The dangerous myth of male privilege

How a lack of empathy towards men and biases against them make men’s suffering invisible

31 min readOct 1, 2021

Introduction

From an early age, women are consistently told they live in a patriarchy where every generation of men oppressed every generation of women throughout the centuries. They’re told that every straight man is a potential rapist and the only thing that’s stopping most men from actually raping women is their fear of getting caught. They’re told that women are consistently discriminated in the workplace and paid less than men for the exact same job. They’re told that gender roles are perpetuated to hold women back. Etc. etc.

This, however, could not be further from the truth. Most men are decent human beings who struggle with many of the same issues women face. Sure, women have been restricted from taking part in business & politics for quite a part of human history. But since the cultural revolution of the late 1960s and the invention of the oral contraceptive pill, women have gradually taken on every role in the workplace and political arena that used to be considered exclusively male. Among people in their 20s, women now make more money than their male counterparts. There’s multiple countries with female presidents or prime ministers and quite a few companies with female CEOs, including various tech companies. Certain STEM fields, like biology & bio-sciences, have become equally or even predominantly female. Numerous organizations & programs exist to exclusively promote women in the workplace and favor them over men with equal qualifications. Gender roles are rarely institutionally enforced anymore, and, where they still exist, they can both harm men men and favor women. “Female empowerment” is celebrated throughout mainstream culture. Meanwhile, masculinity is consistently either ridiculed or portrayed as inherently toxic, effectively harming men’s lives in a many ways.

Camille Paglia is a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. When she went to Yale Graduate School during the late 1960s, she was quite the radical feminist and possibly the only openly lesbian at Yale. Paglia has been fighting for gender equality for decades. But where her focus used to be on women’s rights, she’s increasingly shifted towards men’s rights. Paglia argues:

Our society is neutering boys of their maleness at a young age, while the lack of people with military experience in important positions is a recipe for disaster. […] What you’re seeing is how a civilization commits suicide. […] Primary-school education is a crock, basically. It’s oppressive to anyone with physical energy, especially guys, […]. Primary education does everything in its power to turn boys into neuters. […] Men have no more models of manhood. […] Masculinity is just becoming something that is imitated from the movies. There’s nothing left. There’s no room for anything manly right now.

Paglia isn’t alone to hold and express these views. Other leading female intellectuals like Daisy Cousens & Christina Hoff Sommers have expressed similar concerns. As have men like Paul Elam, Harry Crouch & Warren Farrel, who have founded organisations to address the marginalization and disenfranchising of men, but which -ironicly- are largely ignored by mainstream society. Mostly, though, there’s a whole legion of often anonymous disenfranchised men who are fed up with the daily struggles they face being downplayed, ridiculed or otherwise marginalized, all while the peception that they are significantly more privileged than women just because they’re men remains pervasive throughout society.

As a result of men being blamed for women’s struggles while their own struggles are ignored, there’s a growing gap between the sexes that seems ever more difficult to reconcile. Distrust and even outright hostility towards the other sex are becoming ever more rampant, creating a vicious cycle of polarization. This situation is untenable, and in my humble opinion we can only end this by deconstructing the myth of male privilege an recognizing that men’s struggles are just as real and important as women’s.

How the legal system is biased against men

In a paper titled “Who Says It’s Still a Man’s World? Questioning The Myth of Male Privilege in America”, author Tina Currado has a lot to say about how the legal system generally favors women :

