There is a lot of talk about "male privilege" and how men supposedly have it better than women, but the reality is that most men live harder lives than women and rarely enjoy the fruits of their own labor (instead, woman are very often the beneficiaries).

When you ignore biology -- once a month periods, physical weakness, and emotional "instability" (whether biological or social in origin) -- women actually have things a lot better than men do.

Society is, in many ways, fundamentally built in favor of women. The way it operates, the way dating / marriage / divorce works, the fact that women are treated better than men, and the way our laws and social institutions are set up, creates a world that is fundamentally centered on the needs and wants of women, often in place of men.

**Sexism**
From the moment a woman is born, she is treated better than a man. She is told that she is "special" and lives in a world of presents, gifts, and favors, often received with the bat of an eyelash (or a short temper tantrum).

Moreover, she is told that she deserves all of this, largely because she is a woman. Women, after all, are better than men, she is told. Men are just a bunch of bumbling idiots that need the grace of a woman in order to act civilized. She is assured that all of the world's problems are created by men, not women.

Sexism against men is significant worse than sexism against women, and a lot of it appears to come from a very young age. Young boys are taught to respect women, to never hit a girl, and to treat them nice, whereas young girls are taught that men are mean and mostly trouble. Indeed, if a man hits a woman, it is seen as somehow worse than if he hit another man, but if a woman hits a man, it is assumed that he did something to upset her, and that he somehow deserved it. This kind of sexism is accepted as normal when it happens to men, but any slight infraction against a woman is met with strong condemnation.

The results of these different indoctrination are quite telling: women commit more domestics violence against men than men do against women, whether verbal, emotional, or even physical (despite the sexist, anti-male stereotype implying it goes the other way). Domestic violence resources are surprising lacking for men, however, and very often it is the man that gets arrested and forced out of his home, even if the woman is the primary perpetrator.

**Employment**
Men are forced to work the most difficult, and often degrading and humiliating jobs, in order to support themselves and be able to have enough left over to give to a women (which they often do without complaining or creating large social movements pointing out this injustice).

Women work easier, less stressful jobs, but then complain about a wage gap. The result of this discrepancy goes much further than wages though. The work that men do, that woman very often refuse to do themselves, puts men at greater risk in all aspects of their lives.

99% of all workplace fatalities happen to men. The vast majority of occupational related illnesses -- black lung disease, asbestos poisoning, etc, are suffered by men. The result is higher health problems, reduced quality of life, and overall shorter lives (but not an earlier retirement age) for men. Men work longer hours, work more years of their lives, have less downtime, and are more often required to be "on call" or work outside of their regular hours, even while on vacation.

These jobs don't just exist in the field of manual labor, either. Many highly technical jobs are also very demanding, requiring long working hours, and create levels of stress than many women chose to avoid (after all, they can just date or marry the men who work these jobs, and do something easier themselves).

Despite the discrepancies in health, quality of life, and life expectancy, all that women care about is the fact that they're getting paid less. They want to be able to enjoy the fruits of that labor, but they don't want to have to risk their own health and comfort in order to get it.

This preference is often found in the home life, as well. Women will brag about dusting or sweeping, but it's very rare for a woman to get her hands dirty with the yard work, learn about and troubleshoot the various appliances around the house, or risk her life working on the roof, the gutters, or electrical systems in the house. The issue here isn't so much that they can't do these jobs -- women are perfectly cable of doing all of these things -- the issue is that a lot of women simply *won't*.

True equality would see women working these same jobs and likely suffering the same health problems and reduced life expectancy that men do. The problem is that women see themselves as too important to have to work the way a man does. In fact, many women look down on men working the very jobs that contribute to the wage gap in the first place.

There is of course a "girl power" movement for women interested in working some of these jobs, and gender quotas make it easy for them to be hired. No such consideration is given to men who want to work in predominantly female roles, however. Discrimination against men is widely documented in the services sector, education, as well as among public employees. It is often assumed that a man must be some kind of a pervert if he wants to work with children. And in the services sector, it is often assumed that customers prefer working with women than they do with men (because women, after all, are nicer than men are).

