Male privilege?

[insideontheoutside]

I bring this up only because this is something that trans guys in particular get accused of – wanting so-called, "male privilege". But I also think the term itself is biased and misused by a lot of people. Before I go any further, let me just say that I'm only discussing this term when applied to western culture/society. I'm not talking other cultures because that is just too large and there really are solid instances of the very definition of male privilege in some other areas of the world.

Now, Wikipedia explains that male privilege, "refers to the unearned advantages or rights granted to men solely on the basis of their sex, but usually denied to women.  In societies with male privilege, men are afforded social, economic, and political benefits because they are male." 

I know there's trans guys out there who take traditionally male jobs after transition but I'm pretty sure it's not specifically the traditional male jobs that most trans guys transition for. There's the social angle – just being male in society. What benefits does that get exactly though? I'm trying to think and mostly what I come up with is there may be a small "safety" benefit. Less chance of being attacked (or worse) when alone if a male attacker sees another male, rather than a female. But a lot of trans guys take a long time to pass, are smaller (on average, not always) then the average man, and always have that thought in the back of their mind that in certain situations or around certain people if they're "found out" it could very well effect their safety. So personally, I don't see that as something that's a guarantee when you're a trans guy. So what exactly ARE the male privileges that we're all striving so hard to get (being facetious there, folks, even though this really is a serious topic)? If people are going to accuse trans guys of wanting this male privilege, then I'd like to know how they're defining that these days.

People will still throw out the socioeconomic stats that men make more than women, but imo if you really look where the stats come from, they're skewed in a way that doesn't take into account the type of job or even that many women simply do not want to do jobs that guys do (steel worker, manual labor, etc. ... not saying there isn't women who do these jobs, because they're are, just talking stats here).

Worse still is it's now kind of a hardcore feminist battle cry that male privilege is a huge problem in our culture. I am all for women's rights and I can see instances in our culture and even legal system where women's rights are being compromised, but this notion of male privilege in western society, especially when applied to trans guys, is off-putting to me at the very least. It's especially precarious when you are one of the more femme/andro guys and this comes up because then you just get accused that that's the only reason why you want to transition – so you could still basically be a "girl" but also enjoy this mystical male privilege. It's kind of boggling to me and shows not only the misunderstanding of trans issues (and what it's like to actually be trans) but also applying this term to even frivolous thing like standing to pee.

We do still live in a society that is predominately binary ... there's a female role and a male role in society. But we've come a long way. Females can do male jobs if they want to. Females can wear male clothing if they want to and have traditionally male hobbies, etc. In the grand scheme of things, there's very few things that females are actually bared from doing. I would say it's harder for a male to get a job in a traditionally female-held occupation. I have a male (MAAB) friend who's a substitute teacher. He says people have practically come right out and said that he didn't get a job because someone down the line thought he might be a "sex predator" (and no, he is not, has 100% spotless record of any kind of crime, etc., and there's absolutely no grounds to discriminate against him in that way).

I'd like to hear everyone else's take on this male privilege thing.

[Kevin Peña]

Male privilege definitely exists in Latin America//Caribbeans. However, in the USA and Canada I have to say that male privilege isn't exactly around. For example, in divorce//custody cases, women/mothers are definitely in an advantage.

I honestly think that some feminists are more interested in hating on men then they are in advancing women's rights. If anything, women can make people feel guilty by claiming to be discriminated against as to get their way sometimes.

My point is that male privilege is highly overrated in the USA//Canada.

[Simon]

I think you asked all the questions and then answered in every typical way possible. We have been "answer blocked", lol.

I think when people come at a transguy and mention "male privilege" they almost imply two things, either it is a birth right and unobtainable by transmen (because we are FAAB) or they're the militant feminist type who see anything even remotely masculine as undesirable and almost predatory.

What does male privilege mean to me? Nothing. Seriously, it has no desirable or undesirable implications for myself. I pass most of the time. I don't feel like I am privileged and don't feel like people have treated me any better now than when I was identifiably female. If anything people are less considerate to men. I don't have doors held open for me, showing emotions isn't as acceptable in the cis world, if my car broke down nobody would stop to help, etc.