In today’s American culture we are spoon-fed one alarming statistic after another reminding us that women are at risk as we are more likely to be assaulted and mistreated due to men’s supposedly oppressive nature. There is a tendency to blame men for any perceived slights upon women and because of advocacy research geared solely towards women’s issues, we concentrate our efforts in preventing harm and injustice for women only. As a result, we make the mistake of ignoring or dismissing hardships that men face in America today. We do this because of the popular belief that men are the privileged sex in most aspects of our society, so when there is obvious bias against males in family law, criminal justice, and overall popular opinion, our American society shows a staggering lack of empathy for men.
In present day, women claim to continue in the struggle for equality in a patriarchal American society. The supposed evidence of this patriarchy are statistics that claim women are still suffering injustices in many areas; namely, equal salaries, holding highranking positions in government, marriage and family life, and violent acts against female victims. Advocacy research tends to highlight statistics that lead the public to believe that American women are still being held back and abused, so it is a common practice to omit positive statistics showing the incredible progress we have made. It is also common practice to cite statistics and automatically blame oppression instead of considering plausible reasons that could explain how the statistics came about (Sommers, 2004). For example, studies tell us that there is an undeniable wage gap (Population Reference Bureau, 2007), but we are remiss by refusing to discuss the possibility that the wage gap exists because men are more likely to enroll in science and technology fields, while women, of their own choosing, lean more towards careers in the social sciences (Population Bureau, 2007).
Though feminists claim their research is done as a means to provide awareness and equality, what it truly does at this stage of the game is pin one gender against another. Advocacy research claims women are left wanting and men are the cause of our plights, but if research were to be conducted for all human rights and not solely geared towards the feminist agenda, we would find that men are not privileged and naturally oppressive. Studies would show there are situations where men certainly do not dominate despite this theory of male advantage.
[…]
There is undoubtedly a need for a women’s rights movement in many third-world countries but not here in America. Women have made tremendous advances here in America and now advocacy research sponsored by women’s rights groups does nothing more but create a bias against males. It ignores the suffering that men face particularly in family law and criminal court proceedings when the victim is male.
[…]
It’s true that while many women are climbing the political ladder, most of the officials are male. However, one would be hard pressed in current times to find evidence that our male leaders create laws to benefit males only. With women making up slightly more of the voting population, (US Census, 2010) it makes sense that male politicians would cater to women’s wishes in an effort to secure a re-election, and that is, in fact, exactly what is taking place. Just one example is Joe Biden, current Vice President and sponsor of the Violence Against Women’s Act. Biden was best known for this legislation that focused mainly on women’s rights and safety before he became Vice President. Another example and latest development is what is referred to as Obama Care, a 907 page document that outlines special considerations for women’s health issues but does not do the same for men’s health (healthreform.gov).
While it is true that men make up the majority of political officials, there is little evidence to suggest that typical middle-class men benefit from this supposed male advantage. The average American man who wishes to marry and have children doesn’t appear to be privileged at all. In fact, if one were to weigh the pros and cons of men marrying today in America, they would find that in this aspect, patriarchy is no more. Men have much to lose should they choose to marry and father children, and the statistics alone might be enough to convince many American men to opt out of marriage and fatherhood. Many of these statistics show that men are at a serious disadvantage concerning their status in the family and most feminism advocates simply ignore the bias shown in favor of females in American family law today.
[…]
President Obama addressed American men not just with a message of respect for all of the dads who provide both economically and emotionally for their children, but that address ended with a stern reminder that the deadbeat dad scenario is all too commonplace. […] It is simply unheard of that the president, or any other kind of high ranking political figure or celebrity, would dare to chastise mothers during any kind of public address, and especially on Mother’s Day. Yet, again, for some reason, men are expected to take this kind of criticism and bear it with no complaints and no grievances.
[…]
This claim that we are a society that “fosters and tolerate violence against women” is a bold statement to make. Yet, statements like these when they are constantly repeated convince a population that women are heroes when they brutally injure or kill a man. True, studies claim that men are more likely to perpetuate violence, but statistics show that male-on-male violence is much higher than that of male-on-female violence. So one many ask why the need for primacy for female victims when discussing violence awareness and prevention.
[…]
When one is presented with studies that claim women are just as likely to perpetrate violence against a man, and women are more likely than males to hurt their children, one might ask if this is the case then how do we explain why more males are serving prison terms than women? Similarly to family court judges showing partiality to mothers, studies show that criminal court judges do show preferential treatment to female offenders (Anderson, Spohn, 2009). If women are sentenced then the length of prison time is shorter than those given to males.
[…]
When one is presented with studies that claim women are just as likely to perpetrate violence against a man, and women are more likely than males to hurt their children, one might ask if this is the case then how do we explain why more males are serving prison terms than women?

How education is failing boys

In The Irish Times, author Larissa Nolan makes the following observations :

We hear of “a crisis in masculinity” in schools and about how “failing boys” are not reaching their academic potential.
A gender gap in educational attainment means boys get lower exam results than girls, are more likely to drop out, and are less likely to go to university than their female counterparts.
This year — again — girls outperformed boys in the Leaving and Junior Cert. They sat more higher level papers and got more H1 grades overall. Academic studies show boys are underachieving, in all stages of education, from preschool — where boys lag behind in language and communication — up to college.

