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Have read a couple of blog posts on male privlege, lately, and--of course--the discussions in the comments are almost always more telling, no matter how well written and insightful the actual post is.
That Guy is, all told, a reasonably good guy. He's nice, someone you'd be happy to hang out with under most circumstances, and considers himself to be a modern, progressive, sensitive man. But when it comes to discussions of male privilege, you can always tell That Guy from the other good guys out there.
Because he doesn't get it. He's never seen male privilege, and he's always quick to point out that women can manipulate men to get anything they want, and isn't /that/ a 'privilege', as well? He argues that he's never gotten anything for being a man, and never seen a woman have to work harder or be denied anything for being a woman. So, clearly, male privilege doesn't exist. And, moreover, he's Very Offended that he's automatically considered to be a sexist asshole because of the concept.
This rather misses the point of the concept.
Men do not /see/ male privilege unless they really, seriously are looking for it. And even then, it's hard to see it applied to themselves. That's because the privileged state is the normative state. It's a state defined by the absence of harassement and threat, rather than being given more than you deserve. If you have it, you don't notice it. Just off the top of my head, some of the aspects of male privilege can be:
You are less likely to have friends and family try to veto long solo trips, or going out by yourself after nightfall.
You are less likely to worry about being raped if you /are/ by yourself out after dark.
You're less likely to be touched by people you don't know. (This goes double for pregnant women, who it seems /everyone/ thinks they have the perfect right to come up and grope.)
You're less likely to have the check handed to someone else at a table, and hardly anyone ever thinks that they can go ahead and order for you without asking.
No one ever asks you if you're planning to get married before you take a job, or before you're given a promotion, with the assumption that marriage will disrupt your career.
For that matter, you don't have to spend as much effort convincing employers that you're 'aggressive' enough, just because you were born with a soft sounding voice.
You can look at most media, and easily find male characters with personality, who are not immediately subtyped into: Dangerous and Beautiful Traitor/Assassin, Conniving and Shrewish Bitch, or Innocent and Childlike Little Sister.
If someone disagrees with a political or public figure who is male, you are much less likely to hear slurs on their sexual attractiveness, rape jokes, and judgement of their political positions by way of their physical beauty (or lack thereof).
I could go on, but the point is, that male privilege in the modern era is largely defined by what you DON'T have to deal with in daily life, as opposed to some super secret magical gifts that you get by virtue of being male. So no, That Guy doesn't see it, because he's all unawares in the middle of it. But he's not willing to accept that women's experiences are different from his, or that this might mean that he's not seeing something that's going on, and therefore, Male Privilege Does Not Exist. And in one fell swoop, he proves himself not such a good guy after all, not because he hasn't experienced it, but because he will happily deny the experiences of others, without understanding that their world is different from his world.
It's as if I, as a white person, decided that because I'd never been called a racial slur (and I haven't), that means that those words aren't used anymore. After all, /I/ haven't experienced it, so clearly, anyone who says that they have experienced such a thing must be exaggerating. It's really quite irritating.
That Guy is, all told, a reasonably good guy. He's nice, someone you'd be happy to hang out with under most circumstances, and considers himself to be a modern, progressive, sensitive man. But when it comes to discussions of male privilege, you can always tell That Guy from the other good guys out there.
Because he doesn't get it. He's never seen male privilege, and he's always quick to point out that women can manipulate men to get anything they want, and isn't /that/ a 'privilege', as well? He argues that he's never gotten anything for being a man, and never seen a woman have to work harder or be denied anything for being a woman. So, clearly, male privilege doesn't exist. And, moreover, he's Very Offended that he's automatically considered to be a sexist asshole because of the concept.
This rather misses the point of the concept.
Men do not /see/ male privilege unless they really, seriously are looking for it. And even then, it's hard to see it applied to themselves. That's because the privileged state is the normative state. It's a state defined by the absence of harassement and threat, rather than being given more than you deserve. If you have it, you don't notice it. Just off the top of my head, some of the aspects of male privilege can be:
You are less likely to have friends and family try to veto long solo trips, or going out by yourself after nightfall.
You are less likely to worry about being raped if you /are/ by yourself out after dark.
You're less likely to be touched by people you don't know. (This goes double for pregnant women, who it seems /everyone/ thinks they have the perfect right to come up and grope.)
You're less likely to have the check handed to someone else at a table, and hardly anyone ever thinks that they can go ahead and order for you without asking.
