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One of the most frustrating parts of attempting to discuss White Male Privilege (WMP) with oh say white males is the 
denial of the fact that it exists and it is an intrinsic characteristic woven into the fabric of our society. It is nice when another study is done (adding to the large body of work) to show its existence and how thoroughly embedded it is in our culture. A big hat-tip to Sociological Images for the leg work (which I am reposting it its entirety) in condensing the study originally found on Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.
In a post at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, Steve Rendall and Zachary Tomanelli investigated the racial breakdown of the book reviewers and authors in two important book review venues, the New York Times Book Review and C-SPAN’s After Words. They found that the vast majority of both reviewers and authors were white males.
“Overall, 95% of the authors and 96% of the reviewers were non-Latino white (compared to 65% of the population).
Women accounted for between 13 and 31% of the authors and reviewers:
This is some hard data showing that white men’s ideas are made more accessible than the ideas of others, likely translating into greater influence on social discourse and public policy. These individuals certainly don’t all say the same thing, nor do they necessarily articulate ideas that benefit white men, but a greater diversity of perspectives would certainly enrich our discourse.”
It is really hard to argue against the substantive data collected about the influence of WMP on our culture and how it conditions us to think and act. As the quoted material says, just imagine if more people were able to influence our culture how much more rich and diverse our culture would be.
Sociological Images always has something disturbing or depressing. Today is a little of both.
“This also nicely illustrates male privilege in the last panel, and how the worst problems with street harassment often don’t come from the men on the street harassing you – but rather from the prevailing attitudes among society/other men that it’s something you should welcome.”
*sigh*
Part of the problem when dealing with the issues of Rape and Rape Culture are the implicit messages that are built into our patriarchal culture. Full marks to Scotland for starting to tease out one of the threads that holds us back from seeing women as people instead of members of the sex class.
One of the neat features of a model is that it allows you to strip down the gloss and inessential features that can sometimes clutter arguments and details about a particular topic; in the case of this post the prevalence of the Patriarchy. I am certainly not part of the Blamatariat yet, but I feel that I am moving across the spectrum toward a more informed, knowledgeable state of affiars.
There has been a furour on the Intertoobz as of late over the decision (now repealed) by Blizzard, the makers of World of War Craft, to attach players real names to their characters in game and while posting in the game related forum. The frantic typing and posting resounded across the Net, there are threads about this topic everywhere from Pharyngula to Shakesville.
The questions and concerns raised range from harassment on forums to IRL stalking and worse. A jumping off point in one of the threads took me here to a brilliant post by Nattie on a thread from MetaFilter. I suggest you go read the entire post with the idea in mind that this could be viewed as a primer for understanding Patriarchy 101. To the uninitiated the patriarchy can seem a little bit of a fuzzy concept due to the implicit and ingrained nature of how the P functions. In light of potential learning from this piece I have added hyperlinks to the Shakesville Feminism 101 section for those seeking more illumination than the limited scope provided here.
Nattie says [italics, underlining and links, mine]:
“* If you do post a picture (I never did) people either go nuts over how hot you are and won’t leave you alone –– and the guys that perv on you treat you in a condescending way because hot=stupid; having to hear that shit addressed to other girls on Vent was really infuriating and uncomfortable — OR they make a point of constantly telling you how ugly you are and won’t leave you alone. There is no middle ground. They either want to fuck you or deride you. And it actually doesn’t matter how hot or how ugly you are, either; the hottest girls will get called ugly (and FAT, ALWAYS FAT), and the ugliest girls still have to deal with lonely guys who aren’t superficial. Any time the girl posts something thereafter, people will comment on her appearance, even though it has nothing to do with whatever is being discussed.”
The italicized statements are nothing new to the advanced Blamer, but to the uninitiated parsing them out can be
No objectification going on here. We are most definitly not appealing to the male gaze.
very illuminating. For instance, the options faced in the the statement A)”oh I you’re sooo hot I want to frak you” or B)”oh you’re so ugly, you are not soooo not”frakkable”. Both “choices” revolve around the idea that the primary feature of a female is her beauty as viewed by how attractive she is to the male gaze. Not the content of her character, not her opinions, not her factual claims, but just how she looks. So female worth is judged by how good of a sexual object they appear to be.
This ugly fact has a one to one correspondence to the real meatspace world. Women deal with this 24/7,all the time, on all stations full on assault on their identity as human beings.
“* If you ask someone to leave you alone, you’re a stuck up bitch. That means you always have to be nice to everyone. This was both unfair and character-building, because now I’m really good at talking to and disengaging from socially ill-adjusted people without hurting their feelings.”
Again, the social expectations of women are quite explicit and when you go against them you get flayed to the bone because you are not properly performing your sanctioned role. Since when should a person have to ‘be nice’ or be anything all the time or be labelled a ‘stuck up bitch’ (insert your gendered insult here)? As a woman you get to deal with this as well, just because you happen to possess a double X chromosome. There are severe repercussions when Patriarchally sanctioned behaviour expectations are not followed.