In Contemporary Issues In Education Research, authors Barbara Jackson & Ann Hilliard list point out :

Boys receive lower report-card grades.
Boys are far more likely to be grade repeaters. 
Boys suffer hyperactivity and stress nine times more frequently than girls.
Boys are identified for special education more.
Boys receive greater behavioral penalties.
Boys comprise 70% of school suspensions.
Boys are three times more likely to become alcohol and drug dependent.
Boys commit suicide two to three times more frequently than girls.
Boys are 80% of high school dropouts.
Boys make up less than 44% of college populations.
Boys, on average, are a year to a year and a half behind girls in reading and writing.

In his paper “How School Are Failing Boys, and What We Can Do About It”, author Peter West lists similar concerns:

Boys are being excluded and suspended from school in disproportionate numbers.
School administrators say that the deputy’s discipline list is 95% boys, sometimes more.
Boys are not volunteering nearly as much as girls do for all the activities that are important in the life of the school: debating, students’ representative council, music and art.
If a boy feels school is a waste of time- then that’s the end of it. The feeling dominates the reality. It is no use headmasters preaching or teachers droning on or parents nagging, if all the boys in his peer group are negative about school.
Suicide rates are too high among young people between 16 and 23. And those who succeed most often are male.
While boys are crowding outside the deputy’s office waiting to be disciplined, girls are filling a large percentage of the academic lists.
Parents have complained about the large number of girls getting rewards- not only for academic results but for participation, citizenship, best effort, most improved and so on.

As possible reasons for boys underperforming in school, West lists the following :

The declining number of male teachers, especially in primary schools , most of all in State schools.
Increasing assessment methods that inadvertentently favour girls (such as ongoing assessment rather than exams)
The move away from factual learning and the increasing tendency for teachers to ask questions starting with “Discuss…”
Poor study habits among many boys.
Boys seem rarely to own books that they enjoy reading
Inability, or reluctance, of fathers to be involved in the lives of boys, sometimes because of separation and divorce.
Boys are given a label which sticks with them throughout their life at school.
Teachers can too often prefer girls, who are generally easier to manage and less confrontational.
Boys are far more likely than girls to go out four or five times a week.
Boys get turned off by one or two teachers. They shut down and it prevents them from learning virtually everything.
Boys want to be active and they want to be outdoors. They don’t want teachers talking at them. Yet trips away from school are difficult for teachers, with forms to be filled out and numerous checks done.

How women are favored in STEM fields

A Popular argument in favor of the alleged discrimination of women in the work place is the underrepresentation of women in STEM. However, today more women than ever major in STEM. More than 58% of all bachelor’s, master’s and doctorates in biology are being awarded to women. Within certain University biology departments, women also make up nearly half of the faculty. And within the department of behavioral and social sciences, 70% of faculty members are women :

However, women comprise only 18% of students receiving bachelor’s degrees in computer science and engineering, and those figures have actually dropped over the past couple of years :

If we look at Britain, we see that women are eg. less than 20% of all engineering and computer science undergraduates, but more than 60% of all biology undergraduates and even more than 75% of all veterinarian undergraduates :

If we look at Europe as a whole, we see that 40% of the 17 million scientists and engineers in the EU are women. However, men are particularly overrepresented in manufacturing (83% of scientists and engineers in manufacturing were male), while the services sector was much more balanced (55% male and 45% female).

Further, we see that women are in the majority in all of the EU Member States among students studying for Master’s degrees. Yet, we also see that there are considerably more female than male students studying social sciences, journalism, information, business, administration or law, with women accounting for 57.6 % of all students within this field of education :

Even if we look beyond Europe and North-America, we see a very similar gender distribution across different fields :

Obviously, there still remain differences in the gender gap on a per county basis. Peculiar about these differences, however, is that women are actually less likely to enter a STEM field in countries with greater gender equality :

One possible explanation for the aforementioned gender distribution is the high “geek factor” in fields like computer science, physics and engineering. Another would be gender stereotyping transmitted through our interaction with others. However, there also biological differences to consider, like the difference between men’s and women’s brains.

Men may simply be more driven by a biological urge to build things, whereas women may simply be more driven by a biological urge to help people. It would be foolish to underestimate the impact of sex hormones on our individual preferences when even among monkeys males prefer to play with trucks and females with dolls!

In spite of all this, Trump signed laws designed with the purpose of promoting women in STEM on February 2017. Multiple universities have Women In Science Programs (WISP) that “promote the full realization of equal employment opportunity for women”, sometimes along with “minorities, persons with disabilities and veterans”. Some of these programs involve paid internships for women only.

The Mickey Leland Energy Fellowship (MLEF) Program is an internship program for women and under-represented minority students is a 10-Week Summer Internship sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy. It is directed towards students who are pursuing academic majors in science, technology, engineering, and math. Only women and “minority” students need apply.

