I think the author's fundamental mistake is in taking a zero-sum view of discrimination. he gives examples of discrimination that hurts men and benefits women, and seems to think that this somehow...
Exemplary
I think the author's fundamental mistake is in taking a zero-sum view of discrimination. he gives examples of discrimination that hurts men and benefits women, and seems to think that this somehow disproves the existence of discrimination that hurts women and benefits men.
the idea that discrimination can negatively affect the group it supposedly benefits is...nothing new? for example:
"patriarchy is bad for everyone" is like, week 3 of Gender Studies 101 level shit.
besides that zero-sum view of discrimination, it seems like the other unifying idea in this essay is complaints about what he identifies as the "diversity industry":
The misogyny myth has served the interests of this diversity industry, but it is enormously damaging to the rest of society—women as well as men.
...
It was not until 2019 that two analysts outside the diversity industry
...
This selective science has been a boon for the diversity industry since the 1990s
...
The claims of bias became dogma, and the diversity industry has flourished ever since, thanks to support from corporations, private foundations, and public agencies like the National Science Foundation.
...
The diversity industry claims to be guided by a desire for “equity,” which sounds noble but is sufficiently vague to mean whatever anyone wants it to mean.
...
But the diversity industry continues to rule public policy and shape public opinion.
...
Many male managers and workers have become leery to meet alone with a woman, a post-#MeToo trend confirmed in surveys and widely lamented by professional women and diversity consultants. (Naturally, the diversity industry blames this on men, expecting them to ignore the new risks they face.)
...
The new male skittishness has raised an awkward topic for the diversity industry: the value of male mentors.
...
The diversity industry’s survival depends on bludgeoning scientists and the public to believe—or, at least, pretend to believe—in the misogyny myth.
...
Like the old male aristocracy, the diversity industry libels one sex while giving unmerited rewards to the other.
and his final paragraph:
The diversity industry has corrupted science and so many other institutions that it has become as entrenched as the old aristocracy—and without even the pretense of the traditional noblesse oblige to the less privileged. No matter how much harm it does to society, no matter how badly it poisons relations between the sexes, the diversity industry will cling to its privilege until we recognize that it, too, is peddling a lie.
at the core of this argument is a tired old right-wing talking point - that people who advocate for some social change, in this case gender equality, aren't advocating for it out of a sincere belief that it would improve society. instead, they're doing it selfishly, trying to make money or gain power.
there's also an interesting sleight of hand here, where he peppers his article with links to sources for various claims he makes. it makes the piece seem well-researched and backed up by data and objective facts. but for this central claim - that the "diversity industry" not only exists, but "has become as entrenched as the old aristocracy" - he does not provide a single shred of evidence. it seems like he takes it as an article of faith and expects his readers will too.
there is useful conversation to be had about various forms of discrimination, who they affect, and the best way to address them. this "diversity industry" bullshit does not advance that conversation. it's a thought-terminating cliche that allows him to dismiss anyone he disagrees with as essentially being a paid shill. it's a dead giveaway that he is not approaching this subject honestly and in good faith.
also, I hadn't heard of the "City Journal" before...it's published by the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. that's some clever "stealth" branding on their part. kudos to their web design team, they did a great job making it look like a website of a normal random newspaper.
Classic projection, which is often the case with right wingers. "There's no way someone could possible do this out of some sort of selflessness or sense of duty to society. People only act in...
at the core of this argument is a tired old right-wing talking point - that people who advocate for some social change, in this case gender equality, aren't advocating for it out of a sincere belief that it would improve society. instead, they're doing it selfishly, trying to make money or gain power.
Classic projection, which is often the case with right wingers. "There's no way someone could possible do this out of some sort of selflessness or sense of duty to society. People only act in their own interests!"
Years of libertarian thinking and indoctrination at play there.
This article honestly unsettles me, and I admit I did not finish it as it was far too long for me to stomach. In the past decade, I've lost the right to my bodily autonomy and witnessed the incel...
Exemplary
This article honestly unsettles me, and I admit I did not finish it as it was far too long for me to stomach.
In the past decade, I've lost the right to my bodily autonomy and witnessed the incel movement emerge and murder women for being women. I've seen the rhetoric on my favorite sites slowly become peppered with unchallenged misogynistic rhetoric and had to question if I'm truly welcome on the web. I've struggled to be taken seriously in "male" hobbies such as video and card games and felt unwelcome and objectified staring at my opponent's softcore porn playmat and card sleeves while playing at tournaments. I've been catcalled, stalked, and even had one harasser attempt to run me over as I walked home along the road.
How many movements are out to kill men for being men? How many laws are on the books that regulate men's bodies? How dangerous does it feel, as a man, to go out on a date with a stranger? How often do you read messages online from women saying they would like to do abusive and horrible things to men for pleasure?
