Does gender privilege exist in the US?

Does gender privilege exist in the US?

  • Yes, gender privilege does exist in the US + I am male

    Votes: 73 76.0%

  • No, gender privilege does NOT exist in the US + I am male

    Votes: 5 5.2%

  • Yes, gender privilege does exist in the US + I am NOT male

    Votes: 16 16.7%

  • No, gender privilege does NOT exist in the US + I am NOT male

    Votes: 2 2.1%
  • Total voters
    96
  • Poll closed .
Yes it does, I think it might be changing quite rapidly though based on the differing educational attainment of women and men. It will be interesting to see how that works out in 20 or 30 years from now.
 
Depends whether you consider positive discrimination, gender privilege
 
Of course gender privilege exists. But it exists in both directions, depending on context. So the whole "check your privilege" thing doesn't really work.
 
Ziggurat said:
Of course gender privilege exists. But it exists in both directions, depending on context. So the whole "check your privilege" thing doesn't really work.
Click to expand...
Exactly my sentiment. Does it exist on one side more than the other?
 
ServiceSoon said:
Exactly my sentiment. Does it exist on one side more than the other?
Click to expand...

There is no objective way to make such a determination.

Many metrics are intrinsically subjective, objective metrics are going to be limited in scope (ie, they measure one aspect of this "privilege"), and even if you try to use multiple objective metrics to cover your bases, which ones you choose and how you weigh them is still ultimately a subjective choice.
 
Yes, there are a number of ways in which gender privilege manifests.

Females tend to get lighter sentencing for the same crimes, the court systems favor women massively in custody and divorce hearings, women get easier standards applied to them when seeking to become military service members, cops, firefighters, etc.

A woman can advertise as a babysitter, daycare provider, nurse or tutor and not have to worry much, if at all, that she might be dismissed as a candidate immediately upon potential clients realizing what sex she is. This is not the case for men.

Men are much more likely to experience criminal violence. Men have a massively higher suicide rate and workplace death rate. Men do all the hardest and most dangerous and least glorious jobs in our society too.

There are also, obviously, some gender privileges which men have over women. I feel that others, including the entire apparatus of our academia and media structure, are doing a fine job of exposing (and exaggerating, and lying about) these. So I won't put a lot of effort into helping that very well staffed cause.

If I were to press myself to think of a good example so I don't completely seem like I'm dismissing the male side of this (which I'm not) I'd say, for instance, men are able to be serious candidates as bodyguards and personal security whereas women are not. However, this is as it should be. Women shouldn't be considered as police, firefighters, or any sort of active combat role in the military. We are a complete clown-world society for doing any of that.

Likewise, I wouldn't for a moment deny that the imbalances I listed above which favor women over men are also rooted in realities and biology. I think some of them could maybe be alleviated a bit, or at least appreciated a bit more, but for the most part - it is that way because it must be.

Equality is a buffoonish thought to even allow to enter one's head, let alone allow to become a large scale societal goal. We are different as individuals and we are different as classes of individuals in a host of ways. Society used to pay attention to these differences, still does but lies about it, and should fully embrace doing so again.

Oh and lastly, I would agree that there are probably some ways in which we could alleviate and appreciate the imbalances which favor men over women without wrecking society even further in the process. I'd need to give it some thought. I feel we've already gone so far down that feminist / egalitarian road, the pickings are getting pretty slim when it comes to any sort of legitimate pro-female-equality thing at this point. But a few things like that may still remain.
 
I suspect that overall gender privilege varies quite a bit less than "beauty" privilege (for both men and women).
 
Ziggurat said:
Of course gender privilege exists. But it exists in both directions, depending on context. So the whole "check your privilege" thing doesn't really work.
Click to expand...

It's just that one is good, heroic and courageous and the other is bad, bad, bad! Because reasons.
 
What the heck is "gender privilege"?

There is still sexism that affects women economically, but there are all sorts of interesting effects of gender, and there always will be, because men and women are different.
 
The question and the given answers don't specify the net DIRECTION of the privilege. I must infer that the one the author had in mind was one favoring men, but, since the real thing actually favors women, there is no way to honestly pick any of the given answers without making it appear as if I agreed with whatever the original author here had in mind or whichever way the reader thinks it was meant.
 
MostlyDead said:
The what's this now?
Click to expand...

Bisexuals can pass for straight and people will assume that you are. He must also be able to pass for white, even if the 'reality' (race is so silly) is that he's biracial. His sex and his gender match.

This is what I believe that sentence means.
 
All you have to do is go to the shampoo aisle at Walgreens to see the gender tax in action. Price the average shampoo for men and then compare it to the average for women. (And then look at the "Multicultural" section and faint from the prices for black women. If paying less for the same product isn't a privilege, I don't know what is.