In 2016, seven global engineering and tech companies (IBM, Intel, General Motors, Booz Allen Hamilton, Cummins, Caterpillar, and Johnson Controls) piloted re-entry, paid internship programs for people who had taken career breaks of two years or longer. In IBM, selected participants are all women. In Australia, there’s the Edith Dornwell Internship for Women in STEM, which is a program provides that one woman each year with three months full time or six months part time fully paid employment with an organisation whose focus is on STEM.

According to a 2015 study there’s currently an overall 2-to-1 advantage for women in being ranked first for the job in any STEM field.

How men’s lives are more at risk

In Forbes, author Chuck Devore argues that men in the US are 10x more likely than women to be killed at work :

Looking at 139 separate occupations and discrete industries, an obvious pattern quickly emerges: the safest workplaces are indoors and the safest occupations frequently require education beyond high school. The most deadly occupations, on the other hand, are outside and often involve operating equipment. This largely drives the huge difference in workplace fatalities between men and women, with 4,761 men dying on the job compared to 386 women in 2017. The fatality rate for men was about 10 times that of women: 5.7 per 100,000 vs. 0.6 per 100,000 for women.

According to Arco Professional Safery Services, this discrepancy is even greater in the UK :

[M]en are 23 times more likely to die In the workplace than women. While the cause of the findings could be attributed to the fact that men statistically occupy more physically intensive occupations (including construction and off-shore engineering) data was drawn from a wide array of occupations in which women also work in high volume. As a result, the statistic suggests that, on average, men are more at risk of suffering a fatal workplace injury across any industry or sector.

In Australia we also see the same pattern. According to the Australian Hen’s Health Forum, 190 workers were killed at work in 2017 and 93% (176 of the 190 fatalities) of those workers were men.

Homelessness is also an issue that hits men much harder than . The Good Man Project reports :

Most studies show that single homeless adults are more likely to be male than female. In 2007, a survey by the U.S. Conference of Mayors found that of the population surveyed 35% of the homeless people who are members of households with children are male while 65% of these people are females. However, 67.5% of the single homeless population is male, and it is this single population that makes up 76% of the homeless populations surveyed (U.S. Conference of Mayors, 2007).

This trend is an international trend as well, as BEN reports :

A total of 86% rough sleepers are men, according to in a study by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Social Affairs.
There are around 380,000 people who are known as the ‘hidden homeless’. This is people who are facing risk of eviction, sofa-surfing at friends and family, or living in unsatisfactory conditions. The majority of the ‘hidden homeless’ are men.
The most common reasons for homelessness among men are relationship breakdowns, substance misuse, and leaving an institution (prison, care, hospital etc.).
Figures compiled earlier this year found that between 2013 and 2017 the amount of homeless people who’ve died on the streets or in temporary accommodation has doubled and around 90% of those deaths were men.

At the European Parliament, María Teresa Giménez Barbat noted that the number of homeless people is on the rise in every European Member State except Finland andf that 75% of homeless people are men. Adding to this, she cited “Sustainable ways of preventing homelessness“, stating that it is harder for men to get rehoused by the authorities because they are perceived to be less vulnerable.

Yet, suicide is still the single biggest killer of men under the age of 45. And a marked gender split remains. For UK women, the rate is a third of men’s: 4.9 suicides per 100,000. Compared to women, men are three times more likely to die by suicide in Australia, 3.5 times more likely in the US and more than four times more likely in Russia and Argentina. WHO’s data show that nearly 40% of countries have more than 15 suicide deaths per 100,000 men; only 1.5% show a rate that high for women.

In “Understanding Suicide Among Men”, Jenny Kennard gives the following explanations for this gender inequality:

Traditional male gender roles discourage emotional expression. Men are told they need to be tough and that they should not need to ask for help. Such rigid gender norms may make it difficult for men to reach out and ask for support when they need it.
Depression may be underdiagnosed in men. Men often do not disclose feelings of depression to their doctors. When they do, it is often described in terms of having problems at work or in relationships. Men also tend to describe their feelings as “stress” rather than sadness or hopelessness.
Men are less likely to seek help for emotional problems. Research suggests that depression is diagnosed less frequently in men because of the tendency to deny illness, self-monitor symptoms, and self-treat.2
Men may be more likely to self-treat symptoms of depression with alcohol and other substances.

