The most easily de-railable topic on the internet.

[BerenTebogo]

Honestly, why I'm making this topic is beyond me. I know how it will end. Hell, I know how it will proceed within 2 posts of the OP.

Even so, it's all data. I'll give the chance for you guys (and girls) to shelve the expected responses and be honest, or hell, even thoughtful.

That said, this wont end well, but try to surprise me.

In 1990, Wellesley 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.”

With the rise of Libertarianism in the public eye recently it has become more and more obvious how many Americans view the world through a "it worked for me so if it doesn't work for you, you're not trying hard enough" lens. It's been discussed many times recently in regards to race, income level, environment, etc, but on BG we haven't really touched on something that may be hard for us (as an overwhelming majority of us are men), the issue of gender inequity.

Before I post the full article link and the discussion points I do want to make one thing clear: The irrational, unreasonable, mythical and wholly stupid standards that men are held to in our society by other men are completely real and amazingly counter-productive. The idea that the measure of manliness is a lack of empathy and emotion, a need to be in a position of superiority by any means necessary, that being anything but an arrow-straight heterosexual is unmanly, etc, are all horribly ridiculous and do nothing but hold us back as a society.

That said, this topic isn't about these issues.

http://www.amptoons.com/blog/the-mal...ege-checklist/

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. (More).

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. (More).

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 relatively low. (More).

8. On average, I am taught to fear walking alone after dark in average public spaces much less than my female counterparts are.

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. (More).

12. If I have children and 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. My elected representatives are mostly people of my own sex. The more prestigious and powerful the elected position, the more this is true.

15. When I ask to see “the person in charge,” odds are 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. (More).

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. (More).

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.

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. Even if I sleep with a lot of women, there is no chance that I will be seriously labeled a “slut,” nor is there any male counterpart to “slut-bashing.” (More).

25. I do not have to worry about the message my wardrobe sends about my sexual availability. (More).

26. My clothing is typically less expensive and better-constructed than women’s clothing for the same social status. While I have fewer options, my clothes will probably fit better than a woman’s without tailoring. (More).

27. The grooming regimen expected of me is relatively cheap and consumes little time. (More).

28. If I buy a new car, chances are I’ll be offered a better price than a woman buying the same car. (More).

29. If I’m not conventionally attractive, the disadvantages are relatively small and easy to ignore.

30. I can be loud with no fear of being called a shrew. I can be aggressive with no fear of being called a bitch.

31. 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.)

32. 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.

33. My ability to make important decisions and my capability in general will never be questioned depending on what time of the month it is.

34. I will never be expected to change my name upon marriage or questioned if I don’t change my name.

35. The decision to hire me will not be based on assumptions about whether or not I might choose to have a family sometime soon.

36. Every major religion in the world is led primarily by people of my own sex. Even God, in most major religions, is pictured as male.

37. Most major religions argue that I should be the head of my household, while my wife and children should be subservient to me.

38. 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. (More).

39. If I have children with my girlfriend or wife, I can expect her to do most of the basic childcare such as changing diapers and feeding.

40. If I have children with my 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.

41. Assuming I am heterosexual, 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 rarer.

42. In general, I am under much less pressure to be thin than my female counterparts are. (More). If I am fat, I probably suffer fewer social and economic consequences for being fat than fat women do. (More).

43. If I am heterosexual, it’s incredibly unlikely that I’ll ever be beaten up by a spouse or lover. (More).

44. Complete strangers generally do not walk up to me on the street and tell me to “smile.” (More: 1 2).

45. Sexual harassment on the street virtually never happens to me. I do not need to plot my movements through public space in order to avoid being sexually harassed, or to mitigate sexual harassment. (More.)

45. On average, I am not interrupted by women as often as women are interrupted by men.

46. I have the privilege of being unaware of my male privilege.

If you've managed to read even part of that, I'd like to hear your opinion of it. Do you think it is all bullshit? If yes, can you defend the stance in any way? Do you support it? Can you defend your support?

Mainly, I want to hear from the females here. It's no secret that by virtue of being here we're taking a non-random selection of the female population, but still, I think some of these issues may ring true to even the most "rugged" girl-gamer here on BG.

Just going to attempt to re-emphasize one point: I know the tendency is going to be to fill this up with snarky one-liners. That is what I expect from you so, really, it's not going to be all that impressive to anyone. I will be impressed, however, if you can put a few nouns and verbs together and manage to form an argument for or against these statements.

[Meresgi]

I think it's slight bullshit. It all depends on the job. There are tons and tons of jobs around where I live where only females are hired, you stand 0% of a chance working there if you are male. Then there are jobs men are hired for more then women, usually jobs like factory work, security guards. I don't buy into the whole sexism in the workplace deal because it's far far too random to actually be looked at in the right eye. And shit, how do we know the scientists and researchers are not sexist too and just showcasing results to feed their own agenda!

Yeah there is inequality in certain areas, but that's just how the world operates. There will never be 100% equality for certain things but I think we've taken a huge step from the old days. There's a stigma against every race and sex in some way or another.

