We’ve had it wrong all this time – it’s not women who are kept down and held back and put in their place, it’s men. And it’s not just anonymous ranters on Reddit who say so, either.
In The Second Sexism, shortly to be published in the UK, David Benatar, head of the philosophy department at Cape Town University, argues that “more boys drop out of school, fewer men earn degrees, more men die younger, more are incarcerated” and that the issue is so under-researched it has become the prejudice that dare not speak its name.
“It’s a neglected form of sexism,” Benatar says in a telephone interview. “It’s true that in the developed world the majority of economic and political roles are occupied by males. But if you look at the bottom – for example, the prison population, the homeless population, or the number of people dropping out of school – that is overwhelmingly male. You tend to find more men at the very top but also at the very bottom.”
I suspect that’s his own particular definition of “the bottom.” I suspect there are a lot of women on the bottom too – for example, the wives and daughters of male prisoners and the homeless population and the droppers out of school. But in any case that casual admission plus brisk dismissal of the fact that most economic and political roles are occupied by males is pretty absurd.
Men are also increasingly the butt of jokes.
Riiight – that’s why Tom Harris says a protester who throws an egg and runs away is “like a girl.”
Give me a break.
The concept of privilege is unknown to Benatar.
“Men are also increasingly the butt of jokes.”
WTF? There were never any jokes about Mrs. Boudreaux and Ms. Thibodeaux! Always about the poor, dumb menfolk!
And I wonder if Benatar has looked at the behavior that has led to different rates of incarceration in men and women. Could there be a teeny difference, statistically, there?
I will consider being more sympathetic when womanhood itself is no longer treated as though it’s the butt of some sort of cosmic joke.
But it’s not an either-or question, is it? I don’t know if Benatar’s case is a good one but from what I (vaguely) remember of the essay that preceded the book-length treatment he wasn’t arguing that women aren’t disadvantaged but that both different sexes are disadvantaged in different ways.
Benatar, by the way, is best known as an advocate of voluntary human extinction.
Whenever I hear the name ‘Benatar’, I always think love is a battlefield.
/runs away.
“more boys drop out of school, fewer men earn degrees, more men die younger, more are incarcerated”
Surely this can only be a kind of sexism if he can establish that women are directly responsible for all of the above, the way the reverse so easily can be in many of the cases of women suffering from inequality.
BenSix:
Yes, actually, it is. That men face certain disadvantages doesn’t negate the fact that women face many more. The two aren’t equal, and anybody without their head in the sand can see it.
Not to mention that many disadvantages men suffer are caused by patriarchal values.
IOW – when there is open competition on a level playing field a lot of males who would have just made the cut when there were no women there turn out no to be able to stand the pace.
Wonder how much is caused by racism. Is there a disparity between the numbers of white women and women of color jailed as well?
There is nothing wrong with dealing with the problems men typically face, as long as equal attention is paid to the problems women typically face.
That said, I’m not so sure that men’s problems can be attributed to “sexism.”
Old people die more than young people. Obviously this is evidence of society’s ageism.
If women are already disadvantaged, and they’re not saying that men are disadvantaged, this doesn’t tell me that men are not the butt of sexism. It tells me that the people in power are taking all the advantages from everyone.
Interesting. So men having problems immediately negates any possibility of women having problems, too.
I do so love man!logic.
Seriously, though, fewer boys getting secondary (tertiary?) education is a real problem over here, and the argument that the current paedagogic regime favours ‘silent girls’ over ‘unruly boys’ is most likely true.
That is indeed something that we highschool teachers need to be aware of, and hopefully ‘fix’, but it doesn’t change the fact that the majority of university positions are still occupied by dudes.
I’ll take false equivalence for 1000, Alex.
1)patriarchy; classism; racism 2) patriarchy; racism 3) patriarchy 4) patriarchy; racism
huh, looks like it’s all covered already by the oppressive systems we know about. no need to invent new ones
Stewart:
Not necessarily. I don’t think we determine whether or not an action is sexist simply by looking at the gender of the person undertaking that action. If a woman says that it was a mistake to give women the right to vote, it’s still misogynistic. The fact that a woman made the statement doesn’t stop it from being sexist.
