General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: There's been a lot of talk here lately about "privilege", so it may be useful to define it ... [View all]Major Nikon
(36,927 posts)I don't take ownership of what any other man says anymore than I expect you to take ownership of everything all feminists say. Trying to put me in the boat with everything said by someone else is silly and pointless. It's pretty rare that I will claim that anything anyone says is "competely inaccurate". I'm not sure you can make the same claim. I have my opinions and you have yours. Just because you don't agree with me, doesn't mean I'm wrong and vise versa. If you have something relevant to this conversation and specific that I've said that you want to contradict, then please offer it. Lumping me with whatever group you're trying to put me in with some abstract claim of bullshittery doesn't interest me.
I would like to see someone quantify male privilege and as yet I haven't seen anyone, self-described feminist or otherwise do so. White privilege is pretty easy to quantify with things like education, employment, life expectancy, health, crime, and justice. When most of those same metrics are applied to gender you find men getting the shit end of the stick. Furthermore when you apply those exact same metrics to men within a non-white class, you also find men predominately getting the shit end of the stick. At best gender privilege is a wash. So what does male privilege mean exactly? Experience or not I'm pretty sure the subject is not beyond the scope of reason regardless of what you suggest. If you can't quantify it in terms that clearly describe it (as is the case with white privilege) then basically all you have is your belief which is not much different than those who believe in a higher power. Regardless of how firm your convictions are, it does not make it so. All conflating various privileges does is wrap up those you may or may not be able to support in a nice wrapper for ones you can, presumably to make the former more palatable. I don't see how it offers anything useful to further the discussion of privilege of any type. YMMV.