The More than Men Project is an effort initiated by the Women Thinking Free Foundation to develop a space where men, often white and/or straight and/or Of Priv, could spend a little time and energy telling their fellow Hetero-occidentaloid-Y-chromosomists something useful or interesting about diversity, and to encourage the promotion of said diversity.
When I was asked to contribute to this project (which was being cooked up last July) I had some concerns. I wasn’t sure if I needed a space to do this, since I have a widely read blog in which I am constantly telling my fellow Hetero-occidentaloid-Y-chromosomists how to behave, and they pretty much do whatever I tell them to do. Hetero-occidentaloid-Y-chromosomists are so compliant and all. Since then, I’ve gotten Yet Another Blog where I can do even more of this behavioral mentoring, so, I thought, why should I bother with another effort like this. Just let the other guys have a space.
But then I decided to take advantage of the offer to try something entirely different. The project is self explanatory, but since you may need some encouragement to pay attention to it, here are the opening sentences in the first of three videos I made for More than Men:
The More Than Men Project is a campaign by the Women Thinking Free Foundation. This is for white men (usually straight , often privileged, etc.) to take an active role in diversity advocacy. This is my chance to tell my fellow white guys what I think about what they should be thinking.
But I get to do that all the time. So, I thought I’d ignore the instructions and try something a little different.
A short memo …. with attachments. It is the attachments that matter.
Dear Straight White Male with Privilege:
This is not hard.
You just need to pay attention to the voices in your head. You supply the head. Attached, please find the voices, in three parts, which I call Part I, Part II, and Part III.
Part I: Sheril Kirshenbaum, Desiree Schell, and Jafsica.
Part III: C. Anderson, Stephanie Zvan, Natalie Wagner, Serena
I would appreciate it if you’all would consider self censoring your comments, and trying to put encouraging or positive comments on the More than Men site posts, the YouTube videos, or my Scienceblogs copy of this post, and if you have criticisms or can’t stop yourself from being a dick, put those comments below, on this version of this post. Thank you in advance for that.
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Well, I know enough to not assume they are all Anglas, since my sister and I are kids og a white man and a mexican american woman, and we both can pass.
So, are they all Anglas?
Of course not.
Cool. Keep it up, More Than Men Project. I continue to be impressed, so I hope you can make an impression on others.
Good. A corollary of “white men need to listen to this” is everyone needs to listen to women of color.
I applaud the effort to edumacate others about “privilege”, but I can’t help but find the efforts misguided by your own ignorance on two fronts.
First:
Privilege is something every human on Earth has (other than an about to be aborted fetus that was a product of rape or incest.)
Privilege is neither good nor bad. Having ‘more’ privilege is not a value judgment, in itself, of the person with ‘more’ privilege.
Privilege is misunderstood greatly by nearly EVERYBODY who uses it, not the least of which are those who proudly extol their superior understanding of it.
Privilege is contextual, in that it VARIES, not just in definition – e.g. “male privilege” is as difficult to pin down as jello – but also in circumstance, i.e., it is different for a young, effeminate, attractive, gay male at a gay bar, than it is for a beer-drinkin’ pot-bellied straight redneck bubba at the same gay bar.
I have yet to meet the human, every single commentator and blogger and myself included, that wasn’t guilty of egregious and repetitive privilege abuse.
Second:
It’s time – it’s more than time – to end racial characterizations. PERIOD.
Greg, you know better.
We HAVE to stop labelling ‘white’ or ‘black’ or whatever. It’s unscientific and inaccurate, but worst of all, it promulgates a woo-woo pseudoscientific biological view of humanity that continues to haunt and hurt the human animal.
Stop it.
In the context of the More Than Men project, it is an inappropriate label foisted onto people specifically to belittle them as to having undeserved status.
If you want to call yourself ‘white’ – go ahead. I will THEN mark you as having undeserved status, and buying into a heritage of racism, classism and sexism.
I am not white. Because I claim for myself the freedom to self-identify, e.g. gay/straight, man/woman, democrat/republican, you cannot and should not be allowed to label me as anything other than what I claim or my ACTIONS belie. To do otherwise would be an example of an inappropriate exercise of privilege.
Anyway, I very much like to underlying goal of the More Than Men project.
And if you want to be “white”, then…
It’s entirely a matter of your privilege to have missed the point, of course. But thanks for your comments. There is truth in what you say, too bad you have no idea how to apply it.
I left a comment about Hans Eysenck’s (well-replicated) research on psychoticism as the central mechanism of creativity and why we should expect that most high creative performers and, by extension, scientific experts, will be mostly men, because men as a whole score substantially higher on measures of this trait.
I also mentioned that complaining about an excess of men in science is like complaining about an excess of Jews in science: silly. (Jews indeed have an extremely disproportionate in the sciences, but there’s nothing wrong with that.)
My comment disappeared promptly thereafter.
It would seem that some evidence is more acceptable than other evidence.
I left a comment about Hans Eysenck’s (well-replicated) research on psychoticism as the essential mechanism of creativity and why we should expect that most high creative performers and, by extension, scientific experts will be mostly men, because men as a whole score substantially higher on measures of this trait.
I also mentioned that complaining about an excess of men in science is like complaining about an excess of Jews in science: silly. (Indeed, Jews have an extremely disproportionate in the sciences, but there’s nothing wrong with that.)
My comment disappeared shortly thereafter.
It would seem that some science is more acceptable than other science…
It appears that some people leap to conclusions. The comment we allegedly censored was held in moderation. It’s been approved. I can’t testify as to its worthiness, however.