Let's talk about privilege.

Like "patriarchy," "privilege" is another one of those "gotcha" words that, when challenged, result in accusations of ignorance, willful or otherwise, and demands that one "educate yourself." So let me start out by saying, privilege is definitely a thing. "Privilege," in the sociological sense, means a benefit or advantage that you have just by belonging to a [dominant] social identity group. It should be noted that privilege is possessed innately; it doesn't matter whether you want it, you acknowledge it, you intentionally use it, or what you think of it. It's just the way things are.

Examples of straight and cis privilege are fairly common, along with examples of white privilege, Christian privilege, economic privilege, and several others. But the group I hear most often run down for their privilege is men.

Is "male privilege" a thing? Sure. But unlike the other groups, the alleged "dominant group" here is not an overwhelming majority, overbearing a smaller population through sheer numbers, nor a conquesting minority, dominating with superior technology. I covered in a previous post the lack of logic behind suggesting that women are an systemically-oppressed minority. Feminism 101 would have you believe that there is no such thing as "female privilege," that areas where women benefit from The Patriarchy are more aptly called "benevolent sexism." This may work for examples like women and children being loaded into lifeboats first. But there's at least one clear example of female privilege where the "benevolent sexism" concept just doesn't wash, and that's paternity.

We women know who are children are. Barring an mix-up at the hospital, the baby we pop out of our bodies is ours, for better or worse. Men? Men have no idea. Men have to have faith and trust-- and with fidelity rates what they are these days, that's trust and faith bordering on naivete. But, luckily for men, these days they don't have to rely on blind trust-- science is on their side! For the first time in history, men can now easily, accurately, and cheaply know if they in fact fathered the child purported to be theirs. And a median 3.7% of children, around the world, are, in fact, subject to "paternal discrepancy."

So how have some women reacted? 

Many men have, of course, ended up raising children who were not genetically their own, but really, does it matter? You can feel quite as much tenderness for a child you mistakenly think to be yours as for one who is. [Source]

Spoken like someone who will never have to experience unknowingly raising a child who is not genetically her own.

Survivors Manchester excluded from Rape Support Fund (via Toy Soldiers)

via Toy Soldiers

"One of the main barriers male survivors of sexual violence face is a lack of services. Most existing sexual violence services only assist women and girls. Of the services that do assist men and boys, most provide limited counseling and referrals.

"Male survivors need services,  however, even when those organizations are created, they face dismissal by the existing female-only groups...."

Read more...

Finding common ground

Just wanted to take time and space to thank @Lancestrian for taking the time over the last five or six days to have a dialogue over Twitter, of all media, about the gendering of rape. Earlier today she posted:

@ConversiveBlog 1) I am coming around to your view on this. It's not possible to accurately determine what proportion of the population are
— #childfree #atheist (@Lancestrian) October 3, 2013

@ConversiveBlog 2) perpetrators based on victimhood stats (my revelation of last night) and no research has been done into how many perps
— #childfree #atheist (@Lancestrian) October 3, 2013

@ConversiveBlog 3) are female and how many are male. We can't even infer that women don't sexually assault other women because a woman might
— #childfree #atheist (@Lancestrian) October 3, 2013

@ConversiveBlog 4) not recognise another women's unwanted contact as being sexually-motivated (man stroking my hair is assumed to be sexual,
— #childfree #atheist (@Lancestrian) October 3, 2013

@ConversiveBlog 5) woman stroking my hair isn't). So in the absence of clear evidence like a Lisak and Miller type of study, we simply don't
— #childfree #atheist (@Lancestrian) October 3, 2013

@ConversiveBlog 6) know what proportion of women perpetrate sexual assaults and it's unfair to presume that more men are perps than women
— #childfree #atheist (@Lancestrian) October 3, 2013

@ConversiveBlog 7) without evidence. Also on reflection, I realise that framing sexual violence as something men do to (usually) women harms
— #childfree #atheist (@Lancestrian) October 3, 2013

@ConversiveBlog 8) the feminist goal of eliminating all sexual violence, by encouraging misogynists to see it as a "women's problem" and
— #childfree #atheist (@Lancestrian) October 3, 2013

@ConversiveBlog 9) hence ignorable. I would welcome research into the prevalence of female perpetration.
— #childfree #atheist (@Lancestrian) October 3, 2013

Baby steps. But still felt good to find common ground.

Oppressive patriarchy is oppressive

Feminism is built on the concept that historically, women have been institutionally oppressed by men, and that that oppression continues through today, visible in our male-dominated and male-controlled society (a.k.a., The Patriarchy).

