Michael Kaufman says there is no presumption of male guilt. Here’s why.
Before I rant, let me say:
- I do not believe all men are bad and all women are good.
- I intensely dislike any collective blame of men (or women, or, well, any group).
- I think that both men and women can be emotionally stunted, emotionally abusive, and have the capacity to commit acts of violence.
- I do not believe that the presence of a dangling bit of flesh between our legs turns males into monsters.
- I believe men can be great dads, great coaches, and great primary school teachers.
- I do know that some groups of men (such as Black men in the U.S.) often are targeted as guilty unless they can prove otherwise.
- I believe there are sexist assumptions about men, just as there are about women (although both are in the context of societies of unequal men’s power and privilege).
- I’m 100% proud to be a man (although, I admit, I’m not proud of many things done in the name of men.)
- And, against much evidence to the contrary, I stubbornly cling to the belief that men and women are basically good.
Now, let me rant against this silly myth: “the presumption of male guilt.”
Myth One: “Feminists (or Whoever) Say All Men Are Violent. People Always Assume That if Violence Happens, It’s Been Done by a Man.”
Uh, in case you missed the newsflash: most violent acts around the world are committed by men. By far. Overwhelmingly. Off the charts. The vast majority of the world’s violent acts are:
- Violence among men (from homophobic bullying and fighting in schoolyards to armed robbery, from sexual assault of boys/other men to murder and war).
- Violence by men against women (domestic assault, sexual assault, stalking, trafficking into prostitution, etc.).
- Violence by men against children (most sexual violence against children, more of the physical violence—although in that area women give men a run for their money).
I can hear a few of you winge and whine: “Are you saying all men are violent?” Why does that follow? That’s like saying “most cases of breast cancer occur in women,” only to have someone respond, “are you saying all women have breast cancer?”
Just to give a loving hand to any insecure guy who feels I’m attacking him: most men do not use violence in their lives, certainly not as adults. I don’t. Chances are you don’t either. (Although far too many of us do.)
Saying that “most violence is committed by men” does NOT mean that most men commit violence. It does NOT mean that all violence is committed by men. (In fact, in North American schools, violence committed by girls is increasing faster than violence by boys, although there is still more of the latter.) No one presumes male guilt.
Myth Two: “There Is as Much Violence by Women Against Men as Men Against Women.”
There’s a mini-industry of men’s rights types who amass an impressive bibliography to prove this myth solely by quoting each other back and forth.
Here are the facts: in countries (such as Canada) where we have high-quality national statistics on physical violence in domestic relationships (married and living together), if you ask males and females if they’d ever experienced anything along a continuum of physically violent acts—from being pushed or slapped right up to being punched, strangled, or stabbed—you actually do get “gender parity”.
If you stop there, you create a myth. If you dig deeper, you find this:
- True, all relationship violence is bad, but when it comes to measurably more serious violence that requires medical treatment or causes lost work time, there is no symmetry: such violence is far more likely to be committed by a man against a woman than vice-versa.
- Men who experience emotional or physical violence in relationships at the hands of a women are less likely to live in fear of that violence than the other way around. Men might not like it, men might know they’re stuck in a crappy and abusive relationship, but they’re less likely to be living in terror compared to women. In other words, the impact of the violence is not symmetrical and that’s because the level of the violence is not symmetrical.
- These statistics leave out sexual violence in relationships which, when it happens, is disproportionately committed by men.
- In many (but not all) cases, the more serious acts of violence by a woman against a man are either in self-defense or are a final, desperate retaliation for years of abuse. (That’s why women’s shelters and better policing to end men’s violence against women are life-savers for men: they help a terrorized, trapped woman get out of her marriage without thinking the only way out is through killing her spouse.)
Myth Three: “Men Are Presumed Guilty Until Proven Innocent”
Huh? Ever see the statistics for how many sexual assault charges lead to a conviction? Ever see estimates of what percentage of sexual assaults actually lead to an arrest? If anything, when it comes to sexual assault, the sad assumption is still either that “she asked for it,” “she was dressed provocatively,” “she should have known what she was getting into when she went to that party,” or “she had sex and then changed her mind.” The real presumption is of a woman’s guilt or, at least, duplicity.
Myth Four: “Women Win, Men Lose In Custody Battles”
A hundred years ago, in rare cases of divorce, men almost always got custody. After all, both the wife and children were his property. By the 1950s, women usually got custody on the assumption that women were the more natural parents and, anyway, the man was off at his job and the woman was working as a housewife. But, you ask, has the pendulum swung too far? Is it now presumed that men, if not guilty of something, are, at least, less capable of being loving, caring parents?
Four things to say on that:
- I believe that if a man (or woman) has committed serious or ongoing abuse of his children or such abuse against his spouse (which, research tells us, when witnessed by children, has as negative an impact on the child as if it was directed against the child) he has forfeited his right to custody. It is not emotionally healthy and often not safe for the children if he has custody. That accounts for some cases.
- Yes, there are still sexist judges (both men and women) who stupidly think women are the natural parent and that men are not. On the other hand, sadly, there are still too many of our brothers who seem to have done their best to prove they are not capable of being nurturing parents: when they were married, they only did a small fraction of the childcare and domestic work even when both parents worked outside the home. In other words, courts sometimes might get it right in cases where they say the man doesn’t seem to be a capable parent. (Again, so I don’t hurt feelings: huge numbers of men are great parents. An increasing number of men are in totally gender-equitable relationships when it comes to equally dividing childcare and housework.)
- It is true that some men have gotten a raw deal in custody, alimony, and child support cases. It’s also true that some women get a raw deal. (And it’s also true in the U.S. that men don’t pay 24% of court-ordered child-support payments and only partially pay another 30%, depriving our children of $13 billion a year in support. As good men, that really should piss us off!)
- Most divorcing parents actually get the custody arrangements they want. Except in cases where there has been abuse, both women and men usually want to share custody. (That desire by men to share custody is one of the great gifts of feminism to men: that encouragement and assumption that we can as good parents as women.)
So, let’s not waste time perpetuating a myth that society now presumes men are guilty (or incapable of being good men). Rather, let’s put our energy into:
- helping parents and teachers figure out how we can do a better job raising our sons;
- learning how we as adult men can transform our own masculinity in ways that will be emotionally and physically healthier both for ourselves and those around us;
- working hard to ensure not only that men live lives of gender equality and full respect for the women and men around us, but work in our offices, factories, schools, places of worship, and communities to bring about gender equality and an end to narrow definitions of womanhood and manhood that hurt us all.
—Photo KellyB./Flickr
About Michael Kaufman
Im so glad to see the antifeminist ‘true DV figures’ crew are here to slice and dice this article
Also, could the author cite, link the study from which he could make the astonishing quote below. Which does not seem likely to me, as the impact of the threat of violence whether mental or physical, is not dependent on sex, but on the temperament of the abusee
Without seeing the study, that is just so hard to accept at face value.
Jameseq – It’s an interesting point.
It’s also interesting that the focus is always upon violence and fear. It looks at dynamics on a micro moment time scale and not the macro – missing the bigger pictures.
Living in an abusive relationship is recognized as causing long term health damage, physical and psychological. That affects Mortality and Morbidity rates. A great deal of study has been done in that area for women – but equivalent study in men has been lacking. Why?
Is it Gender Mythology and supposed common sense getting in the way of balanced study that is not diluted and even tainted by Gender Mythology? Circular Logic has been a big issue and abused far too often to justify what is the Micro – or as it’s better known “Small Mindedness.”.
I do find it interesting when some work to score a debating point – but they fail to grasp that there is no debating competition. The only person they are debating with is themselves – always attempting to make matters smaller so they can grasp them – and missing the big picture that others are dealing with.
“In other words, the impact of the violence is not symmetrical and that’s because the level of the violence is not symmetrical.”
That assumes that male and female are symmetrical in all ways – which comes from a feminist ideal and gender mythology not gender reality !
Putting the ideal over reality is a gross imbalance which causes all structures built upon it to have to deal with keeping balance rather than being balanced.
An ideal should be based wholly upon reality so that it is by nature stable. You can balance a Triangle on a point – but by nature the Triangle is stable when it’s balanced on it’s longest edge.
Symmetrical may be an ideal – but it’s just balancing on a corner!
Possibly men expect violence, so less fear and more acceptance of it as a “normal” part of their experience. Considering the majority of deaths from violence are male, I don’t think it’s a good thing to accept if it’s true. Even if men have less fear, violence is wrong and they shouldn’t be subject to it. Violence is a sure-fire way to increase the risk of them defending themselves, that fight can escalate quick and if a man’s strength overpowers the woman and ends up with her more injured then who’s at fault? Is it the man for defending himself, or her fault for initiating? They still suffer the effects of violence!
Regardless, both genders need to learn a better way to sort out their differences and issues.
I meant, Both still suffer the effects of violence*
Well this fits the feminist narrative of why women are violent in DV cases. But Im not buying it so easily.
Now, Again, please provide the name of study.
So we can examine the findings for ourselves
1. You call this a myth but it happens. There are people (not just feminists) that actually do make the assumption that if violence happens it must have been done by a man. Sure you lay out that most violence is committed by men but instead of using that evidence to call out the people who buy into the assumption (that if violence happens it must have been done by a man) you instead use it to cry foul on the people who are pointing out that the assumption is unfair.
3. Huh? Ever see the statistics for how many sexual assault charges lead to a conviction? Ever see estimates of what percentage of sexual assaults actually lead to an arrest? If anything, when it comes to sexual assault, the sad assumption is still either that “she asked for it,” “she was dressed provocatively,” “she should have known what she was getting into when she went to that party,” or “she had sex and then changed her mind.” The real presumption is of a woman’s guilt or, at least, duplicity.
I disagree. The presumption plays out in the court of public opinion as well as in the courtroom. Now I’ll agree that there is presumption of female guilt as well. Unless you have some numbers on how many actual crimes are ignored when you say, “Ever see estimates of what percentage of sexual assaults actually lead to an arrest?”
Most divorcing parents actually get the custody arrangements they want. Except in cases where there has been abuse, both women and men usually want to share custody. (That desire by men to share custody is one of the great gifts of feminism to men: that encouragement and assumption that we can as good parents as women.)
If they were so gracious with that gift to men then why are so many of them so silent when it comes to cases of men fighting to stay in their children’s lives?
I know how badly you want to make the world a better place for men and women but it does none of us any good to just stick out heads in the sand and pretend these presumptions don’t exist.
Right. Let’s pretend society doesn’t like to believe men are guilty and women are not. I’m sorry to repeat it since we’ve all heard it enough times, but as many of us were told as young boys (my parents had it on a plaque on my bedroom wall…):
What are little boys made of? Snips (frogs) and snails and puppy dogs’ tails. What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice and everything nice.
Mr. Kaufman, I thoroughly debunked your article at my blog. I challenge you to muster up a response. Okay?
How ironic, the very next article over is by Hugo who says male guilt presumption is justified and needs to kept up.
This article says no such thing exists. I think you man-haters at least need to get your stories consistent.
If they were worried about consistency and logic, they wouldn’t be man-haters.
It’s well documented that women commit more child abuse. It’s due to the propinquity of women to kids.
That is what makes the following from the article so frustrating. It assumes that men commit the majority of abuse and that is why they lose custody.
“I believe that if a man (or woman) has committed serious or ongoing abuse of his children or such abuse against his spouse (which, research tells us, when witnessed by children, has as negative an impact on the child as if it was directed against the child) he has forfeited his right to custody.”
“That desire by men to share custody is one of the great gifts of feminism to men: that encouragement and assumption that we can as good parents as women”
It should have been that way if feminists were intellectually and morally consistent. They never ever were. Feminists have always demanded the ability to have their cake and eat it too. Feminist did expect men to be good parents when it suited the feminist desire to have equal number of women and men work, however they have never ever supported joint custody or shared parenting in cases of divorce. That came from the father’s rights groups. These father’s rights groups were painted by feminists as extremely dangerous child abusers, wife abusers, sexual molesters filled with bitterness and anger. Read Michelle Landsberg.
Read what NOW said about joint parenting.
http://www.now.org/nnt/03-97/father.html
Right, the thing that’s always interested me was the demand for Victorian protections while demanding equality. Nothing wrong with equality, of course. But the neo-puritanism of being extremely sex-negative and pro-monogamy while being feminist strikes me as being inconsistent. Such early feminists as Edna St. Vincent Millay, Emma Goldman, and (later) Germane Greer didn’t take this position, of course.
Most of the feminists I knew in the 60s-70s were sex positive. But the Andrea Dworkin – Bob Jensen type of feminism seems to re-connect the two.
You know for a feminist this really was a pretty good effort. For an anti-feminist it would be a C but for a feminist it’s an A. I guess you just have to grade them on a curve, right? At least he tried. When a feminist does try like that I’ve noticed that it is often a guy. Probably the best feminist for that “womansplaining” would be Ampersand although I don’t know if has got any new material in the last 5 to 10 years. It’s just so rare for any feminist to try and debate any of their claims with actual arguments.
It was more common twenty-odd years ago. I remember at the time I had just been given a copy of Warren Farrell’s “The Myth of Male Power” by a woman who said “I don’t know if I should give you this; you’re always saying this sort of stuff already”. I was impressed by the book so I naturally wanted to see what the feminist response had been to such a devastating criticism. Annnnnnnd…. I basically found there wasn’t any. If there was any direct response to Farrell it was the Liz Library calling him a pedophile. Much later, he also got an insulting ad hominem put down in Susan Faludis book, “Backlash”.
So I went on the feminist web sites and tried to talk about this stuff. What do you think of this argument? What’s your response? The response was to ban me. Hundreds of times. It’s now the standard for any feminist web site to explicitly say critics are not allowed to comment. I get the impression that’s down to me. I “made” all the big sites change their policy to justify my being banned after the fact. The arguments were not just unanswered, not just rejected, but rejected with incredible venom, and the same thing happened everywhere.
Well… almost everywhere.
So I drew the obvious conclusions about the character of the feminist movement. They were simply unable to respond to their critics. They were a tight ideological community that were propagating falsehoods. Many times they knew the facts they repeated were false. These falsehoods were extremely negative and stereotyping men. The claim of seeking equality was a total sham. And as I dug into it I found worse things about them than Farrell had ever dared to write.
> Violence among men (from homophobic bullying and fighting in schoolyards to armed robbery, from
> sexual assault of boys/other men to murder and war).
Why do you think gay men are so much more vilified than lesbians? Because two gay men means two less men than can provide for women. If you go ask the guy who did the armed robbery where the money goes to, a good chunk of the time, the money he made goes to his girlfriend. A man is trained from birth to be a provider for women, to keep them safe. Men go to war, so women don’t have to. And how get the most fruits from a war? The women that remain safely at home. Once again. it’s in service of women.
” Violence by men against women (domestic assault, sexual assault, stalking, trafficking into prostitution, etc.).”
Yes, except for that annoying little problem that most pimps/madams are women, they also do the sex trafficking, “stalking” is only “stalking” when the woman doesn’t like him, if she likes him, she marries his “stalker”, hell, the “stalker” is considered romantic and perfect. As for domestic assault, wrong. With non-reciprocal partner violence, that is, there is but one abusive partner, some 70% of those, are women. Of the reciprocal partner violence, the large majority of the cases, the question is not who does more damage; the question is who starts it. You see, a woman that attacks a man is not “afraid” of him; but eventually, he’s going to say, this far and no further. And when he retaliates with his greater size, strength and mass, he’s going to do more damage.
That does not make him worse, it makes her worse, both as the person who starts the fight, and the lack of brain capacity to understand attacking someone much stronger than you is not a good idea.
Oh, by the way, the number of women that start the fight? Once again, some 70%.
To punish the man for doing more damage, is to punish American soldiers in WWII, because they killed more Germans than Germans killed them, so they were the evil assholes, not the Nazis that murdered 6 million jews and started the war.
> Violence by men against children (most sexual violence against children, more of the physical
> violence—although in that area women give men a run for their money).
Wait. You don’t make any sense! First you say men do the most violence against children, the next sentence you say the women do the most violence against children. (It’s the women by the way, some 70% probably the same 70%.)
Here actually you destroy your claim you don’t presume male guilt; you haven’t even done the research, have no paper, and oh yeah, deny statistics without having your own to back it up. You merely presume and air your presumption, in the last example to such a cognitive-dissonance event you presume male guilt to such an extent you blame men even as you in the same paragraph say that women abuse even more..
I’m responding directly to the article without taking the time to read all of the posts before mine. I state that so we all know I may restate a point already made.
I have first hand experience from several attempts to get my Autistic son out of an abusive household. My ex has been investigated 13 times, and had charges of child abuse substantiated against her. Multiple custody evaluators have stated in court that my son should be with me. My ex has violated the visitation schedule a dozen times costing me thousands of dollars. This has been acknowledged and ignored by courts (i.e. she’s never been punished for it). Child support I paid went to buy toys for mom and step dad while I also bought things for my sons needs (that the support should have covered, like shoes, coats, etc).
For doing it right I’ve had multiple judges reward me by decreasing my visitation.
The ultimate kicker was when a Sheriff told me that hitting an Autistic child with a pool cue (I have the pictures of bruising from this) constitutes discipline, not child abuse.
And something that needs to be addressed with child support. At one point I had a court order me to pay $800 a month, while I was out of work, with no income. Keep in mind my ex wasn’t working (but had someone to live off of). It made as much sense to have me flap my arms and fly to the moon. So no, courts asking for unreasonable sums of money for child support, and having it not get paid does not piss me off.
Your premise is that the courts are reasonable. I can clearly demonstrate with documentation and video that is not the case. I suspect a large contingent of men would be able to do the same. No, courts are VERY sexist, and to claim the opposite exacerbates the problem.
A fact: The cost of raising a child averages $770 a month (provided by U.S. census bureau). Since it takes two people to make a child, no man that doesn’t have custody of his child should be paying more than $385 to support a child. Anything above that is alimony. How many men are charged with paying more?
Finally a question:
“(And it’s also true in the U.S. that men don’t pay 24% of court-ordered child-support payments and only partially pay another 30%, depriving our children of $13 billion a year in support.”
Based on what statistic, and what is the statistic for women? Also what is the statistic for women that get paid and treat that money as alimony instead of for child support. Last, you have a system that gets to make up anything it wants to as a child support value, and then says that 24% won’t pay, and another 30% under pay? This is surprising?
Quick question, can you provide research that supports the claims that the Myths above are in fact Myths?
> Men who experience emotional or physical violence in relationships at the hands of a women are
> less likely to live in fear of that violence than the other way around.
And you call that a sign of how bad women have it.
Oh, Michael, let me enlighten you.
Have you ever heard the phrase (big) boys don’t cry?
The reason why experience less fear even when they should by hiding in a corner shivering with it, is because they are taught from when they are little to ignore and suppress their wants, needs, pain, and fear. Every time a parent does not come to comfort a boy and tells him to grow up, be strong, whatever, they are taught that their pain means nothing, that their fear means nothing, and that if they want to be valued they better ignore and suppress it.
Girl on the other hand, are catered to from birth, every wishy washy bit of pain and potential fear has a parent rush over hold and sooth her. They are taught that their emotions are right, that they are entitled to them; indeed that they are entitled to the Titanic’s life boat regardless how much or little worth they actually have to anyone else or the world. While boys are taught to ignore their suffering and die in the freezing waters; no matter if they are a father, or friggin’ Einstein.
Not experiencing as much fear is not a sign of women’s oppression and hurt; it’s a sign how completely misandric and abusive toward men our society actually is.
Amen, with exclamation marks!!!
Men are also purveyors of the idea of men as predators. If you worry about your wife or girlfriend or daughter walking alone at night, are you worried about her being assaulted by women or men? If she says she felt creeped out by male stranger, what are the thoughts that go through your head? In my case, the way I think, sounds like an assumption of male guilt to me….
I’m not saying it’s justified or not, just that the presumption of guilt is clearly there, and internalized in men as well as women.
I have the following to say: The data is bad.
Not just your data. All of it. Every piece of data from every study on any issue this politically charged.
It’s not bad because of a conspiracy or an organized cover up or a cabal of wizards. It’s bad because the surveys which produce this data are drawn up by people with politics, people who are emotionally to close the issues at hand, instead of people who actually care about data. I have autism. I know what it means to care about data and I can spot someone who doesn’t from a mile away. In fact, seeing the flaws in this kind of thing is the only skill I have that I can actually be proud of. The numbers from these surveys always look neat and clean cut and above board, perfectly ready for academic interpretation, but if you dig deeper, if you care more about the data than about the point you want to make, you will find a web of omissions, inconsistencies, deliberately mis-worded questions and unaccounted variables.
This doesn’t mean that one side or the other is right or wrong or lying or telling the truth. It means that all discussion is premature. To form ideas without truly comprehensive and reliable data will inevitably skew perceptions when that data finally arrives and damage your ability to interpret it.
Also, this article kind of misses the point. It strikes off on a tangent at about the second sentence and never actually gets around to discussing the point it’s supposed to be addressing.
Actually, these things aren’t politically charged. Feminism is right, men are ignored is status quo, there is no political charge anywhere.
Feminist, however, ideologues have been caught outright lying, or sucking numbers out of their thumb. Indeed, Michael as all feminists name numbers – that aren’t even numbers! They claim shit about how women are the majority of victims, and but a tiny number or no number at all – then when you check the numbers, you find the named numbers are false. In the few times the feminists did do a study, or a group that is friendly with them, you quickly find that the numbers are massaged at best, and outright fraud at worst.
Check out the recent CDC report on violence which included rape. 95% percent of all rapists are men, right? Well… forced envelopment of vagina around penis isn’t called rape, it’s classified as “other sexual violence.” When you add the that number where it belongs, rape, you suddenly find 40% women and 60% men rape.
Things that support men’s rights, not so much. Why not? Because there are no, to hardly no people caring about men’s rights, at all. Men’s rights certainly don’t have the means to get a study ordered, meaning the studies that show their issues clear as day, either come from neutral employees of a government institution, or even their enemies.
Warren Farrell was a feminist, he went to do a study on wages, and found something that belied the rhetoric he’d been following, unlike others he did not massage or defraud the numbers and simply reported what he found. The feminists excommunicated him for it.
The justice department is openly hostile to men. Their page has the head claim that the number 1 death for African-American women is partner violence. The study a little further in, show’s it to be the last place in the list, a very small fifth place, where the largest killers are natural causes. You can trust that whenever this male-hostile department comes up with a study that favors men as the biggest victims, they’re either true, or the actual numbers of male victims is even bigger.
You can find more correct studies and numbers like this – find studies that are done by order on a third party where an employee just does the study without a wit of a care in the issue, or done by those that are actively hostile to certain number outcomes, and report those outcomes anyway.
I kinda liked this article. It’s nice to see a presumption of male guilt debunked.
But here are the two I would like to discuss more:
“Uh, in case you missed the newsflash: most violent acts around the world are committed by men. By far. Overwhelmingly. Off the charts.”
“Men who experience emotional or physical violence in relationships at the hands of a women are less likely to live in fear of that violence than the other way around.”
These two actually cover the majority of my involvement in the men’s movement. And let me change things around a bit.
Not too long ago, it was to be assumed that if you saw a black man, he would be more violent. And in fact, that statistics show it. The statistics STILL show it. But how have we responded to it? We looked deeply into the problem, and assumed that any fear against a black person just for being black was considered racist.
Now, let’s go over to the overall view of men. Men rack up really high in violence overall, meaning there must be a big problem. Especially as biology increasingly shows that we are a more naturally peaceful species. How have we dealt with it? We took a deep look into violence against women, almost ignoring the violence amongst men. Instead of seeing as a problem WITHIN masculinity, we saw it as a problem of how we view women.
But if you look at the stats, women face less violence than men overall. Most violence by a woman is towards a man, and most violence by a man is towards a man. In fact, the only statistic in which women are more likely to be victims is on inter-gendered violence. The diagnosis? Something is seriously wrong within the male community. So blatantly problematic, in fact, that it spills over to the other gender.
In fact as we treat women more and more like men, we see more and more violence. So maybe…just MAYBE it’s MEN we should be studying. There is no reason NOT to arrive at this conclusion.
But instead, we put up women’s groups for free self-defense against men. We talk all the time about how men attack women, and that generally seems more important than the more common scenario of a man attacking a man.
Going back to race: Imagine if we started “White-only” groups to protect us against the “oppressive black people” And used statistics to justify excluding them from the conversation. What if, instead of asking why blacks are so violent, we just tagged it as “part of their nature” and focussed on how “white people are seen as weak and are taken advantage of by blacks”
It absolutely would not fly. So why do we think it’s okay to use this logic on men?
Actually, if virtually all violence is toward men, and society approves/doesn’t care, there is something wrong with how society treats and socializes men; not a problem within masculinity itself.
Well, that’s kinda what I meant. We talk about the “problems in masculinity” a lot and I suppose that phrase is rather ambiguous. By “problems in men” I refer to problematic behaviors that are symptoms of a higher problem.
In my meaning, it implies a question: “Why do men dominate the world of violence?”, “Why don’t men band together to get their issues taken care of as much?”,”Why are men doing poorly in schools”.
In a lot of cases, like the news, “problems in masculinity” implies a statement: “Men are violent creatures”, “Men are worse at organizing groups than women.”, “Men aren’t as smart as women.” Or my favorite yet: “Our men are becoming mere boys.”
In the latter case, it seems to stop at men and not look much farther. And rarely is it ever implied that there is something wrong with how society as a whole expects men to behave. Because it already states us a privileged and non-oppressed.
And therefore a male criminal is seen as “a person swimming in privilege, but too selfish and immoral not to commit a crime.” We see him as a rich person breaking the law to earn an extra buck.
When we look at women criminals, we see it as “a person so overwhelmed by oppression, that she couldn’t help but commit the crime.” We see her as a beggar robbing a food store just to survive.
And therefore, we are more likely to look into what ails the criminal woman, while we condemn the male criminal as though he was just born that way. And indeed as we were/are seeing with the UK’s plan to exclusively close women’s prisons because “we need to focus less on punishment and more on the oppression that causes it.”.
And idea of male privilege and the consequent antipathy towards men’s issues has been my primary, and possibly my only REAL problem with feminism from the get go.