this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2024
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It's unreasonable to categorize this as an example of male privilege when men have little to do with it.
That's not what privilege means. It's not that men are at fault, although patriarchy as a whole plays a role in it. It's that men obliviously benefit from something other people, purely because of social reasons tied to gender, have problems with.
That's what privilege is. White privilege, for instance, isn't saying that every white person is responsible for systematic racism, it means they don't have to experience systematic racism, which means they get to pretend it's not a problem. Because it isn't, for them.
OP has been grossly misunderstood by the reply and nearly everyone here.
I disagree inasmuch as male privilege does exist but this is a really fucking stupid example to pick and in reality diminishes the seriousness of real issues like the pay gap, glass ceiling, etc.
The real problem in this scenario is other women using the repeated wearing of the same outfit as an excuse to act like assholes.
I'm not a woman, but this doesn't seem like a trivial issue to me. Basically what they're saying is that if you're a woman, you have to invest more time, effort, and money into your wardrobe or face systematic bullying from your peer group. It's almost like a tax. And when money is involved, it seems to me it rises at least roughly into the same echelon as the pay gap, for instance.
One might say men have something similar with... I dunno. Power tools or something? But I don't think a guy is as likely to be as severely bullied over not owning an angle grinder as a woman over wearing the same clothes.
This example of male privilege is one that doesn't involve men so much as, say, the glass ceiling conversation does. Which I'd say means the respondent in that thread should have just butted out. But that doesn't make it straight up not an issue.
This just sounds like an opportunity to ditch the assholes and associate with better people. You're talking about adults who can make their own decisions but you make it sound like high school.
Individual action works, but society must change for the problem to truly be solved.
It is changing but it's going so slowly that it's hard to see progress sometimes.
Society is funny that way. Sometimes you see no change week after week and then two years you look around and go, when did everything change?
And then other times you're like "it will change any day now" and then your grandchildren are still experiencing the same state of affairs.
I contest the original premise. When I was traveling a lot for work, I spent a lot of time packing to ensure that I had enough combinations of shirts, ties, belts, and shoes such that I never wore the same outfit twice. Yes, I did economize on suits, and tended to bring only one; that's because men don't have the female privilege of having such a vast variety of acceptable business-wear. Being able to dress in outfits for work that don't take up nearly an entire carry-on by themselves is a luxury men don't have. Shit, I wish I could wear skirts; they take up less packing space.
On the other hand, the shoe situation for women sucks. A man can get away with one pair of shoes for a week; it's a lot harder for women to match a week's worth of business clothes to a single pair of shoes... and in a pinch, a man can wear those shoes anywhere, whereas a woman doesn't want to be in the same heels all day, every day. That's an advantage men have.
Women can mix and match outfits just as well as men do; they can get away with two different shirts and two different pants and make it last 4 days without comment, same as a man can. And a guy that wears the same suit, shirt, and tie 4 days in a row will definitely get noticed, and not in a positive way.
Today I learned that simply allowing somebody else to be and look like they want to is privilege. Pray tell, kind being, how does one avoid this sort of privilege? Should I be pushing my opinion on everything with ears?