My husband just accidentally explained male privilege.

[SimonBridges]

Please enjoy this analogy. He’s a lovely chap really but didn’t get my point.

DH is very tall. I am very short.
When we walk anywhere he strides on ahead. I am trotting along trying to keep up. Because he is in front of me he moves to the middle of the pavement meaning that I have to walk behind him going at the very limit of my walking speed just to keep up.

Today he said to me ‘why are you always three paces behind me?’
To which I replied ‘no, the question is why are you three paces in front’.

He didn’t understand.

Your husband is enjoying being a jerk at your expense
Yeah sorry OP, he's being a dick. If you stride off and leave someone behind you're not walking with them, you're just walking. You match your pace to the slowest walker or you just walk separately. I work with tall blokes and we walk a lot. They don't walk off without me because I'd tear them a new one for being so rude. Ironically - male privilege is all those posters laughing off their rude and inconsiderate partners, like men have a right to be "clueless/thoughtless".

My ex was 12” taller than me. He was 6’4ish so pretty tall.

When we moved house, I got a guy to hang up some pictures.

Apparently they were hung at the wrong height. Perfect for me, and for the picture-hangy-guy, and for most people. It wasn’t male privilege; it was just self-centredness, literally a refusal to see things from anybody else’s viewpoint —dick—

I used hanging the bathroom mirror to illustrate that there is no default height. (And my heart died a little when I saw on their face that they got it.)

Good analogy OP

Yes I am making the assumption she is a white middle class woman because her analogy would have been much stronger has she belonged to a maginalised group.

Fuck me. ^^This is satire, right??

Anyway..

I like the analogy but agree you should be slower cos you're carrying a bag of shopping and a toddler

I fear this might skew the argument, but whenever my husband is three paces ahead of me, I just remind him that I am not the Duke of Edinburgh.

My dh moves ahead, I walk swiftly to keep up, We are level pegging and he speeds up a little so he is just a little bit ahead. He always does this. His walking pace is about 60% effort and mine is about 75% effort, hence after a while it becomes a struggle to keep up.
He is unaware of this until I point it out.
I like to think of it as a mini workout.

I also notice this with small children running alongside their parents walking to school.
And small dogs too
IMO it just makes the person striding along look selfish.

It makes the striding parent and the small, jogging child look late for school (source: every damn morning).

My dh also does this. Im petite so when its especially crowded where we are walking I get jossled alot and end up miles behind him.

Haha, we have the opposite. DH seems incapable of pushing through crowds, while I nip through gaps and sidestep people and end up leaving him forlorn miles behind.
I think there's more to this than height.

hipster
Haha
Yes, point taken.
It's been a few years since I had to take my kids to school.
I totally forgot how kids make you late.
like it's your fault

My DH does this. It's also learned behaviour-my DD started doing it too, once she was taller than me. I've had to teach her, and remind her. Matching your companion's walking pace and looking out for their comfort is an elementary social skill.

This is basically me and my kids on the school run. Except my kids have scooters, so I’m the one running to keep up.

Is that what men are afraid of? That if women and minorities get ‘scooters’ they will have to make more effort to keep up?

There's a foot between my and DP's height too, so I recognise this :)

When we go out as a family, I'm in the middle, trying to keep my eyes on DP, whilst also keeping my eyes on the kids (who, in turn, are about a foot shorter than me, and then the same again shorter than his brother).. doesn't help that he doesn't have a great sense of direction either.

In his case, there's the normal not thinking about it, but also that he gets really embarrassed if we walk next to each other on the pavement because we're getting in other people's way - and that's a hang over from always being the big dude in the room, and getting told off for being in the way when he was a kid, so I let him off on that one.

I find myself desperately trying to keep up - till I can't and then feel guilty.

I assume this is my female socialisation kicking in. It’s easier with the children and they will walk at my pace even though they can walk faster though grabbing hold of DH arm also works as a break.

MIL is much smaller than FIL last few years she started walking at her pace and not giving a fuck if anyone gets impatient. I’m trying to copy her more in this one area.