Do men need to check their privilege? | FACTUAL FEMINIST — Transcript

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1. 0:00Do men need to check their privilege? Gender activists tell us that men carry around with
2. 0:05them an invisible knapsack of advantage. Well, is this true and is it the whole story? Let’s
3. 0:11check the facts. Coming up next on the Factual Feminist.
4. 0:17If you are willing to cherry pick, stretch the truth a bit, and suppress counterevidence,
5. 0:22you can easily make it seem like women are the have-nots in our society. You point to
6. 0:26the wage gap, the glass ceiling. You focus on women’s vulnerability to body shaming,
7. 0:32sexual objectification, mansplaining, street harassment, intimate partner violence. Before
8. 0:39long you will have constructed a full-scale patriarchy. And we have hundreds of women’s
9. 0:45groups who do just that—they specialize in persuading us that Venus is victimized
10. 0:51and Mars is privileged. But here is the problem. Women’s advocacy
11. 0:56groups tend to exaggerate the plight of Venus and ignore the troubles on Mars. As I have
12. 1:01tried to show in earlier segments of this series, most of the standard feminist injustice
13. 1:07statistics are exaggerated or just plain wrong. It not true that women are being cheated out
14. 1:13of 23 percent of their salaries or that 1 in five will be victims of sexual assault.
15. 1:19And it’s also the case that, in many critical domains, women are faring far better than
16. 1:25men. Let’s consider a few:
17. 1:28In education, it is women who are the privileged sex. At every level of education—from preschool
18. 1:34to graduate school—and across all ethnic and class lines, women get better grades,
19. 1:39win most of the honors and prizes, and are far more likely to go to college. Today, women
20. 1:45earn a majority of BAs and advanced degrees. Our schools do a much better job educating
21. 1:51women than men.
22. 1:53Now look at the workplace. Women’s groups focus a lot of attention on people at the
23. 1:58pinnacle of achievement—CEOs of Fortune 500 corporations, tenured physics professors
24. 2:04at MIT, U.S. Senators—and they are right to say that there are too few women. But look
25. 2:10what happens when you consider the entire workforce. There may be a tiny handful of
26. 2:15women—but the lethal professions are largely a male preserve. As my favorite dissident
27. 2:21feminist, Camille Paglia, has noted: "It is overwhelmingly men who do the dirty, dangerous
28. 2:28work of building roads, pouring concrete, laying bricks, tarring roofs, hanging electric
29. 2:34wires, excavating natural gas and sewage lines, cutting and clearing trees, and bulldozing
30. 2:39..."
31. 2:40So it’s no surprise that the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that every year about 5,000
32. 2:47Americans die each year in workplace accidents—92 percent of them men. We hear about the Fortune
33. 2:54500 CEOs, but what about the unfortunate 4,600? Alongside male salaries, perhaps some mention
34. 3:04should be made of male sacrifice.
35. 3:08Whenever perturbed gender warriors draw up lists of male advantages, they always mention
36. 3:14men’s freedom from fear of being attacked. It’s true that women are much more likely
37. 3:19to be victims of rape and sexual assault. But men are much more likely to be victims
38. 3:23of violent crime as a whole: Consider Campus crime--men may need safe spaces
39. 3:30more than women--according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics: Men are twice as likely
40. 3:34to be victims of a violent crime on campus. Look at the overall Murder: Of 12,253 murder
41. 3:43victims in 2013, 78 percent were men. Even on the Internet, men face as much or
42. 3:51more bullying than women. According to Pew Research, More women than men are sexually
43. 3:56harassed (7% women and 4% men), but men are the primary targets of threats (10% men compared
44. 4:00to 6% of women). Let's continue: Here are more facts that challenge
45. 4:02the male privilege mantra: Suicide: 77.9% were male, 22.1% female .
46. 4:09Incarceration: 93.3% of federal inmates are male and even when men and women commit the
47. 4:14same crime and have similar criminal histories, men receive 63 percent longer prison sentences
48. 4:20on average. Homelessness: it’s estimated that more than
49. 4:2460% of homeless individuals are male. Combat: 85 percent of active duty soldiers
50. 4:31are men. Though there are many women serving in the armed services, fewer than 8 percent
51. 4:36profess a desire to engage in combat. If you visit a veteran’s hospital or rehabilitation
52. 4:42center, male privilege is not the first idea that comes to mind.
53. 4:47And now for the mother of all gender gaps—life expectancy : Women’s average life expectancy
54. 4:54is nearly 5 years longer than men. In sum: men must be the only oppressor class
55. 4:59in history who are less educated, more victimized, and shorter lived than those they oppress—and
56. 5:08who have claimed society’s gritty, dangerous jobs their exclusive preserve.
57. 5:12The Factual Feminists verdict: Modern life is a complicated mix of burdens and benefits
58. 5:20for each sex. Men and women enjoy distinctive advantages and face distinctive challenges.
59. 5:26So if men have to check their privilege, then so do women.
60. 5:31But why play this game? Why do so many activists want to promote gender resentment? Men and
61. 5:38women are not two opposing teams competing for some trophy. We are in this together.
62. 5:44Our fates are intimately connected. As one wit has observed, “Nobody will ever win
63. 5:49the battle of the sexes. There’s too much fraternizing with the enemy.”
64. 5:54My advice: Let’s dispense with the bitter rhetoric about male privilege and get on with
65. 5:58the fraternizing ... and sororitizing.
66. 6:02Do you think one sex is more privileged than the other? Or do you agree that it’s a complicated
67. 6:08mix? Let me know in the comments section below. I invite you to subscribe to this series,
68. 6:13follow me on Twitter, and like me on Facebook. And remember—before telling a man to check
69. 6:19his privilege, check your facts. Thank you for watching the Factual Feminist.