Three Reasons Men are Sexist and White People are Racist Without Realizing It

You’re not you when you’re playing Monopoly. I remember the first time playing Monopoly with (against?) my family, and how, in my mind, I secretly celebrated my deviousness with a barely contained grin when I was winning. Yet I felt especially frustrated when I was losing, especially if I thought I was being treated unfairly, and frowned, looked at the floor, and took it personally. I learned to get real cutthroat, especially against my younger brother and sister, who were newer at it, saying “Sorry” to them as I took things from them. I believe I was apologizing half out of guilt, half out of politeness. In essence, I was playing the game it was supposed to be played, but it brought out a part of me – the merciless part – that I wish to see as foreign. At least I realized I was playing a game. [1]

"Alright, you win, Steve, but since you did not cut me a break in this game, don't expect me to cut you a break ever again in life ever!!"

1. Social Systems Shape Individuals

Cut from "just a game" to different social situations, ones that brought out parts of me that I later looked back on and cringed: the elementary-school playground, where I joined the teasers against the teasees; violent video games and rap messageboards where I would laugh about killing people or write gorily detailed battle raps in a tournament; and Facebook, where I learned to be a gladiator in a coliseum of self-righteous debates, trying to beat my opponent into submission while attacking their honor. I cringe now, but at the time, doing these things were accepted, or in some cases, expected.

And now I find myself doing the “adult version” of these things. Institutions, in fact, work the same way as games. Working as a therapist for a social work agency, I was expected to turn up my compassionate behavior. Yet to get in with the fellow therapists, I learned to laugh about some of our client's eccentricities in the break room, despite my initial reluctance and the bad taste it would sometimes leave in my mouth.

Aspiring politicians and underworld criminals are warned about the consequences of their work cultures constantly, aptly using the "game" metaphor. Mr. Smith goes to Washington D.C. a man with a moral compass, but more often than not, he “plays the game,” under enormous pressure from his peers. Other occupations work this way too, whether they are corrupt police departments or high-stakes and cutthroat occupations like law and banking firms. Criminals follow a code, and sometimes when someone is killed it is "just how the game works; you do x, you get capped." To a less extreme extent, work cultures might bring out juvenile clique-behavior, cattiness, juvenile jokes, or other behaviors. Working at my Dad’s construction job with a bunch of Black men, I learned from the workers what it meant to playfully “throw shade,” and learned to throw some myself.

Why are all these bills just jokes about my mother's appearance? WHAT DID I DO??

What all these have in common with Monopoly is that they are all something larger than ourselves in which we can participate, and there is a notable absence of some behaviors and the presence of others are accepted and expected. Why? Is it the system, or is it the individual? It’s both, in relation to each other. The system creates the rules which guide behavior, yet individuals chose whether or not they have the audacity to challenge those rules in a consistent manner. [2]

2. We're Playing the Game of Privilege

There are larger invisible social systems that perform the very same way; America has its own "workplace culture". Enter the concept of “Male Privilege.” It is a game, but its rules are invisible; like the presence of pressure to act in corrupt ways in politics, both men and women are pressured to look and act according to their gender (Try wearing a dress all day tomorrow, my fellow men, and see what happens when you break the rules). The invisible pressure acts as path of least resistance that, like the rules to Monopoly, encourages some behaviors out of us as accepted or expected, while discouraging others. 

So Privilege is like a game of Monopoly we are all playing. Unlike Monopoly, these rules are unwritten, though people have attempted to codify them. There are rules (men and women are put into boxes on how they can act and look), and there are behaviors and rewards either listed by beer advertisers, self-appointed masculinity bosses, and college bros (search the internet for "Man Laws") or listed by academic sociologists in a critical light (the Male Privilege Checklist). These rules are based on those expectations for femininity and masculinity we all learn about simply by observing the world, not necessarily being overtly taught, which are brought out by a male-dominated culture. 

Indeed, the source of violence against women here is that men had an unfair start to the game, and got to write the rules, in a way such that women's full potential is cut short. 

When double-standards exist, for existence, men do not recognize the same thing in themselves they would call "passion," "willfulness," "healthy stubbornness," or "assertiveness" in women. Instead, it is "bitchiness," and women are thus denied the humanity of having men see themselves in women- because women's positive urges of assertiveness and willfulness are not seen but instead replaced by something else, something alien (bitchiness) that they deny is ever in themselves, women are instead "the other". They are not worthy of the understanding and compassion men would give to themselves- "oh, he's just passionate about this" - "he's assertive, and doesn't bullshit, but tells it like it is". 

This denial of a woman's full humanity is a form of violence - as is any violation of a person's humanity, and has real consequences, such as economic injustice. A common experience shared between women and people of color is the inability to express their full range of emotions in front of men and white people without being "otherized" as "bitches" or "just being emotional/on her period," and "uppity" or "angry" Black people.

