I may be wrong, but it seems to me that a lot of the entries I read in this forum assume that men, and especially white men, enjoy more power than women and members of ethnic minorities, and have fewer worries about violence, etc. Certainly, a lot of the articles I read in the press proceed from those assumptions.

So, here's my question: Are those assumptions valid? In your experience, regardless of your background or gender, do you see white males getting a better deal, ascending to position of power and generally being sent to the head of the line? Or is that all a P.C. myth?

-- Anonymous, July 21, 2000

Answers

I don't know if you're asking men and women, but yes, I see white males getting a better deal in just about every area of life.

-- Anonymous, July 21, 2000

Yeah, I was asking everyone. But I have to admit, I was hoping for a little more detail, Lizzie! ;-)

-- Anonymous, July 21, 2000

I don't think this is really the right question to be asking. People tend to notice more when they are treated unfairly than when they are treated fairly, so asking people whether they feel priviledged or not is not an accurate gauge of injustice.

The disparity between men and women and whites and non-whites in our society is not based on vague feelings--it's well documented. We know what percentage of American presidents have been white men. We know what percentage of CEOs are white men. We know what percentage of crime victims are male, female, white, black, etc. (if I recall correctly, men are slightly more likely to be victims of violent crime, and blacks are far more likely to be victims than whites). We know that men are more likely to commit violent crimes than women. We know that women and non-whites in the U.S. are more likely to live in poverty than men and whites.

I think a better question to ask would be how these inequities came about, and what we can do to eradicate them.

-- Anonymous, July 21, 2000

I disagree, Jen. Statistics also tell us that it's 300% more likely someone in your household will die of a gunshot wound if you keep a firearm in the home, but this forum just finished a long thread about how people feel about firearms. I don't see how it's inappropriate to discuss how people feel about male privilege -- or if they dispute its existence. In fact, it's a hot current topic.

Two recent and fairly controversial books, titled (I think) "The War Against Boys" and "Our Boys Speak" take diametrically opposed views on what boys need, whether new, emerging male gender roles are crushing boys' spirits and robbing them of good masculine role models (a theory we might call, "Drowning John Wayne"), or if new gender expectations are helping boys become more productive, participatory members of society.

The N.Y. Times on Monday published a long review, questioning whether male privilege really still exists, or whether most men are actually miserable wage slaves, driven by society's expectation to do things they dislike and find unrewarding. That's what inspired my post. I'm not taking sides on this one, just pointing to the controversy.

-- Anonymous, July 21, 2000

Tom, what I am disputing is the fact that your question sets up inequality as an "assumption" of the media in the first paragraph, and then asks about people's personal experience with prejudice in the second, as if that were a more valid measure of what is actually happening. I don't think that anecdotal "evidence" contributes much to the debate, and I also don't think it's valid to dismiss real evidence about inquality in our society as "assumptions."

-- Anonymous, July 21, 2000

...but I also want to point out that I think that the statistics I cited in my first post are certainly open to interpretation, and I think this is a very interesting and controversial topic. I just take issue with anyone saying "yeah, prejudice against women doesn't exist because my boss is a woman," or "I was sexually harassed by my boss once, which goes to show that women don't have a chance at making it to the top in my field unless they want to sleep their way there."

-- Anonymous, July 21, 2000

I think there are sectors where race & gender does not matter.

The financial services industry, where I work, is *NOT* one of those sectors. After being told for so many years that woman had it pretty equal in the workforce and never having anyone question my abilities because I was a woman, I came to the financial services industry where, in training, we listened to tapes of men (advisors & clients) making women cry by demanding in such a vile way to speak with "a man, because they're the only ones who know about money." These were strong women these men were talking to, but after being berated and then having the person ask for a man on those grounds, the women lost it. Never had they done that to a man - usually the follow up call with the man was very nice after.

I think they had us listen to the tapes to prepare us for what lay ahead. I think African-Americans have it even worse in financial services. It is still a *very* male dominated industry.

I don't think it happens everywhere.... but I think there are certain areas where women and minorities can & do succeed.

-- Anonymous, July 21, 2000

You know, I phrased this question very badly, and I regret it. I was being talked at by a colleague as I wrote it, and paying attention half to him and half to my typing. As I read it back over, the text clearly asks for responses in line with cory's, and I want to make it clear that I'm not harshing on his viewpoint.

