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• 
  Ben - Editor
  May 17th, 2012 @18:15 #
   
  
  

  Here's Suzanne Moore's reply to Benatar:

  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/16/second-sexism-men-blaming-feminism

  
  
• 
  Sophy
  May 22nd, 2012 @09:45 #
   
  
  

  And here is Benatar's concise reply to Moore: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/may/18/men-and-sexism?newsfeed=true

  
  
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  Helen
  May 22nd, 2012 @22:57 #
   
  
  

  This annoys me so much I'm trying to ignore it, but it's an itch I have to scratch, just for a second (the heading for this piece doesn't help)... Hello. It is now the 21st century. It was clearly and absolutely thrashed out, as basic literary, political and economic theory 20 years ago, that sexism refers to discrimination against a human being on the basis of their gender. So "turn[ing] sexism on its head" is a nonsense phrase, nearly as bad as "reverse racism". All together now, for the umpteenth time: 1) patriarchal societies dehumanize everyone, even those who apparently benefit. (The obvious analogy is apartheid, which damaged even those at the top of the totem pole -- altho whining from the top of the totem is pretty nauseating.) 2) Race, class and gender are intertwined to the extent that they constantly inflect each other -- trying to study them as isolated phenomena is a waste of time. For e.g., the glass cellar is obviously primarily about class. 3) Biology determines to some extent how discrimination is experienced: poor men are more likely to use their muscles (violence, manual labour), poor women are more likely to be driven or drift into sex work. 4) The earth is round and revolves around the sun.

  OK, am going to ignore this from now on, but really, the timing sucks: women's standing around the globe is worsening, with ground gained in Beijing 1995 being lost to the extent that the organizers could not risk a Beijing-plus-ten conference. Rape is accepted as a fact of daily life in parts of Sudan, Northern Uganda, the eastern DRC and right here on the Cape Flats, the US is going all medieval on abortion and gay rights, human trafficking is growing in leaps and bounds... not a good moment to point out that those at the top of the totem pole also get rained on.

  
  
• 
  Lauren Beukes
  May 23rd, 2012 @10:04 #
   
  
  

  Oh, Helen, I think you'll love John Scalzi's brilliant gaming analogy:

  Straight White Male : The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is

  I’ve been thinking of a way to explain to straight white men how life works for them, without invoking the dreaded word “privilege,” to which they react like vampires being fed a garlic tart at high noon. It’s not that the word “privilege” is incorrect, it’s that it’s not their word. When confronted with “privilege,” they fiddle with the word itself, and haul out the dictionaries and find every possible way to talk about the word but not any of the things the word signifies.
  So, the challenge: how to get across the ideas bound up in the word “privilege,” in a way that your average straight white man will get, without freaking out about it?
  Being a white guy who likes women, here’s how I would do it:
  Dudes. Imagine life here in the US — or indeed, pretty much anywhere in the Western world — is a massive role playing game, like World of Warcraft except appallingly mundane, where most quests involve the acquisition of money, cell phones and donuts, although not always at the same time. Let’s call it The Real World. You have installed The Real World on your computer and are about to start playing, but first you go to the settings tab to bind your keys, fiddle with your defaults, and choose the difficulty setting for the game. Got it?
  Okay: In the role playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting there is.... <click link for the rest of it plus follow-up article>

  http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-the-lowest-difficulty-setting-there-is/

  
  
• 
  Lauren Beukes
  May 23rd, 2012 @10:06 #
   
  
  

  Can we all pretend there was proper punctuation in there? Like a full-stop after the title and quotation marks for the excerpt of Scalzi's essay that I was quoting.

  
  
• 
  Lauren Beukes
  May 23rd, 2012 @10:07 #
   
  
  

  And it's worth reading in full, including his follow-up post.

  
  
• 
  AlexM
  May 25th, 2012 @23:34 #
   
  
  

  Helen, firstly, as far as I’m aware, “turning sexism on its head” is not Benatar’s own phrase.

  There also seems to be a deep contradiction running through what you’ve said. On the one hand, you accept the point that discrimination against men on the basis of their sex takes place, but dismiss this as obvious and well established. On the other hand, you are unable to conceal your annoyance at the very notion that any such discrimination takes place! You seem to think that because a society is “patriarchal” (whatever that might mean), all men are in some way advantaged by it and that consequently there is something distasteful about “whining from the top of the totem”. But the whole point about discrimination against men is that as a result of it, many actually end up at the bottom of the “totem”.

  Now my question to you is this: if you think the struggle against sexism (and apparently you would agree that this includes discrimination against men) is a worthwhile one, why adopt this attitude?

  As for your point about “timing”, you can’t be serious. Don’t point out anti-male discrimination because it might distract us from, or diminish the perceived importance of, anti-female discrimination? Turn a blind eye to it until the latter is eradicated? Is this really what you’re saying?

  Finally, to describe the US as “going all medieval on abortion and gay rights” isn’t even an exaggeration, but rather a perversion of the truth. In spite of concerted campaigns against abortion and gay rights led by the religious right, both are only becoming more accepted in most parts of the country. This is especially true of gay rights.

  
  

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