* Some people think anything you do or say is attention-whoring, even if you never wanted the attention. If a guy makes a joke in a forum post, he’s a funny guy. If a girl makes a joke in a forum post, she’s an attention whore. If a guy makes a good argument in a forum post, he’s a smart guy. If a girl makes a good argument in a forum post, she’s doing it for attention. She’s ESPECIALLY an attention whore if people like her or agree with her.
* Similarly, people assume that the only reason anyone likes you is because they’re one of your fanboys. So people don’t genuinely think women or funny or make good arguments, they’re just fanboys. If other girls like you, then it’s because women form cliques — even if in the previous breath they were saying that women are all catty and hate each other.
Do you notice the pattern of choices that is become prevalent? Women are presented with two choices both equally shitty that do nothing to further her own autonomy or identity. You can choose either one patriarchally approved stereotype or the other, both damage you as a person.
“A sizable portion of [the population in general]gamers are racist. (Sexism, racism, and homophobia are what make me most uncomfortable about the gaming community; in a serious way I feel more connection to gamers than any other group, so this pains me. Plenty of gamers are none of these things and I love them to death, but I think those same gamers realize what a huge problem it is in the community in general.) An even bigger portion of gamers are just not very racially sensitive — they’ll use “nigger” or “Jew” a lot, for example, even if they don’t think they actively feel anything against those groups, because they think it’s funny. In the same way that saying stuff is “gay” is especially pronounced in the gamer community, even the people that say slurs ironically or by force of habit inadvertently make actual bigots in the gaming community feel empowered because they don’t realize other people don’t mean those things like they do. It is much more common and acceptable to express racist opinions in the gaming community than society at large.”
The quote really speak for itself, but the tacit acceptance of gendered insults and racist putdowns only reinforces the negative stereotypes that have such corrosive effects in our culture.
I have barely scratched the surface of all the issues that could be covered, just with the quoted materials. Frighteningly there is almost a 1:1 correspondence to what happens in the gaming world vs. what goes on in the real world, it is just a little easier to see in the gaming world because people are less constrained by social norms and morality in the mostly anonymous world of gaming. (or shorter the vile sexism and batshite crazy stupidity is easily observed)
A big thank you to Shakesville for having such a comprehensive FAQ for dealing with the multitudinous issues that this particular world of warcraft blip brought up.
Hey, if it worked in 1955 why shouldn’t it apply now…?
*headdesk*
I write this post out of a shared personal experience with a religiously addled graduate from university. Let’s call him, to be charitable, douche-nozzle or DN for short. As with most of the risibly sanctimonious religious turds out there DN believes he has a relevant, informed opinion on a myriad of topics. It must be nice to be able to answer the hard questions of life with the unctuous “goddidit” and not be laughed out of the room by your peers. DN seems to think that he can bloviate on about Especially Easy to understand topics ones Feminism and Post Modernism. Now DN, with his above average score in verbal rectaltude decided to strike up a conversation with my partner based on the All-Star thesis that “feminists have “gone too far” and really need to take a hard look at the direction of their movement.
Feminism has gone too far… Oh ya right! Magically, since DN was warming up to mansplain exactly how frakking peachy the womenz have it now. DN, despite a few inconvenient facts such as that the patriarchy, rape culture, rape, the pro-kyriarchy biased social, economic and political systems, not to mention ingrained cultural misogyny and….et cetera are still all going on full stream, began to explain how right the world was and how feminism had gone wrong. It was as if all the institutions that enslave, depreciate and and destroy women somehow disappeared, seemingly overnight and more importantly, are inconsequential because he is white and male and he frakking says so.
DN, even jebus knows you fail.
DN carries his privilege well. He is middle class and literally has both sides of the family falling over him to ensure a soft landing in what we like to call reality. One of his more egregious assumptions is that Intransigentia is just a mere girl and therefore does not have much going on in the grey matter. Not many things can be further from the truth. She possesses a quick wit and near encyclopedic memory of facts and argumentation which she often calls upon to dissect and dismember fuckwittery of a much greater calibre than DN could ever hope to offer.
DN got lucky though, as my parter was bereft of sleep and had a magnitude 8 headache. Even with her size 8 brain packed into a size five skull she put an end DN’s douchery. Simply by asking which feminist authors he was referring to and to back up his claim with some sort of reasonable example. It was amazing to watch how fast the conversation shifted.
“Uh-oh this one uses her lady-brain for more than just house cleaning, praising jebus, and bearing children to brainwash in order to propagate the frakking bloody car-wreak that is christianity.” – I’m sure this didn’t cross DN’s mind, but I’d like to give his withered rationality at least the benefit of the doubt.
I look forward to the day when the Feminist movement is no longer necessary. I work toward furthering the rights of women and educating people about the assumptions they take for granted, that necessarily hurt women but remain unexamined. There is a long way to go, I just hope we can take another step by firmly slapping down the mealy mouthed privileged mendacity that regularly spews forth from mouths of people like DN.
I try and start my Saturdays on a positive note. I look at the CBC, a few Science Blogs usually something upbeat is going on. Not today though.