And why can we not address men's issues (which yes, absolutely do exist!) without complaining about women's progress? This article reeks of "I haven't experienced discrimination so it doesn't exist," akin to white blindness of racism in America. It's like an article from a white guy complaining that white people are the true underclass because minorities get access to more scholarships. I wouldn't be comfortable spreading that kind of article and I'm hesitating to give more attention to this one, but as this site is heavily skewed towards men (as many are), I feel I need to give an alternative perspective. I fear that this type of article normalizes the idea that gender equality has been "achieved" and therefore women are full of it when they're complaining about discrimination and harassment.
Men have important issues that need solving. Men need to lead the way on solving those issues (just as women have toiled to bring the progress for women we have today) and the solutions need to lift men up without pushing women down.
I think this article does well to list out many of the legitimate concerns men's rights activists have, and it's a flashback to when I was more active in the space as a young man. I'm sure the...
I think this article does well to list out many of the legitimate concerns men's rights activists have, and it's a flashback to when I was more active in the space as a young man.
I'm sure the author is well aware that 'two things can be true at the same time'. Most level-headed people understand that both sexes face issues, and there's a healthy debate to be had about where we put our attention and resources. But maybe without such an inflammatory angle we wouldn't be spending our time with it here.
It's a little bit telling that multiple paragraphs are used to talk about scrabble (according to him, women have the privilege of enjoying the game, but men carry the burden of feeling the need to compete because of Genghis Khan) whereas the word 'rape' doesn't feature at all, and 'sexual assault' gets one mention as a 'girl power' tool to eliminate men.
One problem with articles like this one is that there are universal claims made and universal explanations given, and that's a very zoomed-out view. Universal claims are implicitly global (unless...
One problem with articles like this one is that there are universal claims made and universal explanations given, and that's a very zoomed-out view. Universal claims are implicitly global (unless they're implicitly about the US), and the scope for this article is sometimes unclear. I suspect that whatever we might learn about misogyny from an Australian study is different in Japan, India, Iran, or Saudi Arabia.
I think that might be a problem with some of the studies, too? The titles and abstracts for psychology or sociology will often be universal statements when they only did the study on university students at one or a few schools. (It's generally a good idea to understand the experiment, and not just read the claims, though I haven't yet for these.)
That's probably also true for the non-contrarian studies of gender discrimination too, though. Talking loosely about what "men are like" and "women are like" seems like a trap? At best these are statistical tendencies.
I think we should separate the author's explanations of why things happen from what the studies were about. Studying gender bias for Scrabble players doesn't depend on a particular explanation of why it happens. The connection to Genghis Khan seems to be that he switched to writing an essentialist explanation of what men and women are like in the next paragraph. We don't need to connect these things even though the author sort of did.
More balanced discussions of the relevant research would be welcome, if you know of any.
My point is moreso that the central issue with the article is what it doesn't discuss. The article opens suggesting that researchers have been desperately looking for evidence to prove misogyny...
My point is moreso that the central issue with the article is what it doesn't discuss. The article opens suggesting that researchers have been desperately looking for evidence to prove misogyny exists, but I don't get the impression any of the studies included were kicking themselves at the results. There isn't anything glaringly wrong with the studies referenced.
Here's the Wikipedia page for gender inequality in the United States. The linked article quite gladly walks down the issues for men, but how many of the women's issues were actually addressed sincerely? Sexual violence is such a huge piece of modern (and historical) misogyny, I think it's absurdly glib and naive to barely give them a passing mention. Not a single mention of women's influence in taking positions in local or national politics either.
This article is mostly a list of accepted biases men face. I could list every time a shark attacks a man, but that doesn't mean men don't kill more sharks.
I think you're missing the point about Genghis Khan. It's not that men feel like they need to compete with Genghis Khan, it's that Genghis Khan was a man with a certain personality whose actions...
I think you're missing the point about Genghis Khan. It's not that men feel like they need to compete with Genghis Khan, it's that Genghis Khan was a man with a certain personality whose actions led to him being quite possibly the most reproductively successful person in all of human history or probably even primate history. Much of the sex differences in achievement can be explained by obsessive attitudes toward work/conquest that were rewarded by evolution.
Of course Genghis Khan himself did not change human psychology, but the example is illustrative of a real driver in the development of male psychology that being obsessed with conquest in some...
Of course Genghis Khan himself did not change human psychology, but the example is illustrative of a real driver in the development of male psychology that being obsessed with conquest in some capacity is evolutionarily a successful strategy. I'm not trying to glorify it in any way.
The author presents a conclusion in the lead paragraph but doesn't spend any time substantiating it. If you want to know how the author concluded that women don't face discrimination, don't waste...
The author presents a conclusion in the lead paragraph but doesn't spend any time substantiating it. If you want to know how the author concluded that women don't face discrimination, don't waste your time.
Yeah, I immediately checked out of the article once I got to the "men are actually the ones getting discriminated" because I knew how the rest of it would go. All of the comments here have...
