While I agree with some of the things listed in the
Male Privilege Checklist, there are a few points that I would specifically like to disagree with:
10. If I have children but do not provide primary care for them, my masculinity will not be called into question.
I would like to point out that while the masculinity of the males is not questioned, they are often heavily disapproved of. This can be seen with the much more common appearance of "deadbeat dad" being a reason for bad teens/problems in media today. Of the "parental disappearance" tropes in media, deadbeat dad is one of the most common, and if a show decides to touch on it is almost always demonized.
16. As a child, chances are I was encouraged to be more active and outgoing than my sisters.
This is a psychological difference more then a societal one. Many studies have shown that due to physiological differences boys are more outgoing and active then girls. This might be contributed to slightly by societal expectations, but the major difference is a physiological one (which means that if we truly wanted "equal" amounts of outgoingness and activity from boys and girls we would need to favor girls as being more active and outgoing in our stereotypes).
18. As a child, chances are I got more teacher attention than girls who raised their hands just as often.
This is from an old study. After quite a bit of googling for a recent one I discovered that the current trend actually is leaning in favor of girls and how gender stereotyping is
harming boy's performance in school much more then it is holding back girls.
22. If I’m careless with my driving it won’t be attributed to my sex.
This one is flat out wrong. As any insurance company will tell you, males are more likely to have accidents due to the simple virtue of being male. It's the reason why
females pay less for car insurance. The only way you could get even close to this statement is if you take statistics that fail to account for the original difference such as analyzed on
this page.
26. My clothing is typically less expensive and better-constructed than women’s clothing for the same social status. While I have fewer options, my clothes will probably fit better than a woman’s without tailoring.
This one might be true, but it's not caused by males, but by females. Men decided long ago to wear suits/tuxes and keep it the same. We don't get annoyed if somebody is wearing the same suit as us at a party. While the pressure for women to be attractive may have been created by males, the variety of ways that women make themselves attractive (leading to an increase in demand and an increase in cost) was completely devised by women. A prime example of this is the corset, which is regarded as one of the most harmful fashions out there, was invented by a woman.
On the note of tailoring women in general have a larger variety of body shapes then men do, this obviously leads to a difficulty in producing a "one-size-fits-all" clothing. Add into that the fact that most female clothing companies do not use a standardized measuring system while most male clothing companies do, as well as several female clothing companies performing
vanity sizing and you arrive at the present situation.
45. On average, I am not interrupted by women as often as women are interrupted by men.
Once again a physiological difference, not a sociological one. Women are more predisposed to listening to others when they talk and to accepting others' views then men are due to the way that their brains function. This leads to a reduction in interruptions by women and an increase in interruptions by men.
46. I have the privilege of being unaware of my male privilege.
This isn't a privilege, it's a hidden insult.