The group has no room for anything really but for the extreme emotional reactions of in-group/out-group psychology and you see this playing out in our society because of social media.
There is literally no room for nuanced discourse between individuals with the way our social media platforms are structured. Individuals will not drive engagement the way groups do.
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
So the average man certainly had more of an advantage. But there are lots of other factors of course, then and now. Class, race, disability status…
I often wish the public face of feminism was more intersectional. Unfortunately we get undifferentiated pop/choice feminism instead. I’m as tired of it as the next person, considering it usually ignores trans issues (beyond maybe some lip service) all together.
Also I feel like this entire thread seems to ignore the economic component of this discussion. Women are stagnant too. Our system is crumbling, and young people without access to generational wealth are suffering, there is no good path into the middle class anymore, so why bother at all? That is the main takeaway.
Absolutely. Through all the stats and pronouncements that make it seem as if women are all powerful and are gaining economic and moral power, it's true only on the scale that is dwarfed by the patriarchal capitalism that is taking everything. For all of us who work hard and take home so little compared to those who hoard so much, we take the bait that the conflict is between us and ourselves, not us and them. Orwell write SO well about this in Animal Farm.
Punishing the most vulnerable individuals of a group because of the collective sins of that group, we may as well feed males lead until they're out of the game, it's only really one step further than subjecting them to systemic discrimination. JUSTICE!
Scott Alexander as a nice rationaliization of this dynamic
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-superweap...
For example, there have been a number of studies that show having a non-white sounding name during a cv screening process leads to far less callbacks, even if the remainder of the CV is identical. Is this not white privilege?
What about how the media treats different crimes. Take a look at the Daily Mail website, arguably the most popular UK tabloid and tell me it’s not designed to paint migrants and minorities in a negative light. For example, when there are acts of violence perpetrated in the name of islam, terrorism as a phrase is used frequently in the headlines. However when white nationalists do the same thing, the phrasing is completely different. Another example would be the coverage of the royals ie Kate vs Meghan.
Acknowledging white privilege doesn’t mean that those poor white folks in post industrial towns have it easy. It means that there are certain areas of society where being white does afford a privilege. It comes down to the tribal mentality at the end of the day. People still seem to like to favour people similar to them.
I've lived in working class neighbourhoods for the majority of my adult life, and there are so many observations that fly in the face of white privilege as a theory.
Most of the poorest people I would encounter were white. The people most likely to be long-term unemployed were white. The people whose children were least likely to get an education and escape poverty were white. Almost all of the junkies were white. Every single homeless person was white, no exceptions.
Whether or not HR staff hiring for a white collar job prefer white names is irrelevant when you and the people you are competing against didn't complete high school.
What the Daily Mail think about Meghan Markle or Islam is less important that what the Vietnamese fruit shop owner thinks of you because you share phenotypal characteristics with the homeless ice addict that sleeps three doors down and scares away customers.
This doesn't even start to cover ethnic tensions (Serb vs. Croat, Indian vs. Pakistani atc.) which exist with no regard for the typical sociological black/white/asian racial boundaries and can cause real violence and discrimination.
I will admit that there are racial groups that have it rough simply because of their skin (black people in America, Aboriginals in Australia, Gypsies in Europe), but the idea that being white grants you privileges over and above all other racial groups ignores the lives and experiences of an enormous segment of the population.
(Just to clarify, I do accept that John Smith has an unfair advantage over Rajesh Kumar when applying for a software job at a FAANG. I also admit that this has worked out well for me. This doesn't extrapolate to the whole population, though; many white people will experience little to no privilege because of their race.)
To be clear, I am not claiming disadvantaged white folks don’t have it rough. However, my point is when we take folks from a similar socioeconomic background, being white does confer an advantages in a lot of cases (in western, white majority countries). I would say the majority of the disadvantages for working class whites is not due to their race. Whereas on the other hand, certain ethnicities do have disadvantages due to their precisely their race. Both are disadvantaged but for different reasons imho.
