Men die far earlier from heart disease, indeed from all causes. Men live 5 1/2 years shorter than women and spend their last decade in worse health.
Yet the vast majority of gender-specific health research and education are for women. Think of the sea of pink ribbons for breast cancer research. Where are the ribbons for the many more men who die earlier of sudden heart attack?
It's sexist and unfair. Imagine that all literacy programs were aimed at whites, even though Blacks have a much higher illiteracy rate. It would never come to be, or if it did, would trigger national outrage and the program pulled. But when women are the beneficiary, there's no problem. Think about it.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
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I think that this might be indicative of a common current mindset that is no good for any party involved.
Who believes that men need help? Unless those men happen to also be a minority, nobody believes they might need assistance. White men have every advantage, right? They don't need help. They're the ones that are in charge of everything and own everything and keeping everybody else down.
But those poor, disadvantaged women and minorities need all the help they can get. They can't do it on their own and shouldn't even be expected to try, so they need all our help so the playing field can be level.
As long as we keep splitting things down the middle on such superficial characteristics as race and gender, as long as we treat any group as less than (not different than; there is a difference) any other group for those reasons, there will always be a double standard. And somebody will be holding the short end of the stick.
When women get shortchanged for any reason, legitimate or not, it's "sexist." When minorities get shortchanged, it's "racist." With homosexuals, it's "homophobic." And with white men, it's "justice."
That's a problem for all of us. And none of us should stand for it, especially those that have experienced the REAL sexism, racism, and homophobia that still exist in America. Those people might better know how to differentiate their experiences from petulant, hypersensitive people who didn't get their way.
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