My apologies to those who have missed this series. As much as I’d like to blame it on the fact that I’ve been spending my Thursday evenings with my ladyfriend, she is not to blame for the disruption to my usual writing schedule. I started writing this post literally a month ago, and it sat at 90% completion – I just couldn’t work up the motivation to finish it off. I hope to resume Movie Fridays henceforth and forevermore.
I’d like to think that my suspicion about gender roles started from a very young age. Growing up as I did, spending most of my middle childhood and into adolescence as the child of a single father, I had a good chance to observe up close the abundant reality that men are caring and nurturing. My father was a social worker, meaning that conversations about emotion and the language we use to express it was never hidden from me – I was never exhorted to “be a man” when experiencing sorrow or frustration, I was merely encouraged to talk about it. As a result, the pop culture narratives about men as needing to tough things out or bottle things up never really resonated with me.
Also peculiar to my upbringing was the fact that, for most of my life, I grew up almost entirely surrounded by white people. White folks made up most of my peer groups, my schoolteachers, and the main characters of most of the shows I watched. It has almost always been true that I was more likely to interact with non-black PoCs than I was with fellow black folks, except obviously for family and Caribbean cultural gatherings (and even in the latter case, not always). Similarly, I never really had to grapple with what it meant to “be black”, except insofar as my racial identity was thrust upon me by circumstance. I’ve had few occasions where I felt pressure to “act black” – I just acted like me, and that was my version of black.
However long I have been skeptical of male-typical and afro-typical behaviour memes, I am definitely incredulous when presented with them today. This has made me somewhat insufferable in casual conversation, but I make up for it by having a ready supply of dick jokes. What it also does is make the following story particularly fascinating:
Now obviously this story is heart-wrenching and deeply tragic. The pain in Anthony Griffith’s retelling is readily palpable and visceral. It’s hard to watch without feeling your own sympathetic ache. We could talk about the difficulties facing American families with terminal illness and the need for comprehensive health care reform. We could talk about the chronic underfunding of the arts and how unless you’re famous it’s incredibly difficult to make money in comedy or theatre or whatever (even in the humanities, which is a whole other thing that I could rant about forever). But the thing that I found poignant and heartbreaking is the advice he shouts to himself at the 7:30 mark:
MAN UP, NIGGA!
This is the voice of an intersection between popular notions of black masculinity. It speaks to one of the things that I think is the most toxic element of the masculinity myth: the assumption of eternal competence and strength. Men are expected to be able to intuitively do anything without complaining. To respond emotionally or to break down in the face of hardship like this is not a simple expression of mere human mortality; it is a failure to sufficiently “man up”. It is a betrayal of the fundamental duty of a man, a betrayal of identity, a public social failure.
This is particularly acute in communities that are socialized to be ‘hypermasculine’ – where machismo and swagga are the sine qua non of identity. Failure to “man up” becomes not just a betrayal of your manliness, but your blackness as an added bonus. The damage is not purely internal, although that’s certainly enough for this pressure to be seriously traumatic. Demasculinization and deracialization can be public social punishments as well. Getting a reputation as a “sissy” or “weak” or “soft” drives a wedge between the person suffering and the community from who they ought to be able to derive support. When empathy too is seen as non-manly, when coping and comiseration skills are not commonly available or practiced, expressing vulnerability and a need for help can result in social isolation (perhaps the discussion of the pastoral role of religious leaders – men who are exempted from some elements of traditional masculinity – can happen another time).
Frustration, helplessness, internal struggle, social isolation. Not exactly a recipe for healthy problem-solving. This is not an active harm of a scheming cabal of “racists” or “misandrists” (my brain gags to even use the word), but rather the result of a passive gender-essentialist system that creates rigid roles for black men and women, and then finds a myriad of ways to punish us for the slightest transgressions.
