Mark Greene believes a monolithic view of male privilege will impede progress toward gender equality.
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In an article titled Now that I have checked my male privilege , Jim Vaughn is engaging a watershed dialogue regarding gender equality. In order to buy into this dialogue from Vaughn’s perspective (and mine) you have to buy into two central ideas:
- Male privilege is real and does a lot of damage in the world.
- The concept of Male privilege is sometimes used in ways that can be rigid and polemical; used to silence or marginalize men in spaces promoting social justice and change.
Vaughn’s article begins with a simple confirmation of male privilege:
As a graduate student, I have been checking my male privilege for several years. As a man I am more likely to run governments and corporations due to my gender, and I have the privilege of not seeing much of that privilege.
Male privilege is a universal thing, at least as it manifests at the meta level. If you can’t see this playing out, you’re either socially blinded or willfully ignorant. Across America and the world, we see the brutal and wide spread oppression of women, primarily by men. When I write about gender I first acknowledge that the collective oppression of women is worse then that faced by men. This is my baseline. Then I proceed talk about issues of oppression faced by men. The result is comments asking “why do you have to start by saying that?”
People can be highly reactive about gender. The oppression olympics it is sometimes called, the temptation to compare body counts and levels of threat and abuse. Recently I tweeted about gender violence. An activist replied “We have to be explicit. ‘Gender’ violence is male violence.” The implication being that violence by women against men is so rare as to be irrelevant.
Like some who refuse to acknowledge the systemic oppression of women as fueled by patriarchy and male privilege, others refuse to acknowledge the widespread physical abuse of men by women, typically domestic partners.
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The widespread physical abuse of men by women, typically domestic partners, is anything but irrelevant. In the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey—2010 Summary Report, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention includes the following data:
More than 1 in 3 women (35.6%) and more than 1 in 4 men (28.5%) in the United States have experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime.
That’s almost 40 million men.
Men and women face catastrophic challenges from social, cultural and political systems that are abusive, punitive, and by design, sets all groups against each other. This makes the struggles of both men and women equally valid and, more importantly, inextricably interlinked.
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Which brings us to social justice language and how it operates.
Women’s rights activists rely on clear dramatic conceptual frames; frames like male privilege to drive change. These kinds of frames are effective tools for creating public awareness. But the frames we construct in opposing injustice are just that; constructed. As such, no matter how universally accepted a frame like male privilege may be, it must remain subject to deconstruction as well.
But frames like male privilege can become, for lack of a better word… privileged. In some spaces, male privilege has become the single over arching litmus test for whether or not a man is viewed as enlightened. Men are expected to admit that they, by definition, have a huge advantage in every single imaginable context.
But men don’t. In many contexts men continue to hold privilege. But in a growing number of contexts they do not.
Although men collectively maintain an advantage over women at the meta level, individually they are subject to widely varying levels of privilege in new and emerging contexts. Many of these contexts have been intentionally created in opposition to patriarchy. And they are operating as intended. Men have less privilege in these contexts, sometimes none.
For example, put a man in a gender studies classroom. Or a family court proceeding. Or employ a man as a nurse in a field that continues to be dominated by women. (One study showed that over 89 percent of the male nursing participants reported hearing anti-male remarks from faculty in the classroom.) Or put a man on the wrong side of the law, sitting across from a woman represented by a discrimination & sexual harassment law firm.
I cite these examples not to say that the world is unfair to men. I cite them as examples of contexts in which male privilege is clearly eroding.
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I cite these examples not to say that the world is unfair to men. I cite them as examples of contexts in which male privilege is clearly eroding. What this indicates is that although male privilege may have been monolithic fifty years ago, it simply no longer is. It is splintering. Fragmenting. And justifiably so. There remains more work to be done.
Vaughn notes:
As Michel Foucault states, power in (post)modernity is constantly resisted and is not possessed by individuals…Men’s macro power has been rightfully resisted through bureaucratization from a strong feminist lobby, government programs for women and girls, and the like. Men’s power does not automatically translate into a privileged experience, there is some turbulence between the two.
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Applying frames like monolithic male privilege is understandable when fighting clear cut instances of the oppression of women but it can become counter productive in the liminal spaces where change is evolving. As more wide ranging expressions of gender emerge, our monolithic view of male privilege must become more nuanced, because any monolithic or static frame that seeks to encompass something as miraculously complex as emerging gender roles cannot help but be under-developed. Applied over and over as a monolithic “fact”, binary views of male privilege will do the most damage in spaces where men are actively engaged in self reflection and social change.