Unwritten double standards have a lot to do with whether or not people identify with us, and resemble us

"Male Privilege" does not mean that sometimes women receive better treatment than men. Hidden cameras have shown middle-class looking woman passed out on the sidewalk compared to homeless-looking male actor, and a beautiful woman stealing a bike compared to a man stealing a bike. The women and men here were pretending to do these things to see how differently bystanders would react, and the women received better treatment than the men. Though this usually occurs at the intersection of other forms of privilege: Body, Age and Class. These are subcategories of women, not women as a whole. The reactions in these videos where women were treated better also assume sexist attitudes that women are less capable then men. I will thus maintain the argument that women as a whole are oppressed by men, an individual woman's temporary beauty-privilege nonwithstanding.

“Male Privilege” does not mean that men are not ever victims; it means that there is no set of policies, attitudes, and practices which hurt their gender as a group, but there is for women. Congress is not passing bills that control men's bodies the way they are to women. Women as a whole are on the brunt end of the gender wage gap. Women are raped at a much higher rate then men. And while both men and women are victims of domestic violence, women are much more likely the victims of someone who is controlling in addition to violent [3]. Also, from 1992-2002, the Surgeon General has reported that "battering is the single largest cause of injury to American women [4];" and the Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that "about 4 in 5 victims of intimate partner violence were female from 1994 to 2010." And while it is true that homeless shelters for women outnumber those for men, if the data is controlled for whether the women have children in the shelter with them, single homeless women are more comparable to homeless men, and men tend to utilize mental health services less then women.

So it is true: individual men, and subgroups of men, can be disproportionately hurt by a policy here (a man whose condom breaks and whose girlfriend wants to keep the child, despite his wishes, unfortunately and unfairly is penalized by child support), an attitude and a practice there (a judge might give a mother sole custody of a child and hold a grudge against the father based on unfair assumptions), but because of men’s historical control over women as a group, there is no comparison. (For those not convinced, I urge you to keep reading on in this series.)

Male Privilege describes the unearned benefits every male is born with and enjoys just because he’s male and not female. When men act traditionally “masculine” and women act traditionally “feminine,” it is clear who gets the benefits and who does not. And just what are these benefits? The list, originally devised by Peggy McIntosh, is available online. Click here to read the Male Privilege Checklist.

As you can see, some of these benefits should be universal. As a man, I can feel confident that my sex is well-represented in the political system. As a man, I feel fairly certain that I will not have to worry about being raped (…as long as I stay out of jail). Ideally, the concept of "privilege" would not have to come into play, and I could rewrite those sentences so they started with “As a human,” instead of “As a man.”  These kind of benefits, which society could stand to change so that everyone has them, are what Peggy McIntosh calls positive benefits [5]. They are privileges desirable to all.

In a just society, these privileges would be rights or entitlements that everyone would enjoy, such as the feeling like your gender has nothing to do with getting that job you were eyeing. For instance, researchers have shown that when job applications with equal qualifications but different genders were sent out to high-end and cheap restaurants, the resumes with men’s names got more callbacks to the jobs that provided much more income. Hierarchies where men are placed over women are not desirable for anyone, because merit should determine power, not a person’s gender.

I know how the specials menu rotation works here better than anyone, I'll be damned if I don't get this job!

Some other benefits, however, are negative, and need to be dismantled if men wish to stop participating in the system which oppresses women. 

“The privilege not to listen to less powerful people” is one of those privileges. “Men do not have a great deal to lose in supporting Women’s Studies, but they don’t have a great deal to lose if they oppose it, either,” McIntosh writes as an example. 

The widespread dissemination of certain ideas and explanations can mean the difference between truth, justice, and security/survival on the one hand, and common (and dangerous) misconceptions, subtle oppression, and trauma/death on the other, for women and people of color. Yet when these ideas are only spoken about by certain voices, namely those presented by women and people of color or in elective college courses or are unique to some university programs, white people and men feel they can ignore these voices at no cost to their security. Polls which attest to this brand of privilege show that most white people believe police and prosecutors can be trusted, do not believe that Katrina has lessons to teach us about race in America or that the shootings of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown raise important issues about race. Likewise, police officers were asked in a study to take a survey called the “victim credibility scale,” and just about 20% said they were unlikely to believe a married woman who claims she has been raped by her husband. 

3. "But I’m One of The Good Guys”: Yeah, But You're Silent

You may well be a guy who doesn’t try to control or sexualize conversations with women. You may not even be the guy who tells random women on the street they look beautiful or to smile [6] [7], not realizing these are really patronizing and the product of male entitlement. In fact, all you need to do is be quiet about the game you’re playing. As in individual, you might not be sexist. But you’re born into an ongoing sick game with consequences that hurt women as a group. You're playing the game if you keep ignoring its presence. If you don't talk about it, the game will survive long after you die. [8]

Think of it like this: when you see an infant deer dead on the side of the highway, you might momentarily feel bad for the animal who died simply by crossing the road to try and keep up with its mother to look for more grazing land. The poor animals didn’t know any better, it was simply acting like the wild animal it is. After all, this earth was an animal kingdom before humans built roads and thus placed animal’s lives in jeopardy. When confronted with this bad feeling, you might say “well I should not feel guilty, because it’s not like I built the road or killed it myself.”

