Is My Female Privilege Showing?! An Open Letter to Mark Saunders

Kelly Fox
Queer Issues Correspondent

LOOK AT ALL MY FEMALE PRIVILEGE!

Dear Mark Saunders,

Like most feminists on the internet, I initially responded to your tract, “18 Things Females Seem To Not Understand (Because, Female Privilege),” with LOL/SOB.

The wimminz r oppressing u with their female privilege? COOL STORY BRO.

But then I realized, with help from your brilliant, well-researched essay, that my initial reaction to the piece was simply the result of my deeply entrenched, unchecked female privilege! For all these years, I’ve only been checking my white, cis, able-bodied privilege, because I failed to see that I also had female privilege! Thanks to you, I now know that female privilege totally exists! That’s why every U.S. president in history is a woman! That’s why we make a dollar to the man’s 77 cents!That’s why male sexuality is vigilantly and violently policed! That’s why all those women in congress (because let’s face it, congress is alllll women) are fighting tirelessly to control male reproduction! That’s why outside every sex shop you see mobs of enraged women screaming, “LIFE BEGINS AT ERECTION!” and “MASTURBATION IS MURDER!” That’s why you can’t walk down the street without seeing billboard ads that sexually objectify, dehumanize, and commodify the male body! That’s why we’re always seeing women aggressively cat-calling and harassing men who are simply trying to walk down the street!

Quick question, Saunders, where is this matriarchal utopia that you describe?! Please PM me the address so I can move there immediately! Because it sure as hell ain’t where I’m living now.

Let’s peruse this insightful piece of MRA propaganda, shall we?

Let’s start by taking a look at perhaps your most offensive assertion: that “female privilege” is to blame for patriarchal gender roles and toxic masculinity culture, rather than the real culprit: THE PATRIARCHY. Your examples of both: unfair child custody rulings that are biased against men, and the soul-crushing, spirit-numbing “man up” masculinity culture that compels men to act like stoic robots, are issues that feminist are already working on. Unfair custody rulings that favor women in divorces derive from the gender essentialist notion that women are natural care-givers, and the commands that men “man up” stem from patriarchal gender socialization, two things feminists have been militating against since time immemorial.

Below are my favorite, and by favorite, I mean fuck the patriarchy, examples of “female privilege” from your manifesto. Many of them involve claiming that rape culture does not exist, which like all misguided attempts to disprove the existence of rape culture, confirms the reality of rape culture by perpetuating the rape culture myths that women make false rape accusations, that rape culture is a fiction created by feminists to demonize men, and that victims are to blame for their rapes.

1. Men are falsely accused of rape all the time! Right! Except that the odds of the average straight man in the U.S. being falsely accused of rape are 2.7 million to 1. You’re more likely to be killed by an asteroid, win the powerball, or become an NFL player than be falsely accused of rape.

One out of four women in the U.S. will be raped or sexually assaulted in her lifetime, but we’re privileged because we will never be “falsely accused” of rape? Fuck you.

2. Men are always seen as potential rapists! Pro-tip: if you don’t want women to think of you as a potential rapist, then maybe you should start by working to end rape by educating men not to rape women, rather than attacking women and blaming their “female privilege” for the existence of rape. Men are the people doing the majority of the raping in this country. Acknowledging this reality is not anti-male, its simply stating a fact.

3. Women are always “considered innocent by default” in rape cases! Right! That explains the pervasive victim-blaming in our culture! Why, for example, we ask rape victims, “What were you wearing?” “Were you drinking?” “Why did you go back to his house?” even though none of those things had any bearing on whether a rapist decided to rape her. The only determinant of whether someone will experience rape is the presence of a rapist. We put the onus rape prevention on women, instead of the people doing the raping, typically men. We tell women, “Don’t get raped!” and “Be careful!” instead of telling men, “Don’t rape!” and “Always ask for consent!” We give women inane sexual assault “prevention tips,” when the only prevention tip that could ever prevent rape is, “Don’t assault people!”

4.“Female privilege is knowing that people would take it as a gravely serious issue if someone raped you.” Right! Our culture always believes and protects rape victims! That’s why when Daisy Coleman’s family attempted to bring her rapists to justice, their community shunned them and then burned their house down! That’s why news reporters empathized with the rapists rather than the victims during the Steubenville trial, and why The New York Times stipulated that an 11-year-old girl’s make-up and revealing clothing were to blame for her gang-rape, rather than the 18 men who gang-raped her. THAT FEMALE PRIVILEGE, THO.

5. Police always take women’s side in domestic disputes. Right! That’s why we ask women what they did to provoke men to hit them, rather than why men are hitting women in the first place!

6. Women are represented positively in the media! Right! That explains this. Women only hold 3% of clout positions in telecommunications, entertainment, publishing, and advertising, but at least we got that female privilege, amirite, ladiez?

7. “Women can decide not to have children!” Right! Because reproductive rights are never under attack in this country!

8. Women don’t have to pay child support! Right! We’re so privileged because instead of paying child support, we’re typically the ones actually raising the kids! Often on our own because we were deserted by the man who impregnated us, and often with minimal financial, emotional, and societal support, because most cis men are not held accountable for the semen they lay. What a treat! Women have the privilege of living in a country that not only dictates motherhood for women, while not supporting mothers, but also actively vilifies any mother who is not married, middle class, heterosexual, and a full-time, stay-at-home mother who invests all her time, money, and energy into making her child some kind of prodigy. Ur right tho, our privilege is totally showing!

9. “Female privilege is not having to take your career seriously because you can depend on marrying someone who makes more money than you do.” Right! We’re so privileged making less money than our male counterparts that we’re typically the partner in a hetero relationship who is forced to give up our job after having a child! If you’re a woman of color, you have the additional privilege of making even less money to the white man’s dollar. The luxury!

10. “Female privilege is being able to have an opinion without someone tell you you’re just ‘a butthurt fedora-wearing neckbeard who can’t get any.’” Right! Receiving rape and death threats for daring to share your female opinion on the internet is super privileged! So much better than being called a “butthurt fedora-wearing neckbeard!”

11. “Female privilege is arrogantly believing that sexism only applies to women.” Right!/LOL times infinity. Reverse sexism and misandry can’t exist in a patriarchal society, silly!

Hi and bye, cutie pie, nice try, but invoking female privilege is the height of male privilege and arrogance.

Srsly tho, thx, Saunders, your article was super enlightening. Truly. LYLAS.

XO,
Kelly