Misandry Today

How are men disadvantaged?

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From a feminist perspective 'gender equality' has come to mean female domination, and male subjugation. It has lead to a reversal of discrimination, where once women were marginalised, and disparaged men have now taken their place.
 
Some feminists seem to have a curious scatoma when it comes to discrimination, as though all aspects of the male gender model lead to a privaleged position in society. Men have it all, or so they would have us believe, however the facts speak for themselves.
 
Now, if it were really the case, as feminists claim, that men have selfishly arranged everything to be wonderful for ourselves, absolutely ignoring womens' legitimate concerns and needs, then why are men so disadvantages on a range of issues.
 
Below you will find discussions regarding the various ways that men are discriminated against.

"Canadian authors, Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young in a controversial 2001 book, Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture reported widespread examples of “laughing at men, looking down on men, blaming men, de-humanising men, and demonising men” in modern mass media. They concluded: “… the worldview of our society has become increasingly both gynocentric (focused on the needs and problems of women) and misandric (focused on the evils and inadequacies of men)”.

 

 

 

Equal Opportunity

 

In recent years many feminists have noted that there are very few women holding senior positions in government and industry. In order to address this imbalance in society affirmative action programs were created to allow women to enter into these male dominated domains.

 

Women have also been able to create female only areas such as the Fernwood Fitness centre or the Women's room on most university campuses creating segregation on the one hand (Zonta International - female only business organisation) yet demanding that women be admitted to male only clubs and organisation (ie Tattersals Club - Brisbane). So while women carve out female only spaces they demand that men do away with their private spaces.

 

While in Victoria they have recently created the first women only jobs site, www.justbe.com.au which only offers jobs for women.

 

One of the key aspects of the male gender is that we are disproportionally represented at the highest levels of society (CEO's, leaders etc) and at the bottom end of society in prison (96% of all prisoners are men, homeless, unemployed, mentally ill). It is easy to just focus on all those succesful men and in the process forget about the masses of men who struggle with repressive gender stereotypes.

 

However, when people noted that boys were struggling in school and that most primary teachers and teachers in general are female it was suggested that perhaps an affirmative action program to get men into  teaching might be needed. However, it was stated by the education department that the most important thing as the skill of the teacher not their gender.

 

While most universities have an aim to institute affirmative action programs to encourage women to enter traditional male areas there are very few programs aimed at encouraging men to enter non traditional careers (i.e. nursing, child care, primary teaching). For example in teaching courses at university up to 80% of students may be female.

 

"To have a student body that closely reflects the make-up of the broader society, to build an environment which fosters successful participation by people from diverse backgrounds, and to develop graduates who are culturally sensitive in order to contribute to creating a society that values diversity and difference"

 

Men's rights groups have described women-only events and organizations as "separatist", with the UK Men and Father's Rights Website describing women-only library tables, for example, as "apartheid practices of excluding men".

 

 

Health

 

Research suggests that proportionally men die earlier than women in all age groups and have a higher death rate due to all cancers that are not sex related. Men comprise the overwhelming majority of people who are injured at work are about twice as likely to be the victim of a homicide.

  • Male life expectancy is 6 years less than for females  
  • 80% of all suicides are male
  • There is little or no funding for men's health initiatives

While, there are numerous screening programs for female related cancers such as breast and cervical cancer, there is distinct lack of these services for men.

Four leading external causes of death 1998

 

Males

Females

Persons

Suicide

2,150

533 

2683

Motor Vehicle Accidents

1,224

507

1,731

Homicide 

203

104

307

Accidental drowning and submersion

187

58

245

 

Female circumcision, or female genital mutilation is illegal to perform in Australia, the UK and USA and most other developed nations. This cruel and unnecesary procedure is now rejected by most civilised people. However, male genital mutilation which is also known as circumcision is widely practiced without any protests or resistance. Male genital mutilation has a profound impact on the psychology and physiology of men. The quotes below come from this website http://www.norm-uk.org/what_intact_men_say.html from men who still have their foreskins.

 

 “My foreskin is sensitive (pleasurably so) when my penis is flaccid or erect and plays a great part in my sexual activity and pleasure."

