The Male Programmer Privilege Checklist
http://lafalafu.com/krc/privilege.html

Just...yeah. Unfortunately.

Being male, as a programmer, means:

This is an interesting list --it sounds like it was written by a aging female developer who had trouble achieving her goals or had low esteem. I wish there wasn't continued reinforcement of gender roles. I think it's a privilege to be surrounded by such smart people and in my near decade of experience, have yet to "sleep my way to a bug fix", feel threatened, or be treated like a "secretary". I am aware of my surroundings and chose to be here, so...

This explains the need and a lot of the trials of feminism (and also acknowledges commanalities with other kinds of discrimination). It's about trust and how so many men fail at being trustworthy.

"This, then, is the terrible bargain we have regretfully struck: Men are allowed the easy comfort of their unexamined privilege, but my regard will always be shot through with a steely, anxious bolt of caution. A shitty bargain all around, really. But there it is." [Sometimes the worst isn't the asshole strangers. Sometimes the worst is a guy you care about casually, offhandedly acting like you're not a person. Making a rape joke, dismissing women as overemotional, telling you when you're offended and hurt that you have no sense of humor. The most damaging attacks are the ones from supposed friends. What can we do, but live in anticipation of the next betrayal?]

the everyday language of sexism and how much it hurts

"There is the perplexity at my fury that my life experience is not considered more relevant than the opinionated pronouncements of men who make a pastime of informal observation, like womanhood is an exotic locale which provides magnificent fodder for the amateur ethnographer. And there is the haughty dismissal of my assertion that being on the outside looking in doesn't make one more objective; it merely provides a different perspective."

English - A feminist about her feelings about men. [Warning: Page is huge and hard to load.]

Women sacrifice their rights to make men's lives easier. Beautifully written, and about all the little ways in which patriarchy is enforced. Use for teaching feminism 101.

It is difficult to sympathize with these people, their comments laced with snobbery and petulance. But you can understand their shock: Their world has been turned on its head. After years of enjoying favorable tax rates, they are facing an administration that wants to redistribute their wealth. Their industry is being reordered—no one knows what Wall Street will look like in a few years. They are anxious, and their anxiety is making them mad.

Wall Street people are not moral idiots (most of them, anyway)—it’s not as if they’ve never pondered the fairness of their enormous salaries. “One of my relatives is a doctor, we’re both well-educated, hardworking people. And he certainly didn’t make the amount of money I made,” a former Bear Stearns senior managing director tells me. “I would be the first person to tell you his value to society, to humanity, is far greater than anything that went on in the Bear Stearns building.”

In a witch hunt, the witches have feelings, too. As populist rage has erupted around the country, stoked by canny politicians, an opposite rage has built on Wall Street and other arenas where the wealthy hold sway. Its expression is more furtive and it’s often mixed with a kind of sublimated shame, but it can be every bit as vitriolic.

IBG-YBG: I’ll be gone, you’ll be gone

As the privileged class loses its privileges, a collective moan rises from the canyons of Wall Street.

It was the culture of what some called IBG-YBG: I’ll be gone, you’ll be gone,”

Whether Avatar is racist is a matter for debate. Regardless of where you come down on that question, it's undeniable that the film - like alien apartheid flick District 9, released earlier this year - is emphatically a fantasy about race. Specifically, it's a fantasy about race told from the point of view of white people. Avatar and scifi films like it give us the opportunity to answer the question: What do white people fantasize about when they fantasize about racial identity?

about Avatar, District 9, & Dune

A story that revisits the same old tropes of colonization. Whites still get to be leaders of the natives - just in a kinder, gentler way

Critics have called alien epic Avatar a version of Dances With Wolves because it's about a white guy going native and becoming a great leader. But Avatar is just the latest scifi rehash of an old white guilt fantasy. Spoilers...

Sure, Avatar goes a little bit beyond the basic colonizing story. We are told in no uncertain terms that it's wrong to colonize the lands of native people. Our hero chooses to join the Na'vi rather than abide the racist culture of his own people. But it is nevertheless a story that revisits the same old tropes of colonization. Whites still get to be leaders of the natives - just in a kinder, gentler way than they would have in an old Flash Gordon flick or in Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars novels.

"When whites fantasize about becoming other races, it's only fun if they can blithely ignore the fundamental experience of being an oppressed racial group."

Like Dances with Wolves, Last Samurai, and even Dune, tis a story about white guilt.

io9?

"Critics have called alien epic Avatar a version of Dances With Wolves because it's about a white guy going native and becoming a great leader. But Avatar is just the latest scifi rehash of an old white guilt fantasy. Spoilers... Whether Avatar is racist is a matter for debate. Regardless of where you come down on that question, it's undeniable that the film - like alien apartheid flick District 9, released earlier this year - is emphatically a fantasy about race. Specifically, it's a fantasy about race told from the point of view of white people. Avatar and scifi films like it give us the opportunity to answer the question: What do white people fantasize about when they fantasize about racial identity?"

I'll up the ante. What if they were Muslim? @laughingwoman Tim Wise: What if Tea Partiers were black? http://bit.ly/cZzE8K

Protest is only seen as fundamentally American when those who have long had the luxury of seeing themselves as prototypically American engage in it. And this, my friends, is what white privilege is all about. The ability to threaten others, to engage in violent and incendiary rhetoric without consequence, to be viewed as patriotic and normal no matter what you do, and never to be feared and despised as people of color would be, if they tried to get away with half the shit we do, on a daily basis.

RT @CarriBugbee: Ephphatha Poetry: "Imagine if the Tea Party Was Black" - Tim Wise ""Imagine if the Tea Party Was Black" - Tim Wise" htt ...

"Protest is only seen as fundamentally American when those who have long had the luxury of seeing themselves as prototypically American engage in it. When the dangerous and dark “other” does so, however, it isn’t viewed as normal or natural, let alone patriotic. . . . // And this, my friends, is what white privilege is all about. The ability to threaten others, to engage in violent and incendiary rhetoric without consequence, to be viewed as patriotic and normal no matter what you do, and never to be feared and despised as people of color would be, if they tried to get away with half the shit we do, on a daily basis." (avoid the comments)

Excellent article on white privilege

"In other words, imagine that even one-third of the anger and vitriol currently being hurled at President Obama, by folks who are almost exclusively white, were being aimed, instead, at a white president, by people of color. How many whites viewing the anger, the hatred, the contempt for that white president would then wax eloquent about free speech, and the glories of democracy? And how many would be calling for further crackdowns on thuggish behavior, and investigations into the radical agendas of those same people of color?" Via Debbie.

And this, my friends, is what white privilege is all about. The ability to threaten others, to engage in violent and incendiary rhetoric without consequence, to be viewed as patriotic and normal no matter what you do, and never to be feared and despised as people of color would be, if they tried to get away with half the shit we do, on a daily basis.