I think @caitlin was trying to point out that being able to not worry about rape is part of male privilege. You can state that you don’t need to worry about rape. It does not mean that women do not need to worry about rape and sexual assault.
EDIT: By “You can state that you don’t need to worry about rape.” I meant that he can choose to say that he doesn’t need to worry about rape. I am not saying that “he does not need to worry about rape”, just that he is free to say those words.
She points out in her article that her son doesn’t face the same kinds of societal dangers as her daughter. She even questions if she’s not protective enough of her son.
You’ve completely ignored the parts in the article where the author clearly states that her daughter is quite polite. She simply isn’t going to teach her daughter to be tolerant of unsolicited attention from strangers, and nowhere does it say that she’s teaching her daughter to be a complete asshole to all strangers all the time. As ladypizza explained by way of anecdote, for a woman, tolerating unsolicited attention only encourages it. This is not anything you’ve ever had to personally deal with, nor will you ever, dude.
I am not sure I agree completely with the writer (who on earth names their kid “Birdie,” unless this is a pseudonym?) but I was raised, as most women born in 1955 were, to be nice, to smile, to compromise. That was how things were done.
The Marine Corps kicked that crap out of me pretty quickly, fortunately for my military career. I picked up rank, learned how to tell people what to do (not necessarily in that order), acquired a habit of going straight to the point. Suck it up, Mac.
I now work in an almost exclusively female environment (Public Health). Many of my colleagues are highly-educated, intelligent, dedicated women who can’t bring themselves to say “boo” if it means they are going to hurt someone’s feelings. It can wear on you, after a while.
I’m a bit alarmed at this. I have reread this at least fifteen times to try and understand if what you mean is – that @caitlin says, and you agree, that men (as a gender) don’t have to worry about rape due to male privilege?
If so, you have many of victims to explain that to, including me.
Male or female, molestation or blunt force, incest or stranger, I don’t think any gender gets a pass from worrying about rape. Now, if being told not to talk about it is what you mean, that’s more understandable, though this is also true for all sexes. Some young boys are taught to be nice at all costs, too.
I did not mean to imply that rape victims are never men and I am really sorry if it came across like that. I was going off of something that @notnato said:
He seems to be saying that he does not worry about being raped or exploited. The fact that he is able to ignore the possibility of rape is a sign of his male privilege. Male privilege does not mean that a man will not be raped (it is estimated that 1.4% of men have been raped: http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/nisvs_executive_summary-a.pdf), it just means that he can easily forget that it is a possibility. It also means that he has not grown up being told that it is his job to prevent other people from raping him.
“Solved” the lying one - YMMV of course - through teaching what it was to be on the other end of an untruth. I told the child that after dinner we would go on a desired outing (movie, I think it was at the time). After dinner I didn’t get ready to go; when asked I said “I lied”. Then we had a longer talk about it but the shock therapy got through. When kids hit their teens I did as my Dad had done - told them I would always have their back in troubles, as long as I could depend on the fact that they didn’t lie to me. It worked pretty well, although I am certain there were omissions of facts at times…
Understood. I personally think that the male instance is generally under-reported, and that under-reporting can be directly linked to the larger problem of male-on-male victimization (not necessarily rape, but definitely victimization based on outdated confusion over gender roles - i.e. what it means to be a man*). However, I think that certainly there are many men who do worry, and have a right to worry, male privilege notwithstanding.
*Which just reminded me of this (I wanted to post from A Mother Thing, but her site has been overwhelmed and shut down):
One in six boys are sexually abused by the age of 18, not including non-contact experiences. https://1in6.org/the-1-in-6-statistic/ I was one of those 1 in 6. Over and over. For two years, starting in the second grade. So, when discussions of male privilege come up, I tune out when you get to the “men don’t have to worry about rape” part, because otherwise I’m not too "nice’. And while my abusers were male, there are a lot of female abusers too Low estimates star at 22% are female. Other studies have shown offenders to be 43% female. http://www.female-offenders.com/ Further, at every age range, boys and men are at a higher risk for injury and death due to physical assault than girls and women, even when you fold the higher rate of rape and sexual assault of females into the mix, yet males have some miraculous privilege against violence (that provides absolutely no protection).
What you are calling privilege sounds a lot like mere ignorance. Men and boys face higher rates of violence and death every day than women, yet there is no comparable fear among men to the fear of rape among women. Certainly we can name many factors that influence that lack of fear, many of which will get a boo from feminists, but ignorance of the danger is not privilege. If you go on a hike and get eaten by a mountain lion, not knowing about the danger does not make you privileged compared to someone who didn’t go hiking because they heard on the news that there is a man-killing mountain lion on the trail.
Not true. The violent crime rates between men and women have been relatively stable since 2000 however, women are more likely to be victims of domestic and sexual homicide and males are more likely to be victims of gang related or drug homicide.
I love when comments devolve to the point where you have women telling men they’ll never know what it’s like for them, and men biting their lip cause…well what the hell is even the point.
A perspective from a person who has lived on both sides and frankly I think it is enlightening to how men and women are both perceived in today’s society. Make of it what you will, but every time a woman rolls out my male privilege card I always think of it.
Not true to what? I know you are wrong if its about the stats. What gets called privilege is actually ignorance? If so, you’ll have to bring more than a “not true”.
And who cares about the stability of rates? I’m talking about the gender split. And you are wrong anyway. Actually violent crime rates have been dropping since 1994. Rape alone has dropped 60% since then. But men are still 3-4 times more likely to be murdered. Some actual statistics: 2011 - murder - 9829 males, 2813 females http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/ Is the subtext to “women are more likely to be victims of domestic and sexual homicide and males are more likely to be victims of gang related or drug homicide,” that the men who get murdered deserve it? Besides you have screwed up the interpretation of the statistics. Of the drug and gang related homicides, the majority or plurality of victims are male. In your formulation, the majority or plurality of male homicide victims are drug and gang related. They are not.
I made that remark because I don’t know how to relate to parenting in a huge city like that. I’ve always lived in small towns, rural areas, suburbia, etc. That’s all.
Well, I daresay our children never engage in such activities, I can’t possibly imagine what sort of home circumstances would lead to this behavior…
OK, all kidding aside now, my least favorite thing by far was the spitting phase, followed by the general all-purpose freakouts that still kind of happen, but with (thankfully) decreasing frequency.
May I recommend this book, which works on children of all ages up to and including adults? It completely changed my life as a parent. Can’t recommend it enough. I would go around slapping other parents in the face with this book if it was legal to do so. It’s for their own good.
