benlehman

Apparently, my friend Barry was the guy who wrote the "male privilege" list that floats about the internet from time to time. He's reflecting, in this post, about how much the list as written sucks, and how he might do it differently given the chance.

But, really, the point of this post is this comment, which is amazingly insightful, I think.

I think the fundamental underlying reality is that you cannot partially construct or deconstruct a gender system. Such systems are, by definition, closed. The roles they ordain and maintain are synergistic and interdependent. You cannot successfully introduce change to a part without transforming the whole.

Feminist theory recognizes this as a general principle but has achieved neither consensus nor synthesis on how to apply this insight. This shouldn’t be surprizing since Feminism historically has been defined as the advocacy of the rights and interests of women. It could hardly be otherwise since Feminism emerged at a time when women were disenfranchised and had little to no legal status separate from their fathers or husbands. It would be a fantastic presumption to expect that women engaged in a struggle for full personhood should divide their energies equally between the advocacy of their own rights and the liberation of men from the warrior/drone paradigm, particularly when so few men seemed interested in such liberation.

Never the less, it’s impossible to envision a society in which women are freed from the strictures of sexism while the condition of men remains essentially unchanged. I think the experience of three decades since the re-emergence of Feminism as a major socio-political force amply illustrates that, by itself, Feminist advocacy will not necessarily lead to a general re-ordering of gender roles rather than to a limited re-ordering of privilege.

I have no simple solution for this paradox. I am of the opinion though, that the uncritical application of paradigms of class exploitation, borrowed from radical political economic theories, has hampered the developement of any possible solution. What has been often overlooked in the enthusiatic embrace of these tropes for their apparent analytical clarity and organizational utility is that the theoretical systems which they are drawn from base themselves on the concept of class war leading to an apocalyptic show down. If the logic of these tropes is pursued consistently, the result isn’t a deconstruction of existing gender roles but their reification into hostile camps along the paradigm of warfare.

It comes down to whether or not you believe men as well as women have something to gain from the advance of Feminist ideas. If you don’t believe so, then the concerns I raised above won’t matter. If you take the affirmative view, we have a lot of work to do and no has yet drawn up a blueprint.