Male and Female Privilege Lists
| July 3rd, 2008Robin Hanson, who I suspect of harboring mischievous1 motives, writes:
….it is really clear male privilege is stronger overall that female privilege in our society? It might be, but as with defense spending I’d like to see some sort of calculation. A little web search finds a male privilege checklist and a female privilege checklist. The next obvious step is to assign point values to such privileges, so we can add them up and compare totals.
The discussion in Robin’s comments has interesting bits, as does the discussion of Robin’s post at Marginal Revolution. (Or course, there are also a lot of painfully obvious, cliched and/or mindless comments, but that’s par for the course, isn’t it?) It’s kind of interesting to see this discussed on blogs where the comments sections aren’t firmly dominated by either feminists or anti-feminists.
* * *
The Male Privilege Checklist is something I now have mixed feelings about. It’s probably the single most widely-read thing I’ve ever written, or in this case, compiled. I’m awfully glad that so many people have found it helpful, including many leaders of classroom and college discussions.
But I’m not sure all of the thought behind the list makes sense.
1) In particular, the implicit definition of “privilege” used by the list is muddled, because I didn’t have a coherent definition of “privilege” in mind when I compiled the list. Instead, I used the word “privilege” as a lefty-speak way of saying “advantage.” But that’s a problem, because “privilege” is a political concept.
2) I’ve also pretty much despaired of critics ever reading the introductory remarks. In particular, this bit is nearly-universally ignored by critics:
More commonly, of course, critics (usually, but not exclusively, male) have pointed out men have disadvantages too - being drafted into the army, being expected to suppress emotions, and so on. These are indeed bad things - but I never claimed that life for men is all ice cream sundaes. [...]
Pointing out that men are privileged in no way denies that bad things happen to men. Being privileged does not mean men are given everything in life for free; being privileged does not mean that men do not work hard, do not suffer. In many cases - from a boy being bullied in school, to a soldier dying in war - the sexist society that maintains male privilege also does great harm to boys and men.
Despite this, the list is frequently taken as a statement that men don’t suffer, men don’t have legitimate complaints, etc etc.. That couldn’t be further from my view; I’ve always felt that many boys and men are severely injured by sexism, which is a major reason I was attracted to feminism in the first place.
3) It’s funny how often critics of the list assume I must be female, even though the list is clearly written from a male perspective. (In a possibly related development, men writing their counterpart “female privilege” lists virtually always write from an assumed female perspective.)
4) Why the hell did I call it a “checklist”? It really doesn’t make sense. Sigh.
5) The list is incredibly US-centric. The intro (that no one reads) acknowledges this, and I’m probably incapable of writing it any other way, but it’s still a problem with the list.
- In the sense of being playful, not in any negative sense. (back)
July 3rd, 2008 at 4:38 pm
I have many mischievous motives - any particular in mind? :)
This comment was written by Robin Hanson.Report this comment to the moderators
July 3rd, 2008 at 5:07 pm
Oh, but you did: “invisible systems conferring dominance on my group”. One of the many problems with your checklist is that it doesn’t actually identify any such systems. Rather it is, as you go on to say, a list of purported advantages.
I say “purported” because in some cases there is obvious gerrymandering. Item 7, for example. Why is it restricted to those “who can stay out of prison”? In others, there isn’t even an advantage. Item #14, unless you are claiming that elected representatives tend to favour their own sex, in which case you should state (and defend) that proposition directly. still others cut both ways. Item #12, women are less stigmatised if they choose to care for their children instead of pursuing a career.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
July 3rd, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Not by me. Here’s what I said in one of my early critiques of the list in response to that very passage:
By “privilege as feminists define it” I meant that it met your (actually McIntosh’s) definition “invisible systems which confer dominance”. I take it as read that the living dominate the dead, the free dominate the imprisoned and the enslaved, the visible dominate those who are rendered invisible, and those whose needs are serviced dominate those whose needs go unmet.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
July 3rd, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Wow, it’s almost like the definition I did have was “muddled” and not “coherent.”
Maybe you should spell out why you find this an unfair distinction to make.
It’s amazing how many white men don’t see any problem at all with having the government disproportionately comprised of white men. It must be because white men are so much more objective.
I agree, it cuts both ways.
” I never claimed that life for men is all ice cream sundaes. […]
Pointing out that men are privileged in no way denies that bad things happen to men. Being privileged does not mean men are given everything in life for free; being privileged does not mean that men do not work hard, do not suffer. In many cases - from a boy being bullied in school, to a soldier dying in war - the sexist society that maintains male privilege also does great harm to boys and men.”
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
July 3rd, 2008 at 6:19 pm
[...] saw this in the recent comments section. Ampersand wrote a post concerning Male and Female Privilege [...]
This comment was written by More On Checklists | Feminist Critics.Report this comment to the moderators
July 3rd, 2008 at 7:21 pm
It’s more like the definition you had was reasonable, then being unable to find any examples of actual male privilege, you made a list of something else instead.
It’s gerrymandering. You’re deliberately excluding the subset of men most likely to be raped in order to reach the conclusion that men are less likely to be raped.
Way to go with the ad homs circumstantial. Whether many white men do or don’t see any problem with it, or whether I do or don’t see a problem with it (your barb was surely aimed at me) has absolutely no bearing upon whether this represents a privilege for men, unless the “problem with it” is that it privileges men.
