Transcript of "Men not marrying? How deep does "the problem" go?"

Okay, so an online friend of mine was spitting mad after reading this recent effort on the part of I can only assume to be a traditionalist woman, in trying to figure out what the heck is wrong with men these days. As so many traditionalists and feminists before her, she missed the mark by a freaking mile, even though she did dance dangerously close (within 100 miles or so) of a few of the core issues that currently discourage men from being good little married drones like they're supposed to be, dammit.

Despite being critical of feminist attitudes that she rightly sees as anti-male, the article was absurdly gynocentric. It was very much about what women want, and there was a lot of expectation that men *should* do what women want when they want it--that is, get married and have babies on HER schedule as decided by her. One has to wonder if she even bothered to ask any actual unmarried males WHY they are refusing or not bothering to "man up" before writing her article.

But as I said, it did at least poke at the surface of the festering boil that is the systemic nature of "the problem", even if it didn't give it the lancing it truly deserved. Her conclusion was "why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free? And why get a good job when women are so independent they can just give the milk away for nothing?" Both are backhanded criticisms of women's behavior (yay, for someone brave enough to blame women for their own troubles), but they fall far short of any sort of true examination of the issues.

So I'm going to give it the old college try, and give a bit of an overview of what I believe has become a multifaceted problem.

A recent examination from Heartiste said a very great deal, and with some serious literary flair (pearls of wisdom from that pit of social nihilism that is the pick-up artist community). I'm just going to quote some of the relevant bits and leave a link to the article below:

If you want to know why men are running away from marriage, children and beta provisioning, one major reason is that the women available to these working class men are flat out disgusting. Take a look for yourself. What man of normal mental health and active libido wants to romantically woo and date, let alone marry, a beastly, waddling tatted mountain of pustulence with the issue of three other men barking and nipping at her cankles?

And let’s not forget that economically empowered and government-assisted women, slaves to their hypergamous impulse for higher status mates than themselves, can’t help but winnow the pool of men deemed acceptable marriage material. When women say “there are no good men left”, what the astute observer hears is “there are no good men left thanks to a combination of my increased expectations and decreased attractiveness.”

He goes on to say: 

to the factory-farmed ivory tower sociologists studying marriage trends and turning out paper after paper of half-assed hogwash: there’s a whole other world out there. It’s the world of men, and in that world, men’s desires matter. You should think about incorporating that ugly reality into your theories.

Hey, Heartiste--why don't you tell us how you really feel. As blistering as that little snippet was, it raises some very important points, I think the most important of which is that MEN'S DESIRES MATTER. When men cannot find women THEY desire who are willing to partner with them, why would they partner?

And I think it's important to note that the reality of divorce and family law in our culture plays a HUGE part in men's growing contempt for marriage as an institution. It's not that men are commitment-phobes. It's that women seem increasingly commitment-incompatible. The word "commitment" has in fact, in female parlance, come to mean, "up until the moment I'm no longer 100% satisfied with the person I married". And that attitude is only going to lead to more and more divorces as more and more successful women effectively set their sights higher than they reasonably should while their youth and attractiveness wanes, leading to a growing number of them feeling like they settled even if they didn't--even if they scored someone 2 points above them on the overall attractiveness scale.

And oddly enough, no one, least of all women, seem to really give a shit what MEN desire in a partner. Why can't men just be happy with what's available? Well, let's look at what's available to the *average* man in his 30s: a 35 year old woman who hollers yes over the jangling of her biological clock while unable to keep the grimace from her face because he's a bigger loser than the 5 guys she dumped in her 20s and now she has to settle, a divorcee who's already financially annihilated and emotionally crippled at least one man, and a single mother who's collecting reams of child support from one poor schmuck while her other baby daddy manages to duck his obligations because he's a drug dealer and his income's off the books.

And yes, I'm exaggerating, but you see my point.

And no, not all women are like that. But frankly, the consensus among today's women seems to be that this state of affairs is the new normal, and even responsible women will often frame such destructive choices on the part of other women as somehow valid and defensible. The sentiment in the mainstream is that men should just man up and go along with Pairing Up 2.0: Who Cares What Men Want?, that essentially, a given woman's behavior and life choices should have no effect on whether she is able to attract a good, reliable man...this does not speak well of the principles of even those women who are more well-situated. In fact, I think it's safe to say that the fewer female voices of reason there are out there the more men are likely to wash their hands of the entire idea of partnering.

