In case you were wondering, here’s a list of all the good things feminism has done for men.
That’s nice. I can’t say that it would make any difference to me: I don’t support it because it’s good for me, but because unfairness and injustice are not right.
All right… all right… but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order… what have the Romans done for us?
Splitter!
Yeah, it gives 23 things feminism has done for men (though a few overlap as “Sex!”), but why is it that they never get around to #24:
From the USDOJ publication:
Cooper, Alexia, and Erica L. Smith. Homicide Trends in the United States, 1980-2008. (Annual Rates for 2009 and 2010.). Washington DC: US DOJ, 2011. Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics. Web. 9 Feb. 2015. .
The murders of men/males by intimate partners as a percentage of all murders of men/males:*
1980: 10.4%
2008: 4.9%
The report concluded that this constituted a trend, which can be seen in graphical data included in the report. The report did not conclude that 2008 was an aberrational year.
But perhaps women have been killing more men and yet men have been killing EVEN MORE men, giving wives and girlfriends a bigger death toll yet less market share?
Let’s test that hypothesis:
Supplementary to the earlier report is the census bureau report on homicide trends (that itself relies on FBI/DOJ numbers, so they are using the same underlying dataset).*
How many men were murdered in 1980 and 2008?
1980: 17,803
2008: 12,731
Is this trend or aberration? Well, the census report doesn’t make conclusions like that, but over the course of 2 decades we fell from the 1980 high to a low of just over 11,700 in 1999. After that, the numbers never go lower than 11,700 or higher than 13,433. The mean over those years is 12,629 and the median is 12,664. Even rounding to the hundreds place, there is no repeat year and thus no valid mode.
But as 12,731 is very close to both mean and mode, it’s pretty typical for that last decade or so.
So how many murders is that?
10.4%*17803 = 1851 or 1852. Or thereabouts, within the limits of the 3 significant digits given in the 10.4% figure.
4.9%*12,731 = about 624.
As a percentage of murders, the murder of men by wives or girlfriends is down about 52.88%.
However, as a total number of murders, the murder of men by wives or girlfriends is down about 66.6%
But wait, there’s more!
According to this document, the population of men in the US in 1980 was 110,053,000. In 2008 it is not broken out by gender, but the total is 304,375,000 and in 2009 the total (which was 307,007,000) was broken out to specify 151,449,000 men. Even if the 2,632,000 person increase from 2008 to 2009 was all men, it would still leave 148,883,000 men in the US in 2008.
Dividing 110,053,000 by 1851 (being generous), we get 1 intimate partner murder of a man for every 59,456 men in 1980.
Dividing 148,883,000 by 624, we get 1 intimate partner murder of a man for every 238,595 men in 2008.
59,456/238,595 = 24.919%.
Yep, that’s right, post feminism the murder rate of men by their intimate partners has fallen 75%. You men now have only 1/4th the chance of being murdered by your intimate partners that you would have had in 1980.
Now use your very, very nicest tone of voice when you say, “Thank you,” boys.
*Note that the FBI/DOJ data upon which both these reports were based excluded deaths attributable to the 9/11 terror attacks, including those persons on the hijacked planes as well as those persons killed in/near the towers and the pentagon. However, since we are examining intimate partner violence, those murders would have been relevant to our investigations anyway.
PZ: I don’t support it because it’s good for me
But it is good for you. I believe that a fair and just world is better for me, and the best way to protect my rights is to protect the rights of others.
Ooops. Link to the census report on Homicide numbers and trends.
My wife and I have always equally shared the care for our children. I am very, very grateful for the opportunity to develop a good relationship with my children and witness them grow.
Isn’t one of the more persuasive arguments for the evolution of morality (Rather than the religious “absolute authority” argument), that ultimately morality and altruism are beneficial to our whole population ?
That’s fascinating, Crip Dyke! I’m not surprised that the effect exists, but I’d never have guessed that it’s anywhere near this large!
As a child i remember thinking that anything that makes other’s lives better, particularly others around me, my friends and family (i was a child, i didn’t see very far xD) is ultimately going to make my life better aswell. And even if it didn’t, why wouldn’t i want my female friends or my female cousins, whom i love, to have better lives?
There really is no good or rational reason not to be a feminist.
@David Marjanović:
Yeah. Women were saying for years that, yes, they had killed abusive partners, but that they weren’t doing it out of revenge for past bad treatment, they were doing it because they were afraid and saw no way to get out alive without killing the abusive partners.
