To hate this current trend that girls should be raised to be fierce and fiery but boys shouldn't??

"For a start I will raise my daughter to just say NO, not happily go along with someone else's suggestion and then claim to be coerced."

Someone said the quiet bit out loud.......

Nice bit of victim blaming going on there!

The post was aimed at mothers of sons but well done for shifting the work onto the daughters. It almost seems you are suggesting girls should be raised fierce and fiery (as described by OP)?

Exactly you have summed things up perfectly.

*Yes, the male privilege argument is far too black and white for me. People can have privilege in their lives at different times. So, for instance, I'm relatively young and fit. I can run for a bus. My brain and memory work well. Is that overweight man sitting over there on a mobility scooter, much older than me, really more privileged than I am because he's male? I could take him for God's sake.

It still comes down to wealth and circumstance to me, backed up by drive, motivation and a desire to succeed. If you're a male and you lack all of these, and there's a female who has all of these - which one is going to succeed and have a better life?*

You're comparing apples and oranges.

You should compare yourself to males that have the same background as you. Are you on the same rung on the career ladder ? Do you have the same wages? Did you have the same opportunities? Are /were your ideas ,suggestions,projects etc taken as seriously? And so on.

The disabled man should be compared to a disabled woman in the same position. How were they treated when they first started displaying symptoms. Length of diagnosis. Type of treatment etc. Was one of them dismissed, gaslit, told the pain is normal,fobbed off etc.

The way you put it means that no isms exist , because there will always be someone more worse off. That's not how it works. That's not how any of it works.

@TomeTome how many of you worry that your sons partners will abuse them, that they will pressure them into sex, that they will be “into choking” or “anal” because of their porn habit

For a start I will raise my daughter to just say NO, not happily go along with someone else's suggestion and then claim to be coerced.

I can't say I have seen it as a current trend at all.
I think boys these days are encouraged to show feelings much more now then when I was young when boys weren't meant to show any emotion at all! It was seen as weakness and boys weren't allowed to be weak.
I think the current trend is much more about equality so a girl can be strong and angry if that's how she is and a boy can be sensitive and caring if that's how he is. That doesn't mean boys can't also be strong and it angry or that girls can't be sensitive and caring. They can both be both.

So mothers of sons who fear they are oppressed, how many of you worry that your sons partners will abuse them, that they will pressure them into sex, that they will be “into choking” or “anal” because of their porn habit, that they will be left raising children alone, that they will be date raped or assaulted, that their opposite sex teachers or tutors will be predatory, that they will be damaged in childbirth, that they will care first for children and then for the elderly in their families, that they won’t have financial independence in old age due to gaps in their employment, that as they age their voices will be shouted over and their needs ignored? I am of course describing the concerns of the most privileged women in our society. I have no need to fear FGM or honour killings or Eve baiting or being married off before I am adult to someone I do not choose…

Exactly. It’s perfectly possible for an individual woman to be more privileged than an individual man without that negating the patriarchal system.

Its a specious argument: a bit like when people wheel out this argument about how white boys in certain communities are the most underprivileged in the community. This is correct in certain deprived communities but it doesn’t undermine the fact that at a societal level white people are generally more privileged than people of colour.

Not an equivalent comparison obviously but the same principle applies with sex privilege. It is the case that many individual women have more privilege than most men but at an institutional level men are more privileged than women.

If male privilege exists? Bloody hell. 3 UK men a week aren't dying at the hands of their supposed loved ones. There is a whole segment of the supposedly democratic UK parliament dedicated to male primogeniture peerages, and another to UK bishops, who could not be women until 10 years ago. Men don't lose their jobs when they have children, unlike the 57000 women a year in the UK who face maternity discrimination. Despite women getting all this education, men still earn 7.7% more than women if everyone was working full time, so the wealth gap you talk about advantages men more than women. Oh, and add to that that 1.5 times as many women work part time (because her salary is lower, so if one of them works part time after kids...) and that wealth gap gets even bigger....

Nope. No male privilege anymore. Nothing to see here....

I think some posters are trying to look at privilege from the POV of individuals rather than societal structures overall.

I think boys are still raised to be more assertive in general. Can you give an example?

Assertiveness does come more naturally to males than females because we are built differently. Females, in general, tend to be more sensitive to negative emotion, in order to keep themselves safe as they are generally not a physical match to males though this really doesn't kick in until around puberty.

