Double standards: the sine qua non of misandry

Double standards lie at the heart of the injustices men and boys face for being born male.  It’s the double standards that are most galling to us. Gender double standards have always been with us, but the women’s movement has served to underscore and even exacerbate them. I am no fan of generalizations, but I thought the following list would help illustrate the point.

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• We happily remove male role models from our sons’ lives, then when our sons behave badly, we blame patriarchy;

• Stereotyping girls as inferior to boys in any facet of life is “misogyny.” Stereotyping boys as potential batterers and rapists is a public service announcement;

• Boys are taught that they must never hit a girl, but they are given license to beat the crap out of other boys. Girls are taught boys must never hit a girl, and they are given license to beat the crap out of boys;

• When girls were behind boys in educational achievement, people said the girls were just fine, the problem was with the schools. Now that boys are behind girls in every facet of educational achievement, people say the schools are just fine, the problem is with the boys;

• Women criticize young men hesitant to marry as immature and afraid of commitment. When those same women later end their marriages because they aren’t feeling “fulfilled,” they say it’s because they have matured, but their own “commitment” is not at all pertinent to the issue;

• A woman who tells her fiance that she wants to take time off from work when they have children is called a normal woman. A man who tells his fiance he wants to take time off from work when they have children is called an ex-fiance;

• If a man wants sex more often than his wife is willing to give, he’s selfish. If a woman wants sex more often than her husband is willing to give, he’s selfish;

• It is the mission of feminism to unshackle women so they can express their femininity in whatever manner they desire, and to shackle men so they can express their masculinity only in the manner feminists approve;

• When dad in an intact family goes through tough financial times, the entire family tightens their belts and sacrifices together. When mom kicks dad out of the house and dad goes through tough financial times, no one needs to worry about tightening their belts any more — dad either comes up with the support money or he goes to jail;

• People criticize men for not being actively involved in their children’s lives, but the minute they see a man they don’t know in the park with his own children, they call the cops;

• Women seeking to enter the business world are afforded all manner of assistance to encourage them to own their own businesses. Men seeking to enter the domestic world as stay-at-home dads are afforded nothing from anyone, least of all encouragement;

• Women have long insisted they are victims of discrimination that manifests itself in the “wage gap.” Now that young women earn more than their male counterparts in urban areas, women still insist they, not the males, are victims — because they can’t find mates who are their intellectual peers;

• Women are told they should be free to explore sexuality in whatever manner they choose, yet feminists pen lengthy, angst-ridden screeds on whether it is proper for women to give blowjobs;

• Women insisted on having equal access to every place men congregate, then after they gained admittance, they insisted on having “women-only” spaces because they say they are afraid of the men;

• When women commit domestic violence, it’s called “self defense.” When men act in self-defense, it’s called domestic violence;

• Man who hits his wife = felon; woman who cuts off her husband’s penis = feminist hero;

• When a woman accuses a man of rape and he denies it, there are conflicting claims of criminality, yet only one is arrested; only one’s name is reported in the news for the world to titillate to his humiliation; only one is likely to be imprisoned if he’s convicted; and only one will have the accusation trail him like a ghost for the rest of his life even if it is false. Can you guess his gender?

• We insist that women are at least as capable as men in every conceivable sphere of life — except the bedroom, where women are as helpless as the most distressed of Disney damsels and only men are responsible for the mutually tipsy sex she later regrets;

• Women never lie about rape, except when they recant;

• Men accused of rape are pathological liars, except when they confess;

• Women who are raped must never be told they should have made better choices. Men falsely accused of rape routinely are told they should have made better choices, and sometimes they are told to apologize to their false accusers;

• Young men are taught that they must ask for sex. When those same young men go to college, they are expelled if they have consensual sex but asked for it too much;

• If a teen boy rapes a teen girl, he must be jailed and prosecuted as an adult. If a teen girl falsely accuses a teen boy of rape, it is “awful” to jail her, much less to prosecute her;

• In college, if a student is accused of stealing another student’s pen, any disciplinary claim likely will be adjudicated under the stringent “clear and convincing” evidence standard. If a student is accused of the far more serious crime of rape, he will have the claim adjudicated under the “preponderance of the evidence” standard, the lowest in our jurisprudence;

• When it comes to rape, everyone agrees one rape is one too many. When it comes to false rape claims, feminists turn into actuaries who declare that some false claims are acceptable because the risk to men is so low;

• For men accused of rape, we defend humiliating practices such as “perp walks” because, we say, there should be no secrets in criminal matters. For rape accusers, we defend keeping secret the very identity of the person on whose shoulders the entire case rests;

• Some countries pay women for claiming they’ve been sexually assaulted, even if they lie and no matter how slight their injuries. Those same countries do not pay men falsely accused of rape, even though they are telling the truth and no matter how great the harm to them;

• Rape of women is a national crisis; rape of men in prison is a punchline;

• We shame young men who would never harm a woman by insisting they must be “part of the solution” to end rape. If we tell young women they must be “part of the solution” to end rape just by being careful, that’s victim blaming;

• When underage teens have consensual sex, usually only one is convicted as a statutory rapist and, upon his release, required to register as a sex offender. Can you guess his gender?

• Men having sex with teen girls are viewed as the lowest form of life, and they are usually sent to prison for many years; women having sex with teen boys are seen as “mixed up” and any prison sentence they receive is far lighter than when the genders are reversed;

• A teen girl who is statutorily raped can have an abortion if her rapist impregnates her. A teen boy who is statutorily raped will be forced to pay child support to his rapist if she decides to have the child. And if the boy doesn’t pay, he likely will receive a punishment his rapist did not receive — he will be jailed;

• Women insist that males are undeservedly “privileged,” arrogating to themselves the right to define what “privileged” means.[/unordered_list]

 

In the current public discourse, the gender injustice most discussed is women’s “right” to have free birth control, paid for their employers. That injustice overshadows the following:

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• women outlive men in developed countries by five or more years; men have higher death rates for virtually all of the leading causes of death;

• men are approximately 50% of the workforce but account for 93% of job related deaths;

• males between 20 and 24 have a seven times greater rate of suicide than their female counterparts, and overall, men commit suicide at rates three to four times greater than women;

• males are between 1.5 to 2 times more likely than females to be assaulted;

• government funding for breast cancer research outpaces funding for prostate cancer research by nearly two to one even though prostate cancer and breast cancer have roughly the same caseload;

• death among young men due to testicular cancer in the 15-34 age group outpaces the number of deaths from breast cancer among women in the same age group;

• victims of war, both combatants and non-combatants, are more likely to be male;

• responsible young men are legally charged considerably more for auto insurance than irresponsible young women, simply because they were born male, but gender differences for health care premiums are being outlawed in the US since women claimed they were discriminatory;

• a woman who commits the same crime as a man will receive, on average, only a fraction of the sentence;

• during FY 2009, 169,586 names and addresses of suspected violators of the duty to register with the Selective Service System were provided to the Department of Justice for possible investigation and prosecution for their failure to register, carrying a penalty up to five years in prison. Every name on the list was male — because young women are exempt from even registering.

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