Caveat Emptor

I often wonder if my husband regrets marrying me.

I feel sorry for him. Perversely, I typically feel sorry for him at times when he infuriates me the most. My husband has been cast in a difficult, if not impossible, role. He is a privileged white male married to a radical feminist. He readily identifies as a "feminist" and knows enough to hate it when I call him a "white male,"  but he has difficulty accepting that his privilege makes his life experience fundamentally different from those who do not benefit from similar status.

Difficulty accepting privilege is not his fault, nor is it unique to him.  When faced with privilege, white males often think that to be associated with privilege "takes away" or "minimizes" the hard work associated with their life achievements.  This is not so. Instead, take the example of golf. A hole-in-one on a PGA-rated course is a difficult achievement by any definition, no matter who you are. However, a hole-in-one may be more feasible if one has a driver, than say, a  5- iron. Or a putter. Socially-valued biological differences can be seen in a similar way.

As described by Allan Johnson in his book The Gender Knot (1995)[1],  a social group is superior to the extent that the society in which it exists is dominated by, identified with, and centered on said group. They key aspect of white male dominance is oppression, which creates and sustains power differences between the dominant group (D) and the oppressed group (O). Oppression includes not only superior positions which allow D to acquire greater income and wealth, but these superior positions allow D to mold social culture in ways that serve D's interests (for example, control of the content of media and the passage of legislation). If Ds occupy all of the positions of power, then D as a group become identified with superiority even if most D are not powerful in their individual lives.

Original American patriarchy was (is) white-male identified in that the core cultural ideas of what is good, desirable, or even normal are those associated with the white male. For example, the previously discussed culturally valued ideals such as strength, efficiency, and rationality are associated with men, whereas emotion, vulnerability and compromise are historically associated with women and devalued.

A plethora of academic literature addresses the topic initially proposed by the German philosopher Hegel of "self" and "other." As the "default identity", heterosexual white men are the "self," i.e. the automatically self-actualized identity, and all other human iterations are identified by their degree of differentiation from the default identity, i.e. their degree of "otherness." Thus, if heterosexual white male is the "norm," a heterosexual white female is one degree removed from the "norm," a heterosexual African-American female is two degrees removed, a lesbian African-American female three degrees, etc. This applies not only to women, but all gender identities, for instance a homosexual Latino man would therefore be two-degrees removed. My best-friend, the vegan-hippie-social-worker refers to these degrees as "masks" that one puts on when one exits the home; they are distinctions that do not have bearing necessarily on the self-identity as such, but become apparent when one leaves the home and enters the society in which one is identified by degrees as "other."

There are a great number of amazing men that read this site, and your reaction will probably be "yes, but…." Please, however, take into account that a huge part of privilege is not having to see how one is privileged. Allan Johnson uses the example of the goldfish in water; the goldfish does not see the water around him, he doesn't feel it as oppressive, but drop a gerbil in the water, and the gerbil becomes acutely aware of the effect of the water on, say, its ability to breathe.  You may just be the goldfish.

So what does this have to do with my poor husband?

The effect is twofold. First, much like the slogan in the 70's "The Personal is Political," the political is personal. Our household is a proving ground of feminist theory, and just like a proving ground, sometimes things explode. I sometimes wonder if the idea of being in a relationship with a strong, athletic, professional, educated, outspoken, wildly driven woman is cooler in theory than it is in practice. Perhaps it is like purchasing a Ferrari, which is cool, but what happens when real life hits and you have to go to the store to pick up lumber? The Ferrari is impractical for daily life. Wouldn't his life be easier if, like 90% of our professional peer group, he had someone to facilitate his life at home?

To his credit, he has never even slightly insinuated the above. Instead, he goes out of his way to ensure that people we meet know that I too am an attorney, I too am in the military, etc. 

The second effect is that I essentially did a bait-and-switch on him. That is, I sold him the package above, but what he didn't know came with the package was a seething mass of insecurity. What an unimaginable paradox. The insecurity in large part comes from the multitude of failures we discuss on this site. It's essentially the impractical Ferrari but discovering it also has a Yugo engine. In that case, the only people who still think the Ferrari is cool are those that cannot get close enough to see how it really functions.  I fail to live up to my own hype.

This leads to incredible isolation. We, the ragingly awesome readers of this site, buy into what we believe we should be. We see Vonnegut's champions and put them on like a shell, believing that if we wear the shell long enough, we will grow large enough to fill it. But inside, we are each quivering little Yugos, terrified that someone will look under the hood.

We are the Emperor's new clothes. We refuse to break the silence because we believe we are the only one who doesn't see any clothes. That we are the only Yugo.

Well, I am a Yugo. And the Emperor has no clothes.

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[1] The book that rocked my little college freshman mind. Seriously, if you haven't read it, you should.