That’s your claim, and it is your burden to justify it. Specifically, in what way does the fact that the State governor is male, privilage Fred the male washroom attendant over his female counterpart Jane?
But your argument in making the list was never “It cuts both both ways”. Your argument was, and as far as I can see still is* that men are privileged over women and that women are not privileged over men, or if they are, they’re lesser, subordinate privileges, along the lines of having some “advantages”.
*If it isn’t, then you are out of line with almost all of the feminist you recognise as feminists.
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July 3rd, 2008 at 7:41 pm
You are more reasonable than I suspected; I take back any imputations I may have made against you.
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July 3rd, 2008 at 8:43 pm
Good Luck Ampersand it seems you have an MRA infestation. They like trolls refuse to acknowledge the ways in which many men refuse to see the privilege that comes with being born male. You can explain until you’re blue in the face about the different things that mitigate privilege but certain people will not allow the relations of power to be challenged in any way. It does not occur to them that owning privilege does not necessarily mean a loss of power.
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July 3rd, 2008 at 8:52 pm
Thanks, Renee, for providing a sterling example of the kind of ad hom that substitutes for rational argument in these kinds of discussion.
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July 3rd, 2008 at 8:56 pm
Daren’s not an infestation, he’s a feature.
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July 3rd, 2008 at 9:19 pm
Thanks, Renee, for providing a sterling example of the kind of ad hom that substitutes for rational argument in these kinds of discussion.
This comment was written by Renee.You are more than welcome sweetie, I am all about keeping it real. I notice that you didn’t deny the MRA label therefor you have been correctly identified and dismissed.
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July 3rd, 2008 at 9:24 pm
It’s “DarAn”, by the way. I don’t don’t want to make a fuss about it, especially since I’ve made similar mistakes with other people’s monikers, but it is my name you know.
I’ve been called much worse than “infestation”.
And in truth, I’m not as much a feature here as I used to be, precisely because of the abuse I get. When I do comment, it’s likely to be on relatively unsubstantial matters, or general (not gender) politics, where my broadly left-wing position is more in alignment with the consensus of Alas regulars.
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July 3rd, 2008 at 9:30 pm
And if I do deny it, that would divert the discussion away from the issue of male vs. female privilege and onto whether I am or am not an MRA.
Then I’d get accused of derailing the thread and making it about me.
Damned if I do. Damned if I don’t.
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July 3rd, 2008 at 10:35 pm
“It’s amazing how many white men don’t see any problem at all with having the government disproportionately comprised of white men. It must be because white men are so much more objective.”
I personally have no problem with it, I’m jaded enough with politics as it is, I doubt anyone would make issues better for my particular group (that is not white men, by the way). They’ll pander to the majority vote and to industries and the rich - cause I understand the bind they’re in. They don’t pander to industries, and the rich? They pack their bags and go elsewhere and bye bye economy. This was used to make the referendum of sovereinty of Quebec province uncertain - when many said they would go to Ontario, or the US, anywhere but staying in a sovereign Quebec. And the referendum that had almost 60% victory in surveys, went down to 49.4% on referendum night, and lost.
I also don’t see Daran as anti-feminist, and I’ve read many of his posts on FC. He goes out of his way NOT to blame feminism as a whole, and to blame instead a particular writer, a particular branch (ie radical feminism in some cases), or something else, like say, the media (bias in reporting deaths - that wasn’t blamed on feminism even remotely).
He might blame societal attitudes, generally not unique to feminism either. If feminism endorses a damaging attitude willfully, or even promotes it, then yes he’ll speak about that. But well, no movement on Earth is above criticism, or perfect.
Socialism was supposedly perfect, on paper maybe it was - but when it was field-tested, it failed miserably. Not due to the economic stand being necessarily bad either, but due to corruption for the most, and abuse of power.
No one is above making mistakes, and I’m not saying feminism is akin to socialism in it’s failures in practice either. I’m just saying even movements acclaimed to be perfect, are not.
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July 3rd, 2008 at 10:52 pm
Renee, I’m delighted that you’ve been posting on “Alas” lately, and I hope you keep it up. But on my threads on “Alas,” please don’t refer to people as “infestations.” Thanks. :-)
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July 4th, 2008 at 12:11 am
Thank goodness you’re here to tell us all what I was really thinking years before you ever encountered me. Truly, yours is the superior intellect, Khan.
Contrary to what you just claimed, I wrote the list sincerely. (Nor did I have trouble thinking of things to put on the list, since I was cribbing from Peggy McIntosh’s already existing list!) But my thinking was muddled.
Specifically, my list had the problem of talking about things from the point of view of specific, individual people’s experiences. But a lot of the reading I’ve done — particularly Allan Johnson’s book — has convinced me that it makes the most sense to think of privileges as accruing to classes of people, not individuals. But the list doesn’t make much sense from that perspective.
So the list really isn’t “examples of privilege.” It’s more like a list of “advantages that many men experience due to being on the male side of the gender class system.”
I’m still not seeing what your objection is.
“Gerrymandering” is warping the shape of a voting district in an extremely unnatural, un-intuitive manner in order to control the outcome of the election.
I don’t think my belief that the position of women in ordinary, non-prison society is a matter of interest is unnatural or un-intuitive. I think it’s actually quite ordinary to think that what’s going on in regular, non-prison society is a matter of concern.
If my overall position was “so therefore, we don’t need to give a fuck about what happens to prisoners,” then you’d have a point. But that’s not my belief at all.
Just to clarify, do you see a problem with it?
