A Post With Links Because I Had Too Many (And They May Be Useful To Other People)
Each bullet point has the link to the quote source in it.
Privilege
Male privilege is being offended at being called sexist, but making fun of women who are offended at actual sexism.
Male privilege is hearing the above things and attributing it to just a few bad guys behaving badly and not taking it seriously as something that women constantly have to deal with and as something that is wrong with society.
You actually need to work pretty hard to explore your own privilege, and when you do, you often start to feel kind of icky and uncomfortable inside, and as you start to realize what this thing is and people ask you to examine it, you get all defensive.
What you have to do is be aware of it. Be sensitive to the fact that there are people out there who have been persecuted and denied advantages that you have because of their race, gender, etc., and understand that when these topics come up, you need to listen to what they’re saying and be aware of the fact that you can only approach this issue from an outsider’s perspective.
Every single one of us has some kind of privilege over somebody. What matters is whether we’re aware of it, and what we choose to do with it, and that we not use it to dismiss the valid and real concerns of the people who don’t share our particular brand.
If he doesn’t believe in male privilege, she must fight for her own equality, being constantly pushed down by someone who doesn’t believe he has an advantage based on his gender.
The point of listening to women and feminists is to listen to women and feminists. Because if you listen to them, you might start to understand certain basic points, such as: Women do not automatically have to accept you as an expert, particularly not when the subject under discussion (sexism!) is something you’ve never experienced first-hand. Women do not have to make you “comfortable” and “welcome” in every single conversation. Women do not automatically have to grant you a space in their discussions, on their blogs, or in their lives.
When people get mad at other people saying that something they did was racist/sexist/homophobic/whatever…
No wonder some women are unconsciously passive aggressive when expressing anger, sadness, or frustration. For years, they have been subjected to so much gaslighting that they can no longer express themselves in a way that feels authentic to them.
While it is true the Patriarchy Hurts Men, Too™, the fact of the matter is that the problems that men face that don’t stem from class, race, sexuality, or able-bodiedness - issues tend to stem from socially ingrained misogyny.
A woman’s worst nightmare? That’s pretty easy. Novelist Margaret Atwood writes that when she asked a male friend why men feel threatened by women, he answered, “They are afraid women will laugh at them.” When she asked a group of women why they feel threatened by men, they said, “We’re afraid of being killed.”
It is not a double-standard to say that privileged people cannot use oppressive language but marginalized people can use and reclaim it. They are two entirely different things. Marginalized people need to feel safe to let off steam, joke about and reclaim oppressive language. They do not need their discussions to be nit-picked and berated for every time they use a word that the poor, helpless privileged folk aren’t allowed to use.
I think we can all recognize that the “it’s a joke excuse” is the most dismissive, self-righteous loophole, created by those who refuse to examine their power, and assume they have not only the right to say whatever they want to people, but the right to control how other people react to what they have said.
True gender equality is actually perceived as inequality. A group that is made up of 50% women is perceived as being mostly women. A situation that is perfectly equal between men and women is perceived as being biased in favor of women.
Being female should not be special. It should be normal. It is normal, in the real world. There are all kinds of girls. There are all kinds of women. You just wouldn’t think so, if you only paid attention to dogs and Smurfs.
Women stick their necks out to say that something is fucked-up, hurtful, oppressive, scary: Misogynist. They do this knowing full well that there will be social consequences. Remarkably, we’re all familiar with the idea that the women who do this are bitches/ugly/humorless/scolds/delusional (“you see sexism everywhere”)/hysterical/oversensitive/insensitive/etc. We know that we take on most of the risk, in this conversation.
When you trivialize what even the women you love are saying to you, when you let sexist remarks slide, when you insist that women view things from your perspective (rational! calm! reasonable!) because you don’t feel like trying to see theirs (emotional! hysterical! nuts!), when you sit around laughing with other men about how crazy chicks are before you go home to the wife and daughters you love more than life and always treat with respect, when you say the fact that online harassment disproportionately affects women somehow doesn‘t mean we should be considering it through the lens of women’s experiences in particular, you’re not fucking helping. You’re being willfully obtuse.
So no, I do not need to be polite about your “counter-points.” I do not need to say “Ah, yes, good point,” when you’re not making a good point at all. You are not unique. You have said to me what literally hundreds of other men have said to me before. And I don’t need to listen to your bullshit, or anyone else’s bullshit. Ever.
