The Second Sexism: Discrimination Against Men and Boys

I have argued that males are the victims of a second sexism — an unrecognized (or, at least, under-recognized) and neglected form of sexism. In this concluding chapter, I take up three resultant questions that arise in at least some people’s minds. The first is whether feminism discriminates against men. My answer is that it need not, but it sometimes does. The second question concerns whether men or women are worse off. My answer is that women have been and continue to be more badly discriminated against than men in many places, but not in all places. The final question concerns what we should do about the second sexism. I suggest that we should take it seriously, and I provide some indication of what we might do to oppose it.

Does Feminism Discriminate against Men?

Sometimes the question whether males are the victims of unfair discrimination is confused with another question — whether feminism discriminates (unfairly) against men.1 These are distinct questions. Many examples of the second sexism long predate the advent of feminism and thus feminism cannot be responsible for those. For those who recognize this, the question whether feminism discriminates unfairly against men is a question about whether feminism contributes something extra to the second sexism.

Part of the answer to this question depends on what kind of feminism one has in mind. In Chapter 1, I distinguished between egalitarian feminists and partisan feminists. The former seek equality of the sexes, whereas the latter seek the advancement of female interests (irrespective of whether that advances equality). Partisan feminism does entail some unfairness to men. Since its goal is the advancement of female interests irrespective of whether this promotes or compromises equality, it will sometimes advance the interests of women even when this is unfair to men. By contrast, there is nothing about egalitarian feminism that commits it to unfairness to men. Egalitarian feminism may sometimes require diminishing men’s relative position but that is not unfair if the inequality it is correcting is the result of unfair discrimination. Egalitarian feminists would similarly be willing to diminish women’s relative position when that is necessary to promote equality. (They would, for instance, remove a prohibition on conscripting women, at least where conscription of anybody is justified.2)

However, although egalitarian feminism never aims at inequality, it might sometimes slip into it. For example, in attempting to correct an unfair male advantage, it may be too effective. Consider, for example, the case of child custody. As we saw earlier, children were once automatically awarded to the father in the event of divorce. That was certainly unfairly discriminatory against mothers and was in need of correction. Feminists rightly took up that matter. However, the problem has now been over-corrected. Although custody is not now always awarded to the mother, we saw that mothers are now much more likely to gain custody even when one controls for other variables. Thus child-custody decisions are now discriminatory against men.

Another such example is sexual harassment. Women previously had insufficient protection against unwanted sexual comments and advances from men. Feminism rightly sought a corrective to this. While the problem persists in some ways, it is also the case that in some quarters there is now a hypersensitivity about these matters. Men have become very vulnerable to accusations of sexual harassment. No matter how frivolous or unfounded such an accusation may be, a man can be seriously harmed by it. The challenge is to strike the right balance, but this is not easy. Victims of genuine sexual harassment need to be taken seriously and given protection. But victims of bogus sexual harassment charges also need protection from malicious, opportunistic and delusional accusers, even if there are not many of these.3 It is also noteworthy that, for reasons explained earlier, women are not similarly vulnerable to sexual harassment accusations. Men who complain of sexual harassment, especially harassment by women, are unlikely to be taken as seriously and this will lead men to level such accusations less often.

Feminism has also been much more successful at breaking down the female gender role than the male gender role. Thus while many of the former advantages of being male have been lost, the disadvantages remain. The response to this is not to turn the clock back and regain the unfair advantages, but rather to finish the job by focusing more on unfair male disadvantages.

Some people deny that there has been greater success in breaking down the female than the male gender role. However, there is plenty of evidence that this is exactly what has happened. Consider, for example, the different attitudes towards “tomboys” (girls who have traditionally masculine dispositions) and “sissies” (boys with allegedly feminine characters). The former were for a very long time not as despised as the latter. Some have claimed that the term “tomboy” no longer makes any sense given how much girls’ roles have expanded.4 Whether or not that is true, it is certainly the case that many activities that used to be termed tomboyish — such as wearing pants or playing sport — no longer are. Boys playing with dolls are likely to be ridiculed in a way that girls playing with trucks are not. They are also likely to concern their parents in a way in which the girls with their trucks are not.

