Why terms like ‘male privilege’ are problematic

If you ever get into a debate with SJW (social justic warriors) or feminists and you happen to be a man and white, especially if you’re heterosexual you will, i can garantee you, you WILL be told you have male privilege, if you are disagreeing you will probably be asked to ‘check your male privilege.’ Sometimes to try and back up their claims further of ‘male privilege’ they will direct you towards transsexual FTM’s who ‘admit to gaining male privilege’ because they were once women right? So how can they be wrong, it’s surely evidence of male privilege, it couldn’t possibly be evidence of anything else going on, could it?! Nah. Course not, it couldn’t possibly be that they’re less miserable now they’ve transitioned and so are easier to approach, that their body language has changed due to a lift in confidence now that they can be seen as men, could it? It must be down to that old ‘patriarchy’ and ‘male privilege.’

But anyway where was i meant to be going with this? Well it’s a problematic term for so many reasons. It’s often used in debates at appropiate moments that essentialy shut down any discussion from the party disagreeing with the feminist rhetoric and the idea of ‘male privilege’ it’s often said in a way akin to saying “fuck you and your man problems, you have male privilege and we’re here to talk about gender equality, you have too much of everything, everything you say is therefore coming from a bias place of privilege.” Now then if i decide to agree, just for the sake of agreeing that men have ‘male privilege’ i would also suggest females have ‘female privilege’ something they will readily deny if one dares to suggest it. Oh but if you’re a man denying your male privilege, you’re denying it because your blind to it, in fact your very privilege makes you blind to it. So i guess their female privilege works in the same way, they can’t see it. What? Females don’t have privilege? You’re pissed off at that idea? Why? Why are you so pissed off? Do you feel a bit dehumanised like your pain as a human being who happens to be a female is being belittled and brushed over because of your supposed privilege?

It is a dehumanising phrase, it lacks compassion it lacks ears to listen with.

I know some people have this idea of me as some ‘bitter man’ some may even go as far as to suggest i’m a mysogonist, you know because i’m openly anti-feminist or non feminist. I look at the feminist narrative and i reject it, i reject it based on the problematic approach and the evidence. I don’t reject it simply because i’m a bitter old man who can’t take the idea of people try to better womens lives, because i’m not against bettering womens lives, i’m not against bettering ANYONE’s life! what i’m against is a problematic theory, and people who use these phrases they’ve learnt in ‘gender studies’ or just from simply being a feminist and then using it shut down discourse. You say male privilege, I point you to the 88% of people who are homeless who all just happen to be men, you say male privilege, i point you to domestic violence statistcs not often talked about showing it’s almost equal between the sexes, you say male privilege, i point you to the goverment funded domestic violence shelters some of which will not allow women in them if they take their sons over the age of 12 (How does that help women in that scenario?) you say male privilege, i point towards quotas that say employers must emply a certain number of women therefore meaning if a man does happen to be more qualified than a woman he won’t get the job, because vagina. I say ‘female privilege’ you point me towards domestic violence, I say ‘female privilege’ you point me towards women living in poverty, i say female privilege, you point me towards rape…. Do you see what I’m getting at here? We can both play at that game, the truth is this ‘you’re privileged’ nonsense needs to stop if we ever want to have a truly open disucssion. Your privilege rhetoric is a barrier in the conversation, it is not a helpful tool and i suggest we take it out of the tool box in trying to fix these issues because the tool is bunk, it’s useless.