Powerless: A fictional short-short story

Talking to Myself: An open journal entry

Making Peace: A fictional short-short story

Nod: A fictional short-short story

Male Suicide: A Silent Epidemic

Men are four times as likely to commit suicide as are women.

The gender gap increases over the lifespan:  "The male suicide rate goes from equal to females' prior to adolescence to five times as high’ between 20 and 24. Among the elderly, men over 85 have a suicide rate 1300% higher."

Perhaps surprising, the rate is highest among whites and lowest among African Americans and Hispanics.

White male suicide is up 40% in the last decade.

In my PsychologyToday.com article today, I explore the gender death gap and argue that it's just one example of why the conventional wisdom that women are treated unfairly should be tempered. 

Days of Our Work Lives: An unvarnished look at work today: Part I: David's Saga. The final episode: Episode 17: Third Time's the...

Days of Our Work Lives

Part I: David's Saga

Episode 17

Third Time's the...

In the previous episode, David proposed that the end of jobs might possibly be a net plus for society. His next day, however, would not be a net plus. 

It was an ordinary afternoon. Susan was giving a singing lesson on Skype. Adam was quietly doing his homework. (Their parenting-by-guilt was working remarkably well.) David was staring into his Big Data, trying to make more efficient the single-payer health care system his white paper helped get enacted. He was so proud that he helped pass the law that allowed 50 million more people, including 11 million formerly illegal immigrants, to get health care.

And then David felt that pressure in his chest again. But this time, taking deep breaths didn't help. As before his previous heart attacks, it kept getting worse. "Susan, call 911."

But this was Sage River not San Francisco, and five minutes, ten minutes, 15 minutes, and still no ambulance. Susan called again but 911 said, "I'm sorry. The system is overwhelmed. We just don't have enough ambulances. We can't keep up with the demand. It shouldn't be too long."

But when you're having a heart attack, you don't have long. David was getting dizzy and the pressure in his chest intolerable. His skin, normally pale, was now red and shading to purple, with Susan and especially Adam, looking on in horror.

Finally after 20 minutes, the ambulance arrived and a paramedic and EMT moved David onto the ambulance, with Susan and Adam by his side. Unless it's a real emergency, noise abatement rules require ambulances to use their siren as little as possible, but this was a real emergency. The driver turned on the siren and kept it on.

While starting an IV drip to reduce David's pain, the paramedic told the EMT to start CPR.  "No, slower! Harder!," the paramedic coached the EMT. The EMT pleaded, "This is only my second time. I'm new!"  

David got more purple. And then blue. Susan screamed, "He stopped breathing!"  The paramedic pushed the EMT aside and continued the CPR, far harder. But it was too late.

A month later, Susan received a copy of David's will. He had always lived modestly and invested rather than spent. Every time he had an extra thousand dollars, he'd invest it in  Vanguard Growth Index Fund, a widely touted smart place to put money. As a result, although he never had a huge salary, in the 20 years since he started saving, his nest egg had already grown to $500,000. He chose to leave half to Susan and Adam and the other half to the American Heart Association, specifically to fund research on sudden heart attack in men, which kills many more men, earlier, than other diseases, yet receives proportionately much less funding. 

Susan decided that the next plays she directs will be fundraisers for that cause. 

Although guilty for feeling this way, she felt relief that only now did she feel free to live the life she really wanted to live--if only she knew what that was.

 * * * * *

And that ends David's Saga, Part I of Days of Our Work Lives.

Next: Episode 1 of Part II: Susan's Saga.

Part III will be Adam's Saga.

It's NOT a Man's World, and Hasn't Been for a Long Time

F or a book she's writing, Former New York Times career columnist, Marci Alboher, asked me about the differences between male and female career changers.

I think you'll find my response instructive, not just about career changing, but about why I deeply believe that "It's still a man's world" is an utter canard.

Here is my response to her:

Of course, any generalizations across an entire sex will have many exceptions. That disclaimer made, here is what I have observed over the 3,800 career coaching clients I've worked with over the past 25 years:

Many men today are scared. They feel it's women's era. For example, the unemployment rate is 25% higher for men than for women, and the media and colleges disproportionately present men as inferior to women. Those are just a couple of reasons why fewer men than women try to change careers. They feel they're lucky to have what they have, even if it doesn't feel great.