Said another way, in the evolving world of gender and justice, declaring someone else’s privilege can be the new privilege. We all need to go carefully here. Or we risk calcifying an ever increasing set of counterproductive binary frames. This is the liberal infighting your mother told you about. It got Nixon and Reagan elected. It is a bad thing.
Let me be clear. It’s not the erosion of unearned privilege that is problematic, but the pursuit of equality by putting men down that is problematic. It still maintains the system of oppression that is at the heart of our culture’s problems. It just flips the groups.
In the evolving world of gender and justice, declaring someone else’s privilege can be the new privilege. We all need to go carefully here.
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Privilege will eventually become gender neutral. Privilege has always existed somewhere on an intersectional continuum, changing contextually hour by hour depending on who we are with and where we are located, intellectually, socially, professionally, sexually, spiritually and so on. The participants are just wider ranging now.
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Men are moving into parenting, care giving, and other spaces once viewed as feminine. Men are increasingly expressing sexuality or gender in non-traditional ways. Men are becoming more empathetic and emotionally literate. Rebelling against gender norms is no simple task, and it can result in a lifetime of abusive pushback from patriarchal men and women. For the most gender radical of men, the risk of being assaulted or murdered still exists. The battle is by no means over. But real substantive and irreversible change is happening.
I realize that privilege is historical. That on one level, men have a debt to pay, an obligation to work towards gender equality. Men who seek to disengage from patriarchal male privilege have still benefitted from a lifetime of living in that patriarchal system. (And likely paid a painful cost as well.)
No matter how significant male privilege is currently, it is no longer monolithic.
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I do not suggest we remove the term male privilege from common use or even modify the frequency of its use, but men and women must go carefully. Emma C Williams states it eloquently in her article titled On Privilege and Being Human:
When the counsel to “check your privilege” is used as a bludgeon rather than a gentle reminder that we each have our own perspective on the world, it drives potential allies away from the people who need them the most. It also belies the very concept that empathy is even possible – and without empathy, we lose our humanity and each other.
No matter how significant male privilege is currently, it is no longer monolithic. Women are rightfully taking a share of power. Men are intentionally walking away from traditional manhood. Change is happening.
Perhaps going forward the solution is to hold universally accepted frames like male privilege more lightly, elevating a range of alternative frames to equal importance. By seeing others via a multitude of frames, we invite opportunities to contextually realign our thinking; to notice the gender performances that are emerging and to design the path forward to a place where masculinity is about equality, not the assumption of privilege; either by men or by women.
I understand there are many places where male privilege remains a brutal force for the oppression of women and girls. In such contexts, the relative niceties of holding concepts lightly are justifiably irrelevant. But in the spaces where working for gender change has created safety and the opportunity for dialogue across all kinds of barriers; gender, race, sexuality and otherwise, we must encourage more dialogue, more participation, more variability and more acceptance, not less.
Because there is no other way forward.
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Read more by Mark Greene:
A Manifesto: Relational Intelligence For Our Children
The Ugly and Violent Death of Gender Conformity
When “Check Your Male Privilege” Becomes a Bludgeon
Why Are Death Rates Rising for Middle Aged White Americans?
When Men Keep Demanding Sex From Their Partners Over and Over
How the Man Box Can Kill Our Sons Now or Decades from Now
Why Traditional Manhood is Killing Us
Why Do We Murder the Beautiful Friendships of Boys?
How America’s Culture of Shame is a Killer for Boys
The Culture of Shame: Men, Love, and Emotional Self-Amputation
The Man Box: Why Men Police and Punish Others
The Man Box: The Link Between Emotional Suppression and Male Violence
The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer
Touch Isolation: How Homophobia Has Robbed All Men of Touch
Boys and Self-Loathing: The Conversations That Never Took Place
The Dark Side of Women’s Requests of Progressive Men
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Male privilege is no better or worse than female privilege which is just as extensive. The only difference is society follows the oppressive male/oppressed female agenda and acknowledge male privilege while ignoring female privilege to maintain that narrative. “Women are rightfully taking a share of power” What would be more accurate is Men are giving power to women. Women aren’t earning it through equality where they earn power positions on an equal playing field but are being given these positions due to affirmative action and shaming practices. So men have no advantages in place to get them a power position,… Read more »
@Mark Goblowsky “Hi Scott, My position that men have a debt to pay; a responsibility to work for equality is based on what I have witnessed in places like India, where the inequalities are bone crushingly brutal. “ ________________ Well then do we not have to first identify the parameters, the geography from which our opinion is derived when speaking of such as male privilege? We simply cannot cite the conditions for women in, India as a reason to continue to reverse the situations, create a new oppressed class (in the form of men) in this country. Right? Likewise, we… Read more »
@Mark Goblowsky “Hi Scott, My position that men have a debt to pay; a responsibility to work for equality is based on what I have witnessed in places like India, where the inequalities are bone crushingly brutal. “ ________________ Well then do we not have to first identify the parameters, the geography from which our opinion is derived when speaking of such as male privilege? We simply cannot cite the conditions for women in, India as a reason to continue to reverse the situations, create a new oppressed class (in the form of men) in this country. Right? Likewise, we… Read more »
“Does it bother you when, after crafting a beautifully simple and moderate argument against exclusionary posturing and dogma, some of the most misogynistic thank you for it in the comments and hold it up as a banner of anti-femminism?” _____________________________ To aid in understanding, Bromius. Does it not bother you when the dialoged is stunted, contention to the thesis shouted down, the speaker attacked rather then said contention with such verbiage as “misogynist”. It is a shaming tactic aimed at avoiding exactly the open and honest debate that the author claims is necessary. It does so in an almost Machiavellian… Read more »
Male privilege does not flow down hill. Understand that, and you will understand a great many things.
Excellent thread, both Greene’s essay and the many contributions. I find the difficulty in defining male privilege is that the impact of class obscures measurable privilege differences. Does anyone really think that a man who works two minimum-wage jobs is more privileged than a woman medical doctor? Who is more likely to enjoy the privilege of a good college education, the daughter of a college professor(s) or the son of retail store worker(s)? The daughter, of course. Class trumps gender almost always. In the past the aristocracy or oligarchy would set one group against the other to keep the spotlight… Read more »
The most difficult part of explaining privilege is inter-sectional theory. Oprah is a black woman who has more privilege than most men in history have ever had. How? Her wealth as wealth is one of the top privileges in the world far exceeding the negatives of her race and gender. I guess the very top privilege would be being King/Queen or totalitarian ruler.
We ask women’s advocates about the hesitation to acknowlege male suffering (and female privilege, in some circumstances) because no rape victim, no homeless person, no PTSD sufferer should have to debate compassion out of someone who think they know and understand life because they read about it in a book and took social studies classes but have so little humanity in them that they have to look at a person’s genitals before deciding if they’re worth being listened to.
Good words Cynthia. We are supposed believe that every person matters and we should “believe the victim”….as long as they are female. As soon as male victims start speaking up suddenly the very same treatment that would be called misogyny if done to women is justified. “…debate compassion out of someone who think they know and understand life because they read about it in a book and took social studies classes but have so little humanity in them that they have to look at a person’s genitals before deciding if they’re worth being listened to.” And that’s what happens when… Read more »
The whole “you can’t see privilege because you’re privileged” has been overused as well. That idea can sometimes spin off into rather extremist and exclusionary points of view. It’s definitely true that many people benefit from forms of privilege without noticing their privilege, but that doesn’t mean that therefore every time you fail to see privilege that’s proof that there is privilege. If I examine a situation where there is real gender difference and do not see male privilege, there are two logical possibilities: 1. The male privilege is invisible to me. 2. Male privilege is not there. As a… Read more »
Now let me flip that for a moment. If I examine a situation where there is real gender difference and do not see female privilege, there are two logical possibilities: 1. The female privilege is invisible to me. 2. Female privilege is not there. Now all of a sudden option 2 is supposedly the only possible answer according to a log of feminists and so called progressives. So what we have is this odd double bind where if a man doesn’t see male privilege it MUST be there and he is blind to it and if a woman doesn’t see… Read more »
This was a good and thoughtful article Mark. I agree with Archy. Privilege is an argumentative turn of a phrase to begin with. It is really complex and cannot be reduced to a mere collective idea that one must fight against. I work in a a female predominant public business. I couch my language because I’d be crucified otherwise. The things I hear from the women Otoh I cannot argue because I’d be crucified. Having said that I do see it changing somewhat. Small and incremental but change nonetheless. I am not overtly privileged. I have no more in common… Read more »
Men need to be stopped being blamed for the problems of the world. It is ridiculous to hold the entire male population responsible for the behavior of the minority and it also assumes that women are without fault. That is ridiculous.
I’m with ya Ken
Ken Suvert, your comment sounds absurd to me. Who on earth in holding “the entire male population responsible”? Get over yourself.
Does it bother you when, after crafting a beautifully simple and moderate argument against exclusionary posturing and dogma, some of the most misogynistic thank you for it in the comments and hold it up as a banner of anti-femminism? The way “check your privilege” is used has been troubling me for a long time because it is often used instead of an argument to end a discussion or to negate criticism. It’s being used to support a kind of intellectual laziness by those who would rather not compete in “the marketplace of ideas”, so to speak. Male privilege is absolutely… Read more »
Thanks Bromius,
Jim Vaughn, who wrote the original article quoted here, describes himself as a man who is viewed as “Too feminist for MRAs & too MRA for feminists”. Its ironic that partisans can’t see that as an authentic intellectual space but it exists. For me there is aggressive ideological overreach on both sides. Fortunately, the partisans are not the only folks in the game. There are people with strong options who are speaking in civil ways and avoiding triggering labels. The work goes on.
The idea of privilege has some legitimate use BUT the problem is most humans do not think in the way that can understand it. Too many people think of a scale of 0-100, but life is not like that. To imagine the world and true level of privilege you have many, MANY variables. Race, gender, physical looks, mental ability, the accent you use, your body weight, culture, what body language you display and the ability to read it, your social awkwardness vs confidence, your size, height, stature, your friend circle, your family, your upbringing, and thousands of other variables. Intersectional… Read more »
Yes. Good article. This is why I dislike the term “privilege;” it is confrontational when it’s not appropriately qualified. One qualification of argument I would put forth, though, is the very significant difference between the western world (for lack of a better term) and the not-so-evolved areas of the world. You say, “Male privilege is a universal thing, at least as it manifests at the meta level. If you can’t see this playing out, you’re either socially blinded or willfully ignorant. Across America and the world, we see the brutal and wide spread oppression of women, primarily by men.” Sure,… Read more »
Yup, the labels are all around us. But I need to point out or should I say reiterate that “equality” wasn’t and isn’t owned by feminists or feminism. I’m about the farthest you can get where it comes to feminism yet “equality” is something that I have fought for throughout the past 40 years. I have a wife and daughter whom I wanted to make sure would get a fair shake in life. But the part of the story that’s always left out is that non-feminists want the same thing.
Besides, for most of our oppressions, it’s not any side that’s to blame; it’s society in general, and NO, men do not CONTROL society, at least not in the western world. I try to point that out but it seems that people would rather fixate on “men have the power”. The thing is men as a class don’t have power. Yes the power positions at the top are mostly held by men however the rest of us at the bottom gain NOTHING by sharing gender with them. But men have become the rallying point instead of the power structure itself.… Read more »
My POV is that men had a lock on power just a generation or so back. Recently enough for many of us to remember a world where women in the U.S. had dramatically fewer options in how they could live. Men have a history of controlling many of the levers of power that goes back thousands of years, and we still have our hands on those levers. Corporations, the Pentagon and so on. So, yes, I do believe men are responsible for what is in place. By virtue of the sheer inertia that our history of control creates. But on… Read more »
My POV is that men had a lock on power just a generation or so back. I can respect that. However when looking at men overall, not just the ones with power I think the image is quite different. I just don’t think its fitting to judge men as a class when only looking at a small portion of them as representation. Men have a history of controlling many of the levers of power that goes back thousands of years, and we still have our hands on those levers. Corporations, the Pentagon and so on. So, yes, I do believe… Read more »
Danny, you need to clarify your use of the term ‘power’. For me it means the ability to impose your will on others. There’s all kind of power and a high percentage of the time those who possess a specific power have not earned it and in some instances are unconscious they possess a privilege others do not have. People used to say of George Bush Sr that he was ‘born on third base and thought he hit a triple’. A very beautiful woman has power. Doors will be opened for her that her plainer sister will have to fight… Read more »
For me it means the ability to impose your will on others. I can go along with this definition. A macro analysis shows that worldwide there is automatic power that comes from being born male. Physical, political, cultural and financial. What happens to individual men depends on a number of factors, but overall, they have a huge head-start on their sisters. Here’s where I start have doubts about power being automatic for men. When the number of men who do not have power vastly outnumber the men who do have power then how can we conclude that being male means… Read more »