What I'm getting at is there are altered expectations when you become visibly male to cis people. Some aren't necessarily good but they come with the territory.

You know females have privileges too but for some reason they're not held up like some trophy.

[Kevin Peña]

What does male privilege mean to me? Nothing. Seriously, it has no desirable or undesirable implications for myself. I pass most of the time. I don't feel like I am privileged and don't feel like people have treated me any better now than when I was identifiably female. If anything people are less considerate to men. I don't have doors held open for me, showing emotions isn't as acceptable in the cis world, if my car broke down nobody would stop to help, etc.

You know females have privileges too but for some reason they're not held up like some trophy.

Preach! I never want to drive a car, but if people are more like to help me on the road if I ever do drive for whatever reason, that will be good for me. After all, to me, every part of a car will forever be referred to as a "thingy." 

[Darrin Scott]

Thinking you have no privilege is the definition of privilege.

[Kevin Peña]

Thinking you have no privilege is the definition of privilege.

1. No, the dictionary says otherwise.
2. That's like saying that someone arguing against being defensive is defensive. You can't win. 

[Simon]

Thinking you have no privilege is the definition of privilege.

That is a straw man fallacy.

[sneakersjay]

I will tell you that as a former middle-aged, not-beautiful-by-society's-standards woman, unless you are in a women's space (or one that caters to women), you are INVISIBLE.  Car dealerships with a kid in tow?  I couldn't get ANY salesperson to look at me.  Maybe they thought I was just hanging out and my husband elsewhere was making a deal.  I walked the lot, looked at cars, and NOT ONE salesperson came to help.  I went into the showroom.  I got busy glances but no one greeted me or asked if they could help.  I left.  Next day, same thing, only this time I was waiting for the husband to show up.  His foot had not even hit the pavement and he had 3 salesmen on him.  This was the late 90s, not 1960.

Walk into Home Depot I found the same thing. And when I tried to track down an employee for help they were invariably scarce.  First few months I was passing I had sales people tripping over themselves to help me not only in Home Depot, but Staples, etc.  Suddenly random people were starting conversations with me.  Salespeople lingered and wanted to talk to me.  I was startled at first; nothing about me personally had changed.  Only my perceived gender.

Women in stores ask me to help them get things down, and I"m short.

This is what I perceive as privilege.  People noticing me and wanting to cater to me, whereas prior to transition, they did not.


Jay

[Kevin Peña]

Okay, I don't know about car dealerships, but I do have some observations about Home Depot. My sister once went there in a dress, and no one helped her. However, she went to the same store in camo cargo pants and a t-shirt, and people asked her if she needed help. I don't think that gender mattered in this situation. The employees probably thought that someone in a dress wouldn't know anything about tools and therefore be annoying to talk to. It's a sad reality, but hardware store employees tend to do that.

[Brooke777]

@sneakersjay - That is so weird! I had the exact opposite happen to me. I was a pretty attractive guy before transition. I was physically built (lean and muscular), and nobody would give me the time of day. People in stores did not help me, and people did not talk to me. Now that I am a woman (and I am not real pretty), people are always talking to me. In stores, the employees seem like they can't help me enough. I figured that male privilege was being left alone when you did not want people to bother you. I personally really like how things are now.

[silly by the seashore]

I'm mtf and I go to lowes, I get asked a lot if I need help, same way anywhere there are salesmen.

As for male privilege, its around in some form in many places, but I don't think its as universal as it used to be in the US at least.

[ozoozol]

Here's one that comes to mind immediately.  My girlfriend has a few health issues.  A couple months ago, I went with her to an appointment with a new doctor.  The new doctor comes into the room, shakes MY hand, sits down across from ME, and talks to ME the whole time.  Makes eye contact only with ME.  Asks ME the questions about her health, questions that only she would have been able to answer.  Glances at her only in passing when I try to direct him to her for her to answer him, and then turns back to me.

It was like she wasn't even in the room.  It was almost comical. 

That I would be the authority in this situation, out of the two of us? that's male privilege.

