I was wandering through my Australian news site of choice
(The Age) when I found this column/blog which I feels fits quite well in with today's theme that I had to share.
Written by the very male Sam de Brito, the entry today in his column/blog "All Men Are Liars" comments on the privilege of being white and male while still asking how that translates in the Australian community as a whole and its effects both sexes.
The 'unearned' benefits of being male
Back in 1988, a feminist writer by the name of Peggy McIntosh wrote an essay titled White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack in which she attempted to catalogue many of the benefits of living in western society as a white person.
The essay is now considered a classic by anti-racist educators and it quite bluntly sketches the mostly unacknowledged benefits white people experience throughout life, just because of the colour of their skin.
"I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was ‘meant’ to remain oblivious," wrote McIntosh.
"White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks" ...
The essay, which you can read here, lists 26 different privileges of being white, like:
I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.
I can be pretty sure that my neighbors ... will be neutral or pleasant to me.
I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.
Whether I use checks, credit cards or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of my financial reliability.
I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to “the person in charge,” I will be facing a person of my race.
If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race.
If you don't find yourself nodding along with what McIntosh writes, I'm gonna suggest you might lack self-awareness and may well be one of those people she describes as having been "carefully taught not to recognize white privilege."
Interestingly, McIntosh's epiphany about her own privilege came to her while working with men in Women's Studies classes where she "often noticed men’s unwillingness to grant that they are over-privileged, even though they may grant that women are disadvantaged."
"They may say they will work to improve women’s status, in the society, the university, or the curriculum, but they can’t or won’t support the idea of lessening men’s. Denials, which amount to taboos, surround the subject of advantages, which men gain from women’s disadvantages. These denials protect male privilege from being fully acknowledged, lessened or ended," writes McIntosh.
Her insights have since provided the foundations for men like violence prevention educator Paul Kivel and gender analyst Jewel Woods who've produced various 'Male Privilege Checklists', of which you can find many versions on the net.
A recent book by Shira Tarrant, Men and Feminism, has synthesised many of those to produce a pretty interesting checklist of male benefits which includes:
I can be pretty sure that when I walk down the street, nobody will yell at me about my body or tell me what they want to do to me sexually.
If I choose not to have children, nobody will question my masculinity.
No one will think I'm selfish if I have children and a career.
At work I can be fairly sure I won't be sexually harassed.
If I have sex with a lot of women, it's unlikely that I'll be called a slut or a ho.
I can be reasonably assured that in my intimate relationships and everyday life I am unlikely to be a victim of domestic violence or sexual assault.
I can easily assume that I'll do less of the housecleaning, cooking, childcare, washing or other caregiving than the women in my family do.
I can dress how I want without people assuming I want to have sex with them.
When I have sex, I don't have to worry about pregnancy if I don't feel like it.
And so on.
Now I'm sure many of you will take issue with this list, and some long-time readers may even direct others back to a post I wrote in 2006 about 'The Myth of Male Privilege'.
In that post I quote men's movement pioneer, Richard Haddad, who wrote: "I argue that men do not enjoy a life of privilege. Far from it - a look at the life of the average man is a fairly depressing sight.
"What kind of privilege is it that bestows on men a 10-year-shorter life span than women, and a higher incidence of disease, crime, alcoholism and drug addiction? What kind of privilege is it that blesses men with a frequently self-destructive need to achieve?
"What kind of privilege is it that honours a man with the duty to spend a lifetime supporting others, more often than not in an unsatisfying job?"
As I wrote in that post as well, men in this country are still streaks ahead when it comes to deaths from most diseases, especially cancer.
Our rates of alcoholism, incarceration and drug addiction are way ahead of females and we still die five years earlier than the average woman.
Blokes kill themselves at three times the rate of women, we're more likely to die in a motor vehicle accident and we're still, on average, the major breadwinner over the course of our lives.
So who's got it right?
Are their "unearned" benefits to being a male in Australia or, as McIntosh argues, "a base of unacknowledged privilege"?
And are we even conscious of it?
..............................................................................................
You can find the columns page
HERE.
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