Here's an even more prevalent reason why fewer men than women try to change careers. Despite societal changes in expected gender roles, many men still feel--perhaps encouraged or manipulated by their wife--to remain the primary or sole breadwinner. So they believe that the risk of making a radical career change, especially to follow their (unlikely to be remunerative) passion, is too risky to their family's financial security. So they stay put. They usually rationalize, "I'll follow my passion when the kids go off to college, when I retire, etc."

But in our economy, which is so fragile and unlikely to turn around for the foreseeable future, and with talk about cutting Social Security for future recipients, many of these men may never afford to retire.

Except for the top few percent of earners (rich executives, doctors, etc) most men will have to work on that non-passion-inducing job until they drop, which is 5.2 years sooner than women--There are 4+ widows for every widower. For so many men within the middle and working class, Death of a Salesman, isn't a play, it's reality.

Marci then asked for more on male career changers. Here was my response:

1. Most men feel they must make their career change FAST. As mentioned, they feel the need to bring home the money. His wife may contribute little or no income but expects that paycheck to keep coming, unreduced. (Remember, women do 85% of the consumer spending.) If a man's attempt to make a career change forces him to cut back on how hard or how long he's working on his current job, he may fear that risks his losing his job or of a promotion and the additional money he feels pressure to get. Such men feel they can't afford to leave their job until they have another source of good income. So they work hard at making the career change for a month or two. But if, after a month or two, there aren't signs that their career change efforts will pay off, scared of the loss of income, they usually give up.

2. More men than women look down on networking. They view "networkers" as people who are trying to substitute a smile for substance, people who do favors for others only so they can get something bigger in return. Such men feel they're more worthy if they put their time into working and into developing their skills rather than in networking. That's one reason why, for example, more men listen to a self-help book on their iPod as they jog rather than, as more women do, jogging with a friend or networking target. My doggie Einstein and I walk around a three-mile lake every day. I notice that when men are in pairs walking/jogging, they're more likely than women to be talking about work. The women much more often talk about friends, clothes, vacation, etc.

On average, men spend less time networking than do women unless absolutely necessary, for example, when trying to change careers. Unfortunately, by then, it's usually too late: For a career changer's networking to pay off, those networking relationships usually need to be deepened over months if not years. That's another reason why male career changers have such a hard time of it.

3. There are tremendous barriers to men setting up men's networking groups. Perhaps the biggest impediment is that they'd be attacked as sexist and pressured, with media support, to shut down. But for reasons beyond the scope of this email, women are not only allowed to set up women's networking groups so without reprisal, they're encouraged to.

4. As I wrote, far fewer men than women allow themselves to even consider a "dream" career that would be low-paying, for example, writer, actor, musician, artist, etc. Following their dream is too unlikely to allow them to keep bringing home that big-enough paycheck consistently. So most men suppress their dreams until retirement, a retirement that is unlikely to ever come. What often happens is they die, leaving enough money to their wife that the wife can, if she hasn't already, pursue her low-pay dream of being a writer, artist, singer, etc.

Why do so few men assert what legitimately should be a right, equal to women, to pursue their low-income-producing dream? My hypothesis is that society's main mind-molders, the colleges and the media, have done such a good job of portraying men as inferior to women, that many men have come to feel inferior and that to justify their existence, men feel they must BE a paycheck, a beast of burden. So they stay on a job, any job. How many women, compared with men, would stay on a job as a pest remover, plumber, roofer, ice fisherman, or even a traveling salesperson who must fly around the country to God-forsaken places to try to sell some widget, or even move their family to places like Montgomery Alabama to get a promotion?

Truly, the most important difference between men and women career changers is that fewer men contemplate it and fewer still feel they can afford to take the often years it takes to make a radical career change. After their 20s, most guys tend to just keep their nose to the grindstone so they can support their family. Career changing usually inhibits their ability to do that.

Marci's response to that email encouraged me to write this explanation for why it's so difficult for men's groups to form. More important, I then go on to explain why it is, nor has been for a long time, "a man's world."

Many opponents of men's groups who nonetheless applaud women's groups, sweep away their double-standard with a cheeky, "All other groups are men's groups."

Marci, that has long been untrue. Nor is their assertion, "It's a man's world" as self-evident as feminists would have us believe.

