Blog 3

I received an email this week pertaining to my veteran women's group that contained an interesting and thought provoking checklist on Male Privilege. The list is based on Peggy McIntosh's article on white privilege and lists privileges as "on a daily basis as a male person". I am only going to list the ones that stood out the most to me for my purposes here.

5. If I choose not to have children, my masculinity will not be called into question.
6. If I have children and a career, no one will think I’m selfish for not staying at home.
7. My elected representatives are mostly people of my own sex. The more prestigious and powerful the elected position, the more this is true.
12. If I’m careless with my driving it won’t be attributed to my sex.
20. My ability to make important decisions and my capability in general will never be questioned depending on what time of the month it is.
28. On average, I am not interrupted by women as often as women are interrupted by men.

I have often noticed, thanks to the perspective of a close friend that has decided to possibly never bear and rear children of her own, that even discussions that appear to be "forward" minded regarding the purpose of childbirth or what it means as a women involve statements that are exclusive and alienating concerning women that choose to or are unable to have children of their own. There is a definite cultural stigma that is against women who can't or won't have children. Even when women don't have children of their own choosing and not because they are infertile and desire a child, most people tend to "whisper" or broach the subject about their own pregnancy or children with these women in a way that attempts to coddle their assumed feelings of inadequacy. I hadn't notice this as much because I have a child so I haven't had the experience, but thankfully my close friend has freely shared her experience on this with me and enabled me to see this conversation differently.

Women are often looked down upon by both men and women thanks to male privilege for choosing their work "over" their children.

I never thought about the lack of representation I truly have by the gender bias in politics until I saw this mentioned in the list I received.

I hate the generalization of "bad woman drivers". You never hear "bad male drivers," you hear, "He's driving like an effing girl!". This also relates to my hatred of women's self-generalization about map reading. I can read a map VERY well and better than or as well as most men who are capable of reading a map. I have nearly choked on my tongue every time I hear a woman say, "Oh I'm a girl, you know I can't read a map."

While as a woman I have, of course, heard the comment over and over again about "that time of the month" I had never considered how it is uniquely applicable to women. I have often been irritated at having my feelings dismissed due to "that time of the month".

I often feel very under-valued and much-interrupted and it has bothered me for much of my adult life, but I never recognized before that it wasn't just ME getting interrupted so much, it was pretty much all women, much less than men are. This has changed my perspective on how I respond when I get interrupted now.

I have copied the original list in it's entirety below for those interested.

On a daily basis as a male person…
1. My odds of being hired for a job, when competing against female applicants, are probably skewed in my favor. The more prestigious the job, the larger the odds are skewed.
2. If I fail in my job or career, I can feel sure this won’t be seen as a black mark against my entire sex’s capabilities.
3. I am far less likely to face sexual harassment at work than my female co-workers are.
4. If I do the same task as a woman, and if the measurement is at all subjective, chances are people will think I did a better job.
5. If I choose not to have children, my masculinity will not be called into question.
6. If I have children and a career, no one will think I’m selfish for not staying at home.
7. My elected representatives are mostly people of my own sex. The more prestigious and powerful the elected position, the more this is true.
8. When I ask to see “the person in charge,” odds are I will face a person of my own sex. The higher-up in the organization the person is, the surer I can be.
9. As a child, chances are I was encouraged to be more active and outgoing than my sisters.
10. As a child, chances are I got more teacher attention than girls who raised their hands just as often.
11. If I’m careless with my financial affairs it won’t be attributed to my sex.
12. If I’m careless with my driving it won’t be attributed to my sex.
13. Even if I sleep with a lot of women, there is no chance that I will be seriously labeled a “slut,” nor is there any male counterpart to “slut-bashing.”
14. I do not have to worry about the message my wardrobe sends about my sexual availability or my gender conformity.
15. My clothing is typically less expensive and better-constructed than women’s clothing for the same social status. While I have fewer options, my clothes will probably fit better than a woman’s without tailoring.
16. The grooming regimen expected of me is relatively cheap and consumes little time.
17. If I’m not conventionally attractive, the disadvantages are relatively small and easy to ignore.
18. I can be loud with no fear of being called a shrew. I can be aggressive with no fear of being called a bitch.
19. I can be confident that the ordinary language of day-to-day existence will always include my sex. “All men are created equal,” mailman, chairman, freshman, etc.
20. My ability to make important decisions and my capability in general will never be questioned depending on what time of the month it is.
21. I will never be expected to change my name upon marriage or questioned if I don’t change my name.
22. The decision to hire me will never be based on assumptions about whether or not I might choose to have a family sometime soon.
23. If I have a wife or live-in girlfriend, chances are we’ll divide up household chores so that she does most of the labor, and in particular the most repetitive and unrewarding tasks.
24. If I have children with a wife or girlfriend, chances are she’ll do most of the childrearing, and in particular the most dirty, repetitive and unrewarding parts of childrearing.
25. If I have children with a wife or girlfriend, and it turns out that one of us needs to make career sacrifices to raise the kids, chances are we’ll both assume the career sacrificed should be hers.
26. Magazines, billboards, television, movies, pornography, and virtually all of media are filled with images of scantily-clad women intended to appeal to me sexually. Such images of men exist, but are rarer.
27. In general, I am under much less pressure to be thin than my female counterparts are. If I am fat, I probably suffer fewer social and economic consequences for being fat than fat women do.
28. On average, I am not interrupted by women as often as women are interrupted by men.
29. I have the privilege of being unaware of my male privilege.

Blog 2

I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again - as I always am when I write. – Virginia Woolf

I have to say, I am not much a fan, per se, of the writings of Virginia Woolf, but I am very much in love with the idea of Virginia Woolf. I saw the film “The Hours” while I was in Iraq and cried my eyes out over the plight of the three manifestations of Mrs. Dalloway, including Virginia Woolf herself, and what that all meant for women. You see, I love Virginia Woolf so much because she was a woman who was truly herself, as best as she could be in the time she lived in and I believe even in today’s times. She was sexual, she was intellectual, and she refused to marry simply for conventions sake and was not afraid to be a little crazy and a lot stubborn. She did not have children simply for conventions sake, and cultivated a room of her own and took charge of her life even unto the end, when she committed suicide. I find the quote I chose as the opening here very fitting for the essence of Virginia Woolf.

I have always been a writer, scribbling mad journals for my own secret pleasure for as long as I can remember, as well as reading books in class when I should have been paying attention to other things and pointedly writing poetry in the margins of my arithmetic. Lately I have come to realize that as I writer I had been lacking a major affect – egotism, or at least an element of conceit. As a woman, writing, trying to sound fair and balanced, I had often and nearly always not assumed an opinion of my words, my own opinions and ideas and sentences and desires and dreams, as inherently mine and not expressed them with the appropriate level of conceit. I was recently in light of this course thinking about many of the writers I truly loved, particularly male writers, and realized what I love in many of their works is their opinion. These writers actually write on their own idea on how things are and how things ought to be and the sheer sense of self that they project in their writings. I feel like I have reached a personal epiphany point in understanding that I too deserve myself and my opinions in my writings, and I am no less talented or no less a writer because of it, but rather more of a writer for being allowed to pour more of myself into it.