Amptoons

There's a decent adaptation of Peggy McIntosh's white privilege checklist for male privilege over at http://amptoons.com/blog/the-male-privilege-checklist/ It's certainly not great, but it's at least an ok starting point for considering disparities in societal privilege and expectations between gender presentations.

Explain it like I'm 5. Specifically, what "power" do white people have that black people lack? Mostly it's not having to worry about certain problems, since they are out of your mind, one can forget about them. This is a great analogy to video games, "white people" is one of the lowest difficulty settings for Real Life™ ( http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-the-lowest-d… ) For some examples of "things that usually easier for white people" (aka privilege) for white people, look at this list ('Daily effects of white privilege'): http://www.amptoons.com/blog/files/mcintosh.html

And this is precisely why we need still more posts. You know why we don't need a "benefits of being a male software engineer" post? Because every day is a "benefits of being a male software engineer" day for male software engineers. You should probably have a read of http://amptoons.com/blog/the-male-privilege-checklist/ . As a rule when it comes to this sort of material, if it makes you feel uncomfortable and defensive, please think about why this is before commenting. I'd love to see a post about "benefits of being a male social worker", or any other female-dominated field! As a feminist (3rd wave), I don't think equality is possible without addressing the problems faced by men, as well as women. Men in such jobs are routinely mocked by other men and subjected to ridicule by our masculine culture society. And that sucks.

The privilege of not being catcalled every time they walk down the street (this is very real and very disturbing). The privilege of not being approached by every man who wants to sleep with you. The privilege of men not feeling entitled to your attention whenever they want it. The privilege of not being constantly objectified. The privilege of being able to go to a bar just to hang out with friends and not be approached by every dude in the bar. The privilege of being payed more (I recommended my friend for the exact same position I was in and she ended up being offered 20% less than I was before negotiation). I could go on forever.. You can't choose your sex, but you can absolutely choose your gender.. Please learn about the difference between the two. There are no laws that favor men in western society? What if I told you that divorce law favors men? What if I told you that when men actively seek custody they are awarded full or joint custody 70% of the time. http://www.amptoons.com/blog/files/Massachusetts_Gender_Bias_Study.htm And I'm pretty sure feminism is anti-rape culture. Most women are taught that in a rape situation it's better to not fight back, some schools of feminist thought teach the opposite. They teach women to fight back and to not accept the role of victim.

I was quoting from a book that I read 8 years and 2 moves ago. But the best that Google turned up is the very dated http://www.amptoons.com/blog/files/Massachusetts_Gender_Bias_Study.htm that found that when fathers choose to contest custody, 70% of the time they win sole or joint custody. I have found elsewhere a claim that usually this is joint, so women are still coming out better. This seems believable, but that claim was not sourced. Several places I found the claim that women receive sole custody about 70% of the time, joint custody 20% and men get sole custody a bit under 10%. But also the majority of custody cases are not settled by a judge, so that proportion does not speak to what happens when a judge makes the choice. So I should put a question mark next to the specific claim that men who contest, have a good chance of getting custody. Because I don't have good sources to back it up.

Please see: http://amptoons.com/blog/files/mcintosh.html It is ridiculous to suggest that men and white people aren't privileged in the US, let alone in the US tech sector.

Can you write your thoughts more directly? I don't understand what you're trying to say. White male privilege is different from the disadvantages low-income people face. There are 50 daily effects of white privilege in McIntosh's original essay, most of which are about how if one is not white then their motivations and successes may often be seen through a lens of their race. The idea that a white male from a rural, low-income community has the same advantage as a white male from a middle or upper class urban area is weird to me. This is about socioeconomic status, not race. Your Onion quote fails to differentiate, but... it's The Onion, isn't it. White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack: http://amptoons.com/blog/files/mcintosh.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_status

Despite commenting multiple times in this thread, you still do not seem to have looked at any of the privilege checklist, and you have not said that the privileges listed there do not apply to you or are not useful: http://www.amptoons.com/blog/files/mcintosh.html That's an article on white privilege. For numbers 1-50, would you make the claim that they either i. do not apply to you, OR ii. are of only marginal use, and you'd be fine with them not being true Would you make that claim for all 50? Again, NO ONE is saying your lift hasn't been hard. Privilege is a relative claim. It can only make life harder or easier, not hard or easy.