I meant to ask the question, "White men: Are you happy with your lot in life? Do you feel personally empowered, or are you a miserable wage slave tied to your desk (or truck)?" But I wanted to ask it in a way that left the door open to women participating in the thread.

I see now that I utterly failed to ask the question that I meant to ask, and worse, that phrases such as "p.c. myth" appear calculated to elicit rebuttals of the claim of white male privilege. In short, I couldn't have phrased my question more poorly.

Jen Wade,you know I regret my error, and if I offended anyone else, I apologize to them, too. I think I'm going to take some time off from posting for a while.

-- Anonymous, July 21, 2000

Tom, how you just explained your original question was precisely how I took it! And the first thought that came to my mind after reading the question was that no men would answer it but that lots of women would weigh in.

I'd love to read how white males feel about being privileged, or whether they think they personally or privileged.

-- Anonymous, July 21, 2000

Tom, don't stop posting!

There are so many complexities inherent in this question. I think the male role in our society (and in the different strata of society) is changing (well, I guess everything is changing, and rapidly) and no one really knows where we are headed.

Tom's "wageslave" comments reminds me of my very traditional father, who worked his rear end off for my family (in a corporate setting, where after 25 years of loyal service, he was laid off. At age 45.)

But women are "wageslaves" as well, Tom, and a lot of times they don't get the "perks" that those in higher corporate positions receive. It sounds like you are toying with the idea of work itself, and the social and monetary priveleges associated therewith. Maybe that is the crux of the question: Do some people create lifestyles that they are "slaves" to (i.e. you have to work your butt off to maintain it, or do work you don't really enjoy)? Is corporate power REALLY a worthy goal?

I could be totally wrong, here, as to what Tom was getting at.

That said, I want to second what I think Grace said about women in the Finance world. My roommate works for an equities firm, and the male heirarchy, as well as sexist stereotypes, seem to be alive and well in this area of business. Example: 2 accounting students were sent to the firm for a summer internship. The male student was immediately placed in a challenging position with the analysts. The higher ups tried to put the female student in the secretary pool to do basic admin work (nothing against admin work, but she was there to learn accounting and finance, not how to do an expense report). I thought that really sucked. Breasts=Secretary? Guys, she's an ACCOUNTING student--just like her male classmate!

-- Anonymous, July 21, 2000

Tom, I hope you won't stop posting. I didn't think your question was offensive at all, and I understand now what you're asking.

I think men have tremendous pressure to be in charge, to be the wage earner, to take care of everyone. Even if his female partner is the one who makes more money, and they're happy with that, a lot of people will see that as kind of a weakness on his part. Even if he doesn't feel that way, knowing his buddies or his parents are clucking their tongues has got to have an effect. Many men ostensibly have paternity leave, but apparently few of them take it because they're fearful about how they'll be perceived at work. At high levels, women have this pressure too, but most of us don't.

"Women's liberation" at its best is liberation for men, too - sharing the burden of supporting a family and running a household instead of putting everything on the shoulders of the man.

That said, as a woman I still feel like I get the short end of the stick. Nowadays both men and women expect to work, and things have improved a lot, but there are still barriers for women. In a lot of fields and at high levels, women have to be twice as good. When women can be just as mediocre as men, at every level, I'll feel things are equal.

Finally, there are issues of safety for most women, world wide. Rape as a war crime. Physical abuse. Sure, men get raped in prison, but it's not something that most men think about all the time. It is something that women know could happen to them anywhere.

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2000

On the one hand, the special perks, expectations, and opportunities that go with being male don't appeal to me. If there's some alternate universe with someone who was born female and is otherwise just like me (in terms of family, social class, upbringing, etc.), that other person is probably marginally more content with her life than I am with mine.

On the other hand, I think I'm atypical.

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2000

Tom - your question is an excellent one. As a white female who's pretty rabid when it comes to the whole equality, I kind of have a lot to say about it.

There is one main personal block in front of me when I come to the issues between men and women as it were : My mother was the middle child in a Slavic family. Her father was abusive, and there was definite chauvanism; the boys got whatever they wanted, and she had to fight for. Whether my mother is aware of it or not, she has perpetrated the same circumstances with me. My younger brother is 13 (much younger) and was raised in a tight family circle of protectiveness with his every need and desire looked after. I spent most of my childhood (till age 9) as an only child with a single working mother as a role model. I responsible for him, in a big way, from age 14 and up, in terms of being his 'keeper' - everything and anything he did wrong, I was the scapegoat for. *I* wasn't doing something right, and that's why he was bad. It went on for years.