Rape Culture
In a rape culture both men and women assume that sexual violence is a fact of life, inevitable as death or taxes. This violence, however, is neither biologically nor divinely ordained. Much of what we accept as inevitable is in fact the expression of values and attitudes that can change.
If a female stranger is wary around you, it is not because she suspects you are a rapist, or that all men are rapists. It’s because a general level of circumspection is what vigilance requires. Don’t take it personally.
These individuals’ propensity to rape was significantly related not only to their acceptance of rape myths and of traditional ideas about male and female sexuality, but also to their belief that male sexual aggression is normal.
You may not know what it is like to be a woman. But surely, as a human being, you can see that your mothers and your sisters are fighting a constant battle against violence perpetuated by men. Surely you can see that by undermining the seriousness of their struggle, you are actually contributing to that cycle of violence.
This is what we’re talking about, rape culture skeptics. We live in a world where people overwhelmingly agree with and defend the derogatory, violent statements made by men about women, regardless of whether they came from the mouth of a rapist or a the pages of a men’s magazine. Shit needs to change.
You tell me what’s more infantilizing: repeatedly letting boys (and grown men) off the hook for their behavior because “boys will be boys” and we can’t ever expect any differently, or creating a consent standard in which all partners take active responsibility for their partner’s safety, and which acknowledges the truly diseased sexual culture we’re soaking in every day.
That there’s “beauty and vulnerability” and “sexy” in an attempted rape,because again, this is not about Lara, this is about the hetero male player looking AT Lara, and the threat of rape hanging over her existing for THEM as part of some protection fantasy.
I am sure every girl can recall, at least once as a child, coming home and telling their parents, uncle, aunt or grandparent about a boy who had pulled her hair, hit her, teased her, pushed her or committed some other playground crime. I will bet money that most of those, if not all, will tell you that they were told “Oh, that just means he likes you”. I never really thought much about it before having a daughter of my own. I find it appalling that this line of bullshit is still being fed to young children.
Rape Jokes
The first thing we need to be able to do if we want to have honest, open discussion about rape is challenge the assumptions we have about where rape happens and who commits it. And when discussing Rape Culture, just ask yourself: Who feels more comfortable with my assertions? The rapists or the Rape Victim/Survivor. This fetishization of not censoring yourself, of being an “equal-opportunity offender,” is bizarre and bad for comedy. When did “not censoring yourself” become a good thing? We censor ourselves all the time, because we are not entitled, sociopathic fucks.
Meaning-making (and unmaking) is much more complicated than simply disregarding the power that decades and sometimes centuries of use have given to certain words. Also, you also might come off as slightly pretentious for assuming that your (likely contrived and unoriginal, sorry) rape joke is somehow contributing to dissolving the power behind the word.
In the world we currently live in, in the social constructs between which we are currently operating, rape jokes are not funny. They’re not funny because we can’t talk about rape honestly, and they’re not funny because they make people laugh at rape (and assume rape will be laughed at), and they’re not funny because rape is not funny. They’re not funny because the reason we distance ourselves from rape with humor in the first place—to wit, the abject hideousness of rape—is something that that very distance allows people to forget.
Creepiness
Can women be creepy? Yes, for sure. They are human and capable of anything that humans are capable of. But when they are creepy, they don’t have an entire culture backing them up and explaining why their creepiness isn’t that bad.
In a culture that teaches women to smooth things over and not stir up trouble, where you’re not really given much of a vocabulary or tool kit to identify and call out people who feel like they have an unquestioned right to you or your time or your attention or your body or even your damn SMILE, and where the world tries to slap those tools out of your hands when you try to pick them up, all that’s left is the word “creepy.”
I want to live in that world where challenging people is as easy as I’m told it is. “Just address the person directly,” guys tell me, “and they’ll have a chance to fix themselves. I do it myself, and it works.” Rad! I am glad these guys are doing this. I do this myself. I address people directly all the time. Here’s a thing: It’s easier for guys. People listen more often when guys say no.
Nice Guy Syndrome
What we learned as kids is that we males are each owed, and will eventually be awarded, a beautiful woman. We were told this by every movie, TV show, novel, comic book, video game and song we encountered…
There’s a certain level of women’s behavior that is always expected to be performative, to be for the benefit of others; specifically, to be for the benefit of men. But I have never heard a guy internalize his romantic frustration in the way that women are taught and encouraged to do.