But I honestly think it goes deeper than even the baggage the average unattached woman now carries, or the danger of ending up an emotionally and financially devastated statistic with "generous" every-other-weekend access to one's children that is keeping men from "manning up".

I've been thinking of the White Feather Girls. For those who don't know, it was a group of young women in the UK during WWI who bestowed a white feather of cowardice on any man they saw in civilian clothes, to shame them into enlisting.

And when I consider how vulnerable so many men were to those kinds of shaming tactics, vulnerable enough to enlist in a war that killed 10 million to preserve their manhood in the eyes of women they'd never met, I simply can't believe that it's only the risks of marriage, as onerous as they are, that have rendered men impervious to the kinds of shaming tactics employed by traditionalists and feminists who seem increasingly desperate to strong-arm men into their old roles.

I think at the very core of it, it's about a positive male identity. Male identity almost always revolves around doing, rather than being. Most of that doing has always revolved around being of use in a uniquely male context. Most of men's usefulness through history has derived from learning "male" skills and performing them well, embodying a male role in the service of women or society. In the more turbulent past, those roles needed to perform a valuable service to women or the community that women could not--or should not be expected to--perform for themselves.

This is the most common path to a positive male identity BECAUSE MEN LACK A MECHANISM FOR AUTOMATIC OWN-GROUP PREFERENCE. Simply put, they do not relate to other men automatically, just because they're men.

Women have this bias, which provides them a natural ability to form cooperatives, relate to other women, and seek consensus though their strong mechanism for own-group preference based on gender alone. Given their gender roles through most of human history, this mechanism makes sense. Their individual value as, to put it bluntly, breeders, meant that in a survivalist environment, you didn't throw a woman on the trash pile without a pressing reason. Adjustments were made when possible to keep as many women as you could within the sisterhood. This is where you find a ton of attention in female spaces given to things like "tone" and "being nice" and "getting along" even when there are disagreements. It's all about comfort level and feelings of acceptance.

Men, however, lack the hardwiring to form a preference for maleness based merely on maleness. And that only makes sense when you think about men's roles for the last couple million years or so--roles that involved things like beating the guys down the valley to a pulp when they threatened his women and children, and competing against other males within his community for a shot at the mating game. Given those roles, automatically siding with one's own gender over the other is...well, it just doesn't work.

And it's not that men cannot manifest a form of own-group preference, it's just that when own-group preference manifests in males, it can't be based on maleness alone. There must be a common purpose, a common set of ideals, a common duty or cause, a common doing or a common position in the status hierarchy.

Men can indeed identify with each other and be team players among other men--you see it in churches, military units, fraternities, sports teams and even sports fans, political parties, movements, project teams. While they will often form hierarchies within those contexts, those realms can be sources of a sense of loyalty and brotherhood among men.

The myth among feminists that men will insult each other for displaying feminine traits because they see women as inferior is just that--a myth. Men do this because women have a trump card that bestows intrinsic value on them--their uteruses--and they retain that value even when they gender-bend a little. A woman who acts like a woman is not seen as inferior. A man who acts like a woman has always been seen not as a woman, but as a "woman without a womb". He has no female value, and he has no male value. Therefore, he has NO value at all. And unlike women, men who were not "useful" did--and still do--get thrown on the trash heap of society.

In the currency of reproduction, an ovum goes for a thousand bucks, a uterus is worth a cool mill, and an ejaculation about 10 cents. To be acceptable mating material, and worth keeping around, a man had to do more than generate sperm. And when the only thing keeping you from becoming completely disposable as an individual lies in differentiating yourself from the feminine, well, guys gonna enforce that shit.

This is why men have always tended to define themselves by their roles. Father, husband, working man, soldier, career man, family man, middle class man, politician, activist, etc...in other words, roles to exist in which allow them to relate to other men who also occupy those roles, and to derive a positive and meaningful identity from performing their masculinity through those roles.

And I think this may be why suicide rates for men skyrocket after divorce--you have not just taken away his kids, his wife, his assets and a chunk of his income. You've effectively stripped him of a huge part of the male identity he's built around himself.

