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I assume the AC had to read White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack for a class. I know I had to and I was rather insulted as well.

For example:

We began our investigation of child custody aware of a common perception that there is a bias in favor of women in these decisions. Our research contradicted this perception. Although mothers more frequently get primary physical custody of children following divorce, this practice does not reflect bias but rather the agreement of the parties and the fact that, in most families, mothers have been the primary [*748] caretakers of children. Fathers who actively seek custody obtain either primary or joint physical custody over 70% of the time. Reports indicate, however, that in some cases perceptions of gender bias may discourage fathers from seeking custody and stereotypes about fathers may sometimes affect case outcomes. In general, our evidence suggests that the courts hold higher standards for mothers than fathers in custody determinations.

To be fair this is in a single state, but I don't see why this pattern would be very different across states.

Please do not link to Dilbert. Scott Adams needs a permanent boycott: http://www.amptoons.com/blog/2011/06/16/scott-adams-still-a-douchebag/

Here's her webpage:

http://valerieaurora.org/

with links to the white male privilege checklist:

http://www.amptoons.com/blog/the-male-privilege-checklist/

And here is here in her scantily clad attire at DEFCON designed to bait desperate sexless men into acts to further her feminist bullshit:

https://www.defcon.org/images/graphics/PICTURES/DAN-2.JPG

She's an ideological provocateur whose only relevance comes from her nutty feminist nonsense . You can read more her BS at her blog:

http://blog.valerieaurora.org/

that the author of this article is a feminazi:

From her web page http://valerieaurora.org/ ...

http://www.amptoons.com/blog/the-male-privilege-checklist/

A white male privilege checklist. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if she baits men to create evidence to back her feminist bullshit.

"Law and order" attitudes are fine when the only people we imprison are murderers, rapists, etc. -- dangerous people who need to be separated from society to keep everyone else safe.

Fun fact: there are probably at least 6 million un-convicted rapists living in the US. The entire prison population is approximately 3 million.

It's about giving women a chance to do the same things that men are doing - like run a business, smoke a cigar, and play golf in a golf club

OK, so now that women can do all those things, what are feminists fighting for?

No, they can't. Women are still treated very unfairly in the workplace, as a historically patriarchal society has turned the business world into a good ol' boys club where men are paid more and more likely to get promoted than women. You seem to be confusing "is able to run a business, smoke a cigar, and play golf" with "is likely to have the privilege to do those things". There is still a ton of work left for femnists to do before they are considered to be even close to equal in our society.

you have no idea how large your advantage actually has been

Yeah, because men like me who grew up in working class families had so many advantages in life compared to women who grew up in suburbs and had private tutors to help them get into college -- where women now make up the majority. Feminists love suburban women, because they are best able to live the feminist ideal of self-empowerment. Symbols of success are what feminists really care about -- running successful businesses, smoking cigars, and playing golf. Feminists are not interested in women who work on railroads (like my mother did), because it conflicts with their own preconceived notion about what everyone wants.

Oh good, you realize that rich women have more privileges than you did, while completely avoiding the fact that there are an overwhelming number of women who are from the same working-class family background as you. The difference is that they don't even have male privilege to help pull themselves out of that situation. Pulled a couple from this list as examples of male privileges you have:

--My odds of being hired for a job, when competing against female applicants, are probably skewed in my favor. The more prestigious the job, the larger the odds are skewed.

--I am far less likely to face sexual harassment at work than my female co-workers are

--If I have children and a career, no one will think I’m selfish for not staying at home.

--If I’m careless with my financial affairs it won’t be attributed to my sex.

--In general, I am under much less pressure to be thin than my female counterparts are. If I am fat, I probably suffer fewer social and economic consequences for being fat than fat women do.

--If I have children but do not provide primary care for them, my masculinity will not be called into question.

--My elected representatives are mostly people of my own sex. The more prestigious and powerful the elected position, the more this is true.

--My ability to make important decisions and my capability in general will never be questioned depending on what time of the month it is.

And, my favorite on that list:
46. I have the privilege of being unaware of my male privilege.

Women ARE better at certain things than men are

OK, cool, women are better at some things. Men are also better at some things, but where are the people parading those results in the media? Nobody tries to "level the playing field" when it comes to things that women are better at, unlike people who want to make fire department physical exams less challenging so that women will have a better chance:

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-07-20/news/ct-met-chicago-firefighter-lawsuit-20110720_1_firefighters-exam-african-american-firefighter-candidates-female-firefighters

What point do you even think this is making? No

You're citing an article that starts off by citing Assange's original lawyers' bullshit about "sex by surprise." This is something that Assange's defense team made up. Assange was never accused of such a thing in Sweden. Basically, early on in this case Assange's lawyers said a lot of falsehoods about the case, and people have swallowed it.

Second, the sad fact is that a large proportion rape victims don't refer to it as "rape."