Yeah, I immediately checked out of the article once I got to the "men are actually the ones getting discriminated" because I knew how the rest of it would go. All of the comments here have confirmed that for me.
Additional context about City-Journal/Manhattan Institute is that one of it's most famous contributors is Chris Ruffo aka a huge activist in the anti-CRT movement in public schools. I'm a huge...
Additional context about City-Journal/Manhattan Institute is that one of it's most famous contributors is Chris Ruffo aka a huge activist in the anti-CRT movement in public schools. I'm a huge proponent that men and young boys are having problems, you can hear a good discussion on this from the Ezra Klein Show but this zero sum game pushed by right is absolutely disingenuous and to me, articles like this are simply trying to dress up tired, old far right talking points to make them seem more intellectually sound and legitimate then they actually are. It's not different than PragerU calling itself an "university", Jordan Peterson flouting his PhD, or Richard Spencer wearing a suit.
These right leaning writers and "men's rights activist" types are generally under the same umbrella as reactionaries. Even by their own account (John Tierney, author of the OP's article) they...
These right leaning writers and "men's rights activist" types are generally under the same umbrella as reactionaries. Even by their own account (John Tierney, author of the OP's article) they refer to themselves as contrarians and it shows in their writing that their only purpose is to rile up a base without offering any solutions. This is particularly glaring in the case of men's issues as a reaction to Me Too and women's empowerment in the face of Dodd, for example: there is no solution, just whataboutisms and vague references to the "other side" getting it better.
This is a particularly good example of how men's issues should be presented: Men are lost. Here’s a map out of the wilderness.
The author goes pretty far in explaining that men need good models to follow and describes well enough how these reactionary "Men's rights activists" just don't offer any solutions to the issues they're angry about. She doesn't offer any good specifics as to what that means but she at least acknowledges that there's a lack of Good Men for angry young men to model after as well as identifying that help for women's issues doesn't meat no help for men's issues.
You're absolutely spot on with this: this zero sum game pushed by right is absolutely disingenuous and to me, articles like this are simply trying to dress up tired, old far right talking points to make them seem more intellectually sound and legitimate then they actually are
Note that this is exact issue with All Lives Matter - there's only ire at the fact that a group that is in need of attention paid to their oppression is getting that attention. They're not the only group that needs it but they are a group that is doing poorly without it in the public space. The ALM "movement" also ignores the fact that multiple groups can be helped at the same time, as you mentioned.
Firstly I would read the RationalWiki entry for this "publication". The author's Wikipedia page also gives some context around his politics (given that he has dressed this article to furtively...
Firstly I would read the RationalWiki entry for this "publication". The author's Wikipedia page also gives some context around his politics (given that he has dressed this article to furtively advance his ideological position).
Men face discrimination.
In some contexts it is better to be a woman.
Therefore, men face more discrimination than women.
It doesn't really follow?
I agree with other commenters that we're not playing Oppression Olympics (unless engaging in very bad faith); it's
One problem with essays is that you can make a very convincing argument (and write something very well) where you can disregard large swathes of evidence. It is part of the joy of essay writing, which is a great joy, but it also allows you to make specious arguments in a "convincing" manner.
He is also parotting a lot of incel lines (although he does so a lot more eloquently than the extremely online TM incel crowd), for example around the whole "women are pickier" and therefore they have an advantage over men, which is a segue into "men are expected to be breadwinners". Honestly I have to congratulate the author here because he has totally turned the whole "women suffer in relationships because they are dependent on a sole male breadwinner which can make it harder for them to leave" line on its head. I also think most feminists would agree with him – coequal relationships (where both partners earn similar amounts, or at least neither is financially dependent on the other) are much more pleasant affairs! Men suffer from it, women suffer from it. Isn't this a game theoretically perfect problem to solve?
About the #MeToo stuff, he states that there are no consequences for women who speak out falseley, but there are a lot of consequences for women who speak out at all. They can end up effectively on an industry blacklist, be sued, belittled, demeaned, etc. Take for example the Harvey Weinstein case where his behaviour was well known to be generally terrible, and yet he was able to continue uninhibited for this. It was definitely well known (see e.g. Arrested Development and 30 Rock's references to it) throughout Hollywood.
This is a long, contrarian article from a reporter who apparently likes to write contrarian articles. The headline is especially one-sided. Even though misogyny gets a lot of attention, I don't...
This is a long, contrarian article from a reporter who apparently likes to write contrarian articles. The headline is especially one-sided. Even though misogyny gets a lot of attention, I don't believe it's necessary to debate whether misogyny is a "myth." It's not going to be hard to find stories about it.
But it does seem well-researched and cites a lot of evidence (which I haven't investigated in detail) for the notion that women have a lot of advantages, too, and I think the evidence is interesting, news to me assuming it's true, and I'm curious to know how well it holds up.
So I'd like to ask that we please avoid going into attack mode, or taking sides? It would be easy to do, and it's no fun. (I'm particularly uninterested in debating whether the author is biased; let's just assume he is.) Also, unless you've done some research yourself, this is unlikely to be answered by explaining your general impressions of men and women off the top of your head.
