It's absurdly hard trying to find women (and men, but especially women) willing to work the same schedule, because it pretty much demands that they have a full-time spouse to take care of the kids, and stay at home dads are way more rare than stay at home moms.

At the risk of bogging this back down in gut reactions to the word 'privilege', you don't view this as an inherent advantage confered upon you by society purely by dint of being male?

Historical societal roles assign women by default as caregivers, and that assignment restricts their willingness and ability to take jobs that have extreme time requirements. As a male, there's very little societal pressure to come home early and cook dinner for the family, take days off work to take your kid to the doctor, etc and so forth...

So we have a demonstrable case of white people who did not enjoy white privilege? So we must allow then that not all people enjoy white privilege, in which case, what good is white privilege as a lens for viewing the world?

If you argue that white privilege is somehow temporally located then it must be a relatively recent phenomenon where the Irish are concerned. In the US that would be the 1940s.

"Privilege" is just a label to hang on groups that are considered more valuable in a particular culture than others, so which group is privileged necessarily depends on your culture. In the US, the privilege goes to white people; but in other places, "white people" are minorities and are not privileged. In some places, some white people are privileged over other white people.

Who has claimed otherwise?

However the rest of what you said basically backs up my point and my position - I'm a white male, I can't say ANYTHING without someone taking it wrong and The Mob turning up.

I wouldn't put it that way. We can still offer critique, it's that the problem is usually with the manner in which the critique is offered. If you post your professional opinion in such a way that it suggests that the woman needs aspects of her profession explained to her, that is not good. It's always condescending to treat another professional as if they don't know what they're talking about. If you post it in such a way that she interprets it as gender-based, then no matter what your intent really was, you failed to take into account how your comments might be perceived.

Everything we say or do affects others, for better or for worse. We should always take the identity of our interlocutor (if available) into account when making our points. Ideally it wouldn't be relevant - and often it isn't - but for some groups certain kinds of interactions are charged because of their history, so the same words will mean different things to different people. As a "systemizer" type thinker I would really like to pretend otherwise, but real life is messy and complicated and there are a lot of special cases.

There was no need for a mob; a reply of 'this is work in progress' would likely defused the situation nicely and is a discussion.

I agree, there's no need for a mob even for mansplainers, I'm just pointing out that it is a thing, and that some women encounter it so constantly that I think it should be called out. I say this as someone who has been caught mansplaining - it's never intentional, and it's difficult to catch oneself in the act.

I'm sorry, where the FUCK did you get 'mocking' from?
Don't even THINK about reframing the argument to 'mocking'.

Well, without the tweet in question handy, it's easy to read all kinds of things into your description. "Mocking" is not the word I would have chosen, either. "Condescending" is what I had assumed, given the reaction.

At the risk of bogging this back down in gut reactions to the word 'privilege', you don't view this as an inherent advantage confered upon you by society purely by dint of being male?

Historical societal roles assign women by default as caregivers, and that assignment restricts their willingness and ability to take jobs that have extreme time requirements. As a male, there's very little societal pressure to come home early and cook dinner for the family, take days off work to take your kid to the doctor, etc and so forth...

I don't think this is a socially constructed advantage (in the USA). Females can choose to either stay at home full time or work full time, most choose a mix of both. I'd say it's mostly a biological difference between males and females, in that mothers tend to have an extremely strong connection to their children more often then men. Because of that, mothers place the priority on their kids more than their jobs more often than not. Many men don't have that same connection with their kids, so they choose to focus on work more, which makes them more preferable for jobs that require long stretches away from home (Petrolium engineers/miners/loggers/truck drivers), and jobs with extremely high importance that require much dedication (Executive roles).

Females can choose to either stay at home full time or work full time, most choose a mix of both.

And men can't?

in that mothers tend to have an extremely strong connection to their children more often then men

I don't dispute that this is often the case, but I don't see any need to invoke biology here. In fact, I think it's a myth perpetuated by our cultural narrative concerning gender roles that women are inherently more connected to their children. If you to stay home with your kids - and women in our culture are conditioned to believe that this is their role - you're going to have a stronger connection to them than if you don't. Do you have some sort of proof showing that men who stay home with their kids from a young age while the mother is working have weaker connections to their children?

It doesn't seem rational to attribute to biology what is more easily attributed to a difference in social conditioning.

And men can't?

They can, that's my point. However, men usually choose not to stay at home.

