Is feminism all about man hating?

[PedanticPanda]

When feminism is brought up around my DP and my other friends they all say the same thing,

I agree with feminists who want equal rights for men and women, but not feminists who hate men and want women to be treated better than men.

Do these feminists actually exist? I assumed that feminism was all about equal rights etc, I thought all the man hating was a stereotype but wasn't actually true, but, most people I know seem to think this is the idea of the majority and it's the minority of feminists who want equal rights.

The thing about accepting your privilege is that it seems more complicated than it is.

(A) Accepting your privilege is profoundly uncomfortable. For everyone.

(b) It's also the action of a decent human being.

Whining about it - while tempting (because of point A) gets in the way of aim B. If you want to be a decent human being, then you do have to start by accepting your privilege.

And starting to check it, to hold it back, to look at it and think: "alright. There you are. Now I am going to react like a decent human being, and not like a whiny toddler who doesn't want to leave the park and go home to dinner, bath and bed. I don't want to deal with you, privilege, but while you're making me a less decent person than I want to be, I'm going to have to."

Have I already posted about white male privilege being the lowest difficulty setting on life ?

This helps get over the "I'm not privileged I don't have a BMW" reaction (that I know I've experienced) - might be useful, maybe, peoplesrepublic ?
Thing is not "I'm a straight white male therefore my life is easy."
it's "I'm a straight white male and therefore no matter how hard my life is, it would be harder still if I weren't a straight white male."

Yes I do think there is amazing privilege given to women although it is often used as a way to oppress women too.....the ability to give birth and to feed their children if they wish to. I always have a sneaky feeling that a lot of the patriarchal obsessions [only ordained MEN can bestow spiritual rebirth in whatever religious form coz y'know all that physical birthing is rubbish anyway/ legislating to control reproduction / ooh let's cull all the witches midwives] boil down to one theme: feeling left out/jealousy at this one thing they can never experience. But at the same time is anything ever so simple?

On a similar theme, Wheezo, it is far easier for women to get attention/sex on a night out if they want it. We can wear flashier clothes. Our bodies are admired as things of beauty.

But at the same time, we are beaten with those sticks too.

I am a feminist and I like men in a sort of baffled way....

how does 'having privilege' not automaticaly transpose into it's state of 'being privileged'?

if your born to be the lord of the manor you clearly have birth privilege, which makes you privileged

is that too simplistic?

No..But it's the exact point we've all been making about your male privilege

It was you! Great link blackcurrants I don't think I commented at the time, just read your link and I thought it was a neat analogy but I knew someone had posted it fairly recently.

I also think a part of accepting you have privilege is realising that there are things you won't see because you aren't part of the group without whatever privilege it is e.g. the change in tone on the phone when someone you're dealing with realises you have an accent or the binning of a CV with a forrin-sounding name - you don't have that accent, you don't have that name. How do you know you've dodged a bullet? You can't value what you can't measure, and you can't measure what you haven't experienced. You can never know how much your privilege operates so I do have some sympathy with you Meow in being unable to practically see your privilege in action. Is it perhaps a leap of cognitive empathy people make before they can confront it?

blackcurrents

i like that post, allthough i wasnt thinking about a BMW in regards to privilege

i get the privilege thing, but i never denyed it ( said that a number of times now) , just found it problematical as my life is probobly less privileged than most of yours ( ok, i dont know that). feel slightly better about it now blackcurrents says it the actions of a good person.

Uh..YEAH, you DON'T know that Chairman.

Frustrated

peoplesrepublic the key point is, no matter how hard your life is as a straight white male (and some people have it hard indeed) it would be harder in those exact same circumstances if you weren't straight, white and male.

Accepting your privilege and dealing with it are requirements (to me) of being a decent human being. It's also a process. I don't think I've 'dealt with' the fact that I have white privilege. I don't think I can go "great, gave it some thought, now I am 100% pure of all the benefits of being white that this racist society gives me!" It's a process.

Chairman, yeah sorry did see that. Ok, so your entry into the well established and potentially lucrative industry of construction could be seen as a male privilege. Legally it is open to women but in reality it isn't:

As a girl it would never have occurred to me to be a builder because it was obvious from tv/RL that builders were men.