The better question is, in what way does that the overwhelming majority of governors, senators, secretaries of states, Presidents, congressmen, etc., advantage Fred and other men, or disadvantage Jane and other women?
First of all, it’s helpful to Fred and others because it provides a model of society in which men are in charge. It helps Fred’s son aspire to being in politics someday, and having that aspiration seem more plausible.
It also helps because “men’s issues” will, by and large, seem more central and important than “women’s issues.” There will have to be a special “violence against women” act for crimes that happen primarily to women; crimes that are primarily against men don’t require special legislation, because those crimes are just called “crime.” And no one talks about cutting funding to them.
It helps because Jane is much more likely to wind up with primary responsibility for childcare than Fred, and governments with large numbers of women in top positions tend to provide more help to parents, and particularly to caretakers. (Sorry, I don’t have a cite handy.)
It helps because Jane is more likely than Fred to wind up caring for aging relatives, and see above re: helping caretakers.
There are other ways it helps — but there are also, very probably, ways we don’t even see. When the AIDS crisis hit the USA, what little attention was given to it, during its early stages, only happened because there happened to be a couple of key congressional staffers who were openly gay, and who pushed the problem. But most of government was prepared, even eager, to ignore a plague in the gay community. What if there had been a bunch of openly gay people in powerful positions throughout government? History might have been different.
Of course, you might say that it would have made no difference, and that there’s no evidence that who is in government matters. But how can you know that, unless we have a government that genuinely represents groups close to proportionately?
* * *
As for “my position”: My position is that men as a class are privileged, and women as a class are oppressed, within the gender system.
This means that, as a whole, the system is generally going to push men to be in charge, and women to be dependent caretakers. It will push men to be more violent, and women to be more willing to subsume their interests to that of their spouse or family.
This doesn’t mean that sexism doesn’t screw over men in some circumstances and assist women in some circumstances, however. And, of course, the picture becomes a lot more complex once we consider how gender interacts with race, class, and other systems of oppression.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
July 4th, 2008 at 1:52 am
And in truth, I’m not as much a feature here as I used to be, precisely because of the abuse I get.
FWIW, I read the comment as being a joke off of the old “that’s not a bug, it’s a feature” line in programming. And you are a feature, not a bug, because whatever your beliefs you are willing to think about them, think about what other people say, and make responsive arguments. Hence, you are not, IMHO, a troll or infestation. I think you’re wrong on this particular issue, but not destructive or uninterested in having a conversation.
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July 4th, 2008 at 3:41 am
And if I do deny it, that would divert the discussion away from the issue of male vs. female privilege and onto whether I am or am not an MRA.
My point is this, you are arguing from a particular perspective and so you might as well admit your biases. It is dishonest not to do so. I have yet to ever meet an MRA who will ever agree that men have any privileges. Its always the same argument over and over again. I do have a question for you…why are MRA’s so threatened that they cannot admit to any form of male privilege and yet it so obvious that we do not live in a society that is based on equality?
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July 4th, 2008 at 4:42 am
Of course, some characteristic ways that men or women are treated may be advantages in some situations and disadvantages in others. For example, women tend to be less noticible to authority figures. This is nice in some situations (I am almost never stopped at airport security screenings and rarely have to show my ID when going into supposedly secure buildings) but not so good in others (i.e. it makes it more difficult to get the credit for accomplishments.) So…is the greater visibility of men in this society a male privilege or is the presumption of trustworthiness a female privilege?
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July 4th, 2008 at 5:44 am
So…is the greater visibility of men in this society a male privilege or is the presumption of trustworthiness a female privilege?
In this case it is not as simple as visibility. To be clear you are referring to positions of power.
This comment was written by Renee.Report this comment to the moderators
July 4th, 2008 at 6:11 am
Brief diversion, then I have to decide how to celebrate kicking King George’s butt. No, not the current King George (shrub), but the other one, 232 years ago.
It is NOT NOT NOT a crime to advocate for “Men’s Rights”. That’s actually supposed to be one of feminism’s objectives — any feminism that doesn’t liberate men from the straitjacket of gender conformity and the rigid rules the patriarchy applies to men is NOT feminist.
But, yeah, Daran is a troll.
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July 4th, 2008 at 9:15 am
I think many things factor into it. The fact that Black women were most commonly stopped in some airports by customs and security forces than women of other races means at least that whatever privilege of “trustworthyness” that gender would have provided them isn’t there at all. But then if people are being profiled as potential drug mules (which I think was the case in some cases where civil rights lawsuits were filed), then maybe women particularly women of color would be more scrutinized and stopped, due to racial and gender profiling. One reason why it’s problematic to separate out gender privilege as something separate because everything is so intertwined.
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July 4th, 2008 at 9:50 am
Male privilege does exist, but so does female privilege. And I may be biased there, but I wouldn’t want male privileges even if I was guaranteed all 46 of them, not worth it to me - and I did have a chance to get them (at least some of them). From my perspective, I’d rather be female, even if I was oppressed, than male, even if I was privileged - because it’s who I am.
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July 4th, 2008 at 10:04 am
“The fact that Black women were most commonly stopped in some airports by customs and security forces than women of other races means at least that whatever privilege of “trustworthyness” that gender would have provided them isn’t there at all.”
It means black women were treated as badly as white men. That which supposedly means gender is not a privilege, or that race makes the intersection worse? Black men are even more profiled than black women, as far as I know.