[Zoolander]

Read entire list. Can't say much of it surprises me (and I'm glad that overplayed women make 0.75 for every 1.0 men make wasnt used, gd is that a skewed stat), but it is a nice reminder.

What always amazed me about the inequality is its consistency throughout world history. Civilizations that are independent of each other throughout time have, with a huge majority (there are expections of course), created this male privilege throughout their societies. Sometimes it is blatant and obvious, while other times it is a bit more subtle.

Always kind of wondered "what the fuck" at that. I mean, the other extreme of a female dominated society, as far as I know, has just about never existed in any major form. Equal? Yea sure in some rare instances, but matriarchal? No way.

Also, I was intrigued by the first topic you brought up lol:

The irrational, unreasonable, mythical and wholly stupid standards that men are held to in our society by other men are completely real and amazingly counter-productive.

[Ramor]

I dunno about an actual job, but at my shitty hourly p/t job I know the women get treated way better, and I, being the only male aside from my boss, have to do all the fucking gruntwork and shit-work that the women won't do, especially having to work nights no matter how many times I ask for morning/day shifts.

edit: i'd also like to point out that the lines for sexual harassment are at totally different points for (most) males versus females, what some guys consider flirting i'd imagine some ladies would classify as harassment. i feel like that's a really odd statistic because it's more of a subjective thing rather than a definitive line.

[BerenTebogo]

Will state, for the record, that unlike 99% of the topics I make I am going to keep my opinions judgments out of the thread. It's going to be fucking hard, because I already feel compelled to respond to certain statements, but I want to get a view of the perspective held by BG posters that is as un-biased as possible.

So, there you have it, whatever your opinions or feelings on the subject, I'm not gonna call you out or praise you for them. Hopefully, this will encourage some people who would normally not post for fear of being chewed out to come and offer up some more data.

[Meresgi]

39. If I have children with my girlfriend or wife, I can expect her to do most of the basic childcare such as changing diapers and feeding.

You kidding me? My girlfriend would hit me with a frying pan if I pulled that shit. If you're in a relationship like that and you're guy is going to pull that shit, you should probably know BEFORE having a kid that he's that type of guy.

40. If I have children with my 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.

Who would assume that? Any semi-intelligent couple would assume that the spouse with the lesser career and less earnings would be the one to sacrifice for the time being. This isn't the 1950's.

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.

Pretty much every male character in media I watched as a kid was 6'7", jacked to all hell and could punch through walls and probably ate steroids for all 3 meals each day. That's a stereotype as well. Positive stereotypes are still stereotypes :D

[Zoolander]

I will say that it is one of those things that has pretty much just become one of the obstacles certain people have to overcome in life. As you eluded to, there are very different kinds of obstacles and road blocks men face (that they often never even acknowledge or overcome, unlike women). Ultimately I think everyone will face unique obstacles based on their gender, race, ethnicity, intelligence, disability etc. Some are obvious, some are not. They can choose to recognize and overcome, or succumb to them and (maybe) suffer the consequences of an unfulfilled life. Unfortunately, people are not created equally and some lives will be more difficult and nothing about that will ever change. Of course, this issue of feminism/sexism/w.e is something that, unlike disability, we as a society can address, although it is far easier said than done. It can't really be forced upon anyone if you want to accomplish true changes in how people think. Pretty much has to be a sort of organic movement, although starting the dialogue definitely helps.

And others have already pointed out, some of the points are a bit dated and are changing before our eyes. Feminism after all isn't a new movement by any means.

[Neosutra]

I think feminists just need to live with the fact that men may actually be better than them. They never even consider that option.

Really there are 4 options:

1. Men and Women are equally capable in every way.
2. Men are superior to Women in almost every way.
3. Women are superior to Men in almost every way.
4. Men and Women both have higher proficiency in differing areas of life.

Obviously 4 is the "more correct answer", however one has to consider each hypothesis before throwing the rest out.

History and social dynamics in general would say the most dominate sex would be the superior sex, else they wouldn't be dominate. If males and females are equally capable mentally, then males are naturally superior because they are naturally physically stronger.

Or we could say that man dominated women for the last few eons due to strength being the largest factor in force/society until our cultures developed enough to allow mental capacity and other aspects of our psyche to be more important, thereby allowing the physically weaker sex a chance at equality.

However I will say, as much as I believe in treating people equally, 10 years in the Army has forever fucked my opinion of women, and humanity in general.

[Seanr]

I can say most of the list is true... I'm not gonna pick out the shit that's not true. But most of it is how life is perceived in general over here.

[Meresgi]

I think feminists just need to live with the fact that men may actually be better than them. They never even consider that option.

Really there are 4 options:

1. Men and Women are equally capable in every way.
2. Men are superior to Women in almost every way.
3. Women are superior to Men in almost every way.
4. Men and Women both have higher proficiency in differing areas of life.