"the vaunted gliding motion of the foreskin is the key, but so is the tingling of the foreskin itself; uncut men seem to have the capacity to get and keep erections more easily, and have multiple orgasms"

"when the glans is covered, every movement of my foreskin along the shaft can trigger an orgasm, but by far most stimulating is rubbing the frenulum inside my foreskin"

"My foreskin has as much sensation as the glans. The inner foreskin has so many nerves that retracting it and massaging it can trigger orgasm. Once I conducted an experiment by wearing my foreskin back for over a year to determine if the circumcised penis glans lost its sensitivity. It does! The exposure of the glans to air and the friction of cloth is a horrible numbing .... Once I concluded the experiment and returned my foreskin to its proper place, the intensity of my glans returned two fold, as did my preseminal volume. I am radically against circumcision and believe it should be made illegal"

"[The Frenulum] twinges more when erect but is very pleasurable and often stretched more when approaching orgasm to enhance the pleasure"

"Any sex play with the foreskin, especially the inside is extremely arousing and pleasurable. A special pleasure is having the inside of the foreskin stimulated with the tongue while the glans is covered"

"The best feeling I get during mastrubation is when the foreskin is brought back on the glans on the upward movement and backward on the downward movement. With precum running between the foreskin and the glans I can go on for hours"

"I can only really masturbate properly when the foreskin is not retracted"

"I love my foreskin. I am glad I have it. I love its total package, protection, appearance flaccid and erect, its smell, its form, its function"

"Everything works together. It would be hard to imagine it without either glans [or] foreskin. It seems to be a system with each taking a predominant role at different times but all together at the end"

"when erect, it is really pleasurable to have the frenulum stretched and the sensation when the area is touched is amazing"

"always enjoyed having the tip of my foreskin rubbed as the inner skin was really sensitive"

 

There was the famous case of “Dr John Money and the Boy who had no penis”,

 

“they burned his dick off, there was a malfunction with the equipment during the circumcision and instead of them just burning off the foreskin they burnt off the whole penis, so it was just like a black bit of string “.

 

Because of this injury doctors suggested to his parents that Bruce should become Brenda, but he never really adapted to life as a girl. In his teens he discovered what had happened and began hormone therapy had a mastectomy. However, life delivered to David Reimer a range of challenges that eventually lead to him taking his own life with a shotgun in 2004.

 

Some people suggest that “the brutality of the early circumcision could be one of many factors affecting men who grow up and eventually give this violence back to society. “ A bit far fetched you say, maybe.

 

“The circumcision of non-Jews started in the USA  around 100 years ago as a technique to stop young boys from masturbating by reducing our ability to feel”.

 

the average circumcision removes over half the genital tissue and many specialized nerve endings, thereby substantially curtails sexual sensitivity.”

 

The British Medical Society, Canadian Pediatric Society, and even the American Academies of Pediatrics have stated that there is no justification for routine circumcision. 

 

“the most sensitive part of the penis, the frenulum of the foreskin, is removed in most infant circumcisions. The glans becomes artificially keratinized (dry, hardened, discolored, and wrinkled) as a result of permanent exposure, and thus significantly less sensitive. So circumcision further reduces erogenous sensitivity in the penis by reducing skin mobility and thus the ability to use the foreskin to massage the glans. “

 

 

Men suffer disproportionately from a range of behavioural problems including;

  • ADHD
  • Autism
  • Aspergers

Some suggest that these disorders are directly related to the manner in which men are socialised in our society.

 

 

Law and Crime

Some people suggest that most laws are designed to regulate men, not women Indeed our laws are designed by men to control men. The best proof of that is the fact that about 94% of all prisoners are male.

Laws are supposedly designed to protect the weak, not the strong. Thus we have special laws protecting women from the activities of men, but do not laws protecting men from the activities of women. In our society, men are considered strong enough to stand on their own, and should not need protection.

Studies have shown that when a man or woman commits an equal crime, it is generally the man who gets the more severe punishment. That is because most laws are directed against men, and most laws are designed to protect and benefit women. For example the “Violence Against Women Act” that was passed by the US Congress in 1998.

Roughly half of all sexual impropriety reported in U.S. prisons and jails last year was perpetrated by correctional staff, not inmates. Female staff were the offenders in two-thirds of the prison cases, and two-thirds of the victims of prison staff were male inmates, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.