How dating is much harder for men

As Norah Vincent experienced first hand when she pretended to be a man, it is very difficult for a man to approach a woman he’s romanticly interested in. Even though it’s still expected of men to make a first move, women tend to have very little patience and tolerance for men who try to approach them, regardless of how nice and respectful the man tries to me. As such, it requires a lot confidence for the average man to approach a woman and persist in the face of constant rejection, resulting in many men simply giving up.

While men who fail in the real life dating marketplace often used to have more success in online dating, the tides have turned in the age of social media, and today online dating is extremely stacked against men. In “Tinder Experiments II”, the anonymous author notes :

It was determined that the bottom 80% of men (in terms of attractiveness) are competing for the bottom 22% of women and the top 78% of women are competing for the top 20% of men. The Gini coefficient for the Tinder economy based on “like” percentages was calculated to be 0.58. This means that the Tinder economy has more inequality than 95.1% of all the world’s national economies. In addition, it was determined that a man of average attractiveness would be “liked” by approximately 0.87% (1 in 115) of women on Tinder.

In Business Insider, author Walt Hickey argues :

We know, from the chart above, that a woman who sends a message to a man her own age has a 17.5% likelihood of receiving a response to that message. We know that a man who sends a message to a woman his own age has a 4% likelihood of receiving a response to that message.
[…]
An average man who sends 18 messages to women his own age can be 50% certain he’ll receive at least one response. For women, they need to send only 5 messages to be 50% certain they’ll get a response.
Looking at higher confidence levels, if a woman wants to be 90% certain she’ll receive a response from a man her own age, she’ll have to send 13 messages. A man will have to send 58 messages.
Finally, to be 99% certain she’ll receive a response, a woman must send 25 messages to men her own age.
A man will have to send 114 .
This leads us to believe that one potential cause of the disparity between the male response rate and female response rate is the system itself. If men must spam women with messages in order to elicit a response, then women will be more selective when responding to the surplus in general. Since women are understandably disinclined to respond to all the messages, men must send out more in order to guarantee any response. It’s cyclic.

How misandry is pervasive in popular culture

In contrast with common complaints by feminists about alleged misogyny in popular culture, the stark reality is that popular culture has become exceedingly misandrist. According to the Canadian Association for Equality :

Negative and ‘flawed’ images of men are perpetuated by most genre of popular culture — books, television shows, movies, greetings cards, comic streeps, ads and commercials and more. Men and boys are widely represented as violent and aggressive thieves, thugs, murderers, wife and girlfriend bashers, sexual abusers, molesters, perverts, irresponsible deadbeat dads and philanderers, even though, in reality, only a small proportion of men act out these roles and behaviours. Media discourses are powerful and shape perspectives of social attitudes. While much literature space has been dedicated to understanding how media influences the role of women in society, little work has been dedicated to media and the portrayal of men.
Media sources have a tendency to deny, minimize and at times ridicule male victimization such as physical abuse, sexual abuse, verbal abuse, and emotional trauma to name a few. The message we give to male victims is that they either “deserved it”, “asked for it”, and/or are “lying”. Violence towards males is normalized in our society, and so are the images that reinforce harmful stereotypes about males and masculinity. The male voice is further stifled by the media’s portrayal of the “butch man”, meaning that if a male victim wishes to complain or report an incident, they will be “whining” because society expects them to “take it as a man”.
Prison rape, injury to a man’s genitals, sexual abuse of boys by women under the guise of initiation and other behaviours, easily identifiable as physical or sexual abuse and assault when they happen to girls or women, are exploited for humor so regularly that they have become a norm in comedy films and entertainment.
Male sexuality faces a growing trend towards objectification in mass media strikingly similar or parallel to the objectification of women which has been widely documented. Among many other examples, pause to consider the mass appreciation of movies such as “Magic Mike”, shirtless photos of sexy male celebrities in Cosmo, or the “14 photos of hot guys who have great butts” on Elite Daily. The reality is that images that objectify, demonize and devalue men have negative consequences for men, women, and gender relations itself.
The very notion that men have a unique set of issues and concerns including fatherlessness, increasing suicide rates and declining post secondary enrollment rates has been met with criticism. Conferences with titles such as “What makes a man: Drawing a new map to manhood,” which seek to define the “right” kind of masculinity, would surely be considered simplistic and offensive — had males not been the topic discussed — are attended in large numbers. On the other hand, events with titles such as “From Misogyny to Misandry to Intersexual Dialogue”, or “Boys to Men: Transforming the Boys Crisis into our Sons’ Opportunities”, seeking safe spaces for men to discuss uniquely male problems across university campuses are protested. Misandry exists, and it is has become pervasive enough to enter academic, legal and political forums.