It's a lot to hope for, but I'd rather see a discussion of what we can find in the article that's actually good evidence for something and seems to hold up, as well as other relevant and perhaps contrary evidence that might result in a better picture. Storytelling and links are always fine.
If you haven’t heard of this evidence, it’s because of the well-documented misandrist bias in the public discussion of gender issues. Scholars, journalists, politicians, and activists will lavish attention on a small, badly flawed study if it purports to find bias against women, but they’ll ignore—or work to suppress—the wealth of solid research showing the opposite. Three decades ago, psychologists identified the “women-are-wonderful effect,” based on research showing that both sexes tended to rate women more positively than men. This effect has been confirmed repeatedly—women get higher ratings than men for intelligence as well as competence—and it’s obvious in popular culture.
“Toxic masculinity” and “testosterone poisoning” are widely blamed for many problems, but you don’t hear much about “toxic femininity” or “estrogen poisoning.” Who criticizes “femsplaining” or pretends to “believe all men”? If the patriarchy really did rule our society, the stock father character in television sitcoms would not be a “doofus dad” like Homer Simpson, and commercials wouldn’t keep showing wives outsmarting their husbands. (When’s the last time you saw a TV husband get something right?) Smug misandry has been box-office gold for Barbie, which delights in writing off men as hapless romantic partners, leering jerks, violent buffoons, and dimwitted tyrants who ought to let women run the world.
Numerous studies have shown that both sexes care more about harms to women than to men. Men get punished more severely than women for the same crime, and crimes against women are punished more severely than crimes against men. Institutions openly discriminate against men in hiring and promotion policies—and a majority of men as well as women favor affirmative-action programs for women.
...
Equalitarians complain that even in fields that are mainly female, too many men are in the top positions. But these positions make extreme demands, and men tend to be more extreme—in both directions. They predominate in homeless shelters and prisons, too. One reason for the gender gap between college students is that there are more boys with low IQs and learning disabilities. Female IQ scores don’t deviate from the average as much as men’s scores do, so there are more males at both the lower and the upper extremes, and this greater male variability is evident in many other traits.
I don't think you're being nearly as harsh as you should be about this article and this author. This is well researched but it isn't in good faith; it reaches false conclusions. I tried to follow...
Exemplary
I don't think you're being nearly as harsh as you should be about this article and this author.
This is well researched but it isn't in good faith; it reaches false conclusions. I tried to follow some of his sources and was met with a book, then a website bashing the gender pay gap by completely misrepresenting data from a WEF report. Some of his sources do link to studies and the things he says are sometimes true, but the presentation then uses is more often than not ridiculous. For example (emphasis mine):
The participants were guilty not of misogyny but of its opposite: misandry, a bias against men. This study merely measured unconscious reactions, so it doesn’t prove that they’d discriminate against men. The many critics of implicit-bias research maintain that measures of people’s “unconscious racism” bear scant relation to their conscious behavior. But when it comes to detecting misandry, we don’t need to probe the unconscious to find it. There is overwhelming evidence of conscious, blatant, and widespread discrimination against boys and men in modern societies.
I should also say that the author extrapolates some pretty insane information from the data in this study, taking the results at face value without any context - someone's split second reaction has nothing to do with what actually happens in day to day life or discrimination.
After speaking about this study for three paragraphs, the author states this massive flaw in his argument, and then just moves on by directing your attention to "overwhelming evidence" which continues to escalate until it starts dropping phrases like the "diversity industry".
Now for my acedotal story,
I presented male for most of my life. To be honest, I don't always pass, but when I do it's really like living in a different city. People treat you completely differently if they percieve you as a woman, and will allow themselves to be much friendlier than they would with a man, whether you want them to or not. Sure, this means people are nicer, but then you have to wonder...
Why aren't people just nicer in general?
Like another poster said, patriarchy hurts everyone. This article, through individual points, raises the question - why do we as a society not just treat people as people instead of by their gender? Why do men get longer sentences than women? Why are women (and harassment against them) not taken as seriously as men in academia? Why are men expected to "be a man" at all?
But this article isn't saying that. I would love to engage with you and with this topic but I can't help wonder if there was a better article to post. This is conservative funded misinformation that is designed to sound vaguely convincing so that when it's posted to places like this, some people don't notice and wind up taking it at face value, believing in the "diversity industry".
You seem to know and recognize the author's inherent bias based on your previous posts, so I'll ask a bit more clearly, why this article, why this site? Why not an article written by an actual gender studies professor? I fail to see how presenting discussion in this manner is positive if you don't intend to focus on it. Personally I can't just ignore an article chock full of borderline manosphere statements, cherry picking the bits of actual good data he took out of context.
Quick Edit: I hope this wasn't too combative. I don't mean to imply that you're willingly spreading misinformation, but I am curious about the choice to spark discussion about gender disparity through an article like this.
