My new favorite terrible Tumblr blog is this is female privilege, a blog that posts user-submitted examples of, well, female privilege. It’s a pretty MRA-adjacent idea for a blog, seemingly designed to be appreciated only by those who can use the word “misandry” without giggling. The woman who runs the blog seems to be fairly MRA-adjacent type herself; she recently responded to one critic with a sarcastic “Wow waahhhh it’s so hard to be a woman wahhhh!” (Literally; that’s an exact quote.)
So it’s hardly surprising that many of the posts seem to have been cut and pasted straight from the Men’s Rights subreddit – at least figuratively, if not literally. (Click on the pics to see the posts in context at this is female privilege.)
But a lot of the alleged privileges are a bit, well, odder than that. The blogger says she posts everything she gets, so either a lot of people have pretty cockeyed notions of just what privileges are, or some feminists are trolling her blog by sending along the dumbest non-privileges they can think of to make the blog even more ridiculous than it already is.
Some suggest that biological differences are “privileges.”
Some of the so-called “privileges” are the results of traditional gender roles that box both men and women in:
Dude, if you want to shave your body hair, shave your fucking body hair. There are lots of guys who shave or wax.
Some are comically delusional:
Chance this last one was submitted by a guy: 110%.
Some are just kind of whiny.
You know, there’s an easy solution to this: wait for a fucking stall, like women do.
Some are kind of weird:
And some are just, well, beyond hope:
Seriously, if you see these things as female privilege, you really, really shouldn’t be talking about privilege in public on the internet. You’re just making a fool of yourself.
The one redeeming thing about the blog: people argue back in the “notes.”
EDIT: Another redeeming thing: It’s inspired the response blog Actually This is Male Privilege.
EDIT 2: Amanda Marcotte riffs on the one about women having the wonderful privilege of sex any time they want!
“Ya gotta wonder, why is the anti-male aspects of society are always “actually” misogyny? Why not the other way around?”
As was aptly pointed out above, because most of the gender policing of men comes from the belief that being masculine is better than being feminine, and therefore men who act in “girly” ways are lowering themselves and deserving of mockery. Feminists aren’t the reason a guy who wanted to work as a Hooter’s server would run into social sanctions.
Where is this massive societal bias against men and only against men supposed to be coming from? In the U.S., for instance, you have 100% of presidents in history, 100% of vice presidents, a large majority in Congress, two-thirds of the Supreme Court, almost all Fortune 500 CEOS, most of the military, a majority of the movie directors and TV writers… If you’ve got all that and you still believe the culture is set up against you, all I can say is men must be pretty freaking ineffectual.
@fembot
yeah, i felt that was the logical conclusion of what i wrote, but i forgot i was writing for superdense false equivalency stalklord, so thanks for spelling things out more explicitly
@leelo
but a dude hasnt been nominated to the supreme court in six whole years!
MISANDRY
Yes, “Steele” may be a “superdense false equivalency stalklord,” but he gave us Torvus Butthorn, and for that I will be forever grateful. 😀
holy shit did I just eat one of those red pills I keep hearing about
because fuck
my hand is amazing
and misandry do real
Steele is so dense, that for his next sockpuppet name I would like to suggest Osmium. (Or Iridium?) Thanks, folks, I’ll be here all week.
But you’re right, Fembot, we’ll always have Torvus Butthorn.
@Ithiliana
Oh man, I totally agree. I WAS just saying that there’s a flip side to all this; whereas it’s common for very little to be expected of women, often TOO much is expected of men. They’re really flip sides of the same coin, but having had some friends who were stoners in high school…
Little grammar tip for you Steele/Varpole —
“Ya gotta wonder, why is the anti-male aspects of society are always “actually” misogyny? Why not the other way around?”
“…anti-male aspects of society…” = plural.
You wanted “why are” there, not “why is”, except, considering you went on to “…are always…”, I think you might’ve been going for “why is it that…”
<Amanda Marcotte has some thoughts on all this:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/07/18/female-privilege/
Oh look who showed up in the comments!
Oops,meant to blockquote David there.
Quit putting Steele off of writing with your misandry, Argenti. It’s not like the man can just start up a tumblr and immediately begin posting short stories or poetry for public consumption!
feminism smh
Logic bomb, Steele? More like a logic sparkler.