The grandparent sounds like he [I can assume that it is a he, but I don't usually use gendered pronouns with an unknown speaker] is speaking from a very privileged prospective of not experiencing sexism himself, thus not realizing it is there. Might want to check out the Male privilege checklist: http://amptoons.com/blog/the-male-privilege-checklist/

I frequently get good things because I'm a man. For example, I find it much easier to get people to listen to me than do equally competent female colleagues. If you'd like to see more examples, Google "male privilege checklist". E.g.: http://www.amptoons.com/blog/the-male-privilege-checklist/ But if you'd prefer a different analogy, try this one from sci-fi writer John Scalzi: "Straight White Male: The Lowest difficulty Setting": http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-the-lowest-d…

Here's a lively discussion on male privilege: http://www.amptoons.com/blog/the-male-privilege-checklist/ Aside from my opinion on the disclaimer, the link above definitely articulates "male privilege" in a more substantive way.

Here's one specific list: http://www.amptoons.com/blog/files/mcintosh.html

>Anecdotally, women seem to be preferred in custody cases. "Fathers who actively seek custody obtain either primary or joint physical custody over 70% of the time. Reports indicate, however, that in some cases perceptions of gender bias may discourage fathers from seeking custody and stereotypes about fathers may sometimes affect case outcomes. In general, our evidence suggests that the courts hold higher standards for mothers than fathers in custody determinations." http://www.amptoons.com/blog/files/Massachusetts_Gender_Bias_Study.htm

Note that the Consad study you cite was from the recent Bush administration which was notorious for abusing science for political ends. Here's rebuttal of some of their findings http://www.amptoons.com/blog/2010/11/26/how-the-consad-report-on-the-w…

Showing a nice ass on a slide is not a sign of male privilege. I strongly disagree. Seeing that image immediately tells any straight women or gay mean in the room that she or he is not the expected audience for the talk. The ideal audience for a Ruby talk is "people who are interested in Ruby," not "people who enjoy looking at pictures of near-naked women." The former is mostly, but not completely, made up of the latter. I'm not the only one who disagrees with you. Here's an entry from the first hit on Google for "male privilege": 41. Assuming I am heterosexual, magazines, billboards, television, movies, pornography, and virtually all of media is filled with images of scantily-clad women intended to appeal to me sexually. Such images of men exist, but are rarer. http://www.amptoons.com/blog/the-male-privilege-checklist/

>Actually, it's not. That's just what many pro-choice people tell themselves to feel superior to "those people" and to avoid thinking about hard questions. Actually, no. http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2006/03/21/why-its-difficult-to-… While many pro-life people mean well, let's look at the linked article and see how their policies really add up. Also, I'm with you: I'm pro-abortion.

Personally I feel that "privilege" is an ill-defined concept and should be ignored by intelligent people. I've never seen a concrete definition that a proponent of privilege was actually willing to stand by. (E.g., people show me this essay http://amptoons.com/blog/files/mcintosh.html to explain "white privilege", then rapidly shift the goalposts once I point out that every point applies to me when I live in India.) I suppose you are right that the relatives of drug addicts, murder victims and criminals might have more problems than others. But then why is happyscrappy talking about black people in Oakland rather than the children of junkies? Note that India has junkies, criminals and bad parents too. In addition to having bad parents, the children of Indian junkies are also legally barred from working in the US (unlike, e.g., an Oakland child of junkies). It's true that Indians are less murder-happy than Oaklanders, but they have all sorts of other traumatizing events (e.g. rampant eve teasing, a high rate of traffic fatalities, multi-day water cuts).