“A deranged Lorena Bobbit cuts off her husbands penis for no particular reason, gets one month mental observation, and is set free. She becomes a hero to certain women’s libbers with evil in their heart, and a source of considerable humor. If a man had cut off a woman’s breast (a considerably less damaging operation), he would be considered an unusually evil person by the media, and would have spent many years in jail”

“In July, 1999 George Walter Jackson of Albuquerque gets a 36 year sentence for allowing his wife to abuse their child. Judge and prosecutor agreed that Jackson’s wife did the abuse, but blamed him for being so weak in front of her. Even though Jackson had been abused as a child and couldn’t psychologically stand up to his wife, since he is a man he couldn’t use the “I was abused myself” plea that so many women get away with in the courts and in the media, since women are naturally considered the “weaker sex.” To add insult to injury, Jackson was also violently forced to pay all medical and psychological bills for his son. Since he is male, he is expected to be punished both physically and financially, even when he does not commit a crime. “

 

Judy Spence said there were no plans to extend the methadone program beyond the two in women's prisons in Brisbane and Townsville.  So despite the fact that men comprise the overwhelming majority of prisoners in Qld (94%) the only prisons that allow the treatment of drug addiction are female prisons, anther case of the soft approach for women.

 

Domestic Violence

  

There is an assumption in the media campaigns being run at present in Australia that domestic violence is about men beating their partners. Men are perpetraitors and women are victims dichotomy. Thus men who are beaten by their female partners do not exist, and they dont exist because these men dont report their experiences.

 

A survey by Bruce Heady and Dorothy Scott of Melbourne University and David De Vaus of La Trobe University exposes the feminist lie that only women are victims of domestic violence.  The survey of 1643 persons found that men are assaulted more frequently than women in domestic situations, as the tables below reveal.

Per cent assaulted by their partners in the past 12 months 1996/97. Survey of 804 men and 839 women

 

% experiencing this type of assault

Type of assault

Men

Women

Slap, shake or scratch

5.1%

3.2%

Hit with fist or something in hand, or thrown

4.1%

2.5%

Kicked

2.1%

1.4%

Any type of assault (one or more of the above)

5.7%

3.7%

Table 4. Injury and pain due to assaults (N=1643). Australia 1996/97

 

% Victims

Type of assault

Men

Women

Injured, needed first aid

1.8%

1.2%

Needed treatment by a doctor or nurse

1.5%

1.1%

Pain as bad as hitting thumb with a hammer, or worse

1.9%

1.9%

Called the police or other government authority

1.3%

1.7%

 

“A May 2006 survey by Western Australian Police: 58 women murdered their partners

A domestic homicide register compiled by the Western Australian police force's Major Crime Division and released in May 2006 exposes the lies and propaganda of the Violence Against Women campaign. This report details all domestic homicides in WA for the past ten years. The report reveals that of the 221 homicides resulting from domestic violence, 58 murders were committed by females, including wives, mothers and daughters.

The worst domestic killing detailed in the report was committed in July 1999 by Barbara Wyrzkowski who gassed to death her five children - Mark 8, twins Luke and Sarah, 5, Jessie, 4 and Jade,1. It remains Australia's largest domestic child killing.”

 

A report from the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, NSW, Oct 2005. (For full report click here), shows that males comprise 30% of victims of DV, and that in cases of DV against women, other women are initiators of violence in 19% of cases. It also shows that incidents of DV are frequently compounded by effects of alcohol, and that poverty is the single most powerful predictor of rates of DV in NSW

 

"I do think that violence by men towards women does have special characteristics, but I don't think that it can be divorced from the general violence of all types within our society. Women as well as men support state violence from police, prison officers, the army and teachers in schools. Violence by the state far exceeds the acts of any individuals."