Personally if it were up to me, I would exclude poor working class whites from any notion of privilege as they clearly aren’t. I also think they need more representation in the work place (ie being included in diversity targets rather than excluded).
IMO we need a better term that’s more nuanced and can capture the disadvantages of these groups, but I dont know what that term would be.
This is exactly the point I'm refuting. In all of the working class neighbourhoods I've lived in, poverty seemed to have a greater adverse affect on white people than other racial groups.
Being poor while Indian, for example, doesn't seem to be so closely associated with family breakdown/fatherlessness, drug abuse, malnutrition/bad diet, chronic unemployment, trouble with authority and just this constantly bleak outlook on life in an unbreakable spiral of poverty.
I'm not trying to say that they have it easy. They work bloody hard for what they've got and are an integral part of society. Still, despite their life being tough there's at least light at the end of the tunnel in the form of hope for the next generation. I would much rather be poor and brown than poor and white.
Don’t know about UK, but in the US the advantage quite decisively goes the other way: people of Indian descent are significantly over represented in FAANG relative to their share of population, and people of Anglo descent are significantly underrepresented.
Most indians working in FAANG in USA tend to be immigrants. So comparing them to their share of population is ridiculous. Even if you limit yourselves to second generation indian American, they are not the same socio-economic background. I guess having rich and education focussed parents is now considered unfair brown privilege.
Nobody is saying that white privilige means that if you're white, you always have it better than when you're not white.
e.g. if you're white and poor, of course you don't have it better than if you're non-white and rich.
The point is, that ceteris paribus, you have it better being white. And that is what we call privilege.
And this shows in countless studies which correct for all non-ethnic factors such as income, neighbourhood, parents' education etc. You'll find worse outcomes for non-whites in ceteris-paribus studies inn jobs/hiring, healthcare, safety, education, political empowerment etc.
So I'm glad you admit that people have it rough simply because of their skin, that's what white privilege means, you not having it rough because of your skin but because of other reasons which affect everyone else too. That doesn't mean you can't have it rough, it just means it's not related to your skin color, and that's a privilege.
Bollocks. Lots of people are saying that, or at the very least saying things that directly imply this with arguments to historical injustices which, though real and serious, have no causal bearing on the specific case being discussed.
"Ceteris paribus" is a wonderful average at which no one lives. Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos are white. That has zero impact on the earning power of a West Virginia coal miner whose job is never coming back and had gotten hooked on Oxy.
Lots of people say vaccines cause autism or that the earth is flat. Just because some people are wrong, doesn't mean I am. Just look up the definition of white privilege, read a book about it. It's been an academic concept for decades, just because a bunch of kids on twitter use it in a wrong way doesn't change the concept.
> "Ceteris paribus" is a wonderful average at which no one lives. Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos are white. That has zero impact on the earning power of a West Virginia coal miner whose job is never coming back and had gotten hooked on Oxy.
I've got no clue what you're talking about. The point isn't to say that all white people have the same lives, it's an absolutely ridiculous claim. It's to say that it's, all else being equal, easier to be white than black. This has been shown in countless studies, which correct for differences and look to isolate the effect of e.g. skin color or ethnic background, but you choose to ignore it.
For example, tons of studies show if you apply for jobs with a black-sounding name, you get fewer responses than with a white sounding name, even if the resume is the same. That's a privilege which you refuse to acknowledge. It doesn't mean you can't be a poor drug addicted ex-coal miner.
I've heard someone dismiss the idea of employing a woman for a post because the team was all male. For such a situation, a rebuttal would probably be heard more if it came from a man.
These are gender related because I'm white but you would doubtless find equivalents for other groups if you asked. Being aware is important I think
It's fair I guess so I apologize for what I represent to all these people who had oppressed ancestors, but I'm not sure they're actually resolving much of what people who looked like me did to them: poverty, lack of empowerement, inability to operate in a modern world etc, they can spend their time making me acknowledge my associated responsibility but I wish they'd just let me help instead :D
I remember telling a "philipino" (culturally/parents born there) born in the country that I was an immigrant here, he could not even compute it. He felt HE was, while obviously he was born here and a full right citizen, while my associated identity made him believe I was a sort of powerful lord instead of the scraping by immigrant I am, who has mostly the right to shut up and be useful... in HIS country. It's just weird.
