Let’s End the Myth of Male Privilege Once and for All

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Commentary

Sexism against women in academia, we’re constantly told, is rampant. It’s not. The author Virginia Sole-Smith recently argued that the desire to be slim, one shared by many women around the world, is a product of the patriarchy. No, it’s not. The actor Joshua Jackson recently blasted the men of America for abusing their supposed privilege. No, they’re not. It’s time to end the myth of the disempowered female and overly privileged male once and for all.

Let’s start with education, often referred to as the passport to a better future. When it comes to high-school completion rates, there’s an “unmistakable gap” between boys and girls, with boys far less likely to graduate. In colleges, meanwhile, 60 percent of all students are female. Males are 20 percent more likely to drop out of college than females. Women now occupy two-thirds of all college administrator positions. Six of eight Ivy League schools will soon have female presidents.

There’s not just an education gap between men and women; there’s also a justice gap. As the Council on Criminal Justice has shown, males are 75 percent more likely than females to receive a long prison sentence; in addition, they’re over three times more likely to serve that sentence. Even when men and women commit the same crimes, men receive sentences that are 63 percent higher than women.

What about mental health statistics? Again, males don’t fare very well. In the United States, men make up 49 percent of the population but nearly 80 percent of all suicides. Every 13.7 minutes, somewhere in the country, a man commits suicide. That works out at roughly 100 suicides every single day, or 33,600 each year.

Yet, for some reason, the idea that men still have access to special advantages and specific privileges unavailable to women persists. In a recent Washington Post article—ostensibly designed to raise the alarm on America’s crisis of masculinity—Derek Griffith, director of Georgetown University’s Center for Men’s Health Equity in the Racial Justice Institute, said the following: “Men are advantaged in every aspect of our society, yet we have worse health outcomes for most of the things that will kill you.”

This statement is a logical non sequitur. It makes no sense. The conclusion doesn’t support the premise. Bear in mind that Griffith is supposed to be an advocate for men’s health, yet here he is, smuggling in the pernicious idea of male privilege.

As Robert Edward Whitley, an expert in men’s rights and mental health problems, told me, “The fact that ‘men have worse health outcomes for things that can kill you’ is ipso facto evidence that men are not advantaged in every aspect of society.”

Clearly unimpressed by Griffith’s contradictory comment, Whitley, a professor of psychiatry at McGill University, Canada, suggested that “blanket statements about the alleged advantages of men denies the huge heterogeneity within the categories of men and women.”

He’s right. They do. Imagine, if you will, a poor, unemployed young male in Michigan. Now, imagine a wealthy, privately educated female in Manhattan. In what world is the male more privileged than the female? Only the delusional would or could respond, “in this one.”

In the aforementioned Washington Post article, it clearly states that, in the United States, at every stage of life, men die at higher rates than women do. The failure to recognize men’s suffering appears to be baked into society. Take intimate partner violence (IPV), for example. When you imagine a victim of IPV, what do you see? Chances are you’re picturing a female. Although women are very much the victims of IPV, studies show that an increasing number of men are on the receiving end of abuse in romantic relationships.

As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has noted, “men experience a high prevalence of intimate partner violence, sexual violence and stalking.” Male victimization, stresses the CDC, is a “significant public health concern.” Yet, considering the amount of attention violence against men gets in the mainstream media (somewhere between very little and absolutely none), you could be forgiven for thinking that women were the only victims of chronic abuse.

Men, it seems, are treated like tissue. In other words, they appear to be inherently disposable. Whitley agrees. This has been the case for far too long.

“This can be seen in social norms such as ‘women and children first’ in the face of disaster,” he said. “For example, the survival of women was prioritized during the sinking of the Titanic, meaning 73 percent of women on board survived, compared to only 21 percent of men.”

Most men in the United States feel anything but privileged. They feel lost, alone, and completely unvalued. To truly address the crisis of masculinity, we must first acknowledge the facts. Now, more than ever, we must put an end to the destructive myth of male privilege.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.