So I'm thinking that for most men, forming a positive male identity in relation to other males requires a couple of things--a male role that is differentiated from the female one (or at the very least, a male-oriented environment) and, well, positivity.

Men used to be able to derive a positive male identity from marriage. That is, through the respected and uniquely male role of husband and father. When that identity is increasingly characterized by society as superfluous, obsolete, or in the words of Harriet Harman, unnecessary to social cohesion, it is no longer a way for a man to defer his disposability, is it? Moreover, when that identity can be unilaterally stripped from him on the whim of the increasingly fickle and hard to please female even when he does everything right, marriage ceases to be a positive way for men to define themselves as men. It becomes a way for men to define themselves as chumps and idiots, and who wants to define themselves that way? Moreover, from sitcoms to romcoms to TV commercials, to billboard ads, the role of husband/father is increasingly one of playing the incompetent buffoon to sassy, smart, together wife or even child. In the mass media there is nothing noble or respectable about husbandhood or fatherhood anymore. Further, when the roles within marriage become virtually indistinguishable and interchangeable, a man's role becomes less and less...well, uniquely male. It's just a role. It can be a path to meaning and fulfilment (if he's lucky), and it may be something he desires to do and become, but it's not necessarily a path to defining himself AS A MAN.

So we can scratch that one off the list--even for men who've been living under a rock when it comes to divorce law. Marriage and children no longer offer a reliable path to a positive male identity. It is no longer positive, nor is it significantly differentiated from the feminine.

The workplace is yet another milieu that has largely lost its maleness. And that's not to say that women ruined everything. It is not so much the presence of women but rather the alterations in environment and interaction many women demand when they want to engage the world through the paid workforce. A male space that leads to a positive male identity need not be free of women, but it still needs to be male--men need an environment that suits their psychology, not one in which they must be metaphorically castrated in order to steer clear of trouble with HR. And I'm not even talking about vulgarity or expressions of sexuality, but aggression, ambition, ribbing, competition, passion, authority, and plain speech--all of these are often discouraged when women are present, in order to spare feelings and prevent discomfort. Outspokenness is replaced with drawing room rules of discourse and ingenuity with protocol, all of which render a feminized workplace, though tolerable to men, no longer a path to a positive MALE identity.

Because it is no longer a male space, and no longer appeals to the psychology of men, the workplace has become a ladder fewer men feel driven to climb in order to construct their identities. Combine this with the fact that we handicap men through quotas and affirmative action for women, well... a large number of men are not only becoming disenchanted with the expectation to perform in an environment that does not feed their natures and has set them up to fail--in the absence of those uniquely male-centered psychological rewards and motivators, a growing number are finally opening their eyes and waking up to the negative aspects of wage-slavery. And that is a pill that, once taken, cannot be unswallowed.

In every space males congregate where women have elbowed their way in and demanded changes, you seem to find large numbers of men giving ground and eventually losing their drive to perform there. And again, I don't think it's the presence of women that does this--it's the enforced necessity to change one's behavior in order to maintain a proper decorum around them, and the changes in how those places function that women often demand. It's the expectation that the environment and the men in it adjust to suit women's needs, rather than expecting women to adjust themselves to the environment.

A few bastions of maleness remain, places where women are often welcome right up until they begin to demand the environment change to suit them, at which point the male protests begin. Hell, you can even see this tolerance on the part of men when women sneak into the men's room when the line-up is too long for the women's bathroom. It's all good unless she takes offence at men behaving the way men do in a restroom by farting and pissing in her presence.

So where are men retreating to? The internet, and the few men's spaces that have not tailored their rules of conduct to suit women's easily offended natures and need for comfort. The MRM, where a common set of ideals and values bonds the community and allows them to define their maleness irrespective of society's or women's approval. A place where words and ideas are more important than the tone or the smiles that may or may not lie behind them.

The hierarchy and uniquely male objectives of the pick-up artist community, where competition and scorekeeping are indeed still allowed, where there are men for others to admire or to mentor, and where they thumb their noses at what women say they want. Society wasn't working for them, so they invented their own society and they're running with by their own rules.