(source)
 
Last edited:
Ziggurat said:
Of course gender privilege exists. But it exists in both directions, depending on context. So the whole "check your privilege" thing doesn't really work.
Click to expand...

Huh? 'Check your privilege' would still 'work' depending on the context. If a woman can't see something as a problem or doesn't believe a problem is as impactful as it is to some men because she's being deceived by her privileged position, then telling her to 'check her privilege' would be a short (and curt, possibly rude) way of stating this. This would also work for men falling into the same perceptual trap.

It wouldn't 'work' for those who misuse the term and think it simply means 'you're x, so wrong'.
 
tyr_13 said:
Bisexuals can pass for straight and people will assume that you are. He must also be able to pass for white, even if the 'reality' (race is so silly) is that he's biracial. His sex and his gender match.

This is what I believe that sentence means.
Click to expand...

A guy could pass for a woman...or pass for straight, gay, or whatever orientation...but the 'old reckoning' throws me, too. Old reckoning, as I recall, is any willing gay encounter, and the one-drop rule.
 
Loss Leader said:
All you have to do is go to the shampoo aisle at Walgreens to see the gender tax in action. Price the average shampoo for men and then compare it to the average for women. (And then look at the "Multicultural" section and faint from the prices for black women. If paying less for the same product isn't a privilege, I don't know what is.

(source)
Click to expand...

My shampoo will work perfectly well on her hair. She wants a more expensive product. That's why hers is more expensive. That is not an example of male privilege.
 
Loss Leader said:
All you have to do is go to the shampoo aisle at Walgreens to see the gender tax in action. Price the average shampoo for men and then compare it to the average for women. (And then look at the "Multicultural" section and faint from the prices for black women. If paying less for the same product isn't a privilege, I don't know what is.

(source)
Click to expand...

I've seen this looked at in more detail. It's not the same products. The more expensive women's shampoo tends to have more of the expensive ingredients and such.

Men aren't as worried about their hair and they don't tend to have near as much of it. Men will buy a cheaper shampoo if people are selling one. Few men will pay the kind of prices many women will for shampoo so the market for males reflects this. If someone wants to try to market a super expensive shampoo for men, and I don't doubt that there are some which are sort of like this, they will have some success but they won't be able to pull the kind of numbers as someone doing the same toward women.

None of this is a problem unless you enter into these considerations from a starting point of assuming men and women are (or should be) the same. They aren't, and they shouldn't be, and they never have been, and they never will be.
 
Skeptic Tank said:
I've seen this looked at in more detail. It's not the same products. The more expensive women's shampoo tends to have more of the expensive ingredients and such.
Click to expand...


Yes, but why do they have more expensive additives? The active ingredients are all the same. Yet businesses put lavender and honeydew scents in them and aggressively market them to women. What is the effect of a lifetime of gender identity images flooding all aspects of media that a woman consumes?

I believe it's quite easy to see that women are told from birth that they should want or even need certain things. And those things cost more money than is spent by men. That's privilege. That's a privilege that's darn near encoded into every aspect of our lives. Ignoring that by claiming any given woman has a choice is remarkably simplistic.
 
Loss Leader said:
Yes, but why do they have more expensive additives? The active ingredients are all the same. Yet businesses put lavender and honeydew scents in them and aggressively market them to women. What is the effect of a lifetime of gender identity images flooding all aspects of media that a woman consumes?

I believe it's quite easy to see that women are told from birth that they should want or even need certain things. And those things cost more money than is spent by men. That's privilege. That's a privilege that's darn near encoded into every aspect of our lives. Ignoring that by claiming any given woman has a choice is remarkably simplistic.
Click to expand...

The Dodge Ram and the Porsche 911 exist, and you're buttmad about the price of a bottle of fancy shampoo? Women aren't the victims here.
 
I don't think any shampoo that I've ever tried has made my hair as soft and as smooth as what I'm currently using - my dishwashing liquid. Plus, it gives my hair that nice fresh lemony scent that I so love.

It seems I'm currently using the "super degreaser" formula, too, with it's "100% grease removal guaranteed," but I'm not sure that this would really be necessary for normal people. ...oh, not that we aren't all equal and stuff. I didn't mean to be disparaging of the underprivileged. Let's be honest, though. Not everyone has a producing oil field on their scalp like I do.

Okay, I cannot tell a lie. There's just no way that we are equal. ...lol
 
I thought women buy 5 x as expensive shampoo because they believe the bollocks that its somehow 5 x better



Sent from my SM-J500Y using Tapatalk
 
This isn't really a matter of opinion. There are many ways in which women are treated poorly in the US, and therefore being a guy gives you an advantage because you don't need to deal with that stuff.

You may have other things that counteract that advantage for you specifically of course, but that doesn't mean the advantage doesn't exist in general.

This does not mean that men personally sought this advantage out, it doesn't mean they're bad people, etc. but nevertheless the advantage exists.