Recently, I had an interesting thing happen to me at work. It was shocking, to say the least. To say I was angry would be a gross understatement.

In a previous position, I worked on a small, tight-knit team.

I came into it with very little experience in the particular field, as did everyone else - men included.

I asked for training, I took a class, I stayed late, I asked to learn things. *NO ONE* made time for me. A couple of years into it, I kind of gave up. We hired a new guy - in fact I interviewed him.

Six months or so later, he's being trained - I mean, when he stays late, they ask him to do things. He had *NO* experience whatsoever. The boys all hung out together and taught eachother. I, apparently, was not invited. Within a year, he was making more then I was.

I had been on the same team for 3 years in a much larger capacity - doing a wider variety of tasks and occaisionally taking on other peoples responsibilities during vacations. I had no problem dropping everything to stay late, go the extra mile.

It didn't matter. The ol' boys network didn't include me.

So I left. They were quite upset, and to this day talk to me about hiring me back. But I'm much farther up the career later (in *six months*) then I would ever be there, and the thought of going back never even enters my mind.

So yes, from my perspective, the white boys got it goin' on. They have it *made*.

The hardest thing for me to accept was that this could still happen at all! I mean I had always figured I could do whatever I want. That this whole glass ceiling thing, the whole male priviledge issue, was evaporating, or would have ceased to exist by now. Naive of me I suppose, but damn it was dissappointing to realize we still have to wait for that generation to die off before real steps can be made. And even then, there are so many young people who have, if not the same attitudes consciously per se, the inbred unconscious assumptions regarding roles and abilities.

It's annoying as hell.

I think some people responding are side-tracking into very different aspects of this issue and aren't focusing on exactly what you're asking. I have *oodles* of tangents I could go off on, but that's my response to your specific inquiry.

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2000

Just becouse you grow hair in some places and voice drops then you a man, right??? WRONG!!

A man contributres to his family and home. He is there to help the woman and children. He is active in the community and with his family. He has the desire to protect his own and assist others when needed!! He knows his own power and uses it wisely!! I began this road at the tender age of 14 yrs when I gave my Mom rent and hunted for food and helped to feed my brothers and sister!! Manhood is more then what most folks think!! Too bad men are getting a bad rep, Becouse they bring it apon themselves!! Snivelers need not to apply!! Truth in inside, take a walk inside yourself!! Peace!! Blacky

-- Anonymous, July 26, 2000

Hmmm. Jennifer's post got me thinking. If the male family member has everything handed to him, that is male favoritism. If the female family member has everything handed to her, that is assuming female incapability.

There really is no way to win, is there?

-- Anonymous, July 26, 2000

Dave, I don't really get your point. But you just lost me a bet. Until a minute ago, I believed that Black Sable Knight was you.

-- Anonymous, July 26, 2000

Tom: Let's say you have a family with two kids, one male and one female. If the family favors the male, it sexism against the female, because they're favoring the male. If the family favors the female, it's still sexism against the female, because now they're assuming she can't make her own way in life and needs their help.

No matter what the family does they're male chauvinists.

-- Anonymous, July 26, 2000

Okay, I get it now. You're basically saying there's a double standard in place -- I have to agree that there does always seem to be a way to twist the facts to match one's ideology. I was thinking about that when I started this thread, and I may as well show my hand now. In my own life, I suppose people would say I'm moderately successful and that the white men's club has done very well by me. I earn a high wage, my wife stays home, and there's no reason for me to fear that the gravy train will end for the next few years. I'm not denying that it would be harder to get where I am for a woman or a minority member.

That doesn't change the fact that I can't quit this not very rewarding job because I can't find an interesting one that will pay me as much. If I took less money, that would mean disturbing my wife's plans to stay at home with our kids for the next few years. So, I'm basically here for the next several years, in the interest of giving my kids a stay-at-home Mom. The twist, which you've identified, Dave, is that agreeing to slog through 80 hour work weeks doing boring and meaningless stuff under extreme pressure doesn't make me a good guy at all. To the contrary, it's just assumed that I must love this sh*t and that I'm really a closet male oppressor because I'm keeping my wife at home.