Tulgey — but how will he ever improve if he won’t listen to criticism, it isn’t like I said he was an idiot or anything (hell, I’d buy that he simply missed the words “it that” and was going for “why is it that”).
Seriously though, I pondered that for a minute before deciding that he can make any error, refuse criticism, and then scream MISANDRY…and then decided he had a logic bomb alright, just not the one he thought.
Well, I agree that it was a bomb.
@Leeloo Dallas Multipass
“Where is this massive societal bias against men and only against men supposed to be coming from? In the U.S., for instance, you have 100% of presidents in history, 100% of vice presidents, a large majority in Congress, two-thirds of the Supreme Court, almost all Fortune 500 CEOS, most of the military, a majority of the movie directors and TV writers… If you’ve got all that and you still believe the culture is set up against you, all I can say is men must be pretty freaking ineffectual.”
Robert Johnson the founder of BET has a net worth of 550 million dollars. Oprah Winfrey is worth $2.5 billion.
I’ve looked to the top as you have and by your definition of who is privileged black people are financially the most privileged people in the US. Never, ever, ever look to the top of society, look to the bottom of society to find out who underprivileged.
Oh holy fuck! Some guy is crying because hed get teased for knitting..
Like shit, I’m a woman and I’ve been relentlessly teased about embroidering (by cool people) unless its being totally ignored because who pays attention to womens hobbies, or worse yet…is being endlessly praised by some idiot guy who is trying to butter me up so I’ll go to his place and cook him dinner while also cleaning his house (because clearly I’m showing proof of being a very traditional woman). And yeah, I meet men like that at least once a year.
What really gets me though is that working with needle and thread/yarn is one of few areas where men don’t get tons of acclaim (haute couture being the remarkable exception). Now, can these guys name one woman in history or currently who is recognized by the general public as a master of her art? No. Because its impossible in Western society for traditional feminine arts to be seen as anything more than frilly things for the house.
So keep crying me a river. I might embroider a hanky for him.
@Argenti Aertheri
“…anti-male aspects of society…” = plural.
“Tulgey — but how will he ever improve if he won’t listen to criticism, it isn’t like I said he was an idiot or anything (hell, I’d buy that he simply missed the words “it that” and was going for “why is it that”).
Seriously though, I pondered that for a minute before deciding that he can make any error, refuse criticism, and then scream MISANDRY…and then decided he had a logic bomb alright, just not the one he thought.”
Grammar policing again? Followed by casual ridicule, condensation and belittlement. Was it to prove your intellectual superiority? Was it to disparage his character? Wasn’t it you who gave a list of thing’s God hates, which included Haughty eyes? Most western women wear haughtiness like a badge of honor. You positively swim in your’s.
Argenti, constructive criticism is misandry. A Men’s Rights approved critique would involve a ball moving across a room or something.
(I would honestly not be surprised to learn that an MRA believes the previous two sentences.)
Tulgey — took me a minute to figure out the second sentence, my brain — huh? balls? with words written on them? the ball of who can talk? …oh….like children’s games…
I’m curious on the first one though, considering conditional statements are also MISANDRY (as are statistics apparently)
Critiquing a mans work or criticizing him is misandry because criticizing is something that should only be done to women and the products of womens labour, in the event that its even worthy of notice.
Conditional statements are misandry because existence functions soley in binary mode. By making a conditional or “nuanced” statement, you are attempting to confuse a man and/or manipulate him or reality.
Oh my God! I just realized that conditional statements could tear the fabric of reality/space/time!!!
And we can guess just who would be expected to mend that tear…women. Which would make us heros…which is DEFINATELY misandry because we all know A MAN named Dr. Who is supposed to be the hero saving us that fate!
I can’t embroider anymore because I gave myself really bad SRI that comes back all the time. I was in the middle of this beautiful, complicated cross-stitch Christmas stocking for my mom, and it’s just been sitting for almost three years. 🙁
SRI, RSI, potato, potahto…
“Which would make us heros…which is DEFINATELY misandry because we all know A MAN named Dr. Who is supposed to be the hero saving us that fate!”
Well, unless he’s too busy being a fool and River has to save him and us…I’m not sure how that fits here, but I love River.
Fuck, is thinking 11 a fool misandrist of me? I miss 10…