There were a ton of skeptics (notably in law enforcement and among conservatives), but there are good reasons to think that for about (from this data) 75% of women who would otherwise murder an intimate partner, providing a way to leave the relationship without killing an abusive partner WAS sufficient cause to prevent murder.
People don’t say it often enough: Women’s shelters and women’s hotlines save men’s lives.
They save a ton of men’s lives. In fact, 624*3 > 1851, so it saves more lives per year than the total number of men murdered by intimate partner violence at the earliest year available.
As for how many tons of lives? Well, from the CDC:
2000/191 = 10.47
Since 624*3 = 1872, we look at 1872/10.47 and find:
Women’s shelters, other escape valves for abused women, violence prevention, and education about domestic violence/ how to spot it/ what one’s options are if it happens are probably largely responsible for saving the lives of 178.8 tons of men every year, and have been for several years now.
178.8 tons of men, saved from death this year and every year in the US alone. And the evidence says it’s likely to be largely the effects of feminism.
A Voice for Men can suck on that.
Crip Dyke: On the downside, though, the lives saved are, by and large, those of abusers. I’m not saying that they should be killed, of course, but if they’re not there’s good reason to think they may live on to abuse other women.
@Don Dueed:
Yeah, but I lied to my partner this summer about something important. It was bad. It’s kind of understandable b/c massive anxiety…but not okay.
The abusers might live to abuse again, but
a) fuck the death penalty
and
b) the prisons which would otherwise incarcerate the women who didn’t commit murder but might have? They’re sickeningly awful in their effects as well.
Keeping those women out of prison saves **their** lives.
But I like to emphasize the fact that feminists are saving the lives of some of the worst, misogynistic jerks on the planet just because it makes Paul Elam’s head explode.
Ruth Bader Ginsberg was already on my most-admired list. Thanks to PZ’s post I now know more about the Notorious RBG. What a great Supreme Court Justice she has made.
@Lynna:
Fair enough. But I’m a little confused at the sentence in the article linked by PZ:
Also, that picture of Bader Ginsburg and her hubby and family in #4 was quite surprising. Her look really has changed as she’s gotten older, ya think?
Learning about feminism is like learning about science: When you’re young and ignorant, you’re willing to stay ignorant, especially when you benefit from the status quo. It requires less work than learning and thinking, less effort than becoming enlightened or being concerned about others.
Once you do start learning, you regret the time you wasted or lost being ignorant. Even if it would be easier to pretend not to know and take the easy way out, you’ll always feel obligated to do the right thing.
Crip Dyke @10:
Sorry, but that’s a bit misleading. A man was about 1/2 as likely to get killed by anyone in 2008 as in 1980, according to the numbers you quote. You’re including that overall drop into your calculation to get the 75%. Other factors are obviously at play, but your larger point remains.
Most of those benefits seem to be incidental. That doesn’t bother me, but like Prof. Myers, I’m not in it for my own benefit except in an abstract emotional way. But while this might be useful for rallying the troops — which is enough if that’s your intention — I don’t see it winning anyone over.
@Rob Grigjanis
And those other factors may be in part down to feminism too (e.g. fewer unwanted/unsupportable children due to contraception/birth control; greater financial independence of women, raising wealth of families whose sons might have otherwise become involved in crime).
@Hershele Ostropoler
I don’t think the point is to win anyone over per se, but to counter the narrative that feminism=hatred and oppression of men. For some reason, there are a lot of people, men and women alike, who have bought that lie without ever examining it.
@Ibis3 #19
Exactly and as a side benefit it will make the bigots sputter.
@Hershele #17
It won’t win anyone over who is decidedly anti-feminist, but it can be a part of the discussion that wins more fence sitters over to the side of justice. Progress is largely an incremental thing unless and until you hit a tipping point. More fence sitters come down on the side of progress and more conservatives find themselves sitting on the fence.
@Ibis3, #19:
This. With bells on.
@Grewgills, #20:
and as a side benefit it will make the bigots sputter.
One of the most satisfying noises in the universe.
Here’s a song where the point is tipping the sitters off the fence.
I hate to follow up that really important point raised by Crip Dyke with one that is nearly trivial in comparison, but feminism was probably also indirectly responsible for the loosening of dress codes for men. As women entered fields that were once exclusively held by men, existing dress codes had to be amended and the suit and tie seem to have been dropped in the process.