So, yeah, I'm a little bitter about it. And I'm defensive because I know it's going to bring on the "other people have it so much worse" recriminations. But, whatever. I have to admit I don't particularly enjoy being in the male role. All things being equal, I'd rather stay at home, play with my son, have someone come in to clean once a week and send the laundry out. Is that wrong?

-- Anonymous, July 26, 2000

No, of course it's not wrong. I think it's great that you want to do that. Look, people get stuck spending a few years in soul-destroying but high-paying jobs for all kinds of reasons. I did it for five years because of college loans - no choice, no one else was going to pay them back for me. If I were a better person I'd still be working in that job in order to give my retired parents a better quality of life, but I'm a bad daughter.

I agree that this kind of trap seems to happen to American men quite a lot once they have families, and this may be one cause of all the anger, bullying, and family dysfunction that seems to be floating around: the wives have "options" but the husbands really don't, since they can earn more by working than the wives can. There was a book written about this a few years ago. It said that women who marry a man with higher earning capacity, which most are socialized to do, are pretty much automatically ensuring they'll be the stay-at-home parent. It would behoove us all to put a social system in place that allows health insurance and reasonable paid leave for both parents, recognizing the fact that children are not finished and ready to go to day care after six weeks. And equal pay for equal work, which is not something I have ever seen in my career. The salary gap between me and my male engineering school classmates just keeps growing, and indeed, most of them seem to have stay-at-home or part-time working wives, which may or may not be the ideal situation for them.

What can you do? Make a little calendar and cross off the days until you're free(r), which is when the child starts kindergarten, I guess. That's what I always do.

-- Anonymous, July 27, 2000

"So, yeah, I'm a little bitter about it. And I'm defensive because I know it's going to bring on the "other people have it so much worse" recriminations. But, whatever. I have to admit I don't particularly enjoy being in the male role. All things being equal, I'd rather stay at home, play with my son, have someone come in to clean once a week and send the laundry out. Is that wrong?"

Tom, I think it's a real pity that you and your wife can't easily switch roles. I suspect this will be an issue for me and Tristan when we start a family, as I am fairly determined to scale the corporate ladder, whereas he would prefer to work from home/run his own business - so he'll probably have the flexibility to be more involved in child-rearing than I will.

If you look at the Western world I think white men do have it pretty good, and this is further emphasised when you look at the world as a whole. Somebody mentioned South Africa as the probable exception and they were right - when Tristan graduated from Cape Town university in 1996 it became quickly apparently that a young white male in that society was not going to have an easy time.

When you think about it though, white men like you, Tom, can only choose now that they want to reject the traditional bread-winning role because they've always had the opportunity to undertake it.

-- Anonymous, July 27, 2000

The thing about (straight) white men, to me, is that they keep each other "in line". They ridicule each other and accuse each other of homosexuality. It seems to me that all a white man has to do, if he wants to stay home with his kids or break out of his stereotypical role in some other way, is decide that he doesn't mind being called a "pussy" or a "faggot". It's not like women are the ones who call them these things.

-- Anonymous, July 27, 2000

Gwen, I'm not sure that's necessarily true. Or at least, I'm not sure it's the only limiting factor.

The expectations run both ways. What do women whisper behind a person's back if she works all day and her husband stays home with the kids? Are they happy that the family has bent the gender stereotypes, or do they just assume that the guy can't find a job, or that he's something of a failure because he can't find employment that pays him more than his wife makes? At least in the offices I've worked in, women can be as vicious as men in that regard.

-- Anonymous, July 27, 2000

I think great strides have been made, but I still have to have a college degree to make the salary a man with a grade eight education can command. Women still make 60 cents on the man's dollar. Etc. I'm sure you've all heard these statistics. The question as it's originally phrased doesn't interest me much, and I'm glad we've redefined what we're talking about.

Personally, I don't work with a lot of men, since I work in arts administration, and the staff is overwhelmingly female. Presumably men won't work for our salaries.

WRT men who complain about how their earning power traps them in jobs they don't like, lots of people are trapped in jobs they don't like - it is not a white male affliction. I can feel sympathy, but I don't think their whiteness or maleness is necessarily to blame, just because those things allow them to, by and large, be trapped in better jobs than the rest of us.

I do agree that gender stereotypes can be as hard on men as they are on women, for all the reasons we've mentioned. I don't see how drowning John Wayne can be a bad thing - teaching boys that they can do whatever they like (including being nurses or stay-at- home Dads) is surely as important as teaching girls the same (including being scientists or CEOs). With a societal re-evaluation of women's roles, there must be a re-evaluation of men's roles as well; it's the necessary corollary.

