Do you identify as a feminist?

[Adam]

no arent you a ginger?

That shouldn't matter!

 

[makare]

It matters to me.

 

[Covar]

three pages and no one bothered to mention John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theorem?

 

[Espy]

Ugh. I want to jump in with the psychology of nonverbal communication but the whole conversation is teetering on the rails...

Oh go for it. What have we got to lose?

 

[Adam]

It matters to me.

In a good way or a bad way?

 

[makare]

good for me. bad for you.

 

[Adam]

good for me. bad for you.

I guess I'm getting mixed messages. Now it sounds like you totally want me.

 

[makare]

I want you to be sterile and not produce any little redhead children.

 

[Adam]

I want you to be sterile and not produce any little redhead children.

With you?

 

[makare]

with me yeah but not with anyone really. no childrens for you.

 

[Adam]

with me yeah but not with anyone really. no childrens for you.

So what you're saying is you want to do the nasty with me, as long as no kids are produced. Yeah, that sounds ok to me.

 

[makare]

damn my sexiness all the boys want me. I just want to be left alone

 

[Espy]

Also, since we are getting reports:

Chaz, knock off the personal attacks. Argue away but do it without the personal attacks.

 

[Charlie Don't Surf]

Let me wrangle this back on track from these interesting semantics debates and Adammon's impotent flirting.

Hey kids, want to hear about Male Privilege? I knew you would! Here's a checklist. I know certain people are going to go through and pull out various numbers and talk about their anecdotes that are completely valid evidence with no context and disprove the entire theory of male privilege! But try to read this with an open mind and maybe think about it.

The Male Privilege Checklist
1. My odds of being hired for a job, when competing against female applicants, are probably skewed in my favor. The more prestigious the job, the larger the odds are skewed.
2. I can be confident that my co-workers won’t think I got my job because of my sex - even though that might be true.
3. If I am never promoted, it’s not because of my sex.
4. If I fail in my job or career, I can feel sure this won’t be seen as a black mark against my entire sex’s capabilities.
5. I am far less likely to face sexual harassment at work than my female co-workers are.
6. If I do the same task as a woman, and if the measurement is at all subjective, chances are people will think I did a better job.
7. If I’m a teen or adult, and if I can stay out of prison, my odds of being raped are so low as to be negligible.
8. I am not taught to fear walking alone after dark in average public spaces.
9. If I choose not to have children, my masculinity will not be called into question.
10. If I have children but do not provide primary care for them, my masculinity will not be called into question.
11. If I have children and provide primary care for them, I’ll be praised for extraordinary parenting if I’m even marginally competent.
12. If I have children and pursue a career, no one will think I’m selfish for not staying at home.
13. If I seek political office, my relationship with my children, or who I hire to take care of them, will probably not be scrutinized by the press.
14. Chances are my elected representatives are mostly people of my own sex. The more prestigious and powerful the elected position, the more likely this is to be true.
15. I can be somewhat sure that if I ask to see “the person in charge,” I will face a person of my own sex. The higher-up in the organization the person is, the surer I can be.
16. As a child, chances are I was encouraged to be more active and outgoing than my sisters.
17. As a child, I could choose from an almost infinite variety of children’s media featuring positive, active, non-stereotyped heroes of my own sex. I never had to look for it; male protagonists were (and are) the default.
18. As a child, chances are I got more teacher attention than girls who raised their hands just as often.
19. If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether or
not it has sexist overtones.
20. I can turn on the television or glance at the front page of the newspaper and see people of my own sex widely represented, every day, without exception.
21. If I’m careless with my financial affairs it won’t be attributed to my sex.
22. If I’m careless with my driving it won’t be attributed to my sex.
23. I can speak in public to a large group without putting my sex on trial.
24. If I have sex with a lot of people, it won’t make me an object of contempt or derision.
25. There are value-neutral clothing choices available to me; it is possible for me to choose clothing that
doesn’t send any particular message to the world.
26. My wardrobe and grooming are relatively cheap and consume little time.
27. If I buy a new car, chances are I’ll be offered a better price than a woman buying the same car
28. If I’m not conventionally attractive, the disadvantages are relatively small and easy to ignore.
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.
30. I can ask for legal protection from violence that happens mostly to men without being seen as a selfish special interest, since that kind of violence is called “crime” and is a general social concern. (Violence that
happens mostly to women is usually called “domestic violence” or “acquaintance rape,” and is seen as a special interest issue.)
31. I can be confident that the ordinary language of day-to-day existence will always include my sex. “All men are created equal,” mailman, chairman, freshman, he.
32. My ability to make important decisions and my capability in general will never be questioned depending
on what time of the month it is.
33. I will never be expected to change my name upon marriage or questioned if I don’t change my name.
34. The decision to hire me will never be based on assumptions about whether or not I might choose to have a family sometime soon.
35. Every major religion in the world is led primarily by people of my own sex. Even God, in most major religions, is usually pictured as being male.
36. Most major religions argue that I should be the head of my household, while my wife and children should be subservient to me.
37. If I have a wife or live-in girlfriend, chances are we’ll divide up household chores so that she does most of the labor, and in particular the most repetitive and unrewarding tasks.
38. If I have children with a wife or girlfriend, chances are she’ll do most of the childrearing, and in particular the most dirty, repetitive and unrewarding parts of childrearing.
39. If I have children with a wife or girlfriend, and it turns out that one of us needs to make career sacrifices to raise the kids, chances are we’ll both assume the career sacrificed should be hers.
40. Magazines, billboards, television, movies, pornography, and virtually all of media is filled with images of scantily-clad women intended to appeal to me sexually. Such images of men exist, but are much rarer.
41. On average, I am under less pressure to be thin than my female counterparts are. If I am fat, I probably suffer fewer social and economic consequences for being fat than fat women do.
42. If I am heterosexual, it’s incredibly unlikely that I’ll ever be beaten up by a spouse or lover.
43. Complete strangers generally do not walk up to me on the street and tell me to “smile.”
44. On average, I am not interrupted by women as often as women are interrupted by men.
45. I have the privilege of being unaware of my male privilege.