Julie McCrossin

Almost 200 studies on partner violence have reached the consistent conclusion that women are equally likely as men to engage in domestic violence:

  • Irene Hanson Frieze concluded in the September 2005 issue of Psychology of Women Quarterly that “research indicates that women can be just as violent as their partners.”
  • A 2000 meta-analysis by Dr. John Archer in Psychological Bulletin concluded, “Women were slightly more likely than men to use one or more act of physical aggression.” 
  • Dr. Martin Fiebert of California State University recently summarized his research, “women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners.”  http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm

A Man's Right to Choose

 

If women decide that they don’t want to have a child they can have an abortion. However, a man has no impact on this decision making process and he will be bound by the woman’s decision. He cannot decide to abort his parental rights, he must then commit to 16years of child support whether he wants to or not. We should be able to choose whether we want to be fathers, just as women can choose if they want to be mothers.

 

Indeed abortion and birth control are two key processes that have enabled women to extend their education and take on careers, and are crucial to the feminist perspective. Without the ability to control their reproductive cycle they were confined by biology. Today the situation is reversed and it is men are have no choice when they will be parents.

 

In some countries if it is proven that you are not the father of the child via DNA men may still be required to keep paying child support.

 

Employment

 

Dangerous work in Australia is performed overwhelmingly by men (ABS 2001). In one year alone there were 134,000 incidents of work-related fatalities and disabilities – not including work-related diseases. The overwhelming majority of these casualties were men.

 

While women are now in our armed forces they do not take up active combat roles, during a war it is only men who are conscripted to fight,

 

Of the 25 worst jobs, as ranked by the Jobs Related Almanac based on a combination of salary, stress, security, and physical demands, 24 of them are predominantly, if not almost entirely, male, which might explain why men commit over 80% of all suicides. (Most of these statistics come from The Myth of Male Power by Warren Farrell.)

 

While average starting salaries for women continue to lag behind those of their male counterparts, females do have higher salaries in a number of areas including optometry (109.6 per cent of males’ salaries), pharmacy (104.9 per cent), biological sciences (102.6 per cent) and social work (102.4 per cent).

 

Recent research completed by Rocio Garcia-Retamero, a psychologist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin has identified that Women bosses are significantly more likely than men to discriminate against female employees.
The study found that when presented with applications for promotion, women
were more likely than men to assess the female candidate as less qualified
than the male one. The findings suggest that the “queen bee syndrome” of female rivalry in the workplace may be as important as sexism in holding back women’s careers.


Education

 

There has been a reduction in numbers of boys going to university and girls are outperforming boys once they get to university. Fifty years ago only 20% of university students were female, as of 2001 females comprised 55% of all tertiary students and more than half of all university staff.

  

“An NEA (2004) survey show that the number of male public school teachers now stands at a 40 year low. After two decades of decline, just 21 percent of the nation’s 3 million teachers are men. Male elementary school teachers are even more scarce.”

 

“According to the NEA’s research report, Status of the American Public School Teacher, the percentage of male elementary teachers has fallen from an all time high of 18 percent in 1981 to al all time low of 9 percent today. And while men represented half of the secondary teachers in 1986 today they make up 35 percent.”

 

“Why do you think this is? Would it have anything to do with the fact that some statistics show that more than 70% of sexual abuse charges against men are false”

 In Australia in 1983 34% of all education students at university were men, while in 2000 this had dropped to 24%.

 

Pru Goward stated that, "the reason men don't take up teaching is not the absence of a scholarship when they’re 18, it’s the absence of decent pay when they’re older, and decent promotional opportunities, the fact that the profession’s seen as very girly, that young men don’t want to be seen as wusses, some men fear that they might be called homosexual, and of course there’s all those allegations of men interfering with small children."

 

Now I wonder how Pru's logic would be recieved by women who have entered politics, business, construction and engineerin such blokey professions I wonder if girls who enter these fields are concerned about being called lesbians?

 

 

When certain people in the education sector proposed affirmative action programs to get more men in teaching Pru Goward the federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner denied this was neccessary saying it is the quality and skill of the teacher that is most important. If we use this same logic we mighty say that there is no need to have an equal number of women in parliament because it should be about the skill and ability of the MP not their gender.

 

"The Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Pru Goward, is friends with the Prime Minister, but that hasn't stopped her accusing the Howard Government of social engineering today. Ms Goward is angry about the proposed men-only scholarships for primary school teacher training.

Only one in five primary schoolteachers is a man, and many schools have no male teachers. So the Federal Government is proposing a $2,000 scholarship to encourage men into the profession. Unlike Pru Goward, the Catholic Education Office in Sydney has welcomed the initiative."