Yes, and the woman automatically is believed to be telling the truth and if the defendant calls her a liar, he's just an evil man.

In the court of public opinion, sometimes. It helps if the accuser is more sympathetic. But there is usually plenty of room for some victim blaming. People are willing to blame 13-year-old girls for being raped by 43-year-old men!

In those pesky actual courts, where people can do jail time and end up on sex offender registries, no, we're still using beyond a reasonable doubt as the test. Hey, remember the Duke Lacrosse team?

It's no secret that girls in middle school / high school do this from time to time to get rid of teachers

It's also no secret that boys in high school occasionally show up with guns and threaten people. Life's not risk free. But both events are rare.

But no, you have a vendetta against all men (what, get turned down a lot by guys you like?)

There are two possible assumptions you're making about my sex and sexuality. Both are wrong. But thanks for playing! Also, bonus points for the ad hominem attack.

Women are legally granted all power in any interaction with men.

Hyperbole much?

You're so deep into your privilege, that very modest changes in society toward equality seem like massive threats. They really aren't. Chill out. The benefits of being male continue to be pretty significant.

"The nice thing about being a white male is that I don't have a chip on my shoulder when interacting with other people. I figure that people that treat me badly do so because they think they can get away with it." I tend to shy away from discussions about privilege, because it has a tendency to become somewhat provincial IMO, but that's a statement that's pretty much impossible to ignore. I shall print it out and frame it and use it as an example whenever someone asks "so what is this privilege thing everyone's talking about?" You might want to take a look at http://www.amptoons.com/blog/the-male-privilege-checklist/ Check out #19 and #46 especially.

More importantly, she was put in a MRI scanner and there was nothing there..

http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2005/03/20/regarding-the-cat-scan-of-terri-schiavos-brain/

However, her situation was only one of the possible PVS states people can end up in..

I can only hope that -all- PVS patients get such a scan before anything is disconnected, and if there is a brain left they then get an active MRI scan to see if they are actually thinking. While it may not have saved Terri I'm pretty sure it will save some others.

Oh; and I really worry about decisions made before active MRI and other techniques came about, I think some horrible things have happened.

You should see the CT scans of my brother's head: he was born without large portions of his brain. When we all found out, me and my other brother looked at each other and simply said, "Well, that explains a lot..."

He's now 43 years old, never been in a persistent vegetative state, and for all intents and purposes functions normally.

Oh, he also got something like an 1100 on his SAT scores, despite "missing" something like 3/5 of a "normal" brain. And that's a REAL 1100, before today's dumbing-down of the scores.

So show me a photo of a bunch of missing brain matter and I'll tell you "BFD, that's meaningless". Especially when you're using it to justify killing someone.

More importantly, she was put in a MRI scanner and there was nothing there..

http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2005/03/20/regarding-the-cat-scan-of-terri-schiavos-brain/

However, her situation was only one of the possible PVS states people can end up in..

I can only hope that -all- PVS patients get such a scan before anything is disconnected, and if there is a brain left they then get an active MRI scan to see if they are actually thinking. While it may not have saved Terri I'm pretty sure it will save some others.

Oh; and I really worry about decisions made before active MRI and other techniques came about, I think some horrible things have happened.

I know next to nothing about Feyerabend, but I do know that he advocated the teaching of creationism--not, it seems, because he was keen on Jesus, but because he was just that postmodern.

Left wing people tend to think in group terms and fail to notice the individuals within each group, or even concede that individuals capable of agency actually exist. Your post is a prime example of this, as you pretend that whatever percentage turn to crime had no choice in the matter. Yes, viewing them as a group is useful for predictive purposes, but it does not absolve individuals of responsibility for the choices they actually make. If the percentage happens to be 5%, for instance, then in a group of 100 people living in poverty you would expect to find 5 individuals who turned to thievery. They are still thieves, and they did have other choices as evidence by the 95% who didn't.

Going the other direction, denying individual agency often leads to claiming that someone is responsible for the actions which other people take. For instance, I, as a white caucasian male, am a racist regardless of how I personally act because I am a member of a privileged group according to the commentariat of places like AmpToons. It is also used to blame the US for the actions of our enemies, by for instance counting all casualties in Iraq as the fault of the US, even when they are caused by an IED set against our troops. This sort of view is implied by "Just avoid the conditions that generate it" since someone has to make the changes to avoid those conditions.

If you're a woman and you have breasts, you fail BMI.

If you're a man with bone size exceeding the average 1950's male, you fail BMI.

If you have long arms, or have worked to gain muscle mass, or had to pee really bad when you stood on the scale, you fail BMI.