A world where we can walk away from these types of roles is a world that would have been better for Anthony Griffith, I think. It’s a world where seeking help from a therapist isn’t “taboo” or “a white people thing”, but the rational act of a person in pain. It’s a world where the pain of self-recrimination for your baby daughter’s cancer isn’t sharpened by the feelings of extra responsibility of the failure to “be a man”. It’s a world where self-directed anger isn’t the only source of strength, but rather a person can draw from a broad palette of emotions and mutual support systems in which to find solace.
It’s a world where niggas don’t need to ‘man up’.
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Miss_Sapphyre offers some opinions on how we get there.
I first heard this on The Moth podcast, and it’s heart-wrenching. The guy who runs the podcast even had to preface it with a disclaimer, saying that even though Anthony Griffith is a comedian, the story he was about to tell was not funny.
This needs to be a world where people are allowed to feel things, where they can be emotionally and intellectually honest with themselves and others. It needs to be a world where it’s okay to be vulnerable and to need help – and not be socially maligned because of it.
This is an excellent post, Crommunist.
These observations are acute and poignant.
I see the destructive impact of resistance against emotional awareness and closeness in my work daily. It destroys relationships, including the relationship to one’s self. Sometimes that destruction takes the form of a catastrophic blowout, but much more often, as with the incredibly tragic story of Mr. Griffith, people are left boiling in the sulphuric acid of their Gordian knots of inaccessible and “shameful” emotions. The results are alienation, depression, constant anxiety, substance abuse to blunt the tension, chronic disease, and premature mortality.
It’s a tricky task to be able to help an individual overcome internal resistance to genuine emotional experiencing, one I’ve happily dedicated years of training, reading, reflection and ongoing supervision to get anywhere near competency with. Believe me, I still strike out a ton, and at least half my success has a good helping of luck in it.
But to add social stigma and the nihilistic culture of machismo on top of the internal struggle an individual must often undergo is simply too much. If I at least get you in front of me, maybe there’s a chance we can work together. If the very possibility of therapy is taboo, there’s no meaningful hope I can offer.
I posted his vid on your thread titled:”okay, I really don’t get this” to show his story is about equal parts male oppression and black oppression Cromm.
Congrats on your 180 from your statement that men are so differently situated (as a singular monolithic group) that it is just for the affordable care act to deny men cancer screenings and birth control (free of copays) but provide those things to women. That is a simplistic view of privilege.
I’m glad to see you’re beginning to understand that privilege and oppression between the sexes doesn’t work anything like it does between whites and minorities, and trying to falsely extrapolate such a comparison is a great undermining of the pain and sacrifice that men make in society and also the burden of always wearing a brave facade and never admitting you have been victimized grinds down mens souls.
I am happy to see you finally acknowledge in one of your posts the man-box men are put in due to internalization of the man-code that they can never show weakness.
Now, if you can only acknowledge EXTERNAL forces that both genders put on men (to wit: stop measuring the wage gap in only dollars and start measuring it in the 19 to 1 work death gap and suicide gap and healthcare gap that affects men many times over women) you might really be on to something.
In the Aurora shooting men who fled leaving loved ones are shamed, but no shaming is done to women who do the same. Men DO face systemic and cultural oppression (some unique to men like coward shaming and others very similar to women) for being MEN.
Thansk for finally acknowledging that. What mountains must have moved in your psyche for this to have happened.
Congrats on moving so far out of your comfort zone from saying ALL MEN (as a singular group) are so privileged that denying them healthcare is just to actually acknowledging male gender norms being DESTRUCTIVE to men.
Now, you’re moving towards a blog that I could someday come to respect.
Who knows, maybe next you’ll acknowledge that shroedingers rapist is an unfair male stereotype?
Well, nevermind. Have to do this in baby steps I guess.
Thanks for missing the point in such a hilarious way.