 

[Adam]

damn my sexiness all the boys want me. I just want to be left alone

Dayum, just got neg-repped by Charlie for Sexually Harassing you. My apologies.

---------- Post added at 08:41 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:40 PM ----------

Let me wrangle this back on track from these interesting semantics debates and Adammon's impotent flirting.

Hey kids, want to hear about Male Privilege? I knew you would! Here's a checklist. I know certain people are going to go through and pull out various numbers and talk about their anecdotes that are completely valid evidence with no context and disprove the entire theory of male privilege! But try to read this with an open mind and maybe think about it.

The Male Privilege Checklist
-yawn-snip-

Just to clarify, we aren't allowed to counter your anecdotes with our anecdotes?

 

[Covar]

No because you're a sexist. Anyone who is not a sexist and a feminist knows that list is 100% true and factual.

 

[makare]

The problem here is that yes I think a lot of those things on that list are true but what is the point of tabulating them and saying NYAH NYAH you suck because you have male privilege!

the very nature of that list invites a defensive response so even if a guy is going to say ok yeah that's true. He won't want to because that list makes him out to be a pampered douche nozzle.

 

[sixpackshaker]

Of course Charlie's avatar of a completely, sexually objectified woman should discredit his feminist stance.

 

[Piotyr]

- I am a white male. I should feel bad for being a white male, because society favors me.

 

[Charlie Don't Surf]

http://www.cpt.org/files/US - Male Privilege Checklist.pdf

I forgot that link and this quote that comes before it that probably would have helped matters!