Really, the privileges of men and women are in different spheres, different areas. Wether one values them more or less is a question of perspective.
I see little to no value in male privilege in my case, and a lot of value in female ones, if not all of them. And I’m speaking as someone who is seen, understood, and treated as female - and who has had the experience of being treated as somewhat male, before.
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July 4th, 2008 at 11:13 am
It is NOT NOT NOT a crime to advocate for “Men’s Rights”. That’s actually supposed to be one of feminism’s objectives — any feminism that doesn’t liberate men from the straitjacket of gender conformity and the rigid rules the patriarchy applies to men is NOT feminist.
The problem is not advocating that men face certain disadvantages in society. That simply cannot be denied, whether it is teaching boys not to cry and have a stiff upper lip or the assault of a boy by a female teacher not being taken seriously, none of these factors eliminate male privilege. To fully examine gender both privilege and factors that mitigate privilege must be acknowledged.
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July 4th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Disclaimer at head: for what it’s worth (and as I’ll go on to state, I think that’s not as much as some people think) my moniker’s not a good indicator of my gender; I’m a woman. But this
I agree with absolutely. And I’d like to add that in many cases it’s men who are the authors of men’s suffering under patriarchy, and in many cases it’s women who are the authors of other women’s suffering. Any feminism that doesn’t mean all feminists, male and female, beginning and continuing by taking a good hard look at the ways in which they are actively contributing to the problem is NOT feminist either. MRAs could be a force for great good if they were actively engaging in how to develop conceptions of being male that didn’t lead to the harms they talked about, and where violence and emotional detatchment and endless status tussling weren’t sine qua nons for masculinity.
I also think that this may be a problem with talking about matters in terms of class man and class woman. The fact is that there’s a strong chance that although the successful businessman or male politician is in a better position than the struggling single mother, he’s still living an impoverished life because of the limits gender imposes even on what we expect for ourselves, on our capacity to imagine goods. The good lives we could build for people in this society wouldn’t necessarily look like either of those things.
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July 4th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
I’m curious. Is it more racist to target the black women at the airports, or to ignore the intel on the drug smuggling operations and let the drugs into the country that will then devastate the black community?
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July 4th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Well, I think Prohibition tends to do more harm then good, and that putting those women in jail tends to do more harm than whatever small amount of drugs it
This comment was written by hf.delayskeeps out. But I also do not believe the implied assertion about intel. See “Driving While Non-White in Missouri: Actual Measured Facts” and the kicker at the end.Report this comment to the moderators
July 4th, 2008 at 9:35 pm
What do the two have to do with one another? How does racially profiling Black women at airports keep drug smuggling from devastating the Black community?
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July 5th, 2008 at 6:34 am
The presumption is that women of color are the ones hauling said drugs.
If that’s a statistically valid factoid, I have no problem with it and it should reduce that channel. However, racial profiling on such a thing is subject to changing which group is engaging in transport, so it’s generally pointless.
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July 5th, 2008 at 10:15 am
If that’s a statistically valid factoid, I have no problem with it and it should reduce that channel. However, racial profiling on such a thing is subject to changing which group is engaging in transport, so it’s generally pointless.
Has anyone bothered to think that imprisoning these drug mules actually does nothing to stop drug trafficking in the first place. Women that are drug mules either have been tricked into it, or are in an economically vulnerable place to begin with. Want to stop the drug trade, stop imprisoning people and start treating the sickness.
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July 5th, 2008 at 10:30 am
Oh, now you’ve gone and done it, being all reasonable and rational.
So, which sickness are you talking about? Excessive Puritanicalism? Escapism? Overworked Americans? Sinfulness? Government expansionism?
Get back to me on that one and we’ll start working on it tomorrow ;)
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July 5th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Interesting discussion with alot of important points being raised, albeit with some sharp exchanges ocurring.
I think the fundamental underlying reality is that you cannot partially construct or deconstruct a gender system. Such systems are, by definition, closed. The roles they ordain and maintain are synergistic and interdependent. You cannot successfully introduce change to a part without transforming the whole.
Feminist theory recognizes this as a general principle but has achieved neither consensus nor synthesis on how to apply this insight. This shouldn’t be surprizing since Feminism historically has been defined as the advocacy of the rights and interests of women. It could hardly be otherwise since Feminism emerged at a time when women were disenfranchised and had little to no legal status separate from their fathers or husbands. It would be a fantastic presumption to expect that women engaged in a struggle for full personhood should divide their energies equally between the advocacy of their own rights and the liberation of men from the warrior/drone paradigm, particularly when so few men seemed interested in such liberation.
Never the less, it’s impossible to envision a society in which women are freed from the strictures of sexism while the condition of men remains essentially unchanged. I think the experience of three decades since the re-emergence of Feminism as a major socio-political force amply illustrates that, by itself, Feminist advocacy will not necessarily lead to a general re-ordering of gender roles rather than to a limited re-ordering of privilege.
I have no simple solution for this paradox. I am of the opinion though, that the uncritical application of paradigms of class exploitation, borrowed from radical political economic theories, has hampered the developement of any possible solution. What has been often overlooked in the enthusiatic embrace of these tropes for their apparent analytical clarity and organizational utility is that the theoretical systems which they are drawn from base themselves on the concept of class war leading to an apocalyptic show down. If the logic of these tropes is pursued consistently, the result isn’t a deconstruction of existing gender roles but their reification into hostile camps along the paradigm of warfare.