Video games and related forums. Online venues where refusals to police speech are deemed misogyny and the men there don't give much of a fuck.

Men going their own way, who've taken a stand based on a realistic assessment of what's in it for them, and maintain their self-respect not by complying with society's expectations but by disregarding them.

Beer and buddies, hook-up culture, and part time jobs men tolerate but don't care about.

Gynocentrism--the manginas and white knights who supplicate and pander to the feminine even when it's ugly or amoral, differentiating themselves from the feminine through their blind worship of it.

And why? Because all of the "approved" paths to a positive male identity, the paths society both endorses and depends on, are gone. And even when men don't consciously realize this, they know it somewhere in the backs of their brains. Men have always worked and sacrificed and sweated and bled if they were rewarded with a means through which to see themselves as worthy of respect. But when every role society wants to cram you into is no longer a way to respect yourself, then it's time to throw those roles away.

And one thing the apexuals at the top, like Bill Bennett and Obama, feminists like Kaye Hymowitz and Katie Roiphe, and traditionalists like Suzanne Venker, will never realize is that using shame to try to coerce men to do what is expected of them isn't going to work this time, because while it's possible to shame a man into giving his life for his country if there's a promise of respect in it, it's impossible to shame someone into working his ass off and risking his future just for the joy of looking in the mirror and seeing Homer Simpson or Ray Barone looking back at him.

When the cost of society's approval is the self-respect you derive from a positive identity, it ceases to be worth it to a lot of men.

The Female Privilege Checklist

In discussions of social and legal issues, I have frequently heard feminists (and gays and lesbians and transgendered people and people of ethnic minorities and, well, pretty much any identifiable group) tell others to "check your privilege", especially in cases where other individuals offer viewpoints that differ from accepted norms. 


This can be valuable advice, when it is given in good faith. We should all examine not only the ways in which we are disadvantaged, but take the time to really look at the areas in which we have advantages others do not--even when those advantages are the result of measures taken by the law and society to alleviate a disadvantage. As I told the teenage busboy at work last night when he was complaining the truck his father had given him was several years old, "You should get down on your knees and thank your dad, you ungrateful brat. You know what my teenagers get? $20 shoes and a goddamn bus pass." He was offended at first, but after he thought about it for a while, he realized just how lucky he is and actually thanked me.


However, in almost every instance I see the phrase, "check your privilege," used by a member of a group that is considered to be disadvantaged, it is used to convey victim status in relation to the dissenter, and to shut down all discussion other than that which confirms the group's beliefs. Moreover, they will often insist that because they are disenfranchised by virtue of their membership in the group, there is no way they could also hold privilege due to their membership in the same group. This is so not the case.


Privilege is largely about the real-world consequences of stereotyping and prejudice. Stereotyping and prejudice may be disfavored as a way of determining the true characteristics of a given individual, and thus be a "bad thing"...but at the same time, they don't always result in negatives for the people stereotyped, and when they result in positive effects, many are entirely prepared to take advantage of their privilege. Consider: Asians are likely to be assumed to be bad drivers = negative effect on individuals. Conversely: Asians are likely to be assumed to be good at tech and math = positive effect for individuals in certain contexts, such as when s/he is applying for jobs in these areas.


And while privilege is a complicated thing--affluent, white, straight, well-educated, able-bodied males being "at the top" in most contexts, middle class black males inhabiting a huge gray zone with upper class, white gay males somewhere down the privilege ladder, and mixed race, overweight, disabled, poor, uneducated, transgendered lesbians stuck right at the very bottom...well, it all gets complicated when you start considering just who has more advantages and disadvantages than whom. 


It's a contest these days, and to hear people talk, everyone's vying for the prized spot at the very, very, very bottom. Discussions of race, class, sexuality, gender and gender identity, disability, economic status, education level, all seem to devolve into a bizarre exercise in "one-downmanship", where everyone clamors that they are a more victimy victim than everyone else.


But some things really are black and white--at least they seem so. When considering things like male/female gender privilege, you need only consider the bilateral--that is, how does one play out in relation to the other? That is, what privileges do men enjoy solely due to their gender that women of similar economic class, education level, race, able-bodiedness, sexual orientation, etc etc, do not?