 

Psychology

 

Sometimes ideas and beliefs can be so pervasive in society that we are unaware of them, like a fog they exist obscuring our vision of reality. So too it is with the oppression of men.

 

Violence

 

"Shortly after the PSS's release, the New Zealand Herald reported on a new study. Where only one partner in a relationship is violent, it is more likely to be the woman, University of Otago researchers have found. Researcher Kirsten Robertson, of the university's psychology department, said the finding indicated a change of thinking was required on domestic violence."

"Violence against men most often took the form of a brute physical attack rather than a sexual assault/threat. When perpetrated by another man, the assault occurred "at licensed premises (34 percent) or in the open (35 percent), however if the perpetrator was female then 77 percent of the physical assaults occurred in the home."

It will surprise most people to know that men comprise roughly one half of all of the spouse abuse victims in the United States. International studies show that this is true throughout most of the world

 

 

"anyone who campaigns to prevent violence against women should vigorously applaud similar efforts directed toward men."

 

It has been suggested that Australian men need to launch a ‘Reclaim the Night’ event.  The facts speak for themselves Australian men are twice as likely as women to become victims of physical violence or of threats thereof (11 percent of men; 5.8 percent of women). For the population between eighteen and twenty-four years of age, men were almost three times as likely (31 percent of men; 12 percent of women). The people who are at the greatest risk of violence are young males. 

 

So while a program focused on ending violence against women is admirable, shouldn’t anti violence campaigns reject all violence, not simply that which affects only half the population. Recent research has myth that women are less violent than men.

 

The fact that the ratio of male and female batterers is close to 50/50 - and that women are as likely to instigate violence as men.

 

 

Programs that urge us to cease violence toward women may be well intentioned but leave me with the impression that it is ok to be violent toward men.

 

Men are conditioned to protect women and children not other men.

 

Misc

 

A domestic airline in Australia recently introduced rules that stated that unaccompanied children can not be seated next to males. The idea is that because most perpetraitors of sexual abuse are males all males are suspect, like suggesting that because many indigenous Australias engage in petrol sniffing all indigenous people should not be allowed to purchase petrol. An absurd proposition.

 

 

Reporting

 

Omerta - men's code of silence

 

Lack of stats men dont report being beaten by their wife or admit to being depressed

 

 

Media

 

"John Beynon, a Welsh cultural studies academic, examined how masculinity was portrayed in the British quality press including The Times, The Guardian and The Sunday Times over a three-year period from 1999-2001 and in books such as Susan Faludi’s 2000 best-seller Stiffed: The Betrayal of Modern Man. Beynon concluded in his 2002 book, Masculinities and Culture, that men and masculinity were overwhelmingly presented negatively and as “something dangerous to be contained, attacked, denigrated or ridiculed, little else”.

 

The “man as a dope" imagery we got rid of the dumb blonde and replaced with the dumb bloke.

 

Maureen Dowd released a book "Are men neccessary?", was designed as a direct attack on men

 

Dendy Cinemas - "Reel Mums" - aimed at carers of children to provide times when they can bring the kids - problem is the name, if they had called it "Reel Dads" plenty of women woudl have complained.

 

When I called them and told them I didnt like it they basically told me tough luck, that was the name they chose.

 

The following excerpt is an example of the way it is acceptable to theorise and hope for a future with none or very few males.

WIE: Which brings us to another question I wanted to ask you. Sally Miller Gearhart, in her article "The Future—If There Is One—Is Female" writes: "At least three further requirements supplement the strategies of environmentalists if we were to create and preserve a less violent world. 1) Every culture must begin to affirm the female future. 2) Species responsibility must be returned to women in every culture. 3) The proportion of men must be reduced to and maintained at approximately ten percent of the human race." What do you think about this statement?


 

Mary Daly: I think it’s not a bad idea at all. If life is to survive on this planet, there must be a decontamination of the Earth. I think this will be accompanied by an evolutionary process that will result in a drastic reduction of the population of males. People are afraid to say that kind of stuff anymore

 

 

 

Support Services - biased toward men

 

Males are generally reluctant to seek counseling in family planning clinics where the decor is feminine and the intake workers communicate negative attitudes, both verbally and nonverbally, toward maleness.

