Before this conversation encourages anyone else to post pics of spiders, and I’m looking at you @ficuswhisperer:
I have another relevant story to the thread to share. I gave a guest lecture tonight on gender and negotiation in librarianship, which is particularly important in my field because we hover at ~85% female. I gave my usual caveat at the beginning. While we often we talk about gender in terms of male and female, it’s the societal constructs commonly assigned to both that I’m discussing, not the fact that you have a penis and I have a vagina (I didn’t use those words, but I figure you guys can handle it). In particular, research shows that women are perceived as more cooperative and collaborative, and given negotiation research in the past 30 years, one would think that works in our favor. But it doesn’t [maybe a conversation for another thread]. To my point, here, however, one fella predictably said, “But I’m collaborative! And I’m male!” I’ve given iterations of this presentation numerous times at conferences, to classes, to co-workers. It always happens. He failed to see that he was the recipient of privilege because when we discuss privilege it’s intimidating and causes cognitive dissonance. Privilege is not an attack on you personally. It’s about recognizing more beyond our own experiences.
