so true america doesnt care about discrimination as long as its against men and boys. couple id like to add tho are title ix, scholarship discrimination, and the boy crisis.

great article julian

Thank you for posting this. You might get some feminist backlash, buy you’re saying what neds to be said.

Here’s another article you (and your readers) might find interesting:

It is not just women who are the victims of spousal violence http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/02/22/f-vp-smol.html

This doesn’t seem to address any points in Sullivan’s article. Even a precursory glance at the article would inform one that she was referring to the justifications for affirmative action in college admission as determined by supreme court precedent and argumentation— not an assertion she has pulled out of mid-air. If you have a problem with the argumentation, the fault lies not with Sullivan’s article but, instead, with our judiciary branch for using the entire frame work of discreet and insular minority groups as a basis for strict scrutiny. They have set the terms for what groups have faced systematic discrimination as a fact. She is using their frame work from a constitutional law perspective to evaluate the merits of using gender ratio in college admissions.

Furthermore, your statements are misleading: 1) the United States has forced men, they do not currently do so, and there is no reason to think that a draft will ever again be used in the same way— precedent isn’t everything. 2) you seem to wrongly imply that she has used the term “male privilege” in your conclusion. 3) you fail to establish that your subconclusion (“this means that in some cases, the father is not evennotified that a legal proceeding is being brought against him”) follows from your subpremise (71 percent of…).

Poor quality of argumentation.

Great, great column Julian. Funny that the unthinking, unsupported “consensus” of male privilege turns out to be a naked lie when exposed to the facts. Government loans and grants to “minority” business women, even though they are a numerical majority, are for purposes of punishing men, termed a minority in order to bestow unearned benefits upon them under what they call the law.

Women's Studies and minority studies and multicultural studies promote the lie that in what was up until the past year, the freest country in the world, with the greatest opportunities for eveyone, that these so called minorities and people who "Don't look like us" are systematically discriminated against and therefore must have special treatment that discriminates against everyone else. Equality before the law is the legal standard of blind justice. Any other standard is immoral.

Dartmouth10, he clearly doesn’t have an issue with the whole article, just that one statement. The article he is referring to never makes it clear that the author is anything but stating that men dont suffer systemic discrimination.

Dartmouth09, 1) you fail to acknowledge his facts that men still have to commit to the Selective Service and potentially be forced to serve in the military. 2) He doesn’t imply it, as he shifts the focus from the writer to a nationwide perception of male privilege. 3) You clearly did not read the whole paragraph and missed the words “default order.”

Brandon Lachner, what the hell are you talking about? You are just an idiot.

This very effectively captures the plight of a white male living in the 21st Century. I do not deny that white Western males have committed what we now consider to be atrocities in the past, and that institutionalized discrimination against minorities and women are a part of our past.

But what is the correct path to equality? Unequal treatment in terms of Selective Service, scholarship availability, and affirmative action are well-intentioned, but they have the second-order effect of more deeply entrenching inequities. Women are inherently more vulnerably than men, they imply, so we need concrete policies to make up the difference. If that mode of thinking persists, I don’t see how we can ever achieve true equality.

I really liked this article, Julian. I don’t think male rape/assault is addressed nearly enough, and men are still shamed for coming forward to seek such help for that, and other issues such as depression.

I don’t really agree with how you throw in “male privilege” at the end, though. Privilege is merely a term to describe how men may sometimes receive advantages over women merely because of their gender – I don’t think it implies that men do not suffer from any kind of disadvantage or discrimination whatsoever.

There is a difference between saying that men are never victims of discrimination, and that men “never suffered the brunt of discrimination.” Men are discriminated against in certain ways. This is inevitable in a society that sees and treats each gender as very different. However, men by no means suffer the brunt of discrimination, which is what Sarkar conveniently fails to admit or address.

Men were at one time forced into military service, and women were not. Men are not forced into service today, though they are required to sign a draft card. Today, women are not allowed to participate in certain parts of the armed service. In the areas in which women are allowed to participate, women face great risk of sexual assault, and great pressure to hide and deny the assault.

Violence against men is no joke. Men are far less often the victims of violence, but when they are, they may face even more pressure than women to deny their situation, due to pressures to conform to masculine stereotypes. However, domestic violence programs that feel confident that they can distinguish a victim from a perpetrator will provide support for men as well as women. Male domestic violence should not be brushed aside, but neither should violence against women, which occurs much more frequently and thus deserves more funds.