If you want to spark good-faith discussion, posting an admittedly slanted, contrarian article from a right-wing propaganda mill full of "evidence" that you haven't evaluated and asking us to find...
If you want to spark good-faith discussion, posting an admittedly slanted, contrarian article from a right-wing propaganda mill full of "evidence" that you haven't evaluated and asking us to find the wheat amongst the chaff seems like a poor choice. City Journal is notorious for presenting culture-war bigotry with a veneer of cherry-picked junk science. Might as well kick-start a discussion about the environment by platforming a climate-change denial blog. It's a garbage source and disappointing to see posted here.
I think the problem is an economic one. The cost of living was a lot lower back in the days of arranged marriages, where daughters were married off to suitors based on wealth and status, not love....
I think the problem is an economic one.
The cost of living was a lot lower back in the days of arranged marriages, where daughters were married off to suitors based on wealth and status, not love.
Hypergamy is not the reason for our societal ills but rather a symptom. Blame the rich strangling the poor out of their wealth.
We are now at the point where couples struggle to rent, let alone buy homes. Single people are outright fucked by comparison because they have half the purchasing power.
The difference is, men are starved of affection and desperate to find love. They get disproportionately affected by this because women judge them by their wealth and societal status. If a man is still living with their parents by their mid twenties, it's basically a death sentence for their love life.
Online dating is a textbook example of this. Men get ignored, ghosted, blocked and sidelined while women get inundated with matches and lecherous messages. Men struggle to get noticed while women have to put all their energy into filtering out bad matches.
I can almost guarantee that if the cost of living was far lower and if we stopped seeing housing as an investment rather than a basic human right, the manosphere would quickly die out.
I have to agree with you. When men are living with their folks, they are seen as schlubs and bums, but when a woman lives with her folks, nobody says anything.
I have to agree with you. When men are living with their folks, they are seen as schlubs and bums, but when a woman lives with her folks, nobody says anything.
I promise you they absolute say things when a single woman lives with her parents past a certain age. The stereotypes are definitely different, but let's not fall into the same trap that this...
I promise you they absolute say things when a single woman lives with her parents past a certain age. The stereotypes are definitely different, but let's not fall into the same trap that this article writer does and conclude that because bad things happen to men, bad things cannot also happen to women.
To give examples for the other comment, there's the "crazy cat lady" for an unattached woman living alone, incredible amounts of judgments and expectations for mothers, particularly stay-at-home...
To give examples for the other comment, there's the "crazy cat lady" for an unattached woman living alone, incredible amounts of judgments and expectations for mothers, particularly stay-at-home mothers or single mothers, the SJW stereotype for feminist women, the expectation that daughters (or son's wives) will take care of aging parents.
Differing social expectations of men and women go both ways
I think it's a bit extreme to conclude that misogyny more or less doesn't exist today because there's extensive evidence for misandry. But, it's true that people definitely shouldn't be making...
I think it's a bit extreme to conclude that misogyny more or less doesn't exist today because there's extensive evidence for misandry. But, it's true that people definitely shouldn't be making unempirical claims about gender discrimination.
Also, I honestly think that most implicit sexism, especially in the modern day, is hardwired into us for evolutionary psychology reasons (ex. people don't want to see a woman struggle since they're more valuable for keeping the tribe's lineage alive). Ultimately we should seek to ameliorate its effects than trying to somehow fix it.
I think the author's fundamental mistake is in taking a zero-sum view of discrimination. he gives examples of discrimination that hurts men and benefits women, and seems to think that this somehow disproves the existence of discrimination that hurts women and benefits men.
the idea that discrimination can negatively affect the group it supposedly benefits is...nothing new? for example:
Why Toxic Masculinity Hurts Men as Well as Women
How Patriarchy Hurts Men Too
How ‘traditional masculinity’ hurts the men who believe in it most
"patriarchy is bad for everyone" is like, week 3 of Gender Studies 101 level shit.
besides that zero-sum view of discrimination, it seems like the other unifying idea in this essay is complaints about what he identifies as the "diversity industry":
and his final paragraph:
at the core of this argument is a tired old right-wing talking point - that people who advocate for some social change, in this case gender equality, aren't advocating for it out of a sincere belief that it would improve society. instead, they're doing it selfishly, trying to make money or gain power.
there's also an interesting sleight of hand here, where he peppers his article with links to sources for various claims he makes. it makes the piece seem well-researched and backed up by data and objective facts. but for this central claim - that the "diversity industry" not only exists, but "has become as entrenched as the old aristocracy" - he does not provide a single shred of evidence. it seems like he takes it as an article of faith and expects his readers will too.
there is useful conversation to be had about various forms of discrimination, who they affect, and the best way to address them. this "diversity industry" bullshit does not advance that conversation. it's a thought-terminating cliche that allows him to dismiss anyone he disagrees with as essentially being a paid shill. it's a dead giveaway that he is not approaching this subject honestly and in good faith.
also, I hadn't heard of the "City Journal" before...it's published by the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. that's some clever "stealth" branding on their part. kudos to their web design team, they did a great job making it look like a website of a normal random newspaper.
