The Privilege of Being Born a Boy

Male Privilege Persists

The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of The Prowler.

When I was in first grade, I remember my teacher asking for “four strong boys” to help her carry a big box of I-don’t-even-remember-what downstairs.

Later, in second grade, every time I was picked on by a boy the teachers or my parents would take me aside and tell me not to worry. They only picked on me because they liked me, they said. “Their brains develop slower.”

During third grade, when I asserted myself, I was named “bossy,” but when by male classmate did the same thing, he was called “a leader.”

In fourth grade, as I was expressing my opinion at a family dinner, my male elders belittled me, and everyone just let them because “that’s just how things are” and “they’re never going to change.”

Then, in fifth grade I was sent home because my bra strap was showing and my administrators “didn’t want me to distract my male classmates.”

That is when I found out that a boy’s education and comfort would always be prioritized over a girl’s. Many more unimportant injustices like these occurred as I grew up, and recently I came to realize that these “unimportant injustices” would never stop. 

Let’s continue from schoolyard trifles and start discussing adult male privileges. In the workplace, men are more likely to be hired or get a promotion than their female co-workers, and, on average, women only make 89 cents for every dollar a man makes.

Similarly, men are less likely to experience sexual assault at work than females. On the topic of sexual assault, women are taught to fear walking alone in the dark or in public places. They’re taught that having a “male chaperone” will benefit them, whereas men can walk anywhere they choose whenever they choose – even by themselves.

Men don’t have to worry about Roe v. Wade – I’d be bold enough to say that many men don’t even know what that is. That’s because they don’t have to worry about having choices about your own body being taken away.

Walking down the street a few days ago, I was subjected to “cat calling” – the modern male version of courting. Is it a whistle, an unsolicited comment, being told to smile because it’d make me “prettier”? You can never tell, honestly.

My mother once told me that her parents didn’t let her take a weekend-long vacation within the state with a few of her (also female) friends in concern for her safety, but they let her brother leave for a two-week vacation abroad.

Now that technical privileges are out of the way, we should go over reputational privileges. If a man is having a bad day it’s brushed off, but if I, a woman, am having a bad day, people will automatically link it back to my femininity. There are countless times I have been asked if I was “on my period” if I got upset at something.

If men do the bare minimum, as in providing their children with primary care or staying loyal to their significant others, they’re praised, but for women, these acts are seen as what they are: the bare minimum.

If women are careless with driving or financial spending, it will be attributed to our gender, and for men it is seen as a phase or a silly mistake.

If men sleep with a lot of women, there is no chance they’ll be labeled as a “slut.” That word only exists for women; there is still no male equivalent.

Men don’t have to worry about what their wardrobe says about their sexual availability, whereas from a young age I’ve been told to “cover up” at school or if men were going to be at my house, and I’ve been called a slut for wearing clothes on the more revealing side. There are endless rape cases where the assaulted women are convinced to stay quiet because “people make mistakes” and “if this went to the police, it would ruin his life. He’s on the way to getting a football scholarship.”

Real male privilege is not being forced to say “I have a boyfriend” to stop a man from hitting on them, because men respect a potentially non-existent man more than the woman in front of them.  Real male privilege is not being subjected to rape culture.

It saddens me that issues like these have been occurring to women in this world since before they could even do anything about it, and even though there are numerous organizations that attempt to bring light to this subject, the change made has been minuscule, and it isn’t enough.

Young women in school should not feel like their education is of less value to young men’s education, but they do. Women should be able to feel safe while walking down the street and have the same job opportunities as people of the opposite sex, but they don’t. Unfortunately, women are put in second place in times when there shouldn’t even be a race.