Statuatory rape laws that disproportionally target men are also discriminatory, due to harmful stereotypes that men are always willing to consent to sex.

As for your data on false accusations of rape, this is definitely the weakest and most misguided or ignorant part of your article. Your data comes from Slate magazine- more reliable sources estimate that 2 to 3% of rape accusations are false. A far more prevalent problem is the lack of reporting of rapes- it is estimate that more than 90% of rapes go unreported.

You bring up violence, and fail to state that women are by far more likely to suffer violence than men. To live in fear, and to suffer trauma, is certainly far worse than to be at a very small risk of being falsely accused (and, in most cases, acquitted).

I don’t understand your argument that men are discriminated against by being forced to provide for their children, just as women are. However, certainly the dismissal of Parker’s particular case is wrong.

Male privilege exists. It does not exist across the board, and it is just as important to end discrimination against men as it is to end other forms of discrimination. However, you fail to acknowledge how small discrimination against men is in comparison to all other forms of discrimination, and that discrimination against men could be best ended by deconstructing the stereotype of the powerful, strong, aggressive man.

Brilliant article. Thank you for writing it.

Though I understand that men don’t have a free pass in society, I also think that the tone of this article dismisses the importance of legal protection for women. Women are disproportionately victims of all forms of gender-based violence (http://www.abanet.org/domviol/statistics.html) and, in terms of societal power, still make 75 cents to every man’s dollar. We are barely a generation away from a world in which discrimination against women was not only explicitly tolerated but implicitly condoned by the lack of legal options for women. Do you really think women who have been raped, abused, forced out of their homes or sexually harassed at work are looking to inconvenience men and not to regain any legitimacy before the law and society? Domestic violence or rape lawsuits are not vindictive nor targeted at men- they are often the last recourse for the disempowered.

Though I certainly don’t mean to imply that men are not also victims of abuse or should not have options (they do!), I think that sarcasm, slate magazine statistics, and a lack of acknowledgment of the amazingly powerful role of gender specific legal recourse is incredibly irresponsible.

While this is an impressive article that denotes quite succinctly some of the institutional/systematic biases and discrimination against men, it is quite a sad you didn’t include something such male genital mutilation in the list, which is a huge privilege females enjoy in the western world.

At any rate as far as some of the commentors go; I find it rather incredible that people are still employing Brownmiller’s 2% figure for false rape allegations. Brownmiller entails about as much probity upon gender relations as a white nationalist does upon race relations, or a creationist does about science.

And why do female supremacists (i.e. feminists) assiduously mollify the figures of male victims of domestic violence. Please stop lying, and pretending that the number is trivial. But even if it was, how is that any justification for the legal/social discrimination men face in this area?

Of course many Feminists attempt to rebuke that such discrimination persists, such as “dartmouthwoman” who avers the following proposition: “Though I certainly don’t meant to imply that men are also not victims of abuse or should not have options (they do!)…”

Your entire post is an attempt to pacify the existence of male victims of abuse to such an extent as to completely impute it with the moniker of ‘anomaly’. It’s also quite disingenuous to state that men have options concerning abuse. Billions of dollars have and will continue to be allocated to domestic violence shelters, and they will (with publicly funded money) refuse half the human race simply on the basis of genitalia. According to the federal government, either men simply aren’t victims (palpably untrue) or they’re such sub-human scum that they shouldn’t be bequeathed the right to be protected and sheltered from it. The federal government has opted for the latter. This doesn’t even account for the degradation, shame, mockery, and incredulity men have to endure, as a result of the abuse. To prattle on as if neither of these are true is extremely mendacious on your part.

Almost every female who commented here only offered sympathy (imo contrived) juxtaposed to female suffering being bestowed the more honored wreath. In other words, they were wholly inept to complete the most simple discourse without perpetually referencing how “women have it so much worse.” The lack of valid sympathy or empathy is disappointing, albeit not surprising.

You’re good examples of why men’s rights activists exist.

Um, DartmouthWoman, no.

Men are the victims of violent crime 1.5 to 2 times as often as women.

Women are MORE likely to commit domestic violence than men and more likely to use a weapon.

Women make 77 cents for every dollar men make while doing only 71% of the work. Men work more overtime, choose more dangerous, demanding fields, and work part time less often. It is only women’s choices that cause the average working woman to make less money than the average working man. Men and women doing the same job with the same amount of experience make equal pay. There is no wage gap and this myth has been completely debunked for years.