Classic projection, which is often the case with right wingers. "There's no way someone could possible do this out of some sort of selflessness or sense of duty to society. People only act in their own interests!"
Years of libertarian thinking and indoctrination at play there.
This article honestly unsettles me, and I admit I did not finish it as it was far too long for me to stomach.
In the past decade, I've lost the right to my bodily autonomy and witnessed the incel movement emerge and murder women for being women. I've seen the rhetoric on my favorite sites slowly become peppered with unchallenged misogynistic rhetoric and had to question if I'm truly welcome on the web. I've struggled to be taken seriously in "male" hobbies such as video and card games and felt unwelcome and objectified staring at my opponent's softcore porn playmat and card sleeves while playing at tournaments. I've been catcalled, stalked, and even had one harasser attempt to run me over as I walked home along the road.
How many movements are out to kill men for being men? How many laws are on the books that regulate men's bodies? How dangerous does it feel, as a man, to go out on a date with a stranger? How often do you read messages online from women saying they would like to do abusive and horrible things to men for pleasure?
And why can we not address men's issues (which yes, absolutely do exist!) without complaining about women's progress? This article reeks of "I haven't experienced discrimination so it doesn't exist," akin to white blindness of racism in America. It's like an article from a white guy complaining that white people are the true underclass because minorities get access to more scholarships. I wouldn't be comfortable spreading that kind of article and I'm hesitating to give more attention to this one, but as this site is heavily skewed towards men (as many are), I feel I need to give an alternative perspective. I fear that this type of article normalizes the idea that gender equality has been "achieved" and therefore women are full of it when they're complaining about discrimination and harassment.
Men have important issues that need solving. Men need to lead the way on solving those issues (just as women have toiled to bring the progress for women we have today) and the solutions need to lift men up without pushing women down.
I think this article does well to list out many of the legitimate concerns men's rights activists have, and it's a flashback to when I was more active in the space as a young man.
I'm sure the author is well aware that 'two things can be true at the same time'. Most level-headed people understand that both sexes face issues, and there's a healthy debate to be had about where we put our attention and resources. But maybe without such an inflammatory angle we wouldn't be spending our time with it here.
It's a little bit telling that multiple paragraphs are used to talk about scrabble (according to him, women have the privilege of enjoying the game, but men carry the burden of feeling the need to compete because of Genghis Khan) whereas the word 'rape' doesn't feature at all, and 'sexual assault' gets one mention as a 'girl power' tool to eliminate men.
One problem with articles like this one is that there are universal claims made and universal explanations given, and that's a very zoomed-out view. Universal claims are implicitly global (unless they're implicitly about the US), and the scope for this article is sometimes unclear. I suspect that whatever we might learn about misogyny from an Australian study is different in Japan, India, Iran, or Saudi Arabia.
I think that might be a problem with some of the studies, too? The titles and abstracts for psychology or sociology will often be universal statements when they only did the study on university students at one or a few schools. (It's generally a good idea to understand the experiment, and not just read the claims, though I haven't yet for these.)
That's probably also true for the non-contrarian studies of gender discrimination too, though. Talking loosely about what "men are like" and "women are like" seems like a trap? At best these are statistical tendencies.
I think we should separate the author's explanations of why things happen from what the studies were about. Studying gender bias for Scrabble players doesn't depend on a particular explanation of why it happens. The connection to Genghis Khan seems to be that he switched to writing an essentialist explanation of what men and women are like in the next paragraph. We don't need to connect these things even though the author sort of did.
More balanced discussions of the relevant research would be welcome, if you know of any.
My point is moreso that the central issue with the article is what it doesn't discuss. The article opens suggesting that researchers have been desperately looking for evidence to prove misogyny exists, but I don't get the impression any of the studies included were kicking themselves at the results. There isn't anything glaringly wrong with the studies referenced.
Here's the Wikipedia page for gender inequality in the United States. The linked article quite gladly walks down the issues for men, but how many of the women's issues were actually addressed sincerely? Sexual violence is such a huge piece of modern (and historical) misogyny, I think it's absurdly glib and naive to barely give them a passing mention. Not a single mention of women's influence in taking positions in local or national politics either.
This article is mostly a list of accepted biases men face. I could list every time a shark attacks a man, but that doesn't mean men don't kill more sharks.
I think you're missing the point about Genghis Khan. It's not that men feel like they need to compete with Genghis Khan, it's that Genghis Khan was a man with a certain personality whose actions led to him being quite possibly the most reproductively successful person in all of human history or probably even primate history. Much of the sex differences in achievement can be explained by obsessive attitudes toward work/conquest that were rewarded by evolution.
That's not how evolution works.