The reason I don't want to think of everyone as human beings first is this: Everyone is part of an arbitrary collective of traits (most of us here are white, male, American, etc) and each trait affects how we see each other. For example, women are seen as more caring, or bitchy if they have power, whatever. Those stereotypes are bad, and we can't ignore that they still happen. The way we get rid of these biases things is by recognizing that when we think a woman is being bitchy (or, say a black man angry) it's likely to be our ingrained sexism (/racism). Seeing people as human beings first erases their identities and _removes the opportunity to fix our prejudices_. You and I are both prejudiced, we have to recognize that, and work to remove it from our minds. Then, on the optimism/pessimism thing. Just keep on investigating the experiences of black people and I think you might become less optimistic about where we are. It's sometimes tough to see how other people could be disadvantaged (that's called privilege). But when this list of benefits white people have over black people http://amptoons.com/blog/files/mcintosh.html#daily doesn't hold any more, _then_ we can get rid of black history month. We can't overcorrect yet, because, broadly, our institutions themselves are still racist. (See http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/07/15/884649/-Why-there-s-no-such-t… or http://femmagazine.com/reverse-racism-and-reverse-sexism-dont-exist/) You don't punch…

The results are similar for several studies that do not look just at fathers who seek sole custody. See this meta-analysis of several studies: http://www.amptoons.com/blog/files/Massachusetts_Gender_Bias_Study.htm… I'll quote the relevant part: """ Although perceptions of bias that discourage fathers from seeking custody are a concern, n52 the outcome of cases in which custody is contested provides a more direct source of information about possible judicial gender bias. We heard testimony from George Kelly, a representative of Concerned Fathers, that in contested custody cases, mothers are awarded physical custody over 90% of the time. Mr. Kelly was unable to provide substantiation, however, n53 and our own investigation revealed a very different picture. The statewide sample of attorneys who responded to the family law survey had collectively represented fathers seeking custody in over 2,100 cases in the last 5 years. n54 They reported that the fathers obtained primary physical custody in 29% of the cases, and joint physical custody in an additional 65% of the cases. Thus, when fathers actively sought physical custody, mothers obtained primary physical custody in only 7% of cases. The attorneys reported that the fathers had been primary caretakers in 29% of the cases in which they had sought custody. The preliminary findings of the Middlesex Divorce Research Group relitigation study show a similarly high rate of paternal success, but fewer awards of joint physical…

This is a pretty good starter inventory for what feminists mean when they talk about "male privilege". http://www.amptoons.com/blog/the-male-privilege-checklist/ You may disagree with the analysis behind the list's construction, but I see little if anything on that list that obviously gets crossed off the list by virtue of being a geek. Social justice theorists also talk about different kinds of privileges, so the idea that geeks have male privilege does not exclude the possibility that there is another form of privilege that they lack that others have. Some other types of privilege that are sometimes considered are white privilege, class privilege, heterosexual privilege, etc. You can have male privilege but not white privilege, etc. In other words, privilege isn't simply a binary have/don't have thing such that geeks have it and women don't. You could make an argument that there is some sort of gender-stereotypical privilege that, say, football players share in but geeks do not. Is that where you were going?

His sock puppets seem to care a lot about what he has to say about all forms of douchbaggery. http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/06/17/the-saga-of-scott-ad… Scott Adams is up to his old obliviously obtuse act again. You may recall that the creator of Dilbert is an apologist for creationism, a pathetic anti-atheist wanker, and a narcissistic sock puppeteer, but did you know he’s also an obnoxist sexist pig? Oh, right, you did already know that. OK, but now he’s revising his personal history and making up stories about being a poor oppressed man, crushed by the matriarchy. http://comicsalliance.com/scott-adams-plannedchaos-sockpuppet/ http://amptoons.com/blog/2011/06/16/scott-adams-still-a-douchebag/ http://www.rickworley.com/2012/06/20/scott-adams-douchebags-of-comics/ http://bitchmagazine.org/post/douchebag-decree-scott-adams-douchetooni… http://bbs.boingboing.net/t/incredibly-interesting-authors-001-dilbert… http://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/gqzgx/dilbert_creator_outed_fo… http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/06/21/987473/-Scott-Adams-can-suck-… http://www.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2011/04/18/the-guy-who-does-d… ...and so on...