Its not all about being raised to be that way. A lot if it is nature.

@notofthisWorld11 "this stupid narrative that all men are vile and privileged and all women are hapless victims"

That is a very stupid narrative indeed, I agree. Who is putting it forward?

@notofthisWorld11 "If it was all loaded in the man's favour, surely they would have made him King anyway and Elizabeth would still be Queen but not as important - but as a man, they relegated him to a lesser role." That makes no sense. We have a hereditary monarchy. So ER was going to be Queen. But he could not be King by marriage (like Camilla is Queen) because a King automatically outranks a Queen. So he had to stay a Prince.

A little earlier you said girls - as in children - comparing adults with children is not generally appropriate.

Your posts are not clear - you use sex and gender interchangeably, girls and women, men and boys. They are not the same....

Interesting too that you said you didn't realise 'drama queen' was misogynistic - what do you think is the equivalent term for men or boys?

The very fact that many people still instantly resort to categorizing children and adults by sex shows just how much our society remains in thrall to sexism. Surely there are more relevant and useful people ways of identifying (behavioural) groups?

Can we not ever be individuals first?

That's not how privilege is measured though. The measure is how is Rashford privileged (or not) compared to a white footballer of the same level as him.

Yes, it is IMO and male privilege is also a thing - but if you're Marcus Rashford, you're probably doing better than that white kid I see at the station huddled up in a corner asking for money. It exists, it's there but it's not the whole story.

Just doesn't add up to me. It's like saying, I have a characteristic - I was born in November. I'm super privileged. But if I was born in June, I'd be fucked. I've been brought up to believe that anyone born in November is first in line. Thing is, nobody believes that anymore - and neither do I.

And colour? Is white privilege not really a thing then?

Yes, the male privilege argument is far too black and white for me. People can have privilege in their lives at different times. So, for instance, I'm relatively young and fit. I can run for a bus. My brain and memory work well. Is that overweight man sitting over there on a mobility scooter, much older than me, really more privileged than I am because he's male? I could take him for God's sake.

It still comes down to wealth and circumstance to me, backed up by drive, motivation and a desire to succeed. If you're a male and you lack all of these, and there's a female who has all of these - which one is going to succeed and have a better life?

Yes totally agree on all the points you make but just think I'm coming from a different perspective.

Had aunts, but it was my Grandmother, born in 1900, who divorced her abusive husband and married her lodger - a lovely man. She also ran her own business, a sweet shop, smoked a lot, told us frequently how much she liked sex, and was her own person.

Yes, it's shocking that women didn't have credit cards, mortgages, couldn't go in bars etc but none of that is the case now in this country because women did what all oppressed people (male or female) do and have done through history and that's revolt - and you and me and others won't stand for it today. Neither would Martin Luther King stand for it when he campaigned for civil rights - and got shot for it. Such a privileged male he was.

Yes, I couldn't have opened my own bank account without a male guarantee back in the day, but I've also never seen a sign saying 'no dogs or white women allowed".

If I had been on the Titanic in 1912, a man may well have given me a seat on the lifeboat then stayed on board and died. That happened. It's nice to be privileged when you're dead.

It's hard to bring my father into this. I don't think he was ever raped but he nearly died of malaria fighting for his country (there wasn't much medical support around then) and he was attacked and beaten up in a subway. There are male members of my family who have been sexually abused - a lot of young boys are.

It's the vulnerable in society who need protecting, which I think is what you're saying.

Exactly

Yes, and he paid a big price for that.

If it was all loaded in the man's favour, surely they would have made him King anyway and Elizabeth would still be Queen but not as important - but as a man, they relegated him to a lesser role.

Same as when Thatcher became PM - they didn't make Dennis PM because he was a man. He took a support role.

If Hillary hadn't have been shafted by Trump and the Russians, and was a bit better with email, she'd be President now and ole Bill would take a back seat.

Do you have any aunts from the household? What do you think their lives might have looked like? We are not comparing the life of men and women and saying all men are vile or all women are abused or disadvantaged in any specific way. Your father if standing on a lonely train platform would for example be far less likely to be raped, he could probably given funds have had a credit card or a mortgage without needing his partners permission, he faced no fear of being locked away or shunned if he fell pregnant and in a hospital would be offered suitable pain relief and face little chance of physical abuse. No man is responsible for the actions of another but we are ALL responsible for seeing injustice and inequality and trying to reduce it.