As a teenager/young woman it was bad enough having to walk past a construction site and brace myself for potential wolf whistles/ comments (1st prize goes to "I'd like you to sick on my cock like you're sucking on that lolly"!!) let alone the idea of working in one.

And if I had wanted to I would have had to have put up with all manner of preconceptions about my ability to do the job, plus quite a bit of sexual insults under the guise of banter.

So that is how you have benefitted from male privilege IMO. You may feel that you don't like the job (from your muddy comment) but you have at least had the chance to enter into a trade and make your way in it.

For my privilege as a woman, it most definitely has to do with having children despite damage sustained to body!

agreed blackcurrents

messy in 25 years in construction i have come across 3 women , 2 of whitch were painters , so yes, it's pretty closed to women, i like women, i wish there were more in the building trade, spending your day with only one sex can be really boring. but that doesnt change the fact that it isnt a real option for women just that the current climate doesnt help men or women.

as for the wolf whistleing there was a thread a while back about this i made myself clear on that there , will look for a link.

being female and deslexic the building trade wouldnt have been an option but at least there is heating in a factory. but ok, the option of the building trade is part of my male privilege.
told you this would be hard to swallow!

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/1498107-Petition-against-sign-inviting-sexual-harassment

Well I appreciate that chairman and in the warm fuzzy spirit of disclosure that is permeating his thread I will admit to feeling uncomfortable at the fact that when XH and I split it was fully accepted that I would have DS.

In my case it was 100% the best deal for DS but I was lucky that the law / societal attitudes were on my side.

Blimey all this sharing is too much. I need a

My thoughts.... For what they're worth....

I do understand the idea of 'privalage'. I'm reasonably well educated, I read newspapers, I'd consider myself informed.

So I know there is legislation for equal pay, sufferagettes, and all kinds of disparities and discrimination that flash 'inequality' and thus a privalaged position as a male. I don't think it's anything but visable.

In the same way as having travelled the world , seeing what most of the rest of the world has to put up with and how our ( British ) general wealth and comparative luxuary leaves us at the top of the great lottery of where you're born.

So being 'privalaged' isn't so much of a revelation tbh.

Any defensiveness I think, speaking for myself, ( and thinking aloud ) comes from the assumption that one goes around gleefully flexing that privalage. Chatting single women up who're quietly reading a book , or shouting obnoxious comments at random women.

And if I could just comment on a post up thread... I know suggesting you cut some blokes testicles off is quite jokey, but if you read on some MRA site a jokey post about cutting some feminists tits off I think it'd probably be quoted in disgust.

If you wanted to understand where discrimination really hits home and where privilege comes into play, you could set aside about 25% of your salary as untouchable, and try to do everything you normally do on 75% of what you normally have at your disposal for a few months, if you want to experience life as a person who is not privileged, whether white or black or whatever.

Everything that women buy costs the same as it does for men, yet women get paid about 75% of what men do and are expected to pay their bills on time, pay the same price as men at the supermarket, etc. It's really no consolation to western women that we have it better than women elsewhere. We are still behind men and it is still harder for women to make ends meet.

yes absolutly mathanxiety, being paid more is a clear case of privilege
mr gin, agreed, the lottery of birth is huge, i also have seen the results around the world of poor education and no welfare state, it's sobering. but, being born male in the UK compared to female in the UK is less privilege than being born in the 3rd world.

being born male in afghanistan has imeasurable privilege, and still you will have a hard life!

I always remember walking home late (probably not that late but at 9/10 years old it was dark so felt late) with my dad and he did this bizarre thing where as we approached a lone woman walking on the same street he immediately crossed over and speeded up - and being confused as to why we were doing this on a pretty much deserted street I asked him why and he explained that it was force of habit - if he ever found himself alone on a street at night with a woman in front of him that is what he did - because he didn't want the woman to be concerned a man was following her and crossing over put distance between them and speeding up put him in front of her within her line of vision so it was the best way (he thought) to remove that fear. At the time I didn't really understand but now I think how awesome of my dad to understand that to any woman he is Schroedinger's rapist and instead of getting all sulky over it he tried to adjust his behaviour practically to ensure he reduced anxiety of women who didn't know him.