For example, if it were a man's world, men would have the full range of career options: from stay-at-home non-income earner to actor/writer/artist to CEO. But while women have all those options, a man who chooses the former two is widely viewed as lazy. It would be socially unacceptable. So most men don't even allow themselves to consider such options. Women feel greater freedom to do so. Men are made to feel they must BE the paycheck. If it were a man's world, a man would have freedom to make important choices about their careers. They don't. Women do.

Other examples of how it's far from a man's world:

• Only men are allowed to serve in direct combat in the military, and 99% of the deaths in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have been men. Perhaps that's surprising in light of the media's unrelenting attempt to hide that fact with such phrases as "the men and women who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan."
• giving women preferences in Small Business Administration female-set-aside loans,
• women but not men allowed to have caucuses in corporations and government to facilitate women's advancement
• having many social-service programs just for women, almost none for men
• having "targets," virtual quotas, for women hired and promoted to al levels, but not for men
• having female-set-aside scholarships but not for men, even though there are many more female college students.
• women's networking and other organizations are encouraged while men's organizations are attacked as sexist with media-trumpeted demands they be disbanded.
• If a man impregnates a woman, even if she falsely claimed to be on birth control, he's stuck with 18 years of financial and temporal responsibility. Only she has the choice to abort.
• 93% of workplace deaths occur to men.
• And in a most painful example, when women have a deficit, for example, they're "underrepresented" in science, massive nationwide redress is undertaken, even though a recent two-decade study reported recently in the New York Times found that women in academic science fare as well or better than men. But if men have the deficit, even the ultimate deficit, they die 5.2 years younger, all we see are more pink ribbons or other women's health initiatives. There are seven federal agencies on women's health, none for men. 39 states have offices of Women's Health, none for men. Even more unfair, a PubMed review, indicates, as mentioned, that over the past 60 years(!), 95+% of gender-specific medical research has focused on women's health issues. Women claim this is because men don't take care of themselves as well: "If only they'd see the doctor." Well, would those women say that to minorities, who also "don't see the doctor" and smoke and drink at much higher rates than men?
• and perhaps most important to the next generation, a school system that has replaced boy-friendly competition with girl-centric collaboration, boy-friendly adventure stories, with soporific-to-boys tales of girl relationships, and history textbooks disproportionately extolling women from Sacajawea and Pocahontas to Simone DeBouvier and Sally Ride while sparing no pages to pound home the evils of white men from Hannibal to Hitler, Joe McCarthy to Timothy McVeigh, and perhaps worst of all, an insistence on ever more seatwork, which when active boys can't endure, are put on a Ritalin leash at a ratio of eight boys for every one girl.

Rather than it being a man's world, men are beasts of burden, the target of ridicule in the media, and the disposable sex.

I'm glad you said that my previous emails give you a lot to think about. I hope this one does too, Marci.

Yet Another Example of How the Media Considers Men The Disposable Sex

When women are "underrrepresented" in science, Time does a cover story calling for redress.

When women are "underrepresented" in high-level corporate positions, Time calls for redress.

But when men are "underrepresented"--in the most important category of all: whether they live (Men live 5.4 years shorter than women, dying earlier of 9 of the 10 leading causes of death), what does Time do? Routinely write about women's health., e.g, this week's TimeHealth: The Advocates, described in that issue's table of contents as: "Our latest wellness checkup surveys the state of women's health."

I searched Time 's archive for the last 50 years on the term "men's health" and found 34 listings. I then searched on "women's health" and found 148--that's 470% as many articles on women's health, even though men die 5.4 years younger.

Why the double standard? Because men visit the doctor less often? Would that justify not focusing on women who are, for example, obese?

Men Don't Have It Easy Either

I've just written an article called Men Don't Have it Easy Either. I was tempted to call it: Men: The Screwed Sex but decided to exercise a little restraint...at least in the title.

I believe it provides an airtight case for how the gender pendulum has swung so far that, except for the tiny fraction of men at the top, it's devastating the male sex.

The article will appear in the April or May issue of the national magazine of Mensa, an organization for people with high IQs.

I thought you might enjoy an advanced look. To read it, click HERE.

By the way, I've enjoyed my involvement in Mensa and recommend it. For info on Mensa's programs and how to qualify for membership, click HERE.