From McGillReporter :

Misogyny is an attitude that nobody in his or her right mind would seek to defend, and popular culture takes a misogynist stance at its own peril.
Not so, misandry. It is perfectly acceptable — indeed, common — to portray men in misandric terms as violent, vulgar, insensitive boors, argue Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young in their provocative new book, Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture (McGill-Queen’s University Press).
Their research, which will eventually fill three volumes, is the result of 15 years of discussions between them about gender and its complex role in society and inter-sexual relations.
“We began to see a pattern emerging,” asserts Young, a religious studies professor. “And we were surprised at the extent of the misandry depicted. That, and the fact that there was absolutely no critique of it whatsoever. It just isn’t taken seriously.”
They write, “Misandry has become so embedded in our culture that few people — including men — even recognize it.” Furthermore, “these problems should sound very familiar. Precisely the same ones arose 30 years ago, in connection with discussions of women as portrayed in popular culture.” In other words, there’s a backlash in evidence. Ideological feminism, they argue, has twisted its disgust at the negative portrayals of women that were the norm 30 years ago into a derisive outlook on men.
“It’s part of a formula in our culture that women are victims, which leaves men to be portrayed as victimizers,” according to Nathanson, who has earned four degrees at McGill, including a PhD in religious studies. “It’s an ideological approach that insists that evil originates with “them.” This “them” changes over the course of time, but it is always some recognizable other, whether of a different race, nationality, or gender.”
Because misandry goes unchallenged, men make for a safe source of evil, one that is unlikely to cause the purveyors of pop culture any trouble by offending a segment of their market.

In Woke Father, author Katarina argues :

You might think misandry is not so popular today, since we’re doing a hell of a decent job at providing equal rights and opportunities for women. But on the contrary, misandry is rife throughout pop culture, across social media and even across the globe.
One way to show our deep hatred for the male population is wearing one of these beauties. Many think it’s edgy, funny, thought provoking, or maybe even profound.
Some retailers go as far as to print logos such as “Boys are stupid”.
Social media is rife with feminists posing with attires such as these. Most of the time, the people wearing them are the ones who genuinely hate men. All too often, they are also self-proclaimed feminists. The excuses are always the same. These women were abused in the past. They remain victims still, and apparently all men in the world are singularly to blame for it.
Equality in this case means silencing and destroying “toxic masculinity”. It also means silencing men in general, because a certain group of people decided that everything about men is evil.
[…]
Diversity. That’s one way to put it. The other is simpler and truer — you are a privileged white man and you can no longer work here, even though you are an extremely experienced professional. You are apparently not part of what we are now calling “diversity”. Your opinion doesn’t matter.
The BBC is on the misandry wagon, willing to remove male employees simply to make room for more females, stating that women should make up half of the staff by 2020. Basically, you can lose your job only because you are a man. And for no other reason at all.
A popular song by Carrie Underwood depicting men as cheating pigs and how it’s apparently okay to key his car has hit around 132,455 views and climbing. The song may be catchy, but the message is horrible. The boyfriend is a cheater. But instead of confronting the situation like a mature adult, you are somehow entitled to enter full-on crazy mode.
The only requirement for entitlement to use violence in response to a non-violent situation is apparently being a a woman. Somehow, that gives you justification for violent revenge and even gender-based hatred. These are behaviors we would never accept from men. Yet we somehow find a way to excuse ourselves from being held up to those same standards. That’s called hypocrisy.
The uncomfortable truth is that misandry, as well as misogyny, are real threats to people. It has been debated that misogyny should be treated as a hate crime, but nothing has been said about misandry. Actually, the opposite is true.
Feminists claim that they should be treated differently, because women were the ones who have been pushed down in the past, while men were bearing the fruits of their freedom.
This actually has no reflection in reality, or even history for that matter. Hatred towards men is very real and sometimes leads to dire consequences, such as cases where good fathers are refused custody of their own children.

