4 ms·

I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with you, but can you provide examples of how privileged men are? Specifically, can you provide examples of how the person you r

I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with you, but can you provide examples of how privileged men are? Specifically, can you provide examples of how the person you responded to is privileged without meeting them? Can you also please cite reputable sources? This is the other source of alienation. Enforcing guilt onto someone based on how they were born (e.g. Gender, race). The last time I checked, this is outright bigotry. How about this, instead of trying to say that everyone is guilty, highlight that everyone has potential to be guilty, and a few are utilizing this so called birthright of privilege to exploit minority groups. Men have been lining up to be allies, and groups are right alongside them telling them they are not good enough.

rorosaurus 10y ago
If you associate privilege with guilt, I think that provides some valuable insight on your attitude regarding this topic. I think you can recognize being privileged without feeling responsible (or guilty) for its existence.
- metaphorm 10y ago
  the phrase is made as an accusation. "you benefited from privilege" which means "you have unearned advantages" which means "you don't deserve what you have".
Fraztastic 10y ago
There's an overwhelming amount of evidence, you could put the slightest bit of effort into looking it up. Being privileged isn't something that takes effort or one is guilty of. Let's say I'm 6' 4"; it's intrinsically easier for me to reach things high up. That's a privilege. I'll spend 3 minutes on Google then I need to get back to work. http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09500693.2015.1114190 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09500693.2015.11... https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/upshot/the-measuring-sticks-of-racial-bias-.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/upshot/the-measuring-stic... https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/upshot/the-measuring-sticks-of-racial-bias-.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/upshot/the-measuring-stic...
gone35 10y ago
You can easily find the evidence yourself, if you care. It's everywhere in the literature. For starters though, try this dumb little quiz (not that I expect it will change your mind): https://www.buzzfeed.com/regajha/how-privileged-are-you https://www.buzzfeed.com/regajha/how-privileged-are-you
burkaman 10y ago
There is no guilt involved. The whole concept of "privilege" is about factors out of your control, nobody should feel guilty for being white or male or anything else, and I'm sorry if someone gave you that impression. And as I said in another comment, it's not an on-off switch. "Male privilege" doesn't mean "your life must be great", it means on average you have more and better opportunities that may or may not result in a better life. There are obviously many other factors in and out of your control, so just being male is not enough to guarantee comfort and happiness, but it's still worth recognizing the marginal advantages.
- Jach 10y ago
  As a concept "privilege" is useless except as rhetoric to get what you want against your supposedly more privileged enemies. I think your defending language is sloppy here: ""Male privilege" doesn't mean "your life must be great", it means on average you have more and better opportunities that may or may not result in a better life." That's not what it is supposed to mean at all, it's supposed to mean men on average (not you as a man on average) have better opportunities etc., and that on observing that you are a man, knowing nothing else about you, I can infer in a bayesian way that you are more likely than not to have better opportunities etc. There are many things I can infer depending on what my priors are and what I learn about you. But when dealing with individuals, priors on such broad factors like race/gender/religion become useless very quickly since you learn so many more specific details about the individual that are far more important than those broad attributes. Additionally not all attributes have the same distribution. So what if the average man has more opportunities etc. if when you look at the distribution no individual man fits the average? Distributions matter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anscombe's_quartet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anscombe's_quartet Drilling into the concept, "privilege" is nothing more than "attributes" we happen to find external positive correlations for. There are many, many such attributes, people are multi-dimensional complex beings, and there are many attribute combinations that interfere both constructively and destructively. What annoys me more than "privilege" advocates focusing so much on broad attributes like gender (and trying to instill feelings of guilt -- you might not do it but it is very common) is ignoring the equally valid concept of "detriment" (except sometimes in the special case of having "not this privilege"), i.e. attributes for which you can find negative correlations. Note that many attributes have both! Being tall is nice because you can reach high things, but sucks because flying anywhere is basically mini-torture. And there are many more positive and negative correlations I can list, just for being tall. This gives me prior information for inference when I observe a tall person, but my inferences should not be very strong because of all the other attributes I don't know about or am not considering.

rorosaurus 10y ago

If you associate privilege with guilt, I think that provides some valuable insight on your attitude regarding this topic. I think you can recognize being privileged without feeling responsible (or guilty) for its existence.

metaphorm 10y ago
the phrase is made as an accusation. "you benefited from privilege" which means "you have unearned advantages" which means "you don't deserve what you have".

Fraztastic 10y ago

There's an overwhelming amount of evidence, you could put the slightest bit of effort into looking it up. Being privileged isn't something that takes effort or one is guilty of. Let's say I'm 6' 4"; it's intrinsically easier for me to reach things high up. That's a privilege. I'll spend 3 minutes on Google then I need to get back to work. http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09500693.2015.1114190 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09500693.2015.11... https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/upshot/the-measuring-sticks-of-racial-bias-.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/upshot/the-measuring-stic... https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/upshot/the-measuring-sticks-of-racial-bias-.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/upshot/the-measuring-stic...

gone35 10y ago

You can easily find the evidence yourself, if you care. It's everywhere in the literature. For starters though, try this dumb little quiz (not that I expect it will change your mind): https://www.buzzfeed.com/regajha/how-privileged-are-you https://www.buzzfeed.com/regajha/how-privileged-are-you

burkaman 10y ago

There is no guilt involved. The whole concept of "privilege" is about factors out of your control, nobody should feel guilty for being white or male or anything else, and I'm sorry if someone gave you that impression. And as I said in another comment, it's not an on-off switch. "Male privilege" doesn't mean "your life must be great", it means on average you have more and better opportunities that may or may not result in a better life. There are obviously many other factors in and out of your control, so just being male is not enough to guarantee comfort and happiness, but it's still worth recognizing the marginal advantages.

Jach 10y ago
As a concept "privilege" is useless except as rhetoric to get what you want against your supposedly more privileged enemies. I think your defending language is sloppy here: ""Male privilege" doesn't mean "your life must be great", it means on average you have more and better opportunities that may or may not result in a better life." That's not what it is supposed to mean at all, it's supposed to mean men on average (not you as a man on average) have better opportunities etc., and that on observing that you are a man, knowing nothing else about you, I can infer in a bayesian way that you are more likely than not to have better opportunities etc. There are many things I can infer depending on what my priors are and what I learn about you. But when dealing with individuals, priors on such broad factors like race/gender/religion become useless very quickly since you learn so many more specific details about the individual that are far more important than those broad attributes. Additionally not all attributes have the same distribution. So what if the average man has more opportunities etc. if when you look at the distribution no individual man fits the average? Distributions matter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anscombe's_quartet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anscombe's_quartet Drilling into the concept, "privilege" is nothing more than "attributes" we happen to find external positive correlations for. There are many, many such attributes, people are multi-dimensional complex beings, and there are many attribute combinations that interfere both constructively and destructively. What annoys me more than "privilege" advocates focusing so much on broad attributes like gender (and trying to instill feelings of guilt -- you might not do it but it is very common) is ignoring the equally valid concept of "detriment" (except sometimes in the special case of having "not this privilege"), i.e. attributes for which you can find negative correlations. Note that many attributes have both! Being tall is nice because you can reach high things, but sucks because flying anywhere is basically mini-torture. And there are many more positive and negative correlations I can list, just for being tall. This gives me prior information for inference when I observe a tall person, but my inferences should not be very strong because of all the other attributes I don't know about or am not considering.