Do you notice male privilege more as you get older?

[Destinysdaughter]

I do! Partly because I know what it is and when I was younger I didn't know it existed. Examples are male friends my own age (50) looking for relationships with much younger women. Men in very good careers, not having had to take career breaks for children, not being judged on their looks or weight, being able to delay having children until they were 'ready', i.e.,40 plus. No negative connotations attached to being a single older male, not being called 'spinsters' or 'crazy cat lady' etc

Anyone else?

I and another female colleague were on a video call today with a male member of another team who is meant to be project managing something. He is not doing it and we were trying to get him to agree to certain actions to bring his project into line.

He spent the entire call half or fully turned away from us and clearly chatting to other people around him, openly laughing at the point we were trying to make, being dismissive, rude and blatantly bullshitting.

He does this to us, and to the female analyst on the project all the time. If male colleagues ask the same questions on the same calls, he is respectful and gives proper answers. It makes me fucking furious, but it's done in a way I can't complain about without it causing a problem for me or damaging the project.

I have also had issues with the all-male development team trying to bypass me, and they behave as though I am an irrational female trying to stop them doing their jobs. When I've complained to their management, it's been 'calm down, dear'.

I'd guess that up to the 1975 discrimination act, it was up to the bank - maybe they made assumptions based on your occupation?

Probably. I wasn't even fully qualified in 1982 but had no difficulty getting a mortgage. I used a bank , not a building society which may have made a difference.

Actually yes I had a meeting with a building society and they were quite sexist but I made an apt with my bank Lloyds, and there was no problem at all.

I think it depended on the views of the bank manager at the time
In a different part of the country my parents opened a joint bank account and only my dad got a check book and card,he was told it was normal around there and wives were give housekeeping money.
All our experiences will be different but all of them just show the extent of male privilege.

Nearly forgot,when I qualified as a nurse and was looking for a job one of our male tutors actually told us not to worry if we didn't get what we wanted as we would all get married in a few years!

I was thinking about this when spending time with my inlaws lately (both lovely people). MIL talks a lot, quite fast and everyone tends to nod and zone out a bit. FIL joins the conversation less often but when he does tell an anecdote, everyone stops doing what they're doing and listens. I've worked out that it's because he pauses quite often and always at a good moment, and a fraction too long, so that you are hanging on his next words. He also has a half smile of anticipation and a twinkly look like he knows you're going to find the story amusing....and people do, even when it's not all that funny. MIL could tell the same story and people would be nodding, wondering what to have for lunch.

It struck me as I was waiting in one of his pauses (it was a story he'd told before), that he converses as if he's never been interrupted, talked over, ignored or had a joke fall flat in his life. He just doesn't expect it and so relaxes and takes his time.

I wondered where you were going with that, power, as it sounded as though, well he's just better at recounting an anecdote . But you have a point, your delivery style will be shaped by whether you're liable to be interrupted or talked over or not, and that tends to happen more to women than to men. Obviously it's not a blanket rule, and your profession may be relevant - my teacher DM could do a good anecdote and no-one would dream of interrupting her.

Agree re (some) male expectations about their anecdotes and blatant fishing for praise if you don't respond quickly enough with it.

Also often gearing their self-congratulatory tales at a male audience- I am often the only woman in meetings where a tale is told of male success, literally, including '.. so I told her to do xyz, while thinking, 'you silly woman''. Cue room of male laughs and I look uncomfortable.

I get the feeling that just calling a client a 'silly woman' might have been a politer modified version than what would have been said if I wasn't sat right there. So that's why it's fine for them to talk that way.

I have noticed a change. We go away every year with a group of other families that dh has known for 20 years or so. 10 years ago, when we had tiny babies and the men and women were roughly equal in our careers, the conversation around the dinner table was also fairly equal. Now there are far more moments where the men are holding forth and the women are listening. I assume it's because the men are all pretty senior at work now and are used to being listened to, while the women have downgraded to part time or self-employed and don't have the same status at work as the men.
In general they are not a sexist bunch of people, they're very equal re chores etc, so I find it surprising how much it happens.

It was in the 90s that a bank refused to give me an account with the title 'Ms' (they insisted on Miss). I thought I talked them around, but when the paperwork arrived it omitted any title - it was just my name.

I've noticed in middle-age that so many younger men expect me to be a self-sacrificing mother figure (for them) and not to have any ambition, wants or needs of my own.

I don't know about age but having a child has opened my eyes to how utterly, jaw-droppingly, blatantly the odds are stacked up in men's favour.

I've been re-watching Mad Men and it occurs to me how much in the workplace hasn't changed since the 1950s - still the 'girls in the typing pool' mentality. Still the women running around doing the work while the men sit on high to opine on...on...actually f**k all of any use most of the time.

And still, still, still the men in the office while the wives are tucked away safely in the suburbs.

I noticed it straight away but over the years a) realised that yes it will affect me too and b) that it hasn't changed much in that time period at all. It saddens me now, whereas before I was hopeful and thought I could work around it more. A lot of pro-equality materials printed by companies but how many women are on the board?

