10. Society values men higher than women.
Men have traditionally been the norm in society, but women’s lives have been valued higher (women and children first…). So all in all you cannot claim that society values men higher than women.
9. Girls are shortchanged in schools.
Boys are the ones underperforming in schools, and female students dominate colleges and universities. How can this mean that girls are being shortchanged?
8. Women work two jobs, men only one.
Men and women work the same number of hours every week in developed countries, when you add up paid and unpaid work. People often forget that many domestic chores are considered to be male chores.
7. Domestic violence means a man hitting a woman.
Extensive research shows that men and women are just as likely to hit each other within intimate relationships. Domestic violence is thus a two-way street. Women do get hurt more, and women are more often afraid, but that is due to men’s greater physical strength and not because of the frequency of assaults.
6. Women earn less money for the same job, which is terribly unfair.
Warren Farell has shown that men and women earn the same money for the same job, when you control for 25 important variables. A large study performed in Sweden failed to find any systematic pay discrimination of women, even though that was the goal of the study.
5. Men oppress women in third world countries.
Women can certainly face a lack of rights in third world countries, which is deplorable. However, men face dangerous jobs and military conflicts, and can also have very few rights. These human and gendered hardships are due to the division of labor, not because of any intrinsic urge to oppress either women or men.
4. Men dominate women through human sexuality.
This belief is the linchpin of radical feminism. However, women are usually the sexual selectors, since women only have a limited number of eggs during a lifetime, while men have an almost unlimited number of sperms. So how can human sexuality be a sign of male dominance?
3. Men dominate women by saying that a woman’s place is in the home.
Men working outside the home and women working in the home was the result of needing to produce food effectively, for example during the stone age or during agrarian agriculture. Now that we have industrialized nations with a surplus of food, women have the same access to the labor market as men.
2. Men create wars.
Nations or tribes go to war, and very often this is supported by both sexes. In democracies such as the US, troops are still sent away to fight, even though the majority of voters are women. So how can men be the ones who create wars? What remains the same though, is that men are the ones who do almost all of the fighting.
1. The male gender role is more privileged than the female gender role.
Each gender role has its own unique set of challenges, and it doesn’t make much sense to compare who has it worse. The reason people believe that women are worse off is because feminism is the only source of knowledge for most people when it comes to gender roles, and feminism only speaks about female issues, while conveniently forgetting to mention all the important men’s issues.
0. Can we please get a sane discussion on gender issues going?
As long as we’re blaming men for everything we’re never going to get any constructive work done; work that can help both sexes.
Pelle Billing is an M.D. who writes and lectures about men’s issues and gender liberation beyond feminism.