…says the guy who has clearly not bothered to read the numerous posts that preceded not only this post (which I started a month ago), but also preceded the arrival of his goofy ass, and that talk explicitly about the ways in which gender construction and the masculinity myth affects men. You’ve written about 6000 words on my blog, John. It seems you’ve read about 100. This is why I don’t take you seriously, and why I specifically caution others not to either. You’re not here to talk, you’re here to pontificate.
And if you thought for a moment that your opinion of me, positive or negative, makes the slightest difference to how I live my life or what I choose to write about, then I suggest you take some time and try to wrestle your ludicrous self-aggrandizement down to a manageable level.
Probably the biggest contributor to this death gap is the ‘man code’ that you wrote about in your previous sentence:
There is no external force killing men off at work, there is only the same machismo at play. Men are the ones acting with bravado, taking risks, concealing injuries, avoiding counsel. Men are the ones killing men 19 to 1. You spelled out the exact cause in that second quote, but you ignored it because it gets in the way of your victimhood.
You don’t read the blog because you don’t even read your own words.
So you imagine ‘men’ are the ones exclusively to blame for the ‘man code’ and the social pressure that goes along with it?
Also, you’re enforcing it yourself here by effectively denying that a man or men could be victims.
Have a look at the first line of mine that you quoted. “Biggest contributor” is not “exclusive contributor”. So no.
Cromm:
In order to highlight the harm done to men by the male gender roles (enforced by both men and women) it is necessary to talk a lot as it seems this message is so counter-intuitive to you and Rutee (who never misses a chance to glibly re-define male pain and suffering as privilege) that it is necessary to lay down a foundation of knowledge since you’ve never bothered to research ways men (as a group rather than black or gay men) are oppressed.
Because the point is so counter-intuitive, it requires explanation and evidence.
How do you reconcile the need to explore the man-box and pressures put onto men, when you advocate on behalf of the affordable care act which denies equal access to men for cancer screening, birth control, and DV services????
In essence you’re advocating for a law that INCREASES pressures upon men to simply mask their pain (by removing support services).
That is the most idiotic stance for somebody who CLAIMS to be fighting gender roles against men I have ever seen.
You didn’t even know that men were 80% of the casualties of suicide. How can you claim to be looking at male oppression when you don’t even seem to be well-versed about HUGE QUALITY OF LIFE issues affecting men (like the 19 to 1 male death rate on the job, the 4 to 1 suicide rate of men over women, the 4 to 1 homicide rate of men over women, the fact that there is a male disadvantage in sentencing nearly equal to the black disadvantage).
If you want to prove you’re here to fight for men to break gender role pressures: then do the fucking work and **DON’T*** advocate for laws which increase those pressures (would seem like a VITAL first step).
In essence you want to claim the role of fighting against ALL harmful gender stereotypes and oppression without putting in the work (or even the research to validate your ridiculous opinions).
You never responded to the 18 or so studies I posted which prove that when women make the same choices, they get paid the same, or my posting of the limitations statement of the 1 (ONE) study you posted claiming the wage gap was still 20% (after controlling for choices) in which it was stated that the study didn’t even control for work conditions.
The problem is that your views are NOT evidence based. You are exhibiting extreme confirmation bias.
This means that your solutions and your advocacy are both going to be fucked up.
Holms says:
“There is no external force killing men off at work, there is only the same machismo at play.”
Izzat so?
ht tp://www.adelaidenow.com.au/ipad/mothers-hanker-for-husbands-of-wealth/story-fn6t2xlc-1225985339082
This article on twin studies of mothers in UK and Australia
state that “if finances permitted, most would choose to be full-time mothers”. In other words: if the man works hard enough.
Jeremy Adam Smith states in his book “Daddy Shift” “Studies consistently show that 80 percent to 90 percent of mothers still *EXPECT* fathers to serve as primary *BREADWINNERS* (and very few will consider supporting a stay-at-home dad). At work, only 7 percent of American men have access to paid parental leave, among other structural limitations.”
ht tp://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=7088747&page=1#.UIHDpcVG8o9
IN this story, a mom who becomes breadwinner, feels
disrespect for her husband taking on the mother’s role.
ht tp://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3318366/Wealth-is-key-for-marriage-study-claims.ht ml
According to this study, women place a premium on men’s
wealth.
