The Second Sexism: Discrimination Against Men and Boys

Many people are unable to think of any ways in which males are disadvantaged. The aim of this chapter is to rectify that. I shall present a number of examples of such disadvantage and provide some details about them. Because some of those who deny that there is a second sexism are inclined to dismiss these as minor matters, I shall spend some time explaining just how substantial some of these disadvantages are, either in the number of males who are affected or by the severity of the impact. In other cases, I devote some attention to demonstrating that there is in fact a disadvantage, because the facts may be in dispute.

The disadvantages are presented under various headings. These categories are for convenience, but there is actually considerable overlap between a few of them. I do not pretend to be exhaustive. There has been so little attention to male disadvantage that it is very likely that we do not even know all the ways in which males are disadvantaged. My examples are thus either those where it is clear — to all except the most ideological deniers of the second sexism — that males are disadvantaged, or those where we have sufficient data to demonstrate male disadvantage. Not every example of male disadvantage I shall mention in this book will be covered in this chapter. Sometimes, I shall raise an example incidentally in subsequent chapters as part of my arguments that there is a second sexism.

In presenting examples of male disadvantage, I draw on both historical and current examples. Both are relevant. Many of the historical examples continue until the present, at least in some parts of the world. Even where they do not, they demonstrate the historical depth of male disadvantage — that it is nothing new. Of primary interest, however, is the persistence of male disadvantage, or the development of new forms of disadvantage, and thus the current examples are crucial.

The incidence of male disadvantage varies not only from time to time, but also from place to place. There is considerable variation geographically. The disadvantages that males experience in some places are not experienced by males in all places. The same, of course, is true of female disadvantages, and thus those feminists who deny the existence of the second sexism should be careful about dismissing the significance of male disadvantage on the grounds that they are not experienced by all males in all times and places. The geographical and historical variation does not mean that the disadvantages are any less real or serious for those who experience them.

For the most part, my account of male disadvantage is general. That is to say, I describe laws, trends, quantitative data and common practices. Sometimes, however, I illustrate a point with an example about a specific person. I do this rarely and my argument does not rest on such specifics. The specific cases are illustrations of more widespread trends. I am thus not vulnerable to the charge of arguing by means of anecdote.

Although my aim in this chapter is to present only examples of male disadvantage, it should be clear, as I present these examples, that some of them are also the products of discrimination. However, the arguments for the claim that they are instances of wrongful discrimination will only be presented in subsequent chapters. Other examples I shall present, although clearly instances of disadvantage are not clearly examples of discrimination. I raise them nonetheless. One reason for this is that they parallel some forms of female disadvantage that feminists cite as instances of sexism. Thus I shall argue that either the relevant male disadvantages are instances of sexism or the comparable female disadvantages are not.

Conscription and Combat

Perhaps the most obvious example of male disadvantage is the long history of social and legal pressures on men, but not on women, to enter the military and to fight in war, thereby risking their lives and bodily and psychological health. Where the pressure to join the military has taken the form of conscription, the costs of avoidance have been self-imposed exile, imprisonment, physical assault or, in the most extreme circumstances, execution.1 Millions of men have been conscripted and forced into battle. Others have been press-ganged into naval service. While conscription has been abolished in an increasing number of countries — at least for now — it is still employed, in one form or another, in over 80 countries.2 These include many developed liberal democracies, where the legal barriers to the advancement of women have (almost) all been broken down.

In those times and places where the pressures on men to join the military have been social rather than legal, the costs of not enlisting have been either shame or ostracism. It may be hard for people in contemporary western societies to understand how powerful those forces have been in other contexts. However, young men, and even boys, have felt, and been made to feel, that their manhood is impugned if they fail to enlist. In other words, they would be cowards if they failed to respond to the call to arms. Women, oblivious to their own privilege in being exempt from such pressures and expectations, have sometimes taken a lead in shaming men who they thought should already have volunteered.

One particularly graphic example of this is the campaign, during the First World War, of British women distributing white feathers — a symbol of cowardice — to young men who were not in uniform.3 These were distributed even to adolescent boys who were technically too young to register.4 One boy, Frederick Broome, who had succeeded in enlisting at age 15, fought in battle, was returned to England in a febrile state and then discharged at the insistence of his father, who produced his birth certificate to convince the authorities. Then, while walking over a bridge in town, then age 16, young Frederick was accosted by four girls who gave him three white feathers. He later recalled as follows:

Even in those few societies where women have been conscripted, they have almost invariably been treated more leniently. Thus, Israel, one of the few contemporary states (and perhaps the only liberal democratic state) currently to conscript women, is far less demanding of women than it is of men. Women are conscripted for under two years and men for a full three years.6 While men serve in the reserves until age 54, women serve only until age 24.7 Moreover, married women but not married men are exempt. Women are also much more likely to be exempt on other grounds (such as religious commitments).8 Most important of all, women are not forced into combat and are thereby spared the worst of military life.9 Indeed, they are largely placed in jobs that “free up” more men for combat.

Some have noted, quite correctly, that the definition of “combat” often changes, with the result that although women are often formally kept from combat conditions, they are sometimes effectively engaged in risky combat activity.10 This is most pronounced in the case of the United States military where, de facto even though not de jure, women are increasingly in conditions where they come under enemy fire. Kingsley Browne acknowledges that these female soldiers are “in combat” in the sense that they face “combat risks” or are “in harm’s way.” However, he suggests that these women are not “in combat” in another, narrower sense which refers to “seeking out the enemy and closing with him for purposes of killing him.”11 In other words, the difference between being “in harm’s way” and “in combat” (in the narrow sense) is the difference between hoping but failing to avoid contact with the enemy and seeking out such contact and engaging with the enemy. Moreover, it remains true that in those relatively few situations, both historically and geographically, in which women are permitted to take roles that expose them to greater risk, it is a result of their choice rather than coercion. Even then women are usually kept, insofar as possible, from the worst combat situations.

Others have noted that the exclusion of women from combat roles has not resulted in universal protection for women in times of war. Where wars are fought on home territory, women are regularly amongst the casualties of the combat. It remains true, however, that such scenarios are viewed by societies as being a deviation from the “ideal” conflict in which (male) combatants fight at a distance from the women and children whom they are supposed to be protecting. A society attempts to protect its own women but not its men from the life-threatening risks of war.

Nor should we forget just how terrible combat is. The conditions can be appalling. Consider, for example, the conditions faced by the English troops awaiting the battle of Agincourt on October 25, 1415:

Nor is diarrhea a necessary condition for these excremental indignities:

Once battle begins so do the casualties.14 Millions of men have been killed in combat. They have been clubbed with various instruments, decapitated with swords and cannonballs, hacked with axes, penetrated in every part of the body — the head, chest, abdomen, genitals and limbs — by arrows, bullets and shrapnel — and blown to smithereens.15 They have been poisoned with gas, burned alive, crashed to their deaths in aircraft, drowned and hemorrhaged internally from the pressure of blasts.16 Some die instantly. Others have bled to death, succumbed to infections or otherwise perished from their wounds over periods of varying duration. Some mortally wounded have died slowly on the battlefield because timely evacuation for medical treatment was impossible.

Not all casualties are fatal. Some are relatively mild, but nonetheless a disadvantage relative to women, who were spared such injuries by being exempt from combat. Serious injuries, however, are extremely common.17 Men have lost limbs, jaws, noses, ears and eyes. They have been blinded, deafened, paralyzed and disfigured in innumerable ways. Nor are all the wounds physical. The trauma of combat, being injured, witnessing the gruesome deaths and wounds of comrades, and even inflicting such on enemies, can readily cause psychological trauma.18 Soldiers can be haunted for decades by their combat experiences, impacting negatively on their lives in myriad ways.

