When debating feminists, I’ve noticed a common pattern. Any time female privilege comes up, they usually don’t deny it directly. Instead, they reframe it as “benevolent sexism” or blame it on the patriarchy. Even if you manage to get them to admit that women are treated better in certain situations, they almost never call it actual privilege. They’ll say it’s rooted in misogyny, or that it’s just a side effect of women being seen as weak or incapable.

Take an example like women being treated as more emotionally or morally significant. The typical feminist response is that this comes from infantilization, or from women being viewed as less threatening and less agentic. At first, this seems like a convincing way to downplay the idea that women are privileged. But if you look closer, this logic could just as easily be used to explain away male privilege too.

For example, if men are respected more or given more authority, feminists don't try to explain that through something like male hyper-agency, even though they easily could. They could say that this kind of respect comes from harmful/unnecessarily high expectations, like the idea that men always have to be in control, stay emotionally detached, and take full responsibility for everything.

That would be consistent. It would mirror how they explain away female privilege as a result of infantilization or low expectations. But they never go there. That kind of framing is only ever used to downplay what women get, not what men get. When it benefits women, it's not real privilege, it's actually oppression. When it benefits men, it's just more proof that men are dominant. The logic only runs one way.

And if you point this out, the conversation always circles back to blaming the mysterious, all-powerful patriarchy. Suddenly, it’s not women’s fault at all. Men created the system, so men are to blame for anything bad that happens -- even to other men. You’ll hear things like, “Men are hurt by the patriarchy too,” as if that somehow removes responsibility from women or justifies ignoring male suffering(also, why is everything bad named after men?).

It turns into a constant cycle of downplaying female privilege and exaggerating male privilege. The same feminists who talk about women’s empowerment will, in the next breath, describe women as helpless objects who have no influence over culture or power. Everything becomes the fault of “evil men” who supposedly designed the entire culture to oppress women, and accidentally hurt other men in the process. Women, in this view, are innocent bystanders with no agency in shaping any of it.

What makes it worse is the assumption that just because most people in power are men, the system must favor men. But this only makes sense if you believe men have a strong in-group bias for other men. In reality, men often show an out-group bias -- they prioritize and protect women more than other men. So it’s entirely possible for a “patriarchy” to be gynocentric.

Institutional power doesn’t really mean much if the culture behind it doesn’t value you. The real driver of oppression is cultural bias -- the shared beliefs that shape our laws, norms, and who we protect or punish. If most powerful figures are men, but those men have been culturally trained to put women first, treat men as disposable, and see women as morally superior, then that power isn’t working in men’s favor.

Furthermore, women clearly have the ability to shape culture -- just look at how successful feminism has been. It doesn’t matter if the leaders are male if the culture they operate in revolves around protecting women. Especially in democracies, cultural values often shape who even gets elected. If a male leader doesn’t reflect those values, he probably won’t be in power for long/won't get elected in the first place.