[insideontheoutside]

I will tell you that as a former middle-aged, not-beautiful-by-society's-standards woman, unless you are in a women's space (or one that caters to women), you are INVISIBLE.  Car dealerships with a kid in tow?  I couldn't get ANY salesperson to look at me.  Maybe they thought I was just hanging out and my husband elsewhere was making a deal.  I walked the lot, looked at cars, and NOT ONE salesperson came to help.  I went into the showroom.  I got busy glances but no one greeted me or asked if they could help.  I left.  Next day, same thing, only this time I was waiting for the husband to show up.  His foot had not even hit the pavement and he had 3 salesmen on him.  This was the late 90s, not 1960.

Walk into Home Depot I found the same thing. And when I tried to track down an employee for help they were invariably scarce.  First few months I was passing I had sales people tripping over themselves to help me not only in Home Depot, but Staples, etc.  Suddenly random people were starting conversations with me.  Salespeople lingered and wanted to talk to me.  I was startled at first; nothing about me personally had changed.  Only my perceived gender.

Women in stores ask me to help them get things down, and I"m short.

This is what I perceive as privilege.  People noticing me and wanting to cater to me, whereas prior to transition, they did not.


Jay

This is a good point. Car dealerships have a weird thing about them. I've never been ignored at one (and as most of you know I don't "pass" all the time and in a situation like buying a car I'd have to show my actual ID anyway). I never was society's version of a "pretty" female either. But I know plenty of people, both male and female that have been ignored at them. My dad once knew a guy that was a millionaire and owned a large company. He went into a dealership and was wearing a flannel shirt with holes in it and ripped jeans and was totally ignored. I think they just size people up in a few seconds and determine how likely they are to buy right then just on appearances. The Home Depot thing I haven't personally gotten the no one talking to me, but I have gotten one guy talking down to me like I couldn't possibly know what I was talking about, which was annoying. I suppose that could have been a case of gender bias there.

But in scenarios like that, is it more that the guy is just an ass? It is one of those situations where it's just a guy who's still stuck in some 50's mindset that "the little lady" should be in the kitchen cooking dinner and not out buying tools and cars? I'm having trouble discerning if that is then male privilege or if it's just not realizing that a lot of things have changed?

Is it more that attitude that a percentage of MAAB's have, more than it is a female actually couldn't do something (attitude that a perceived "women" with a child in tow couldn't buy a car ... when the fact of the matter is that woman had the means and could have very well bought the car).

This is just me, but I won't take anyone's sh*t in a lot of environments (especially retail). I had an awesome time buying my first car because they tried all the intimidation tactics on me. It was hilarious everything they tried. After about 20 min I told the guy flat out, "why don't you cut this sh*t and go get your boss for me, I'm tired of talking to the low man on the totem pole." The guy was shocked, but he want crawling away with his tail between his legs and got his boss. We sat there for 30 min while the boss tried different things and when I finally worked them down to the price I wanted to pay, I signed the paperwork. Not everyone is willing to go that distance and be that person. It's why car dealers act how they do, because most people cave.

Come to think of it, that guy in Home Depot talking down to me was the first time anything like that had happened in a very long time. It caught me off guard for sure. Even still, I told the guy, "Look buddy, it's you who doesn't know what they're talking about. If you don't know what a compression sleeve puller is, that's fine, I'll go to Lowe's". And I turned around and walked out ... and went to Lowes.

So I guess in my lifetime I have felt the attitude coming from some MAAB's but I didn't put up with it. Perhaps it rarely happens because of the way I carry myself or the way I deal with people? I don't know. I may look like a andro chick or a femme emo guy but I know about fixing stuff, cars, all the usual "male" stuff. Most of the time when I'm talking to other guys and just carrying on a convo they don't bat an eyelash at me or treat me any differently. I was over at the body shop I go to one day and had just got done picking out the paint (I'm restoring an old car) and the paint guy actually showed up (salesman) and he jumps in and we're talking all about cars and stuff and he actually said something to the effect of, "us guys blah blah blah" and then did a double take on me and said, "uh and ... and women ... yeah!" I found that hilarious.