The horrors of war are such that many soldiers — even those who volunteered, but more especially conscripts — would much rather leave battle than stay. The pressures against desertion are partially social. Men, if they are to save face, must act bravely and “honorably.” But these pressures are insufficient to keep all men in rank, and thus steep penalties have been imposed for those who seek to hold back or run away. Deserters are regularly imprisoned but other penalties have included branding.19 Deserters have often been executed, either summarily on the spot or following a court martial.20 Among those who were executed for desertion are those who would today, at least in some societies, be recognized as having post-traumatic stress disorder.21 However, there are still cases, even in enlightened societies, where the military is insufficiently attentive to the psychological stresses of combat. In 2003 an American soldier, on his second night in Iraq, saw an Iraqi who had been cut in half by machine-gun fire. The soldier vomited and “shook for hours. His head pounded and his chest hurt.”22 “When he informed his superior that he was having a panic attack and needed to see someone,” he said he “was given two sleeping pills and told to go away.”23 Two days later he was shipped back to the United States and then charged with cowardice. “Coward is a pretty big stigma to carry around,” he said.24 Eventually all charges against him were dropped,25 but not before causing him a great deal of distress.

Other soldiers, wishing to avoid both continued combat or the punishments for deserting, have feigned psychiatric illness, while others have resorted to self-mutilation, rendering themselves unfit for continued service.26 Some are so desperate that they take their own lives.27

Some soldiers become prisoners of war. Although there are now conventions governing the treatment of prisoners, these are relatively new and even now are frequently breached. All prisoners of war are, by definition, prisoners and suffer the hardships that come with imprisonment. Some have been beaten, tortured, starved, put to hard labor. Some are executed.

Having fought, often unwillingly and under threat of severe punishment for refusing, surviving soldiers return home. While a hero’s welcome sometimes awaits them, this does not last as long as the injuries many of them have suffered.28 Their initial reception by civilian society is frequently less glorious. They can be feared because of how war has brutalized them.29 They may even be met with hostility where the war in which they fought has become unpopular.30 Indeed, they are sometimes rejected even before returning from such wars. For example, as the Vietnam War become more unpopular in the United States, “it became increasingly common for girlfriends, fiancées, and even wives to dump the soldiers who depended on them.”31

Not all men who are conscripted see combat, but conscription even in the absence of combat is a significant disadvantage. Careers are interrupted. Conscripts are separated from their families. They are subjected to serious invasions of privacy, restrictions on freedom, demeaning treatment and harsh discipline.32 Even today, in the Russian army for example, an “abusive system of discipline known as dedovshchina” is practiced.33 Thousands of cases are reported every year and a number of soldiers die each year as a result of this discipline.34 Hundreds take their own lives.35

Violence

Combat is by no means the only context in which men are the victims of violence. Indeed, with two exceptions, men are much more likely than women to be the targets of aggression and violence.36

The first exception is sexual assault. Although, as I shall show later, the incidence of sexual assault of males is significantly underestimated and taken insufficiently seriously, it is the case that women are more frequently the victims of sexual assault.

The second exception is one kind of domestic violence, but this is exceptional in an unusual way. In its spousal or “intimate partner” form,37 the phrase “domestic violence” is routinely understood to refer to the violence husbands or boyfriends inflict on wives or girlfriends. The general perception is that spousal violence is almost exclusively the violent treatment of women by their husbands, boyfriends or other male partners. However, this perception is mistaken. Many studies have shown that wives use violence against their husbands at least as much as husbands use violence against their wives,38 Given how unexpected such findings are to many people, at least one well-known author (who shared the prevailing prejudices prior to his quantitative research) examined the data in multiple ways in order to determine whether these could be reconciled with common views.39 On almost every score, women were as violent as men. It was found that half the violence is mutual, and in the remaining half there were an equal number of female and male aggressors.40 When a distinction was drawn between “normal violence” (pushing, shoving, slapping and throwing things) and “severe violence” (kicking, biting, punching, hitting with an object, “beating up” and attacking the spouse with a knife or gun), the rate of mutual violence dropped to a third, the rate of violence by only the husband remained the same but the rate of violence by only the wife increased.41 Wives have been shown to initiate violence as often as husbands do.42 At least some studies have suggested that there is a higher rate of wives assaulting husbands than husbands assaulting wives,43 and most studies of dating violence show higher rates of female-inflicted violence.44 It is thus not the case, as some have suggested, that female violence against intimate partners is usually in self-defense.

Research findings on the effects of spousal violence are mixed. Some have found that husbands inflict more damage on wives than wives do on husbands.45 It has been suggested that this is because husbands are generally bigger and stronger than their wives.46 However, other studies have found that wives inflict more damage on husbands.47 If weapons are used, the smaller size of women would make no difference to their capacity to cause injury. Yet other studies have found no difference in the severity of injury caused by male and female partners.48

Thus spousal violence is an exception to the trend that men are at greater risk of being the victims of violence, not because men are at lesser risk but because they are at comparable risk. However, the mistaken perception that wives do not batter husbands itself causes further disadvantage to males. Abused men are taken less seriously than abused women when they complain of abuse or seek help. There are also fewer resources to aid abused men.

With the exception of sexual violence and intimate partner violence, males are more likely than females to be the victims of violence. Both men and women have been shown, in a majority of experimental studies, to behave more aggressively against men than toward women.49 Outside the laboratory, men are also more often the victims of violence. This is true in a variety of contexts. Consider first violent crime. Data from the USA, for example, shows that nearly double the number of men as women are the victims of aggravated assault and more than three times more men than women are murdered.50 Statistics from England and Wales show a similar phenomenon there. During the 2008–2009 year, men “were twice as likely as women to have been victims of violence.”51 Young men, aged 16 to 24 were particularly at risk. Thirteen percent of them had been the victims of violent crime, compared with 3% of all adults.

In cases of conflict, men, even when they are not combatants, suffer more violence. For example, the overwhelming majority of deaths during the Belgian “rubber terror” in the Congo were males. Although there is apparently no direct evidence of the numbers killed, the subsequent significant demographic imbalance between the number of adult males and females in the population at the end of this period reveals that it was primarily male lives that were taken.52

Men were also the majority of victims of the Stalinist purges. Examining data from the Soviet census of January 1959, Robert Conquest concluded that although the casualties of war explain some of the sex imbalance in the population, the more significant imbalances were in older age cohorts that were less affected by combat losses in the Second World War and more affected by the purges. Thus, in the 55–59 age group, only 33% of the population was male. In the adjacent age cohorts, the proportions are very similar. About 38% of 40- to 54-year-olds were male, and nearly 35% of 60- to 69-year-olds were male.53

In South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that the overwhelming majority of victims of gross violations of human rights — killing, torture, abduction and severe ill treatment — during the apartheid years (at the hands of both the government and its opponents) were males.54 Testimony received by the Commission suggests that the number of men who died was six times that of women. Non-fatal gross violations of rights were inflicted on more than twice the number of men as women.55 Nor can the Commission be accused of having ignored women and their testimony. The majority of the Commission’s deponents (55.3%) were female,56 and so sensitive was the Commission to the relatively small proportion of women amongst the victims of the most severe violations that it held a special hearing on women.57

In the Kosovo conflict of 1998–1989, according to one study, 90% of the war-related deaths were of men, and men constituted 96% of people reported missing.58 According to the report of the Organization of Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Kosovo Verification Mission, “young men were the group that was by far the most targeted in the conflict in Kosovo.”59 While women and girls constituted the majority of rape victims, men and boys were tortured and killed in much greater numbers.

These are but a few recent examples, in the long history of human violence, in which males have been the primary victims of mass murder and other serious human rights violations.60

Corporal Punishment

One category of violence that merits separate attention is corporal punishment, the punitive infliction of pain on the body (by means of flogging, caning, beating or smacking, for example). This is because, unlike violent crime, which is by definition illegal, and much violence inflicted on non-combatants in times of conflict, which is often a breach of either law or local or international norms, corporal punishment is either imposed by the law or it is legally and socially permitted, if not encouraged.

Although corporal punishment has been inflicted on both males and females, it has been imposed, especially but not only in recent times, on males much more readily and severely than on females.61 Distinct double standards exist.

