Commenter Eagle 35 posted the text of a Reddit exchange he had with a feminist as a comment. (He prefers not to link to the actual exchange.)
The feminist in the exchange exhibits a behavior that is a recurring problem in the discussion of gender, the assumption that women fully understand men and our lives and can make meaningful comparisons. This typically is expressed in statements such as “Men have X privilege because men can Y and women cannot”.
These statements usually suffer from two defects. One is that very often the statement that men can do X is simply false and the speaker is simply unaware of the relevant facts. The feminist below exhibits this in her reference to the threat of street violence when walking home from class. This is sometimes acknowledged by denial, in the form of some kind of bogus, supposedly extenuating or mitigating factors around the threats men face and the harms they suffer. The typical form is “Yeah, but that’s inflicted by men!” as if that effectively discredits the claim. (Didn’t you just list a harm to women that is also inflicted by men? So is that now discredited too?)
The second and more problematic defect is the erasure, sometime to the point of appearing sociopathic, of a particular disadvantage men have, usually by false equivalence. To answer a point about the rate at which men are murdered with a statistic about female rape victims is to equate rape to murder, which pretty obviously erases the seriousness of murder. I am going to spell this out in detail: saying the rape of a woman is equivalent to the death of a man devalues his life fundamentally.
We see this particular form of misandry all the time. When men’s suicide rates are mentioned, a response that rests on women’s rates of attempted suicide devalues actual suicide. When the removal of the entire foreskin is discussed, there is inevitably a reminder that the removal of a portion of the clitoris in incalculably worse. When the deaths of men in war are mentioned, we have Hillary Clinton telling us that “Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat. Women often have to flee from the only homes they have ever known. Women are often the refugees from conflict and sometimes, more frequently in today’s warfare, victims. Women are often left with the responsibility, alone, of raising the children.” – in other words, they survive, unlike their men.
Please add your own examples.
Ah, one of my own – K R Suryaprakash was chased down and physically attacked in the street for “eve-teasing” – flirting with his attacker – and Matthew Champion of the Independent applauds this, as if a physical attack is a mete response commensurate with flirting.
Here is Eagle35:
I’ll supply you the Male Privileges she lists instead.
“Male privilege is not walking down the street and being singled out and verbally harassed by different groups of men on a weekly basis.
Male privilege is being visually harassed by blatant sexual displays on the street on a daily basis and being called a misogynist for daring to “dictate to women” when it comes to dress by calling this what it is, visual harassment.
Male privilege is not having to explicitly plan out your walk home from class every evening by carrying bear mace or holding your keys in your hand because you’ve been approached by men/people who are 1.5 times your size and demand you ‘sit your purple lips on their nose’.
Male privilege is being the overwhelming majority of actual, not just feared, street violence, violence that results in injury and death, not just a sense of affront. Male privilege is being the target of actual physical violence rather than mere speech.
The society you live in doesn’t teach you that your primary value is in the sexual pleasure you are capable of providing to the opposite sex.
The society we live in teaches men that their primary value is their usefulness to women, and that if they want intimacy with a woman, they have to pay for it one way or another. it may be performing three feats to win the princess, it may be spending six months income on a piece of jewelry, it may be staying in a job for a lifetime that kills your soul and keeps you from raising your own children.
(With that said, wouldn’t life be easier for dudes if they were as objectified as much as women are in the media? If women were told that men were to be primarily valued for how they look and for their sex, maybe more women would see men as sexy things to do sex on!
Yes it would. It would be like sexual equality. But before that can ever happen, women are going to have to stop choosing to see male sexuality as predatory and male genitals as some kind of weapon that they can mutilate at will and then laugh about. (You don’t know what I’m talking about? How convenient.)
Unfortunately(?), our society perpetuates the notion that men are to be valued for many things other than their sexuality.)
Unfortunately our society values men only for their economic profitability and usefulness to others, primarily women, and their willingness to risk their lives to protect women.