I'll tell you one thing that strikes me as odd. If you're married and filing taxes, the man will always be the first one listed on the taxes as the "head of household". That's a little old fashioned in my book. I mean everything else, from our house to medical insurance my name is actually first (still got the female name).

@ozoozol was the doctor an old guy or a young guy? Just curios if that whole "50's mentality" might have been playing out there too...

This all may come down to individual perspective and experiences.

[DriftingCrow]

Now, Wikipedia explains that male privilege, "refers to the unearned advantages or rights granted to men solely on the basis of their sex, but usually denied to women.  In societies with male privilege, men are afforded social, economic, and political benefits because they are male." 

I definitely think gender equality has come a long way in our society, but I still think there's some imbalances on both sides. Like others mentioned--men have hard times teaching the younger grades, they can't wear dresses while women can wear pants, they're not allowed to be too emotional, etc.

I think I've had some experiences where I know if I was male things would be different--like, I wouldn't have been told to quit the wrestling team by my father, I wouldn't have been skipped over for promotions for and paid less than the guys at some of the places where I've worked, or been told by people that I shouldn't be allowed to work third shift security because I'd get myself killed. Now, while these may seem like fairly small things, and I am sure they can all be challenged as me either being overly sensitive or it's just old people who are stuck in their ways, I think it shows that, at least in my life experience and how I've viewed things, being born in a female body has denied me of some things that men are just entitled to.

It's just all these little things that just add up to something more. Since we have laws here to prohibit gender discrimination, I can get a job as a police officer if I chose to apply, or join the wrestling team, but there's just all these little attitudes to show that females aren't wanted and aren't accepted.

Things are better for women these days in our culture, but there's still this male privilege, which to me is acceptance. I've noticed a heck of a lot more men doing "pink collar jobs" (like nursing and being secretaries) than I've seen women doing blue collar jobs. And, some of the women in blue collar jobs I've seen are just given the "easy" assignments because the guys don't think the girls can handle the harder stuff (like, whenever I see women doing construction on the sides of the road, the women are always just the ones holding the sign telling me to stop or slow down, they're never actually driving a backhoe or working the equipment). I think these privileges are mostly invisible to those who have it, so it's hard to notice, and it's even hard for people without the privilege to notice sometimes just because we're so used to living with it.

A great article on privilege is "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" by Peggy MacIntosh. http://www.amptoons.com/blog/files/mcintosh.html  She goes through all the things that being white gives her a peace of mind with (like she doesn't have to say to herself "I wonder if X happened to me because I am not white"), and I think we can have both sexes write up nice little lists on all the things being male or female gives them a peace of mind with.

Both genders have privileges, they're just different.

I don't plan on transitioning to get any male privilege; the sexist things I've experienced, while some of it does bother me, isn't really that big of a deal to me that it makes me want to go through medically transitioning to male for. Despite my lack of promotions while working for a sexist company, etc., I've done pretty well for myself despite my female body. People who say transguys transition to get male privilege are probably just ignorant, and if they're female, they're probably overlooking all the female privilege that they have.

[ozoozol]

@insideout - I'd say he was in his 40s or 50s, which would make him born perhaps in the 1960s.

But for me, it pretty much encapsulates what male privilege is.  It grants more weight to the opinions and positions of men (if you feel like it, listen to the voice-overs in commercials, keep track of whether the speaker is male or female and what kind of product is being sold).  If you're male, men (and frequently women) are more likely to listen to you when you have something to say.  The flipside, as was mentioned above, is that if you're female, men are less likely to care about what you want or think (about your personal space, being left alone on the train, the knowledge you could share, or your health issues).

[DriftingCrow]

But for me, it pretty much encapsulates what male privilege is.  It grants more weight to the opinions and positions of men (if you feel like it, listen to the voice-overs in commercials, keep track of whether the speaker is male or female and what kind of product is being sold).  If you're male, men (and frequently women) are more likely to listen to you when you have something to say.  The flipside, as was mentioned above, is that if you're female, men are less likely to care about what you want or think (about your personal space, being left alone on the train, the knowledge you could share, or your health issues).

