[da_dude4242]

Males have the "privilege" of being the "stronger" sex. If you're not collected and emotionally unreactive you are abnormal/weak. Any emotional expression that deviates from a narrow acceptable range is abnormal. You do not need the same reaching out or emotional support of the "weaker" sex because you are strong. It's no wonder males have the privilege of being more likely to be isolated. Have the privilege of being 5 times more likely succesfully commit suicide. Being 10 times more likely to die on the job. Our "strength" gives us the privilege to be drafted into wars and be generally disposable to the hazards of society. None of this captured by your list though so I suppose it's irrelevant.

"Weakness" in females signals a socialized response to reach out and support. "Weakness" in males signals a socialized response to stigmatize. Because after all you are privileged, why don't you just "man-up"?

"Social justice theorists also talk about different kinds of privileges, so the idea that geeks have male privilege does not exclude the possibility that there is another form of privilege that they lack that others have."

That's my point. When is the last time you read an article about leveling the field of female privilege? In theory the idea of privilege is inclusive but in practice it's not.

[cemery]

You're thinking about the word privilege in the wrong way. When you use the term in a social justice setting you need to stop thinking about all the possible meanings and focus on a very few specific ones. (Think of the word in the same way you think of class when you are talking about programming, it has a specific meaning, trying to make privilege mean more then it does makes you look like you are trying to argue semantics).

When we talk about privilege in a social justice setting you want to think about the privilege of being the default. Ignore every other privilege and think about that one in particular. You point out all the downsides of that privilege in your post, which are all true and valid, which is why calling whiteness and maleness a privilege breaks our brains a bit. It's not unadulterated good, there are a lot of bad things that come about due to the default of maleness and masculinity.

Lets look at the idea that you put forward about Weakness, how in women it's ok, and in males it's not ok.

In males it's not ok because it violates the default maleness that is expected (a negative aspect of the default maleness), and in females it is ok because it goes along with the !default of femaleness.

When you start thinking of privilege not as things that you get for being male, but about expectations of the world, what we view the default as, and what we view the other as, the idea that male privilege could be bad for males and females makes more sense. In a lot of ways the word privilege is a crappy way to put it, because it makes us think about things that are privileges in our lives, not the privilege of being the default.

[wanorris]

> None of this captured by your list though so I suppose it's irrelevant.

They're not on a male privilege checklist. A catalog of gender differences would be a different list.

> When is the last time you read an article about leveling the field of female privilege? In theory the idea of privilege is inclusive but in practice it's not.

I think most feminists would discount the idea of "female privilege" per se as a false equivalence similar to a hypothetical "black privilege".

> "Weakness" in females signals a socialized response to reach out and support. "Weakness" in males signals a socialized response to stigmatize.

The fact that there is a societal preference toward masculinity, which underlies many of your points, is definitely a topic that gets brought up in feminist/gender studies circles. This is why it's comparatively okay for women to be tomboys and such, and highly frowned upon for men to be effeminate or show what are considered feminine traits.

Many feminists call this general societal enforcement of gender roles part of patriarchy, and seek to remove the stigma associated with violating these roles. So if that's something you're interested in, there's no reason you can't find common cause.

[da_dude4242]

"I think most feminists would discount the idea of "female privilege" per se as a false equivalence similar to a hypothetical "black privilege"."

That's my point.

"The fact that there is a societal preference toward masculinity, which underlies many of your points, is definitely a topic that gets brought up in feminine circles. This is why it's comparatively okay for women to be tomboys and such, and highly frowned upon for men to be effeminate or show what are considered feminine traits."

My point is that's not a fact. I mean look at what you're saying. You're saying that the fact a gay male is more likely to experience stigma, have less support, more likely to be a victim of hate crime, and more likely to kill himself than his gay female counterpart is an offense against the feminine. The determining factor for these injustices is being biologically male.

"Many feminists call this general societal enforcement of gender roles part of patriarchy, and seek to remove the stigma associated with violating these roles. So if that's something you're interested in, there's no reason you can't find common cause."

In theory there is no reason why there can't be common cause. Gender analysis is gender analysis. In practice it usually doesn't work out that way.

[slurgfest]

I think you are right, but it is really hard to take a nuanced position like that out in public (or anyway, it invites a lot of criticism) because it is inevitably interpreted as a political move to neutralize efforts in favor of groups which are, still, disadvantaged on-the-whole even if they actually are privileged or advantaged in some specific ways.

[burgerbrain]

So I guess we can add "Being able to speak frankly about [opposite gender] privilege in public" to the list of female privileges.

[slurgfest]

Hmm, I'm not sure - because women talking openly about male privilege might find agreement from some quarters but ridicule or worse from other quarters.

This is like saying that black people have the privilege of talking about race in the US, but whites don't. That might have some truth to it, but overall it's a point-missing half-truth, since black people who talk about that kind of thing are often treated as "angry blacks" or "to ideological" or whatever, and the broader context makes "feeling mildly uncomfortable about race discussions" a comparatively trivial complaint.