“Hey, society and the media and politicians, institutions have all decided your nature is a problem and that you are assumed guilty, to be viewed with suspicion at all times. Oh and for some reason, you should still want to support this structure with your hard work and taxes, and shut up and never mention it.”
Honestly - I don’t know why I would tell him he should accept this society, why he shouldn’t move to another country and why he should stick around. It isn’t showing any signs of changing.
It sickens me, I don’t believe in my own country anymore.
Whoever you are and whatever you do, there's always going to be some group that doesn't like you or "your kind". Running away doesn't teach your kids how to face this; it just changes where they'll face it.
In all seriousness, if we are to succeed as a society, then ignorantly maintaining what are mostly over generalizations and stereotypes related to gender is a failing proposition. And that involves anything that existed pre-the-whole-world-is-now-connected.
That means
> It's not a binary decision, people. We don't need to decide which gender/sex is "better" or "more right".
But, for most of our parents it was binary and decision was obvious.
People fantasize about going back to that. Even the young kids, Gen Z, which is most concerning. Something alarming is that this comes from a feeling of helplessness. That and similar feelings explains the increase in massacres, hatred, and even why terrorists traditionally came from countries in turmoil. The kids need to be feeling hopeful not helpless.
Violence has been falling substantially in the US:
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/20/facts-about...
In commercial and entertainment media, it’s the woman in the kitchen, buying the groceries, raising the children, and holding down a 80 hour week job at her law firm. The man is playing ball in the yard, or is doing business in a suit. He definitely expects dinner to be on the table when he gets home from his 1950’s day job.
Then there’s other people. Women get asked “when are you having a baby” and “why is your husband so thin don’t you feed him”, and men get “so what do you do?”.
Women are now in the position where they are expected to do all of the things a woman would traditionally do, and hold down a career. The expectation of men has barely shifted - I know precious few guys who do all the cooking and cleaning and child rearing.
The message is that to be a man is to be lesser, or irrelevant, or harmful to society. That there's something shameful about being a man.
"There's nothing wrong with taking men down a peg or two; after all, they rule pretty much everything". Yeah, now what about the overwhelmingly vast percentage of men who will never have a management position or hold office? Whose life is just mediocre? Is it also okay to tell him he's toxic trash?
And sure, the proper response is "don't listen to the garbage". Doesn't mean it's okay to spew garbage.
As for entertainment media, it's a shit-show on both sides -- women and men are both horribly stereotyped.
This whole comment was BS, but I’ll focus on one example. This is the exact opposite of the truth, “toxic masculinity” is a common phrase because “toxic” is an adjective that is seen as *adding significant information to the description which is not already present in ‘masculinity’”.
If masculinity were viewed as inherently toxic, “toxic masculinity” wouldn’t be a needed phrase.
No, its not, and if you think the things it targets “all the thing that make men men”, you have a very sick idea of what being a man is.
> If it was really a technical term to describe the bad components of masculinity, then there would be an equivalent in terms of femininity, since there are aspects of femininity that can be construed as toxic.
The equivalent is, as one might expect, “toxic femininity”. While it gets less attention, the attention it does get is from the exact same people who care the mosf about toxic masculinity.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sex-sexuality-and-ro...
"Please don't fulminate."
"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. 'That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
We've transitioned from "A women's place is in the home (barefoot, pregnant, and cooking a delicious meal for her husband)" to "A woman's place is whatever she wants, and men are the reason for everything that's wrong with the world today". Whether it's world war or a bad relationship or choosing the right car.
It's not a binary decision, people. We don't need to decide which gender/sex is "better" or "more right".