With a hat-tap to Shakesville, I excerpt from the linked article:
“Acid attacks and wife burnings are common in parts of Asia because the victims are the most voiceless in these societies: They are poor and female. The first step is simply for the world to take note, to give voice to these women.” Since 1994, a Pakistani activist who founded the Progressive Women’s Association (www.pwaisbd.org) to help such women “has documented 7,800 cases of women who were deliberately burned, scalded or subjected to acid attacks, just in the Islamabad area. In only 2 percent of those cases was anyone convicted.”
I post one of 12 pictures representative of thousands of women who have been permanently disfigured by acid attacks by men. When women are not people, when they cannot speak or be heard, when they have no rights…
Saira Liaqat, 26, poses for the camera as she holds a portrait of herself before being burned, at her home in Lahore, Pakistan, Wednesday, July 9, 2008. When she was fifteen, Saira was married to a relative who would later attack her with acid after insistently demanding her to live with him, although the families had agreed she wouldn't join him until she finished school. Saira has undergone plastic surgery 9 times to try to recover from her scars.
They get male centric justice.
Michal Coren gets it wrong even at the best of times. I can always count on the Sun Newspaper to annoy me enough to blog about the inanity that fills its pages.
I really want to agree at least once with Coren before I die and with the opening sentence of his article I though today would be the day.
“These are sad days for the American right.” intones Coren.
My eyebrow twitched, would this be the day? Naa… It would be easier to smash an atom with my shoe then agree with Mr.Coren. Case in point – next sentence (italics mine):
“The Republicans have no credible leader, Rush Limbaugh has conquered the art of perennial outrage and the men in smart suits and women in shrinking skirts at Fox try to outdo each other in their use of hyperbole.”
Very nice ass-hat. ‘Smart’ men and sexualized women. Isn’t institutionalized misogyny great?
“The tragedy is that all this comes at a time when we have one of the most worrying presidents in American history. Then, just as we think it can’t get any worse, comes the dream ticket of Sarah Palin and Carrie Prejean, both former beauty queens and both proving that jokes about beauty queens are somewhat justified.”
Ah, yes. Beauty queens are always stupid. Check. Throwing a “somewhat justified” does not fix the message. Just like after punching someone in the face then saying ‘sorry’ does not mitigate the initial transgression.
“Actually she is an ordinary, nice woman blessed with beauty, a devoted husband and a good family. It really should end with that. But no.”
Bra-vo! She should be constantly pregnant, barefoot and in the kitchen too. Sex class! Back to the galley with you and make me a sam’ich bitch.
“Palin wants power and is willing to close her eyes to the facts as she marches forward in glorious denial. Perhaps most chilling is how so many conservatives refuse to accept the obvious and twist into awful shapes trying to justify the woman’s failings.”
The ‘facts’: You are a woman and should never ever aspire to power. The public sphere is not your domain and how dare you even contemplate running for the highest office in the land. How could the Right even think of backing a female candidate? Patriarchally speaking, we have not gotten past the archetypal feminine “built in” flaws! The horror.
“Her daughter Bristol’s pregnancy,[…] Yet, where was your relationship with your daughter, one that would have indicated to you in numerous ways that the girl was hiding and doing something that was wrong?”
Because mother daughter relationships are always open and communicative, if only you’d just play your role and tend to the children. I guess Mr.Palin does not get the whole ‘girl’ thing and could not spend the extra time strengthening his role and bond with her daughter, his culpability is never questioned, while hers is immediately put front and center.
Awesome. Could this patriarchal values 101 lesson get any worse? Of course it does, the ass hattery kicks into overdrive as Coren trashes Carrie Prejean. What follows is his cogent response against her arguments(insipid as they my be). Hmmm…calculating the possibility my previous sentence being true…err… did I mention the smashing atom thing with my shoe… ?
“Carrie Prejean is an even more frightening example of right-wing hypocrisy. Her now famous defence of genuine marriage — only between a man and a woman [Wow, parroting the hetronormative standard. You go girl!]. […] she has posed almost-naked for photographs and that she made at least one graphic sex tape for a former boyfriend. We’re also supposed to believe that her recent relationships with young athletes have all been entirely celibate.”
What?! Pose nekkid for pictures? How dare you, whore! You are a public figure and you go off parading your sluty-slut-slut-lifestyle for all to see? No, no. You keep your sexuality ensconced in terms of patriarchal expectations or it will be a extra slut-shaming lightning round for the likes of you, after-all it isn’t your sex life for heavens sake.
“What she does on her own time is her business, but a moral position demands consistency and so should the response of social conservatives. This woman has even less right to speak for the American right than does Sarah Palin. And that, I’m afraid, is something I thought I’d never say.”
If only the italicized phrase applied to women…
So the calculus is in. If you have taken nekkid photos of yourself, and/or had sex with more than one partner (outside of marraige…ohhh the vapours take me now) as a woman that is an automatic disqualification from being in the ‘moral’ category.
The burning nuclear stupid burns! No Mr.Coren the morality of women is not intrinsically tied to their ranking in the Sex class. Women are autonomous beings capable of thinking outside of their imposed gender roles.
You should try it sometime.
I do not endorse what Mrs.Palin or Ms.Prejean represent, it is social conservatism of the most repugnant variety. Would it be too much to ask that we tackle their arguments as opposed to their gender?
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…