I gotta agree with you. 4 is pretty much the answer in my eyes. I think men are stronger then women physically in some ways ratio wise, women are smarter then men in some ways ratio wise. Women are amazing at analyzing crazy ass shit and manipulating. Men just tackle shit head on a lot of the time and get things done.

[Zoolander]

Women are amazing at analyzing crazy ass shit and manipulating. Men just tackle shit head on a lot of the time and get things done.

The philosophical response though is to ask whether men and women are like that because they naturally are, or because they are raised and treated significantly different throughout their lives from day 1? I would argue the latter. People tend to reject this, often because the notion alarms them, but we are pretty much constructs of our social interactions. Philosophers and psychologists tend to agree with that point.

Just something to toss around the noggin.

[thetruepandagod]

Some of the list is right, some are wrong, a lot are subjective. wtf is the point of this

[Ziero]

There can never ever be equality between the genders, because the blunt truth is that the genders are not equal. Down to the very fiber of our beings, men and women are just completely different. It's literally in our blood to be different, so we will always end up having different experiences from one another. This difference goes far beyond those differences found within race, religion, nationality and so forth, as a black man and a white man are still both chemically and physically the same, a canadian women and an asian woman are both, physically and chemically the same. But genetically speaking, scientifically speaking, hell even population wise, men and women are, and will always be far too different to ever be considered 'equals'.

However, that doesn't mean that one is better then the other. In terms of educations, professions so forth and so on, the only real reason(in a perfect world) anyone should excel or succeed in any given field should be based on pure personal talent. If a woman can do the same job as a man to the same standard of quality they should both receive the same praise and the same pay. If a woman can exceed a man in any given field, then that woman should receive better compensation for her personal skills.

But at the same time, there will always be fields and situations where the average man is better suited for the role then the average women, and conversely the average woman will have roles better suited for her then the average male. These issues aren't just brought about simply because of gender issues or sexism, it's because the very natures of men and women are just so different from each other that they're both able to accomplish different things in easier manners naturally.

Sure there will always be exceptions to the rules, but that's what makes them exceptions. It's not the fact that certain roles exists, or even that one gender will receive more praise for succeeding in a role that they weren't expected to succeed in that's the issue. It's not giving someone a chance to succeed in that role in the first place that's the problem.

Even the whole "No male-slut" concept falls under this. Men, by their very genetic code, are built from the ground up, to be able to spread his seed constantly and frequently, from the moment they hit puberty to the day they die. Women on the other hand have a much stricter time schedule, and can only "receive" so many times before they end up being pregnant. There is just far more built in consequences for a woman sleeping around then there is a male. Even when protection is used that risk is always there. Now this is completely unfair for women, as many of them enjoy sex as much as men and wish to be able to partake in it without negative labeling. But this isn't an issue that resulted strictly from society, it is something that evolved and grew from the very genetic differences between the genders.

It's a shame there is such a discrepancy between the genders, and it sucks that one side will be scorned while the other is praised for engaging in the exact same action. But at the same time, the two genders will never be perfectly equal so all we can do is try and treat everyone the best we can, regardless of silly things like gender, race, religion or whatever other crap people get judged by.

[Chen]

i thought it was largely correct, #46 was pretty funny, as it was really accurate

[Seanr]

i thought it was largely correct, #46 was pretty funny, as it was really accurate

Well it's no longer true if we're told about it >.<

[SamanosukeShiva]

26. My clothing is typically less expensive and better-constructed than women’s clothing for the same social status. While I have fewer options, my clothes will probably fit better than a woman’s without tailoring. (More).

this is true

[OWS_Tonx]

The whole list pretty much holds true, some more than others.

[Meresgi]

The philosophical response though is to ask whether men and women are like that because they naturally are, or because they are raised and treated significantly different throughout their lives from day 1? I would argue the latter. People tend to reject this, often because the notion alarms them, but we are pretty much constructs of our social interactions. Philosophers and psychologists tend to agree with that point.

Just something to toss around the noggin.

I agree with you that it's how we are raised. As there are plenty of men who are great a manipulating and analytical thought and there are plenty of women who could punch a hole through my chest or are very abrupt and want to get shit done now without questions.

[SamanosukeShiva]

but those women are not attractive

[Khajit]

10 is wrong imo. I got bored around #30 so i skimmed after that but #41 is kinda funny since women's magazines actually show MORE scantily clad women than many advertisments shown at men so something obviously needs to be reworked there. Old spice man merely existing also throws a wrench in that idea.
40 is obviously a cultural/class difference since in my country teen pregnancy is actually throwing off old family dynamics where the grandmothers and/or other relatives would take care of the children while the parents worked. The maker of that article/list is in retrospect basing things off of the assumption that everyone is of the same exact class/culture/ethnicity that they are.
Upon further examination of the previous entries I'm seeing more and more assumptions and flaws on the part of the author.
A few opinions are kinda right, alot of em are just idiotic assumptions, and the rest ill admit i dont have the data to prove it right or wrong one way or the other.