What Privilege?
At this moment in our history and culture, men rarely feel powerful. Or rather, those that do simply spend most of their time reassuring themselves that they are powerful—Trumping their wealth, Schwarzeneggering their bodies, Tiger Woodying their way into their latest compulsive conquest. Scratching an itch that our cultural and social structure is designed to keep us from permanently soothing.
The underside of this precarious state is hetero men’s perpetual task of preventing themselves from ever becoming, or more importantly, ever feeling like a victim. (And for many men, humiliation is equated with victimhood.) The opposite of feeling powerful is feeling (and sometimes being) vicitimized. This threat—that if you stray too far from cultural norms you risk humiliation and vicitimization—underscores that if men have historical privileges, they rest on a narrow platform. Step too far off it and you fall.
In this sense, being a man, even a resolutely normal, hetero Anglo white boy, kind of sucks. So is it any wonder that many men are impatient, if not incredulous, to hear someone claim that they are “privileged.” “Privileged?” they may ask. “I don’t feel fucking privileged. Is this what privilege looks like?”
Professorfangirl’s guy-friend is pretty damn impressive himself.