This isn’t to say that the examples Benatar provided are actually good examples of sexism hurting men. Given that women are still underrepresented in academia, I have trouble getting worried about boys doing a bit worse in school. And I doubt men dying younger is related to sexism. It seems more likely that men are more likely to have certain health problems.
I suppose that sexism could contribute to more men being incarcerated. It wouldn’t surprise me if women were more likely to get more lenient sentences than men at least in part because women are seen as less threatening than men.
I’d say a better example of how men are hurt by sexism is the breadwinner/homemaker gender role dichotomy. Women are certainly hurt far more by this (discrimination in the workplace, the wage gap, etc.). But I also think it harms fathers who want to stay at home and raise their kids.
Ms. Daisy Cutter:
Women certainly face many more disadvantages than men. And many of the disadvantages men face are caused by patriarchal values. That’s absolutely true.
I’m not sure this conflicts with Bensix’s point though: this isn’t necessarily an either-or thing. It’s not either sexism hurts women or sexism hurts men. Sexism can still hurt people of both genders, even if it is much more detrimental to one gender than the other. It would be wrong to say that the harm sexism does to men is at all equivalent to the harm it does to women. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t harm men at all.
In 2006, 59% of grad school students were women. If women are underrepresented in academia now, maybe that won’t be true for long.
Cite: http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/education/cb06-186.html
Makes one think: are the victims of sexism (theoretically in either direction) treated the way they are because they are one sex, or because they’re not the other?
Some of men’s problems are undoubtedly due to concepts of what men and women should be. Patriarchy hurts men, too.
Not sure why that would make any difference.
Men go to prison more because men commit crimes more. This isn’t an example of women benefiting at men’s expense.
Good grief.
Also his view of the “bottom” is, as Ophelia says, very….particular.
What about prostitutes, for example? What about sex trafficking victims? What about the feminization of poverty? What about domestic violence victims? Why are they any less “bottom” than a guy who gets himself in jail because he beats his wife?
The cartoon with the article suggesting that men’s problems are due to a matriarchical society are absurd.
Men remain quiet about health issues – result of patriarchical society
Men work long hours and have high stress – result of paiarchical society
( also when they say men work longer hours I wonder if there is any consideration for the hours spent looking after the household. Surveys show that even when both husband and wife work, the woman still usually does most of the housework.
The better academic achievement of women, now outperforming men, is a interesting one. It certainly is happening here in New Zealand. I’m not sure if anyone understands why but it has been suggested that changes in assessment is favoring young women.
PHMT, but I don’t think he gets it. Clueless git.
Wonder if he’ll get a lot of comments saying :
But what about the Wimmin! 😉
As has been noted already by others :
Patriarchy hurts men too.
Sexism in societies is set up in a way dimishes the choices and restricts the freedoms and generally messes up
bothall genders.(Disclaimer: Benatar is a colleague at UCT, and something like a friend for over a decade now).
The Guardian article is not an accurate reflection of his views – and it’s in no way true that he discounts the fact of prejudice against women.
An alternative first sentence to this post would be something like “We’ve had it wrong all this time – it’s not [only] women who are kept down and held back and put in their place, it’s [also] men.”.
This could be empirically false, sure. But demonstrating that would require assessing the evidence presented in the book (and of course, whatever evidence might have been left out).
It could also be politically wrong-headed, in that even if it’s true, it’s completely outweighed by the more pressing issue of systematic discrimination against women. But perhaps he acknowledges this in the book – he certainly does in conversation.
I haven’t read the book yet – only the paper that serves as the initial expression of these thoughts (currently still available free here: http://hettingern.people.cofc.edu/Intro_Philosophy_SP_2011/Benatar_Second_Sexism.pdf , but from “Social Theory and Practice”.