Another example of how the female gender role has been broken down more successfully comes from the extent to which women have entered historically male professions. The phenomenon of female doctors and lawyers is now unremarkable but male nurses and pre-primary school teachers are still much more of a rarity. One author has suggested that the restrictions of a gender role do not constitute oppression5 unless the restrictions are imposed because of a perceived lack of abilities (which he thinks is not true in the case of restrictions on males).6 He says that whereas young women are told they cannot be doctors, young men are being told that although they could be nurses it would be unworthy of them. But the evidence of men’s and women’s actual success in entering professions traditionally reserved for the opposite sex suggests that today in western societies, women can become doctors. Only the paranoid could think otherwise. Even if it is still true that men are not being told that they cannot become nurses, and even if they are not thereby being oppressed, it is still true that some individual men are unfairly disadvantaged (in ways that women are not) by societal pressures that militate against their becoming nurses.

Feminism has also produced a number of catch-22 situations for males. Consider what we might call the “chivalry bind.” Feminists criticize the practice of men opening doors for women or letting women through the door first.7 Even a man who, as a courtesy often allows others, male or female, through the door first, may be subjected to a rebuke when the person is a female feminist who takes offense.8 Yet men are sometimes also rebuked for not letting women through the door first. This happens when the woman the man precedes is one who still expects the chivalrous gestures. When each kind of woman offers her rebuke, she does not think of the other kind of woman, and the bind in which these mixed messages leave men.

A further problem lies in certain excesses. Thus, it is not uncommon to hear the sort of insulting, demonizing or untrue comments about men that would cause outrage if said about women. While some of these comments are of minor significance, others feed and are fed by a culture of political correctness that protects female speech about men, but has a silencing effect in the reverse direction. Moreover, the comments are usually left unchallenged. As a result those making them are rarely given an opportunity to see just how inappropriate or unfounded they are. This is neither good for men nor fair to them. The following are but a few of the very many examples that could be cited.

In the question-and-answer session following a lecture by husband-and-wife team Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl Dunn-Wu,9 one brash young woman prefaced her question by saying that “behind every enlightened, intelligent man is an even more enlightened, intelligent woman.” Now, of course, it is no insult to be called an “enlightened, intelligent man,” but it is a kind of backhand compliment when one’s having these attributes is implicitly attributed to one’s wife. Feminists would be outraged if the reverse were said or implied.

I can think of two responses that defenders of this sort of comment might offer. First, they might say that such comments really are very minor and inconsequential and not something men should complain about. I agree, of course, that they are minor matters, but then presumably the same attitude should be taken to similar comments about women. However, when the comments are about women they are typically met with indignation. Second, defenders of the comment might remark that men and women are differently situated. Women are the underdogs and thus jibes at them would be unfair in a way that jibes at males are not. But this response is also problematic. As I shall argue in the next section, it really is not clear that women are the underdogs in places like the United States, where this comment was made. And even if women are, it really is not the case that women like Sheryl Dunn-Wu are. I cannot imagine that women like her need that sort of affirmation or that men like Nicholas Kristof deserve the compliment in its backhanded form.

Some people will object that I have referred to only one stupid comment. However, that sort of comment is far from uncommon. Here is another:

Here we have a feminist who, while objecting to the insult implicit in a man’s opening a door for a woman, explicitly insults men.

One regularly hears those sorts of jibes.11 Since they are socially acceptable and opposing ones are not, they create a certain climate in which unreflective criticism of men is condoned. To be clear, I am not recommending limitations on freedom of speech. Instead I am making a comment on the ethics of speech — on how one uses one’s legally protected freedoms. Nor do I think that jocular jibes routinely violate the ethics of speech. However, to the considerable extent that they are permissible, they are permissible whether the butt of the joke is the male or female. The unfairness to men is thus not that these jokes are made, but that if the joke goes in the opposite direction the response is indignation or outrage.