One context in which corporal punishment has been inflicted — and still is inflicted in some countries — is the military. Because, as we have seen, the military has traditionally been an almost exclusively male preserve, females have been spared the brutal physical punishment, often for the most trivial of infractions, that has been inflicted on males in the military. Thousands of soldiers and sailors have been flogged. In the US Navy, for example, nearly 6000 floggings were inflicted in the period 1846–1847.62 In any given flogging up to hundreds of lashes would be inflicted on a single man. The cat-o’-nine-tails, a whip made of “nine small, hard, twisted pieces of cotton or flax cord, with three knots in each, fixed to a short, thick rope handle,”63 was used on the bare back, while the sailor on whom it was inflicted was tied with his arms elevated above his head. This punishment, which was administered in the presence of everybody on board, flayed the skin on the back and often also caused anterior damage as the whip curled round to the front of the sailor’s body. Boy sailors were made to “kiss the gunner’s daughter” — that is they were tied in a bending position, lengthways across the barrel of a cannon and then flogged on the (often naked) buttocks. Another penalty to which sailors were subjected was keelhauling,64 in which a man was tied to a rope and dragged under a ship, from one side to the other. In this process the barnacle encrusted keel lacerated his skin. When hauled too slowly men drowned. In the nineteenth-century Russian army blows “from the officers, flogging with birch rods and with sticks, for the slightest fault, were normal affairs.”65 In contemporary Singapore, conscripts are caned (although the frequency is not known).66 These are but a few examples drawn from many centuries and hundreds of countries in which men have been subject to harsh corporal punishment in the military.

Although corporal punishment is a judicially inflicted punishment in many fewer countries now than earlier, there are still over 30 countries in which the courts sentence people to corporal punishment.67 In the overwhelming majority of these countries, this punishment is reserved for males and may not be inflicted on females. This double standard was also the norm in those countries that previously inflicted judicial punishment but no longer do.68

While the details of how the punishment is inflicted vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, judicial corporal punishment tends to be extremely severe. In Singapore, for example, the man is brought into the caning room, stripped naked and bound to a trestle. Protective material is placed over the kidney area to prevent organ damage in the event of a misplaced blow, but the buttocks are left exposed. The caning officers are powerful young men who are legally required to put their fullest force into each strike (a term I think preferable to the ambiguous, but commonly used “stroke”). The strikes are delivered with a rattan cane. The number of blows depends on the sentence, but the maximum is 24 (per offense) for adults and 10 for juveniles. The pain has been described as “beyond description,” “stronger than excruciating” and “unbearable.”69 The blows draw blood and, if a sufficient number are delivered, the skin becomes lacerated, leaving open wounds in which the flesh is exposed. Permanent scarring is common. The number of caning sentences in Singapore has steadily increased over the years and now stands at over 6000 per year.70 The Singapore Criminal Procedure Code specifically forbids the infliction of a caning on women,71 which is also the case in most other countries where judicial corporal punishment is inflicted. Even where women are not exempt, the punishment is much less severe. Males are therefore at a disadvantage.

Many jurisdictions that no longer impose judicial corporal punishment still permit it in schools. Where it is (or has been) permitted in schools, it is often the case that only boys may be hit — that the corporal punishment of girls is prohibited.72 This is true even in co-educational schools. In other words, if a boy and a girl in the same class commit the same offense, the boy may be subjected to corporal punishment, but the girl is treated more mildly. Indeed, a boy might be caned for a minor offense, while the girl is exempt even if she commits a serious wrongdoing. While the canings of boys is sometimes done in private, it is also often done in front of the class or even the whole school.73 Thus a boy might be subjected to the humiliation of being caned in front of other children — including those (that is, girls) who are immune from that punishment. In one case a boy “was caned for sitting on the grass during break with his girl-friend’s head on his lap.”74 This punishment was inflicted in the presence of the girlfriend, who was not caned even though it was her head that was in the boy’s lap.75

As is the case with judicial corporal punishment, the way in which school corporal punishment is inflicted varies. The sadism in the following account of corporal punishment in a boys’ boarding school, although not universal, has also not been uncommon:

While such treatment has sometimes been inflicted on girls, there have been very many places where it has been inconceivable to treat girls in this way, while it has been entirely normal and common to inflict such punishment on boys. I know of no places where the reverse has been true.

Where it is legally permissible to hit both boys and girls, there are nonetheless many disparities. Boys are hit much more often than girls.79 Boys are often hit for more trivial offenses than girls. Among the very many trivial offenses (or “offenses”) for which boys have been caned are: “not writing down homework; …for being offside in a soccer match; for losing a rugby match; for not batting properly in a cricket match”;80 for not wearing the correct uniform; for running in the corridor;81 “for stupidity”;82 for spelling and mathematical mistakes;83 “for forgetting to change into house-shoes at six o’clock”;84 and for being a member of a class in which a wrongdoer had not been individually identified.85

There are also various other disparities — either matters of convention or of law. Thus, boys are often hit with a more severe implement — a cane instead of a slipper, for example. Sometimes the site on the body where the punishment is inflicted differs, boys suffering the more degrading posture of bending over and being hit on the buttocks — in some cases naked buttocks86 — while girls are hit instead on the palms of their hands. Sometimes there are prohibitions on male teachers hitting female students but there are never, or almost never, parallel prohibitions on female teachers hitting male students.87

There are a small but increasing number of countries that prohibit all corporal punishment, including that inflicted by parents on their children. In most, countries, however, physical punishment of children by their parents is still permitted. Where parents do hit their children, both mothers and fathers are more likely to hit sons than daughters.88

To emphasize, it is not my claim that girls and women have never been subject to corporal punishment. Nor am I denying that some females have been subject to physical punishment that is as severe or degrading as that inflicted on any male. Instead my claim is that in general, corporal punishment has been inflicted much more often on males and has tended, in many contexts, to be inflicted more severely on males, while the reverse has not been true.

Sexual Assault

Although much sexual assault is violent, not all of it is. Fondling of genitals (without consent), for example, need not be violent or done under the threat of violence, even though it sometimes is. This is one reason to examine sexual assault separately from violence, which was discussed before.

The other reason is that male disadvantage in the realm of sexual assault is of a distinct kind. Although most victims of violence are males, females constitute the majority of victims of sexual assault, whether violent or otherwise. The greater likelihood of being sexually assaulted is a disadvantage of being female. However, males experience many unrecognized or under-recognized disadvantages pertaining to sexual assault. In general the problem can be characterized as a failure to take sexual assault of males as seriously as sexual assault of females.

In one illuminating study, the male and female experimental subjects were told that they were participating in a study on “Legal Decision Making.”89 They were told that the aim of the study was “concerned with the extent to which jury decision making in actual trials is based on the nature and strength of the evidence presented.”90 They were then given a detailed description of what the experimental subjects were told was a real case. The case concerned a hitchhiking 20-year-old college student who was picked up by two people who later pulled off the road in a deserted area, pulled a gun and forced the student to disrobe and then engage in mutual oral–genital sexual activity. The student was then left in a field. The assailants were later arrested and a gun found in their car. They were arrested and charged with rape. At trial they acknowledged that the sexual activity had occurred, but claimed it was consensual.

Unbeknownst to the experimental subjects, they were actually randomized to four different versions of the case. All details of the case, except the names of the assailants and victim, remained the same in each version. The effect of the variation in the names was to create four different permutations of the assailants’ and victim’s sex: male–female, male–male, female–female and female–male.

The experimental subjects were asked to complete a “Juror Questionnaire.” These questions concerned the innocence or guilt of the defendants, the recommended sentence, the likelihood that the victim was forced, the likelihood that the victim encouraged or initiated the sexual activity, how pleasurable the incident was for the defendants and the victim and how personally responsible the victim was for the sexual episode.

While almost all subjects judged the defendants guilty, the “likelihood that the victim was forced to engage in the sex acts… was perceived as higher when the victim was female” and the “highest likelihood of victim encouragement of the acts was attributed when the victim was male and the assailants female.”91 Victim stress was judged to be least when the victim was male and the assailants female, and greatest when there was a female victim (of either males or females).92 Male victims were also judged to have derived more pleasure than female victims.93 Significantly longer sentences were recommended when the defendants were male than when they were female.94

These effects were more pronounced in male than in female subjects — a matter to which I shall return in the next chapter — but the study still suggests that both males and females are less sympathetic to male victims of sexual assault than they are to female victims of such assault.95 Male victims of sexual assault are disadvantaged by this phenomenon, which also manifests outside the laboratory.

