My Latest TheAtlantic.com Column: The Economy is Biased Against Men

Here is my just-published TheAtlantic.com column: Why the Economy is Biased Against Men.

Update: I'm delighted to report that in its first two days, the column received over 2,000 Facebook "Recommends."

Warren Farrell on How Women and Men Should Change

When I write about men's issues, I tend to annoy more than convince.

Far more circumspect and perhaps wiser is my co-president of the National Organization for Men, Warren Farrell.

HERE, he writes about how women and men might wish to change, to the betterment of both: in relationships, work, and in creating a better society.

The latest painful letter from a man

Good evening. My name is XXXX and I'm going through the hardest fight of my life!! I'll try too make this short.

My wife and I split up in April of 08 and she and I agreed that my son would live with me. One day six months later, she simply took him away. I didn't know what to do so I did what they said the law told me to do. I filed a petition for paternity but she said in court that I beat her up a few times. That never happened!!!!!!!

She filed with the state attorney's and they picked up the case in Jan.09. So I have had to hire two attorneys--one for my child and the other for my criminal defense!!!!

My heart is clean and clear but I still worry because if I lose, my chances to be with my son dwindle away. I love my son!! Any tips you can provide would be so appreciated.

XXXX

Obama Ignores Domestic Violence Against Men

This excerpt is from Cathy Young's recent article in Reason:

As for combating violence against women, it is, of course, a worthy goal. But plenty of men and boys are victims of family violence as well. The same federal study which found that one in four women in the United States have been assaulted by a partner at least once also found that nearly 40 percent of domestic assault victims every year are men. Women face higher risk of injury due to disparities in size and strength; but the problem of abused men, though largely neglected, is hardly negligible.

The Bush White House was often assailed for building its policies on ideological myths rather than facts and 'reality-based' thinking. So far, the Obama administration's initiatives on women are not exactly reality-based.

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.

BBC Feature on Domestic Violence Against Men

President Obama is planning to strengthen the Violence Against Women Act, which specifically excludes male victims even though, as I've documented in previous posts,  the literature is clear that 25-50% of serious domestic violence is initiated by women.  Much information on this is available here. 

While the American media refuses to report on this issue, I am gratified that the BBC just did a 30-minute radio program on the problem in England, Ireland, and Scotland. 

Biden Will Be a Disaster for Boys and Men

Democratic vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden said:

What I'm most proud of in my entire career is the Violence Against Women Act. It showed we can change people's lives, but the change is always one person at a time. There are many more laws and attitudes that need changing so women are treated with equal opportunities at work, in the classroom, and in our health care system.

As I've documented in a number of previous posts and articles (To see them, click on the Men's Issues and Men's Studies labels in the tag cloud in the right margin of this blog,) each of those statements is unfair to men and boys:

1. A wealth of studies make clear that roughly half of serious domestic violence is initiated by women. Biden's Violence Against Women Act specifically excludes violence against men.

2. Women, on average, are treated at least equally to men in the workplace. For example, the oft-cited statistic that women are paid less than men is terribly misleading. Here's just one way: Full-time-working men work 4 to 10 hours longer per week than "full-time working" women, yet the studies, almost all of which are sponsored by feminist organizations or conducted by women's studies professors, don't acknowledge this*, and the media, which is diligent about vetting studies that draw pro-male conclusions, are somehow unwilling to vet pro-woman findings. But Biden wants to make the workplace even more anti-male.

Appropriately, the media more carefully vets a study on the effects of a drug if it is funded by the drug's manufacturer. It more carefully examines a tobacco study's findings if funded by the tobacco industry. Yet in the case of gender-related studies, the media seems to accept uncritically the findings generated by women's advocates.

3. Boys are treated unfairly in today's schools: Competition is replaced with so-called cooperative learning, books of male heroism and adventure are replaced with stories of heroines and connection. Recess is increasingly replaced by yet another round of phonics, just one example of how boys--more active, on average than girls--are forced to sit still for ever more hours at a time, for more than a decade. And if they can't, they're often put on a chemical leash: Ritalin. Boys drop out of high school and commit suicide at much higher rate and attend and graduate from college at far lower rates. But Biden wants to make schools even more biased against boys.

4. Men live 5.3 years shorter than women and live their last decade in worse health, yet the vast majority of gender-specific health care research and outreach over the last 50 years, has been done on women. We, for example, see a sea of pink ribbons for breast cancer yet none for sudden heart attack, which kills many more men, much younger. And Biden wants to make our health care even more biased against men.

I believe Biden will accelerate the tidal wave that is drowning men.

Sigh.

Another Egregious Example of Media Anti-Male Bias

The media breathlessly celebrated a finding by a women's studies professor that said that high school girls now score as well as boys in math. Here are just a few examples: The Associated Press/CNN, New York Times, and National Public Radio.

But the media failed to raise the obvious question: Did girls' achievement occur at boys' expense? That's not an unreasonable possibility given the the tremendous attention having been paid to girls' math education over the past 20 years: teachers being trained to to not call on boys too much, to show role models of females who achieved in math, even to redo the math curriculum to focus on what girls do better: explain things verbally.