Nor is humor the only situation in which feminist concerns are used as a cudgel to beat the politically incorrect. We saw earlier what happened to the (now former) president of Harvard University, Lawrence Summers. Some feminists also berate those who use the male pronoun when referring to people of both or indeterminate sex, even though it is far from clear that morality dictates the use of the female pronoun or a disjunction of the male and female pronouns.12 There have also been feminist campaigns to ensure that females are included among keynote speakers at conferences, even though there are dozens of feminist conferences at which there are no male keynote speakers.13

One comment heard not infrequently is that if men had wombs, abortion would be freely available. By that logic you would think that if men suffered more lung cancer than breast cancer, more money would be spent on research into the former rather than the latter. Yet men do suffer more lung cancer, but we find that research into breast cancer is better funded. Perhaps, then, men do not have as much power as they are purported to have, or they have the power but are not very good at utilizing it to their own advantage, or they quite knowingly exercise their power for the benefit of others. Whatever the reason, it is clear that men are not ensuring that public resources are devoted to alleviating their health problems rather than those of women. Moreover, it cannot be assumed that if men had wombs, abortion would be freely available.

Feminist excesses are also to be found in the rationalizations that are frequently employed. As we have seen repeatedly in earlier chapters, some feminists attempt to portray females as the victims of all unfair sex discrimination, even when they are not the victims. And when some feminists make a moral argument about what should be done, they curiously always reach the conclusion that it is the interests of females that ought to prevail. There is always some reason, as we have also seen, why the interests of females are of paramount importance.

Rationalizations are also employed to exculpate women.14 For example, some feminists make much of how war is carried out by men, implying and sometimes even explicitly claiming that women are above this kind of behavior.15 But there are obvious social and gender-role explanations that can account for why men become soldiers. Where women have had the opportunity to kill, torture and perpetrate other cruel acts, they have proved very capable of doing so.16 There is disingenuousness in the arguments of those feminists who will discount the opportunity differentials between men and women for the violence of war, but who rush to explain the greater incidence of (non-sexual) child abuse by women as being a function of sexism. It is women, they correctly note, who have most contact with children and therefore have the greatest opportunity to abuse children. Moreover, we are told that female abusers of children “would probably not have become child abusers had the culture offered them viable alternatives to marriage and motherhood.”17 If this line of argument (contrary to my own view) is acceptable, why can a similar explanation for participation in war not be given for young men “whose culture does not offer them viable alternatives” to machismo and the military?

Some feminists not only excuse women’s violence in the way that they refuse to excuse men’s violence, they also resist the very changes which would make the violence of warfare a less male affair — namely parity in enlistment of the sexes. They oppose conscription of women.18 Feminist defenders of women’s absence from combat assume that women are different and unsuited to war. They maintain that so long as there is (or must be) war, it is men who must wage it. There are a number of problems with this view.

First, by seeking to preserve the status quo, they suppress the most effective test of whether men really are better suited to war. Notice how the real test of female competence to perform other tasks has been most unequivocally demonstrated by women’s actually performing those tasks. Whereas when there were almost no female lawyers, people could have appealed to that fact to support claims of female unsuitability to the legal profession, that same line of argument is simply not available when there are vast numbers of successful female lawyers.

Second, those who argue that women are ill-suited to war assume that men (unlike women) want to participate in war. Alternatively, male preferences on this score are a matter of indifference to them. The overwhelming majority of men do not wish to be part of the military. Were it otherwise, conscription would never be necessary. Why should these men be forced into the military, while women are not? It simply will not do, as I explained before, to justify this by saying that men are naturally more aggressive than women and thus more suitable to military activity.

Perhaps the most serious cases of feminist excess are those in which scholars — many themselves feminists — have been threatened or harassed by highly partisan and intolerant feminists who have deemed their work threatening. The feminists offering these threats are a small minority, but they are nonetheless noteworthy for the harm they cause individuals. Two scholars among those who have come under threat are Suzanne Steinmetz and Murray Straus. Professors Steinmetz and Straus conducted studies that showed that males were the victims of intimate partner violence as often as were females. In no way did they deny the seriousness of domestic violence against female partners. Instead they showed only that there was a further neglected problem. This met with outrage in some quarters. Professor Steinmetz received phone calls threatening her children. When she spoke at an American Civil Liberties Union conference, threats were received that if she were allowed to speak, the place would be bombed. Murray Straus was heckled, booed, picketed and slandered in the most appalling and groundless ways.19 Obviously the direct victims of this harassment are the particular targets, both male and female. In this regard, feminist excesses can be bad for both men and women. The broader way in which males specifically are disadvantaged is that the threatening and harassing behavior is aimed at silencing views that highlight male disadvantage.