It comes down to whether or not you believe men as well as women have something to gain from the advance of Feminist ideas. If you don’t believe so, then the concerns I raised above won’t matter. If you take the affirmative view, we have a lot of work to do and no has yet drawn up a blueprint.
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July 6th, 2008 at 1:26 am
I don’t agree. The history of the development of Western society since the dark ages has been one of incremental change. Revolutions rarely come out well.
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July 6th, 2008 at 2:10 am
Renee:
You are misunderstanding the argument.
Feminists assert the existence of a social phenomenon called “privilege”, with certain properties. One of the claimed properties is that it is one-sided: Men are privileged over women; women are not privileged over men. It is therefore the feminist’s burden, first to explain exactly what they mean by privilege, and second to show that it has the properties they claim it does.
Thus you might start by offering incidents - essentially anecdotes purporting to show a man’s privilege over a women. This invites the skeptic to respond with counter-incidents, such as your boy-abused-by-his-teacher. The counter-incident is not posited as “eliminating male privilege”. The counter-incident is offered to demonstrate the insufficiency of the feminist’s incidents to show one-sided privilege.
You could raise your game, by asserting advantages enjoyed by men over women. That, essentially was what Ampersand’s checklist was about. But that invites the same kind of response. If I can show a similar list of advantages that women get, then your list doesn’t show the kind of one-sided privilege you claim it does.
Now suppose you set the bar even higher, by arguing systems which favour men, such as the system of gender norms which tend to exclude women from positions of institutional power. I can point out other systems which favour women, such as the system of gender norms which tends to send men to their graves.
At this point, you’ve run out of rational arguments, and really have no response but to insult me or call me a troll.
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July 6th, 2008 at 2:47 am
Dianne:
O RLY?
So how come the murdered women of Cuidad Juárez get so much attention, while the overwhelming majority of those killed in the wave of violence that has swept that town are completely ignored. (See footnotes 8 and 9 of this report.)
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July 6th, 2008 at 3:10 am
This is Bulverism.
It’s also a false dichotomy. “male privilege” and “a society that is based on equality” are not the only possibilities here. I would say that we live in a society which advantages men over women in some ways and circumstances, and which advantages women over men in other ways and circumstances.
I don’t see any reason why I should explain the behaviour of MRA’s solely on the basis of a label you pinned on me. Do you feel obliged to explain why feminists are so threatened that they cannot admit to any form of female privilege?
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July 6th, 2008 at 5:58 am
[...] Ampersand: Just to clarify, do you see a problem with [having the government disproportionately comprised of white men]? [...]
This comment was written by Male Privilege, Victim Invisibility, and the Predominance of Men in Government. | Feminist Critics.Report this comment to the moderators
July 6th, 2008 at 7:04 am
Ampersand:
Then
Well you did ask. But rather than speculate on your motives, I’ll stick to what calling it a “checklist” does, what it’s rhetorical effect is.
It personalise it. It invites the reader to examine each item to see if it applies to them.
OK, I will speculate on your motives: Presumably your intent was that male readers would see how many of the privileges did in fact apply to them, and would thus be convinced of their gender-privilege.
Unfortunately it backfired, because many of your readers can see that many of the privileges don’t apply to them. Where’s the privilege in being able to negotiate a better deal on a car purchase, if you can’t afford to buy a car at any price?
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July 6th, 2008 at 10:07 am
No, it’s not. Bulverism has a specific form, in which one goes from “you have a motive for believing X” to “therefore X is wrong.” I don’t think she has claimed that you are wrong because you have a motive for your beliefs; therefore what she said was not Bulverism.
1. I note, with no surprise, that you are objecting to anyone paying attention to women who have been victimized. Typical.
2. Dianne did say “tend to be,” a phrasing which implies that her claim is true much of the time, but not all of the time. Exceptions do not disprove general patterns.
3. The report you linked to gives several reasons for the difference in attention:
In other words, the high murder rate of men in Ciudad Juárez is caused by the high murder rate of men all along Mexico’s northern border, whereas the high murder rate of women in Ciudad Juárez is something particular to the situation in Ciudad Juárez.
I’m not sure if I agree with all of that — I don’t really know enough about the situation — but it’s certainly something that a reasonable person could believe.
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July 6th, 2008 at 10:32 am
I don’t agree. The history of the development of Western society since the dark ages has been one of incremental change. Revolutions rarely come out well.
Not exactly sure why you think what I said implies revolution. It can be interpreted that way of course but not necessarily. The principle is fairly straight forward. If you increase the freedom of action of a group or individual you naturally decrease the power of other groups or individuals to limit that freedom of action . When women became fully recognized in law as autonomous individuals, the liquidation of the role of men as their legal guardians and masters was a natural and necessary consequence.
It may be that you and I attach differing meanings to the term “revolution”. Some limit it strictly to a relatively brief period of revolt leading to an abrupt overthrow of the existing political order. Others take a more expansive view wherein such upheavals simply punctuate a more generalized social process that can span generations.
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July 6th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Yes it is.
That’s not what Bulverism is. According to Lewis, “The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly.”
In the words of Bulver himself (surely a greater authority, even than Lewis) “[R]efutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume your opponent is wrong, and then explain his error… [Do not a]ttempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right”
Nothing there about motive. The elements are 1. Assume without discussion that he is wrong. 2. Redirect attention from this, the only real issue, onto whatever might explain why he is wrong, (my alleged bias, for example arising from my alleged status as an MRA). That is exactly what Renee did.