On the other hand, for every 100 women who earn a degree only 73 men do.

Men are systematically discriminated against in the areas of health, education, family law, divorce, violence laws, criminal sentencing, rape law, military conscription, and circumcision.

Please don’t claim that false domestic violence and rape claims are not meant to be vindictive – that’s usually the whole point.

Want sources? http://jayhammers.blogspot.com

Men’s rights are certainly important- that’s why VAWA was extended in 2005 to include gender-neutral language, and why I would hope in the future that legislation provides recourse for all victims of abuse. And in some ways it already does, to set precedent for domestic abuse/gender discrim being something prosecutable, and to allow for shelters and outreach programs to use funding allocated for women for men. Domestic violence and gender specific law is new and not perfect- but is does play an important societal role in declaring that the federal government/social contract doesn’t permit abuse.

The statistics you cite have literally no information about where/how they were collected and are not replicated over time. The reason why jobs/pay/gender/health/etc are correlated is hard to discern, but I would guess that it has something to do with how women were excluded from the workforce for hundreds of years and were only given the option to bear and raise children fairly recently in modern history. I would suspect that laws protecting women’s right to be in the workforce, not have to solely raise children, not be sexually abused, etc, are important symbols enough not to be ignored, and could certainly adapt to be accommodating to instances where men are disenfranchised.

The reason why your comments are inflammatory, gentlemen, is because you seem to ignore the broader aspects of gender discrimination and offer solutions that are neither workable nor palatable to women, who value legal protection in instances of abuse. These laws are remarkable because they protect victims first. It is your surprising lack of empathy that is astounding- why is it so hard for male rights to be based on female rights as precedent? Why is it so hard to imagine the time-sensitive decisions that these laws allow?

What would you want for your sisters or daughters- a world in which, were she abused, she would have to prove that she wasn’t violating her abuser’s rights before she could get a restraining order? That she wasn’t unfairly accusing her boss of harassing her and tarnishing his reputation, before the harassment charges were investigated? Imagine, too, that there is an additional economic burden, if not a wage gap then that of children. The reason why these laws encourage fast judgments is to prevent ongoing abuse from continuing; if this is unfair, which it may be, it can be investigated later, when there is time to spare. I would hope that these laws can continue to be adapted to protect male plaintiffs, too.

On a side note- Jay- I read your blog- taping women while you have sex and checking their IDs is perhaps funny, but choosing sex partners that you know and trust might be a less demeaning answer to the problem.

Oh for christ’s sake this discussion is so juvenile. Its a who the most oppressed kinda argument: women or men, women or african american, african americans or hispanics, women or gay people. In the end it doesn’t matter. There is a reason that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is called Universal! All people have should have the same rights under the law- thats why they are called human rights not men’s right or women’s rights or anybody elses rights human rights. There is not a single demographic in history that has not been discriminated against at some point or another. Hell, being gay means I can’t give blood, can’t get married and I can’t travel to seven under pain of death and a further 68 under pain of imprisonment. So what, doesn’t mean I should be more entitled than anyone else. Universality of Rights is the principle that you should be espousing not bickering over who is worse treated.

Both sides bring up some interesting points here. I think there are inequalities on both sides. In general, women are favored under the law (as written) while men are favored by society and custom. I am not sure it is useful to try to figure out who is more oppressed. I do think it is worth noting that the legislative advantages enjoyed by women can be easily reversed, while the cultural / social advantages men enjoy are entrenched and difficult to fix.

There is no doubt, except among extremists with an agenda, that women suffer the brunt of sexual violence, violence perpetrated by the other gender (men only suffer more violence in the aggregate due to violence committed by men against men), and domestic violence. There is a reason that more laws have been enacted to protect women. This is an extremely serious issue, and work with some of those women (as I have) and you will see the severity of the problem.

Wage disparity is more interesting as a problem. It is something of a lagging indicator of societal equality as the disparity becomes increasingly small (but nonzero) in younger cohorts. This is largely because women who are working today and are 60-65 years old chose careers in the 1960’s and had far fewer options open to them than the young women of today. Also, the mean income is distorted as an indicator, as people who are near retirement are generally the highest paid, so those very large disparities in the oldest cohorts distort the mean (the median might be a better indicator in this case). Also, men have lost earning power disproportionately during the recession of 2008-2009, due largely to their concentration in more cyclical sectors (e.g. financial industry) versus the less cyclical sectors in which women predominate (e.g. health care). I expect wage disparity to further dissipate and possibly reverse if the trends mentioned by the author of the previous article persist. There is still a pregnancy / maternity leave effect, and that is something society does need to address.