Because any disagreement with a feminist over patriarchy theory usually starts with accusations that the dissenter doesn't understand what patriarchy is and/or is deliberately misdefining patriarchy and/or privilege to support their argument, and generally ends with the feminist ordering the dissenter to come back when they've "educated themselves," let me demonstrate my working understanding of patriarchy as put forth by feminism. We're talking institutional discrimination, not individual; things like executive glass ceilings, the wage gap, and abortion rights. Systemic stuff. It's not a conscious, intentional conspiracy by men to keep the wimmins down, but a system of male domination and female subordination largely benefiting men and limiting and/or disadvantaging women. I invite corrections in the comments.

The elephant in the room is the question of why, if women are so strong, smart, capable, competent, and all around equal to men, then how have they been oppressed by men since the dawn of time? Other groups commonly accepted to face institutional discrimination are overwhelmingly outnumbered. For example, blacks are 13% of the population in the United States. Jews are 2%. Gays are 1.8-10%, depending on who you ask, and transgenders just 0.3%. But women are roughly half the population, and always have been. So either women are so weak and fragile and incompetent that they took literally thousands of years to rise up against their oppressors and even begin to finally demand equality, or, the idea that women are oppressed is a new one that is being applied retroactively.

The New Chivalry, Feminist Style

Let’s get one thing straight. I think women are equal to men. I don’t hold any quaint notions of a “woman’s place,” or believe that men and women are obligated to fulfill prefabricated roles, in the home or anywhere else. And while there are certain physical advantages and brain chemistry differences that, on average, cannot be denied, I believe each man or woman should be judged on his or her own individual merits, and not those of their gender.

Which is why it drives me nuts when well-intentioned people try to protect women from themselves.

Rape is as rape does, Part 3: "Other Sexual Violence" a.k.a. "Not Rape"

In 2010, the CDC conducted the "National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey" (NISVS 2010) and published the results in 2011.  From the introduction: "This report presents information related to several types of violence that have not previously been measured in a national population based survey, including types of sexual violence other than rape; expressive psychological aggression and coercive control, and control of reproductive or sexual health" [emphasis mine]. Why is this important? Because traditional methods of surveying or studying rape don't include male victims of female rapists (except in the cases of the woman using a surrogate penis to penetrate the man), because that's Not Rape.

Rape is as rape does, Part 2: Lady Rapist 101

So, how does that even work? Men are bigger and stronger than women, on average. Physically, they generally have the upper hand. And, not to put too fine a point on it, but there are certain anatomical realities to penis-in-vagina sex that require the cooperation, and, presumably, the consent of the male. Right?

Rape is as rape does, Part 1: Define "rape"

Thinkprogress.org recently posted a piece discussing the findings of what they call "The Largest International Study On Rape That’s Been Conducted So Far." The study itself was published in The Lancet and was titled, "Prevalence of and factors associated with non-partner rape perpetration: findings from the UN Multi-country Cross-sectional Study on Men and Violence in Asia and the Pacific." Surveys were performed over two years and six countries and 10,000+ men.

But men were only surveyed as perpetrators.

No man was asked if he'd ever been a victim of rape. No woman was asked if she had ever "'forced a [man] who was not your [husband] or [boy]friend at the time to have sex,' or if they had ever 'had sex with a [man] who was too drunk or drugged to indicate whether [he] wanted it'” [genders reversed.].

Men getting raped? Absurd, right? Only happens in prison.  Maybe during wartime. And always by other men. Women don't rape. That's the official narrative, right?

Ladies and gentlemen, it's complete bullshit.

Objective?

Every other day, I hear about "objectification," and what I hear is that men, as a group, objectify women, as a group, and that this is wrong and terrible and we need to teach our men better. There's a whole lot of subtext involving "rape culture" and "victim blaming" and so forth, and the general message is that if you don't condemn the "male gaze," you are complicit in the general oppression of women everywhere.

A friend of mine recently shared this link on Facebook, with a hearty endorsement of the contents. I could tell from the title, "Seeing a Woman: A conversation between a father and son" that it was going to annoy me, and I was not disappointed.

Let's end the rampant bias against... Men?

I know! As if there’s one group that does not need protection, it’s men; am I right, ladies? Everywhere you look, men are in charge. Men are Presidents, the majority of judges, and the vast majority of top corporate executives. Women in the United States earn seventy-seven cents for every dollar a male earns. Little boys are encouraged to grow up to be astronauts, engineers, scientists, and doctors, while little girls are told that “math is hard” and encouraged towards nursing, teaching, or full-time housewivery. In 2009, men were responsible for 81.2% of the violent crime in the US and 62.6% of the property crime. And we all know that all rape is committed by men and that domestic abuse is mainly comprised of men beating their wives or girlfriends and often their children or step-children. They just stick it in anything and then skip along on their merry way and leave women to pick up the pieces of their lives, whether it’s trying to put together money for an abortion or track down a deadbeat dad later.

Yes, clearly, it’s a still a man’s world out there.

Until you look closer.