Ok, your reply was pretty long so it’s going to be hard for me to address everything, but I’ll do what I can. Also could I ask you use a similar format to me in your reply? I know it’s a bit of hassle, but it really helps me concentrate on my reply and focus if things are in a standardised/neat format. Otherwise I get stressed out worrying about how to go about answering, and lose focus.
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1. I disagree with this. For starters, men pay for things because society expects them to. I’ve never spoken to a man who’s said he prefers paying for it (at least not when we were having a serious/private discussion). Men pay because if they don’t, society calls them out on it. They do not pay because they want to oppress or reward the woman. Even in my uni (I’ve made a post a long time ago about this, too) there’ve been girls bitching in lectures about how guys didn’t pay for them, how the guy was “tightfisted” rather than a “feminist” like he claimed to be. Yes, originally it was out of necessity like I said - men were empowered, they had the money, they had the jobs, and women couldn’t do anything about it. But times have changed and people have changed, women have jobs. Even if you said “oh but there’s a 19% pay gap on average so men should pay”, that’s bullshit. If you want to be fair, then you can calculate it so men pay 55% or whatever, and women pay the rest. But it doesn’t work that way.
Now that’s just one example but hopefully you can see how it applies to a lot of privileges women have. It originally started as a way to control women, or as a by-product of that control, but now (for the most part) these have completely changed and are no longer necessary. But men are still forced to abide by them because if they don’t, they’re not “real men”. This also gives the impression that women want the asshole stereotype guy or the rich douchebag guy (which seriously pisses me off. I know so many girls who are like this, it actually disgusts me how they’d degrade themselves to being mistreated for little more than sexual attraction).
But I digress. My point here is that we still force men to do things for women, as a society, that they should not (or at least, no longer) have to do. We insult them, degrade them, make them feel less masculine or make them feel less attractive or suitable as a potential partner because they don’t follow habits that are remnants of female oppression. And women do exploit this, by and large. For the most part, women will expect the man to pay. They may not WANT him to (although this is less common, I’ve found), but they will at least expect him to offer. Therefore it’s a female privilege because the man no longer gains anything from them (as the acts or privileges they WERE based on, no longer exist - for example, being the only gender with economic independence). It is female privilege, because the female is the sole beneficiary of this particular incident, REGARDLESS of where its roots lie.
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Do not get me wrong, though. Male privilege is just as abhorrent to me as female privilege is. All privilege is. And male privilege hurts men just as much as female privilege hurts females. It portrays both genders in negative ways.
2. You’re misunderstanding me. I’m talking about marketing within capitalism. Men are portrayed as lazy or thrillseekers with little common sense or rationality. Therefore movies, games, luxuries that aren’t productive, are usually more geared towards them (I say usually, because you can’t deny that in the last few decades men have become disgustingly more objectified in such media. I hate the argument that “it’s fine if men are objectified/it’s less of a problem because they’re not oppressed”. Maybe they aren’t. Now. But if you let it continue, then they will be. And we’ll continue to have more inequalities. I hate how people can’t see this).
Conversely, women are seen as the ones in charge of domestic duties, so marketing for cleaning products and such are usually geared towards them. That’s what I meant by my capitalism point. I hope this is clearer?
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Small tangent related to point #1, but let me ask you this - is it humiliating for a woman to admit she’s a gamer? Or that she enjoys movies of stereotypically male enjoyment such as action or martial arts?
Now… is it humiliating for a man to admit he enjoys cleaning, or doing domestic duties like the laundry or some such thing? I’m not saying everyone will judge the guy, or no one will judge the girl, but proportionately, men are chastised more for doing female-aligned activities than women are for the opposite. You can say this is the patriarchy or male privilege all you want, but women are the beneficiaries here all the same.
3. Women are sympathised with more. Yeah some women are horribly bitchy to other women, even with topics like rape, but in general society is a lot more sympathetic to a female rape/assault victim than they are towards a male. It’s why female perpetrators of domestic violence apparently “don’t exist”. Or no, want to know something funny? I have a transcript here from a session of my country’s PARLIAMENT. The government. And a representative (female) actually pretty much flat out said that men aren’t the main victims, and their numbers are so negligible that we should pour more resources into helping female victims rather than trying to help males, even though recent studies have shown much larger numbers of male victims (sometimes equal to or more than females).
In the law, a man cannot be raped by a woman. LEGALLY he cannot be raped. The best he can hope for is sexual assault, but there is always the fear that if he reports it, she will turn the case around and claim he’s the rapist. How can he prove he didn’t rape her? He can’t. And she can very easily claim he did, because of the stereotypes we pander to. This is another example of privilege.