It’s true that in many of Lewis’ examples, the purported explanation was the person’s alleged motive, but it’s not part of his definition.
No I’m not. This is a strawman as well as an ad hom. I’m objecting to the erasure of male victimisation. There is a huge difference.
I don’t agree that her phrasing implies merely that her claim was true “much of the time”. A tossed coin will come up heads much of the time, that doesn’t imply a tendency towards heads. Rather, she was asserting a generality.
And it’s a generality I dispute. In turn I offer a counter-generality, that adult male victims tend to be overlooked in favour of women and children. My references were intended to be examples of my counter-generality, not merely counter-examples to her generality.
I contend that the existence of a counter-generality occupying a significant portion of the space over which the alleged generality operates does undermine the generality in a way that mere counter-examples do not.
Um, no it isn’t. The murder of men in Juárez is a part of the wider problem of the murder of men all along the border, but it is not caused by it.
Well that’s probably true. On the other hand the explosion of murder of women in Juárez is unlikely to be unconnected to the explosion of murder of men there. The murder of women is also a part of the wider problem of murder in Juárez and along the Mexican border.
Look, Amp, I would have no problem with reports or essays or discussions focusing on the murder of women in Juárez, if those murders were contextualised, internally and externally, by being framed against the backdrop of the wider problem of murder. By ‘internally’ I mean that a few paragraphs near the beginning be spent summarising the wider problem. ‘Externally’ meaning that I would expect the document to be part of a corpus of work dealing with the wider issues.
So for example, I would expect an essay on, say, the extermination of homosexuals in the Holocaust to spend a paragraph or two summarising the broader background, including the fact that 6 million (or whatever the accepted figure is) Jews were murdered. I would not expect a search on the word holocaust to turn up page after page after page after page of texts about the murder of homosexuals, with only the scantest references to the six million Jews, if that. If this was what I discovered, then I would find it very problematic, wouldn’t you?
Assuming, of course, that I even knew about crime perpetrated against the Jews. And with that in mind, I will give the inestimable Dr. Jones his well deserved hat tip.
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July 6th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Renee writes:
Excellent point, thank you.
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July 6th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Daran, the Wiki link you provided gave the form of Bulverism as I described. But I’m not familiar with Bulverism, so perhaps you’re right and wikipedia is mistaken.
It’s not an “ad hom,” because I didn’t say “and therefore your argument is wrong” or the equivalent. That’s an essential part of ad hominem. Nor it is a strawman; it’s a straightforward example of you objecting to people talking about female victims, because you object to female victims being talked about unless male victims are given primacy.
You don’t act as if there’s any difference between objecting to female victims being talked about, and objecting to “erasure of male victims”; as far as I can tell from observation, you consider it “erasing male victims” whenever female victims are focused on.
It’s hardly just this one example, either. Earlier this thread you objected to me talking about the problem of men raping women, even though I “contextualised, internally and externally,” by referring to the prison rape problem within the list (internally) and in other posts on “Alas” (externally). So your claim that you wouldn’t object if it’s “contextualized internally and externally” isn’t true; you object to people focusing on harms to women, regardless of contextualization.
Similarly, on your own blog today, you explain that you don’t care about equality in government (and you don’t even bother responding to my examples of how representation in government matters, not just to the ruling class, but to people at many levels of society) because people in other countries are suffering so much worse. Here, you do cite a problem that happens to women (and men) as important — but only because you can use it to dismiss women’s problems.
Amanda Marcotte refers to this “logic” as “I’ll show you what real suffering is, bitch!,” and I think that’s apt. But let me also point out that when the subject is (say) options for love-shy men, I don’t see you dismissing men’s problems as too petty to be concerned about in a world in which people are being murdered in Mexico. Again, you demonstrate a double standard: talking about men’s problems is permissible, even admirable, whereas talking about women’s problems is objectionable.
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July 6th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Wow, Amp, I’m impressed. A two-page comment almost entirely about me. Perhaps you just wanted to get it out of the way so that you could then post a reply addressing my substantive points without being sidetracked. (That incidentally, is the reason I made the post you mentioned. I was drafting a reply to your comment #16 above, and I decided to spin off what was otherwise going to be a major side-track into a separate post. I still haven’t finished the original reply.)
But on the basis of the record so far, it looks like you’re more interested in talking about me, than you are about the substantive points I raise:
1. Do you agree that the coverage of the murders in Ciudad Juárez is problematic in the way I say it is?
2. Do you agree that this coverage is illustrative of a broader gender-dynamic that operates to erase male victimisation?
3. Do you agree that this dynamic operates systematically?
4. Do you agree that this dynamic operates within feminist and feminist-influenced discourse?
5. Do you agree that this is not only a feature of feminist and feminist-influenced discourse, but is, in fact, a characteristic of the system that you call “Patriarchy”?
If you do not agree with these things, then please state your disagreement.
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July 6th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Renee:
I don’t know about MRAs, but I think that most serious Male Privilege skeptics will agree that male privileges exist. What we question is the existence of Male Privilege—a systematic and unambiguous privileging of men over women. We acknowledge male privileges—that is, specific privileges men have that women do not—but we also acknowledge the existence of female privileges.
Hanson is on to something: To determine whether men or women have more privilege, you’d have to assign a value to each specific privilege and then add them all up. The problem, of course, is that the value depends on your preferences, so there’s no one answer. Some people may do the math* and find that they prefer the package of male privileges, while others may find that they prefer the package of female privileges. Others may say it’s too close to call.
