Do men need to check their privilege? Gender activists tell us that men carry around with
them an invisible knapsack of advantage. Well, is this true and is it the whole story? Let’s
check the facts. Coming up next on the Factual Feminist.
If you are willing to cherry pick, stretch the truth a bit, and suppress counterevidence,
you can easily make it seem like women are the have-nots in our society. You point to
the wage gap, the glass ceiling. You focus on women’s vulnerability to body shaming,
sexual objectification, mansplaining, street harassment, intimate partner violence. Before
long you will have constructed a full-scale patriarchy. And we have hundreds of women’s
groups who do just that—they specialize in persuading us that Venus is victimized
and Mars is privileged. But here is the problem. Women’s advocacy
groups tend to exaggerate the plight of Venus and ignore the troubles on Mars. As I have
tried to show in earlier segments of this series, most of the standard feminist injustice
statistics are exaggerated or just plain wrong. It not true that women are being cheated out
of 23 percent of their salaries or that 1 in five will be victims of sexual assault.
And it’s also the case that, in many critical domains, women are faring far better than
men. Let’s consider a few:
In education, it is women who are the privileged sex. At every level of education—from preschool
to graduate school—and across all ethnic and class lines, women get better grades,
win most of the honors and prizes, and are far more likely to go to college. Today, women
earn a majority of BAs and advanced degrees. Our schools do a much better job educating
women than men.
Now look at the workplace. Women’s groups focus a lot of attention on people at the
pinnacle of achievement—CEOs of Fortune 500 corporations, tenured physics professors
at MIT, U.S. Senators—and they are right to say that there are too few women. But look
what happens when you consider the entire workforce. There may be a tiny handful of
women—but the lethal professions are largely a male preserve. As my favorite dissident
feminist, Camille Paglia, has noted: "It is overwhelmingly men who do the dirty, dangerous
work of building roads, pouring concrete, laying bricks, tarring roofs, hanging electric
wires, excavating natural gas and sewage lines, cutting and clearing trees, and bulldozing
..."
So it’s no surprise that the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that every year about 5,000
Americans die each year in workplace accidents—92 percent of them men. We hear about the Fortune
500 CEOs, but what about the unfortunate 4,600? Alongside male salaries, perhaps some mention
should be made of male sacrifice.
Whenever perturbed gender warriors draw up lists of male advantages, they always mention
men’s freedom from fear of being attacked. It’s true that women are much more likely
to be victims of rape and sexual assault. But men are much more likely to be victims
of violent crime as a whole: Consider Campus crime--men may need safe spaces
more than women--according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics: Men are twice as likely
to be victims of a violent crime on campus. Look at the overall Murder: Of 12,253 murder
victims in 2013, 78 percent were men. Even on the Internet, men face as much or
more bullying than women. According to Pew Research, More women than men are sexually
harassed (7% women and 4% men), but men are the primary targets of threats (10% men compared
to 6% of women). Let's continue: Here are more facts that challenge
the male privilege mantra: Suicide: 77.9% were male, 22.1% female .
Incarceration: 93.3% of federal inmates are male and even when men and women commit the
same crime and have similar criminal histories, men receive 63 percent longer prison sentences
on average. Homelessness: it’s estimated that more than
60% of homeless individuals are male. Combat: 85 percent of active duty soldiers
are men. Though there are many women serving in the armed services, fewer than 8 percent
profess a desire to engage in combat. If you visit a veteran’s hospital or rehabilitation
center, male privilege is not the first idea that comes to mind.
And now for the mother of all gender gaps—life expectancy : Women’s average life expectancy
is nearly 5 years longer than men. In sum: men must be the only oppressor class
in history who are less educated, more victimized, and shorter lived than those they oppress—and
who have claimed society’s gritty, dangerous jobs their exclusive preserve.
The Factual Feminists verdict: Modern life is a complicated mix of burdens and benefits
for each sex. Men and women enjoy distinctive advantages and face distinctive challenges.
So if men have to check their privilege, then so do women.
But why play this game? Why do so many activists want to promote gender resentment? Men and
women are not two opposing teams competing for some trophy. We are in this together.
Our fates are intimately connected. As one wit has observed, “Nobody will ever win
the battle of the sexes. There’s too much fraternizing with the enemy.”
My advice: Let’s dispense with the bitter rhetoric about male privilege and get on with
the fraternizing ... and sororitizing.
Do you think one sex is more privileged than the other? Or do you agree that it’s a complicated
mix? Let me know in the comments section below. I invite you to subscribe to this series,
follow me on Twitter, and like me on Facebook. And remember—before telling a man to check
his privilege, check your facts. Thank you for watching the Factual Feminist.