I wanted to look up to see if the incidence of domestic violence had also decreased within the period CD mentioned, but could only find the numbers reported to police, rather than the self-reported numbers. Maybe my Google skills are just lacking…
@ck, #22:
No, no. They’re all important, particular ones being more important to some than to others.
I just find it very interesting that the cult of masculinity that still exists makes “Feminism saved men’s lives from women who would otherwise kill them” kinda difficult for men to admit. And since it doesn’t get admitted out loud, it’s that much more important to share.
But, yes, you’re talking about hundreds of lives saved vs. millions of men who can be more comfortable at work (and not merely in terms of dress codes – less masculine men might not be dismissed in importance/expertise as quickly these days, which creates comfort benefits and opportunities for deserved promotion that would otherwise have been stifled).
So run riot. There’s plenty of benefits to talk about, and talking about a reduction in certain murders shouldn’t silence talk about other benefits….
No-fault divorce + financial equality under the law (if not in reality). That’s not to say it’s trivial to get away from an abuser, but it’s a lot easier when 1) you don’t have to prove in a court of law, to the standards of a lawsuit, that he beat you or gambled away the rent in order to be granted permission to divorce, and 2) your money belongs to you, and it’s illegal to be paid less because how could a little lady possibly want to pay her own way through life.
“No fault divorce saves male lives” is particularly fun to annoy MRA types with because they have such a burning hatred of no-fault…which, you know, allows a woman to leave a marriage without their permission.
Crip Dyke
Clear evidence that Feminism is making men fat. They are probably fattening us for slaughter. In spite of their rhetoric they really want to serve men, just not in the way MRAs would like.
@Crip Dyke
Thanks for the link, it kind of reminds me of Disposable Heroes era Franti.
@#3: Crip Dyke:
I may have missed this, but is there a reason you are assuming that all men/males counted as murdered by “intimate partners” were murdered by women? Is there any sexual orientation breakdown available in the data? I didn’t see any, and didn’t get any search hits for “orientation”, “gay”, “lesbian” or “sexual”, but I admit I skimmed it quickly (and have had problems with searching in PDFs with my reader before). Do you know if there is any data available in the same area, but including orientation?
I’m sort of assuming that US government homophobia wouldn’t categorize a gay identified man killed by his identified male partner as having been killed by an “intimate partner”, as opposed to “known to victim” or somesuch. It would be interesting to see if the correllation also held for a reduction in the murder rate between ALL couples, regardless of identified gender; that would be great spit-take fodder for the MRA crowd.
shikko @27: The document defines
but I saw no further breakdown, except by weapons used (Table 11).
neverjaunty wrote:
Well, to be fair, MRA types have a burning hatred for women doing anything without their permission, even when the women in question has nothing to with them.
While I am thankful for all of the huge benefits that feminism has wrought for all, I am most thankful that strong feminist voices have awakened me from my own ignorance of male privilege. And I am ashamed of our society, and indeed myself, that so many have been oppressed and continue to be oppressed today, and so many have had to struggle against entrenched misogyny in all of its forms. I benefited from the patriarchy to the detriment of others countless times, and it is time to give back. Every cause I contribute to will be a feminist one, until the day I die. Every conversation that I have that includes the slightest hint of a gender bias will include a stong rebuke by me.
It was ultimately Jen McCreight’s brave and brilliant takedown of the “Dear Muslima” message, not too long after I became a regular reader of the BlagHag blog, that resonated with me. My blindness did not evaporate immediately. In fact, it took months as I struggled against my own unrecogonized biases as I rationalized misogynistic behavior (that guy on the elevator was just a harmless clod; Dawkins was just pointing out that there was no real assault, etc ). But that blog post was the catalyst that caused my eyes to slowly start opening. In fact, they are still opening. It pains me that I still have to make a conscious effort to be completely bias-free and that sometimes I am probably still failing. It pains me that girls are born with so much more of a burden than boys, and that women have much more of a burden then men, and that I have contributed to that. and probably still unwittingly do so. It pains me that the bloggers involved in that exchange were harassed relentlessly, and still are, by clueless privileged individuals who are not willing to consider their own privilege.
So what am I most thankful for? Strong feminist voices, who continue to stem the tide and are making slow but steady progress in the consciousness of our society, even in the face of toxic pathetic lumps of MRAs.
@Shikko, #27:
Excellent question. Thanks for taking my argument seriously.
