Blog Post #5

Let’s talk about white male privilege and the topic of toxic masculinity. These concepts are continuously denounced by the people who meet the criteria, which ironically is exactly why they exist.

Here’s an example of toxic masculinity: The dean at Harvard Law School during Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s attendance had once asked her why she thought she had the right to take a man’s place at the school.

And here’s an example of while male privilege: A white male posting on Facebook, “It’s OK to be white” in response to the “it’s OK to be black” and Black Lives Matter movements.

Kevin Dunn’s article titled “Interrogating White Male Privilege” is a prime example of non-toxic masculinity because he is self-aware of his privilege and, instead of either accepting or justifying it, he makes sense of it and acknowledges how it could harm other people in society.

“I know I did not get where I am today by my own personal accomplishments alone. I benefitted from white male privilege. When I sought admission to college… almost all the people evaluating me looked like me… I presented them with reflection of themselves-to-be.” (Dunn, 48)

Dunn’s article highlights the reasons why feminism and its theory exist. White male privilege and toxic masculinity is the reason for these movements from BLM, protests, rebel groups that represent women or POCs, etc. 

“As Ferguson note, we need to make these dominant configurations ‘strange’ by demanding explanations about their existence.” (Dunn, 49)

This is in direct correlation with Cynthia Enloe’s idea of curiosity and stripping behaviors of their comfortable terms of “traditional” et. al. 

The question at hand here is whose fault is it that the way men are supposed to be, supposed to act, supposed to say is typical? The individual’s or society’s? Is it the fault of society for being so influencing or is it the fault of the individual to allow society to influence it?

This is the beginning of curiosity when it comes to figuring out masculinity rather than femininity this time. Dunn says it’s the fault of the individual.

“The charge lays the blame on the individual rather than the systemic forces which have shaped that individual and his or her society.” (Dunn, 49) Meaning that works on racism and sexism that put the blame on certain behaviors on the shoulders of individual people and not the society and culture they are a part of as a whole.

Dunn argues against the idea that society is to be blamed for influencing the individual and enabling his or her behavior of racism, homophobia and sexism. He says that by allowing us to blame society, a faceless creature of which we cannot actually confront, we allow individuals to “escape responsibility for their actions.” (Dunn, 49)

But white male privilege is not a new concept, obviously. And I don’t think I need to dive deep into such privilege during the time of colonialism and imperialism. But:

Geeta Chowdhry and L.H.M. Ling write in their essay “Race(ing) International Relations: A Critical Overview of Postcolonial Feminism in International Relations” that:

“Postcolonial theorists articulated an understanding of society as a collective narrative of history, culture and power deeply marked by colonialism and imperialism.” (Picq and Ling, 6) Aka the white man holds power over the brown people.

The dominance of the West over the East “complicated unequal power relations based on identity, race, or privilege, …” Colonialism obviously “depended on racialized and gendered imagery” to maintain dominance and the femininity of white women became the universal norm of womanhood and, in direct contradiction because of white male privilege, it was also used against those women.

We have talked a lot about the “characteristics” of masculinity and femininity during this semester. After reading Picq and Ling’s writing, I realized something that I hadn’t really before. And that is the masculinity of the word “colonizer.” It’s very interesting that, under the category of intersectionality, stories of “white women in the colonies” and how, if one looks at the woman as the colonizer, she now becomes the masculine, dominant, not-so-innocent figure.

But this all goes to show how deep and profound white male privilege has been throughout history and is still today. Those imperialists probably went on to have many generations after them who owned slaves, were against the abolition of segregation and quite possibly could be white nationalists today.