If you guys had ever bothered to review some of the writing on avoiceformen.com you might have tripped over one of the most poignant messages of male disposability and utilization(placed upon by society at large by men and women alike).
A story was posted in which a picture was taken from a coal mine tunnel intersection. The mine said (this was a while ago but roughly) “Look around, your family needs your income”
Also, don’t you think at a minimum, those who claim to take stances on equality shouldn’t advocate for a health care law which restricts services to men like cancer screenings, birth control, and DV services but provides them to women with no copay?
How is restricting support services to men to care for themselves or in DV situations improving the man-box?
The sign (at the intersection) said ” “Look around, your family needs your income”.
Not the mine said (that doesn’t even make sense).
The problem Holms is that there seems to be no shortage of articles, research, and advocacy (to affect change)regarding the ways in which women lose agency and have detrimental behaviors foisted upon them (body issues, slut-shaming, work-life balance choices pressures etc..).
I actually agree with the sentiment, I just wish a little of that sunshine would fall upon the fates of men too.
From what I see, a lot of these same pundits who drill SO DEEP into all the ways women lose agency, don’t even do a miniscule bit of research into men’s decisions and proclaim those decisions to be free of shame, coercion, or force.
This is not objective reality.
Women can and do shame and coerce men all the time. In the last CDC report on interpersonal violence 50% more men reported controlling and coercive behavior from their significant other than women (I think the incident rate was 12% for men and 8% for women).
The simple fact is that privilege and oppression between the genders works a lot differently than say the way it works between whites and blacks. It is also a lot more nearly equal in terms of the pressures the sexes can put on each other.
The simple fact is women can and do put pressures upon men all the time, typically by using shame and ridicule (or in the case of men abusing their bodies to materially provide for their families, by simply not electing to spend time with men who cannot support a family of four in a lavish fashion).
Also, I would say that men who want to provide materially for their families has very little to do with “machisimo”.
Back in the 1980’s there was a Time article in which a woman who’s miner husband was injured destroying his ability to work in the mines, so SHE took a job in the mines to provide for him and the kids.
She was highlighted as a hero.
Strangely when WOMEN do it, the behavior is pegged accurately: SACRIFICE.
That sign in the mines didn’t say: “Look both ways for mine carts because if you’re injured you won’t be hot shit anymore”.
It said to look both ways, or you won’t be able to provide for your family anymore.
Men abusing and breaking their own bodies is a loving sacrifice many men make to earn and keep female attention and love, not machisimo.
Last sentence was an excellent point.
All I see from you is a wilful attempt at every turn to choose the most anti-male interpretation possible, when others might be more likely.
No. In other words, ‘if we ignore financial considerations for the sake of argument, do you want to spend more time with your baby?’ ‘GEE HOW DID YOU GUESS??’
But of course you saw one parent wanting to spend more time being a parent as a stealth attack on the other. Because that way you get to have a cry about it.
You forget / omit the bit where that same ‘family values’ crap from the 50’s also works the other way: women are still expected to forgo a career to be a housewife. You seem to have forgotten that the mother happens to be the spouse guaranteed to have physiological changes to her body and mobility as a result of pregnancy, and is the only one capable of breastfeeding. The only way you *might* have a point here is if the father is actively unable to take over baby-caring duties short of quitting.
So while you might be on to something here, you are also quite wilfully off track in other regards.
How did you forget your preceding paragraph so quickly? You only just noted that we have yet to shake off the ye olde home maker / bread winner mindset, but suddenly you’re now shocked – SHOCKED – at the discovery a single woman might still be stuck in that lousy mindset. What the hell happened between the paragraphs, a seizure?