Some of the inequities facing men are quite real also. While legislation favoring men in the workforce has been reversed, legislation favoring women in family matters has not. Women still have tremendous advantages with respect to child custody. It varies from state to state, but many states still explicitly favor women to the point where unless the mother is proven abusive, she can get custody. This is not the right message to send when we are trying to encourage men to take their roles and responsibilities as fathers more seriously. These laws are relics, and there has just not been enough of a movement to reform them. Domestic violence against men falls into a similar category. Men who are victims are not taken seriously by authorities and many laws don’t even apply to them. Statutory rape of young men by teachers or other authority figures is not taken seriously in general, and the laws sometimes are so narrowly written as to protect only women/girls. This sends the wrong message, and these laws must be changed.

I want to emphasize, however, that domestic violence against women, despite having more progressive laws, is a far greater problem. Far more women will face serious abuse than men, although that offers little comfort to the men who do find themselves in such a situation.

The requirement that men must register for the draft is also inequitable, although so long as the draft remains inactive, it is of relatively little importance beyond the symbolic. It is yet another example of how legislation favors women.

The number of false rape allegations is relatively small, and I agree that the number of unreported rapes is dramatically (orders of magnitude) higher. I do believe there should be far more severe penalties for false allegations of rape (which can be life-destroying), but I can name multiple examples of unreported rapes among close female friends of mine, many of which occurred at Dartmouth, and I never saw a false accusation. This is a massive societal problem. Here it is not simply a legislative issue, it is a cultural one, and that makes it hard to fix. Due to the presumption of innocence in our judicial system, proof of rape is exceedingly difficult, and the vast majority of rapists (including many repeat offenders) do not pay for their crimes. I am not sure if things have changed, but in the mid-late 90’s when I was a student, the CoS at Dartmouth punished rapists far less severely than people who collaborated on lab reports without proper citations. It was one of Dartmouth’s most appalling failures in my time there. I suspect it is because they did not want to call attention to high rates of rape occurring on campus. This is particularly unfortunate because it is not just a Dartmouth problem, it is a societal problem on a much larger scale.

Ultimately, I think a game of who is the most oppressed is not productive. Rather, we should be seeking to bring about equality for both genders in all aspects of life, both socially and legislatively. We should not make this a war between men and women, but rather between those of us who want equality for both genders against those who seek to use their own gender to some advantage. These types of inequity only hurt all of us.

Though I could never hope to trump the last comment, I do wish to make a crucial point that I feel has been missed in this back-and-forth. I really appreciate that this article highlights something I feel much feminist commentary misses (and let me clarify, I am not using the term “feminist” in a derogatory way as I do not hesitate to call myself one): patriarchy does not benefit anyone. For the most part, the entrenched gender roles present in our society have not been established or perpetuated by individual men hell-bent on dominating or degrading women. Rather, they are the remnants of the collectively agreed-upon ideology of an outdated society in which women were nothing more than the property of their fathers and then their husbands (why do you think women go from using their father’s name to their husband’s, for instance?). This kind of obvious inequality does not exist anymore to the same extent, but insofar as it does, it leads to discrimination against both women AND men. The feminist revolution of the 1970’s failed primarily in addressing how men were affected by the gender roles that simultaneously oppressed women and limited them to the world of house and home and told men that to be, say, a stay-at-home father would be effeminate and weak, as would showing vulnerability in any sense or allowing someone to one-up you without responding in turn. All of these ideas are prevalent and widely accepted today—that a man should be emotionless, that a man cannot be sexually assaulted because he is virile and ready for the hunt at all times, that men should engage in violence and defend our territory in war, that a man’s duty to his children is money and money alone, and that fatherhood is more about being a breadwinner than being a nurturer. Our laws reflect these outdated notions because men were never given the benefit of the feminist revolution which addressed the absurdities of the feminine gender role while leaving those of the masculine gender role untouched. It is laughable and widely rejected these days to suggest that women are only good for cooking, cleaning, and bearing children, yet still seen as radical (or at least out-of-place) to suggest that a man who stays at home and cooks dinner every night for his family or cries during sad movies could still qualify as masculine.