Male privilege is failing at something, anything, and not qualifying your entire sex as a failure. Example: girls are bad at math. (Really, I can’t count how many times in my life I’ve heard ‘girls can’t do x’ or ‘only boys can do y’).
Male privilege is being told by elementary school teachers, while you are young and defenseless and gullible, that girls are naturally smarter, that they are better behaved, and that men cause all the wars and problems in the world.
The society you live in equates logic and academic prowess with masculinity, even though most college graduates are female and those numbers are increasing.
So obviously that society does not equate academic success with masculinity, it equates it with femininity, and privileges femininity in granting access and opportunity to education.
Male privilege is being able to meet friends for drinks at a bar and not having to preemptively think about how you’re going to peacefully make it to the bathroom when you have to piss without someone trying to stick their hand up your skirt.
Male privilege is having women grab your crotch – not your ass, your actual genitals – and being called a misogynist or gay if you’re not all flattered and cool with it, or getting thrown out by the bouncer if one of them objects to your reluctance.
Female privilege is being able to meet friends at a bar and not having to worry if you are going to be attacked by the boyfriend of the woman who has come over to flirt with you, or attacked when you leave the bar. Hell, female privilege is having strangers buy you drinks based on nothing more than your gender.
In the same respect, male privilege is talking to a person without uncomfortably trying to cover your chest as a means of maintaining a person’s attention on what you’re saying. The society you live in doesn’t teach the opposite sex that you are to be treated as something that is another’s right to consume.
Male privilege is not having the majority of acquaintances you run into on a daily basis ask you if you’re sick because you’re not wearing makeup. Society doesn’t tell you that you’re ugly without it.
Male privilege is risking your life on the street if you wear make up.
Male privilege is having society deem you unattractive, ugly even, for not presenting a female face. Male privilege is having your genitals deemed ugly, ugly enough to require mutilation at birth, before you can possibly consent, to make them esthetically acceptable to some shallow sociopath. Male privilege is having all depictions in art be of female bodies and no male bodies.
Male privilege is not being interrupted or having your opinions dispelled immediately by your opposite-sex peers because you’re considered biologically ‘illogically inferior’ and ‘professionally incompetent’ (in other words: ‘because what do you know?’).
Unless you happen to be talking about raising your own children or trying to watch them at public park. If you dare try that, you can count on some officious matron giving you the stink eye and even accosting you or reporting you to the police.
Interrupted? You mean like having your every comment in the discussion of gender policed or silenced with “what about the menz?” or accusations of misogyny or of whining or the simple resort to “male privilege”? Ooops, like just above.
The society you live in does not tell the opposite sex that they inherently know more than you because at some point thousands of years ago they had to fight to fuck a person and they killed animals for food while you merely built homes and raised the next generation.
The society you live in says women get to make all reproductive decisions because you “create life”. The society you live in says women have a special feel for the arts and anything to do with design in the home, so her man had better just shut up, pay the bills and sit in his designated chair, and go sleep on the couch if she takes a notion.
Male privilege is actually having male masturbation depicted in media of any kind or referenced in popular media with regularity.
Okay, this is so false as to border on willful blindness. Depictions of male masturbation? This part is a straight up lie. Can she show me even one, or is she just perving on gay porn sites?
The fact is that male masturbation has been the object of cultural hysteria for centuries. There are even films on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Ribbon
Anonymous feminist is apparently unaware of the shaming language directed at men who masturbate – “wanker”, “jerk”, “jerk off” – and how this language equates male masturbation with being worthless.
Anonymous Feminist is almost certainly ignorant of the fact that the prevention of male masturbation was the infamous Dr. Kellogg’s reason for popularizing mass male genital mutilation in the US.
How often do you think young girls and women get to see female masturbation or even remotely accurate female desire depicted in popular media? (I’ll give you a hint: never.)
Then why don’t they get up off their asses and develop some content that does show it? Popular media is market driven, and young girls and women sure have a lot of disposable income for it to chase; why so passive?
Male privilege is not having to shave your legs or armpits if you don’t want to and not expecting to be treated as a deficient man.
