Male Privilege, Blaming, and Whining - Dan Tres

Male Privilege, Blaming, and Whining - Omi Note

By Dan Tres Omi

Contrary to popular belief, most men I interact with actually talk about relationships. They talk about what they want, what they don't like, who they are seeing, and other things that the mainstream media seems to mythologize. We might not make an evening of it and we may not come to huge life changing revelations, but we talk about it. We might not come up with solutions but we learn much about one another. Do I wish we can talk about it some more? Sure I do, but it gets done. We don't always have to reach a logical conclusion or find a solution to someone's problems if there is one.

One thing I take issue with and I am very adamant about is privilege. Male privilege affords men several rights and statuses that are denied women. These rights and statuses are across the board and can be found in religion, work, school, and even our social circles. While male privilege in religion, work and school are things that need to be tackled on a personal and a political level, the ones we can fix much faster is how we interact in our day to day social interactions.I often find men who are hurt or were hurt by women blame women for mistreating "good" men. I use to believe in this "Woe is me, the good man" Bible. I blamed women, even the good ones, for hurting good men for one reason or another. I blamed part of the "relationship problems" between men and women on those women who "mistreated" good men. The crazy part is that I often hear people, both men and women, make this statement as if it were fact. Personally, I find this excuse to be tremendously ridiculous.

You heard the story, "women mess up good men by mistreating them, that's why alot of men dog women." As if men or women need an excuse to mistreat one another. It again places the relationship problems we have on women. When talking to my male friends and they bring up this tale of woe, I laugh. Pretty much, they sound like whiny children. I don't mean to belittle or demean someone's emotions. To be honest, it would be better to say, "You know brother, she really hurt my feelings...." That would be more honest and gets to the actual heart of the matter.

Sometimes we don't know why people hurt us. We expect other people to get hurt and when it happens to us, it comes as quite a shock. It's easier for us to try to create ideas and reasons as to why people hurt us emotionally when in the end, we might not have any clue. Making assumptions don't help. But to try to explain away all relationship problems by blaming all women for something that happened to you personally its not productive.

So how does male privilege come into this?

We "rebound." We don't rebound because we are detached creatures. Men are just as emotional as women we just tend to bury those emotions. We rebound because we can. In almost all levels and areas in our society, men outnumber women. We can easily find another young lady to date. In most cases, a man just has to have a pulse to get a date. However, the numbers do not imply privilege. What implies privilege is that society (actually people) allows for men to date any desired number of women at a time whereas a woman cannot do the same. It is frowned upon if a woman dates several men at one time. As a matter of fact, it is not taboo for men to sleep with several women at the same time even if he is honest about it.

I often hear my male friends say "I'm a good guy, I don't rob or kill or been to jail." The first thing I say is "don't give yourself props for something you are SUPPOSED to be doing." It is also important to note that 98% of the rest of the population isn't robbing or killing or going to jail.I also explain that maybe you are not that exceptional. I also ask if this person knows whether the women who "scorned" him was actually feeling him like that. Sometimes people realize that the person their dating is not up to standard. That might come as quite a shock to some of you brothers, but it's true.

That's where male privilege rears it's ugly head. As men, we feel entitled. "What's wrong with me?" we ask. "I'm have a good job, college educated, don't cause any trouble, etc..." "Why did she leave me?" Boo hoo. Ironically, we are quick to blame women in high flying careers for being "too" successful (whatever that means) which we erroneously believe is why they can't find a decent mate. Yet when we are in the same predicament, we blame women again. Well, brother, you might not be all that.In the end, stop whining and get over it. There is always room for improvement and we can't always win. There is no need to blame an entire gender for it.

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