 

The subject of male victimization, especially when at the hands of a female, often is not dealt with.  One example of this is sexual abuse of males by females.

 

 

Other

 

Men Are At The Bottom Of The Value Hierarchy but At The Top Of The Responsibility Hierarchy

Men are expendable. Throughout recorded history men have gone off to war to protect the women and children at home. If a man dies during the course of the conflict, it is considered unfortunate, but necessary. However, if a woman, or heavens forbid, a child dies in war, it’s considered at the level of a “war crime.” Protection of “civilians” (read: women and children) during war is one of the most hallowed traditions of modern war. Remember the refrain: “women and children first.”

 

Women acting like men

Most women are trying to be like men. They wear male clothes and act like men. Male words are used in the media to describe the perfect “woman” such as feisty and strong. They are essentially female transvestites. They are desperately trying to be like men. The worst insult you can give a man is to tell him he’s acting like a woman while the best complement you can give a woman, according to the media, is to tell her she is acting like a man.

Why do women’s libbers and the media hate female characteristics? What’s wrong with being a woman?

It ironic that the feminist movement has actually lead to a  masculinisation of our society for as women seek to enjoy the freedoms that men have enjoyed they have embraced the masculine styles of behaviour and dress.  So rather than feminism leading to a point where feminine qualities are revered and valued most women have turned their backs on such qualities to embrace the masculine.

 

A woman’s view of male disadvantage. The following list was compiled by Esther Vilar to describe the way men are disadvantaged.

 

  1. Men are conscripted; women are not.
  2. Men are sent to fight in wars; women are not.
  3. Men retire later than women (even though, due to their lower life-expectancy, they should have the right to retire earlier).
  4. Men have almost no influence over their reproduction (for males, there is neither a pill nor abortion - they can only get the children women want them to have).
  5. Men support women; women never, or only temporarily, support men.
  6. Men work all their lives; women work only temporarily or not at all.
  7. Even though men work all their lives, and women work only temporarily or not at all, on average, men are poorer than women.
  8. Men only "borrow" their children; woman can keep them (as men work all their lives and women do not, men are automatically robbed of their children in cases of separation - with the reasoning that they have to work).

 "Various feminists proclaim that women are 'under siege', that a monstrous social bias against them, if not a virtual war, is going on, that women have little respect or power (Steinem, Faludi, Tavris, etc.) “

“Yet the notion of the American woman as a powerless "victim" is one of the most absurd notions ever foisted upon anyone. American women live, on average, seven years longer than men. They control 86 % of all personal wealth [PARADE Magazine, May 27, 1990], and make up 55% of current college graduates. Women cast 54% of the votes in Presidential elections, so they can hardly claim to be left out of the political decision-making process! They win almost automatically in child custody disputes. Women suffer only 6% of the work-related fatalities (the other 94% are suffered by men). Women are the victim of only about 35% of violent crimes, and only about 25% of all murders, yet because of our society's exaggerated concern and respect for them, special legislation has been passed to punish "violence against women" as if it were a more heinous crime than "violence against men". (Feminists claim to want "equality", and this is an example of what "equality" means to them, i.e., preferential treatment to address their concerns). “

Two out of every three dollars spent on health care is spent on women, and even if you don't count pregnancy-related care, women still receive more medical care than men - yet feminists still holler that womens health is being "neglected", and far too many of us credulously believe them.

 

 

 

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Taken from the Independent Women's Forum


Are you tired of male-bashing and victimology?
Have you had your fill of feminist "Ms./Information"?
Have you been misled by factually challenged professors?

TAKE THIS TEST:

Campus feminism is a kind of cult: As early as freshman orientation, professors begin spinning theories about how American women are oppressed under "patriarchy." Here is a list of the most common feminist myths. If you believe two or more of these untruths, you may need deprogramming.

THE TEN MOST COMMON FEMINIST MYTHS:

1. Myth: One in four women in college has been the victim of rape or attempted rape.

Fact: This mother of all factoids is based on a fallacious feminist study commissioned by Ms. magazine. The researcher, Mary Koss, hand-picked by hard-line feminist Gloria Steinem, acknowledges that 73 percent of the young women she counted as rape victims were not aware they had been raped. Forty-three percent of them were dating their "attacker" again.