Of course Genghis Khan himself did not change human psychology, but the example is illustrative of a real driver in the development of male psychology that being obsessed with conquest in some capacity is evolutionarily a successful strategy. I'm not trying to glorify it in any way.
The author presents a conclusion in the lead paragraph but doesn't spend any time substantiating it. If you want to know how the author concluded that women don't face discrimination, don't waste your time.
Yeah, I immediately checked out of the article once I got to the "men are actually the ones getting discriminated" because I knew how the rest of it would go. All of the comments here have confirmed that for me.
Additional context about City-Journal/Manhattan Institute is that one of it's most famous contributors is Chris Ruffo aka a huge activist in the anti-CRT movement in public schools. I'm a huge proponent that men and young boys are having problems, you can hear a good discussion on this from the Ezra Klein Show but this zero sum game pushed by right is absolutely disingenuous and to me, articles like this are simply trying to dress up tired, old far right talking points to make them seem more intellectually sound and legitimate then they actually are. It's not different than PragerU calling itself an "university", Jordan Peterson flouting his PhD, or Richard Spencer wearing a suit.
These right leaning writers and "men's rights activist" types are generally under the same umbrella as reactionaries. Even by their own account (John Tierney, author of the OP's article) they refer to themselves as contrarians and it shows in their writing that their only purpose is to rile up a base without offering any solutions. This is particularly glaring in the case of men's issues as a reaction to Me Too and women's empowerment in the face of Dodd, for example: there is no solution, just whataboutisms and vague references to the "other side" getting it better.
This is a particularly good example of how men's issues should be presented: Men are lost. Here’s a map out of the wilderness.
The author goes pretty far in explaining that men need good models to follow and describes well enough how these reactionary "Men's rights activists" just don't offer any solutions to the issues they're angry about. She doesn't offer any good specifics as to what that means but she at least acknowledges that there's a lack of Good Men for angry young men to model after as well as identifying that help for women's issues doesn't meat no help for men's issues.
You're absolutely spot on with this:
this zero sum game pushed by right is absolutely disingenuous and to me, articles like this are simply trying to dress up tired, old far right talking points to make them seem more intellectually sound and legitimate then they actually areNote that this is exact issue with All Lives Matter - there's only ire at the fact that a group that is in need of attention paid to their oppression is getting that attention. They're not the only group that needs it but they are a group that is doing poorly without it in the public space. The ALM "movement" also ignores the fact that multiple groups can be helped at the same time, as you mentioned.
Firstly I would read the RationalWiki entry for this "publication". The author's Wikipedia page also gives some context around his politics (given that he has dressed this article to furtively advance his ideological position).
Men face discrimination.
In some contexts it is better to be a woman.
Therefore, men face more discrimination than women.
It doesn't really follow?
I agree with other commenters that we're not playing Oppression Olympics (unless engaging in very bad faith); it's
One problem with essays is that you can make a very convincing argument (and write something very well) where you can disregard large swathes of evidence. It is part of the joy of essay writing, which is a great joy, but it also allows you to make specious arguments in a "convincing" manner.
He is also parotting a lot of incel lines (although he does so a lot more eloquently than the extremely online TM incel crowd), for example around the whole "women are pickier" and therefore they have an advantage over men, which is a segue into "men are expected to be breadwinners". Honestly I have to congratulate the author here because he has totally turned the whole "women suffer in relationships because they are dependent on a sole male breadwinner which can make it harder for them to leave" line on its head. I also think most feminists would agree with him – coequal relationships (where both partners earn similar amounts, or at least neither is financially dependent on the other) are much more pleasant affairs! Men suffer from it, women suffer from it. Isn't this a game theoretically perfect problem to solve?
About the #MeToo stuff, he states that there are no consequences for women who speak out falseley, but there are a lot of consequences for women who speak out at all. They can end up effectively on an industry blacklist, be sued, belittled, demeaned, etc. Take for example the Harvey Weinstein case where his behaviour was well known to be generally terrible, and yet he was able to continue uninhibited for this. It was definitely well known (see e.g. Arrested Development and 30 Rock's references to it) throughout Hollywood.
This is a long, contrarian article from a reporter who apparently likes to write contrarian articles. The headline is especially one-sided. Even though misogyny gets a lot of attention, I don't believe it's necessary to debate whether misogyny is a "myth." It's not going to be hard to find stories about it.
But it does seem well-researched and cites a lot of evidence (which I haven't investigated in detail) for the notion that women have a lot of advantages, too, and I think the evidence is interesting, news to me assuming it's true, and I'm curious to know how well it holds up.
So I'd like to ask that we please avoid going into attack mode, or taking sides? It would be easy to do, and it's no fun. (I'm particularly uninterested in debating whether the author is biased; let's just assume he is.) Also, unless you've done some research yourself, this is unlikely to be answered by explaining your general impressions of men and women off the top of your head.
