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?

Women discouraged from keeping fit and maintaining a healthy weight, because we will lose our 'curves' and we all know that men prefer us 'curvy'.
Never mind what s good for us, it's about what men want from us.

The tv and magazines are full of adverts to help us lose cellulite/banish the 7 signs of aging/dress properly.
Never see any ads aimed at making men feel crap about themselves.

There's a lot of road rage from men towards older women.
Men forgive a younger woman making a mistake on the road, but if an older woman accidentally does something wrong it's
'Get out of the way you silly old cow'

Totally agree with the PP who said that previously feminist seeming DHs go all funny when the children come along. I am currently on mat leave with 3 month old DS and last week I went into work for a keeping in touch day and persuaded my MD to promote me when I come back. For the 7 years we have been together I've earned waaaay more than DH while also doing the lions share of wife work. This promotion turns a good job into a Big Job and I have already said to DH that when I go back he's going to have to pick up some of the domestic slack as he's off to uni in September. He was very as he genuinely didn't feel that he wasn't pulling his weight. I feel like there will be a lot of really annoying conversations over the next few months as I try to get him to see what needs to be done. Then I think, hang on, why the fuck have I allowed this to happen? It just never occurred to me when I was early twenties that it was even an issue and now we're in a pattern which will be hard to break.

daisygirlmac

Here's an idea that I used years ago.

Sit down together and make a list, that you both agree on, of all the chores in the house. Every last one. But make sure you agree.

Then, deciding together you assign a numerical value to each. Make sure you agree.

So he might like hoovering, but think cleaning the skirting boards is awful. It doesn't matter. Agree with a number.

Tear them all off when you're finished, screw them in a ball, put them in a hat.

Take turns picking one each. At the end, you have to make sure you have the same numerical number. You might have to do a bit of swapsies if one of you really hates something but the other doesn't mind.

But the number should be equal. It might require a little bit of tweaking.

That way the chores are divided, on a pre-agreed value of each chore. With you both ending up with the same. But he hasn't been able to wriggle out of anything, or assign a bigger number to something he hates, in case you get that number or vice versa.

It's the equivalent of dividing a Mars Bar in half. You cut, I choose.

If nothing else, he will be aghast at the amount of chores that have ended up in his lap. Even though he has explicitly agreed on the value and equality of those chores.

Thanks Datun. It's not so much that there's anything he won't do, simply that it would never occur to him to do it off his own bat. Even if he had a list of chores he was responsible for he would not do them without being prompted. It's also mainly the life admin stuff that he is really really poor at, car insurance, dental appts, bill paying and it's stuff I don't want to have to have sole responsibility for. He was supposed to be responsible for the electric bill a few years back and we ended up in a mess because he hadn't read meters or paid on time. Anyway, slightly derailing! I do think it's more apparent to me now, thanks to MN and being a bit older.

Interesting point further up about men owning social space and feeling no issues with boring on and on. I'm a serial interrupter and got told off by FIL for "rudeness" towards a family friend at a meal. He'd been talking at us all for 35 minutes and frankly I either interrupted or stabbed myself in the eye with a fork for a diversion.

I'm quite enjoying my middle-aged invisibility too. I feel a lot freer as I age.

I was chatting to a much older friend not long ago. She has been a widow for quite a long time now, having lost her husband when she was 65. Well-meaning relatives and friends kept telling her that she wasn't too old to find another husband or partner, but she summed her feelings up with "I don't want another old man to look after".
She had a good marriage and loved her husband, but she is enjoying the freedom to do what she wants to do now.

I love the middle aged invisibility too. I couldn't give a crap if a man fancies me or not.

daisygirlmac Long term, I think it's really essential to avoid the trap of you becoming the delegator. There is so much brainspace involved in simply noting what needs to be done and by when. Lots of men will perform wife work if it is specifically delegated to them. But delegation is simply an extra task for the woman.

Part of male privilege is not noticing mundane tasks which have no tangible benefit to the person who performs them. In a way, housework and cooking are different because at least they get to enjoy the clean bathroom or meal. Tasks like replying to your kid's birthday party invitation, buying a present and arranging lifts feature on very few male radars IME.

Ah, just seen that we cross posted daisy.

I never read magazines: why should I pay for stuff seeking to make women feel bad? The articles more than the ads.

YY to men thinking they do a fair share but not actually doing it. My DH does a lot more than other men I know, and would say he does 50% but nowhere near IMO, especially the admin, health and neverending school stuff.

I've always noticed this, which is ahy I chose to study and work in STEM where work is rewarded with money, and even as a young girl when asked to by my mum to make my dad a cup of tea "because he's done a long day at the office" I refused, because, I mean, haven't we all been working.

I've been a feminist all my life. It's taken a great deal of effort not to constantly explode with rage at all kinds of entitled behaviour from men.

I put my money where my mouth is too and I preferentially employ back to work mums as well as younger women.

I like a diverse team, but I've had nothing but lies and bullshit from any straight young men I've employed. They don't last long with me.

I've yet to meet a man at work who will tidy up the kitchenette, clean the bathroom, or even ffs change the loo roll of his own volition because it needs doing. As I said, they don't last long with me.

and would say he does 50% but nowhere near IMO

We are approaching 50pc WRT to admin now. But only because I stopped doing half of it. Bills didn't get paid and we missed some tax deadlines. It was worth the charges involved for a fairer balance.