Female privilege is not having to shave your face every day and not being considered some kind of a boor or a peasant or worse yet some kind of unclean pervert if you don’t.
I have very little leg hair and don’t shave. My boyfriend still fucks me harder than ever and even licks my legs while he does it. I can’t count how many times I’ve been asked to justify why I don’t shave. How many times a day are you asked about the hair that occurs naturally on your body?
Asked? If it even gets that far. Male body hair is execrated and derided: http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/fashion-blog/2014/aug/20/hairy-back-wax-grooming-men
And then there is all the sneering and opining and femsplaining about beards.
I mean, make some attempt to know something about the society and culture you are criticizing. You say you live in it? I think you have shown you really don’t.
Eagle 35 wraps up:
This is a very rudimentary and possibly sloppy list, but would you like me to go on? I can and will, but it’s late, and I’ve been drinking.”
Granted, someone requested the list but that’s what started it all.
Besides, Tamen did a great job fighting back with actual evidence posted. I think Tamen and I would make a great team, me using emotion and Tamen the technical.
- The Woman Card - May 2, 2016
- Frat boy bachelorettes and the invasion of gay bars - April 15, 2016
- “Not my kid….” - February 22, 2016
by 
Good post, as usual. I just wanted to jump in with this because it is one of my pet peeves: there is no evidence whatsoever that women attempt suicide more often than men. The CDC recently did a study about suicide and found zero evidence of such a gap. I’ll try to find the link, my bookmarks got screwed up.
I dont have a way to prove this, but I actually asked a researcher about women attempting suicide more. She told me that the reason it appears that way is that A: an event is listed as either an attempt or a suicide. This is false as every completed suicide is also an attempt at suicide. and B: The researchers count the number of events, not the number of suicidal people. Therefore a person who attempts suicide, survives, and attempts again is counted as “two attempts” rather than one suicidal person. A person who commits suicide can, by definition, only be counted the one time.
Let me post the response I laid out for her:
After listing priveleges males have and detailing what women struggle with, I had this to say in response:
“Yes, you have struggles and areas in life that aren’t respectful to your basic humanity.
But in all of this, you realize there is one thing you have that no man on this earth will ever have, and likely never will judging by our long storied history.
Empathy.
Let me lay it out for you:
Every single problem in that list has programs, support groups, and media attention addressing it. Especially in terms of violence against women. I can count beyond my two hands the number of PSAs and coverage violence against your gender receives, not to mention the level of funding bank rolling it from the government.
Now what does a man like me have in regards to empathy?
1) Get hit/abused by a woman
Empathy: “How can you let a woman hit you?”, “HA HA HA, what a wuss!”, “You’re bigger than her, capable of handling such a frail petite little girl like that”.
2) Get hit/abused by a woman than retaliate in self-defense before it escalates.
Empathy: “Oh my god, you monster!”, “Never hit a woman!”, “You are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent…” and so on.
3) Get falsely accused of rape or domestic violence by a vindictive woman with a grudge
Empathy: “She’s right.”, “You are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent…”, “We don’t want your kind around here.”
4) Speak out against women slanderously insulting men.
Empathy: “Oh quit your whining!”, “What about the MENZ!”, “It’s not about YOU! Stop making it so!”, “Check your privilege!”, “Men have all the power. Consider yourself lucky!”
5) If, as a boy, I am physically bullied and hurt by a girl/group of girls.
Empathy: See #1
6) If, as a boy, I am physically bullied and hurt by a girl/group of girls then defend myself physically.
Empathy: See #2. “NEVER. HIT. A. GIRL!”
7) I am a boy being left behind in education.
Empathy: “Only minority boys. White boys fair better.”, “It’s not an issue”, “Stop taking attention away from the girls”.
8) I am a boy/man getting told my gender is responsible for war, violence and general damage being done to the world then express my hurt.
Empathy: Well, see #6 with an additional “It’s only fair. Now you know how it feels after girls and women were oppressed for thousands of years!”