If you’re about to say that that’s ridiculous and that no one could ever prefer female privileges to male privileges, that’s why you’re a feminist. Women who are happy with the status quo don’t become feminists, or at least not hardcore smash-the-patriarchy feminists. This isn’t to say that you’re wrong—just that your preferences aren’t universal.
*Well, in theory. It’s probably not actually feasible to enumerate all male and female privileges.
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July 6th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
Brandon, I think we can test your argument more easily; that some people prefer the societal advantages of being men and other’s prefer the societal advantages of being women.
How many organizations can you think of that are focused on allowing men have the same advantages that women now have?
How many organizations can you think of that are focused on allowing women to have the same advantages of men?
How widespread is the support for their ideas? How large are their memberships? Feminist Critics does not equal NOW for instance.
I wish I could remember which one of the other commentors at Alas came up with that idea so that I could give them credit.
I’ll bet dollars to donuts that the only large organizations focused on allowing men more of the women’s advantages focus on situations involving divorce.
I also wish that someone with more time and interest in this (Amp, Mandolin, Robert or Daren) would do some actual research for a blog post so I can see if I’m right.
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July 6th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
“Brandon, I think we can test your argument more easily; that some people prefer the societal advantages of being men and other’s prefer the societal advantages of being women.”
If any masculine man says he prefers the advantage of females, he’ll not only not be listened to (by both men and women), he’ll be shunned for it, be told to ‘man up’, and basically taken for someone who is a loser.
Personally I’m female, and yes I do prefer the societal advantages of females over males. Pretty sure I’m not alone there.
Not that I see women having no problems left to be resolved, especially outside the US and Canada.
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July 6th, 2008 at 8:17 pm
How many organizations can you think of that are focused on allowing men have the same advantages that women now have? How many organizations can you think of that are focused on allowing women to have the same advantages of men? …I also wish that someone with more time and interest in this (Amp, Mandolin, Robert or Daren) would do some actual research for a blog post so I can see if I’m right.
Research takes work. Pass. However, I’ll bloviate and guess for nothing, while my dinner digests.
Although I generally like tests like this, my offhand answer to both questions is “none”. NOW doesn’t try and get women to have the same privileges as men; NOW tries (broadly) to reorient society away from privilege being associated with gender.
That’s the theory, anyway. In practice, NOW ends up trying to improve women’s position in society, and men’s groups end up trying to do the same thing for men. Men’s groups, as you noted, seem primarily focused on divorce and child custody issues - which is the one area of social life where women seem to have a pretty strong advantage.
Of course, a feminist would point out that the government, business, labor unions, social clubs, etc. all buttress the power of men. NOW seems pretty feeble next to that amassed social firepower. By the criteria of your test, we could conclude that women must have lots more power, since there are all these social organizations formed to ‘fight’ it and build up the position of men.
Now, although by the lights of most self-identified feminists I certainly am not one, that doesn’t jibe with my perception of reality. Even misogynistic sexist old me can see that the feminist description of reality is largely accurate: men seem to have the upper hand - not society-wide, not in everything, but in most things. Why? Feminists say “patriarchy” or oppression; meh. Evil empires have this way of falling apart. If patriarchy were a conspiracy to keep the chicks in their place, it would have failed by now. It’s structural, not contingent on a social order.
My horseback diagnosis: men have a significant edge in being able to cooperate with one another. Women’s organizations seem to fall into a state of perpetual war, internal or external - Ovarian Suicide Squad, attack! Men are way better at getting along. Oh sure, sometimes we decide we have to kill millions of our fellows, but that’s usually because one gigantic male-dominated outfit wants something that another gigantic male-dominated outfit has. In the meantime, we go around building the gigantic MDOs willy-nilly, while the women work on trying to get a fourth person in the group without someone killing someone else. So men end up running most things because our organizations can get bigger and more efficient with less conflict. Not NO conflict - just less. (The reason for the differential is probably the greater bell curve in men’s performance on most measures of same, which in turn is probably related to having only one chromosome with lots of important genes, instead of two copies. Big differentials make hierarchies important. Important hierarchies mean that men have no choice but to learn the skills of hierarchy among almost-but-not-peers - how to be a dominant, how to be a submissive. Women tend to see everyone as a exact peer, and as a result fight all the time because they don’t see why they should just knuckle under and let that bitch Gladys run the group, she’s no better than I am! While next door, Frank sees that dang, Bill really is good at this, OK, I’ll shut up and let him run it.)
So how come women have the power edge when it comes to these marriage and family issues? We don’t see women shelling out $20,000 for a ring so some guy will say ‘yes’. We don’t see divorce courts routinely handing the kids to the men almost without regard for differential parental ability. I think the answer is cooperation, again. Men can’t cooperate to get a woman pregnant. We can cooperate to hunt a mammoth, build a wall, form an army, dig a well, have a parliament - but putting babies in the belly, that’s a one-man job. Our organizational skills fail, and in fact we end up fighting one another (metaphorically or literally) for the permission of a woman to reproduce. Women are no better at cooperating here, but they don’t need to be - they each have a unitary monopoly on their reproductive resource. So they end up with a built-in advantage in this one area of social life.
There, that ought to offend everybody.
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July 6th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
Oh this is ridiculous. I’ve never heard anyone suggest that a particular form of words be used before something is deemed to be a fallacy of a particular kind. None of the examples in this postare of that form.