Oh whoops, that’s right – you only noted half of it to begin with. The half that let you have a cry about prejudice against men. Also worth noting is that the percentage of fathers taking on the role of ‘house husbamd’ is on the rise, but no, go ahead and quote an article about the prejudice of ONE GODDAMN WOMAN if it suits your selected narrative.
And men still place a premium on a woman’s tits. the shallowness runs both ways, but of course you forgot abaout that. NEXT.
A cautionary sign was posted in a mine, advising the emplyees to be safety conscious. THAT’S PRETTY POIGNANT.
Never visited the place myself, but if the thinking there is as skewed as your own, I don’t think I’ll bother.
I don’t know much about the US health system aside from Obama trying to expand it, but I do know something about domestic violence (I think that’s what you mean by ‘DV’?). It is primarily inflicted by men against women. I don’t mean to trivialise the men who get abused, but it is a simple fact that it is not nearly as systematic a problem as it is for women. Thus, while it is regrettable that some men will be left out in the cold, it is also quite obvious that any program intending to reduce the impact of such violence will direct available resources towards assisting the women.
I suspect though that the reduced support for vicitimised men is itself a product of this masulinised view of men: that a husband being abused just needs to ‘man up’, that he isn’t ‘proper’ man if he isn’t the one in charge.
Certainly though we can say that your appraisal of the various matters holds little to no water in each case; I have not been to this avoiceformen site, but if your resoning is indicative, the I will save myself the trouble and not bother.
“Never visited the place myself, but if the thinking there is as skewed as your own, I don’t think I’ll bother.”
Just ignore that bit, I fucked up my editing.
Percentages don’t work that way.
“From what I see, a lot of these same pundits who drill SO DEEP into all the ways women lose agency, don’t even do a miniscule bit of research into men’s decisions”
There’s this blog you should check out: freethoughtblogs.com/crommunist
It often deals with masculine identities. And there’s even a frequent guest blogger named Edwin who specialises in masculine identities and feminism and has studied these issues at university level. Seriously, try giving the blog a read sometime. You might find it interesting.
Well Holms, what can I say?
You certainly have great arguments….against things I never said.
Please don’t try to impute what you think my beliefs or stances are on things I never discussed with you. That is a liars game and you’re only going to embarrass yourself.
Embarrassment #1: In point of fact, in the post titled “Ok, I actually don’t get this one” I told Rutee that I believe the cultural pressure to push women into fulltime motherhood (particularly in the 1st half of the last century) IS oppression.
You and I never discussed the culturally enforced expectation of mothers to be the primary caregiver. Why would you assume that I dismissed women having their agency reduced as a result of this pressure?
Because that would then make your dismissal of men having their agency reduced acceptable?
All I’m asking for is a little bit of consistency in how we look at culturally (or even legally) enforced gender expectations, rather than mountains of hypocrisy (when it comes to acknowledging men can undergo the same influences).
The question is why do you so vehemently resist the idea that a culturally enforced role for men to be primary earners (inflicted upon men from both genders) is not *also* oppression????
I remember listening to NPR and they interviewed a grizzled (at least he sounded grizzled) dairy rancher. He had to close his dairy due to hard times. This grizzled dairy rancher was crying like a 10 year old girl.
Why? Because he felt guilty for the dozen families he would have to lay off.
Personally, I think there are social forces forces (or maybe natural to some extent) that culminate in different ways in which men and women sacrifice for others.
Men are constantly socialized to be actors, and that the permissable way for us to get love and adoration is by being a hero.
I know I certainly believed this in my early life.
I’m 46 and I remember as a child watching the wonderful world of disney on Sunday nights with my mother and step dad. In a break they put the poem about the mythical character of “John Henry” the miner who beat the mining machine, but lost his life to music with a cartoon.
This memory has stayed with me a long time. Everywhere is the notion that a good man is one who sacrifices himself for others.