Nor is it only the lay population that takes sexual assault less seriously when the victims are male. One study showed that clinical psychologists were more likely to hypothesize sexual assault in females than males.96 In this study, clinical psychologists were given a “detailed summary of an adult client which incorporated a number of indicators that the client had been sexually abused.”97 In half the cases, the client was presented as male and in half as female. All other details of the case were the same, yet the clinical psychologists were twice as likely to hypothesize that female clients had been sexually abused.98

It is widely recognized that sexual assault in general is under-reported. This problem is particularly acute when the victims are males. Sexual assaults upon boys are less likely to be reported than are those upon girls.99 It is unclear, however, what the ratio of abused girls and boys is. Some say it is as much as 9 : 1, while others say that girls are abused at only a slightly higher rate than boys.100 Adult males are also less likely than women to report being sexually assaulted.101 The under-reporting of sexual assault on males and the resultant misperception of the ratio of male to female victims may partially explain why people are less sympathetic to male victims. Because the phenomenon is less in the public consciousness it is less likely to be taken seriously. However, the reverse causal relationship is arguably greater: sexual assault on males is less likely to be reported in part because people are less likely to believe the report. There are other reasons too. Some of these have to do with the male gender role and these will be discussed in the next chapter.

There is some evidence that males are “more likely to be victims of multiple assailants, to sustain more physical trauma and to be held captive longer than female victims.”102 Their sexual identity is also threatened, irrespective of whether the assailant is male103 or female,104 although the experience tends to be worse when the assailant is male. Lest it be thought, in keeping with popular wisdom, that sexual assault of males by females is extremely rare, it should be said that it is actually not as uncommon as is generally thought.105 It is unclear what exactly the rate of female abuse of males is. The scant existent data are very variable. A very small minority of studies have found that females are the perpetrators in no more than 2% of cases of sexual abuse of males.106 An equally small number of studies put the rate as high as 60%.107 Most studies, however, have found that the rate of abuse by females lies between the low and high rates just mentioned, with many studies finding the rate to be between a third and just under a half of all cases.108 Given the under-reporting of sexual assault on males we cannot presume that the current rate of convictions is any indication of the actual rate. Indeed, there is some reason to think that the under-reporting of sexual assault on males may be particularly pronounced where the perpetrators are female. This is partly because of widespread incredulity that women, with a few highly aberrational exceptions, are capable of child sexual abuse.109

Both females and males can exhibit physiological sexual arousal without corresponding psychological arousal.110 Thus both males and females can be physiologically aroused while being traumatized during and after a sexual assault or rape. Ignorance about this disjunction of physiological and psychological arousal (and ignorance about the disjunction between arousal of any kind and consent) can heighten trauma, leading victims who were physiologically aroused to be confused about whether they really were victims — or whether they really wanted the sexual experience. This effect is likely to be greater in males, perhaps in part because their physiological arousal is more apparent both to the assailant and to themselves.111 Those heterosexual males who are victims of sexual assault by other males may be led, on account of their tumescent response, to bewilderment about their sexual orientation.

One context where sexual assault on males has received relatively more attention is that of incarceration. Although both females and males are subject to sexual assault in prisons, jails and other detention facilities, there are more male victims. This is partly a consequence of males constituting a disproportionate share of the prison population. However, there is also evidence that the rate of sexual abuse of male prisoners is higher. One study comparing sexual coercion of men and women in a Midwestern state prison system in the United States found that the sexual coercion incidence rate for males was 22%, while for females it was 7%.112 It is also noteworthy that when the sexual assailant is a fellow prisoner, males are more likely than females to be infected by HIV as a result of being raped.

Very little has been done about this problem. In 2003 the United States passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act, one of the provisions of which was to establish the Prison Rape Elimination Commission, which monitors sexual assault statistics in United States detention facilities. It is unclear whether either the Act or the Commission has succeeded in reducing the numbers of sexual assaults in prison, but the mere existence of these initiatives is an advance over most other states, where the problem remains unaddressed. Indeed, in some parts of the world, rape is condoned if not actually approved as an act of torture.113

If we turn from the penal system to the criminal law, we find that there are other disadvantages to being male. Historically, rape has been defined in such a way that only females can be the victims of rape and males the only perpetrators of it. In some places, there is no comparable crime of which males could be the victims. This is true in China (excluding Hong Kong), where Article 236 of the Penal Code prohibits rape of women and sexual intercourse with underage girls, but has no provisions to prohibit comparable acts against men.114 In other places, anal penetration of a man by a man is criminalized, but in many of those jurisdictions no distinction is drawn between consensual and non-consensual sodomy, which suggests that the law’s concern is not with protecting males from rape but rather with prohibiting a certain kind of sexual activity, irrespective of whether the parties to it are consenting. In other jurisdictions a distinction is drawn between consensual and non-consensual sodomy, with only the latter being criminalized. However, the penalty for sodomy of a man without his consent is sometimes less severe than the penalty for rape of a female. This is the case in Japan, for example, where the minimum penalty for forced “carnal knowledge of a woman or a girl” is more severe than the penalty for any sexual crime that can be committed against a male.115

In a few countries, primarily liberal democracies, the definition of rape has been broadened to include the possibility that males can be raped. The State of Michigan in the United States of America was an early jurisdiction to effect such a change116 — in the mid-1970s. A number of other jurisdictions, both within the United States and elsewhere, have followed in making such a change. In some places, the reform has been effected only very recently. In South Africa the relevant Act was passed in 2007,117 while in Scotland the change was made in 2009.118

Even where the law has been reformed to recognize that males can be raped, the reforms often fail to achieve full gender neutrality. Consider England, for example. Despite recent advances in sexual offenses law, English law still treats penetration by penis of vagina, anus or mouth as a necessary condition for rape.119 Thus while the law now recognizes that males can be victims of rape by other men, it still does not recognize that females can be perpetrators of rape against males. Females can only be charged with other sexual offenses against men and boys. While some of these offenses could incur the same penalty as that for rape (namely, life imprisonment), other ways in which a woman could sexually assault a male incur lesser penalties. A man’s penetrating a woman with his penis seems to be judged worse than what one would think is the equivalent offense committed by females on males — namely penile envelopment by vagina. Thus if a woman stimulates an unconscious or bound man and then has intercourse with him, she is liable only to a lesser penalty. In other words if the owner of a penis inserts it in a vagina without the consent of the woman whose vagina it is, he is committing rape and he is liable to life imprisonment, whereas if a woman inserts that penis into her vagina without the man’s consent, she is guilty only of a lesser crime.120

Finally, statutory rape of boys by older females (or the equivalent of statutory rape where it is believed that females cannot rape males) is taken less seriously than when the sex of victim and assailant are reversed. There is a widespread belief that boys “are more likely than girls to be active collaborators rather than unwilling recipients of adult sexual attentions.”121 Now whether or not this belief is true, the whole point of making sex with minors a statutory offense is that minors are deemed not to have the capacity to consent. Willingness is thus not exculpatory. And insofar as a child’s willingness mitigates the wrong, it should have equal mitigating force, irrespective of whether the willing party is a boy or a girl. In other words, even if there are more willing and fewer unwilling boys, they should be treated like willing and unwilling girls respectively.

Yet it seems that perceptions about the relative rates of willingness lead to male disadvantage. Because female abuse of boys is less likely to be reported, boys are less protected (which matters even if they do not want the protection). Sometimes, the blame is actually put on the boy rather than the adult woman. In one case, for example, a 10-year-old boy was repeatedly sexually assaulted by an older woman who looked after him when his parents were out of town or out for the evening. Eventually he plucked up the courage to tell his parents. In response, his father whipped him. He was then taken to a priest and then a psychiatrist, both of whom referred to his “shameful conduct.”122

We do not know the full extent to which males are the victims of sexual assault. There has been far too little academic attention to this issue, with the possible exception of prison rape, and the data we have are conflicting. It is very likely, however, given attitudes to sexual assault on males, and males’ greater reluctance to report their having been sexually assaulted, that the problem is bigger than we currently think.