Get the idea?
You talk about male privilege but don’t even bother to delve deeper and see that men are in the same boat with items on your list in a different way.
With the ultimate difference being: Empathy Apartheid.
Now you’re a feminist, right? Why is it that the movement, when faced with the severe level of empathy dolled out towards your gender compared to the expired scraps dumped from the garbage bin to men, didn’t address this? And when those who did, why did the movement write them out of existence?
Answer that. Because from my end, you lack basic awareness of how much empathy and support you’re given compared to someone like me regarding your problems.
And when men attempt to address their needs as a collective, they get misinterpreted and labeled sexist. Some even have their careers threatened and reputations slandered.
Kind of makes you think, doesn’t it?
And you know what’s worse: This empathy gap is never going away any time soon. Because it’s a part of mankind. Men and women are more empathetic to women. Period.
And the feminist movement, or at least some segment of it, used this empathy gap for their selfish gain with not a single protest from others.
I know this sounds harsh but if you step into my shoes for a just a brief minute, you’d understand just how much this slap in the face, this empathy gap, makes me so depressed to the point of suicidal thoughts if I spare more than my burdened train of thought can muster.
Yet here I am in the world, putting on my sunday best, pulling up my bootstraps and being a model citizen. Just like many tell me. “Hey, just count your blessings. Find a hobby, an interest, get involved.” Just another way of telling me to be another mindless drone. Even my current psychiatrist recommended we focus less on what has happened to me in the past and on the present. “Don’t dwell on it too much.”
See what I mean? You get the programs, the support, the media backing, the mucho denaro, a nice little Department for Women and Girls in The White House.
What do I get? A mask to wear, just my size, for the betterment of the community.
That’s all.
There’s my opinion. Take it for what it is.”
And her follow up:
““First of all, as far as empathy is concerned, I mentioned several times in most of my comments in this thread that I believe it is horrific and cruel that men anywhere have to undergo circumcision. I am the sort of feminist that believes there is a place in feminism that addresses men’s rights, but as a whole, I am a feminist because I am interested in addressing the ways in which women specifically are disenfranchised in the society we live in.
I was asked to provide a list of ways I and many feminists believe men are privileged. Your comment is so full of hostility that in all honestly it makes it difficult to take seriously. You seem to be operating under the impression that I have no interest in extending the same empathy I am shown to men, and if that is in fact the case, it is because I was not asked anything that would have required me to discuss those opinions of mine.
I think men should have as much access to recovery and trauma care as women have, and believe there is no excuse for why such centers don’t exist.
Also, I know of zero instances in my personal life where a woman falsely accused a man of raping or assaulting her when it in fact did not happen, but I know of several friends of mine, let alone acquaintances who have actually been raped. Has it happened to you/do you know of one man who has been falsely accused of rape? Do you have any idea how much more frequently women are actually raped in proportion to the number of men who have to endure false rape accusations? Or that a very small proportion of men who are raped are actually raped by women? The U.S. Justice Department estimates that false rape accusations occur at a rate of less than 2%. I’m guessing you aren’t a part of that two percent, in which case that instance of disenfranchisement does not apply to you. If you have in fact been falsely accused of rape or sexual assault, then I am genuinely sorry you ever had to deal with that. I think it is wrong that women falsely accuse men of rape because I believe it takes the focus of of women and men who were actually raped.
Along the same lines, I fully understand and admit that domestic/violent abuse at the hands of a woman against a man is something that happens, and is something that should be put to an end. Are you someone who has endured such violence at the hands of a significant other? I don’t say parent or familial member, since I think girls and boys endure physical abuse at statistically insignificant equal numbers. As wrong as I truly believe it is that anyone endure domestic abuse from their significant other, about 7.4% of men in the U.S. reported being physically assaulted by a partner. On the flip side, about 22% of women have reported being physically abused by a spouse. Yes, men are subject to experience physical violence in large numbers, but they are less likely to be physically hurt than women. That being said, as many as 1 in 5 women report attempted or acts of rape, and as many as 48% of assault cases go unreported. Do you still think women have too many shelters to go to when they feel in danger?