Anyway – the arguments should be addressed, and these are at least two of the ways in which that could be done. I don’t think a dismissal based on a journalists summary does that job.
Isn’t this very, very easily explained by known facts?
It is well established the male psyche shows much more variety than the female. So you get more male geniuses but also more male idiots. (Which of course says nothing about any particular male or female, it is an average.)
It does make sense to see how young men can be better accommodated in education. There is something happening there but it isn’t discrimination. Boy’s and girl’s have different brain development so what works for girls at a certain age may be different from what would work for boys. There may be something important to learn here.
Still, it is not discrimination.
who’s “we”?
it’s been known for a very long time that the Patriarchy Hurts Men, Too™ and so do racism and classism (see my previous comment here)
interesting assumption. what makes you think they haven’t been addressed already? just the fact that you think some nebulous “we” haven’t noticed yet that men are not all uniformly at the top of the kyriarchy, and thus somehow this book is presenting a novel argument/problem?
You have to be a little bit careful with school completion rates. There’s a big difference between a “drop out” and a leaver who becomes an apprentice. At least in Australia, lots of non-school-completing boys are entering well-paid trades to become plumbers, electricians, mechanics etc. Very few girls take this path.
It’s also an assumption that the book isn’t presenting any novel arguments. And I don’t say anything about a nebulous “we”, nor what they might not have noticed. The burden of proof is strongly on Benatar, but not even giving his attempts to make the case an airing makes far more assumptions than I’m guilty of here.
Having read Benatar’s previous book and some of his essays, and having found him to be a very rigorous thinker who is not as easy to dismiss (when you actually read him) as your intuition urges you to, I read this posting and its predictable comments (and insults) with disappointment. I encourage those who are serious about sexism, in any form, to read the source material.
‘But in any case that casual admission plus brisk dismissal of the fact that most economic and political roles are occupied by males is pretty absurd.’
Could it be that loser roles are also roles?
It is well established the male psyche shows much more variety than the female.
Well, that settles it then.
(I know I’ve said it before, but goddamn, uncritical sexism is so tiresome. “Sexism is assumed, so it must be true!” Give me a break.)
With categories as large and as differentially socialized as “men” and “women,” good fucking luck finding a useful control group for establishing that male ‘psyches’ “show much more variety” than “the female,” especially when no plausible mechanism is so much as even alluded to.
You can switch the gender to race, too, if you still don’t believe this is just more truthiness disguised as “well established” fact.
xaw says:
May 13, 2012 at 2:41 pm
Old people die more than young people. Obviously this is evidence of society’s ageism.
This seems an odd comment as you can die of old age but I don’t think you can drop out of school, fall into a criminal lifestyle and end up in prison by being male. I think a lot of these problems are caused by sexism, but its the same sexism as ever which is bad for both men and women as ever. After all “males don’t need to be educated as a real man is big and strong and can earn his living with his hands or down the pit like his father did while women are sweet and weak and will be happy working in a wool shop” is an attitude that continues to exist especially in the kinds of working class areas where it does the most harm.
As long as boys and girls are effectively being brought up in separate countries, any talk of “the male this” or “the female that” requires very careful qualification to make clear whether any supposed differences were present at birth or developed during socialisation. Because it is also well established that brain development is affected by early childhood experience.
Ah yeah, the biological fallback position.
If carefully thinking about a phenomenon is too much, quote biology as a reason.
So, did Benatar even bother to ask feminists about this, since PHMT and toxic masculinity are well-understood facts within feminist discourse, they could have told him.
Oh, wait, that means asking mostly women about their opinion…
Wait, he is from UCT? Oh FFS
We live in a country where ukuthwala is a thing.
http://www.citypress.co.za/SouthAfrica/News/Police-team-to-probe-ukuthwala-20110203
It’s not a “new” sexism. It’s the SAME sexism. It’s a patriarchal society telling men and women how they are to behave by expressly putting things in their little “male” or “female” bins. Unless the book comes right out and says “patriarchy hurts men, too” then it’s not worth a sidelong glance.