So to me understanding privilege isn't only an intellectual activity - it is about basic human empathy and as blackcurrants said, being a decent human. It's all very well to grudgingly admit it exists because the statistics say so or because you've travelled the world but then to reject it personally because you don't attempt to chat up lone women or wolf whistle reveals a pretty limited capacity for empathy and imagination. It's just not very perceptive or self-aware. For my dad I don't think it was consciously feminist, I think it was a combination of loving a woman who had been sexually abused as a child and dealing with her pain as an adult and being a Buddhist (he reflects a lot on ego so I suspect if he had gone through a thought process where initially he felt well why should I have to cross over the road I've done nothing wrong I'm not going to do anything wrong, I pay my taxes for this road, I'm equally entitled to walk where I want blah blah blah he would immediately have had to question his reaction as being arrogant and ego-driven).

Mr Gin - I thought it had been established this board was about feminism not for feminism - therefore if posters want to come on threads and say horrible things about men you can't assume it's a feminist saying nasty 'jokes' about men because they're a feminist. We can't assume anyone on this board is a feminist unless they say they are. It could just be someone who hates men who has no feminist affiliations whatsoever. Or someone with a crass sense of humour who wants to derail threads and cause a fight? I thought the lack of comment on that particular post meant that we were all just getting on with the discussion and ignoring any attempts to derail which in view of past experiences on here is probably the best approach.

Also Mr Gin why the persistent mis-spelling of privilege and putting in speech marks as 'privalage' - comes across as a bit sneery and as if it is some mythical nebulous concept that can't quite be believed? Is it just bad spelling/misunderstanding punctuation? Apologies and ignore if you're dyslexic and it's just a mistake - it just struck me as to how it affected the entire tone of your post which is a shame if unintended.

Classify it however you want Chairman. If it makes you feel better to say 'I have this privilege BUT not as much as xzy' go for it. But you still have male privilege.

Succinct post Wheezo, worded much better than I could have!

Whezo

Thanks for your reply. And I'd just say before I respond, I'm not attempting to make this thread all about MrGin or seeking a pat on the head. But it deals with, at least partly, with the question of why some men might get defensive around some feminists and a posters admission that she feels slightly sorry for some men in the face of feminism.

I'm obviously a man so can give ( only ) a male perspective.

The first point I'd make is you are making an assumption that I don't cross the road when I see a lone woman late at night ( or generally behave with humility ) . I can't remember a time in my adult life when I didn't do this tbh. And I'm neither a Buddhist or married to a woman who was abused in early life.

I doubt you will now afford me the same 'awesome'ness you give your dad for his similar actions. And I don't see it as awesome tbh, it's just what one does.

So it's a little patronizing to say the least that you firstly assume that I don't behave like that and then go on to say I have "a pretty limited capacity for empathy and imagination." and a lack of humility because of your false assumptions.

And again I think this is something relevant to the subject of this post. It's certainly a reoccurring scenario on MN. Why might men be defensive when discussing stuff with feminists ? Well here is a case in point.

And like I say I'm not saying this in order to get a pat on the head ( now that would be patronizing ! ) , but your post, to me at least, does bring into focus why some men might feel defensive.

As for Hully's testicle post... Well you know I like Hully's posts so I know her style. It's just in the context of thread that touches on 'man haters' I think it's worth the effort to at least mention how these kind of things might be misread when taken out of context from both sides of the division. Whether you're a feminist reading a comment on an MRA site, or an MRA reading a comment on a feminist site ( I know MN isn't a feminist site but I hope you see what I mean ) .

Lastly, yes I do have a form of dyslexia so I apologise for my bad spelling it's not intentional, I don't mean anything by it.

Whatmeworry do you realise that a transwoman is more likely than not, a person with a penis and testes?

I think it is really odd that there are so many people who are willing to argue that a transwoman and a biological woman are exactly the same. The mental gymnastics must be exhausting.

male privilege

male privilege

This guy knows about privilege

I assume everyone here is over 18. If not, don't watch! (sweary language)