And conversely--and contrary to what many feminists believe--what privileges do women enjoy that men do not, all other things being equal? I was asked by a feminist to provide a list, and I did. She dismissed it as a "failed experiment." But I wonder what all of you might think of my female privilege checklist. Feel free to suggest more in the comments, if you think of any--I'll update the list as necessary.


Women are requested to consider whether they can answer "yes" to these questions:


1) People are likely to assume I am a warm and empathetic person.


2) People are likely to assist me when I must perform a physically arduous task.


3) If my car breaks down or I am otherwise in distress, people will be more likely to stop and help me.


4) If I am being physically assaulted, no matter the gender of my assailant, it is more likely that passersby will intervene.


5) People are likely to assume I am a competent parent, unless and until I prove otherwise.


6) People are more likely to respect my right to be offended by inappropriate or impolite behavior.


7) If I yell, people are not likely to believe I am going to hurt them.


8) Dress codes in the workplace and in leisure contexts are more likely to allow me to choose clothing that emphasize my most attractive features and minimize those I am unhappy with.


9) I am allowed by society to wear make-up to make myself more attractive without anyone questioning my sexual orientation. I am given a large social leeway in the kinds of hairstyles I can choose that will flatter my facial features.


10) If I work in a profession that is dominated by the opposite gender, people are likely to see it as "heroic", or a sign of social progress, rather than that I am deficient in some way.


11) If I show weakness, the first response of most people will be to console or help me, not criticize me, ignore me, or dismiss me as pathetic.


12) I am not expected to make the "first move" when meeting members of the opposite sex for the purposes of dating.


13) Members of the opposite gender are expected to make the first move; therefore, it is less likely I will be sexually rejected by those I come into close contact with in a dating context.


14) I am not expected to spend a significant portion of my yearly income on a token that accompanies a marriage proposal.


15) I am less likely to be expected to spend a significant amount of money on gifts, tokens, and activities during courtship and dating.


16) If I am having dinner with a member of the opposite gender in a dating context, and I do not reach for the check, people are unlikely to assume I am cheap.


17) If I am having dinner with a member of the opposite gender in a non-dating context, and I do not reach for the check, people are still unlikely to assume I am cheap.


18) If I earn less than my partner, no one will look at me funny.


19) If I earn nothing and my partner supports me, no one will look at me funny.


20) If I am unemployed and my partner is supporting me, people other than my partner are unlikely to pressure me because I am "not trying hard enough" to find employment.


21) If I earn less than my partner, people are unlikely to expect me to contribute equally to our living expenses.


22) If I am skilled in activities/hobbies that are commonly attributed to the opposite gender (kick boxing, operating power tools, shingling a roof, knitting, scrap-booking, floral arranging), people will see me as admirable. No one is likely to think I am a weirdo or wonder if I'm gay.


23) If I am completing a task with a member of the opposite gender, it will be expected that they take the greater physical burden--such as carrying the heavier boxes.


24) If I cry or am hurt, men and women are unlikely to tell me to "suck it up".


25) If I choose to stay at home with my children while my partner works, people are unlikely to think I am a deadbeat, unskilled, or shirking my responsibility to my family.


26) If I choose discontinue, temporarily leave, or reduce my participation in a high-status career in order to spend time at home caring for children, people are likely to consider it a "noble sacrifice" rather than a waste of my talents. 


27) If I work and have a family, my employer will be less likely to require me to work overtime or bring work home with me. This will be the case even if I equally share domestic duties with my partner, or have outside domestic help (housekeeper, nanny).


28) If an employer claims to have "non-sexist" hiring policies, I can assume this to mean that members of my gender will be more likely to be hired, rather than less.


29) If I choose a career in early childhood or elementary level education, or volunteer to work with youth, no one will wonder if it's because I am a pedophile. They will trust me, even if they are aware that members of my own gender can and sometimes do use these positions to facilitate their sexual abuse of children.


30) If I commit a crime against children, even before details come out, people are likely to want to believe I have been falsely accused, was "failed by the system", or was somehow "driven to it" by factors outside my control (such as mental illness, poverty, lack of social services, childhood abuse), because members of my gender "just don't do stuff like that". It is unlikely they will automatically attribute my actions to unprovoked aggression or hold me entirely responsible for them.


