[tedks]

>The blame-language is endemic to the feminist literature - e.g. men are 'privileged' when they exercise ordinary rights that women would like to share.

I don't follow. Is the act of being able to exercise basic human rights not a privilege if others are denied those rights? Why the scare quotes?

[A_COMPUTER]

If some baseline human right can be defined as a privilege, then there still needs to be terminology to distinguish it from undeserved privilege so that it can be properly addressed. Undeserved male privilege should be eradicated, but basic human rights and dignity should be extended to all. I have seen some people make this distinction and some not when using this term.

[tedks]

For most of feminism "privilege" was not a concept. There is only the concept of oppression and possibly of rights. The introduction of "privilege" came to try to explain oppression to men in ways they could more easily stomach, and is something I personally tend to avoid because I'm not shy about confronting men with the damages of masculinity.

You'll notice that framing many things in terms of privilege removes the concept of the oppressor. Men oppress women though rape and sexual harassment, but a privilege notion frames this in terms of "men have the privilege not to be raped or sexually harassed", is a passive-voice esque weasel.

So, if you're confused, just think in terms of oppression. Oppression needs to be eradicated. Any advantages stemming from oppression of women will be eradicated with the oppression that enforces them.

Of course, if what you really care about is not liberatory social justice, but playing language-lawyer to avoid confronting the ways in which you, personally, oppress women and benefit from the oppression of women, this will not help you; you will not become a wiser and better person; you will be left in the dustbin of history with the people who opposed integration of public schools and gay marriage.

Choose carefully.

[JoeAltmaier]

I don't mean to play at anything, and I'm not confused. But its off-putting to begin a conversation by accusing those who are essentially as innocent as the oppressed. And to offend or annoy those who are meant to be recruited to the cause is perhaps not the best process to a desirable outcome. Especially as the premise is, these are the people holding all the cards.

I understand the point of it, and the injustice. But the attitude projected is one of "you are doing it wrong, and you need to be corrected". When I know dang well its right and correct to work hard. I have little control over who gives me 'privileges' which look pretty much like the goal I am working toward (getting the contract, the job, the promotion).

And it never occurred to me to consider not-rape as the right being foisted as a 'privilege'. That's not what it says in the brochure anyway.

[tedks]

All men that are not active feminists, that are not actively doing everything they can to undermine and destroy their privilege, are not "as innocent as the oppressed." You aren't going to get a cookie for not beating your wife recently. Feminism is not that easy; being a male ally to women isn't that easy. The point of the concept of privilege was to force men to reflect on how they benefit, usually without their active intervention, from patriarchy.

>And to offend or annoy those who are meant to be recruited to the cause is perhaps not the best process to a desirable outcome. Especially as the premise is, these are the people holding all the cards.

I know it can be hard to imagine, because it was once hard for me to imagine, but men are actually entirely tangential to feminism. There are enough women that all feminism needs to do to succeed is win a baseline amount of political power and then command vast numbers of women. This has already happened to the degree to which it has and it is responsible for all social change won by feminism.

Freedom can never be given. It can only be taken. Either by oppressors who take it away, or by the liberatory struggle that takes it back.

As in any political struggle, no individual person or even group of people hold "the cards", the cards are a socialogical construct that the ideology with the most memetic power has control over.

Also, you do indeed have control over whether you access privilege. This is more apparent in some situations than others; a good example is culture fit. If you are interviewing and the interviewer makes a misogynist joke, do you laugh (exploiting your privilege, as a man, both to laugh at the joke and to be told it in the first place) or do you call the interviewer out on his misogyny? When you start, do you join in objectifying women with your co-workers, do you meekly avoid the issue, or do you confront it?

The degree to which you have privilege is the degree to which you make yourself an ally of the patriarchy. You can be a good ally, you can try not to take positive action (in which case you cannot be called a good ally, but you cannot be said to be helping feminism either, siding as you are with the status quo), or you can sabotage patriarchy at every chance you encounter.

[A_COMPUTER]

An awful lot of feminists take the concept of privilege seriously as its own concept, if you're such a great ally maybe you should consider the great wealth of academic literature on the subject written by them instead of just writing it off as a weaseley way to explain oppression.

[JoeAltmaier]

That's the dirty word, used to explain that men aren't owed anything, its all unearned respect and undeserved rights.

If they aren't owed then I guess women don't need them either, right?