-- Anonymous, July 27, 2000

Well, South Africa may be an exception in more than one respect. And things may have been tough for white men in recent years. But you have to bear in mind that South Africa had the worlds most bizarre and ultra-privileged system of employment and advancement and militarized protection for white men (especially Afrikaners) sustained over the last 60 years -- and many would argue 300 years, in fact since Jan van Riebeeck set foot on the shores of Table Bay. But I dont think theres any way we can separate out the particularities of race, gender and even class issues in answering a question like this. Generalizations are always slightly unconvincing when they are taken out of context. The hows and whys and whens of a young white man facing army conscription in a racist war of the 1980s and a young black man forced into exile in the 1980s and a young white man facing joblessness and possible emigration issues in the 21st century and a young black woman who is HIV+ under a government that doesnt believe that HIV is related to AIDS the specifics tell more of the story.

-- Anonymous, July 27, 2000

I think gwen makes a great point. Just as it's women who criticize each other for being fat, it's men who keep each other in line about being manly, not being a pussy, etc.

-- Anonymous, July 27, 2000

Women still make 60 cents on the man's dollar.

I work in computing and there is no way you can convince me the women around here make 60% of the men. And there's nothing stopping women from entering the ranks of computer programmers. So quityerbitching.

-- Anonymous, July 27, 2000

I saw a recent study cited in the New York Times saying that college educated women have come closer to parity with men -- something well over 80%. Not perfect but some progress. Those women without college degrees did not do quite as well when compared with non-college educated men.

-- Anonymous, July 27, 2000

How do you know 80-some percent is not perfect? In a study of never married people wage parity was found to be 99%. The overall numbers are going to be skewed by the fact that women, more often than men, abandon their careers in favor of staying home with the kids. (Or never plan a career in the first place.)

-- Anonymous, July 27, 2000

Or do plan careers, but they're in sectors where concepts like "helping people" end up meaning "accepting lower pay".

Of course female computer programmers make the same wages as male computer programmers. The '60 cents on the man's dollar' thing (which I'm still reading articles quoting as fact - I'm happy if it's up to 80 cents now) is based on all women's wages and all men's wages, was my understanding, and yes, women leaving jobs early would skew the stats, but how many stay-at-home wives are there, really, these days (other than those married to computer programmers). Statistically (I'm really asking, I have no idea). Nearly everybody I know, both halves of the couple work.

Telling me to quit my bitching because I could have worked in computing is a little simplistic, and, also, strangely amusing considering that's part of how I make my living (designing web pages, not programming).

-- Anonymous, July 27, 2000

Every place I have worked (except for 2 small businesses) has had extremely strict and unbiased guidelines for determining salary, promotions and raises. Few U.S. companies want to be accused of paying minorities and women less than the white men. Lawsuits and bad publicity follow. Some companies must even report their HR practices to various agencies, depending on the nature of their business and their ties to the government or the demands of their stockkholders. Of course, some don't. This company ,for instance. The link requires a NY Times password. A truly disturbing story on so many levels.

My personal and anecdotal experience has been that the females I know consistently made more money and found employment more easily than the males up until the whole technology explosion. Perhaps this was unique to the whole gen x experience. There was a span of about 10 years when the gen x males were considered mostly unemployable. The gen x females weren't faring much better, but they were able to get non-food service gigs and were more likely to be trusted with responsibility. Without the booming technology industry pretty much everyone I know would still be washing dishes or filing papers or working for peanuts at bookstores or record stores, degree or no degree. Male or female. Though the women would be more likely to be the shift managers, because they were considered less likely to dip into the till.

I dunno. It's all very complicated, but it seems difficult to address economic power as it applies to women and minorities without addressing class issues (yes, I know that no one believes in 'class issues' anymore--I still do) and inequitable distribution of wealth in general. When 10 percent of the world's population holds 95 percent of the world's wealth, does it really matter what gender or race the 10 percent is?

-- Anonymous, July 27, 2000

The AFL-CIO website has an interesting page with statistics on women in the workforce. In the U.S., women now make up about 45% of the workforce, but they are more likely to work in temp. jobs or only work part time. They also mention that 99% of all women in the U.S. do work at some point in their lives.

-- Anonymous, July 27, 2000