I've recently turned 43 and its suddenly dawned on me that my "role" in life is basically the same as my mother back in the 70s and 80s! I've been a SAHM for 14 years, despite having an MSc, while workaholic DH has never taken a day off work for childcare and has made an absolute fortune with all the "kudos" that goes with it. These days he will go off for the day or week to do his hobbies, whereas I would need to book anything months ahead and get everyone else organised to do something like go away overnight. So I tend not to bother to be honest. The whole issue of what DH and the kids eat seems to be my permanent responsibility, whereas nobody would give a second's thought to what I may have eaten on a given day. If the house is not organised or his clothes aren't ready, I admit I feel guilt, even though I know I shouldn't. I've realised how much I've internalised as a result of my own background and it seems to have caught up with me. Even though I've no regrets, the differences in my husband's expectations and mine have certainly become evident over the course of time.

Even though I've no regrets
I think I would be furious if in your shoes Mojo

peaceout - well I can't be furious because it felt like my choice to be with the kids and I can't deny that. But on the other hand, there was never any question of him shifting his work agenda to accommodate the kids, so any decisions I made were framed by that.

yer but, he got all the glory because you did all the behind the scenes stuff
They always get all the fucking glory dont they, all the cool stuff, all the kudos

@hiveofactivity that's why I couldn't watch MadMen. Everyone else was raving about it and it just utterly depressed me at how little had really changed.

Yes definitely. When I was in college, I had come from an all-girls school where we were free to be as outspoken as we wanted and various talents were celebrated - academic, sporting, art, being kind etc. Then I went to college in a class which was half male/female in a pretty academic subject. I suppose I should have felt the first notes when a guy in the class said "I can't believe you did better than me" when our results were posted. I was pretty and fairly social but also very bright and hard working but apparently those things should have been mutually exclusive.

It is when work - and especially managing children - arise that the shit really hits ime.

At work (in the US) I would regularly sit around the table of decision-makers and realise that there would be 4 women present and I was the only one with children - every other woman would be childless. Every man at those tables did have children (and a wife with a decidedly less stressful job if she had one at all).

Even something as stupid as where we walk - we were in London recently and dh led us in an underpass near st pauls to get to where we were going. I told him there was no way I would have chosen to walk there if by myself. It didn't occur to him.

Life is still heavily weighted in favour of the male.

It affected me more as a teenager because I literally couldn't leave the house with unwanted attention from men and boys. I have let men treat me horribly because after years of this I think I just became conditioned to give in to mens wants and needs. I'm only 27 but I'm rarely harassed by men in the street any more. Part of me was relieved that I only had sons because I don't think I could cope with seeing a daughter of mine go through all the shit I had to go through as a teen.

I'm ashamed to say though that there is someone at work (different department but is in and out of our office all the time) who I actually have to hide from whenever I see him coming because his behaviour makes me so uncomfortable. But it's just banter apparently . No woman would ever speak like that to a man.

Yes to the wifework. Workwise younger women using their sexual capital or not realising that older men are "nice" because they are sniffing around them. And I am sure mansplaining has increased as I have got older?

Yes to all of it.

And I thought this was timely today:. And it's not just motherhood that drives it, it's the possibility of motherhood once married that's still a driving factor.

www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/upshot/the-gender-pay-gap-is-largely-because-of-motherhood.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0

YY to so much of this!

Yes, I notice the privilege more with age. And it makes me furious, because I can see how easy it is to just slide into a sort of tacit acceptance, by a drip-drip-drip of tiny decisions, none of them significant by themselves, but that mound up in your life, and suddenly you look round and WTF happened? How did I get stuck with the shitwork again? And how come it happens to just about every woman I know?

And them someone will helpfully sidle up and tell you that it's your fault because you picked a wrong 'un for a husband and that their wonderful Nigel isn't like that at all. Actually, of all the couples that I know well enough to have a good insight into their domestic lives - a couple of dozen maybe? - I only know one couple where the man could plausibly claim to shoulder the bulk of the domestic burden. For the rest, even though they might say otherwise, scratching the surface reveals who's doing the wife work. And that includes me

Meh, it's touching a nerve at the moment for me.

I don't think men mansplain more to older women, I think we just notice it more because we know more!
I totally agree about the fact that the domestic stuff is almost always the woman's responsibility in every couple I know, even the ones where she works ft and he is a sahd! And I don't know any men who think they don't pull their weight. In fact most 40 something men with kids I know seem to feel a bit put upon with the domestic drudgery
It's often a good excuse to have affairs with women who aren't their frustratingly demanding, increasingly feminist wife..
I don't know many high flying men with kids but my friend does ( she's very senior in a London firm) and she has always said that it has been easier for her male counterparts to rise as they have wives at home to pick up the slack. Her male boss would bring in his kids to work if they had an inset day, and all the staff would go "aw, what a lovely dad " whereas she felt she had to try and pretend she had no dc as she wanted to be taken seriously.
Men are treated like heroes when they lower themselves to doing the bare minimum wrt children or chores.
And yy to being the housework director. I don't want to dole out chores to a grown man. That puts you in the role of nagging mum, and I have that role already covered!

Her male boss would bring in his kids to work if they had an inset day, and all the staff would go "aw, what a lovely dad "

Really interesting. He is lauded because he is seen as being put upon for having to do two roles.

If a woman took her children to work, she would be denigrated for not being able to 'manage' two roles.