Obama's New Council On Women and Girls: A Man's Perspective

Yesterday, President Obama announced a new Council on Women and Girls. Its mandate is to address these areas: violence against women, women’s health, economic security for women, and balance between work and family. Each of those will exacerbate the already unfair treatment of men:

Women 's health. When women have a deficit, for example, they're underrepresented in engineering, massive redress programs are initiated but when men have the deficit, even the ultimate deficit--they die 5.3 years younger and live their last decade in worse physical and mental health--all we see is yet more focus on women's health. Countless nonprofits and government agencies address women's health, few address men's.

Violence against women. What about violence against men? The research clearly indicates that 25% to 45% of severe domestic violence is initiated by women. Yet Obama ignores that.

Economic security. In announcing the Council, Obama said, "Women still earn just 78 cents for every dollar men make." Few statistics are more misleading: As is well documented, for the same work and same level of expertise, women earn at least as much as men. But the Council, using such profoundly misleading statistics, will likely demand legislation hurting men further--raising women's pay but not men's. And in a tight economy, tight budgets will often mean that if women's pay must be raised, men's will be decreased.

Balance between work and family. The Council on Women and Girls will, for example, likely urge employers to provide paid family leave, which more women than men will use, thereby saddling men with the work those women leave behind.

If President Obama were to be fair, he would institute a Council on Men and Boys. Its mandates would include:

• Reducing the life-expectancy gap between men and women.
• Helping to ensure that men and women receive equal pay for truly equal work.
• Reducing domestic violence against men and women.
• Ensuring fairness to men and women in divorce and custody cases.
• Ensuring fairness to men and women in college admissions, hiring and promotion. (For example, among this year's college graduates, almost 60% will be women, only 40% men. Society didn't tolerate it when, decades ago, the situation was the reverse and society shouldn't tolerate it now.)
• Ensuring that the curriculum and the media doesn't unfairly demonize boys and men. Today, textbooks focus on women's accomplishments and men's evils. Boys are falling further and further behind girls in student achievement. Movies and television programs disproportionately portray women as smart and efficacious, men as boors, idiots, dishonest, and/or violent. Men have contributed mightily to society: from the transformative (inventing everything from refrigeration to penicillin to Google) to the mundane (from building our homes to policing our streets to digging our graves.)

Obama claims to be a president for all Americans. He needs to prove it.

White Men: Disposable

In previous posts, I've provided many examples of men's perceived disposability, for example, 

• Only men are required to register with Selective Service (in case of a future military draft.)
• Only men are allowed to serve in direct combat, which is why 99% of the Iraq War deaths occurred to men. Yet the media always uses obfuscatory phrases such as "the men and women serving in Iraq."
• 92% of workplace deaths occur to men, yet you never hear of reverse discrimination efforts to help improve workplace safety for men. Yet when women suffer a less critical deficit, e.g., they're "underrepresented" in engineering, massive redress efforts are initiated.
• Men die 5.2 years younger than women and earlier of all the top 10 causes of death, yet all we see is a sea of pink ribbons for breast cancer.
• Books on the disposability of men such as New York Times' columnist Maureen Dowd's Are Men Necessary? and Bill Clinton's press secretary Dee Dee Myers' Why Women Should Rule the World became bestsellers while books decrying today's unfair treatment of men go unpublished or ignored. Even books on boys' and young men's struggles languish. 

Here is the latest example of the accelerating perceived disposability of men, especially white men. It was reported by the CBC, Canada's equivalent of National Public Radio. Each year, the students of Canada's Carleton University raise $1 million for a cause. This year, its student association chose cystic fibrosis...until a rumor started that it mainly affected white men (untrue,) whereupon, the students voted overwhelmingly to find another charity.

The next assault on white men: President-elect Obama's promises to focus on education and health care "for all" is code for "focusing on all but white men." 

Men, the Disposable Sex

Most people say they want to be fair...and yet:

Men die 5.2 years younger than women, spend their last decade in worse health, and die earlier of all the leading causes of death. For example, before age 65, twice as many men as women die of heart disease--100,000 more male human beings dead, early, every year. That's thirty times more men than have died, total, in the Iraq War!

Yet, where are the ribbons for early heart attack? The only campaigns I've seen are the American Heart Association's Wear Red campaign to increase awareness of heart disease in women and the Oakland A's initiative on women's heart disease.

