Male Privilege

My husband sent me this in a text message a couple days ago and I'm not sure whether he meant it seriously or just to push my buttons because he knows I'm an ultra feminist. Regardless though that then sparked me making a large rebuttal to the post and I want to go ahead and make a point about it because I am sick and tired of seeing this image and similar ones used in arguments.

"Male privilege" makes no sense to me because there are facets of life in which men are the privileged but there are ones in which women are the privileged. I don't like being upset with an entire gender because of one or the other being "privileged". The problem with images and posts like the one above is that whoever it is that is trying to prove they have it worse cherry picks their issues while ignoring anyone else's societal problems. And in most cases, the content of the image doesn't actually hold any merit.

Combat Deaths and Industrial Deaths/Accidents

This is strictly based on career choices made of your own free will. More men than women make the conscious decision to fight in the military or to work dangerous industrial jobs. You know the risk yet you still choose to go in to the field. Only 14% of active duty is female and in various industrial career options women occupy 5-20%, so of course there are more male deaths. That isn't a matter of privilege, that is a matter of personal choice.

Winner of Custody

This one sparked a bit of a debate but I will shorten it. The American custody system is broken. It should be equal split custody between the two parents unless you can prove one parent to be unfit. However that isn't what this statistic is about, it's about in the case of full custody, which parent is granted that? What I said is my uterus, my choice. If I volunteer my body to grow a human life for nine months and then spend several hours in labor to then push a child out of my vagina or undergo surgery and get cut open, I am going to raise that child. I think that is far from perfect but I think to assume automatic custody to the man who did nothing but deposit sperm is even more flawed than what it already is.

Suicides

That is not a matter of privilege. Privilege is a matter of institutionalized power, suicide is a matter of mental health. There is a slight societal issue here being that men with depression are more likely to go unrecognized and untreated, therefore resorting to suicide. Why is that, you ask? Because depression is something associated with feelings and emotion, which is weakness and vulnerability. Women get diagnosed, men don't. This is a male problem, but it is an immediate result of a female one and is not an example of female privilege.

Homicide Victims

I at first wrote this off as the only one on the list that was valid, but the more I think about it I have reevaluated that. This may be true but you have to think, women often are afraid to walk alone in certain places in certain hours, while men don't have that fear pressing on their mind as much. For this reason we are put in less bad situations and protect ourselves. That covers random homicides, and that is what most of these obviously are. As you will see below, when we are referring to actual personal targeted homicides, this statistic is inaccurate.

But things like this image of course aim to do nothing but make men the victim to stop the big bad feminists from fighting our fight. Here are some more statistics to take a look at.

• 1 in 3 women as opposed to 1 in 4 men, are victims of domestic violence
• 1 in 5 women as opposed to 1 in 7 men, are victims of rape
• 19.3 million women as opposed to 5.1 million men have been stalked in their lifetime
• 72% of all murder suicides involve an intimate partner; of which 94% of the victims are women
• 9 of 10 rape victims in 2003 were female
• According to the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center, 99% of female and 85% of male victims were raped by a man
• Women may work longer than men to receive the same promotions and benefits
• Only 53% of employers provide some form of pay during a maternity leave

Sources:

http://www.ncadv.org/learn/statistics

https://www.rainn.org/statistics

http://www.barcc.org/information/facts/stats

https://collegetimes.co/women-workplace-statistics/