Circumcision

In many African countries as well as in a few countries on other continents, female genital cutting is performed on women and girls. Although this practice is often referred to as female circumcision, this designation is misleading. As usually practiced, female genital cutting is a much more radical procedure than male circumcision. It is involves excision of part or all of the clitoris, and sometimes also the labia majori and minori. In the most extreme cases, which are by no means rare, the girl or woman is then infibulated — that is, what remains of her genitalia are sewed up, leaving only a tiny hole for voiding urine and menstrual blood. Girls who are subject to these procedures are disadvantaged. They endure considerable pain during and after the procedure. The risks of infection are high. There is obvious damage to the genitalia without any (known) medical benefit. Longer-term sequelae include limitation or obliteration of sexual pleasure and, in the more severe cases, even pain during intercourse. For these reasons, female genital cutting has rightly been condemned. In some places it has been banned, although in countries where the practice has been widespread such bans have often proven ineffective.

In the developed world, the practice is largely unknown. The exceptions are among immigrants who moved from societies where female genital cutting is practiced. Indeed, some western countries have introduced bans in order to deter the practice in such immigrant communities.

These same western societies permit circumcision of male infants. This is not problematic in itself. It is possible, without inconsistency, to disapprove of female genital cutting of the above kinds, while also approving, or at least tolerating, circumcision of males. This is because it is possible to think that the more severe procedure is unacceptable while the less severe procedure is acceptable.

Not all opponents of female genital cutting think that male circumcision is permissible. Some regard any form of genital alteration, at least of a minor, to be wrong unless it is done for a clear medical purpose. Such people tend to think that circumcision is medically indicated only rarely — indeed much more rarely than is usually thought. They argue that removal of the foreskin is mutilation and that it serves no medical purpose.

Contrary to this view, there is good reason to think that circumcision of boys is not morally wrong. I shall not provide a comprehensive argument for this claim here. One important reason for this is that it is not central to the thesis of this book — namely, establishing that there is a second sexism. If I am mistaken, and circumcision of boys is wrong, then this is a further way in which males are the victims of wrongful discrimination (in those places where female genital cutting is not practiced). That said, it is important to note when practices that may appear to be discriminatory are not in fact so. Thus I shall provide an overview of the argument that (male) circumcision per se is not wrong. Those who want further details of the argument can consult papers that focus specifically on this topic.123

Central to many arguments against circumcision is that it mutilates. However, the word “mutilation” can be used in different senses and these are not usually differentiated. In a descriptive sense it refers to the removal of part of the body. Alternatively, it can be used in an evaluative sense to refer to a wrongful removal of part of the body. If the word is used in the first sense then circumcision obviously constitutes mutilation, but it does not follow that it is wrong. This is because it is often necessary to remove part of the body, even healthy tissue, in order to advance the patient’s interests. Consider, for example, the removal of an entire breast on account of a malignant lump within it. While this is disfiguring, it does not follow that it is wrong.124

If “mutilation” is used in the evaluative sense then one cannot designate circumcision as mutilation unless one establishes that it is not in the interest of the child who is circumcised. It is hard to show that circumcision does violate a boy’s interests. This is because there is some evidence of modest medical benefits that could reasonably be thought to outweigh the even more modest costs and risks.

At least until recently, the benefits were not known to be sufficiently marked that one could claim with confidence that routine circumcision of male infants was medically indicated. However, they were sufficiently notable that one could not claim neonatal circumcision to be medically contra-indicated. In the last few years, the case for circumcision has become a little stronger, at least in some contexts. A number of studies have demonstrated that circumcision has a protective effect against HIV infection.125 So clear was the evidence and so marked was the effect that the studies had to be ended early on ethical grounds: it was thought unacceptable to continue withholding the circumcision option to the control arm of each study. This finding does not entail, as some people think it does, that circumcision should be advocated as a public health measure. One reason for this is that the protective effects of circumcision might be offset by more risky behavior if people erroneously think that circumcision prevents rather than merely lowers the risk of contracting HIV. Nevertheless, the protective effect of circumcision does provide parents seeking to give their child the best chance in life some extra reason to circumcise their sons. Some might suggest that circumcision of children is still wrong because those children could decide, on reaching majority, whether or not they want to be circumcised. The primary problem with that argument is that the negative aspects of circumcision are minimized when performed in the neonatal period. Moreover, some of the benefits of circumcision occur in infancy and childhood.

This is not to deny that there is any disadvantage in circumcision. However, unlike the other disadvantages I have discussed so far, which I shall later show involve wrongful discrimination, the disadvantage of circumcision is not, in itself, impermissibly discriminatory. If circumcision has advantages for males and the only way of obtaining these advantages is to experience inevitable but lesser disadvantages, then males are not being wrongfully discriminated against in being circumcised.

That said, however, there are a few significant disadvantages to circumcision that are not inevitable and which do constitute the kind of disadvantage which can plausibly be described as inappropriate discrimination. Consider first circumcision in the western world. When circumcision is performed in this part of the world, it is usually done during the neonatal period. There is a widespread failure to use anaesthetic when a boy is circumcised at this age.

There was a time that this was justified by the belief that neonates were insufficiently neurologically developed to feel pain and thus the use of an anesthetic was thought unnecessary. This view is no longer tenable. Almost every expert in the area now maintains that the capacity for pain is developed quite late during gestation and thus, except in the cases of extremely premature babies, on whom circumcision would not be performed until later anyway, neonates are able to feel pain.126 The removal of the prepuce without the use of anesthetic is a significant hardship. It is also avoidable.127 A topical anesthetic cream is available, and there is no reason to avoid using at least that. This cream is not as effective as a penile dorsal nerve block, which is administered via injection. Obviously an injection involves a moderately greater risk than the use of a cream, but if done by a trained professional seems the right thing to do. When the procedure is performed on older boys or men in the developed world, appropriate anesthetics are used because any risk of anesthetic is more than outweighed by the benefit of not experiencing what would otherwise be quite considerable pain. We should employ the same reasoning in the case of neonates. Although they may not remember the pain later, they experience it intra-operatively, and that is unacceptable.

The equanimity with which infant boys are subjected to painful circumcision stands in contrast, in western societies, to the attitude taken to cutting female genitals. In western societies, where the practice of female genital cutting is not indigenous, there is intolerance not only of the common radical forms of female genital cutting, but also of the mildest forms. This is well illustrated in the United States. A group of immigrant Somalis in the Seattle area, mindful of the new cultural milieu in which they found themselves, but also wanting to preserve their own cultural traditions, sought a compromise. They sought to have their daughters symbolically cut at the Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.128 The proposal was that the prepuce of the clitoris be nicked sufficiently to draw blood. No tissue would be removed and no scarring left. This practice, although far from the form of female genital cutting that takes place in Somalia, would evidently have satisfied at least some members of the Somali community in the Seattle area. The Somalis made it clear that they would have their daughters “circumcised” traditionally, either in Seattle or by sending them back to Somalia for the procedure, if the doctors did not oblige their request. The medical staff agreed to the proposal, which became known as the “Seattle Compromise.”

When news of the compromise became public, the hospital received a barrage of criticism from feminist groups opposed to female genital cutting. One prominent critic was Patricia Schroeder, then a member of the United States House of Representatives, who had worked to enact federal legislation banning female genital cutting. In a letter to the hospital she claimed — evidently incorrectly129 — that the Seattle Compromise would breach that legislation. Doctors also received communications that they described as “hate mail and death threats.”130 In the face of this pressure the hospital announced that it had decided not to perform the procedure. One upshot of this is that whereas the entire foreskin of a male infant may be removed without anesthetic, the much milder procedure of merely drawing blood from the clitoral prepuce has been rendered taboo. This discrepancy was not lost on the Somalis, who, quite reasonably, cannot understand this inconsistency.131

In April 2010 the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) published a policy statement on “Ritual Genital Cutting of Female Minors.”132 The statement noted that a ritual nick

Barely a month later, the AAP, responding to an avalanche of criticism of the sort that thwarted the Seattle Compromise, issued a statement announcing that it had “retired its 2010 policy statement on female genital cutting.”134 The statement, explicitly backtracking, stated that:

Commenting on this, a New York Times editorial described the clitoral nick as “a milder version of mutilation” and contended that “medicalizing violence against women would only legitimize it and undermine the force of the ban.”136 The claim that a mere nick of a girl’s genitals constitutes a form of mutilation, even a milder form, is implausible in its own right, because it eviscerates the word “mutilation” of any meaning. The same may be said of the claim that this harmless procedure is “medicalized violence.” (Do those who pierce their young daughters’ ears also mutilate them? Are ear piercings medicalized violence if they are done under aseptic conditions by medical professionals?)

