You seem to agree with the inference that as a man I am simply a waking rapist waiting to happen. That is both disgusting and insulting.
so I am simply an oppressor of minorities by virtue of being a white man?
Statistically, a randomly selected white male is more likely to have discriminated against a non-white, non-male than have been the subject of discrimination by a non-white, non-male but that doesn't mean that any prediction can be made about any individual in the set.
I haven't seen any post that makes a prediction about you personally. If I've missed it, I would appreciate you pointing it out.
I do not mean to impugn any person with my posts. I am not saying that anyone is a rapist, sexist, homophobe, etc. What I am saying is that people who do not fall into the category of white heterosexual males are much more likely to experience abuse and harassment, and that, because those white heterosexual males do not experience that harassment themselves, they may be blind to it.
There was a viral video which came out a few years ago whereby a woman walks through New York. She is not doing anything in particular except walking, yet she regularly receives harassment from men in the street, who feel free to wolf-whistle, comment on her appearance, demand she talk to them, etc. That is something that men pretty much never have to deal with.
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Similarly when dealing with authorities, as a white male your story will likely be believed, and you will have a productive meeting. If however you are black, then police are predisposed to think of you as a threat. Research has shown that black children are regularly assumed to be older than equivalent white children. If you are black,
you are significantly more likely to be shot and killed by police, even if unarmed. If you are a woman and you are raped (
85,000 women are raped in England & Wales each year, compared to 12,000 men),
your rapist is unlikely to ever see a courtroom, and if they do there's a very good chance they will likely walk free, even if they admit to drugging you, even if they are caught in the act. If the rapist is convicted, if
they're white they'll likely see a significantly more lenient sentence, especially compared to a black man raping a white woman.
This is not due to any legal difference, it's systematic injustices within our society. A large part of the disparity in achievement by ethnic minorities is due to generational poverty - if you're poor you can't go to such good schools, or your parents can't afford to provide a good learning environment at home, sometimes even food, which in turn reduces achievement. For women it's an issue of still transitioning from the pre-WW1 societal roles, plus the fact that we separate our children at birth into blue and pink, subtly telling boys that it's not right to want to cook or provide care, or telling girls it's not right to like engineering and sciences. We also subtly teach boys that it's good to take risks, while making girls more self-limiting. Again, this is not a legal thing, it's a societal thing. Studies have shown that, given CVs which are identical apart from the name (a stereotypically white name, a stereotypically male name, a stereotypically minority name and a stereotypically female name), the white and male names got more interviews. Ironically, LGB (less so T) people have it much easier in some ways, because despite being the "newest" front in civil rights, it's also less obvious - it's generally quite easy to see someone is of a minority ethnic background, or is female, it's much more tricky to know from their appearance that they're gay.
You don't need to be a social justice warrior, but it's always good to recognise what privileges you benefit from, and to try to treat people equally, recognising that their lived experiences are as valid as our own. I know I don't succeed in that - I am at times racist and sexist. Not intentionally, nor in major ways, but I suffer the same societal preconditioning that the rest of us do and those are very hard to eradicate. But if we don't try then we will certainly never succeed.
