What happens when male privilege stops being invisible to men in anti-sexist activism?

What is it about?

Men who engage in gender justice activism often become aware of their own privilege in the process, and must learn to process and navigate it. Previous theories of privilege often frame privilege as invisible to those who have it, so we know very little about what happens when privileged people become aware of their privilege. Through interviews with fifty-two men who engage in gender justice projects and twelve women who work with them, this article investigates the complex ways some men do see, understand, and critique male privilege, as well as the ambivalent feelings and strategic decisions of both the men and women in response to the continuation of male privilege in feminist spaces. Many describe a “pedestal effect,” wherein men receive disproportionate rewards for their work as feminist allies, as well as internal conflict among interviewees who recognize that these added benefits conflict with their egalitarian ideologies. These men often find that their efforts to undermine, reject, or critique their own privilege are more effective in small internal and interpersonal ways than at the macro level. Through investigating how men negotiate the contradiction between their anti-sexist commitments and the unequal appreciation they receive for these commitments, the article argues for a retheorization of privilege to recognize that it operates at multiple analytic levels and that individual action is often insufficient to address structural privilege.

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Why is it important?

This article introduces the concept of the pedestal effect, where allies working on behalf of for social justice for other marginalized groups get extra or unearned attention, appreciation, respect, and romantic and financial benefits, in contradiction to their own egalitarian ideologies. It also makes a grounded, concrete empirical case for a complex, structural theory of privilege, which improves upon existing understandings of privilege in multiple ways.