We bought our first house in 1983 and the solicitor (in my town) insisted on sending everything to DH (200 miles away) instead of to me. DH would then have to call me to ask what to do with it, and/or post it back.

It took my dad going in to see them before they would send it to me instead.

Then we asked the bank for a joint account named E and BA Army, simply because I have only one initial and it made more sense (I thought BA and E sounded like 3 people). So they set it up as BA and Mrs E Army.

I have to admit being interested in (and quite radical about) feminism from about 14 when I first read 'The Female Eunuch' - it completely changed my perspective and from then on I was aware of male privilege. I was always told (by women and men but the women were notable) that my views about the sex industry were 'too much' or 'over the top'. I dared not discuss Dworkin with them .

As I have got older I notice different aspects of male privilege to the ones, things like the successful careers of men, you mentioned this in your OP - who didn't take a break to have families and attitudes to men about women working after that break despite the fact it was THEIR family the woman was bringing up. My friends have mostly caught up with my views on the sex industry now interestingly enough and see me as far less radical than they did when we were younger. I think they see male privilege more now as they have become more ... jaded (for want of a better word).

To some extent I think things have actually got worse for women - the sex industry has become somewhat of a monster with the advent of the internet and I find pressure for women to conform and be 'cool' with all this is far more intense.

The Men's Rights movement (although not new - Robert Bly and his men's groups were around a long time ago and mens rights activists existed many years ago) has become more vocal and aggressive.

I think it is easier to be unaware of male privilege when you are young and society treats you well but as a woman ages and enters the world of work and has a family, it begins to become more obvious.

We bought our first house in 1983 and the solicitor (in my town) insisted on sending everything to DH (200 miles away) instead of to me. DH would then have to call me to ask what to do with it, and/or post it back

It took my dad going in to see them before they would send it to me instead

I was a newly qualified solicitor in 1983. There was no excuse for a solicitor ignoring your instructions but frankly getting it wrong once I might let pass but after the second time I would have complained to the partner or managing partner.

We remortgaged recently and despite the fact it was done in my name on my salary for reasons, and I filled in all the forms with me as buyer 1, everything came back changed with DH as buyer 1 and addressed to him.

I also own another property which I let out, again in my name and on my salary. In fact, DH has never been on that mortgage, though the lender knows I own a property jointly with DH. Yet when remortgaging that last year, the lender kept addressing the paperwork to Mr & Mrs Doom. FFS.

Yes definitely. DH was unemployed for a few months and eventually we gave up on the joint account and I just started paying for everything on my card. But the servers in restaurants still always gave him the chip and pin machine!

Similarly, we go to Spain a lot and I speak Spanish, so I make all the reservations, I'm the one who speaks when checking us into hotels, etc. But receptionists and waiters still always try to address him instead, and then look confused when he can't reply!

YetAnotherSpartacus
It was in the 90s that a bank refused to give me an account with the title 'Ms' (they insisted on Miss). I thought I talked them around, but when the paperwork arrived it omitted any title - it was just my name.

I married last year and told the bank (in person) I wanted to be Ms. The cards all arrived as Mrs.

I agree with other pp that male superiority definitely become s more noticeable the older you get particularly with a family,. I found the family courts to be guilty of this behaviour to a degree that was beyond believable. I qualified as a professional In the early 90s. I am patronised far more now. But what to be done about it?

I work in childcare for 10-12hours a day, I'm relatively well paid compared to some in this sector but still the hours can be draining. I love my job and think early years care is of value to the whole of society so you can imagine how great it was recently when chatting to a guy who works in an office based corporate job 9-5 that I can't complain I'm tired as I could have worked harder at school then I'd be more than a babysitter!

I look around my friends and realise that the only women who are doing better than their partners in career terms are gay, and / or have no children, and / or earn mega mega bucks so have always had full time nannies and cleaners

Ev1l I find the MRA thing baffling. They appear to genuinely believe that women are favoured in every walk of life and men are being deliberately disenfranchised. I honestly struggle to understand how they come to that conclusion.

Until a few years ago, I had naively thought that sexism and male privilege was pretty much nearly a thing of the past. It was only really when I started looking at everydaysexism that I suddenly realised that examples of it were around me all day, every day, everywhere and I had just become so inured to it that I'd stopped noticing.

I'm doing uni group work atm, group of mainly females and one male. Every single woman defers to the man.

I'm meant to comment on how the group work went, and I'm toying with talking about patriarchy...

Yy to men and their anecdotes. I have noticed this a lot with my own father and other men I know. They will pause when there's really no need to for dramatic effect even when what they say is boring and you've heard it a million times before and also go on and fucking on long after they've made their point.

And people let them. Because there's this expectation - it's kind of like the way men own space and take up more of it than women do. They take up social space as well.

Sometimes when it's getting particularly deadly I'll do things like summarise an entire ten minute treatise I've endured in a few sentences and then move swiftly on with the conversation. But still they do it.