My essential point is that the discrimination against men that you point out is in every case simply the opposite side of the same coin of patriarchy, which forces men to fulfill a role of masculinity that is simply outdated and ignores his rights to equal treatment under the law in favor of maintaining the man as a symbol of power and strength. Though men have, in fact, been systematically discriminated against, it has been for the same reasons that women have been discriminated against as well—simply inverted. We are not enemies in the discussion of gender equality. The restricitve ideology that hurts one gender hurts the other. Perhaps we should throw out all of our ideologies about what it means to be a woman and what it means to be a man, and how we should act, and then women’s bodies will not be treated as objects or dominated without permission, while men’s humanity and vulnerabilities will be recognized and protected.

A situation that deserves attention however un-PC it is; is the case for male abortion in regards to child support. The case for abortion has been made and stands in courts but gives the sole choice of the child to the woman. The man has no voice as to whether th child comes to term. This is only a problem when put into context of gender equality and the idea that the woman and man are equally responsible for the child. The argument has been made that the man was still make child support even if he is misled by the woman that she is infertile and neither wanted children in the beginning. The reasoning was that the well-being of the child outweighs any other situation. The fact is that child support laws are unjust because men can’t choose to terminate the pregnancy under any situation. Say the mother is unfit and the man knows sole responsibility for the child will come on him because custody will be taken away from the woman. Even under this situation the man can’t remove his paternity from the child under current law. I don’t suggest aborting the pregnancy is the purpose of the inequality but simply that a woman can choose whether she is ready to be a parent after conception but a man cannot and is not fair under the idea that both sexes are equal under the law. While I am not someone who necessarily believes in complete equality under the law; the way things are now it is not even close.

In regards to Rape- unreported rape cannot be seriously taken into consideration. There is no reason to be a victim of true rape and stay silent in today’s society; and to encourage further reports of rape by limiting the scope of cross-interrogations is unconstitutional. Even more grotesque are the laws surrounding date rape and consent. The implication of some of these laws is that only men can rape and only women can consent. If impairment is reason enough for women to be unable to consent then how can two impaired adults have sex; the simple answer is they can’t but the grotesque part is that the man is implicitly a rapist and the women raped because she cannot consent. The idea that a man’s consent is not important seems grossly unjust.

I am a close friend of one of the Duke accussee’s and his life was irrepably altered by a false accusation. Rape is it important to note is the most heinous crime notwithstanding murder and to not give the accused every chance to clear his or her name is unthinkable. I do not contend that this is not possibly a traumatic event but the accusation and conviction is so damaging that the cases must be treated with the highest amount of discretion.

Violence against anyone is wrong, be it man or woman. The fact that people get hit and have traumatic experiences is undeniable, but to limit this to a man or woman or give women extra protection under the law doesn’t make much sense legally given the implication of equality. The social embaressment of a man being beat up by a girl makes most woman on man cases go unreported and deserves just as much attention as the fact that men are bigger generally than women. I am not saying that the numbers aren’t extremely tilted towards man on woman violent incidents but everyone in society accepts that man on woman violence is wrong but woman on man violence is both dismissed and laughable by most in society demands, if anything does, extra attention from the law.

Equality in the workplace deserves more attention but I am not sure that this is as big a problem as many think. First, the person who said something about people in their 60s misses the big picture because people generally max out in their earning before they are 60. Only the rare company owners who set up companies that pay them make serious money in the elder years. The problem is that women make less generally in their prime earning years. I think the some women view careers as something they do in their 20s and 30s and ‘proove’ to themselves they can do but then revert to traditional roles in the family be it because of motherly urges – or the fact that it is emasculating to be a stay at home dad and have your wife work. The reality is women must choose what is important to them-career or family. It is relatively impossible to be your best at both because they are both full time jobs. You can tell me I’m wrong but the families with two very successful full time parents generally have nannies who take on the roles of the mother and the child develops a mother/child relationship with their caretaker. The people that do that choose their career and can certainly max out their earning potential, but it comes at a price.

Kathleen Mayer, “patriarchy” does not exists. It is a purely rhetorical construct that has NO use whatsoever beyond serving as a vessel for the notion of collective male guilt. The word “patriarchy” as feminists use it is pure unadulterated hate speech against men.

As a parent of an ‘11, I’d have to say that males are definitely bashed by school systems in the U.S. It is typical for 20% or more of young males to be given Ritalin to get them to be compliant in class. Many males get the message that education is about compliance, not learning. It is this, in my opinion, that contributes to the current skewed college gender ratios. Too many males hate education by the time they are 18 and justifiably so.