Whereas women are more likely to sacrifice themselves by nurturing men are more likely to sacrifice by abusing and wrecking their bodies, or risking their lives to get external validation.
But, when you try to pretend that men are immune from the pressures of obligation, shaming, ridicule or scorn (i.e. you refute that men are human) your stance isn’t about gender differences as much as it is about wholesale dismissal of men’s humanity.
Since you love trying to put words in my mouth, I will explain this so you don’t *again* pretend to know what I believe and try to attribute simplistic statements to me.
Something you will *never* hear me say:
“I disagree with the idea that the mercenary choices of a great deal of men in mate selection (based on beauty) of women abbrogates womens agency, and sets destructive social norms for women.”
Something you *will* hear me say:
“The mercenary choices of a great deal of women in mate selection (based on income/willingness to sacrifice) of men abbrogates mens agency, and sets destructive social norms for men.”
See how that works? Privilege and oppression and infliction of standards which coerce behavior is a two-way street when it comes to women and men.
What universe do you live in where apparently men are 100 foot tall mountains of agency where their actions are NEVER EVER coerced or forced through shaming, scorn, ridicule just as womens are?
You claimed that I refused to look at alternative explanations (to sacrifice) of why men abuse and break their bodies.
Strange, because despite claiming these alternative explanations are more likely you don’t even bother to NAME them.
Please enlighten me of why you think men are inhuman and never ever are susceptible to obligation, shame, scorn or ridicule.
Please lay out your evidence or reasoning of why these mystery reasons are *more likely* an explanation than men being fully human and actually sacrificing for others (bizarre I know).
This should be a really enlightening look into a disturbed mind.
If Cromm and his fans have to accept that A) when the work/life choices of men and women are measured in attributes besides $$$ (like health and safety) that it is DEMONSTRABLY SHOWN that men are ALSO often subjected to destructive SOCIALLY ENFORCED cultural norms and B) that when men make these decisions to engage in risky unhealthy work it is due to sacrifice rather than domination I think they will likely have to pluck their eyes out as their need to deny mens humanity and their need to believe in male perfidy and female victimhood are so ingrained that they resist all evidence.
The level of deception, mental gymnastics to deny men’s full humanity is staggering and comprehensive and has to be seen to be believed.
You are also definitely wrong on the issue of domestic violence.
The 2000 natl violence against women survey states:
“Approximately 1.3 million women and 835,000 men are physically assaulted by an intimate partner annually in the United States.” Which puts men at 1/3rd the victims.
ht tps://www.ncjrs.gov/txtfiles1/nij/183781.txt
If you look to the new CDC report on intimate partner violence it shows the following:
On page 38 in tables 4.1 and 4.2 it shows that men have a 4.7% rate of being subjected to physical violence by an intimate partner in the last 12 months versus a 4.0% rate of being subjected to physical violence by an intimate partner in the last 12 months.
ht tp://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pdf/NISVS_Report2010-a.pdf
That puts men at 54% the victims of DV. If you look at the lifetime figures:
Women: 32.9% Men: 28.2% which puts men at 46%. So please stop telling it like it ain’t.
Using even the least favorable stat men are 46% of DV victims and SHOULD NOT be subjected to a law (the Affordable Care Act) which denies us services but grants them (free) to women.
I can’t believe that Cromm stated men are so differently situated that they don’t have a need to health care like women as a defense for this law.
myname is cheese:
And yet Cromm stated that men are so differently situated (as one whole group) from women that it is right and good for the Affordable Care Act to deny equal access to cancer screenings, birth control and DV victim services to men but for the act to provide those services free to women.
Can you explain to me how this view of Cromm’s isn’t a DEEPENING of the man-box that tells men to just fake it when in pain or vulnerable?
Just take the pain and shutup fucker. IN essence this isn’t about internalization of the man-code (man up nigga), this is about Crommunist supporting advocacy that adds external pressures upon men to “man up nigga”.