Rape is a uniquely horrible crime. That is why we need sober and responsible research. Women will not be helped by hyperbole and hysteria. Truth is no enemy of compassion, and falsehood is no friend.

(Nara Schoenberg and Sam Roe, "The Making of an Epidemic," Toledo Blade, October 10, 1993; and Neil Gilbert, "Examining the Facts: Advocacy Research Overstates the Incidence of Date and Acquaintance Rape," Current Controversies in Family Violence eds. Richard Gelles and Donileen Loseke, Newbury Park, CA.: Sage Publications, 1993, pp.120-132; Robin Warshaw (with Ms. Foundation) I Never Called It Rape: The Ms. Report -- With afterward by Mary Koss, New York: Harper Perennial, 1988; Mary Koss, et al "The Scope of Rape," Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 1987, Vol.55, pp.162-170; Mary Koss, et al "Stranger and Acquaintance Rape," Psychology of Women Quarterly, 1988, Vol.12, pp.1/24.Campus Crime and Security, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, 1997. *According to this study, campus police reported 1,310 forcible sex offenses on U.S. campuses in one year. That works out to an average of fewer than one rape per campus.)

2. Myth: Women earn 75 cents for every dollar a man earns.

Fact: The 75 cent figure is terribly misleading. This statistic is a snapshot of all current full-time workers. It does not consider relevant factors like length of time in the workplace, education, occupation, and number of hours worked per week. (The experience gap is particularly large between older men and women in the workplace.) When economists do the proper controls, the so-called gender wage gap narrows to the point of vanishing.

(Essential reading: Women's Figures: An Illustrated Guide to the Economic Progress of Women in America, by Diana Furchtgott-Roth and Christine Stolba, published by the Independent Women's Forum and the American Enterprise Institute, Washington, D.C. 2000.)

3. Myth: 30 percent of emergency room visits by women each year are the result of injuries from domestic violence.

Fact: This incendiary statistic is promoted by gender feminists whose primary goal seems to be to impugn men. Two responsible government studies report that the nationwide figure is closer to one percent. While these studies may have missed some cases of domestic violence, the 30% figure is a wild exaggeration.

(National Center for Health Statistics, National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey: 1992 Emergency Department Summary , Hyattsville, Maryland, March 1997; and U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Violence-Related Injuries Treated in Hospital Emergency Departments: Washington, D.C., August 1997.)

4. Myth: The phrase "rule of thumb" originated in a man's right to beat his wife provided the stick was no wider than his thumb.

Fact: This is an urban legend that is still taken seriously by activist law professors and harassment workshoppers. The Oxford English Dictionary has more than twenty citations for phrase "rule of thumb" (the earliest from 1692), but not a single mention of beatings, sticks, or husbands and wives.

(For a definitive debunking of the hoax see Henry Ansgar Kelly, "Rule of Thumb and the Folklaw of the Husband's Stick," The Journal of Legal Education, September 1994.)

5. Myth: Women have been shortchanged in medical research.

Fact: The National Institutes of Health and drug companies routinely include women in clinical trials that test for effectiveness of medications. By 1979, over 90% of all NIH-funded trials included women. Beginning in 1985, when the NIH's National Cancer Center began keeping track of specific cancer funding, it has annually spent more money on breast cancer than any other type of cancer. Currently, women represent over 60% of all subjects in NIH-funded clinical trails.

(Essential reading: Cathy Young and Sally Satel, "The Myth of Gender Bias in Medicine," Washington, D.C.: The Women's Freedom Network, 1997.) 

6.Myth: Girls have been shortchanged in our gender-biased schools

Fact: No fair-minded person can review the education data and conclude that girls are the have-nots in our schools. Boys are slightly ahead of girls in math and science; girls are dramatically ahead in reading and writing. (The writing skills of 17-year-old boys are at the same level as 14-year- old girls.) Girls get better grades, they have higher aspirations, and they are more likely to go to college.

(See: Trends in Educational Equity of Girls & Women, Washington, D. C.: U.S. Department of Education, June 2000.) 

7. Myth: "Our schools are training grounds for sexual harassment... boys are rarely punished, while girls are taught that it is their role to tolerate this humiliating conduct."