(Again, I am not saying that men shouldn’t have shelters to go to, but empathy doesn’t seem to be doing much to stop women from getting raped does it?)
As far as your 4th point is concerned, I hate sexism wherever it appears, and personally, I regularly call out anyone that I feel is unfairly insulting someone based on gender alone, whether they are a man or a woman speaking out against men or women. At the end of the day, I hear more people calling each other bitches, pussies, cunts, and little girls more than anything else as a means of insulting (playfully or no) another person. You have the privilege of not having your entire gender used as a set of common slurs which equate with inherent weakness. Yes, there’s dick, but even I still think that’s wrong and that gendered slurs are bad. As a dude, you probably have no idea what it’s like to hear so many people around you use your own gender as a slur.
In regards to your 5th and 6th point, WHY IS IT NOT FUCKED UP TO HIT ANYONE AT ALL?? Whenever men point this out, I can’t help but think that they are just pining to nail a woman in the face because that’s a threat they have to deal with, a threat that is imposed BY OTHER MEN. As I mentioned in a previous comment, my boyfriend was an infantryman and a goddamn sniper in the US Army for 4 years, and even he never responded with violence when that’s what he was met with before joining the army and being flung into combat (what he called the most aggressive, testosterone-fueled environment in existence). Why is physical violence necessary, ever, against anyone? I don’t think anyone should be hit, period.
In regards to your 7th point, what mechanism, exactly, is it that is disadvantaging you at the educational level? Women are receiving 56% of college degrees in the U.S. Do you really think it’s unfair that men are no longer getting the most degrees?? 85%+ of the U.S. Congress is made up of WHITE MALE AMERICANS. Would you dare to tell me that women aren’t being left behind in our COUNTRY’S legislature?? College attendance is the most equal it has ever been.
For your #8, as a feminist and logical human being, I disregard such overwhelmingly generalized terms, and think that thousands upon thousands of years of warfare ingrained into our very species is what is responsible for so much chaos and war. I personally do not blame it on one gender or the other, so you can count me out of that discussion. Have you personally had to fight in a combat zone? Have you personally had to endure what it’s like to send a loved one or a significant other to war for a year? If you can respond yes to any of that, then my god, I am so sorry you had to endure that, ever. I cohabit with someone who has given years of his life to combat and did nothing but support him in ever way I could while he was overseas. The forces that lead us as a species to go to war against each other are much, MUCH more complex than mere gender, and I will fucking argue that point every time.
I as a feminist address issues the men in my life (who are willing to open up) face every time I discuss my own issues. You are coming into this discussion accusing me of ignorance, and assuming you have me pegged. You do not understand the first tenet of feminism if you believe it means to be automatically anti-male. I think men should have just as much access to trauma care as women, but at the core of my feminist beliefs, I believe women and men should be regarded as equals and that women are inherently equal not better than men, they just aren’t treated as such in the ways that matter the most economically and socially. You are talking to me as though I have placed women on a pedestal of greatness that men can’t touch, but it is people like you and comments like yours that try to pigeon-hole me into a corner I was standing nowhere near in regards to what I believe. I as a white woman understand fully that I belong to the most privileged race that has ever existed, and yet am able to observe that privilege because I actually want to use it to help advance those whose voices don’t have as much resonance as mine in this society. Unlike you, I am actually willing to and in this discussion have list the ways in which I am privileged as a woman, I just happen to believe that, when it comes to my personal dreams and goals, life would be a bit easier if I was a man.
You ask me to step in your shoes as if I have never had a profound discussion with the men in my life that I love so much about their struggles, and as if I don’t as the men around me about what makes their life hard. If you are a man who has experienced any one of the issues you have dealt with on a daily basis, then I wish you nothing but the best, and hope beyond hope that you can get the help, or access to the help that I believe you deserve. You wear the mask you accept. I refuse the one I am told to wear every day just so that I can try to reclaim my confidence every day. The literal image of a perfect woman is plastered everywhere for me to study, especially on this website. I volunteered for nonprofits that benefited both abused men and women, and did what I could to ensure that everyone felt welcome no matter what their circumstance. When is the last time you did something tangible to help men, besides write tirades against feminists you claim to know so well?