I said earlier that the question whether feminism treats men unfairly is distinct from the question whether men are the victims of a second sexism. The questions intersect in the following way. Insofar as feminism does treat men unfairly, it contributes to the second sexism. This is not to say that feminism causes — is the sole or even the major cause — of the second sexism.20 However, it is to say that those feminists who really are interested in equality of the sexes should oppose both the first and second sexism. The first step to opposing the second sexism is to acknowledge that it exists.

In noting that some feminists contribute to the second sexism I do not and need not deny that non-feminist males are often the perpetrators of what I take to be the second sexism.21 Tom Digby is reluctant, given the context of the cultural ideals of manhood in which they operate, to blame males for what they do to other males.22 However, he thinks that talk of a second sexism is inappropriate (partly) because the harm being inflicted on males is done by other males.23 I cannot see how this makes a difference. We know that blacks can be agents of racism (against blacks), that Jews can succumb to prejudices about Jews and that women can be complicit in (anti-female) sexism.

As an example of the latter, consider female genital excision, which is almost always performed by women. Women are also amongst the most vigorous defenders of the practice. Nevertheless, feminists argue, entirely appropriately, that given how damaging the procedure is to the girls on whom it is performed, it cannot reasonably be claimed to serve the interests of women (except, perhaps, those few female performers of the ritual, as they may have a vested interest in it).24 Why should similar reasoning not be applied to the conscription of only males, for example? While it has historically been mainly men who have sent other men to war, why should that undermine the claim that those males sent to war are the victims of sexism? Why are the female agents of genital excision serving the interests of men, while the male — and now also female — agents of government, the bureaucracy and the military who send men to war, are serving men’s interests? And why may we not say that males can be perpetrators of the second sexism?

One answer may be that for members of a targeted group to be agents of racism or sexism, they must be serving the interests of some dominant group. But there are two problems with such an answer. First, as I shall argue in the next section, it is not clear that males are any longer the dominant sex in some societies. However, even where they are, I cannot see why that would preclude the possibility that males could be among those who perpetrate the second sexism. It is entirely possible, as I am suggesting is actually the case, for gender roles to be internalized by both men and women and for each group to perpetuate these to their own unfair advantage in some circumstances and unfair disadvantage in others. Moreover, the attributes that each sex looks for in a mate might reinforce those roles. Whether this is inevitable, as some evolutionary psychologists suggest, or whether it could be altered, it is certainly the case that “mate selection” is often (but not always) a two-way street. Women have played a role in “selecting in” certain (biological and cultural) male traits. If females valued different things in males, there would exist different kinds of males.

Are Men Worse off than Women?

Strangely, people are sometimes driven to vie for the status of being more or most victimized. Yet comparisons of suffering are often invidious. It is often notoriously difficult to compare different kinds of suffering. Is it worse to be raped or to be maimed? Is it worse to lose one’s sight or to lose one’s memory? Is it worse to lose a child or a spouse? And insofar as one can compare and weigh up different kinds of suffering, the exercise of doing so is prone to trivializing the suffering of those who have not suffered the most. This is unfortunate because a person’s suffering can be considerable even if others suffer more. Matters become still more complicated when the suffering of groups is compared. This is because groups are made up of individuals. Even if we could work out which group, on the whole, suffers more, there is a temptation to infer that every member of that group suffers more than the contrast group. This is the fallacy of division.

This is not to say that comparisons of suffering are never useful. If, for example, some or other instance of suffering (but not both) is unavoidable, one might aim to avoid the greater suffering, all things being equal. Yet this is not usually the choice we face in comparing the first and second sexisms. It is possible to oppose both.

Why is it, then, that some people are so keen to know whether it is men or women who are worse off? The most charitable explanation, I think, has something to do both with issues about the definition of “sexism” that I raised in Chapter 1 and with various objections to the second sexism that I considered in Chapter 5.

