I want to introduce you folks to a concept that's been slowly solidifying in my brain for a while now, as a partial explanation or the failure of the liberal gender-egalitarian left community to take mens issues seriously.

The idea of privilege is big and pervasive in these spaces, and many political and cultural problems are discussed under the lens of privilege. Many different axes of privilege exist, among the most frequently discussed ones are gender, race, sexual orientation, social class and disability. These are often treated in a similar way.

But reality is that Gender is different from most other axes of privilege in being substantially less of a pure privilege -- let me explain.

A pure privilege is a privilege that someone has that comes with many and substantial advantages, and zero or very close to it disadvantages.

Examples includes being university-educated, being white, being straight and being cis.

If we're discussing racism (at least in my part of the world) -- then there's no need to consider white peoples issues, because at least to a first approximation, there just aren't any.

If we're discussing sexual orientation -- then there's no need to spend much energy on discussing the discrimination that straight people face, because that's such a miniscule problem.

If we're discussing gender-identity, we can pretty much entirely ignore how people face oppression on account of being cis, again because that's simply not a thing that happens. (or at least it happens *very* infrequently relative to the reverse).

The privileges are at least fairly pure. There's a multitude of advantages to being straight cis and white -- and there's very very few substantial disadvantages.

Many people, tend to treat ALL axes of privilege as if they're pure. Which leads to a belief that being male has a multitude of advantages, and very very few substantial disadvantages.

Considered even a bit more carefully, it should be obvious that this is not true. Even if somone accept the thesis that on the overall balance men hold more privileges than women do -- it really can't be defended to believe that men have very very few substantial disadvantages.

Gender needs to be treated differently. It's a mixed privilege -- a demographic factor that comes with many important advantages BUT ALSO many important disadvantages.

I seriously think a failure to internalize this important difference between gender and most other axes of privilege is one of the main things preventing large parts of the left from correctly recognizing and addressing mens issues.