Men are less likely, FAR, FAR less likely, to report rapes, sexual assaults, or even physical assaults, by females. Because they feel they will be chastised and robbed of their masculinity over it. They know that society will judge them IF THEY’RE LUCKY, and if they are unlucky, there’s every chance the case will be turned on them. If you look into more recent studies you’ll see that men are victims far more often than people think, but no one really cares because it’s a man’s duty to be strong. And if you can’t fight off a woman, you’re not a man. Yes, that is sexist against women, but the men suffer from it far more. If a woman does physically outperform a man, she’s praised for her physical prowess, whilst the man is humiliated for his defeat.
These inequalities exist, but no one campaigns for them. You say “getting rid of the patriarchy will solve this” but… that’s not really the point, is it? The fact is, no one ADDRESSES these issues or clears up these preconceptions or stereotypes. They will gladly campaign for a girl’s right to do far lesser things than be recognised as rape victims. My point is that whilst women have support, men don’t. Feminists support females, but not men. And MRAs can’t even get a foothold as an activist group because of the radicals - but the radical feminists will accuse all MRAs of misogyny and shoot them down, twisting their words against them as being in support of the patriarchy when not all MRAs are. MRAs are the male equivalent of feminists - they both have radicals - but people care about female rights, and thus feminism is still taken seriously, even WITH the soiled reputation that the radicals grant them.
4. Firstly, I’d like to express my sympathy for what you’ve gone through. Stereotypes are horrible things to be judged on. But my point ties in to what you’ve said - you’re being judged on racial stereotypes. Stereotypes in general define you as a person, to the general population. Anyone of different races, classes, genders, sexes, whatever, can face these stereotypes. Not the exact same type, but they will understand how it feels. For example, because I’m shy and quiet and matured slightly faster than my schoolmates, as a child I progressed a little faster in education. I was praised a lot for being an excellent reader and writer and mathematician and whatever else. But now that I’m older, I’m average. I’ve averaged out where the typical kid ends up, so any achievements that I make over that bar are seen as where I should be, and anything at that typical level or below it are seen as bad and as if I’m “not trying”. I’ve had to put up with teachers saying I give the “bare minimum effort” all through school because of my record, I’ve had to put up with my father being a complete asshole about me not performing like the genius I was made out to be. I’ve had moments where I’ve wanted to just give up with life because I couldn’t take the stress being piled onto me to succeed, where I’ve not been able to take living in my own home because of the oppressive and aggressive atmosphere whenever I’ve failed to meet expectations. And that isn’t even a racial/gender/sex related problem. That’s not even class related either. That’s just education level, and I suffer from stereotypes. I’ve gone through lots of shit based on that one stereotype alone. And yeah it doesn’t exactly compare to what you’ve gone through, but I can empathise with the feeling of being judged as a person, against some non-corporeal template of what these other people believe me to be.
You can never tell what hardships a person has gone through, and I find it horrible to judge someone based on their gender - it’s horrid to tell a woman she’s “just being dramatic” for being upset over her stereotype comparisons, but it’s equally horrid to tell a man that he “doesn’t have a right to say that he can empathise”, which I’ve seen many women on here doing. You do not know this man. You know his gender. You do not know the intricacies of his life, you cannot say he has lived a better one than you. That is my point. Like you for example. I didn’t know you were trans*, nor did I know you were hispanic. I knew you were a woman, and that was all. I could never judge the severity of your stereotypes. And even those small details are only drops in the ocean compared to the ways a person can be stereotyped.
5. That works I suppose, I didn’t know it was a search command or anything like that, but the explanation I found online of trans* said that it was to show that there were more than just trans people being affected (genderqueer, etc, etc). So from my point of view, trans+ made more sense to that explanation of it. But yeah, with your explanation, trans* is a much better term to use.
6. I never meant that they faced the same level of things as you do, but their fears of being judged are equally real. A gay person can find it terrifying to come out. Not only that, but my friend in particular is a very devoted muslim, within a very traditional family, and she has to deal with her self loathing over the conflictions she feels in her religious beliefs and her romantic and sexual desires. This is a much tougher situation than the average gay person is usually subjected to. But there we go. You didn’t know her religion, her family history, or her own feelings. You knew my friend simply as a lesbian scared of being judged, but now with this extra information do you see how much more complicated things become?
Yeah, in general trans* face more problems in REALITY, but in your own head? Your fears and doubts and negative feelings can be as strong as a gay person, or an asexual person, or someone who doesn’t fit the norms society forces on them (for example, a male victim of rape). The fear of being judged is universal, and while you might be scared of different things, or you may have a more reasonable justification of your fear, it does not mean that these people are any less likely to be scared of that judgment than you are, nor do they have any less entitlement to be afraid. We’re social creatures after all. It’s what we do.
The problem is not with who has more cause for concern, the problem is society itself, and we need to fight to change it. And to do that we cannot simply focus on one section. We can’t have multiple entities trying to push for different things. We need one, large, combined force that will push for the needs of everyone, every gender, every sex, every identity imaginable. We need unity. Without it… we’re doomed.
(Source: saiyajinlegacy, via intelligent-sama)