To say that there is no such thing as privilege based on gender is to say that med and women are treated equally in this country (or, I guess, that men are treated worse) which isn't supportable through actual facts and evidence.

There are, of course, some specific points you can argue where women are treated better than men (although interestingly enough most of those are also based in anti-woman sexism). These pale in comparison to the situations where being a man is advantageous in American society though.
 
SOdhner said:
There are, of course, some specific points you can argue where women are treated better than men (although interestingly enough most of those are also based in anti-woman sexism).
Click to expand...

If a specific form of discrimination helps women, how is that "anti-woman"? That's an obvious contradiction.
 
Ziggurat said:
If a specific form of discrimination helps women, how is that "anti-woman"? That's an obvious contradiction.
Click to expand...

If I do something for you because I think you are physically and mentally incapable of doing it for yourself, then you are getting a benefit (I'm doing a thing for you) and it's based on a bias against you (I think you're incapable).
 
SOdhner said:
If I do something for you because I think you are physically and mentally incapable of doing it for yourself, then you are getting a benefit (I'm doing a thing for you) and it's based on a bias against you (I think you're incapable).
Click to expand...

It's a bias, sure, but it's hardly anti-me if the goal is to help me.
 
Loss Leader said:
All you have to do is go to the shampoo aisle at Walgreens to see the gender tax in action. Price the average shampoo for men and then compare it to the average for women. (And then look at the "Multicultural" section and faint from the prices for black women. If paying less for the same product isn't a privilege, I don't know what is.

(source)
Click to expand...

I got this far before I caught on that this was agenda-driven journalism:

And it’s not just products. Before President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, women were paying a total of $1 billion more than men for heath insurance premiums. The Affordable Care Act banned those gender-based premiums.

But women still pay more for long-term care insurance. Women can expect to be charged a full 13% more simply because they’re expected to live longer, according to The Daily Share producers.
Click to expand...

Women paid more for health insurance premiums because they spend more on health care than men do. And of course you are going to charge women more for long-term care insurance if you expect them to live longer than men.

What isn't mentioned here is the flip side of the coin. Women pay less for life insurance coverage. Why? Is it some gender privilege for women?

Nope. They pay less for life insurance simply because they live longer than men. They pay less for auto insurance simply because they get into fewer accidents than men.

As for the shampoo and other products, there are several reasons why they would be more expensive. Women are much more brand-conscious than men when it comes to beauty products. Ergo, they must be advertised more to than men are. Men go into the store and see one shampoo priced a dollar more than another with the same ingredients and say, "It's just shampoo, I'm buying the cheaper one. Women see the same things and say, "Yeah, but the expensive shampoo is that one that Gwyneth uses."
 
SOdhner said:
If I do something for you because I think you are physically and mentally incapable of doing it for yourself, then you are getting a benefit (I'm doing a thing for you) and it's based on a bias against you (I think you're incapable).
Click to expand...

That seems to describe a lot of what the hard-left is doing while pretending to help women.

But I disagree that it is anti-X to have a bias towards helping X. You might say that it's derogatory in some way, but not anti-X.
 
Loss Leader said:
All you have to do is go to the shampoo aisle at Walgreens to see the gender tax in action. Price the average shampoo for men and then compare it to the average for women. (And then look at the "Multicultural" section and faint from the prices for black women. If paying less for the same product isn't a privilege, I don't know what is.
Click to expand...

As I already said, if it's really the same product and you don't reach across the aisle and pick the cheaper one, that's your own damn fault. Nobody prevents women from buying men's shampoo.
 
Ziggurat said:
As I already said, if it's really the same product and you don't reach across the aisle and pick the cheaper one, that's your own damn fault. Nobody prevents women from buying men's shampoo.
Click to expand...

I usually go for the cheap stuff myself. Regular shampoo, you know. My wife, of course, prefers the "natural" brands and unsurprisingly pays more for her stuff. She knows that, and buys it anyway. Her choice.
 
Argumemnon said:
But I disagree that it is anti-X to have a bias towards helping X. You might say that it's derogatory in some way, but not anti-X.
Click to expand...

As I said, there's a difference between an anti-woman *bias* and an anti-woman *action*. You can take an action that is beneficial to women but be motivated by a bias that is anti-women.

If I think that women are incapable of doing math because their weak feminine brains are just too fragile, that is an anti-woman bias regardless of what actions I take. It exists as its own thing.

Now I might, driven by this bias, not hire women because I don't think they'll be able to do the math the job requires. This is obviously an anti-woman action.

I might instead forgive a woman for giving me incorrect change and still tip her (not her fault, with her fragile girl brain) when I would have yelled at and not tipped a man in the same situation. This is a pro-woman action (or effect or whatever).

Or I could do both, because those actions exist apart from the bias that informs them.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom