How Feminism Hurts Men

This isn’t the first time I’ve written about feminism, and it won’t be the last. (Case in point: Expect to see a post on how feminism hurts kids and women in the next coming weeks.)

What is commonly referred to as “feminism” has become a way to make women think they can have it ALL–but only at the expense of men and/or the families they chose to have.

Such a thought isn’t out-of-this-world. It’s common for many of us to think we already have it all: Health, love, a family, a home, a vocation (which doesn’t always mean a job), and other truly valuable things.

But the definition of “all” varies, and some women focus on a really narrow meaning: To them, “all” represents a growing career, a growing family, an increasingly loving husband, time off to do their own thing with their girlfriends, a growing bank account, etc.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting it all–as long as you’re clear on what exactly you want, and it doesn’t come at the expense of other things.

The former kind isn’t difficult to achieve and it yields contentment because you understand you deliberately and gladly chose your outcome; the latter will always lead to sacrificing something (and making you feel like you’re missing out on it). This is something feminists don’t get. Instead of blaming themselves for something they chose, they blame men.

How Feminism Hurts Men

Remember how in the 50s, commercials would indirectly highlight women’s incompetence and how they were supposedly better suited for the home because anything else was “too much” for them? Take a look at a few I found (click/tap on each image to see it in full size):

(I’m not so politically correct but I didn’t look at more because they were frankly kind of disturbing.)

Nowadays, it’s the complete opposite–albeit less direct: The media will have us believe that men are morons and useless, and that they’re inhibiting women’s progress.

Actually, not even that: It’s believed today that we don’t need men, period. (I mean, biologically, if we want a child minus the man, we still need a man’s “stuff” and a lab… but relationship-wise, men are supposedly skippable.)

It’s also believed that society is too patriarchal, that women can’t get ahead, that women earn less than men, and other BS the media loves to promote with no rational basis.

With men realizing that they’re not necessary, is it surprising that some have lost interest in good old-fashioned dating or courting? In being knights in shining armor? In being gentlemen? Is it surprising that they’ve also started to see women as perishable and not worth keeping? That they can share a bed with one woman for years and later discard her for one who didn’t see herself as a car that needed a test-drive?

Before he met me, and after going on several first dates, my husband concluded that women were advantageous and wanted a free meal. They’ll go out with a man they’re not interested in if they can get something tangible in return, like food. They’re the male equivalent of tools, basically. Which both really embarrasses me for what they’re doing to women in general AND also makes me glad that they’re leaving the best men to the women who deserve them. (So thanks, losers!)

But I digress.

The War on Men

Tucker Carlson did a really interesting piece recently about the “war on men.” I watched it with my husband and was so shocked and saddened at what men these days have to deal with. Below is the segment, followed by a transcription:

You hear a lot in America about the “war on women,” but it’s men in America who are failing. We have some shocking statistics:

The signs are everywhere. … If you’re a parent, you may have noticed that your daughter’s friends seem a little more on the ball than your son’s. If you’re an employer, you may have noticed that your female employees show up on time…. And of course if you live in this country, you’ve just seen a horrifying series of mass shootings, far more than we’ve ever had. Women didn’t do that. In every case, the shooter was a man.

Something ominous is happening to men in America. Everyone who pays attention knows that. What’s odd is how rarely you hear it publicly acknowledged. Our leaders pledge to create more opportunities for women and girls, whom they imply are failing. Men don’t need help. They’re the patriarchy. They’re fine. More than fine.

But are they fine? Here are the numbers:

Start with the most basic, life and death. The average American man will die five years before the average American woman. One of the reasons for this is addiction. Men are more than twice as likely as women to become alcoholics. They’re also twice as likely to die of a drug OD….

But the saddest reason for shortened life spans is suicide. Seventy-seven percent of all suicides are committed by men. The overall rate is increasing at a dramatic pace….

You often hear of America’s incarceration crisis. That’s almost exclusively a male problem too. Over 90 percent of inmates are male.

These problems are complex, and they start young. Relative to girls, boys are failing in school. More girls than boys graduate high school. Considerably more go to and graduate from college. Boys account for the overwhelming majority of school discipline cases. One study found that fully one in five high school boys had been diagnosed with hyperactivity disorder, compared with just one in 11 girls. Many were medicated for it. The long term health effects of those medications aren’t fully understood, but they appear to include depression in later life.

Women decisively outnumber men in graduate school. They earn the majority of doctoral degrees. They are now the majority of new enrollees in both law and medical schools.

For men, the consequences of failing in school are profound. Between 1979-2010, working age men with only high school degrees saw their real hourly wages drop about 20 percent. Over the same period, high school educated women saw their wages rise. The decline of the industrial economy disproportionately hurt men….

Far fewer young men get married than did just a few decades ago, and fewer stay married. About one in five American children live with only their mothers. That’s double the rate in 1970. Millions more boys are growing up without fathers. Young adult men are now more likely to live with a parent than with a spouse or partner. That is not the case for young women. Single women buy their own homes at more than twice the rate of single men. More women than men now have drivers licenses.

Whenever gender differences come up in public debate, the so-called wage gap dominates the conversation. A woman makes 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That’s the statistic you’ll hear. It’s repeated everywhere. But that number compares all American men to all American women across all professions. No legitimate social scientist would consider that a valid measure. The number is both meaningless and intentionally misleading. It’s a talking point.

Once you compare men and women with similar experience working the same hours in similar jobs for the same period of time — and that’s the only way you can measure it — the gap all but disappears. In fact it may invert. One study using census data found that single women in their 20s living in metropolitan areas now earn eight percent more on average than their male counterparts. By the way, the majority of managers are now women. Women on average are scoring higher on IQ tests than men are….

Perhaps most terrifyingly, men seem to be becoming less male. Sperm counts across the west have plummeted, down almost 60 percent since the early 1970s. Scientists don’t know why. Testosterone levels in men have also fallen precipitously. One study found that the average levels of male testosterone dropped by one percent every year after 1987. This is unrelated to age. The average 40-year-old-man in 2017 would have testosterone levels 30 percent lower than the average 40-year-old man in 1987.

There is no upside to this. Lower testosterone levels in men are associated with depression, lethargy, weight gain and decreased cognitive ability. Nothing like this has ever happened. You’d think we’d want to know what exactly is going on and how to fix it. But the media ignore the story. It’s considered a fringe topic.

Nor is it a priority in the scientific research establishment. We checked and couldn’t find a single NIH-funded study on why testosterone levels are falling. We did find a study on “Pubic Hair Grooming Prevalence and Motivation Among Women in the United States.”

Those are the numbers. They paint a very clear picture: American men are failing, in body, mind and spirit. This is a crisis. Yet our leaders pretend it’s not happening. They tell us the opposite is true: Women are victims, men are oppressors. To question that assumption is to risk punishment. Even as women far outpace men in higher education, virtually every college campus supports a women’s studies department, whose core goal is to attack male power. Our politicians and business leaders internalize and amplify that message. Men are privileged. Women are oppressed. Hire and promote and reward accordingly.

That would be fine if it were true. But it’s not true. At best, it’s an outdated view of an America that no longer exists. At worst, it’s a pernicious lie.

Either way, ignoring the decline of men doesn’t help anyone. Men and women need each other. One cannot exist without the other. That’s elemental biology, but it’s also the reality each of us has lived, with our parents and siblings and friends. When men fail, all of us suffer.

This was so enlightening because it made something that seemed like a stereotype more concrete. Women aren’t victims. Women are thriving. (And it’s not due to “feminism.”)

Men are failing–and sadly, everyone thinks they’ll be fine in the end.

I’ll end this first part of this short Feminism series with a short anecdote from an event I experienced this week:

John Crist, a popular Christian comedian (the phrase may sound like a bit of an oxymoron but stay with me here), recently did a parody of Chip and Joanna Gaines and of how she’s always the calm and collected being who negotiates contracts with her vendors, while the creo will have Chip off-camera building a mask out of sheetrock. The ironic thing is that Chip seems seems very intelligent himself. John said he didn’t understand how Chip’s portrayed to be such a goof even after writing a very articulate book that made him seem like a genius.

We need men. Embrace them.

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What’s a common male stereotype that drives you nutty and you wish didn’t exist? Sound off in the comments.