In 1990, W ellesley College professor Peggy McIntosh wrote an essay called “White Privilege: Unpacking
the Invisible Knapsack”. McIntosh observes that whites in the U.S. are “taught to see racism only in individual
acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group.” To illustrate these invisible
systems, McIntosh wrote a list of 26 invisible privileges whites benefit from.
As McIntosh points out, men also tend to be unaware of their own privileges as men. In the spirit of
McIntosh’s essay, I thought I’d compile a list similar to McIntosh’s, focusing on the invisible privileges
benefitting men.
Due to my own limitations, this list is unavoidably U.S. centric. I hope that writers from other cultures will
create new lists, or modify this one, to reflect their own experiences.
Since I first compiled it, the list has been posted many times on internet discussion groups. Very helpfully,
many people have suggested additions to the checklist. 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.
Obviously, there are individual exceptions to most problems discussed on the list. The existence of
individual exceptions does not mean that general problems are not a concern.
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 individual boys and men.
In the end, however, it is men and not women who make the most money; men and not women who
dominate the government and the corporate boards; men and not women who dominate virtually all of the
most powerful positions of society. And it is women and not men who suffer the most from intimate violence
and rape; who are the most likely to be poor; who are, on the whole, given the short end of patriarchy’s stick.
Several critics have also argued that the list somehow victimizes women. I disagree; pointing out problems
is not the same as perpetuating them. It is not a “victimizing” position to acknowledge that injustice exists; on
the contrary, without that acknowledgment it isn’t possible to fight injustice.
An internet acquaintance of mine once wrote, “The first big privilege which whites, males, people in upper
economic classes, the able bodied, the straight (I think one or two of those will cover most of us) can work
to alleviate is the privilege to be oblivious to privilege.” This checklist is, I hope, a step towards helping men
to give up the “first big privilege.”

The problem here is that yes I think a lot of those things on that list are true but what is the point of tabulating them and saying NYAH NYAH you suck because you have male privilege!

the very nature of that list invites a defensive response so even if a guy is going to say ok yeah that's true. He won't want to because that list makes him out to be a pampered douche nozzle.

Admitting you have privilege isn't some sort of bad thing. The paragraphs up there detail how male privilege can hurt men as much as women. I know that it gives me a lot of grief and makes me feel worthless for not having a job/career right now. I still struggle to throw that off.

Of course Charlie's avatar of a completely, sexually objectified woman should discredit his feminist stance.

My avatar is my favorite part about this entire thread.

---------- Post added at 03:55 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:54 PM ----------

- I am a white male. I should feel bad for being a white male, because society favors me.

No, you shouldn't. You should feel bad that society disfavors so many other people for no reason other than how they were born.

 

[makare]

I think the list is stupid. There I said it. It accomplishes nothing, solves no problems, raises no awareness. It's more just a ragman's roll of bitching.

- I am a white male. I should feel bad for being a white male, because society favors me.

you should flay yourself.

 

[Covar]

I think the list is stupid. There I said it. It accomplishes nothing, solves no problems, raises no awareness. It's more just a ragman's roll of bitching.

- I am a white male. I should feel bad for being a white male, because society favors me.

you should flay yourself.

Can I do it? As a fellow white male I'm great at flaying people due to their sex and skin color.

 

[makare]

That might be a little gay.


Not that there is anything wrong with that.

 

[Piotyr]

- I am a white male. I should feel bad for being a white male, because society favors me.

No, you shouldn't. You should feel bad that society disfavors so many other people for no reason other than how they were born.[/QUOTE]

Here's the thing, though: I can control nothing about it except my own attitude towards other people. Done well before the anecdotal list was posted. I refuse to be ashamed of who I am, or what advantages that affords me. I resent any implication that I follow any item on that list simply because of what I am. What I am is not who I am, and what anyone else is does not in any way indicate who they are.

 

[Charlie Don't Surf]

Maybe it gets you upset, and you try to bring it to more people's attentions so they maybe do one thing to cast off male privilege?