Hey, the post was in reply to the article, not to Benatar’s book, which I haven’t read. The article started with Benatar but it also included several other sources.
And I know he’s a very rigorous thinker; also a very persuasive one. He did a long essay (the featured Essay for that issue) in The Philosophers’ Mag when I was under-editor, and I remember being amused at the deep gloom of the subject (the one he’s famous for – better not to have been born) in combination with the lively enjoyment of reading it. I mentioned it to the Editor and he’d had the same reaction. That takes real skill.
About “who’s we?” – the “we” was ironic. Feminism has said all along that it’s good for men too, that the gender roolz are bad for men too, that equality is better for both.
“I read this posting and its predictable comments (and insults) with disappointment”
I’m sure you’ll get over it.
The quotes provided seem to wish to separate the effects of patriarchy on men from those on women, and to indicate cherry-picking.
The book may be wonderful, but neither the original article nor the defenders of this terribly nice chap are inspiring me to rush out and read it.
no, it’s a conclusion based on available evidence. Because so far, none of the points from the book that have seen the day of light have been new.
O RLY
again, this assumes that his “case” is something we’ve never dealt with before, which isn’t true. At most, he might have a new spin on it, but that’s about it (and yes, it may even be rigorously argued new spin, but that’s not the point). Forgive me if I prefer not to continually go back to square one, and rather deal with the issue of how the kyriarchy hurts men at the next level, namely that of intersectionality and dismantling the systems of oppression.
here’s the list of things the book is dealing with, from its index:
Conscription and Combat
Violence
Corporal Punishment
Sexual Assault
Circumcision
Education
Family and Other Relationships (Custody, Paternity, Paternity Leave, Homosexuals)
Bodily Privacy
Life Expectancy
Imprisonment and Capital Punishment
not a new topic to be had, so yeah, it’s likely going to be new spin on old arguments
oh hey, and a chapter on Teh Ebil of affirmative action.
I’m falling asleep already (though that might just be coffee deficiency)
Jadehawk, the “we” was my doing – Jacques was rewording my first sentence in the post when he used the word.
oh, it’s even worse than that. if the book is anything like the paper with the same name, dude explicitly rejects PHMT
and I’m sure absolutely no one will be surprised that he cites Christina Hoff Sommers in his argument.
jesus this is tedious. Jaques owes me the last 20 minutes of my life back for convincing me, against my better judgment, to find and read that.
Ok, I’ll take an item from page 2 and leave it at that for now.
Perhaps the most obvious example of male disadvantage is the long history of social and legal pressures on men. but not on women, to enter the military and to fight in war. thereby risking their lives and bodily and psychological health.
Yes of course; and that’s not a news flash; but think about why that is. It’s because men are seen as Better, thus fit for the military. It’s part and parcel of the whole dominance thing.
…the long history of social and legal pressures on men. but not on women, to enter the military and to fight in war. thereby risking their lives and bodily and psychological health.
Does he really think women aren’t affected by men boldly risking their bodily and psychological health in war, as if women sit on the sidelines cheering on the men without they or their children being maimed and killed themselves? Has he not heard of rape as a weapon of war??
I think it’s worth mentioning many men in the armed services respond with incredible hostility towards the idea of women in direct combat roles. A lot of what keeps women outside of combat roles is that infantrymen feel it will debase and weaken our military if women are allowed to fight.
MRA’s confuse the issues. Their problem is that men always have to be more everything than women: more intelligent, more emotionally stable, more inventive, more creative, more courageous, more discerning, more educated, more physically able, more delicate, more vulnerable, more disadvantaged, more oppressed, more mocked, more downtrodden, more likely to die young…And because of this asinine selfishness all the real issues of human rights and wrongs are obscured, and women are made to feel more guilty (though not more guilty than men, obviously) for having problems at all. They’re like spoiled brats whining that it isn’t fair that someone else gets something — whatever it is, they must have it too. Dreary, depressing, despicable.
