Last month, researchers at Kings College London reported some astonishing results from a survey of beliefs about gender, based on a representative sample of over 3,700 residents in the U.K. Over a quarter of young men (ages 16 to 29) reported that they believe it is harder to be a man than a woman in society today. Even more young men, nearly a third of the sample, believe that in 20 years it will be harder to be a man than a woman.
The implication is that feminism is to blame for bringing men down: Over 50 percent of these young men reported that they believe that feminism hasn’t done any good, or if it has done any good, it has also has done at least an equal amount of harm. Levels of support in this sample for Andrew Tate, unabashed British misogynist and social media bully, are equally disturbing. What makes these results disturbing is that men—at least White men—will probably never have it worse off than women. But regardless, any difficulty about being a man is largely because of men, not women.
People who believe that women have it better than men—or even as good as men, as most Americans in a similar Pew poll reported believing–are cherry-picking data. It is true that women are admitted to college these days more than men, and of course women are always the dubious beneficiaries of benevolent sexism—for example, getting free drinks and meals during dates and being rescued first off sinking ships. But any such benefits to women are profoundly outweighed by hardships that disproportionately affect women: sexual violence and rape, domestic abuse, socially dictated responsibility for pregnancy, not to mention persistent gender inequalities that are manifest in pay disparities and lack of representation of women in leadership roles in business and governance. There is no country on the planet where women have it better off than men, or are even equal to men.
While men may never have it as bad as women, still, life is not easy for men. But the people most likely to make life difficult for them are not women. They are not feminists. They are other men. Who is most likely to bully men in the workplace? Other men. Who contributes most to workplace toxicity? Men. Who instigates violence toward men? Men.
Ethnic minority men have a case, however, that their lives may be as hard or harder than ethnic minority women. The data on this point are most harrowing when it comes to the criminal justice system: Black men are vastly over-represented in prisons and jails and are still over-represented among those killed by the police, even in modern, post-George Floyd times. Ethnic minority women have also been killed by the police, but those numbers are a fraction of ethnic minority men killed. Black men are also nearly 30 times more likely to be incarcerated than Black women. Similar disparities in the criminal justice system exist for Hispanic men compared to women.
Still, the problem for ethnic minority men is men. White men and other men in positions of power—Black police officers have also been charged with unjustly murdering Black men—are responsible for enforcing the criminal justice disparities that result in the continued subordination of Black men.
This is not a screed against men, White or otherwise. Obviously not all men behave in toxic and violent ways, but it only takes a few to make life rough for many.
In any case, any trouble men face should not be blamed on women. Indeed it is women and the hard work of feminists that are sorely needed to bring more empathy and care into social relations, and to correct cycles of bullying, violence, and toxicity that plague men, not just in the U.S, but around the world.
Men Make It Tough to Be a Man Today, Not Women
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18.03.2024
Last month, researchers at Kings College London reported some astonishing results from a survey of beliefs about gender, based on a representative sample of over 3,700 residents in the U.K. Over a quarter of young men (ages 16 to 29) reported that they believe it is harder to be a man than a woman in society today. Even more young men, nearly a third of the sample, believe that in 20 years it will be harder to be a man than a woman.
The implication is that feminism is to blame for bringing men down: Over 50 percent of these young men reported that they believe that feminism hasn’t done any good, or if it has done any good, it has also has done at least an equal amount of harm. Levels of support in this sample for Andrew Tate, unabashed British misogynist and social media bully, are equally disturbing. What makes these results disturbing is that men—at least White men—will probably never have it worse off than........
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