So recently I had a conversation with a friend of mine in a sorority. I said that she was lucky to be able to come to stuff that she didn't have to work on and she said that sororities were actually banned from hosting parties. And this got me thinking about a conversation I had with my sister like a year ago. We were talking about the wage gap as compared to the purchasing gap, i.e. that although women as a whole make less money than men as a whole, they spend more money than men as a whole.

I told her the reason that women's products are more expensive is because companies know that in general the women are going to be spending more money than the men. And, by and large, she agreed. However, she didn't think that a stay-at-home spouse's (probably woman's) ability to spend to spend money was a privilege, but a responsibility. Stay-at-home spouses were expected to go and use the family funds to buy stuff for the family.

And that got me thinking: what actually separates privilege vs responsibility? Men are "privileged" to be expected to go and work a 9 to 5... But no one likes working a 9 to 5. Women are privileged to be able to cover up their physical defects with make-up... But they'd prefer if they didn't have to.

So how do we distinguish (if possible) between privilege and responsibility? And if not possible, at what point does something lean toward one more than the other?

Let me give an example: Twitch streamers. I'm just going to come out and say it. It is impossible for a female streamer to get and maintain a similar audience to a male streamer in their same success percentage without the use of sex appeal (twitch thots). Without sex appeal, the largest female streamer I've seen had like 6 thousand people in chat, whereas the largest male streamers can easily get 30+ consistently, all the way up to like 70+. And I'm not sure that it's because they just don't work as hard, or if that's even a contributing factor. The simple truth is: Women just don't game as much as men, and without sex appeal men just aren't as interested in hanging out with (or watching) women. Ergo, the women who don't use sex appeal have a much smaller viewer-base than otherwise. On the other hand, those who do use sex appeal can get large amounts of money with what most characterize as comparatively little effort. When you get a couple different donations individually ranging from 1000-3000$ per month on top of subscriptions, you rake in the money fast.

So is sex-appeal a privilege or a responsibility? Although I think that those who use sex-appeal are clearly taking advantage of stupid people, and wish that twitch would stick to its TOS and ban them, I actually think it could be closer to the latter, in that there is almost no way to succeed without it. But if we use the "Something is a responsibility as opposed to a privilege if it is necessary for success", then a lot of privileges dry up instantly. I thought it was privilege to be able to do shit without hosting it. She thought it was a privilege to be able to host. Both of us thought that it was we who had responsibility, and the other the privilege.

I'm interested to hear your thoughts on this.