So a fella on the Men’s Rights subreddit made this poster, which he’s planning to post in the vicinity of the Women’s Studies Department at his school, assuming he can find it.
Since I know that a lot of females read this blog, I thought I’d ask you all just which of these Unchecked Female Privileges (There’s Nothing “Benevolent” About Them) are your favorites. You can pick more than one! (I know how inherently greedy you feemales are.)
Has he missed any important ones?
Non-women are allowed to post in this thread as well, but only if they preface their comments with “If it may please the feemales, might I humbly suggest that … .”
kittehs – You mean like baby powder? Oh dears. Did the onion wet itself out of fear of being devoured by an MRA?
My favorite privilege is being assumed to be on display for men’s enjoyment when I leave my house. And if I forget to enjoy this privilege, a helpful, kind man may take a moment from his busy day to remind me to smile, or offer constructive criticism of my clothing, so that I can become a better piece of eye candy.
Yeah but the woman can’t even dust the raw onion properly! She’s too busy having the sex.
Alice – yes!
Maude – okay, reading about dusting onions and the sex in the same sentence gave me all sorts of images I didn’t want. 😛
Is it just me or are there a lot of repeats and/or near repeats on this list?
Less work-related injuries. Less work related deaths. Safer work conditions. Safer workplace conditions.
Wouldn’t safer work conditions result in less work relation injuries and thus less work related deaths? I mean, how are these separate bullet points? They should all be listed under “safer work conditions” at best. (Seriously though, “workplace conditions” vs. “work conditions.”)
Reproductive rights. More, better contraceptive options.
How are reproductive rights independent of contraceptive options? If by “reproductive rights” they mean women can have abortions, they should say women have better contraceptive options AND can have abortions. Otherwise just stick with “reproductive rights.”
Emotional encouragement. Feelings given more inherent value.
How are these different things?
Better education. High college acceptance rate. Less likely to drop out of college.
Yes, people who attend and do not drop out of college are better educated than those who don’t attend college or do drop out… No duh.
Less likely to be depressed. Less likely to have a mental illness.
Depression IS a mental illness. And aren’t MRAs the ones that insist modern women are all hopped up on anti-depressants? What gives?
Less likely to abuse drugs. Less likely to abuse alcohol.
Again, alcohol is a drug. The second statement doesn’t tell us anything we can’t infer from the first. (Now if it turned out women were less likely to abuse drugs in general but more likely to abuse alcohol specifically, that would actually be interesting! Otherwise you might as well add “Less likely to use cocaine,” “less likely to use meth” and so on to pad out the list further.)
Any others I didn’t catch?
Redundancy is MRAs’ middle name. Sorry, their two middle names.
I’d love to hear the specifics behind “Positive sexual encouragement”. Have I hallucinated the unending insane push for “abstinence only” sex education and purity balls/rings/pledges etc in the US? Of course, as others poster have pointed out, the experiences of women outside of the US doesn’t count.
Brooked – I swear it’s a reference to how feminists have SlutWalks because we hate sex-shaming, and how there’s a sex-positive streak in the movement.
My favorite privilege is being the non-default human.
I like how women being responsible to do the errands and go grocery shopping for their families makes them “in control of 60% of the nations wealth.” Like many of these women don’t have strict restrictions on what they can and cannot buy. It’s simply part of their contribution to the household, and getting the necessary tools and equipment to make sure they can do their jobs, and yet it’s supposed to be considered a privilege? They treat it like there’s just sooo many women buying fancy clothes on their husband’s dime. Going out and buying your husband’s tighty whiteys is such a privilege.
And yeah, I’m sick of hearing about the suicide thing because they always treat suicide attempts by women as if they’re irrelevant and that they’re just “attention whores.” Like it’s not a big deal to get to the point of trying to commit suicide several times throughout your life. Like it’s not a big deal to constantly be thinking about it. The issue here is that mental health isn’t treated seriously enough in this society, period. This is an issue for everyone, not just men, and they’d be wise to try and change that rather than trying to use the rate of suicide in men as a gotcha against feminists.
And uhh, what is this about health care? I haven’t been able to get health care as a female adult, period. Republicans are fighting to get the only places where I can access free sexual health care shut down (and they’ve been very successful doing it in my state). I have yet to find an affordable counselor for people without insurance. I have to pay out of pocket every time I get sick or need a filling. But supposedly I have cheaper better health care. Riiiiight.
Also annoyed at this claim that school is geared towards women, as if all women have the same learning style. We don’t, and I damn sure didn’t benefit from any of my teacher’s learning styles. In college I had to figure out my own ways to memorize facts for test and quizzes in my classes because I’m horrible at it (contrary to what people tend to say about women). I’ve never been good at history, but been good at maths and sciences because I can only remember things that make sense in my mind. Names/Dates/Locations go in one ear and out the other. So yeah, any time MRA’s talk about school being geared towards women I just sit here like, maybe women are just working a lot harder than men in this case, because I’ve met very few women where school came easily to them.
