hello, blinding insight!

[keryx]

The other day, a man told me this: the reason many [straight?] men have difficulty understanding the concept of male privilege and the need for feminism is that their experience of gender is that women have all the power.

That is, because there's this cultural notion that women run households, guys grow up with the assumption (if they live with their moms) that mother had all the power. And then there's dating, where men are presumed to be the asker, the aggressor, etc., while women have the power to decide whether there will be dating & whether there will be sex. So, everywhere there's this idea of women as the gatekeepers of things straight men want; is there any surprise that they have a hard time imagining that they're actually in a societally favored position?

I have difficulty relating this idea to gay men (who frequently also struggle with the idea of privilege), but it does make some sense to me for straight ones.

Thoughts, anyone?

Comments

[vaspider]

Yeah, this sounds a lot like a dialogue I've been having with my boyfriend lately. Men have all the power over things women (in a generic need-for-feminism sense) want -- financial freedom and privlege, job mobility, ownership over their own bodies and reproductive functions and, hell, theirselves in general, etc. -- and women have the power of... Sex. Which straight men want.

It's an awfully tilted scale when you put it that way, innit?

[keryx.livejournal.com]

Yep. I wonder if we'd have less trouble with this concept if we were less fixated on individualism. People really want to believe it's all about me, personally.

[firecat]

their experience of gender is that women have all the power

Anyone who can look at the relative pay scales of men and women and say that isn't thinking very deeply. Yes, women have some power in the domestic realm but they have much less power in the public realm.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

I wonder if that's simply not obvious to straight white dudes? If, because they have the convenience of not having to think in a systems way, they see politics as about individual interaction more?

It would actually explain quite a bit about the way most (straight white dude) politicians behave, too.

[firecat]

You're definitely on to something with the notion that most people think of politics in terms of individual interactions. It's not just straight white dudes who think this. It took me years to learn to think that way less often myself. I'm not sure if this is a function of class and privilege only, or if it's a function of being raised USan - there's an enormous emphasis here on individualism that doesn't seem to exist in the same way in other cultures I know a bit about.

[cutegaychick.livejournal.com]

I think also that part of the problem is that we hang out with decent feminist guys. They can't conceive of any reason for treating women differently, can't conceive of paying a woman less than a man, can't conceive of being date rapists or sexual harrassers or even of why you'd lean towards hiring a man over an equally-qualified woman. *They* don't grant any special male privileges or deny any rights or respect to women so they have a hard time seeing that society in general does.

[vaspider]

For the most part, this is true. Lots of otherwise groovy feminist guys get captured by the stuff that's difficult to see unless you're a woman. But generally, yeah, on the broad-stroke stuff, yeah. I agree.

you asked for it...

[orkid.livejournal.com]

that makes a lot of sense. and regarding gay men: i don't mean at all to repeat the stereotype where a domineering mom is responsible for the gayness (bad!), but could it be that there's just a different typical dynamic between gay men and their moms, since there's no other woman vying for the number one spot in his life? maybe some gay men's moms keep being major influences in their lives and, therefore, seem powerful to them. this is, of course, pure and improvised conjecture.

[zhenzhi.livejournal.com]

rubbish! while there may be certain individuals who feel this way, i don't think it would be a majority. women look after the home.... LOLOLOLOL!!! so we aren't actually domestic slaves? we are power holders??? aaaaaaaaaaahahahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!! :-D

[pamsterdam.livejournal.com]

This is my first time commenting on your LJ, so forgive me if this comes out all in one big blob. As a newcomer to the conversation, I'm not sure how interesting my viewpoint will be, but here goes regardless:

I think that your male friend's comment is a bit of a cop-out. Men clearly have (at least) economic & physical power over women. To claim not to realise that, or to claim that because women can maintain some control over their economic & physical position we somehow are on a level playing field, is disingenuous.

That having been said, I have heard this claim from several men in the past - men who I consider to be nice and fairly pro-woman. Their experience of gender aside, they still feel that sense of entitlement - even if they can't see it. In fact, they don't see it because they feel it so strongly.

(The men in question were American 20-somethings - I can say that the 30-something Englishmen I now know tend to "get" this concept in a way that the younger American guys didn't - could be cultural, could be age.)

As far as I understand, gay men have just as complex relationships with their mothers (and fathers) as anyone else does, which does influence their views of male-female relationships. However... just as straight men tend to only care about what happens to women insofar as it affects their mothers/grandmothers/sisters/daughters/wives/girlfriends/friends, gay men tend to only care about what happens to women insofar as it affects their mothers/grandmothers/sisters/daughters/friends. I don't think that being gay doesn't give a man some kind of special insight into what it means to be a woman. Oppressed, sure. Female, nope.

Again, this is just my opinion and I'm just as likely to be full of it as anyone else.

Nice LJ, by the way. I'm really enjoying it.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

Aren't we all full of it?

The guy in question wasn't so much offering this as a cop out (he's actually an apparently rare straight white guy who does "get it", at least in that he can talk about it), but as a perspective for me. I've been struggling, trying to explain the concept of privilege and the necessity of feminism to a variety of men recently. And strangely it's a whole bunch of guys all at once - apparently I've been living in a crazy feminist bubble where men are concerned up till recently. Seriously, even my dad gets it.

Thanks for the comments, by the way. I like new folk!

[pamsterdam.livejournal.com]

Hee hee - thanks for the welcome. :-)

Yes, as a (pervasive, I think) straight male perspective to keep in mind when attempting to explain the concept of entitlement to men who may not otherwise be disposed to listening - it is both interesting and useful.

It's funny, I sometimes live in my own little humanist bubble (hence my love of reading your LJ - for growth/stretching purposes), and it's things like this that shake me out of it. I do try to understand things from a male perspective, but we are enculturated in such deeply different ways that I do lose patience.

My Dad's the one who starts these conversations with me! But he was raised entirely by women, so I guess he's atypical for a 70-year-old.

[crafting-change.livejournal.com]

Didn't these same people grow up watching the news discussing the fight for rights of women, the debate over access to our bodies, the statistics of rape and abuse?
Even if they didn't witness these things first hand, the happy bubble of home life and percieved power would shift as they became adults?

I don't know...it seems wacky, but probably because that wasn't my childhood (there was no mystery who had the 'power in my house) or even my husband's (where his Dad raised them due to his Mom being... a not good parent) family.

[peregrin8.livejournal.com]

People notice things that confine or frustrate them personally. It's much harder to notice ways one is free, ways one has power. It takes work.