# Are you privileged or oppressed?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-privileged-or-oppressed/831322>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [March 18, 2019, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-privileged-or-oppressed/831322 "2019-03-18T17:02:43Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 5

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**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\
**Post date:** [March 20, 2019, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-privileged-or-oppressed/831322/81 "2019-03-20T05:39:21Z")

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> [@ITR\_champion](#):
>
> And nowadays, I believe, women heavily outnumber men among students at most colleges and universities.
> 
> Did you know that [in Massachusetts](http://reason.com/blog/2019/03/19/massachusetts-sends-men-to-prison-for-ad) male drug addicts can be sent to prison, while females in the same circumstances cannot be?
> 
> There are, and always have been, and always will be vast differences in the average treatment of men and women as groups. No doubt 60 years ago many legal and institutional barriers blocked women more than men. Nowadays many, thought not all, American institutions function better for women than men.
> 
> In any case, to avoid hijacking, that’s all I’ll say in this thread. If you want to start a GD thread on the topic, I’ll participate.

Since you agree that at least 50 years ago I was relatively privileged as a man, I’m satisfied.

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**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\
**Post date:** [March 20, 2019, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-privileged-or-oppressed/831322/82 "2019-03-20T05:51:27Z")

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Female, which, while not formally or legally “oppressed” in most locations (try to actually oppress me and I might bite your hand off) does make me “a frequent target for jerks” (including inadvertent ones),

but

from a EU-member country, white enough to be mistaken for American by American customs officers and other LEOs (no, ma’am, I’m not in the wrong line; yes, ma’am, I know Americans is over there _raise maroon passport with ESPAÑA stamped on cover_), I have one of the best passports in the world in terms of easy travel, UHC FTW, college-educated, and while my mother and her side of the family include multiple samples of the kind of people who bring humanity’s averages down, and the paternal side made me a terrorist target (they didn’t like our lastname), all in all I was born in a good position within my own society. I also was raised by that paternal side on the knowledge that I was, in fact, lucky in the circumstances of my birth and had therefore the duty to assist those who were not so, and to assist them in a way that they were interested in.

When I set up as self-employed, I had to indicate “area worked”; normally the response would be one or more Spanish regions. I wrote down “the whole world”. There are countries to which I won’t travel and some of them it’s because of their treatment of women, but so long as I stay within the developed world or Spanish-speaking countries I’m generally safe from official harassment.

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