And for years, we certainly see ever more pink ribbons against breast cancer. For example, today, I walked into Safeway whereupon I was immediately enveloped in breast cancer activism: (Click on these images to get a better feel for how it dominated the store)

• I entered the store under a canopy of pink breast cancer signs.
• Underneath the canopy, a giant sign touts that Safeway and General Foods are sponsoring this breast cancer initiative.
• Underneath are free-standing displays of Kraft and Nabisco products, most of which have been repackaged to look like pink breast cancer signs, with a notice saying that part of the profits from the sale of those items will go to breast cancer.
• Nearby hangs another prominent sign listing other corporations that are sponsoring breast cancer initiatives.
• Next to that is a table offering free drinks to all who donate, and selling breast cancer shopping bags.
  
  
  
• Throughout the store, countless products have been repackaged to look like breast cancer posters, with signs saying that if the item is purchased, a breast cancer donation will be made.
• Every 30 to 60 seconds, an announcement is heard on the loudspeaker: "Another shopper on checkstand X has made another generous donation of Y dollars to fight breast cancer."
• When I reached the checkstand, I saw that the credit card reader is framed by a pink breast cancer sign.
• The clerk then asked me, "Would I like to donate to breast cancer?" I said, "Did you know that every year, 100,000 more men than women die early of heart disease, yet have you ever seen Safeway or anyone else mount a campaign against that?" She said, "I never thought about that."

At that point, I decided to write this op-ed and send it to Safeway's president Steven Burd (steve.burd@safeway.com.)

Safeway has made a small effort against prostate cancer but that and other corporations' male-oriented initiatives are dwarfed by those on women's health. Here, for example, is the list of corporate sponsors of the Susan B. Komen breast cancer fund.

Have you seen corporations do much to address the more prevalent early heart attack, which disproportionately kills men? Even companies whose products disproportionately are bought by men are unfair to men's diseases. For example, the aforementioned Oakland A's have donated $1,000,000 to breast cancer but dramatically less to prostate cancer. Even more dismaying, the A's initiative on heart disease specifically excluded men. Wells Fargo (which has far more men-owned money under deposit) often has breast cancer ribbons at their ATMs and sells an entire line of breast-cancer checks and checkbook covers, but I could find nothing that Wells has done to fight prostate cancer or heart attack.

Of course, I want to see breast cancer cured, as quickly as possible. But the nearly complete ignoring of men dying younger and spending their last decade in worse health than women makes me feel sad, scared, and yes, angry. When women have a more minor deficit, for example, so-called underrepresentation in engineering, massive redress efforts are initiated. But when men have the deficit, even the ultimate deficit-- they die younger--all we see is the pink-ribbon tidal wave grow ever more massive.

Today, no matter how many sewers men repair, no matter how many fires men put out, no matter how many medical discoveries men make (Indeed, nearly all breast cancer treatments including the state-of-the-art Herceptin were discovered by men,) no matter how many technical discoveries men make (for example, Google, computers, televisions, cell phones, refrigeration, and even this blogging software,) no matter how many roofs men replace, no matter how many Safeway shelves men stock, no matter how bravely men defend our nation, men are, as Dr. Warren Farrell says, the disposable sex.

P.S. When I came home and poured myself a glass of milk, an entire side of the container was devoted to--you guessed it--breast cancer.

Tim Russert, Sudden Heart Attack, and Sexism Against Men

Tim Russert’s untimely death from a sudden heart attack reminded me of the dramatic 50+-year-long gender disparity against men in health care research and outreach.

Many more men than women die of sudden heart attack and at an earlier age than do women of breast cancer.

Indeed, sudden heart attack is the #1 cause of premature death among men over 40. Yet, more money per capita is spent on breast cancer research.

And regarding outreach, there are a trivial number of prostate cancer ribbons compared with the number of pink ribbons against breast cancer. And have you ever seen even one ribbon against sudden heart attack?

More broadly, men die 5.3 years younger than women, and spend their last decade in worse health. There are more than four widows for every widower.

Yet when I searched PubMed, which indexes 3,000 medical journals over the past 58 years, I found 22,304 articles with the keywords “women’s health,” but only 586
with “men’s health.” That’s 39 articles related to women’s health for every one on men’s. A review of Charity Navigator, the leading database of nonprofits, finds that nearly all the gender-specific health-related nonprofits are on behalf of women.

If women suffer a deficit, for example, the “underrepresentation” of women in engineering, we typically see significant efforts at redress. Yet, when men have the deficit—even the ultimate deficit: they die younger—not only is there not redress, but the opposite occurs: disproportionate amounts of research and outreach are directed at women’s health.