However, insofar as the much greater intervention that constitutes male circumcision is not deemed mutilation, there is also a consistency problem. It would be similarly inconsistent to describe a clitoral nick as medicalized violence if one fails to offer the same criticism of circumcising boys, especially without anesthesia. Now there are some people, of course, who think that both a clitoral nick and male circumcision are mutilation and medical violence. While they are consistent they are, for the reasons mentioned above, consistently wrong. Theirs is, in any event, a minority view in the United States at present, where the inconsistency prevails in public policy and practice.

Now it might be suggested that the explanation of this inconsistency is that male circumcision is commonplace in the United States and thus culturally familiar, whereas female genital cutting, even of the mildest kind, is culturally foreign to the dominant communities in the United States. This diagnosis is correct, I think. We see here a manifestation of intolerance towards the culturally unfamiliar. However, because the United States is a relatively tolerant country in many other ways, it matters that the intolerance is selective. It is relevant that the prevailing views grant no protection to infant boys against circumcision without anesthesia whereas they are hyper-concerned about the protection of baby girls from milder and less painful genital surgery. Whatever other errors are being made, male babies are disadvantaged relative to baby girls with regard to the infliction of pain upon the genitals.

Male disadvantage is still greater in those parts of the developing world where male circumcision is practiced but female genital cutting is not. Consider, for example, South Africa, where young Xhosa men are circumcised in an initiation ceremony that marks their passage from boyhood to manhood. Anesthetic is not used, in part because the young men are meant to demonstrate their manhood by enduring the pain. Moreover, the procedure is performed in non-sterile conditions. The same blade is often used on multiple men, increasing the risk of transmitting infection from one initiate to the other. It is not uncommon for men to suffer gangrenous damage to their penises, and there are a number of deaths each year.137 Because the Xhosa (and other South Africans) do not perform genital cutting on females, young women are spared the pain and risk of death or genital mutilation to which Xhosa males are subject.

Circumcision has sometimes caused men to be disadvantaged in other ways. Consider, for example, those Jewish males attempting to pass as Christians during the Holocaust. Given that circumcision was practiced exclusively by Jews in the relevant countries at that time, any Jewish man could readily be exposed as a Jew in a way that a Jewess could not.138

Education

Through much of human history girls and women have been educationally disadvantaged. Boys have often been prioritized for education over girls. Sometimes girls have been barred even from primary or secondary education. More often they have been prohibited from attending universities. In some parts of the world girls and women are still significantly disadvantaged educationally. However, there are other parts of the world where, thanks to feminism and advances in the position of girls and women, this is no longer the case. Indeed, it seems that in such places males are now educationally disadvantaged according to some important metrics.

Before this evidence is presented, it should be noted that this is controversial terrain. A so-called “gender war” has been waged over the question of whether it is boys or girls who are now disadvantaged in the United States, for example. Sometimes it has seemed as though the facts were in dispute, and sometimes it has seemed as though the argument has been about the interpretation of the facts. I shall try to map out the issues in an attempt to show what we know and what is in dispute.

The first thing to note is that there are a number of possible competing claims one can make with regard to the question of who is educationally disadvantaged in those countries where the answer is disputed:

(1) Girls suffer all (or almost all) the disadvantages.

(2) Boys suffer all (or almost all) the disadvantages.

(3) Girls suffer some disadvantages and boys suffer others:

(a) All things considered girls are more disadvantaged.

(b) All things considered boys are more disadvantaged.

(c) All things considered, boys and girls are equally disadvantaged, albeit in different ways.

For me to demonstrate that males suffer educational disadvantage, I need show only that (1) is false. In other words, even if (3a) were true — girls are more educationally disadvantaged than males — it would still be the case that boys suffer educational disadvantage. I do not think that (3a) is true in the places where the debate arises. However, if it were, male disadvantage would still be worthy of consideration in just the way that feminists would think that female disadvantage would be worthy of consideration if (3b) is true.

The evidence, as we shall see, makes the stronger interpretation of (1) — that is, (1) without the parenthetical “or almost all” — highly implausible and the weaker version only moderately less so. It really does not seem as though girls suffer all or even almost all the possible disadvantages in the educational realm. (2) is also false. There are at least some disadvantages of being female — arguably enough to make even the weaker interpretation of (2) false.

It is often difficult to know exactly which of the above claims is being made. Consider, for example, two reports commissioned by the American Association of University Women (AAUW) — Shortchanging Girls, Shortchanging America in 1991139 and How Schools Shortchange Girls in 1992.140 These both appear to be making the first claim. Although they mention the occasional male disadvantage, this is almost immediately either qualified or it is argued that it is not a real disadvantage. For example, while the 1992 report concedes that girls outperform boys on tests of verbal ability, it claims that the disparity has “decreased markedly.”141

Christina Hoff Sommers, taking issue with these reports and other claims of female educational disadvantage in the United States, appears to defend (2).142 Her challenge seems to have prompted the AAUW to moderate its position, at least somewhat, and to recognize that both girls and boys suffer disadvantage in schools. The report Beyond the “Gender Wars”: A Conversation about Girls, Boys, and Education thus endorses (3), although it is arguably (3a) rather than (3b) or (3c) that is endorsed.143 For example, this report claims that what looks like a disadvantage to males is “actually much more a race and ethnicity difference.”144

Myra and David Sadker, in their book Failing at Fairness,145 are more explicit in recognizing some male disadvantage, although they too endorse (3a), given that only one chapter in their book is devoted to male disadvantage and that the book’s subtitle is How America’s Schools Cheat Girls.

What are the facts? In the United States, boys drop out of high school at higher rates than girls. This has been true every year since 1977.146 When one looks at individual “race” or ethnic groups, one finds the same trend, even though they are more marked among some groups than others.

Nor is the United States the only country in which boys drop out at higher rates. In Canada the drop-out rates for both males and females have declined, but the rate for females has declined more significantly, and from a lower base. In 1990–1991, 19.2% of boys and 14% of girls dropped out. By 2004–2005, the rates were, respectively, 12.2% and 7.2%. Thus boys are dropping out at nearly twice the rate of girls in the latter period.147 Boys also graduate from high school at lower rates than girls in Chile, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom, among other countries.148

In the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, boys obtain higher mathematics literacy scores than females.149 In these countries boys also score slightly higher than girls on science literacy, although there are more exceptions to this trend — that is to say, quite a few countries where girls outperform boys on science literacy.150 Girls outstrip boys on reading literacy (by a higher margin than boys exceed girls on the other scores).151 Research conducted in North America, Europe and Asia, among other places, tends to indicate that overall females tend to perform academically better than males in childhood, adolescence and adulthood.152

In the United States, a greater proportion of females than males have enrolled in college every year since 1982.153 More women are also graduating from colleges and universities in the United States.154 For the year 2006–2007, women earned 62.2% of associate’s degrees, 57.4% of bachelor’s degrees and 60.6% of master’s degrees. If one excludes non-resident aliens earning degrees, a smaller percentage of whom are women, the proportion would be still higher. These figures are also an increase over those in the 1996–1997 academic year, when females were already earning a majority of these degrees. Women now earn half of all first professional degrees and half of all doctorates. These proportions are increases since the 1996–1997 academic year, when women were still earning only about 40% of these degrees.

If the sexes in these statistics were reversed, feminists would take this to be evidence of overall female disadvantage. Indeed that is exactly what they did in the past, and still do with regard to other parts of the world. However, in those places where males are dropping out in greater numbers and earning fewer degrees than females many feminists have focused instead on other issues, thereby arguing that females are still disadvantaged.

For example, they say that “males receive more teacher attention than do females.”155 Receiving less teacher attention is, of course, a disadvantage, but the question is how this weighs relative to the male disadvantages mentioned above. If we assume that females are indeed receiving less teacher attention, it has not prevented them from enrolling in and graduating from colleges and universities in greater proportions than males. Indeed, if the tables were reversed — if most graduates were boys — and somebody were to object that girls were receiving more teacher attention, most feminists would argue that that is exactly what is required. Students who are doing worse, they would likely say, would require more attention. My aim here is not to deny that restricted teacher attention is a disadvantage. Instead, I mean only to show that it is not a sufficiently powerful consideration to support (1) or (3a) over (3b) or (3c).