There is no sexual orientation breakdown available in the data, and indeed if you look at record keeping like VICAP, sexual orientation info was a mess even last year. [NGLTF had a hand in making it better, but this does not retroactively improve record keeping in 2008, much less 1980.] I don’t have to hand (or memory) info on when sexual orientation became a selectable (and thus searchable) characteristic in either the victim or the offender sections, but IIRC the year started with “2”. I’m frustrated not to have a better answer for you, but at best ViCAP started using this 7-8 years before the end of the 29 year time frame I examined.
ViCAP isn’t where the statistics I examined were originally found, but as a nationally standardized database, the fact that it wasn’t useful for such searches until the latter third (if that) of the time frame suggests that local record keeping and reporting of sexual orientation would be inconsistent at best.
Given the lack of good data here, we can’t give an absolute number of lives saved/ men murdered by women intimate partners/ women who murdered men intimate partners.
However, the null hypothesis suggests we have no reason to believe that between 1980 and 2008 change occurred in the proportion of the murders committed by women among the men victims killed by an intimate partner.
Thus when I was being serious about results, I explained my results as percentages and/or rates:
I did compare 624 * 3 to 1851, but this is just to say (624 *3)*s is greater than 1851*s, where s is the proportion of straight relationships.
That further requires assuming that men engage in straight relationships at the same rate as women. This isn’t actually true, but it’s close enough (the spreads vary, but we’re talking about approximately 2 percentage points at most in the 95% range. 2/95 = .021, or about 2.1%. It’s a source of error, but not a big one.
Finally, I did put specific numbers, not just rates, to the tonnage of men saved by feminism.
This, however, was decidedly tongue in cheek and is not meant to be a serious result.
The biggest source of uncertainty and error, actually, is in the general reduction in violent crime rates and how that applies. It was suggested earlier that the dramatic reduction in violent crime across the board should mitigate the amount of credit given to feminism.
Unfortunately, this general reduction is studied and explained in gender specific ways, and most of the general reduction is explained through changes among men. In categories related to more minor violence, I believe that women have been being charged more often. Whether that means women are more violent than they were in the past or whether it means cops are taking more seriously the idea that women’s violence is a criminal justice issue, I can’t say. Without good data, however, we can’t use a mechanism specific to a gender other than women to explain a change in women’s behavior (a decline in murdering intimate partners over 29 years).
So… the general decline in violent crime may be a major factor here. For instance, with or without criminal justice intervention, men’s violence declines past a certain age – definitely by 40, but I can’t remember when it starts. Women’s violence may or may not decline by age 40, it’s not as well studied. If it does, then the baby boom/baby bust cycle in the US would have demographically affected the number of women in the most violent age group in the same way as men, and we could adjust downward the impact of feminism on murder rates an appropriate amount.
But it may be that the age relationship to violence isn’t as strong in women (or is as strong, but peaks at a different age – 47 for all we know). It may be that women are MORE violent now than in the past, because socialization hasn’t as effectively rendered us meek. You might think that would make the effects of feminism stronger, but in fact it leaves it unchanged because the socialization changes that lead to more violence would also be attributable to feminism…so feminism would, in that hypothetical case, have boosted violence a small amount through one mechanism but reduced it by a much greater amount through another mechanism. The small increase and the necessitated extra reduction, however, cancel each other out.
So with a lot of fuzz amongst our understandings of how women’s violence resembles or doesn’t men’s violence, we can say that we don’t have good data to tell us the general reduction in violence rates (which, as defined and studied, is actually a specific reduction in men’s rates, but appears “general” because men’s violence is much more than 1/2 of all violence that comes to criminal justice attention in the US) explains this specific reduction of men being killed by intimate partners, most of whom are women, though not all, and hopefully about the same percentage were women in 2008 as in 1980.
So my hypothesis, which I find supported by data here and elsewhere, is that women who committed intimate killings were more often than not telling the truth when they said that these were motivated by self-defense, and seen as a last-resort method of self-defense at that. Further, I hypothesize and believe that by providing OTHER avenues to escape intimate violence, women commit fewer intimate killings.
Since I believe that these other avenues arose via the direct and indirect effects of feminism, I’m attributing an unknown but large proportion of the overall reduction to feminism. As a wild-ass guess, I’d say 80%, but really what we have are data that support an effect by feminism and a lack of research that would be necessary to rule in or out other likely effects. I could easily be convinced to cut my estimate of feminism’s effects back by quite a bit if it turned out that new research was supporting a baby bust generational effect, for instance.
