RCimT: Further Privilege Readings

One of the best things to have come from my recent Problem with Privilege and Disadvantages of Being a Man posts — I mean, aside from comments covering many of the issues I didn’t touch on in the original posts (and there are quite a number — enough to make a Disadvantages 2: Electric Boogaloo at some point) — is the treasure trove of links that have come from commenters and via email. There’s a ton of worthwhile reading material here, from various diverse sources, and I’m certain there’s even more to be had if you’d like to contribute in the comments.

First, and above the fold, Greta Christina linked the Disadvantages post and doubled my readership pretty much instantly. There’s some more discussion going on at her linking post, so I highly recommend you check it out. For more links, do read on.

A reader of the Privilege series (who happens to be an MA and lecturer in social psychology, no less!) wrote an email in praise of my series, and pointed me to two interesting links that are related. First, this paper by John T. Jost, Mahzarin R. Banaji, and Brian A. Nosek discussing the theory of “system justification”, wherein even those on the short side of a particular institutional system will expend great effort justifying why it must remain in place. I think this has huge ramifications for why male rights activists don’t realize that most of the issues they claim to fight stem from societal gender roles and patriarchal society — the same systems that create most of the injustice feminists fight.

The other link that same reader sent in was a transcript of a talk by evolutionary psychologist Roy F. Baumeister complaining that women have it really good (except where they don’t), and women are just lazy, and that’s why it falls to men to run society. And that that burden leads to men being exploited by women because they’re not stepping up and taking their share. And men are really easy to exploit, via sex. Yeah, suffice it to say this doesn’t much improve my view of evolutionary psychology.

A reader named Eris87 posted her thoughts on my Disadvantages post, from her perspective living in Pakistan. It’s worth a read in its own right for the cross-cultural implications of some of what I’ve discussed. That and it praises me liberally, which I naturally enjoyed very much.

Thus ends the self-ego-inflating portion of my links. Hopefully that unusually large amount of ego-inflation will carry me through to the end of this list.

This post at Yes Means Yes discussing rape culture, what it is, who comprises it (using real statistics no less!), and how it muddies the waters for “what counts”. It also discusses how best to go about affecting the change that needs to happen to end the rape culture.

In a discussion about the workplace glass ceiling women face, this link was posted to counter a suggestion that men face the glass ceiling in the same way. The long and the short of it is, no, they don’t. Any barriers to upward mobility that men face are in actuality something completely separate and distinct.

Another great link is Jadehawk’s Toxic Masculinity series, where ideals of masculinity clash with obtaining health care, environmentalism and vegetarianism (e.g. what’s “chickfood”) in part one, and sexuality being defined antagonistically in part two. They’re excellent and hilarious rants on some of the ways patriarchy and gender roles hurt men outside of statistically demonstrable injustices, which I focused on primarily in my own post.

And No Seriously, What About Teh Menz is an entire blog run by rational, clear-headed non-MRAs who understand that the current system hurts men and work to fix them, all without calling for feminists to stop fighting against their own injustices. This is empirical proof that it’s possible to take some serious issues seriously, without also demanding that everyone else stop dealing with other, also-serious issues. Eat it, David Byron.

Finally, if you’ve never been there, you really need to visit Man Boobz. Men mocking misogyny. Pure comedy gold. It’s going in my blogroll shortly, in fact.

With that, I’m likely to blog about less weighty matters for a little bit. I do hope these excellent conversations continue, and I’ll continue to participate in them, even while I’m posting completely unrelated stuff.

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RCimT: Further Privilege Readings
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5 thoughts on “RCimT: Further Privilege Readings

  1. 1

    My only real thoughts when reading the entire series were, “Yep. Exactly right.” Especially the Disadvantage of Being a Man article. Amazing, and incredible, and it’s everything I always wanted to say on the subject. I’ve saved the links to use in the future.

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