No one ever asks you if you're planning to get married before you take a job, or before you're given a promotion, with the assumption that marriage will disrupt your career.
For that matter, you don't have to spend as much effort convincing employers that you're 'aggressive' enough, just because you were born with a soft sounding voice.
You can look at most media, and easily find male characters with personality, who are not immediately subtyped into: Dangerous and Beautiful Traitor/Assassin, Conniving and Shrewish Bitch, or Innocent and Childlike Little Sister.
If someone disagrees with a political or public figure who is male, you are much less likely to hear slurs on their sexual attractiveness, rape jokes, and judgement of their political positions by way of their physical beauty (or lack thereof).
I could go on, but the point is, that male privilege in the modern era is largely defined by what you DON'T have to deal with in daily life, as opposed to some super secret magical gifts that you get by virtue of being male. So no, That Guy doesn't see it, because he's all unawares in the middle of it. But he's not willing to accept that women's experiences are different from his, or that this might mean that he's not seeing something that's going on, and therefore, Male Privilege Does Not Exist. And in one fell swoop, he proves himself not such a good guy after all, not because he hasn't experienced it, but because he will happily deny the experiences of others, without understanding that their world is different from his world.
It's as if I, as a white person, decided that because I'd never been called a racial slur (and I haven't), that means that those words aren't used anymore. After all, /I/ haven't experienced it, so clearly, anyone who says that they have experienced such a thing must be exaggerating. It's really quite irritating.
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I am oblivious to a lot of stuff, and still... if nothing else... I know that I am automatically grouped into "victim" in certain circumstances. It gives me a paranoid streak.
*sigh*
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He was also pretty sexist, too, now that I think of it.
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Because people need to understand the concept of privilege. It's not a single, concrete thing. And I am so sick and tired of people saying "well, women can use their sex appeal to make men do what they want, is that a privilege?" EFF NO. That'd be like saying, Johnny Depp can use his sex appeal to make women do what he wants, is that anything but "sexy person privilege" or whatever that is? Jaysus.
But thank you for saying it far better than I ever could.
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Plus, women using 'sex appeal' to get what they want is actually a very different message, because what it's saying is a) women can't get what they want by competing fairly or working for it, b) men have to give women things, and c) there is an implicit expectation of sex traded for the woman's wants.
That's not privilege at all...actually, sort of the opposite. That someone on the losing end of a power imbalance can find a way /around/ it does not mean that the power imbalance doesn't exist, merely that no system is without its exploits.
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Sadly, no one gets that "feminine wiles," much like chivalry, is actually a bad thing. x.x
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On the other hand, the version where women are put up on a pedastal that they're never really allowed to leave, and you have chaste love from afar for 'worthy' women, while the 'unworthy' are essentially playtoys, and the guy has to do /every/ bleeding thing in a relationship...that's bad. I'm not a fan of pedastals, and I tend to think that anyone who has empty hands should hold the door open for anyone who has full hands. :p
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In other words, I don't see women as perfectly innocent in this. Both sides have some validity. Manipulation, domination and control is a human phenomenon, not a solely gender-based one.
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That is a well-said argument.
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To give one concrete example: the stereotype that women are "fragile" (primarily a white European belief) means that men will be more solicitous about protecting women, offering to fix things, lift things, etc, partly to show off their manly strength and show their concern for the weaker sex. The advantage comes from the disadvantage; it is not unrelated but intrinsically interconnected with it.
On a different level, there's also the biological power that women have over men in the area of personal relationships. In primates, it is the female, not the male, who has the primary power of choosing the mate and father of her children. This is because males can beget a lot more offspring than females can actually bear, so the female must be selective. This biological advantage of female choice is sometimes circumvented, in certain human societies, through customs such as arranged marriages. However, when women do choose, their biological advantage interacts in complex ways with the social customs, advantages, disadvantages, and opportunities of their time and place.
It's not all culture, not all biology. It's not all advantage, not all disadvantage. It's not all mens' fault, not all women's fault. It's a multiply nested network of compensations, complementarities and trade-offs. The question, of course, is: Which trade-offs are worth it? What social arrangements will bring the greatest long-term benefit to both men and women? That is how I understand the project of feminism.
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Now convince me, as part of the privileged class, that I really should give a damn about it rather than enjoy what society has deemed my rights.
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