be scary.
Declining ability to see from other perspectives. People are increasingly siloed with likeminded people on social media, etc., and fewer and fewer engage in reading good fiction, which is one of the absolute best ways (in my humble opinion) of being exposed to other people’s perspectives and experiences.
I think there is something interesting in the language which creates an adverse reaction to the word “privilege” (and it makes me wonder whether that term was originally selected to be deliberately controversial and provocative).
Defining it as “unearned advantage” is not how I would have used the term growing up, it actually was something you earned through good behavior (eg your parents letting you go to the mall with friends or to a sleepover), as opposed to being grounded for bad behavior.
“Advantage” seems a much less controversial term: we are all familiar with degrees of advantage, and it has a natural opposite on the scale, namely “disadvantage”.
On the other hand there’s “privilege” and (basically) nothing. You have it or you don’t. You can have multiple privileges, but degrees of privilege? Not really.
