Male Privilege

[lumberjack_jeff]

195. It is absolutely true that poor women, women of color and lesbians suffer all the same problems...

... as their male counterparts.

But their problems don't derive from being women. Earlier this week, there was a discussion about an airline which moved the men from sitting next to unaccompanied children. The only basis on which this makes sense is that women are the only ones who can be trusted being around kids. If each gender is inherently less (or in-) capable of the variety of tasks on which society depends then the world will always be, and in fact must be, unequal.

And no. I don't acknowledge that the residual differences of the patriarchy constitute advantage. In fact, I'd argue that the opposite is true. The only residual bits of the patriarchy which are still tolerated are those bits that benefit women.

The patriarchy is, in essence, the authority of men to decide how to best protect the women. That protection responsibility is still firmly in place, but without the authority. In fact, this is the source of much of the tension with 2nd wave feminists; it is men's responsibility to protect women who would (if empowered to make their own choices) engage in the sex trades, but at the same time, it is inappropriate to make other decisions such as setting conditions on welfare benefits.

My issue with this is misdiagnosis. So long as we're tilting at the windmills of non-problems, the actual structural injustices deriving from class, heteronormativity and race go unaddressed.