Privilege is a right or advantage that is not earned. There has always existed both male and female privilege. Female privilege has often taken the form of chivalry, greater compassion for the suffering of women, and exemption from military service. These forms of ancient female privilege still exist. Consider male exclusive conscription in Finland, the expectation that men will sacrifice their safety to protect women and the great number of sheltered for abused women in contrast to the dearth of such facilities for abused men. Most feminists bristle at the idea of an inherent female privilege. That is because the… Read more »
Hi Scott, My position that men have a debt to pay; a responsibility to work for equality is based on what I have witnessed in places like India, where the inequalities are bone crushingly brutal. Women there are murdered for simply being women. Until you walk a part of the world like India, you can not fully appreciate what women face. I would ask that those of us here in the relative safety of the U.S. not loose sight of our responsibilities to the global population of men and women. Equality isn’t equality until its global. There is a lot… Read more »
If we want to end sexism, we would be well advised to stop practicing it. When you blame half the world’s population for the actions of an exceedingly small percentage of that population you are engaging in sexism. It would be the same as if you were to blame all blacks because, on average, blacks are more likely to be involved in criminal behaviour than non-blacks. The overwhelming majority of blacks are decent law abiding people. To characterize them all blacks based on the worst actions of a very small proportion is inherently racist. To steal a turn of phrase… Read more »
Scott, I personally hold men responsible for much of the state of the world. That is a collective judgement meant to mark the male culture we live in. The statement is not meant to judge individual men. But men collectively have held the reins for a long long time. And our collective record of fighting for justice is mixed at best. On the issue of privilege, I would add that having power or privilege, earned or unearned is not a bad thing, if you use it to empower those less privileged. The issue isn’t having privilege. The issue is misusing… Read more »
I knew there was a good reason I hadn’t responded … all I had to do is wait and someone would say exactly what I was thinking. Great job Scott!
Mark, while I do not deny that such a thing as male privilege exists, I am not so blind as to acknowledge that such a thing as female privilege exists also. Women are privileged themselves over men in many ways and yet when it comes to discourse about gender equality we only ever hear about how men are privileged. I completely agree with what Scott said about comparing blaming all men for the inequality and sexism in the world as being the same as blaming all black people for the criminal behaviour of a minority of black people (who are… Read more »
Hi Scott, My position that men have a debt to pay; a responsibility to work for equality is based on what I have witnessed in places like India, where the inequalities are bone crushingly brutal. Women there are murdered for simply being women. Until you walk a part of the world like India, you can not fully appreciate what women face. I would ask that those of us here in the relative safety of the U.S. not loose sight of our responsibilities to the global population of men and women. Equality isn’t equality until its global. There is a lot… Read more »
Here is the central point, right? Whether or not those who are seeking to create equality, men and women alike, are being punitive in their treatment of men. Are punishing men for simply being male. Scott’s son may become a teenager in a world where a much larger number of kids just don’t buy into all this gender war binary stuff. I see evidence of this in my own son’s circles. God willing, many of them may simply leave it behind.
Yes that is the goal. I’m just expressing my concerns that we are far from that day and we still largely live in a world where being male is an original sin.
I agree with almost everything Mark wrote here, and I found myself saying “exactly!” or “yes!” out loud in almost every paragraph, but there’s something about the “debt” part that I just could not join in with. The idea that someone’s 2-year-old son is born into a debt that he owes because of thousands of years of history sounds extreme to me. That sounds uneasily similar to the idea of “blood libel” used as a pretext for attacking Jewish people for centuries. Or what the U.S. Constitution refers to as “corruption of blood,” when offspring are punished for their parents’… Read more »
When I write about gender I first acknowledge that the collective oppression of women is worse then that faced by men. This is my baseline. Then I proceed talk about issues of oppression faced by men. The result is comments asking “why do you have to start by saying that?” I ask because it seems that when talking about issues of oppression faced by women in areas that may be affect men in larger number (like being homeless) there is no rush to acknowledge that men have it worse. Odd that we must readily acknowledge when women have it worse… Read more »
Thanks Danny. I always appreciate your thoughts.
Give this Danny his own column!
What an articulate writer you are Danny. A real insight to read your posts on this topic.
A sincere thank you from Australia.