(National Organization of Women, "Issue Report: Sexual Harassment," April 1998.)

Fact: "Hostile Hallways," is the best-known study of harassment in grades 8-11. It was commissioned by the American Association of University Women (AAUW) in 1993, and is a favorite of many harassment experts. But this survey revealed that girls are doing almost as much harassing as the boys. According to the study, "85 percent of girls and 76 percent of boys surveyed say they have experienced unwanted and unwelcome sexual behavior that interferes with their lives."

(Four scholars at the University of Michigan did a careful follow-up study of the AAUW data and concluded: "The majority of both genders (53%) described themselves as having been both victim and perpetrator of harassment -- that is most students had been harassed and had harassed others." And these researchers draw the right conclusion: "Our results led us to question the simple perpetrator-victim model...")(See: American Education Research Journal, Summer 1996.)

8. Myth: Girls suffer a dramatic loss of self-esteem during adolescence.

Fact: This myth of the incredible shrinking girls was started by Carol Gilligan, professor of gender studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Gilligan has always enjoyed higher standing among feminist activists and journalists than among academic research psychologists. Scholars who follow the protocols of social science do not accept the reality of an adolescent "crisis" of confidence and "loss of voice." In 1993, American Psychologist reported the new consensus among researchers in adolescent development: "It is now known that the majority of adolescents of both genders successfully negotiate this developmental period without any major psychological or emotional disorder [and] develop a positive sense of personal identity."

(Anne C. Petersen et al. "Depression in Adolescence," American Psychologist February 1993; see also, Daniel Offer, and Kimberly Schonert-Reichl, "Debunking the Myths of Adolescence: Findings from Recent Research," Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, November 1992.)

9. Myth: Gender is a social construction.

Fact: While environment and socialization do play a significant role in human life, a growing body of research in neuroscience, endocrinology, and psychology over the past 40 years suggests there is a biological basis for many sex differences in aptitudes and preferences. In general, males have better spatial reasoning skills; females better verbal skills. Males are greater risk takers; females are more nurturing.

Of course, this does not mean that women should be prevented from pursuing their goals in any field they choose; what it does suggest is that we should not expect parity in all fields. More women than men will continue to want to stay at home with small children and pursue careers in fields like early childhood education or psychology; men will continue to be over-represented in fields like helicopter mechanics and hydraulic engineering.

Warning: Most gender scholars in our universities have degrees in fields like English or comparative literature--not biology or neuroscience. These self-appointed experts on sexuality are scientifically illiterate. They substitute dogma and propaganda for reasoned scholarship.

(For a review of recent findings on sex differences see a special issue of The Scientific American "Men: The Scientific Truth, " Fall 2000.)

10. Myth: Women's Studies Departments empowered women and gave them a voice in the academy.

Fact: Women's Studies empowered a small group of like-minded careerists. They have created an old-girl network that is far more elitist, narrow and closed than any of the old-boy networks they rail against. Vast numbers of moderate or dissident women scholars have been marginalized, excluded and silenced.

(Essential reading: everything by Camille Paglia; Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge -- Professing Feminism: Cautionary Tales from the Strange World of Women's Studies; and Christina Hoff Sommers -- Who Stole Feminism? How Women have Betrayed Women)

**Should you encounter an item of Ms/information in one of your classes, in a textbook, or a women's center "fact" sheet, let us know. We will print it on our campus website, SheThinks.org, correct it with accurate information, and politely inform the source of the mistake.

This list came from a women's group dedicated to restoring reason, common sense and open discussion to the campus.

"I am concerned about the implications of a whole series of things I've heard or seen written such as: 'men are mutants'; 'its know use putting energy into men'; 'can heterosexual women be feminists'; 'porn is violence against women'; 'smash the sex shops'; 'castrate all rapists'; 'dead men don't rape'; 'kill them in their cots'; etc. Was there any relationship between these ideas? What could I read to explain to me the analysis behind them?"

Julie McCrossin

 

Links to documents elaborating on the points above

 

Julie McCrossin critiques separtist feminism

Breaking the lies the Gentler Sex Offender - You tube video

The Truth about violent women - You Tube Video

Male victims of domestic violence

Does ADHD exist?

Girls will be boys