QuoteHi , does anyone else utterly hate being male , but not the urge or inclination to go down the gender reassignment route.
Definitely! And its a rather bizarre position to be in, isn't it? I feel like I've fallen down the gap in the sofa in the space between the male and female cushions. I used to really be freaked out by this as I couldn't control how I felt alienated from being male, but not feeling an affinity with other women. How you experience and appreciate gender really does depend on the individual. I tended to get misgendered alot as female when I was younger, and I remember feeling humiliated by it because the emphasis was that I was failing as a male. I don't think I've had much in the way of this famous male privilege, apart from being able to walk down streets late at night without worrying.
What I think can be overlooked is how male privilege only applies to males who top of the pack. Skinny and non-aggressive males (like I was) don't tend to get much in the way of benefits. I tend to be seen as stupid and ineffectual and always have to prove myself first, which is very similar to what is listed as a female issue here. As for weight, it works differently. As a woman you have to be thinner or hourglass shaped according to beauty culture, but for men, men have to be well-built with muscle as deemed by popular culture. So there's exactly the same pressures, just over different ideals. Trust me on this, women are just as scathing about skinny or fat men as men are about overweight or small-busted women.
As for the money side of things, I've noticed that A: the female students who studied the college courses with us secured jobs first over the males, and B: in catering women make far more in tips than the men do, and are usually hired over the males due to the extra revenue they will raise. So in my experience, it has actually paid more (literally) to be female in the media sector and catering/hospitality sectors.
I'm not discounting anyone's accounts or being argumentative (as I said earlier my experience will be different to everyone else's), I'm just mentioning that surprisingly there are perks to being a Western female over being an average male, especially in this day and age. However I will agree that as soon as a woman enters big business where there are alpha males, I can imagine that must be super tough and that there is a pay divide.