It's ridiculous as a gauge of health, because the human body is varied in its form. Healthy people don't all look alike, and aren't all built the same. You can say that BMI is accurate unto itself, but that doesn't make it a good way to judge anything other than BMI. Saying someone is unhealthy because they don't fall into the right scale in BMI causes undue hardship.

http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2007/10/31/bmi-is-bullshit-now-with-photos/

Excellent! Where can we find those?

How about the Internet? Start with the "Male Privilege Checklist": http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2004/09/15/t he-male-privilege-checklist/

Then start reading in the feminist blogosphere, two decent entry points into it are http://pandagon.blogsome.com/ and http://feministing.com/ .

Then begin looking up "white privilege" and "anti-racism", since the strategies are nearly identical between both problem domains. Google for the excellent essay "Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack", normally at http://seamonkey.ed.asu.edu/~mcisaac/emc598ge/Unpa cking.html , but tonight the server is down so try this instead: http://justworld.typepad.com/perspectives/2005/11/ peggy_mcintoshs.html .

After some time it might start making sense.

I would say that there is a lot more to the desire to rule out abortion in the case of rape than simply punishing the woman.

Well, there's also the rapist's fear that even after a guy has gone to the trouble of raping a woman, she might go and undo all his hard work.

Yeah, because we all know that the pro-life people are supportive of rape, I mean, it's not like they consider it a mortal sin or anything, right?

While religiosity is a good predictor of how patriarchal someone's views are, it's not the only predictor. The real drive is the belief that women who have sex deserve to be punished for it, and you don't have to be religious to think that--though it helps. I'd be interested in knowing what portion of people who oppose abortion hold misogynistic views as well.

For evidence of how bad-faith the anti-abortion movement is, there's always this handy-dandy chart.

Way offtopic but this common claim abount different counting methods is simply not true- see this link for a decent analysis. The US has alarmingly high infant mortality rates for some races (African-American, American Indian notably) and even when adjusted for the different categorizations (stillborn v. 1st month v. full-term) , it still trails the more civilized countries significantly. For white americans, things are fine, but to address the broader problems of infant mortality requires addressing poverty and racial inequity issues which is way beyond what the US government is interested in.

Dude, Terry Schiavo is not a terribly complex issue, and there was nothing "questionable" about her state. As was clearly documented at the time, her brain was gone. Tragic, but true. Those desperately trying to pretend that she had some higher-order function left were denying science, medicine, and facts. The craven politicians trying to get mileage out of the tragedy were disgusting, even by Washington D.C. standards, with actual-doctor Bill Frist the most egregious and hypocritical.

No, their motive is to try to reduce the larger social problem of out of wedlock births. Children who grow up in single parent homes are at a great disadvantage in any society. You are the one spreading fear by suggesting a special interest group conspiracy is keeping an effective vaccine from being approved.

Do you think they would want to deprive a vaccine from the millions infected with HIV in Africa? Pretty wacky.

Stephen Lewis, the UN secretary general's special envoy for HIV/Aids in Africa, said US cuts in funding for condoms and an emphasis on promoting abstinence had contributed to a shortage of condoms in Uganda, one of the few African countries which has succeeded in reducing its infection rate...
Meanwhile, religious groups that oppose condom use are receiving an increased share of funding, the pressure group says. "Religious fundamentalists, some financially supported by the US government and the office of the first lady, Janet Museveni, have become prominent in attacking condoms and those who distribute them," Change's report said.

Wow, it took me two minutes to debunk both those claims.

prostate cancer kills about as many men as breast cancer kills women

No, it doesn't. Prostate cancer deaths are 75% of breast cancer deaths.

breast cancer gets 3x the funding

No, it doesn't. It gets 2x the funding. So, for reference, breast cancer is slightly "overfunded" ($/death, we spend 60% more.) If you're looking for a reason why that might be so, it's because breast cancer strikes at an earlier age. A woman under 40 is EIGHTY-FOUR times more likely to develop breast cancer than a man is to develop prostate cancer.

My guess would be that counting $/lost year of life makes the most sense; we spend (and should spend) much more per death on, say, preventing SIDS than we do on, say, preventing some equally rare consequence of late-stage chemotherapy. You could try to work out the numbers yourself, but I have a feeling you're not the kind of person who likes facts. Facts... they are so cold. Breast cancer versus prostate cancer stats.

OK, onto the next one:

men make up at least 35% of the victums of domestic violence

Well, you have to scroll through a few pages of websites whose main existence is to either promote "Men's Rights" or criticize feminism until you get to a reasonable source: the BBC. There you find the results of a 2001/2002 British Crime survey: "19% of domestic violence incidents were reported to be male victims with just under half of these being committed by a female abuser."

I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark here and suggest that you are less concerned with gay victims of domestic abuse because your larger point is that men in heterosexual relationships are somehow "discriminated" against. In any case, the correct statistic would be 9.5%, not "over 35%." BBC reference.

Thanks for playing "make up facts"; you have lost. Please try an easier game. We suggest cable TV.