Are some male privileges also benevolent sexism?
• tanglethis, on July 4th, 2008 at 12:49 am Said: Kaj et. al., One of the reasons that I think “privilege” works so well as a way of describing benefits of a dominant class (whites, males, able bodies, etc.) is because (to me, at least) the term denotes the benefit of power. And that’s really what it comes down to, nearly all of the time: power, agency, mobility. So, if women are expected to be sensitive (a supposedly “weaker” trait of the “weaker” sex) but men are not, that is certainly harmful to men (by denying them expression human emotion) but it also maintains the myth of men as impervious to emotion (i.e. stronger). If women may wear feminine (read: vulnerable) clothing but men may not, then men continue to avoid association with shoes that destabilize your walking and clothes that put your form on display. In these instances that you gave about, it’s true that women have cultural access to certain traits that men are not supposed to have, but it would be wrong to call this priv