It has also been noted that girls’ self-esteem drops from elementary to high school at a greater rate than boys’ self-esteem.156 That too is a disadvantage, but there are a number of reasons for denying that this so vastly outweighs the educational disadvantages of boys as to show that females suffer greater educational disadvantage.

First, the self-esteem problem is only partly an educational disadvantage. Some of the problem does not arise in connection with education, but instead with issues about body image that arise during puberty. Schools can exacerbate or ameliorate these. It is also the case that these issues can impact on education. Nevertheless, they are not fundamentally measurements of educational disadvantage. “Black” girls were found not to have the same self-esteem problems as “white” girls, even though the former performed more poorly academically.

Second, given the fact that girls do better than boys in the ways mentioned above, it may well be that male self-esteem is partly misguided. If we are trying to determine where the educational disadvantage lies, we should put more weight on how well students are actually doing educationally and less weight on how good they feel about how they are doing. It is not that positive self-assessments are unimportant. Instead it is that we should not treat these as decisive in the face of (more) objective evidence about how well the sexes are doing.

In summary, then, a smaller proportion of males than females is succeeding educationally. That is a substantial educational disadvantage, irrespective of whatever educational disadvantages girls suffer.

Family and Other Relationships

Bodily Privacy

The bodily privacy of females is valued more than the bodily privacy of males. In many places and times this imposes a disadvantage on females who are required to cover their bodies more extensively than men are. For example, in some places women are required to cover themselves from head to toe in a burqa, while no comparable restriction is placed on males.

However, the greater value placed on the shielding of the female body from view has some significant disadvantages for males, who are more likely to be subjected by society to unwanted invasions of their bodily privacy. In other words, whereas females are sometimes forced to cover up their bodies, men are sometimes forced to uncover their bodies.

Consider, for example, the differential treatment of male and female prisoners, most especially in the context of cross-gender supervision. Many countries require that prison guards are the same sex as the prisoners they are guarding. There are exceptions to this trend, and the United States is one notable case. Male guards are found in female prisons and female guards are found in male prisons. In some cases, guards who are not of the same sex as the prisoners are restricted from some functions within the prison in order to protect the prisoners from undue invasion of their bodily privacy by guards of the opposite sex. Often these measures do not grant complete protection.

Four kinds of legal challenge have been raised against these arrangements:

(1) Male prisoners have objected to female guards searching their bodies or being able to view them in states of undress.

(2) Female prisoners have objected to male guards searching their bodies or being able to view them in states of undress.

(3) Male guards have objected, on equal opportunity grounds, to being excluded from certain positions or functions in female prisons.

(4) Female guards have objected, on equal opportunity grounds, to being excluded from certain positions and functions in male prisons.

In general the courts in the United States have given much more weight to the privacy interests of female inmates than they have to the privacy interests of male inmates.184 Concomitantly, in balancing privacy interests of prisoners against employment interests of guards, the courts have put greater weight on the interests of female guards relative to male prisoners than they have on the interests of male guards relative to female prisoners. Privacy interests of female prisoners prevail over employment interests of male guards, but employment interests of female guards prevail over privacy interests of male inmates.

For example, when a male prisoner petitioned against the practice of female guards conducting pat-down searches of fully clothed male prisoners, including the groin area, the court ruled against the petitioner,185 yet when female prisoners challenged a policy that permitted male guards to perform clothed pat-down searches, the court ruled in favor of the prisoners.186 Similarly, when male guards appealed a District Court judgment against their complaint of sex discrimination because they were barred from select positions in a women’s prison, the Court of Appeal ruled against them. The court said that excluding male guards was “reasonably necessary to accommodate the privacy interests of the female inmates.”187 However, when female guards had previously lodged the same kind of complaint, the court did not accord much weight to male privacy interests and ruled in favor of the guards.188

In cases where courts have ruled that male guards may continue to supervise female prisoners this is because arrangements have been made to protect the privacy of the prisoners to a considerable degree.189

There have been some exceptional court rulings, where the privacy interests of female prisoners have been treated in the same way as those of male prisoners,190 but there do not seem to be any cases where the privacy interests of female prisoners have been treated less seriously than the same interests of male prisoners. Where the (lower) courts have been as sympathetic to male privacy interests as the courts typically are to female privacy interests, their rulings have been overturned by higher courts.191

It is strikingly clear that male inmates are much more likely to be subjected to cross-gender supervision invasions of their privacy than are female inmates. When they seek injunctive relief or damages from the courts, they are less likely to receive a favorable response from the courts. This is a considerable disadvantage.

Nor does this attitude seem to be localized to the United States, one of the few countries that allows cross-gender prison supervision.192 The “Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners” adopted by the first United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders and subsequently approved by the Economic and Social Council in 1957 and again in 1977, displays a clear gender bias. Rule 53 reads as follows:

In other words, the Rule explicitly prohibits male guards from supervising female inmates, but there is no rule prohibiting female guards from supervising male prisoners.

Nor is it the case that male privacy is valued less only if the males in question are prisoners. Some military personnel undergo SERE training, which is aimed to equip soldiers, who are at high risk of capture by the enemy to survive (if their aircraft is downed or they find themselves otherwise missing in enemy territory), to evade capture, to resist the enemy and to escape if captured. Part of this training can involve techniques for dealing with being searched. The training thus involves strip searches, inspection of the genitalia and body-cavity searches. In the Australian Army, female soldiers perform these searches on male soldiers in the training exercises, but male soldiers do not perform them on female trainees.194

In apartheid-era in South Africa, there were two in-takes of (male) conscripts per year. These inductions were regularly featured on the television news of the government-controlled South African Broadcasting Corporation. The visual footage would show the young conscripts arriving in their civilian clothes, bidding farewell to their families and then being paraded around in their underwear while they were weighed and measured and while they waited for their medical examinations. It is inconceivable that the nightly news would have entered into a changing room of 18-year-old females and filmed them, without their consent, in their bras and panties, and then aired the footage on national television.

Then, consider the configuration of single-sex toilets. Whereas males are provided with urinals, which are relatively exposed, females have stalls. Now, it is true that males also have stalls and thus males are not forced to use urinals. Nevertheless, the space taken up by urinals reduces the availability of stalls and there are social pressures on some males to use the more exposed facilities. Women often claim that because stalls take up more space, the queues for women’s toilets are longer and they are thus disadvantaged. That may be true, but the point to note is that, contrary to what many feminists think, the disadvantages are not all in one direction. Could we imagine, in contemporary western societies, replacing some of the stalls in women’s toilets with more closely spaced, but unpartitioned toilets, à la ancient Rome, in which women could urinate, only entering the stalls if they need to perform other functions?195 While a woman who has to remove her trousers to urinate may be more exposed to other women than a man who has only to unzip his fly, a woman in a dress would be less exposed than the man. Our current practices are so entrenched that people rarely see how odd they are. Men are expected to urinate in the presence of other men, but women are not similarly expected to urinate in the presence of other women.

The different standards of privacy that obtain in male and female public toilets also have a differential impact on the parents of young children. Mothers are able to take both their daughters and young sons to female toilets without intruding excessively on the privacy of other females using public toilets and without exposing their children to the spectacle of women urinating. By contrast, fathers may be able to accompany their sons, but daughters present a greater problem. A father taking his young daughter (of, say, six, seven or eight years of age) to a male toilet will subject other men using the urinals to cross-gender invasions of privacy and expose his daughter to the spectacle of males urinating. Yet fathers caring for their young daughters may not want their daughters to enter (female) toilets unaccompanied by a trusted carer. This presents a problem when the mother, older sister or aunt, for example, is not present.