Um.. What if you are female passing but don’t identify as a woman? Can I talk too plz?
I’d like to add that the list is backed up by the survey and research results acquired directly from the University of Uranus, Department of Bullshittery.
Does ‘MRAs just don’t seem to get how posters work’ a female privilege?
Because, if not it should be.
Oh oh I got one!
“Any females in gamer circles get tonnes of attention and sex offers from strangers just by the virtue of being lady-gamers!”
And that reminded me of another one; “Most characters in almost all types of media are full of male characters for the female audiences’ viewing pleasure.”
Yay!
Thank you, kitteh and Alice. I am now picturing cute little baby onions wearing diapers.
I may never be able to slice an onion again.
“I’m also pretty skeptical of the “less likely to experience dysmorphia” bit. Umm, CITATION NEEDED PLZKTHX.”
Ah, but that isn’t what it says! And I’m fairly sure that one is mathematically correct — more MtF trans* people than FtM. However! Female bodied non-cis folks have far ore societal acceptable options in regards to dress, hairstyle, etc. Also, those stats probably come from surgery rates and I doubt many cosmetic breast reductions are listed, even if “reduction” mean “remove it all”.
So yeah, the stats there are about medical transitions, not social ones, or people who present in a masculine manner but retrain female pronouns for whatever reason.
Also, my face literally fell when I got to that one, I did not read the rest of the list.
KathleenB — top google hit for “mental illness rates by gender”? You’re right about Dx rates.
And regarding depression being a mental illness? They are flat out wrong that women are less likely to be depressed. The rest break even, or, for drug and alcohol abuse and not much else, men have higher rates, but depression? Nope. Feeeemales are more likely to be depressed (or diagnosed anyways).
Hey, we need a crazy privilege list! I’m never gonna have to fight in a war abroad as no military could take me! (Apparently the US one has some special “you were never here” not-discharge for the suicidal so they can [re]elist when not suicidal…I’m paraphrasing pecunium, badly)
…that’s all I’ve got. My ability to spin things on their head is apparently broken.
It’s times like this when having a copy editing and fact checking background completely fucks with me. I could spend hours on this. Most of the items on the list are either false or not actually privileges, and I desperately want to teach its creator the difference between “less” and “fewer.”
Given extra attention in class: Clearly untrue.
Women control 60% of wealth: Untrue (it’s more like 51% of personal wealth … and it’s a little unclear how “control” is defined). It looks like this figure came from Warren Farrell’s “The Myth of Male Power,” from 1993. A totally clear statement from a clearly unbiased source drawn from the most recent data!
Assumed primary parental figure privilege is awesome when one partner is congratulated for “babysitting” and the other is just doing their job.
Lord knows men have never been given any positive sexual encouragement! Society is wholeheartedly against men having any sex at all.
But I have to say that quote Having it all end quote is a pretty special privilege indeed. I get to sarcastically have it all while not at all having it all. And my attempt at having the kind of all that MRAs expect from life is laughable! Ha ha ha!
If it may please the females…
FGM… Knife? Is that… something they actually do? That’s worse than what I have heard, and what I have heard is already really bad.
This guy sure found a lot of foolishness, and not only is it inconsistent with a lot of New Misogynist dogma, but I can tell that he is not focusing on the few that are actually important (although I would still not call them privileges…): Less enforcement of heterosexuality, lower chances of various sorts of non-sexual violent crime, and one which is missing: not presumed to be dangerous or violent.
My favorite is probably the hypergamy one. Others are more wrong or ridiculous, but this one is pretty goofy. I’ts like he thinks modern Western women live in Jane Austen’s England or something.
Feeeemales get in free at bars on ladies’ night!! Wider deodorant selection! (Yeah I just had to buy more and dear gods why is it all either old spice or flowery?)
More options what do to with your long hair and said long hair being
expectedaccepted!Computer salesmen are more likely to
assume you’re cluelessoffer you aid!Regarding the money one, I think women do spend more, but whomever it was who mentioned groceries (Jessey?) was right — it’s totally shopping expenses, not personal. But I’m too lazy to go find a citation on that.
“Less likely to transition gender identity”
Implicitly demonstrating a complete lack of understanding of trans* people in general and assuming that CA/DFAB trans* men are women and CA/DMAB trans* women are men. Nice fucking job, MRAs – alienating people who are also men and being inclusive towards people who aren’t.
Oh yeah! Feeeeeeeeeeeeemales get periods and men don’t! And you’re not allowed to hit feeeeeeeeeeeeeeemales. Female privilege!
We spend it all on colour-coordinated towels and Scented Fucking Candles!
kittehs – And hard chairs! Lots of them! And bon-bons for breakfast, lunch, and dinner!
*finishes list, feels stupid* sorry! It does say that about dysmorphia, and I am a fool who stopped reading at the one about transitioning because my jaw was in my lap.
Yeah, social pressures and acceptance of masculine presenting female bodied people versus female presenting male bodied people are irrelevant to that one.
And Spanx for the penguin whores!
Won’t someone think of the baby onions?