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It's easy to glean the toxic sense of white male entitlement that underlay the attempted insurrection: the feet on Pelosi's desk, the zip ties, the... everything. But this is a good chance to remember that white male entitlement is also an everyday phenomenon--an insidious one.
White male entitlement encompasses the permission to take up space, evident in manspreading and the way men are typically the ones with a room of their own when WFH in the pandemic. It's the sense of entitlement to interrupt and dominate even on subjects they know nothing about.
White male entitlement is not only the relentless mansplaining, but also the assumption that others are inevitably fascinated by their attempts to derail the conversation. It is feeling perpetually relevant, and declining to learn from others--often, quite unselfconsciously.
White male entitlement is so ubiquitous; it is the cultural water in which we swim. Let us use the vivid, dramatic examples of it partly as a basis for reflecting on its subtler, everyday manifestations.