For example, some people deny that males are the victims of sexism because they think that in order for unfair sex discrimination to be sexism it must be both systemic and to the advantage of those who hold power. The assumption is that it is still males who hold power and thus females who are worse off. On this conception of sexism, if neither males nor females are worse off in a given society then sexism no longer exists in that society, even if both sexes are wrongfully discriminated against in different ways but to an equal extent.25 However, there is a still more troubling implication if it turns out that males are worse off than females in a given society. It then becomes the case that not only is there is a second sexism but there is no first sexism in that society.

Or consider the distraction argument. According to that argument we should not designate unfair discrimination against males as sexism because that will distract us from attending to the first sexism. This argument assumes, contrary to what I said before, that we cannot oppose both the first and second sexisms simultaneously or that opposition to one would diminish the effectiveness of our opposition to the other. However, there is also the further assumption that unfair discrimination against females is worse, because otherwise there would be no reason why we should prioritize efforts to oppose the first sexism rather than the second sexism.

The costs-of-dominance argument also assumes that women are worse off than men, in the sense that whatever disadvantages men have, they are at least dominant, according to this argument. If males were not dominant then the costs-of-dominance argument would obviously fail.

Given the role it plays in the above objections, there is some value in broaching the question whether it is males or females who are worse off. My answer to this question is that while in many or most places women are generally worse off than men, this is not true everywhere. Consider, first, those places were women are worse off. In some societies, as I noted in the introduction, girls are deprived of even basic education. Their brothers are prioritized for limited food and thus the girls often suffer greater malnutrition. They are married while still children, and run terrible risks during pregnancy and childbirth. It is possible, of course, that males can also be the victims of sexist discrimination in such societies, but that discrimination is often not as bad overall as that directed against females. There may be individual males who suffer more sexist discrimination than individual females even in such societies, and that discrimination should not be ignored. However, this would not undermine the claim that in general women are worse off than men in those places.

Consider next those societies in which the position of females has been substantially advanced. There is, of course, a continuum. It is not the case that women either suffer pervasive discrimination or suffer no discrimination at all. However, we might consider those countries in which the most progress has been made — generally the “western” liberal democracies — because if women are worse off there then they are probably worse off everywhere. And if they are not worse off in such societies then the excesses of those who claim they are will be demonstrated.

Feminists typically think that women remain substantially worse off than men even in those places where the position of women has most improved. Indeed, they go so far as to say that women remain oppressed in such societies. Marilyn Frye says that it “is a fundamental claim of feminism that women are oppressed.”26 Kenneth Clatterbaugh adds that Professor Frye “and other feminists argue that men are not oppressed.”27

The claim that women remain oppressed in Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States, for example, sounds ludicrous. At least some feminists are aware that if we employ the traditional sense of “oppression,” women in such countries may not plausibly be thought of as oppressed.28 This is because talk of “oppression” conjures up images of tyrannical regimes. Accordingly, we are told that the meaning of “oppression” has “shifted.”29 It is worth considering this new meaning in order to determine whether, employing it, women are (and men are not) oppressed in the developed world.

Iris Marion Young provides a detailed account. She says that the new usage designates not only the tyrannical power of the traditional usage but also the disadvantage and injustice that people suffer “because of the everyday practices of well-intentioned liberal society.”30 It is, she says, “embedded in unquestioned norms, habits and symbols, in the assumptions underlying institutional rules and the collective consequences of following these rules.”31 Quoting Marilyn Frye, she says that “oppression” names “an enclosing structure of forces and barriers which tends to the immobilization and reduction of a group or category of people.”32 Professor Young identifies five faces of oppression, the presence of any one of which, she says, “is sufficient for calling a group oppressed.”33

The first face is exploitation, a “steady process of transfer of the results of the labor of one social group to benefit of another.”34 The second is marginalization, which is what happens to “people the system of labor cannot or will not use.”35 The third is powerlessness. Those who are oppressed in this sense are “those over whom power is exercised without their exercising it.”36 They are those who “have little or no work autonomy, exercise little creativity or judgement in their work.”37 The powerless “lack the authority, status, and sense of self that professionals tend to have.”38 The fourth face of oppression is cultural imperialism, which “involves the universalization of a dominant group’s experience and culture.”39 Under conditions of cultural imperialism, “the dominant meanings of a society render the particular perspective” of an oppressed “group invisible at the same time as they stereotype” the oppressed group.40 The fifth and final face of oppression is violence. Members of groups oppressed in this sense “live with the knowledge that they must fear random unprovoked attacks on their person and property.”41 Professor Young says that what “makes violence a face of oppression is less the particular acts… than the social context surrounding them, which makes them possible and even acceptable.”42

Professor Young thinks that women are subject to four of the faces of oppression: exploitation, powerlessness, cultural imperialism and violence. She does not think that they are the victims of marginalization, which she describes as “perhaps the most dangerous form of oppression.”43 Is she correct that women are oppressed in the other ways (in the developed world)?

