"I can understand men looking baffled when women accuse them of exercising male privilege; it's like many white people who look blank when confronted with their racism....
"I didn't 'lose' my male privilege so much as I made a conscious decision to get rid of it, and I didn't get rid of it all at once; it's an attitude that is insidiously pervasive....It took my becoming a woman to discover my 'male behavior'--that is, exhibiting male privilege.
"Male privilege is woven into all levels of the culture, from unearned higher wages to more opportunities in the workplace, from higher quality, less expensive clothing to better bathroom facilities. Male privilege extends into sexual harassment, rape, and war. Combine male privilege with capitalism (which rewards greed and acquisition) and the mass media (which, owned by capitalists, highlights only the rewards of acquisition and makes invisible its penalties), and you have a juggernaut that needs stopping by any means....
"Male privilege is, in a word, violence."
From Bornstein's 1994 book Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us.
It is killing me that this book has been in print for over fifteen years and I'm just reading now. Better late than never, I suppose.
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