Yes, there's a professor at my school who's really old and refuses to call on women, because he thinks they don't belong in law school. And also, it's mostly the guys who raise their hands and volunteer answers, and a lot of the times when the women raise their hands, they always end up apologizing! Like, "excuse me, I am confused with X topic. Sorry..." Men have been raised to know that their view matters, and that they can ask questions and not feel bad; where it's a big deal for most women who haven't had that conditioning.

[Arch]

I'll tell you one thing that strikes me as odd. If you're married and filing taxes, the man will always be the first one listed on the taxes as the "head of household". That's a little old fashioned in my book.

The "head of household" is based on income and is the person who pays for more than 50% of the expenses. Since more married men than married women are the principal breadwinners, of course most of the Heads of Household will be men. But they're not all men.

You also mentioned salary studies. I don't know which ones you are talking about, but the ones I've seen are adjusted for all sorts of factors, and women still wind up making less. So the experts claim.

One thing I find curious is that now men talk to me as if I actually know something about cars and tools, regardless of whether I have actually demonstrated such knowledge. If I profess ignorance about a particular aspect, the other guy doesn't talk down to me; he just explains it.

Also curious is that I have a much better time at the Home Depot (although I buy most of my stuff at the gay hardware store now) because I don't feel like an interloper. Now I feel free to just wander around until I find what I need. It's not that I don't want to ask for help in finding what I need; it's that I feel more comfortable looking for it.

And I have to admit that I'm going to miss automatically getting help and protection when my car breaks down. Even when I was forty-five and overweight, a highway patrolman actually guarded me for forty minutes when my tire blew in a construction zone one night on the freeway. When the AAA guy finally showed, I saw the cop scoping him out, really scrutinizing him, before sort of transferring me.

I guess that's "female privilege."

[ozoozol]

Arch, that's a good point -- a consequence of being assumed competent is that it's then assumed that you don't need help.

[Kevin Peña]

Honestly, whenever I hear of a woman wanting to join any male-dominated career to "break a barrier," it ticks me off. I met a girl who wanted to be a firefighter for that very reason. Listen, lady, you should only be a firefighter if you actually want to be a firefighter.   

[insideontheoutside]

I do a lot of people watching and I do notice that a good portion of women seem to be the type who apologize for themselves. Which is sad to me. I have a friend who's also saying, "I'm sorry!" for even tiny little things and I always go, "for what?" I've also seen women who purposely play into that "damsel in distress/poor little girl" type of thing as a means to get what they want. To that I just say, whatever. That's their prerogative I suppose. Both genders definitely seem to have their privileges and and behaviors. I totally agree though that women seem to have to put up with more demeaning things. Being ignored I think could happen to anyone, but the talking down to or talking "around" (like the doctor's office thing), the blatant ignoring in favor of males (the law school), the obvious sexist company, the taking away of reproductive rights  ... all those things are definitely occasions where women's rights could be improved. But I'm pretty sure misandry or hardcore feminism isn't the way to go about it to get favorable results. That only creates it's own backlash. And I do think that particular group is responsible for a lot of the trans man hate.

@ozoozol There is still outright sexism in marketing. It actually amazes me how much companies get away with on that front.

I saw an article recently that was telling women in corporate positions that by smiling at men it makes them weaker and opens them up to sexist behavior and comments. I found that fascinating too. There was no scientific evidence to it, it was just a blog article on a news site, but still. The article seemed to state that men smiling at women was just a way for them to get what they wanted and when women smiled back then it would just confirm to the man that he could then manipulate that women. The way I see it, that may work for the type of women who's a push over anyway (like the one's always apologizing for themselves) but if a women has worked her way up the corporate ladder, she's no push over. This article also seemed to imply though that ANY time a man smiled at a women in a corporate environment that that's what was happening (he was trying to get something out of her). I think I was moderately offended by the whole article now that I think of it.

@Arch I'm the one that actually owns our "corporation" (majority that is) so technically I am the main bread winner ... but still not listed first.

@DianeP I have to agree, especially in jobs like that where lives could be on the line. You have to take that stuff seriously and want to do it and all the responsibilities that go with it. If you're just doing it to be the woman firefighter that's not a great reason. I know female cops, EMTs and firefighters and they all just really love their jobs and want to help people.