male privilege

I was recently asked to explain male privilege, and while I have mentioned it in blogs, I have never really explored the concept on The Colonic. Male privilege is characterized by normalized feelings of entitlement and access among men, coupled with socio-political structures of power that are overwhelmingly dominated by men, and generally represented with male imagery and language.

What keeps male privilege in tact is obviously male participation, but more curiously, constant female participation. While a group would clearly maintain a climate that favors its own group's advancement, it is bizarre that the oppressed class actively participates and upholds its own disenfranchisement. I will not dwell on the matter, but it is obviously correlated to ingrained female gender roles that have been both romanticized through history, literature, and culture, but also hailed as biologically determined and/or religiously mandated.

In an older post (actually, a favorite with a fun follow-up), I focused not on how omnipresent male privilege is, but on how women unknowingly reaffirm it. I vaguely describe male privilege as:

I am male, and I deserve access to all women unaccompanied (or "claimed") by other men at all times. Unclaimed women, you are always my business, and you are always available for my pleasure.

This is only one of many aspects of the overall social condition of male privilege. In terms of dominant cultural scripts (that is to say not everyone, but certainly more common ideologies reaffirmed through social institutions), men are given the privilege of only considering themselves, and the privilege to not think twice about it. As their counterpart, women are generally socialized to consider all others first. While these two life philosophies are at odds with one another, our culture strangely enforces compulsory heterosexuality, and then squawks about the divorce rate.

Other examples, taken from a fairly comprehensive check list, are quite compelling. I find the first most poignant, "I have the privilege of being unaware of my male privilege." I tried to cherry-pick from the list:

• If I choose not to have children, my masculinity will not be called into question.
• If I have children but do not provide primary care for them, my masculinity will not be called into question.
• If I have children and provide primary care for them, I’ll be praised for extraordinary parenting if I’m even marginally competent.
• If I have children and a career, no one will think I’m selfish for not staying at home.
• 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.
• My elected representatives are mostly people of my own sex. The more prestigious and powerful the elected position, the more this is true.
• 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.
• As a child, chances are I was encouraged to be more active and outgoing than my sisters.
• 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.
• As a child, chances are I got more teacher attention than girls who raised their hands just as often.
• 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.
• I can turn on the television or glance at the front page of the newspaper and see people of my own sex widely represented, every day, without exception.
• If I’m careless with my financial affairs it won’t be attributed to my sex.
• If I’m careless with my driving it won’t be attributed to my sex.
• I can speak in public to a large group without putting my sex on trial.
  
• The grooming regimen expected of me is relatively cheap and consumes little time.
• If I’m not conventionally attractive, the disadvantages are relatively small and easy to ignore.
• My ability to make important decisions and my capability in general will never be questioned depending on what time of the month it is.
• I will never be expected to change my name upon marriage or questioned if I don’t change my name.
• The decision to hire me will never be based on assumptions about whether or not I might choose to have a family sometime soon.
• 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.

Keep in mind these examples may apply to varying degrees to varying populations of men (these do intersect with white privilege and class privilege--but of course, all groups unite in their oppression of women).

And of course, there is dispute as to how privileged men really are (e.g. "men have the privilege to grow in a society that encourages boys to be tough, dads and moms buy war toys, 64% of adolescent boys hit or beat-up another kid in the past year").

I will never deny that sexism and male privilege ultimately harm men--this is why I consider myself as a humanist and not a feminist (and because people are more than genitals). However, what distinguishes the harm done to men and women is this framework of entitlement and access that men so freely experience, and therefore, they are greatly privileged. Hence the term"cocky." Entitled, with a phallus.