31) If I am a victim of domestic violence, there are many services in my community that will help people of my gender. It is unlikely I will be denied services based on my gender.


32) If my partner physically abuses me, I will be believed by the authorities. Their belief will not depend on whether I have physical signs of injury.


33) If I physically abuse my partner, people--including the authorities and victim's services personnel--are likely to assume it was in self defence. Even if I tell them I hit first and my partner is non-violent, they are likely to wonder if my partner did something to instigate the assault, like cheating on me, yelling at me, or otherwise provoking me to lose control.


34) If I physically abuse my partner, and they reciprocate, they are as likely or more likely to be the one arrested as I am, even if my partner's reciprocation was in self-defence.


35) If my partner physically abuses me, and I reciprocate--even if I admit my reciprocation was not in self-defence but out of anger--it is unlikely that I will be arrested.


36) If I am divorced, and my ex-partner earns more than I do, it is more likely I will be awarded spousal support, even if am employed and self-supporting, than if our positions were reversed.


37) If I am divorced, the default assumption in the family court system is that I will have primary custody of my children. This will be the case, even if my ex-partner and I shared breadwinning and childcare duties roughly equally during the marriage.


38) If my ex-partner sues me for custody, they are unlikely to be as successful as I would be were our positions reversed. The burden will be on them to prove I am an unfit parent, rather than that they are more fit, before this likelihood tips in their favor.


39) If I am divorced, I will in almost every case be awarded child support. If my ex-partner does not abide by the terms of the custody/child support order, they will face legal consequences as serious as a prison sentence. They will face these consequences even if their reason for not paying is that their financial situation has changed since the marriage. They will face these consequences even if I do not fulfill my own legal obligations spelled out in the custody order to permit or facilitate their access to my children--my right to distance myself from my ex-partner is likely to take precedence over my children's right to involvement with their non-custodial parent.


40) If I am divorced and my partner is awarded primary custody of my children, I will only rarely be required to pay child support, even if I can afford it. If I am required to pay child support and I do not, for whatever reason, it is unlikely that I will face any legal consequences.


41) If I abuse the legal process during my divorce by obtaining a fraudulent temporary restraining order, misrepresenting my financial status, hiding assets, or otherwise perjuring myself, it is very unlikely I will be charged with a crime. In fact, my abuse of the legal process--even after it has been discovered by the court--is likely to benefit me in matters such as custody. Moreover, "the good of the children" will be treated as a reason to not penalize me monetarily--such as by reducing my share of joint assets.


42) If my ex-partner abuses the legal process in the above ways, they are more likely to be penalized criminally by being charged, or monetarily through reduction of their share of our joint assets. 


43) If I have consensual sex with my partner and we are both underage, and a charge of statutory rape is filed, I will never be the one charged. This will be the case even if I pressured my partner to have sex and they objected.


44) If I am raped by a member of the opposite gender, and I am not below the age of consent, no one will tell me such a crime does not exist.


45) If I am raped by a member of the opposite gender, knowledgeable members of the medical and criminal justice communities are unlikely to consider my body's involuntary and automatic responses to sexual stimuli as "proof" that I gave consent.


46) If I am the victim of a statutory rape committed by a member of the opposite gender, and it results in a pregnancy, I will have a choice as to what my parental responsibilities to that child will be. I will not be legally required to be financially responsible for a child that results if I have been raped by an adult.


ETA: 

47) irregardless of my parents' culture or religion or any small beneficial side-effects, I am protected by the law from any genital cutting until I am an adult and request it for myself. If I have been cut, my peers will universally agree that I have been a victim of a heinous crime.

48) I can openly state a sexual preference for members of the opposite gender who had significant portions of their genitals removed at birth, and not immediately be called out as crazy by most of society. I can request a sexual partner who has not been cut to become cut for me, and that partner would most likely not immediately leave me.

49) I can cite my own sexual preference for members of the opposite gender who had significant portions of their genitals removed at birth as the sole reason for requesting the same done to my newborn child, and my child's doctor will comply without arguing with me or reporting me to the police. My health insurance will even pay for it.

50) It would be career suicide for a doctor or politician to recommend cutting off significant portions of my genitals to reduce the chance of catching STDs or having other medical problems with my genitals.