I don't see any need to invoke biology here. In fact, I think it's a myth perpetuated by our cultural narrative concerning gender roles that women are inherently more connected to their children.

Well... I mean, it's extremely well documented that women undergo several large horomonal changes after being pregnant/giving birth that men don't, or only have temporarily.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maternal_bond

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternal_bond

It has nothing to do with social conditioning, it's been repeated across many different races, even different species across everywhere on the globe.

I think the issue here is...imagine a 200m race where half of the athletes start with a 100ms handicap from the get-go.

I don't take issue with the comparison, only the automatic assumption of who it applies to. Things like means testing where we don't care about who you are, only what help you need are superior in my book to lumping people into groups and making broad assumptions.

(And yeah, I do feel uncomfortable debating this with someone that had it way worse than me, but since we agreed to discuss ideas on their merits... :) )

It shouldn't be this way, but the ideology that has spawned privilege seems to delight in creating a polarizing effect. I can't see how supporters think this is a good thing.

It's absurdly hard trying to find women (and men, but especially women) willing to work the same schedule, because it pretty much demands that they have a full-time spouse to take care of the kids, and stay at home dads are way more rare than stay at home moms. Honestly, I'm dreading when I have kids, and have no idea how I'm going to be able to handle it, but that's the tradeoff for a well-paying job.

I suspect the privilege line of thinking would lead us to invent a "childless privilege" here. (Ugh, google already tells me this is a thing.)

Historical societal roles assign women by default as caregivers, and that assignment restricts their willingness and ability to take jobs that have extreme time requirements. As a male, there's very little societal pressure to come home early and cook dinner for the family, take days off work to take your kid to the doctor, etc and so forth...

You are correct that these are deeply historical roles which have in more modernized societies shifted. One argument about the rise of diabetes and obesity in Western society relates to the decline of home cooked meals and busy parents relying on convenience foods. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2290106/Only-mothers-cooks-scratch-day-lack-time-confidence-kitchen.html)

With respect to whether or not women (or men) take the lion's share of the burden of caregiving, we have a difficult problem: To what degree would either men or women choose these traditional roles absent reinforcing social influences? What is enforced and what is a choice?

Most reasonable people would agree that we shouldn't be condemning people for non-harmful choices they make. We do on either side, unfortunately (even allegedly open-minded progressives do, as Kaley Cuoco famously found)

To show how easy it is to pull this, I could find other DeVry graduates that took their Game and Simulation Programming degree, but never got hired to the industry and claim being oppressed for some made up reasons.

At the risk of agreeing too much, I have a real life example of a friend who took a test to get into a game course and washed out (he resisted blaming someone else thankfully). He considered himself to be really good at math and bombed pretty badly in the test's math section. A question I asked him was, "What did you study beforehand?"

He was surprised at the question.

I said to him, "What were your competitors doing? Do you think they might have been warming up? Practicing? Ask yourself why this wasn't natural for you. If you not only don't know the answer to that question, but didn't think to ask it, THAT is the core barrier to overcome."

We can pat ourselves on the back teaching young people that they are oppressed and someone must change in order to give them something, but it is far more effective to empower people with specific strategies and the resources to realize them.

I agree with your point 100%.

Women have imposed to them that "family comes first" from day one. Men don't.

Men are expected to provide for the family. Men are expected to fix anything broken in the house. Men are expected to protect the family. Men are expected to take out the trash and mow the yard. I've heard all the propaganda that makes it sound like the US is still stuck in the past. Though, it is interesting when are these views imposed on us? I mean according to some, parents lie and tell children they can become and do anything, but if they are imposing women are servants to men, seems rather contradicting. Maybe it happens in high school, I vaguely remember the elective course "Women are cattle".

As for the wage gap:

Men are expected to provide for the family.

In most working class families, both parents have to work. There's not really an option here.

Men are expected to fix anything broken in the house.

Things need fixing in much less frequency than meals need cooking, and clothes need washing and ironing. Just how many times the TV antenna loses reception anyway?

Men are expected to protect the family.

What? From whom? Pumas? Bears? Burglers? These are fantasy scenarios that rarely ever happen. We're talking about actual, mundane work around the house that needs to be done *every day* and takes several hours each day.

Men are expected to take out the trash and mow the yard.