This isn’t a journal article, so I won’t go on longer, but I hope that this gives you a good idea of why I believe what I believe and why with respect to RATES (not absolute numbers) queer relationships in 1980 and queer relationships in 2008 approximately cancel each other out…and to the extent that they don’t, queer relationships are few enough that other sources of error swamp them. Thus I didn’t originally go into that.
Any further questions? I’m happy to help.
@#31: Crip Dyke
The Horde never ceases to amaze me. I ask a single question and get part of a term paper’s worth of explanation back. Thank you!
I’m not surprised that orientation reporting is generally better described as “reporting”. I agree about the null hypothesis about no change in rate of “female murdering male intimate partner” numbers, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a drop in “male murdering male intimate partner” rate. However, for the reasons you mentioned, that would be difficult to tease out of the overall drop in male-instigated violence. I suppose it may be possible to consider separately, but sample size gets to be a problem.
Lots to think about. Thanks again, and keep on being awesome.
I think you really need to educate yourself before spouting bull.
Read this Real Sexism – Statistics & 160+ links
Micheal Hunt, you present the equivalent of AIG or the disco institute. Presupposionalism. And your site is as wrong as the creobots/IDbots.
Let’s play: Look at the Idiot MRA’s links!
(Trigger warning, Jesus Christ).
Sample size:
Used a random number generator, looking at links: 103, 73, 109, 51, 127, 66, 72, 20, 90, 69
Counting links starting with left column, going down, and starting in right column after left column’s end.
20: Original article says “One third of all fathers in the USA have lost custody of children”. Linked article says “Today, one-third of American children – a total of 15 million – are being raised without a father. ”
Being raised without father =/= father lost custody.
Link is also to LifeSiteNews. Misquoting an already unreliable source is a truly epic fail.
51: About wage gap being myth, they quote to this and several other articles with the phrase “And their husbands don’t care about it either” (in cases when women make more than men). But they are just cherry picking what they want to hear. From the CNN article:
Hard to believe that things are Truly Equal when that would require believing that half of women spend less than two hours a day with their kids, as is the case with working fathers….
66: Domestic violence research group. Not sure what to make of it. Site seems shitty, but looked up researcher John Hamel and he doesn’t seem to be illegitimate, as far I can tell. Site claims that 28% of women perpetrate domestic violence vs. 21% of men. And the American Bar Association disagrees: http://www.americanbar.org/groups/domestic_violence/resources/statistics.html
69: Link saying “”97% of rapists never see a day in jail” is a myth”. Cites BJS article. Scrolling through, it says half of all those arrested for rape are convicted, about 12 per 100,000 are arrested for rape, with 70 rapes per 100,000 reported per year. Graphs at the very start show that the estimated number of actual rapes is over 3 times the number reported. So 210 rapes per 100000 people, 12 arrests, 6 convictions, 96.66% unreported, unarrested, and/or unconvicted . Why these idiots linked to this study, I don’t even know.
72: Waaa waaa Duke Lacrosse!
73: Lesbian on lesbian rape. Therefore….rape culture isn’t a thing….somehow.
90: Men are doing worse in education!!!!!11!!1!eleventy Links to NY Times article with the following quotes:
MISANDRY, all around.
103: Allege that male victims of sex trafficking are ignored. Links to video from Vancouver Sun, which cites new (2012) research that claims that boys are just as at risk as girls for sexual exploitation in regards to sex trafficking and tourism. Most sources I used to double check didn’t really specify whether children were boys or girls. This is fucking morally disgusting pissing match they are trying to play though.
109: 80% of homeless people are men. Neglected to mention that this was for The Netherlands. Virginia Commonwealth University and End Homelessness dot Org puts the number in the U.S. at 63%.
127: One of three links dedicated to one specific feminist, Mary Koss, saying there are no male rape victims. Allegedly, since this link is dead. And was an unreliable source anyway (leaderu, which I am most familiar with for Christian apologetics). The second link also dead and unreliable, and the third one works but is to a blog post on Feminist Critics, a site which says in its about page ” If we come across as broadly opposed to feminism, then this is because we find that it often doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.” Gotta love faux rationality.
Yeah, it is pretty much exactly what we all expected.
Michael Hunt, there are not words I can find adequate enough to properly insult you. And now that I actually bother to read your horrible joke of a name, AFTER this exercise, I wonder why I even bothered.
Sample size was ten by the way, for those trying to solve that mystery.