Blog Post - Male Privilege

Today was one of the best and most interesting classes I have ever been apart of. To think that in the year 2015 there still exists tragedies that are pushing the women down in our society is beyond my belief. I always thought when a women complained about being discriminated, or not giving an equal opportunity as men are, that they were just not performing at the level the men were. I have always ignored issues like these because I never saw them as major as issues concerning racism. However, today really opened my eyes, and it showed me how little I knew what women go through on a daily basis. I learned that male privilege is extraordinary, and something we don’t even realize. We pay no mind to it because it is something that we do not experience, therefore we do not comprehend what the women of our society go through. Meaning that we just ignore it, similar to the way white people in our society ignore racism and say racism doesn’t exist anymore because they do not live the lives of the people who are being affected by this discrimination.

Productive and Reproductive are big factors in the discrimination of women in our society. It shows how when a woman's reproductive and is not as much of a help to you, they are pushed down. However, productive, when a woman is of some sort of assistance for you, you keep them around because they produce for you. For example, when a woman is on maternity leave from work, they are automatically replaced with a new worker and sometimes, on their return are not guaranteed the same spot or same pay that they were given before. Why is that? Because once a woman is not able to perform at her normal level she is reproductive and is not necessary to keep around.

What really shocked me was the personal experience of Ms. Sweeney and how the U.S. Government showed how even they push down the women in their environment. For example, when males see women succeed more than they do, it automatically means that they are sleeping with someone in the company to get that spot, because god forbid, they actually work hard for it and earn the spot that they deserve. They MUST be sleeping with someone to get that spot.

What else shocked me was how all this plays out in the community that I am apart of. Like Ms. Sweeney also said, she heard the inappropriate comments students at St. Benedicts have to say about her. Or how when Mrs. Tuorto told us about the things that goes on even at Benedicts that gets to her. Considering her some sort of secretary just because she is a woman. She must be at the meeting, getting coffee for everyone, or taking notes for her boss. This discussion opened my eyes and made me more aware of the situation woman go through in my community. A question I had for Mrs. Tuorto is that she was talking to us about how every man is a threat to her, and how when she is walking on the street she has to consider every man a threat because there is only so much she can do to defend herself, I related that to the racist discussion we had in class a few weeks ago, when a white male crosses the street every time he sees a black or latino man walking towards them, the white man would be considered wrong and discriminating all people of color. Isn’t what Mrs. Tuorto said, have some sort of correlation to this situation? So is she wrong for performing these actions?