(I feel secure in saying this, as a white male)

[einhverfr]

Personally I don't find it problematic to talk about female privilege at all. I think one has to be careful (just as women have to be careful talking about male privilege) but there are areas where it is so blatant and damaging that it must be talked about, particularly in areas of domestic violence.

When I was just out of college, I was (as a male) the victim of some pretty intense domestic violence several times a week for about six months. It was a very hellish situaiton, but one thing that made it a lot worse was the sense that if I went to the authorities, I would be blamed for the attacks against me. Yet I was assaulted with lethal weapons (knives mostly) several times a week.

Nobody can tell me that there aren't key areas where female privilege doesn't exist. The problem is that it is as invisible to females as male privilege is to males.

[burgerbrain]

Well, put it this way: As a white male, I would be extremely uncomfortable having this discussion in public. When this sort of thing comes up, I tend to leave the room or at least sit there quietly.

See, men also may find support in some quarters, and ridicule or worse in other quarters. One of those quarters they may encounter "or worse" happens to be workplace environments where overzealous HR departments can end careers.

[da_dude4242]

What's unique to this situation is the social construct of the "stronger" and "weaker" sex. A claim of victim hood coming from a female aligns with bias we already hold about women. Women are socialized to emotionally connect with others as a way of support and people are socialized to respond back positively.

A claim of victim hood by a male violates this norm. There is little established protocol for this situation and is basically taboo. So even outside of a politically fragile context there's already a power differential as far as talking frankly or seeking empathy goes.

[einhverfr]

But in certain domains (childrearing, for example) females are definitely in a net-privileged position in terms of power and control, particularly if unmarried.

[Anechoic]

> Our "strength" gives us the privilege to be drafted into wars and be generally disposable to the hazards of society.

This isn't an example of privilege, it's patronization - it was a male-dominated society who declared that women weren't fit/suitable for war (and other occupations) and therefore should be protected from the horrors of war. Until recently it was men who wanted to keep women out of combat roles (now the split is about even, with the majority supporting combat roles for women).

[da_dude4242]

A)My use of the word privilege was sarcastic.

B)The Equal Rights Amendment which would have required drafting for both sexes was defeated by a woman organization(STOP ERA).

[einhverfr]

I am thinking of the descriptions of missionaries to Ireland who were horrified at what they saw as women in battle hacking eachother to pieces, while carrying their infants on their backs.

[wpietri]

That's my point. When is the last time you read an article about leveling the field of female privilege? In theory the idea of privilege is inclusive but in practice it's not.

Actually, there are quite a lot of people who seek true equity. Google "kyriarchy" and you'll find a lot of these discussions.

However, the reason you won't find many articles like you want is that a) the historical gender bias is undeniably pro-male, so people have focused on the bigger problem and b) the argument has become stigmatized because every time people try to talk about anti-female sexism some guy immediately jumps up and cries "what about meeeeeeeee". Not because his lot is particularly rough, but because he as the privileged party is used to thinking about his experience first, and ignoring that of the non-dominant group.

So if you want people to start noticing the way the current system of gender biases also hurts men, then a) don't hijack discussions of male privilege, and b) help solve the giant historical inequity.

[da_dude4242]

The reason you won't find many articles is because the male perspective has been marginalized from gender studies. The generic argument being "the male perspective dominates all other domains so there is no need for a mens studies".

>the historical gender bias is undeniably pro-male, so people have focused on the bigger problem

You're comparing apples to oranges. What's worse having a 5-15% risk of sexual assault or having 15% of your gender die like Soviet men in WWII? Trying to turn this into a pissing contest isn't a logically valid way to approach this topic. Both genders face hazards that are qualitatively unrankable.

[wpietri]

Once again, your goal doesn't appear to be to eliminate the gender-related problems that people face; it seems to be to disrupt the discussion of problems that women face.

[makomk]

We're not just discussing the problems that women face, though. When the author of that Kotaku piece used male privilege as a starting point to base his argument on, he made an implied statement about men's problems with gender too; he implied that they were irrelevant. It's not just a case of ignoring them or putting them to one side - his argument was an argument that they couldn't exist, at least not in any way that mattered.

This is a common pattern when someone "disrupts" a discussion of women's issues. Sometimes it's a discussion of women being raped as the only kind of rape. Maybe someone's arguing that domestic violence is something that happens to women because they're women - of course, then all the many male victims couldn't exist.

In fact, almost every time I've seen someone tell a man that they're disrupting a discussion of women's problems by talking about men, they were making a statement about what men experience in the first place and using it to shut out contradictory evidence.

[wpietri]

Your theory that not mentioning something equals saying it's irrelevant is fascinating. You didn't mention famine in Africa, the bad economy, or the decay of NASA. Your "implied statement" (coughoxymoroncough) is that those are irrelevant. Why do you hate Africans, workers, and NASA?

As far as I can tell, this is just the same disruptive tactic as I've called out elsewhere.

[da_dude4242]

Don't feed the trolls.