.
Boys behave as they do because of patriarchy. They have to be so superior that they don’t need to learn, they just expect to be able to make their demands and be obeyed. A “real man” just knows, a “real man” can just do — whatever, whenever. Yes, they are victims (of patriarchy), but they are also accepters and transmitters (of patriarchy): patriarchy wins because it is essentially an expression of egotism, an endorsement of selfishness. Men are victims of other men because they are led to believe in their superiority. They train themselves to be cannon-fodder. They won’t accept women as allies because their egotism is invested in independence and personal superiority. They are victims only because of their selfishness.
.
Stewart said (#17):
Makes one think: are the victims of sexism (theoretically in either direction) treated the way they are because they are one sex, or because they’re not the other?
Both, of course. But sexism is always about power. Antimale sexism under patriarchy is merely the expression of some men’s power over other men, but part of the way it works is ensuring that all men have power over women. Calling it “antimale sexism” is merely a ploy to prevent women gaining even the pitiful “superiority” of greater suffering.
.
E.g. Man want sex, man get strong, him beat up other men, him get their women, him know other men want sex too, them get women, him beat em up, him win and live in big house, have lots of women. Then come democracy. Teach him grammar. Man no want grammar. It not fair…
.
StevoR said (#23)
As has been noted already by others :
Patriarchy hurts men too.
etc.
Yes, patriarchy hurts men. But men set it up. Men who wanted (a) sex and (b) authority and (c) protection. Someone got to be in charge (a man, of course — whoever was strongest). But if someone is in charge, “everybody else” (that is, the other men) has to be subservient. Still, women (as long as they remain at the bottom) don’t need to be considered, so when it’s a question of fighting for freedom (the freedom to be ruled by someone else) it’s the freedom of men that is the issue: for women, it’s basically no change. Men see only themselves. They think in terms only of themselves, so oppressed men are the ones at the bottom. They cannot see the women beneath them, unless it is as beneath their consideration.
.
No, it’s worse than that: their wives and mothers and sisters are not even “beneath them”: they are simply there, part of the order of the world, not really even people: facilities, liabilities, taken for granted, despised as servants, resented as desirable and desired. To behave like a woman is shameful not only because a woman is a mere possession and weak and contemptible but because it threatens a man’s “integrity” as a superior, an owner; and this plays into the whole structure of male ownership and male rights and male patterns of dominance. Male rights are probably a male ape’s winning a mate by defeating a rival male. That’s probably what it’s all about — and most of religion, and most of politics…
.
Put simply: patriarchy is male selfishness defended by male muscle-power, and it works by exploiting the natural selfishness of all men. Some win, many lose, but no one loses more than women, who are the primeval battleground.
.
It’s a mistake to regard “patriarchy” as a system. It isn’t. It’s nature, it has come about by nature, an unquestioned pattern of behaviour from our ancient prehuman past, endorsed by primitive religion and upheld by unthinking ambition and politics: but now that we are learning how to use our brains we must not only question it but oppose it.
gender essentialism FTL
Why do I have to think of Eowyn all of a sudden.
Oh yeah, something about a place in the house and if the men need it no longer the house can burn and you within.
natural selfishness of all men
(=) gender essentialism
Well, not really, Jadehawk. We’re all selfish, and we can’t help that, but self-interest is exploitable as well being as the foundation of exploitation. The issue here is the age-old exploitation of women by men, so it is men’s selfishness in regard to women that I am concerned with. Faced with our selfishness (that it is exploitative and makes us vulnerable in turn to exploitation) we have a choice.
as well being as
as well as being… (sorry, pushed the wrong button!).
Of course, many men do choose against their (instinctual) self-interest. I’d like to think that this is true of every man who has a daughter, but it seems not to be the case, unfortunately. One can say that it’s “culture”, but who takes responsibility for “culture”? How does “culture” get started? And how does an oppressive culture maintain its hold? And who are the chief opponents of change?