**Social expectations and norms**
Men live a life where they are forced into submission, trained and told how to behave, and what to do in order to "deserve" a woman. Women, on the other hand, sit back and manipulate the world around them, constantly reassured that they're right, and that the men around them are wrong.

Women see men as a means to an end. What they expect out of a man is to have some kind of a slave, a trained puppy dog, whipped and scolded into submission. As a reward, she might give him a peck on the cheek, if she feels he deserves it, but of course she feels entitled to have him to work for her anyway, because she sees herself as "worthy" of that kind of servitude.

The life of a man is one of humiliation, of knowing that you're a second class citizen, knowing that other people don't care about your well-being or happiness.

The life of a man is one of hard work, a of living in a world where if you fail, there is nobody there to pick you back up.

The life of a man is disposable. Women and children are always put first, and if it costs the lives of a few men, so be it.

The life of a man is one of sacrifice. It means sacrificing your own happiness for others. It means working hard, but handing over the fruits of your labor to other people. It is a life in which you have to get permission in order to enjoy yourself, to relax, or take a break. Only after the needs and wants of your wife / girlfriend and kids are met, are you able to do anything for yourself.

The life of a man is often silent. It is a world in which your opinions don't matter, where your only course of action is to suck it up (or "man up").

True privilege in life comes from being a woman. It comes from not having to work for everything that you want in life. It comes from whipping another human being into submission. It comes from knowing that your life is special, that your happiness comes with intrinsic value, and that other people will go out of their way to please you. It comes from pretending to be a victim while holding a special position in society (one that many people deny exists).

True privilege in life is gained at birth. It comes from the innate, biological ability to reproduce and have kids, an ability that is highly prized by societies the world over.

True privilege in life comes from laws that ensure the well-being of women, often at the expense of men. It comes from a tax system that takes money from men, and uses it to better the lives of women. It comes from a society that constantly pushes for more and more benefits for women, while ignoring the dismal plight of men.

It comes from the police, who presume innocence from a nefarious women, but presume guilt from an innocent man. It comes from a court system that gives leniency to women, while demanding harsher punishment for men. It comes from a social standard that takes money from a husband and gives it to the wife, and a divorce industry that codifies this behavior under threat of imprisonment.

Indeed, the privileges that women receive from the legal system is six times greater than the privileges that white people enjoy compared to black people. Black lives might matter, but not the lives of men.

In fact, minority men are the ones who take the brunt of the injustices of society. Minority women favor comparably better than their male counterparts. Sexism, it seems, is a greater force in the world than racism.

Crimes against women, and white women, in particular, demand much higher punishments than crimes against men. In fact, murdering a white woman will get you the death penalty some 14.5 times more often than if you were to murder a black man.

That is what it means to have privilege. Privilege, in the modern world, is the exclusive purview of a woman. A life of privilege is a life that a man can never know or experience for himself, for he has been relegated as a second class citizen, as a work horse, as a piggy bank and a slave for the women around him.

**Real disenfranchisement**
And what is the cost of this privilege? Men suffer from higher mortality rates, higher suicide rates, higher rates of mental illness, higher levels of homelessness, and have significantly lower levels of educational achievement (largely the fault of laws that were put in place to make sure women didn't fall behind men). If these were issues that women faced, society would turn itself upside down to fix it. But because these are issues that men face, society largely turns it's back on these problems.

Men suffer in silence, many without even realizing that there's a problem. The privileges that women enjoy are protected by years of anti-male propaganda, male shaming tactics, and prevailing social apathy to the plight of men.

To claim that men are privileged, and that women somehow have things harder than men, is absolutely laughable, and in this context, is morally reprehensible. Why should a woman's happiness be worth more than a man's? What reason does a woman have to demand special treatment from a man, when a man would not receive the same treatment from a woman? And why do we think it's ok to leave millions of men behind when we spend every resource available making things better for women?

And yet we somehow think that this is ok. We live in denial about "male privilege", telling ourselves that woman are the true victims, when reality couldn't be further from the truth.