Life Expectancy

The life expectancy of females exceeds that of males almost everywhere. There are some exceptions. In Kenya, South Africa and Zimbabwe, male life expectancy, although short, is slightly higher than that of females.196 In some other places, such as Nigeria and Pakistan, men and women have roughly the same life expectancy.197 Almost everywhere else, however, females outlive males. In some countries, including some eastern European states, the differential is considerable. In Russia, for example, male life expectancy is 58.7 years, while that of females is 71.8.198 Even in those places where both men and women have long life spans, women’s are even longer. In Japan, for example, the life expectancy of males and females is, respectively, 79.1 and 86.4.199

While female life expectancy has not always been longer than that of males the phenomenon can be traced at least to the early decades of the twentieth century, and at least in some countries.200 For example, in 1908 the life expectancy at birth in Spain was 40.41 for males and 42.27 for females. Australians born in 1921 had a life expectancy of 61.4 years if male and 63.24 years if female. Males born in 1922 in the United Kingdom had a life expectancy of 55.18 years, while females could expect to live for 58.86 years on average. In 1933, males born in the United States had a life expectancy of 59.17 years, in comparison with 62.83 years for females. Although the differential in life expectancy between Russian males and females has increased, it was nonetheless already significant in 1959. In that year females had a life expectancy of 71.14 years, roughly the same as today, whereas the life expectancy for males was 62.84, which is higher than today.201

Older reliable data are harder to obtain, particularly outside of developed countries. Where it exists at all, it is often “fragmentary” or unreliable.202 Nevertheless there is some reason to think that it may not have been uncommon, or at least it may have been more common, for males to outlive females prior to the twentieth century.203 On the other hand, this was not the case everywhere. In the late nineteenth century, the only data from the United States are for Massachusetts and New Hampshire.204 In 1890 the life expectancies there for males and females were 42.5 and 44.46 respectively.205 As far back as 1789, the respective life expectancies were 34.5 and 36.5.206 However, whatever once was the case, it is clear that for at least about a century, and a lot longer in some places, women have been outliving men. Males are thus disadvantaged in this way, and have been for a while.

The difference in male and female life expectancy is explained by more than one factor. Although males may be biologically more susceptible to earlier death, this cannot explain all of the difference in male and female life expectancy. Given the geographic and historical variation, local factors are clearly influencing the extent of the difference between male and female life spans. These factors include the status of women. Where females are treated better — where, for example, there is no widespread female infanticide or the prioritizing of males for food under conditions of scarcity, and where women have access to obstetric care — their chances of survival are obviously higher than they otherwise would be.

However, it is not only female life span that is influenced by how well they are treated. The same is true of male life expectancy. The greater tolerance for, and incidence of lethal violence against males must constitute part of the explanation why males tend not to live as long as females. Not only are more men killed in wars and conflicts, but more males are also murdered, and male lives are more readily sacrificed. This surely contributes to shorter average male lifespan.

In almost all places males are also more likely than females to kill themselves. Throughout the west and in westernized Asian countries, the rate of suicide for males is at least twice that of females,207 and sometimes even higher.208 One notable exception is China, where females (particularly in the rural areas) have a higher suicide rate than males.209

Males also constitute the majority of workplace accident fatalities. In the United States, the fatality rate for men is about ten times that of women.210 Although women account for 43% of hours worked for wages in the United States, they account for only 7% of work fatalities.211 Matters are worse in Canada, where men account for about 95% of workplace fatalities. In that country, the incidence of workplace fatalities for men is about 10.4 per 100 000, whereas the incidence for women is 0.4 per 100 000.212 In Taiwan, males account for about 93% of workplace fatalities.213

Wars, criminal violence, suicide and workplace fatalities are but a few of the factors that contribute to males’ shorter life expectancy. A shorter life span is a disadvantage. While there are a few societies in which females suffer this disadvantage, in most places, and overall, it is women who live longer than men and thus men who are at a disadvantage.

Imprisonment and Capital Punishment

Men are also much more likely than women to be imprisoned or to be subjected to capital punishment. The overwhelming majority of the world’s prison population is male. The same is true of those who are sentenced to death and those who are judicially executed.

In the United States, which has the largest prison population rate214 (and possibly also the largest absolute prison population215) in the world, males constitute about 92% of all prison inmates, while females constitute only about 8%.216 In England and Wales together, which have relatively low imprisonment rates, about 94% of prisoners are male.217 In about 80% of prison systems worldwide, females constitute between 2% and 9% of the total prison population.218 In only 12 systems is the percentage of female prisoners higher than that. Hong Kong is the highest at 22%, followed by Myanmar (18%).219 The world median level is 4.3%.220

Being imprisoned is a serious harm (even when it is deserved). It involves massive restrictions on one’s liberty and, as we have seen, on one’s privacy. One runs a significantly elevated risk of sexual assault, including rape, along with the attendant risks of contracting sexually transmitted diseases. Of chief concern among these is HIV, which can transform a life sentence into a death sentence. This particular problem is especially acute for males, not only because they constitute the vast majority of prisoners but also because they, unlike female inmates, are much more likely to be infected as a consequence of sexual assault by fellow prisoners. Sexual assault by one female of another is less likely to transmit HIV. Of course, female inmates could contract HIV if raped by an HIV-positive male guard. However, in many places the guarding of female prisoners is performed only by other females. In any event, male prisoners can be infected both by male guards and by fellow prisoners.

An even greater proportion of those executed are male. In America, 568 women were executed in the 374 years from 1632 until the end of 2005.221 This constitutes only 2.8% of all executions in America during this period. That is to say, 97.2% of those executed have been male. But this fact fails to capture trends over time. The rate at which women have been executed has actually declined. From 1973 (which marks the reintroduction of the death penalty in the United States after the Supreme Court had terminated it in its previous form in the 1972 decision of Furman v. Georgia) until the end of 2005, women were only 1.1% of all those executed.222 Between 1973 and 1997 the rate was even lower (0.2%), but that seems to be atypical.223 Thus men currently constitute about 98.9% of all those put to death in the United States.

Globally, women may constitute an even smaller proportion of all known executions.224 According to one calculation, less than 1% of all those known to have been executed in recent years are females.225

Some countries explicitly exempt women from capital punishment. This was the case in the Soviet Union by 1991226 and is today the case “in a few countries — mainly those associated with the former Soviet system — Belarus, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, and the Russian Federation.”227 A number of other countries prohibit the execution of pregnant women. While some of those simply treat this as a stay of execution, other countries, Kuwait being one example, “automatically commute the sentence to imprisonment for life.”228

The death penalty has historically been inflicted for a range of crimes. In more oppressive societies, that trend continues. The United States is one of the few liberal democracies to retain capital punishment, which it inflicts only on murderers. While it is not difficult to have sympathy for those executed in oppressive societies for sexual misconduct, drug violations and political opposition, it is very hard to have sympathy for people who commit the sorts of crimes that carry the death penalty in the United States today. Moreover, executions account for an extremely small proportion of all deaths — a drop in the kicked bucket. Nevertheless, execution is a major disadvantage for those subjected to it (even when they do deserve it229). Not only does it cut short the condemned person’s life (as death always does), but the prisoner endures the extreme anxiety and fear of knowing that he will face death at an appointed time. The clock ticks and he, powerless, awaits that awful date.

In Chapter 4 I shall consider the reasons why females constitute such a small proportion of prisoners and of the executed. More specifically, I shall consider whether this is attributable, even in part, to discrimination against males. For now, however, I am only interested in establishing the fact of disadvantage. The above statistics demonstrate as much. Being born male gives one a much higher chance of being incarcerated and of being executed.

Conclusion

In this chapter I have demonstrated that males suffer substantial disadvantage in many important ways. Obviously not every male suffers each of these disadvantages, but it is similarly the case that not every female suffers each of the well-known disadvantages generally suffered by females. For this reason we can conclude that some males are more disadvantaged by their sex than some females are disadvantaged by theirs, even if it is the case that women, in general, are more disadvantaged by their sex than men are by theirs. I am not suggesting that women are in general more disadvantaged. This too depends. There are times when and places where it certainly is the case that they are. However, there are other societies in which the disadvantages of being female are far fewer and less serious. The extent to which males are in general disadvantaged is also not constant. Thus whether males or females suffer more disadvantage in general may vary across space and time.

Even these modest claims, which I shall discuss further in the concluding chapter, are likely to be met with outrage by those who hold less complex views about the distribution of males’ and females’ disadvantage. Such people will be even more resistant to the further claim that at least many of the disadvantages males experience are the products of unfair discrimination, or sexism. My defense of that further claim will be provided in Chapter 4 and, by responding to objections, also in Chapter 5. First, however, there is some preliminary work to be done in understanding how male disadvantage arises and about how we should think about differences between the sexes.