Comments Elsewhere

FoolishOwl:

On the first point, no. Ultimately, bosses aren’t necessary at all — we’ve long since passed the point at which there was real economic scarcity, and therefore a need to have social classes.

Ultimately, are men necessary at all? (I don’t mean human beings with a Y chromosome and testes; I mean as a cohesive group identity that confers some social role more substantial than, say, having hazel eyes or detached earlobes.)

Most men have problems in their lives which are clearly the result of sexism, and I find that many men will agree that this is the case.

Of course, bosses usually have problems in their lives as the result of capitalism: they are often extremely busy, may not have time to see their kids as much as they would like, may have feelings of ennui or spiritual emptiness, may find themselves subject to an unpleasant pecking order or to unfair office backbiting. There are whole movements of literature devoted to telling us how the managers and bosses of the world may have money and control, but don’t have happiness or spiritual fulfillment.

But does that have any burly consequences for how workers should agitate or organize? Should the labor movement spend a lot of time—or any substantial amount of time at all—pointing out that “Capitalism hurts bosses too”?

Of course, you might object that the salient difference is this:

On the second, strictly speaking, bosses are hurt by capitalism, but they benefit so much from it that the hurt is trivial in comparison.

This is not the case with men and sexism. Most definitions I’ve seen of male privilege seem to amount to, men don’t suffer as much as women from sexism. That’s not to say that men don’t suffer.

But that just raises the question: do you think that men don’t get benefits from sexism that benefit them so much that the hurt is trivial in comparison?

(It might help also to look at the classic examples of the ways in which sexism is said to hurt men—and what the hurt in those examples accomplishes.)