Do you blame me for responding so aggressively when I’m met with so much aggression? Jesus.”
Unquote.
Let’s go through the list of stereotypes they fit:
1) Claiming they emphasize while throwing bogus statistics in the critic’s face. Aka “I know this is an issue but women have it worse…”
2) Believing False Rape is not a big deal since they know men who have never been falsely accused of rape. Aka (False Rape Accusations is not a big deal because…well it doesn’t happen in my world)
3) Blaming men and emphasizing men as the problem. AKA (“It’s done BY MEN!”)
4) “People shouldn’t be hitting each other”. Yup, always brings this out when there’s still “Boys don’t hit girls” and girls allowed to get away with physically abusing boys.
5) And the cherry on top: Bragging about what they do in real life, all the good deeds for men and women, as if it absolves them of of their dishonest, ignorant bias. Then snarkily asking what the critic has done in equal measure in their life.
I should also add:
6) Making judgement’s on how one’s mental state heals. Just because she claims to have supposedly conquered her personal issues (of which I am highly skeptical based on this exchange) doesn’t give her the right to say statements like this:
“You wear the mask you accept. I refuse the one I am told to wear every day just so that I can try to reclaim my confidence every day.”
I have a newsflash for her, she likely had the backing and support circles to GIVE her the confidence to heal. Healing doesn’t occur in a vacuum. If someone lacks the resources and support structures to mend their damaged states, do they fucking have any choice about the masks they wear? Does she think it magically disappears in a puff of smoke simply by wishing and believing in yourself?
How arrogant. The equivalent of telling a person suffering from depression to “Get over it.” or implying someone who kills himself is “Selfish and sinful”.
Anyway, here it is folks for your viewing pleasure: Saying one thing then contradicting what you said in a fell swoop.
Part of it is a mutual gender Dunning-Kruger effect, each gender thinking they know a lot more about the other than they really do because they don’t know how ignorant they really are. Partly it’s because there are a lot more male characters in media and literature, but hardly any of those characters provide more than the most superficial insights to how men live and many are caricatures of masculinity. And partly something you’ve mentioned before: the traditionalist conception of women possessing unique wisdom and common sense that men generally lack, leading many to assume that women understand men better than men understand them.
My favorite is the men don’t have their consent to sex determined by what they wear privilege because men are always thought of as having consented to sex regardless of what they wear.
In essence, in ANY discussion of the sort discussed in this article, one overriding fact is quite apparent: For all their claims about trying to eliminate gender-based stereotypes, feminists RELY on those stereotypes, incessantly, as “proof” of how oppressed they are.
The average feminist’s entire construct of the concept of “men” is built of a foundation of the very gender stereotypes which they claim to be fighting.
“The average feminist’s entire construct of the concept of “men” is built of a foundation of the very gender stereotypes which they claim to be fighting.”
This, exactly. Take the traditional view of what a “Real Man” is, restate it in collective cod-Marxist terms, and you have “male privilege”
A couple of times I’ve seen some feminists respond to this, and I think a lot of it has to do with the oppressor/oppressed paradigm.
The oppressor obviously won’t know what the experiences of the oppressed are like, because they’re oppressors, boo hiss etc.
But the oppressed do know what the experiences of the oppressed are like because they’ve had to learn about them to survive.
Sounds like a recipe for minimising and demonising those unfortunate enough to get lumbered with the “oppressor” label to me – it isn’t going to produce calm, careful, rational thought among those oppressed that internalise it.
OrishM: “Sounds like a recipe for minimising and demonising those unfortunate enough to get lumbered with the “oppressor” label to me – it isn’t going to produce calm, careful, rational thought among those oppressed that internalise it.”