Here’s how wikipedia defines the term:
And that is exactly what you have done.
Even if it were true, (which it isn’t) that I object to people talking about female victims, or I object to them talking about female victims unless male victims are given primacy, then it is still a strawman and an ad hom.
1. It’s a strawman because my argument is actually that these discourses in aggregate erase male victims because a. There are no (or very few) discourses which externally contextualise the discussion about female victims, and b, the discourses which focus upon female victimisation fail to adequately (or at all) contextualise them internally.
That, on its face, is not me objecting per se to people talking about female victims. It’s not about me at all. It’s a factual claim about a corpus of discourse.
2. It’s an ad hom, because whether I do or do not object to people talking about female victims has no bearing upon the question of whether these discourses erase men in the way that I’ve said that they do (By failing to contextualise, etc.)
Whether or not I act as if there’s any difference between objecting to female victims being talked about, and objecting to “erasure of male victims” has no bearing upon whether the discourses I cited erase male victims in the way that I said they do.
Stop! Addressing! Me! Address! My! Arguments! Instead!!
I have absolutely no idea which of my comments in this thread you are talking about here, but in so far as you reference my criticism of your list, it is clearly on its face a different kind of discourse, and therefore has no bearing upon whether the discourses I was refering to do or do not erase men in the way that I say they do.
Wrong.
I haven’t yet responded to your examples of how representation in government matter. I have a half-drafted response to that comment, which, admittededly hasn’t reached that part. I span off that particular sentence because it took me off on too great a tangent, because I thought it would make a good post in itself, and because I was aware that you had raised the matter before:
There’s a reason why I remembered that comment from more than two years ago. I filed it away in the back of my mind as something important which I never got round to addressing back then, nor properly since. So when you asked essentially the same question again, I decided to reply to it in much more detail, that the one-word answer it might otherwise have merited: “yes”.
So no. It’s not through lack of bothering that I haven’t yet replied to some of your points. Why won’t you reply to mine?
I cite as important a problem that happens to women and men. How dare you re-erase those I made visible, when describing my post. How dare you!
And no, I did not dismiss those women’s problems. I made it very clear that I thought Amnesty’s focus upon those individual cases absolutely appropriate. Nor did I dismiss the problem of rape in Brazilian prisons in so far as it happens to women. Unlike Amnesty, I would call for the Brazilian authorities to protect all prisoners from sexual violence. To do that, I entirely endorse Amnesty’s demand that women are never housed with men, and children never with adult prisoners. But I wouldn’t stop there. I’d also call for particularly vulnerable men and women to be identified and protected within, and if necessary segregated from other prisoners, and for such additional steps as appropriate to be taken to protect the general prison populations of both men and women from abuse by other inmates and guards.
If you think that I’m “dismissing women’s problems” by making men visible in this way, then I can only conclude that your views are so distorted that there’s little point in us continuing the discussion.
I’ve got more to say on this topic, but that’s enough for now. Maybe in another two years you’ll ask again, and elicit another lengthy post.
Again, you are in error.
First you are ignoring the difference between “It matters” and “I don’t particularly care”. The first statement was about “It”, i.e., women’s underrepresentation in government. The second was about me, i.e., what I care about. In no way does my statement about what I care about, which explains the focuses of my own blogging, dismiss other people’s concerns as being too petty.
Second you ignore the external context of my post, which context included your working definitions of oppression and privilege, before you withdrew criterion 3. Criterion 3 says, basically, that no amount of oppression on the male side could ever outweigh the oppressive effect of women’s underrepresention in government upon women in general. That was an invitation to show you some oppression, bitch.
Thirdly you are correct that another of my focuses is Love-shyness and similar problems in forming intimate and sexual relationships and that this is a problem with, to the best of my knowledge predominanly affects men. Since it has never been my position that “talking about women’s problems is impermissible” there is no hypocracy in talking about men’s. What would be hypocritical, would be if I were to erase or marginalise women who have related problem (perhaps by saying “we’re talking about the men here” or by creating a ghetto thread as if that were some sort of favour (see your own privilege criterion 2), or if I were to allow their erasure by others to go unchallenged.
But look: I do try to include women’s experiences and I do challenge their erasure. And I do try to welcome women in the discussion, and if I move the discussion to another thread, it’s to one of the mainstream threads on the topic, rather than a special ghetto just for them.
Also hypocritical, would be if I were to offer the following putative “female privilege” for any other purpose than to refute yours:
“If I’m not horrendously unattractive physically, then the likelihood that I will not be able to attract a sufficient number of men to have a reasonable dating life is negligible”*.
*Notwithstanding that I don’t actually know that the premiss is correct.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
July 6th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Damn right it does: you’re stealing my shirk-the-work-and-bloviate shtick!
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July 6th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
It was an homage. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Homage.
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July 7th, 2008 at 12:09 am
If I might infest for a little while, too…
About #7:
I do see value in discussing rape rates in the non-incarcerated population, and I’m not sure I agree with Daran that doing so is “gerrymandering.” Yes, the list does obscure rape rates in the most vulnerable male populations. Yet this problem isn’t with that particular item: the problem is with the whole enterprise of the list, which in general obscures the links and parallels between male and female oppressions.
Ampersand said to Daran:
I disagree with this interpretation (though I’ll admit to bias, as Daran’s co-blogger).
At most, I think you could conclude from his discussion of Juarez that he objects to anyone paying attention to women