I learned about it in 1990/91 and it was eye opening. It was called “male privilege” at the time although rightly so, it’s been specified to “white male cis privilege” these days.
It was eye opening. Once you see it, it’s everywhere.
The sad thing about it: The men that do it, think they’re sexy. They think they’re flirting. They think it’s ‘cute’.
Making it harder to go away as well, is the women that go along with it, playing “the flirting game” for their own reasons, don’t improve things and perpetuate it. It’s not their fault: they’re dong what they have to do in the circumstances they find themselves in, but it doesn’t improve things.
But I think things are improving in younger generations.
The distinction between body parts and gender is a huge change for the positive. The backlash we’re seeing from the alt.right shows me that the reinterpretation of “what is gender” is finally taking hold.
My ne last year, in the middle of a conversation having nothing to do with this, told me he’s genderless.
I knew what that meant and I’m happy to see that the word is finally becoming normalized to mean “How do I identify?”
In his case, I know genderless means “Yes, I’m a boy but I don’t identify with either boy or girl things. I’m just me”.
I think this is a step forward, so change is possible and – it’s happening.