It's a lot to hope for, but I'd rather see a discussion of what we can find in the article that's actually good evidence for something and seems to hold up, as well as other relevant and perhaps contrary evidence that might result in a better picture. Storytelling and links are always fine.
(Shared in ~life and not ~life.men or ~life.women because it's about both.)
A couple of quotes from the article:
...
I don't think you're being nearly as harsh as you should be about this article and this author.
This is well researched but it isn't in good faith; it reaches false conclusions. I tried to follow some of his sources and was met with a book, then a website bashing the gender pay gap by completely misrepresenting data from a WEF report. Some of his sources do link to studies and the things he says are sometimes true, but the presentation then uses is more often than not ridiculous. For example (emphasis mine):
I should also say that the author extrapolates some pretty insane information from the data in this study, taking the results at face value without any context - someone's split second reaction has nothing to do with what actually happens in day to day life or discrimination.
After speaking about this study for three paragraphs, the author states this massive flaw in his argument, and then just moves on by directing your attention to "overwhelming evidence" which continues to escalate until it starts dropping phrases like the "diversity industry".
Now for my acedotal story,
I presented male for most of my life. To be honest, I don't always pass, but when I do it's really like living in a different city. People treat you completely differently if they percieve you as a woman, and will allow themselves to be much friendlier than they would with a man, whether you want them to or not. Sure, this means people are nicer, but then you have to wonder...
Why aren't people just nicer in general?
Like another poster said, patriarchy hurts everyone. This article, through individual points, raises the question - why do we as a society not just treat people as people instead of by their gender? Why do men get longer sentences than women? Why are women (and harassment against them) not taken as seriously as men in academia? Why are men expected to "be a man" at all?
But this article isn't saying that. I would love to engage with you and with this topic but I can't help wonder if there was a better article to post. This is conservative funded misinformation that is designed to sound vaguely convincing so that when it's posted to places like this, some people don't notice and wind up taking it at face value, believing in the "diversity industry".
You seem to know and recognize the author's inherent bias based on your previous posts, so I'll ask a bit more clearly, why this article, why this site? Why not an article written by an actual gender studies professor? I fail to see how presenting discussion in this manner is positive if you don't intend to focus on it. Personally I can't just ignore an article chock full of borderline manosphere statements, cherry picking the bits of actual good data he took out of context.
Quick Edit: I hope this wasn't too combative. I don't mean to imply that you're willingly spreading misinformation, but I am curious about the choice to spark discussion about gender disparity through an article like this.
If you want to spark good-faith discussion, posting an admittedly slanted, contrarian article from a right-wing propaganda mill full of "evidence" that you haven't evaluated and asking us to find the wheat amongst the chaff seems like a poor choice. City Journal is notorious for presenting culture-war bigotry with a veneer of cherry-picked junk science. Might as well kick-start a discussion about the environment by platforming a climate-change denial blog. It's a garbage source and disappointing to see posted here.
I think the problem is an economic one.
The cost of living was a lot lower back in the days of arranged marriages, where daughters were married off to suitors based on wealth and status, not love.
Hypergamy is not the reason for our societal ills but rather a symptom. Blame the rich strangling the poor out of their wealth.
We are now at the point where couples struggle to rent, let alone buy homes. Single people are outright fucked by comparison because they have half the purchasing power.
The difference is, men are starved of affection and desperate to find love. They get disproportionately affected by this because women judge them by their wealth and societal status. If a man is still living with their parents by their mid twenties, it's basically a death sentence for their love life.
Online dating is a textbook example of this. Men get ignored, ghosted, blocked and sidelined while women get inundated with matches and lecherous messages. Men struggle to get noticed while women have to put all their energy into filtering out bad matches.
I can almost guarantee that if the cost of living was far lower and if we stopped seeing housing as an investment rather than a basic human right, the manosphere would quickly die out.
I have to agree with you. When men are living with their folks, they are seen as schlubs and bums, but when a woman lives with her folks, nobody says anything.
I promise you they absolute say things when a single woman lives with her parents past a certain age. The stereotypes are definitely different, but let's not fall into the same trap that this article writer does and conclude that because bad things happen to men, bad things cannot also happen to women.
To give examples for the other comment, there's the "crazy cat lady" for an unattached woman living alone, incredible amounts of judgments and expectations for mothers, particularly stay-at-home mothers or single mothers, the SJW stereotype for feminist women, the expectation that daughters (or son's wives) will take care of aging parents.
Differing social expectations of men and women go both ways
I think it's a bit extreme to conclude that misogyny more or less doesn't exist today because there's extensive evidence for misandry. But, it's true that people definitely shouldn't be making unempirical claims about gender discrimination.
Also, I honestly think that most implicit sexism, especially in the modern day, is hardwired into us for evolutionary psychology reasons (ex. people don't want to see a woman struggle since they're more valuable for keeping the tribe's lineage alive). Ultimately we should seek to ameliorate its effects than trying to somehow fix it.