Honestly, I don’t even think these people are looking for calm, careful, rational thought in the first place.
“The oppressor obviously won’t know what the experiences of the oppressed are like, because they’re oppressors, boo hiss etc.
But the oppressed do know what the experiences of the oppressed are like because they’ve had to learn about them to survive.”
That doesn’t make any sense, even applied to actual oppressors and those they oppress. Oppressors often have strong incentives to have at least some insight into their victims, and the oppressed frequently interact with their oppressors only in specific, narrow contexts that give them neither the opportunity to learn much about their oppressor’s lives outside that context nor a way to benefit from that knowledge even if they had it.
You know, I wish people like her would just stick with spinning the big wheel and whatever media event it lands on she can gather her merry band of cohorts and make it all about women.
Seems to be the ONLY thing their ideology is good at nowadays.
Damn! I duck out for a couple of days and a load of great comments appear. John, thanks especially for yours. See it in a post.
Male privilege is not being interrupted or having your opinions dispelled immediately by your opposite-sex peers because you’re considered biologically ‘illogically inferior’ and ‘professionally incompetent’ (in other words: ‘because what do you know?’).
Note how sexism, being thought incompetent, and just being challenged are all treated as the same thing.
@Eagle35:
Your comment is so full of hostility that in all honestly it makes it difficult to take seriously.
Ah, yes, a twofer. Accusing a man of being “hostile” or “angry” (Code Red), and implying that the reader’s reluctance to take him seriously could only possibly be his fault. Yet when people say feminism is too angry and vitriolic to support, they’re yelled at by feminists, and told to stop making the “Tone Argument”.
PS: Come to think, if you take it to it’s logical extreme, that feminist would be justified in leaving pretty much any discussion where feminism was being negatively criticized, on the grounds of “hostility”. Thing is, Eagle was actually being relatively polite. The fact that they can’t even handle something like that does not bode well for their ability to listen and respond to any criticism.
“Thing is, Eagle was actually being relatively polite. ”
See John’s comment above on the tendency of feminists to employ the sexism they denounce. Policing men as never quite polite enough, as always a little crude, is Lady Privilege in a bustle.
I feel like I’m from another planet when somebody interprets politeness as hostility.
Then again, autistic people get the same treatment: Anytime they state a fact in a polite, yet direct, way they’re flogged for being rude, hostile, or both at the same time.
“But the oppressed do know what the experiences of the oppressed are like because they’ve had to learn about them to survive.”
I’ve always thought there is a lot to that, which is why I’m not surprised that women as.a whole know so very little about men.
RP,
Ha! Deft, very deft.
“But the oppressed do know what the experiences of the oppressed are like because they’ve had to learn about them to survive.”
but survival is a very low standard, isn’t it. Sun Zi articulated the real standard for knowing someone: mastery. “Know the enemy, know yourself; one hundred battles without defeat.”
So by your definition, women do understand men – but only enough to achieve control, not thorough knowledge of men’s whole lives. Only the ones with empathy do that. RP, I give you the Honey Badger Brigade.
The oppressor obviously won’t know what the experiences of the oppressed are like, because they’re oppressors, boo hiss etc.
That’s one of my favorites. Because, as everyone knows, the key to gaining and maintaining control over someone or a group of people is knowing absolutely nothing about them. Right? Right?! That’s why, for example, politicians are always described as manipulating the populace… because knowing nothing about a populace makes it really easy to manipulate that populace.
It’d make much more sense for oppressors to have an intimate understanding of the oppressed in order to maintain control in any society where the controlled aren’t literally kept in cages.
Who tried to pass that idea off as even remotely realistic?
JDCR, Sun Zi made the same argument a long time ago and people still quote him.
http://www.genderratic.com/p/1545/meta-you-dont-know-me/
[…] this post: http://www.genderratic.com/p/4543/male-privilege-why-do-women-assume-they-know-about-men-or-mens-liv… we discussed the cultural trope that women understand men better than men understand women, that […]