Sexualisation and Sexuality
The real impact of the male gaze, and objectification, and judgment, is about way more than beer commercials, Playboy pictorials, and who does and doesn’t have to pay her own bar tab.
Enlightened sexism insists that women have made plenty of progress because of feminism — indeed, full equality has allegedly been achieved — so now it’s OK, even amusing, to resurrect sexist stereotypes of girls and women. After all, these images can’t undermine women at this late date, right?
This is how thoroughly we women have been sexualized, that we cannot make the kind of noises that come with physical exertion without it being associated with sex. In fact, everything about our bodies has been sexualized in one way or another. If we groan during sport or we breast-feed in public, we are criticized for making people think about sex. If we talk openly about things like menstruation and poop and farts, then we are criticized for making people not want to think about sex.
Because women have been, as psychotherapist Susie Orbach points out, set up as sexual objects judged and valued for their outward appearance, they’re seen as “fair game” not matter what field they’re in.
Young women are sold provocative clothes but aren’t taught where to find their own clitoris. Many girls give their boyfriends oral sex, but are too uncomfortable with their own bodies to allow the guys to return the favor. It’s still a radical act to say that women need and deserve access to information about their own sexual pleasure — not just about the risks and negative consequences of sex.
Feminism and Misogyny
I am tired of being consumed by confusion and anger, typing, typing, typing and typing a seemingly endless response, including research, links and statistics, and then hesitate clicking “submit”. I am tired of knowing that I hesitate because I am afraid of the flood of responses that will come. I am tired of knowing that I will be bombarded with lighten up’s, stop whining’s and get a sense of humor’s for so long, that I will start to wonder if I am indeed wound up too tight, a nagger and humorless.
Why I am a male feminist. I decided that I loved feminists and embraced feminism. Not only does feminism give woman a voice, but it also clears the way for men to free themselves from the stranglehold of traditional masculinity. When we hurt the women in our lives, we hurt ourselves, and we hurt our community, too.
What these people are basically saying is that, despite the overwhelming evidence of entrenched sexual, physical and ideological oppression of women, the only way feminism can really be fair is if it first identifies and solves all of the ways in which the patriarchy also oppresses men.
And when the topic of misogyny comes up, and men change the subject, it comes across as excusing misogyny. It doesn’t matter how many times you say, “Yes, of course, misogyny is terrible.” When you follow that with a “Yes, but…”, it comes across as an excuse. In many cases, it is an excuse. And it contributes to a culture that makes excuses for misogyny.
Miscellaneous
The following post is a list that links to many examples of why the idea that we Westerners live in a genderblind society, meaning that we have achieved total equality, is a myth.
I think it’s criminal that we don’t socialize women to be direct about expressing refusal, and I know what women risk when we do express ourselves directly. I’m sorry that it makes dating and interacting with men so fraught and confusing – if we could just say “not interested, thanks” and be respected and believed and not constantly worried about personal safety and violent blowback it would be a better world.
It’s an existential dilemma to be alive and realize you are not important and that your body, the one you believe belongs to YOU, in fact may not. It may belong to your father, your mother, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, a stranger, your state. It makes some people angry. But good girls don’t get angry, do they? It’s so unattractive. But depression, that’s a different thing.
Australian women Olympians have weighed into an escalating row over the second-class treatment of elite female athletes compared to their male counterparts.
I don’t think it’s an accident that it’s [fashion] typically seen as shallow, trivial, and vain. It is the height of irony that women are valued for our looks, encouraged to make ourselves beautiful and ornamental… and are then derided as shallow and vain for doing so.
There is an argument that it’s OK to draw women in this hyper-idealized and sexualized way, because male characters are idealized too. The difference is, more often than not, women are idealized primarily in a sexual manner, and men are idealized in a way that emphasizes power and strength.
I can remember speaking to a 12-year-old boy, a football player, and I asked him, I said, “How would you feel if, in front of all the players, your coach told you, you were playing like a girl?” Now, I expected him to say something like, “I’d be sad; I’d be mad; I’d be angry,” something like that. No, the boy said to me, the boy said to me, “It would destroy me.” And I said to myself, “God, if it would destroy him to be called a girl, what are we then teaching him about girls?”
Source.