 

[Piotyr]

Here's another somewhat personal anecdote situation:

A couple years ago, there was a series of incidents in the area involving female sexual assaults. On the college campus where I work, our IT thought it might be prudent to not allow a female lab monitors to be work by themselves after dark in the remote computer lab. Too often the lab is deserted, and at the time there wasn't what IT thought to be sufficient security measures in place to protect against a sexual predator. The IT's justification for this was the specific incidents happening in the area, coupled with the significantly higher odds of a female being assaulted vs. a male, at least until sufficient security was in place to protect a worker in that lab. The measure was criticized for being sexist, and the department was forced to relent and let any person work by themselves in the lab. Was it sexist and unnecessary? Maybe so. Was it unreasonable to want to protect a high risk area from a local sexual predator? I didn't really think so at the time.

 

[Adam]

Maybe it gets you upset, and you try to bring it to more people's attentions so they maybe do one thing to cast off male privilege?

No, all it does is confirm opinions about your self-hating.

Edit: how exactly does one "cast off male privilege"?

 

[makare]

I think you "cast it off" by going through each issue and dealing with it on an individual basis.

And then we can throw out shit like the mailman, congressman thing. who the hell cares about that? Im a woman. wo-man. man is in my gender too. honestly.

 

[HCGLNS]

Edit: how exactly does one "cast off male privilege"?

Vote NDP.

 

[Adam]

I think you "cast it off" by going through each issue and dealing with it on an individual basis.

And then we can throw out shit like the mailman, congressman thing. who the hell cares about that? Im a woman. wo-man. man is in my gender too. honestly.

I guess the issue is my sphere of influence is limited to me. No matter what I personally do, Charlie's always going to be around whining about how he runs the world. So the incentive for me to improve is to hear more bitching about how I'm not doing enough? I don't see that succeeding.

 

[Charlie Don't Surf]

I dunno if "cast off" is the right word or term. But just recognize it exists and minimize it as much as possible.

 

[Adam]

Edit: how exactly does one "cast off male privilege"?

Vote NDP.[/QUOTE]

You son of a bitch!

---------- Post added at 09:26 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:25 PM ----------

I dunno if "cast off" is the right word or term. But just recognize it exists and minimize it as much as possible.

Not one item in that list can be directly attributed to actions I take.

 

[makare]

Just because a general issue doesn't apply to you, doesn't mean it isn't an issue.

 

[Espy]

Maybe it gets you upset, and you try to bring it to more people's attentions so they maybe do one thing to cast off male privilege?

No, all it does is confirm opinions about your self-hating.

Edit: how exactly does one "cast off male privilege"?[/QUOTE]

It's done alone and in private unless you get together with a buddy and do it to each other.

 

[MindDetective]

Maybe it gets you upset, and you try to bring it to more people's attentions so they maybe do one thing to cast off male privilege?

Sorry, but that is not the best way to evoke change. Your list says absolutely nothing about why things are that way, just that they are. There may be (I would contend there ARE!) biological reasons for some of those, as well as social, (which is not changed by listing things), psychological, entrenched economic, linguistic, and plenty more possible causes, some of them related or inter-related and some of them not. You absolutely cannot imply there is a single cause for these disparities (which is implied by such a list, even if not consciously) and simply listing off disparities like this does no justice to the issues. You might as well go and gawk at a traffic accident. It is the same problem as with wage disparity earlier in this thread. There are reasons (plural) why things are like this. If you genuinely want social change, you go about figuring out those reasons and determining the courses of actions that work in changing people's minds and behaviors, or at least respect that people are doing so and follow the science with interest. Otherwise your list is uselessly inflammatory at worst and simply useless at best.

If I recall, you are studying to be a teacher (I apologize if I remember incorrectly but it will serve my point to assume I do not). That is a laudable field, filled with joys and stresses and opportunities to influence lives. But it is a position of action, not of discovery. If you want effective and genuine social change discovery comes first, implementation second. Otherwise you are just trying things because they feel right. Freud did the same thing with cocaine in his practice, to very poor results. This is no way to examine the world and especially no way to figure out the best solution to these complicated problems.

In summary, see my signature.