Cromm isn’t trying to free men from the male role straight-jacket, he’s adding shipping yard chains on top.
[Quick poll: anyone who is going to miss John D’s distinctive voice around here, please make yourself known. He’s starting to irritate the living shit out of me and I have enough things to deal with in my life without obsessive internet weirdoes added to the mix. – C]
Holms says:
“Percentages don’t work that way.”
Apparently, in addition to the big fat fail on understanding privilege, oppression and coercion you also have a colossal fail at 2nd grade math.
lol
And I bet you think you’re the enlightened one too?
lol
I could explain it to you, John D, but odds are you wouldn’t accept anything that doesn’t fit your narrative.
Crommunist, re: your poll, I say ban John D. I noticed his obsessive commenting on other threads and it’s clear he isn’t here to discuss. Rather, he’s here to just talk at the wall, spouting his werid-ass opinions on a never-ending loop. If we need someone to fulfill that role, we can just get one of those toy parrots. At least the toy parrot has an off-switch.
@mynameischeese:
Ah yes, trying to reframe your opponents criticisms as his lack of understanding.
No cheese,
The point is I understand precisely too well.
@Cromm,
I have no doubt I am becoming incredibly irritating to you.
I can understand how asking you to defend your supposition that you defend breaking down gender norms for men, when you advocate for a law which worsens the male role would be very problematic for you.
Go ahead and use the banhammer, but remember: the truth is nobody’s enemy (except for liars).
And lies are nobody’s friend. If asking you to defend position A) and position B) one which talks about breaking gender roles for men and one which talks about deepening them (i.e. revealing your hypocrisy) is enough for the banhammer:
well, I can’t honestly say I’m surprised.
Opening people’s eyes is often very painful. You can tell a 5y/o that there is no Santa Clause, but she certainly won’t thank you for it.
REMEDIAL MATHS CLASS NOW IN SESSION
The statement “12 is 50% greater than 8” is correct. The statement “12% is 50% greater than 8%” *might* be, but it is not mathematically rigorous. The difference? Percentages are a representative value, whereby two numbers are reduced to a ratio expressed as a fraction of 100. They are not an absolute value. To learn the absolute values (and hence the relative proportions) of the values you quoted, we need to know the raw numbers.
12% of what? 8% of what? As an example: 12% of 100 is 12. 8% of a million is 80,000. 12 is not 50% larger than 80,000, therefore 12% (of 100) is not 50% greater than 8% (of 1,000,000). While I grant that it is highly unlikely that this article you vaguely recall has such lopsided poll groups, it remains that percentages don’t work that way.
What you are doing is artificially magnifying the difference by taking two proportions with small numbers and rendering them as a ratio of one another. Hey presto, our difference of 4 points becomes 50, a much larger talking point to support your narrative.
I’m not sure if the above explanation is very clear, so here is a better explanation of the same phenomenon by an actual mathematician.
If you want to compare the two percentages, just say that there is a 4% difference. If it means you can’t have a fucking cry about your precious victimhood, too bad.
…
And
Fair enough… but then, why did you go on to say “you think men are inhuman and never ever are susceptible to obligation, shame, scorn or ridicule”? I don’t recall saying or thinking that, or the other sentiments you seem to attribute to me. Just as well you aren’t “try[ing] to impute what you think my beliefs or stances are”, because that would make you a hypocrite.
That was the entire point of the article to which you replied here, maybe you should read it?
I like how you chose the one and only statistic on those tables where men are worse off than women. Almost as if you dredged these these reports specifically looking for the few numbers that bolster your victimhood narrative? Maybe?
P.S. Just in case you are inclined to dismiss my opposition of you as being the ramblings of a resentful woman: I’m a man, man.
P.P.S. Piss off.
Ugh and I fucked up yet another hyperlink.
“a better explanation” ==> http://numberwatch.co.uk/ratios.htm