Taking out the trash takes like 5 mins. And again, how often do you mow the yard? You keep comparing work that needs to be done *every single day*(cooking, cleaning, vaccuuming, washing, child caring) and never ends with work that needs to be done much less frequently and is considered "done" until something breaks again. Yeah, in the relatively rare occasions when something broke, me and my dad spent 3-4 hours fixing it. Rest of the time, we didn't do anything. My mother spent 3-4 hours *every day* doing work around the house. It's not even close. I mean, objectively, the hours spent in domestic work were not close to comparable. There is no "propaganda" that "taught" me this, I'm simply saying what the situation was at home. And I think my family is a pretty typical working class family. Things are getting better, arguably(for instance in my sister's houshold it's her husband that mosty does the cooking).

Though, it is interesting when are these views imposed on us? I mean according to some, parents lie and tell children they can become and do anything, but if they are imposing women are servants to men, seems rather contradicting. Maybe it happens in high school, I vaguely remember the elective course "Women are cattle".

Hyperbole Hyperbole Hyperbole. These views are imposed in everyday mundane interactions. Like when girls are more encouraged to help their mothers doing the chores and learn to cook than boys, because "you're a girl and one day you'll have to do this". That happens. (and yes, I was more encouraged to help my father when something broke, but again, that happens much much less frequently). Or when boys learn their sexual life is noone's business and they can date whoever they want, whereas girls have a much stricter curfue and parents spying on "who our girl is dating". That happens. You can argue that this happens because girls are more "vulnerable" by nature, and can end up getting hurt more easily, but it still happens that family has a stricter control on their daughters. Stop trying to tell us this is some nebulous "propaganda" that says these things happen dude, we *see* them happening in our families. I could stay out until dawn since I was fifteen, my sister got into trouble when she wanted to stay beyond midnight till she was 21 or something.

So we have a demonstrable case of white people who did not enjoy white privilege? So we must allow then that not all people enjoy white privilege, in which case, what good is white privilege as a lens for viewing the world?

If you argue that white privilege is somehow temporally located then it must be a relatively recent phenomenon where the Irish are concerned. In the US that would be the 1940s.

"Privilege" is just a label to hang on groups that are considered more valuable in a particular culture than others

This would imply that there is "black privilege." I have not heard this argued in the broad at all.

so which group is privileged necessarily depends on your culture.

Sadly this is a nuance that appears lost as this concept has exploded into the mainstream, and in effect in mass media and across social media it is used as a way to demonize people.

In the US, the privilege goes to white people;

And is called into question by the disparity experienced by black immigrants versus native born black Americans.

In some places, some white people are privileged over other white people.

Which means its value is highly suspect in discussing American history and present and we have every right to be critical of it. Consider:

• The philosophy behind white privilege leads us to minimize serious social problems, even tempting us into revisionist history (http://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/High-school-student-disproves-professors-theory-that-No-Irish-Need-Apply-signs-never-existed.html)
• If it can be demonstrated that large groups within the supposedly privileged group do not enjoy the privilege, then applying it to the group as a whole is incorrect
• If it can be demonstrated that what constitutes privilege is arbitrary and varies from person to person, then it really isn't privilege

Who has claimed otherwise?

White privilege (or white skin privilege) is a term for societal privileges that benefit people identified as white in Western countries, beyond what is commonly experienced by non-white people under the same social, political, or economic circumstances.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_privilege

Again cf. Irish in the United States and in England.

@Wavinator: I'll agree that, IMO, things are not so cut and try as "white people always oppressed black people, everywhere". There is a tendency to apply US politics to the whole globe. Not every white nation were colonizers. I'm Greek, and for 400 hundred years we were subjects to the Ottoman Empire and you can say we were pretty oppressed, hence why we eventually rebelled. Now, we weren't slaves in the terrible way Africans brought to America were slaves and treated as literal property, but we were oppressed and slavery and kidnapping of infants did actually happen:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janissaries

Not to mention that, when the rest of Europe was going through the Rennaisence, inspired by ancient Greece, actual Greeks didn't get through that phase of enlightment because they were part of the Ottoman Empire. And many argue this has had long-lasting results that halt our progress even today.

Now, this is all in the past, but when I hear that "white people oppressed darker-skin people, everywhere, always", I can't help but feel my own country's history is being erased for the sake of applying what happened in the US or the British Empire to every white nation. Ibrahim Pasha's 30,000-man army came to Greece from Egypt to end the revolution and basically burned major cities down. Again, the dynamics of US do not necessarily apply to every single country in the world.