51) There's little debate as to whether or not cutting my gender's genitals is bad.


***Please, if anyone wants to add more items, just let me know in the comments, like Beanie Appa did. This list is a work in progress. :)


When I proffered some of the second half of this list in an online discussion, one feminist scoffed, "Women's privilege is exclusively when we are raped, physically abused, or divorced? Wow, lucky me."


What feminists--and many groups claiming disadvantage in whatever area--don't seem to consider is that privilege is an inherently oppositional and proportional concept. In order for men, for instance, to have male privilege in a specific context, it requires that women's disadvantage in that context be in opposition in relation to that privilege. If everyone had equal status under the law and in the eyes of society in relation to each other, even if our circumstances were terrible, no one would be more privileged or disadvantaged than anyone else, right? Privilege of one group requires the disadvantage of another. And when you have gender privilege, it is the other gender that is, perforce, disadvantaged.


Feminists of today still see the wage gap as a serious problem that needs to be dealt with. Feminists believe that the wage gap is a product of sexism in the workplace and unfair social expectations placed on women. The more libertarian view is that it is largely the result of women's choices in regard to work-life and home-life, and that most choices involve prioritizing one thing over another, even if we may desire and value both equally. But whatever you believe, the wage gap has been narrowing and will continue to narrow, because feminists decades ago believed it was a problem, and other people believed them and did something about it.


Feminists may scoff that it's no great shakes to have gender privilege when they are being victimized, raped, beaten or going through the difficult and emotionally devastating process of negotiating custody agreements. I find it quite alarming that they don't seem to be able to look at the situation from the other side. That female privilege, by the very nature of what privilege is, lies in direct, proportional opposition to male disenfranchisement in these very same areas. The greater the female privilege, the greater the male disenfranchisement. And female privilege in these particular areas--sexual assault, domestic violence, divorce and child custody--is HUGE. And in some areas, it's only going to get huger as due process in rape cases erodes at the behest of feminists.


So in these areas where lives are often shattered, where people suffer enormous physical and emotional pain, where their relationships with their partners are dissolved and their lives turned upside down, and the their relationships with their children under threat, where they are charged with crimes or are the victims of them--where they are going through an already horrible experience--these are the very areas where men suffer the greatest disenfranchisement in our society. 

Way, way, way up at the beginning of the post, I mentioned privilege in regard to an Asian applying for a tech job. It's foolish to think that if he beat out a black or white candidate who was better qualified for the job, even if he knows it's due to stereotyping and the privilege that derives from that, that he will he will take the boss aside and say, "Hey, you know, I think that other guy is actually better than me. Just because I'm Asian doesn't mean I'm great at fixing computers. You should probably hire him instead." The more of a positive effect a privilege has on an individual, the less they are inclined to give it up. 


And in horrible situations, like divorce, DV or rape, how likely is any individual to say, "Hey, I think you're making your judgments of the situation based on gender privilege. I'd like you to be more fair to the man I say raped me and respect his due process rights"? How likely is an individual to say, "Well judge, you know, I realize everyone assumes mothers should get custody, and as a feminist I find that stereotypes based on socially constructed gender norms are harmful. So I'd like you to forget all that, even if it means I may lose custody of my children"? How likely is an individual to say, "Listen officer, I actually hit first. Arrest me too, please"?


Individuals take advantage of their own privilege. They do. And they do it all the more when the stakes are very, very high. Feminists--hell, all women--would be advised to consider what it would be like were the gender privilege reversed in these situations, if they suffered the same level of disenfranchisement men currently suffer in cases of rape, DV, and family law. 


If women were assumed by the authorities to be making it up when they make a claim of rape, and predisposed to believe the accuser if they themselves were charged; if women were assumed to always be the aggressor in domestic violence situations and treated accordingly by the law, and if women were turned away from shelters because those shelters only serve DV victims of the opposite gender; if the family court system tore children from their mothers because the default assumption was that custody should go to the father and your rights as a parent--even a weekend one--didn't matter to anyone... ?


If women suffered this obscene and unconscionable level of disenfranchisement in these terrible and potentially life-destroying situations, and weighed it against the current wage gap, which would feminists consider the bigger problem?