In Commentary, author Christine Rosen states :

That was then — in 2015, CafePress began selling mugs with the words “male tears” on them. Now the misandry seems less jokey and performative and more in earnest. “It seems logical to hate men,” wrote Suzanna Danuta Walters, a sociology professor and editor of the “gender studies journal” Signs, in a Washington Post op-ed this past June. “When they have gone low for all of human history, maybe it’s time for us to go all Thelma and Louise and Foxy Brown on their collective butts,” Walters wrote, denouncing the U.S. as the “land of legislatively legitimated toxic masculinity.” She ended her screed by calling on men to “Lean out so we can actually just stand up without being beaten down. Pledge to vote for feminist women only. Don’t run for office. Don’t be in charge of anything. Step away from the power. … We have every right to hate you. You have done us wrong. #BecausePatriarchy.”
In a recent interview in Bustle, Blythe Roberson describes her “hilariously relatable” new book, How to Date Men When You Hate Men, as crucial because “the patriarchy messes with everything, even romance.” The book begins: “I think about men all the time. About how they, individually (Donald Trump), and as a group, are oppressing me.” Later, she writes, “I think that if you picked up a book with a title about hating men, you’re already pretty hip to the ubiquity of sexism and toxic masculinity. Young men are taking guns to school and shooting their classmates. An extremely high percentage of any men you’ve ever heard of have recently been revealed to lie somewhere on the spectrum of creepy to sexual criminal. … Men: they need to get their shit together!” The book, which comes out in January 2019, is marketed as “comedy-philosophy.”
The same misandry-laced condescension is evident in a recent opinion piece by Valenti in the New York Times. The essay, which claims to teach readers “What Feminists Can Do for Boys,” takes as its starting assumption that boys are natural-born misogynists. “Budding patriarchs could use our help,” the subhead observes. Valenti suggests that every person with XY chromosomes and an Internet connection is a future incel sociopath. “Feminism has long focused on issues of sexual assault, reproductive rights, harassment and more,” Valenti concludes. “But issues don’t hurt women, men do. Until we grapple with how to stop misogynists themselves — starting with ensuring boys don’t grow up to be one — women will never be free.” This from the woman who bathes in male tears.
Buried in the feminist excuse-making for misandry is a demand for absolute tolerance for everything women do and zero tolerance for anything remotely sexist that men might do.
But the new misandry is not, as Bitch magazine claims, merely an “extended exercise in harmless trolling” (which was also the excuse that Jeong used to justify her racist tweeting).
It has a corrosive effect on debate — and not just online — at a time when civil debate is more necessary than ever. Even if you accept the left-progressive notion that a woman could never be a misandrist #BecausePatriarchy, or that a racial minority could never express racist views because minorities lack power, no decent person should accept the gleefulness with which they bandy about cruel and denigrating remarks.
A well-functioning, free society should always discourage hatred aimed at groups because of the color of their skin or their sex or their religious faith or their sexual orientation. A man who attached #KillAllWomen hashtags to his tweets and then claimed it was all a big joke probably wouldn’t get much sympathy from the likes of these performative misandrists. (Nor would he be offered a job on the New York Times’ op-ed page.) The First Amendment protects the misogynist’s and the misandrist’s right to spew their venom. But it doesn’t make either any less guilty of noxious incivility.
Not every feminist has been enthusiastic about the turn to misandry. Writing in the British paper Metro, Miranda Larbi suggested feminists pledge to distance themselves from misandry: “In 2018, more of us need to commit to speaking less generally and more specifically when we’re taking men to task. We need to make an effort to consider their opinions before we negate them entirely. We need to value the male experience as much as we do the female. We need to stop telling them that they can’t have a voice just for being male.” In other words, they need to treat men the way they’ve been demanding that men treat women since the first wave of the feminist movement.
But the vast majority of feminists (and, more broadly, the progressive left) have embraced the idea that because women are broadly oppressed, anything goes with regard to man-hating.

Hollywood is no less guilty of perpetuating misandry, as author Philip points out in Woke Father :