I’ve heard these explanations to justify the double standard:
1. “It wouldn’t happen if, like women, men organized to protest.”
My response: Would you deny redress to women who are “underrepresented” if they hadn’t organized to protest?
2. “Men’s dying younger is their fault—if they’d only take better care of themselves.”
My response: The three major controllable causes of mortality and morbidity are obesity, smoking, and excessive drinking. Men have lower incidences of the first two. In any event, if women are “underrepresented” in engineering, would you deny them the redress by chastising them, “It’s your own fault. Do better in science and math.”?
3. “In the past, most health research was done on men. This only levels the playing field.”
My response: First, as cited, over the past 58 years—the period during which the greatest medical advances have been made—the opposite is true. And with regard to research that’s more than 58 years old, an underreported reason why women were often excluded from many experimental treatments was not lack of interest in women’s health but a concern that an experimental drug or treatment might damage a woman’s fetus.

And en toto, any deleterious effect that came from a smaller percentage of women being subjects in 58+-year-old medical research apparently was small: In, fact, the
life-expectancy gap in favor of women grew during every decade but one from 1900 through 1980.

The big question is why:
— Why do you think that, for the past 50+ years, the overwhelming majority of health care research has been on women’s health, despite men living shorter and in poorer last-decade health?
And consider these other male-death-related questions:
— Why do 92% of workplace deaths occur to men yet we rarely hear that statistic, while we frequently hear statistics such as, “Women earn 79 cents on the dollar compared with men?” (By the way, that statistic is misleading: Most current evidence suggests that for the same work, pay is, on average, roughly equal.)
— Why, still, must only men register with the U.S. military’s Selective Service?
— Why, still, are only men allowed to serve in direct combat? (resulting in the little-publicized fact that 99% of the Iraq War deaths have been men.)
— Why do the media emphasize when deaths occur to “women and children?”

I agree with men’s advocate Warren Farrell, who is the author of nine books including The Myth of Male Power and who has taught at Georgetown and the School of Medicine at U.C. San Diego. He believes the main reason is sexism: “Men are the disposable sex.”

Many of us have the opportunity to be gender-neutral or biased toward or against men in our professional lives.

For example, consider all the choices that higher educators can make:

— Which students to admit to your program
— Which readings to assign
— What content to present in class
— What research agenda to pursue
— Who to select as your research assistant
— What student thesis and dissertation topics to encourage
— Who to hire as a faculty member or administrator
— To whom to grant tenure
— Which studies to fund. (For example, should sudden heart attack studies be given higher priority?)

At this point in time, what do you think is the wisest stance for you, personally, to take?

More Unfair Male Bashing

I was watching a PBS panel discussion among four women (nary a man) about why newly hired women scientists get strong evaluations yet half of women scientists stop working within the first few years. They offered only three explanations: machismo, sexual harassment, and employers not accommodating to employees' motherhood.

Why did none of the panel members mention any of these, which I have heard again and again from my women clients:

• Many women soon tire of the rigors and isolation of scientist work. Indeed recent research finds that women, on average, just aren't interested enough in science to make a long-term career out of it.
  
• They end up valuing being a mother more than working outside the home.
• They find it easier to be a stay-at-home mom.

As always in the mainstream (read "liberal") media, it's easier to just blame men.

Obama and White Men

This is just the smallest thing, but it suggests the impact of the race consciousness Obama will bring. On April 24, the AFL-CIO (which will no doubt vigorously campaign for Obama) issued a report: AFL-CIO Cites Rise in Hispanic Workplace Deaths." The fact that only 990 of the 5840 workplace deaths occurred to Hispanics didn't matter. The AFL-CIO report focused only on the Latinos.

Of course, it didn't mention the percentage of deaths that occurred to men vs women, even though you can be sure most of the deaths were to men by looking at the occupations with the largest percentage of workplace deaths: construction: transportation and warehousing, agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting. Warren Farrell's statement, "Men are the disposable sex" is triply true for white men.

I am confident that when Obama gets elected, he will revert from his on-the-stump rhetoric designed to calm white male fears to what he's done in the past: calling for dramatic additional redistribution of resources from white men to minorities and women.

It won't matter, for example, that men die 5 1/2 years earlier than women and live their last decade in worse health. You can bet that the 50-year-long practice of conducting almost all-gender- and race-specific research on women and minorities will continue.

The Most Deadly Double Standard

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.