I remain consistently unclear what is the take-away is with discussions of Male Privilege. Are men supposed to feel guilty, and by carrying around that guilt they will act better? It's often said that it "should be acknowledged" but what then? A lot of men (at times myself as well) bristle at this stuff, but at least for me it's the sense that there are unspoken accusations underneath the discussion. I don't get the point of acknowledgement alone, and since I don't understand the point I'm inclined to infer there's an unspoken motivation behind the discussion.

If the point is "we should be sensitive to one another" then yes, absolutely. I personally try hard to do this, towards women, towards beginners, towards people with other domain expertise, towards people with social anxiety... there's a whole bunch of people who have different needs, and programming communities have their own quirky mix. It's hard, I forget, other people forget, finding a balance between empathy and boundaries can be awkward at times... but eliminating the awkwardness or uncomfortable events is something I personally don't try to do. Maybe because my own personal demon is alienation, and I know those boundaries are dangerous for me -- they allow me to stick to a comfort zone that I know I need to push my way out of.

But... privilege... I just don't know where that fits into this. There's lots of specific issues I understand and can engage with. Impostor syndrome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome) for instance -- this is something I've heard a lot of women feel quite strongly, even in cases when I know the person should not feel that way. I've felt it too, but I know it's felt more strongly by many women, and if I keep it in mind maybe I can do something positive with that knowledge at some time, to reassure, or perhaps to push someone further knowing they might be self-limiting themselves for the wrong reason.

And in these discussions I've heard other useful anecdotes... but in these lists (the article and the list of Male Privileges)... not really. It feels like there's two categories:

1. Don't be a jerk. Fine, I'll try not to be. Sometimes I might be. I'm sorry, I'm only human, I will accept criticism if it is offered.

There's also a message: don't let other people be jerks. I'm not sure how I feel about this. If I feel strongly like both I and the possible-jerk are really members of the same community, then I would like to make the community better. But I have no interest in getting outraged because some dude somewhere said something offensive. Like the comment sections in many gender-diversity-related articles get filled with sexist bullshit (or worse)... I don't know who those people are, I don't recommend anyone even read that shit, and having absolutely no investment in that transient community of commenters I don't see what I (or frankly anyone) should try to do about it. Just shut the fucking comments down.

2. The message to respect boundaries and be professional. I'm simply not okay with this one. This isn't just a profession for me, and that's true of my community (and most open source related communities). I see other professional communities and I am totally disinterested. To be fair, in those professionalized communities there are a lot more women. But that's a tradeoff I'm not willing to make. If I or any other member of the community wishes to profess, on a personal channel (like a Twitter account) that they find women attractive, so be it.

Truly misogynist stuff isn't okay (and that does occur, IRC can be particularly bad) and some awareness could be useful there, though I think outrage is not particularly helpful -- it invokes defensiveness instead of empathy. Outrage strikes me as more to the emotional benefit of the person who is outraged than it is of benefit to the community.