In the same vein, we are taught that sexism and racism only exist in individual acts of meanness or irrational fears of Black people that cause people to profile or shoot them. We do not look at the fact that, as in Monopoly, systems bring out certain behaviors, making them more prevalent than other ones. The same fear of Black men that makes unarmed Blacks more likely to get shot by police also allows me to get a home in a nice area when the Black man who just left the real estate agent's office eyeing the same property got turned down due to that fear.

When we look at the dead baby deer situation from a systemic perspective, we see that even though I as an individual did not kill the deer, I still benefit from a national highway system that allows for the inevitable deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent animals each year. Likewise, every disadvantage a person of color or a woman faces simply for being a person of color or a woman is tied up with my advantage as a white male. The following image documents this:

The oppression of people of color by police only exists vis-a-vis white leniency by police, and vice versa. Our society (not just the police) marks one skin color as bad and one as good. It's important to make the connections this image is showing, because it highlights the fact that in our current reality, the image on the right cannot exist without the image on the left existing. The two are inextricably tied up right now. I benefit from a system in which Black men are inevitably going to be oppressed, and if I am only taking benefits and not giving anything back, by working to change the system, my silence and inaction can only be taken as complicity.

My racism is not my meanness to, or my irrational fear of, Black people, but my benefiting from the existence of white supremacy that comes from these things. White supremacy had a role in decreasing my competition for that job, that house, that education.

Though intersections with race will be continued, I will be posting two more articles about the game of privilege with a focus on gender. Part two will be about how every man and women are police officers in this game and possess the choice to enforce its sexist rules or not, and how you can make it easier for people to break the rules. I do this in the hopes that we could all begin to be a mirror to the police officers, allowing them to realize their badges and the power they wield (as opposed to becoming a police officer yourself, walking around and yelling at people for being sexist); in essence, to wake other people up to this invisible game. Indeed, we each have our own inner officer that will be easier to detect after reading the article. Finally, I will post about ways in which we all contribute to rape culture.

Here is a link to part 2 in this series, "Three Reasons We Are All Gender Police"
Click here for part 3 in this series, "5 Ways We Unintentionally Contribute to Rape Culture"

[1] Adapted summary of Allan Johnson's Privilege, Power, Difference, and Us

[2] ibid
[3] Jacobson, N. S., and Gottman, J. M. (1998). When Men Batter Women: New Insights into
Ending Abusive Relationships, Simon and Schuster, New York.

[4] National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women, 1997
[5] Summary of Peggy MacIntosh's "White Privilege and Male Privilege"

[6] "Last year in college I took a polisci class on feminism, and one of our assignments one weekend, after having read a piece by [Miss Manners], was to go out and basically do something that you wouldn’t expect someone of your gender to do. Most girls did things like open the door for their boyfriends or pay for dinner, but I went out and told random men on the street to smile. I’m Southern and a manners stickler, but let me tell you that I never had so much fun being balls-out rude in my LIFE. You’d think I had actually said something like 'Did you know your penis is very, very small?' They were just appalled. I wouldn’t ever ADVISE doing the same thing, of course…but if you should ever happen to try it, in the interest of SCHOLARSHIP, you know…"

http://amptoons.com/blog/2004/09/30/smiling-at-strangers/

[7] "Smiling at strangers happens at that split-second when you glance into their face as you walk by. I didn’t even think before I smiled at that guy – it was instinctive. So, this incident. Rare? Yes. Sticking with me? Oh hell yes. It’s a risk game – I could smile at someone and they’ll smile back, and we’ll have a nice little moment of human contact (30%). Or, I’ll get no response (50%). Or a random sexual come on, hey baby, you wanna come out with me? (15%) Or he’ll come after me into a damn Blockbuster and I will have to spend fifteen minutes doing safety calculations and trying to figure out if there’s a rock or something I can grab, and glancing behind me as I walk home in the dark (5%). But you know what? That 5% does a whole lot to negate the 30% tiny happy feelings, and the 15% of random crap isn’t much fun either.

"And when I walk staring straight ahead, expressionless? No one bugs me. No one follows me, and no one thinks I might be their lay for the night. And I get to think about my grocery list, and what I have to do that day, and the books I’m reading, and who I’m going out to lunch with, and there’s very little in the way wondering if I’m going to get followed all the way back to my door, and what somebody might do if they’re a little nutty AND know where I live."

http://amptoons.com/blog/2004/09/30/smiling-at-strangers/

[8]  Summary of Allan Johnson's Privilege, Power, Difference, and Us