Perhaps the best example of how Hollywood often portrays men in film is shown in John Tucker Must Die. Women fully admit that this film is misandrist. It makes autostraddle.com’s list of “20 Movies About Friendship and Misandry For When You Want to Burn it All down”, and has a misandry score of 6/10.
The plot is simple: The man is a stereotypical sexual predator; a mindless, clueless sports jock whose only purpose is to lie and cheat. He simultaneously dates three girls at once, and these girls, along with a friend, team up to humiliate him and get their revenge.
The girls spread a rumor that John has genital herpes, and mix estrogen in his protein powder. When that doesn’t work, they get their friend to seduce him, and because he’s a mindless sexual predator, he falls for it.
The end of the movie shows professors in thongs, and John Tucker is sexually objectified throughout. The entire theme of the movie is “destroying” men, and the movie rejoices in this theme. There are many such revenge films floating around, all with similar sexist stereotypes, all man-hating, and all with similar plots. “The Other Woman“, for example, is essentially the same film. They are meant to appeal to a sexist audience who enjoys films that promote hatred and sexism.
There are less-obvious forms of misandry in Hollywood, but they are just as perverse.
For example, the new Star Wars trilogy is a feminist mess. Led by extreme feminist ideologue Kathleen Kennedy, who famously wore t-shirts that read, “The Force is Female”, the latest Star Wars trilogy has faced massive backlash from fans, mostly due to their distaste for sexist feminist writing.
Though the character of Rey had potential. After all, who doesn’t want to see a female Jedi who’s as badass as Ellen Ripley was in the Alien film series from the 1980s?
However, that potential was ruined by the fact that she never materialized into anything other than a Mary Sue. It wasn’t until the third film, when J.J. Abrams was called in to fix things, that Rey’s uber powers made any sense at all.
Before that, we saw Rey effortlessly winning at everything, easily defeating the likes of the more skilled and powerful Ben Solo, and even besting the most powerful Jedi in the history of Star Wars: Luke Skywalker.
Until the third film, she had no weaknesses, no backstory, no failures, no challenges, and no setbacks. In contrast, the male characters in these films were all written as weak, clueless, incompetent buffoons who were lucky to bask in the glory of Rey.
[…]
The aforementioned films are examples of feminist ideology playing up sexist male stereotypes for entertainment. But they’re just a small sampling of what’s coming out of Hollywood these days.
Not only are men made to look the fool in front of the ever-present superior woman, but men are accepted in all of these films as disposable. Violence and murder against men is accepted without any thought, while similar scenes involving the same violence against women would incite a riot.
This hypocrisy may very well be due to traditional stereotypes about men that are only further fueled by feminist hate-based ideology which too many writers and directors have come to accept. There is intense pressure in Hollywood to do this, as a result of the lobbying of extreme feminists.
To portray a female even slightly negatively without making her character sympathetic incites extreme outrage, yet the same exact objectification and subversion of men is regularly accepted as normal and even promoted. Feminism thrives in Hollywood, and as a result, misandry continues to make its way into movies and TV shows more than ever. Unfortunately, this only fuels negative myths and stereotypes about men by warping social consciousness regarding men.

Conclusion

Note that the aforementioned are just some of the many situations where men not only are not only lacking in privilege, but actually are at a major disadvantage in comparison with women. This enumeration is by no means intended to be exhaustive and merely serves as a demonstration of the various struggles men experience in their daily lives.

Also, note that, with this essay, I by no means intend to imply that there no aspect to the female experience that is alien to men. I by no means intend to suggest that men are the only ones who struggle or that women are inherently privileged. I recognize that there are aspects to women’s lives that men will never fully understand, and that this gives men an advantage in certain areas.

However, what many fail to realize is that this goes both ways. There’s many aspects to men’s lives that women will never fully understand, where women have the advantage over men. And this is almost always overlooked, often making men’s struggles invisible. Not just that, but men are often blamed for women’s struggles, even when they have themselves become disenfranchised and marginalized.

With this essay, I hope I’ve been able to demonstrate that men’s issues deserve attention too. I hope I’ve been able to demonstrate that misandry has become prevalent in society and increasingly problematic. I hope I’ve been able to demonstrate that men who are struggling deserve our empathy no less than women who are struggling. As Tina Currado points out :

We must begin to acknowledge that men do not ‘rule the roost’ in every situation and it is unfair to assume that men are favored in every aspect of society. Because of this belief that men have had it too good, the pendulum has swung too far resulting in domination over men while misguided feminists, who continually cite statistics that only strengthen their cause, demonize males and proclaim them to be violent, sex-obsessed, or privileged. Advocacy research for the women’s movement is causing society to view men in a negative light and as a result we lose empathy. While devout feminists insist that men had it coming to them, we must realize that oppressing one group as a means of payback for alleged past injustices is not how a society thrives and continues to progress.
Despite popular opinion it is most certainly not a man’s world. In America, men are deemed the more violent and the less trustworthy of the sexes and for that they are often separated from their children, assumed guilty when they are innocent, and laughed at when they suffer physical harm. Men’s issues have been overlooked but improving awareness can be achieved if we insist on research that does not omit data due to sex.
[…]
Sexism is alive and well in this day and age, and there is no doubt some men still believe women are not their equals. However many women are guilty of the same. We should no longer concentrate solely on how women were oppressed as it does nothing but perpetuate a victim mentality. As with any other group who has suffered from the tyranny of a stronger sect, speaking only of the atrocities does not result in progress, but discussion as to how we may repair and find balance benefits all of society