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History of Feminism

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YoungDemCA

(5,714 posts)
Fri Jul 3, 2015, 05:31 PM Jul 2015

White men and individualism: Anyone else notice... [View all]

...that whenever a white man deviates from societal norms in such a drastic way ( for example, any of the countless white male serial killers, mass murderers, and other criminals and terrorists), the individual white men are blamed, whether as a "crazy person" or a 'sociopath" or "mentally ill" and a "loser."

However, whenever a woman or a black person or a person of color in general does something similar or identical, it is not the individual women or person of color who is blamed, but all women and all people of color. Collective guilt applies to them, but not to white men.

The obsession with medicalizing and pathologizing white male criminality is an example of white male privilege. It can't be the fault of a "cultural pathology" (like it allegedly is for black people, for example) ; the pathology must be individual and personal, the fault of some aberrant, mentally ill white male "loser." White men have the luxury of being treated as individuals, while women and minorities are always held responsible as a group.

-My $0.02.

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