So, I asked the study's senior author, Janet Shibley Hyde, the Helen Thompson Woolley Professor of Psychology and Women's Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison that question: 'To what extent did the score gap close because girls' scores went up or because boys' scores went down?" Her response: "We can't really know the answer to your question -- whether it's girls' scores going up or boys' scores going down."

My question to you dear reader, why did not the media ask this question or if they did, fail to report that it's unclear whether boys are being hurt by girls' gains?

An article in City Journal pointed out that the major media's reporting of the story also omitted that while the male and female average math scores were equal, there were many more high-performing boys. That may help explain why more men are scientists. But the media would apparently prefer to leave unexamined its PC belief that sexism is the reason.

Why Women Don't Get Ahead in Science Careers

A blog post on Sciencecareers.org, a project of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS,) recently reported a study that found that "many women participate more actively at the beginning of their scientific career, with their work ambitions reduced after having children."

Why does the media relentlessly report claims of a glass ceiling yet rarely report research findings such as that?

A Letter from an Angry White Male

I just received this email. I'm X'ing out details to preserve his anonymity. I have requested his permission to use his name. If he grants it, I'll reinsert these details as well as his name.

"I went to the ??? Police Dept. to apply for a position. When I asked for an application, I was told by the human resources clerk that the police dept. was not accepting applications from white males and that I should come back in 2 years.

I explained to the clerk that I was a small percentage Native American. The clerk said, "If you can provide any proof of that bloodline then you're in." I thought to myself this is not fair and did not apply on that basis.

The awareness I was being discriminated against worsened when I watched a black acquaintance of mine get an job at the ??? Police Dept. with no education and who could care less if he got the job. Later in life I saw him again and he didn't even like being a cop. Yet I had a passion for law enforcement, a degree in police science, and had a slim to none chance at the job.

I eventually left the state and moved to ???? where I applied to be a police office in ???. To my surprise I was hired fairly quickly. It seemed that ??? didn't care about skin color.

I was wrong. I watched people get promoted because they threatened to pull the race card. I grew sick of hearing, "You just stopped me cuz im black" as he or she sits in a vehicle with blacked out windows not even being able to see what color or gender they are.

I found myself cutting minorities more breaks on crimes or traffic stops just so I wouldn't have to hear the race card played or have to let them slide to prove I wasn't a racist.

It is sad but true that you get calls from a fellow officer who just got into a shooting and he says, "Yeah, I'm OK. Thank God the suspect was a white male--the media wont care." Or I hear officers say things like, "If I ever am forced to shoot my gun, I hope its not a minority."

Once, I, with multiple other officers, had to shoot a young Hispanic male. The media loved it! It became a frenzy for months. According to the media, we shot not because he tried to stab an officer with a butcher knife but because he was a Hispanic teenager. The sad thing is people believe everything the media says. I personally was very hurt because I never wanted to pull my trigger but had no choice. Again, I always treated everyone with respect and never judged anyone because of color or gender. Yet the media called me a racist! Eventually I became so stressed out that my blood pressure got so high that my doctor became fearful that I could have a stroke.

I have soooh many true stories relating to my and other white males being discriminated against that I am going to write a book.

I will not, though, be racist myself. And I will teach my daughter to treat everyone with respect regardless! I will not complain or tell her about my experience. That would create another generation of haters.

I hope that, somehow, my daughter will grow up to live in a country/world where it doesn't matter what color you are and there is racial harmony. But I also want her not to feel guilty about being white and to stand up for herself if and when she is discriminated against.

Victimization and Identity Politics Will Reach New Heights

I just listened to Hillary Clinton's concession speech. It was notable for her insistence that women are still serious victims of bias. Paired with Obama, who believes minorities are still treated unfairly, we will have a nation of ever growing victimhood among women and minorities.

As a white guy, I know that women and minorities allow me no credibility on this, but I deeply believe that, certainly over the last three decades, women and minorities have had more than equal opportunity in this country and that it is whites and men who are not getting treated fairly according to their merit.

And in response to the argument that we need reverse discrimination to compensate for past injustices, I deeply believe that the net effect of that is a large negative. It results in less competent, doctors, lawyers, and bridge builders. It results in quiet resentment among white boys and men, which reduce the likelihood of racial and gender understanding. And in the largest sense, from where I sit, it is a cosmic injustice.

Hail to YouTube/Google and Men

I, again and again, watch and listen, on YouTube, to Glenn Gould's amazing performance of Bach's sublime Goldberg Variations.

What a miracle: to be able to revivify Gould and his amazing performance for us all to hear whenever we want, for free. I am filled with gratitude to the geniuses at Google/YouTube who make it possible.

Two points:

-- In an era in which we take great pains to praise women for their contributions to the world, may I point out that it is highly likely that most of the people that allow us to experience the wonders of Google and YouTube are men. And of course, so are Gould and Bach, not to mention Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, Chopin, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, indeed nearly all great composers, even the leading contemporary classical composers, long after the women's movement created opportunities for women composers.

-- As the Internet gets ever more congested, viewing and listening to most sound- and graphic-intensive files including YouTube is getting more difficult. For example, every few seconds, Bach's/Gould's genius is interrupted by "buffering." Would you bet that the persons who develop a solution will be mostly men or mostly women?