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

[Voodoohoodoyoudo]

Now I'm not saying one gender is better than the other. But as a mother of sons I feel worried for their future because it seems this notion is currently being pushed that girls can get away with being drama queens but boys need to keep their feelings to themselves and pander to them or they might grow up to be abusive men? What happened to equal rights? I don't condone violence of any sort but this is totally unfair that boys shouldn't be able to do what girls do in terms of sticking up for themselves.

@notofthisWorld11 ""Always"? Really? Did the Queen of England start lower than the guy outside her palace on a horse"

I don't know much about the Royal Family. But I do know that when QE2 became Queen, Philip couldn't be king and had to stay a prince because kings automatically outrank queens....

I haven’t seen this at all.
If anything I’d say the opposite is true, there’s a real regression to gender stereotypes where girls are expected to have long hair and wear girl clothes, and to put up with crap behaviour from boys and men.
Same for boys, this reversion to alpha male behaviour and an increase in toxic masculinity.

It's important to remember that male privilege and misogyny and toxic masculinity is very often damaging to men too.....

@Sirzy ,

But it is about the level of privilege.

Having taught in a private school, I struggle to see the boys being more privileged in most ways. Both sexes have equal university ambitions, both are looking at middle class careers, both expect healthy relationships and, on the whole, to settle down and marry well. I still hear the less academic girls talk of ‘marrying rich’, which I have only heard once from a boy in my entire time teaching.

Boys are still louder and dominate the space in lunchtime and breaks, an area where their size and testosterone gives them privilege. OTOH, teachers tend to favour the girls and they do get away with more. The detention lists were about 4:1 boys/girls. In addition, many would argue that the way we the school system teaches favours the way girls learn, hence them outperforming by a significant margin.

Oh, and ‘toxic masculinity’ is a very popular phrase these days but what is the difference between ‘toxic masculinity’ and just plain old ‘masculinity’? Even if you can clearly see this, a lot of the messaging that boys get in schools (or hear even where schools are careful not to say it) is that they were born with the potential to be ‘toxic’. That is quite a grim message to be giving teens trying to find their identities in the world.

Now, I have also been a governor of a state school with a very different demographic. Many of children depend on their hot free meal as the main meal of the day, many wouldn’t consider university as the next step at all. They are not going home to warm houses or helped with their homework by parents.

If male privilege exists at the upper end of the income and education scale, which I am far from convinced of, and we look at the step analogy. Sex is worth 1cm whereas wealth is worth 1m.

Personally, with ds’s, I promote confidence, ambition, respect for others and a ‘can do’ attitude to life. It would be exactly the same if I had girls. Have to admit if I had a child who in anyway felt that ‘marrying well’ was something to aspire too, I’d feel like I’d failed. Make your own way in life.

Yes, but I could call you equally as "blinkered".

The teaching of history is changing to be told more from the female perspective. I've been studying the Wars of the Roses which is being presented entirely from the point of view of Margaret de Beaufort, who changed the course of history.

There's nothing to stop you doing some research and retelling history in your own way and to future generations. Traditional history which was stories of battles and monarchs barely touches on the lives of the majority - men or women.

What's the point of banging on about injustice of any sort if you're not prepared to take action and change the course of history.

All males are not privileged from birth for goodness sake.

My father (who was very good academically) was brought up by a man who beat him up and told him he would never tolerate him getting an education and denying his working class roots. He should be proud to work shoving coal, just like him.

Fortunately, my father's grandmother - a complete force of nature - stepped in and made sure my father got to make use of his scholarship and got educated.

Later, my father ran away from home and from the abuse. He made a complete success of his life in business, and although he hated his father, he made sure he paid for him to live in a decent home at the end of his life, so he wouldn't have to die alone and in poverty - such was the glory of shoving coal and being poor.

I'm sorry, but for men or women, it's circumstances that dictate our fate but it's up to us to change that and not fall for this stupid narrative that all men are vile and privileged and all women are hapless victims. It's an insult to women. No man can or will make me a victim. End of.

All of this 👏👏👏👏

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.

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.

See how nobody questions calling men vile but If it's said about a woman its misogyny 🙄

Exactly

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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?

@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.

@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?

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.

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

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....

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.

Yes this as well! I can't articulate it like this but you hit the nail on the head.

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…