Consider exploitation first. Professor Young says that women’s “oppression consists not merely in an inequality of status, power, and wealth resulting from men’s excluding them from privileged activities.”44 In addition, she says, the “freedom, power, status, and self-realization of men is possible precisely because women work for them.”45 More specifically, she says that exploitation of women “has two aspects, transfer of the fruits of material labor to men and transfer of nurturing and sexual energies to men.”46

There are a number of problems with saying, on these grounds, that women are exploited. First, it is not clear that men are still excluding women from privileged activities (in developed countries). It is true that disproportionately few women occupy the most powerful positions. For example, there are relatively (but not absolutely) few women in the highest positions in government, the professions, academia and industry. However, that is a distinct issue from whether women are being excluded from such positions. Just because women occupy disproportionately few such positions does not mean that they are being excluded from them. There is also a difference between “the most powerful positions” and “privileged activities,” the latter being a larger category and the one to which Professor Young refers. Women are now found amply among the ranks of lawyers, doctors and accountants, for example. Determining to what extent women are participating in privileged activities depends in part on what activities are deemed privileged. Is teaching schoolchildren a privileged activity? I think it is: consider this profession relative to the many forms of hard, and often dangerous, manual labor typically performed by men. If I am correct that teaching schoolchildren is a privileged activity, then it will be even harder to say that women, who predominate in professions like this, are excluded from privileged activities. And if it is not deemed a privileged activity, how does one determine which activities are and which are not privileged? If the bar for what is considered a privileged activity is set very high then most men are also not engaged in privileged activities. Many men, after all, work in low-status jobs, many of which (unlike teaching, some would say) are also unfulfilling, not to mention dangerous. Some of them may also be more poorly paid than teaching.

A second problem with Professor Young’s argument is that it is not clear that the “freedom, power, status, and self-realization of men is possible precisely because women work for them.”47 If this were true, then the freedom, power, status and self-realization that men are said to have would not be possible without women working for them. But there are men — and women — who enjoy freedom, power, status and self-realization without women working for them at home,48 which suggests that the former are possible without the latter.

Third, it is not clear that there is a net transfer of fruits of material labor from women to men. It is true that women do more unpaid work within the home and family, but insofar as a man’s income is conjugally pooled, there is also a transfer of the fruits of his labor to his wife or female partner.

To this Carole Pateman may respond that we should not “confuse particular examples of married couples with the institution of marriage.”49 While some couples may share the husband’s income, the institution of marriage itself does not grant her equal access. But that objection also fails. First, if a large proportion of married couples in a given area or group operate in the way I have mentioned, then de facto there is not the unidirectional transfer to which Professor Young refers. Thus, in the absence of suitable empirical evidence, one cannot make the sweeping claim that there is a net transfer of the fruits of material labor from women to men. Second, how does one determine what the institution of marriage is like? One way is to examine the de facto institution. If we do this, then the first response suffices if the net transfers are not actually from women to men. The alternative is to examine the de jure institution.50 It might then be suggested that because men retain the power to determine whether their incomes will be shared with their wives, the institution of marriage favors men.51 One problem with this argument, however, is that it confuses the actual transfer of resources with the power to transfer them. If the claim is that women are exploited because there is a net transfer of resources from them to men, then the claim is refuted if, in fact, the net transfer is not in that direction. This is true even if men control the extent to which they transfer their resources to their wives. It may still be a good idea to equalize this power, but that is a distinct issue.

A fourth problem with Professor Young’s argument is that even if we assume that there is a net transfer of nurturing and sexual energies from women to men, it will not follow that women are exploited. There seems to be something selective about focusing on those transfers that are towards men rather than in the reverse direction. What if we focused instead on the transfer of protective energies? Perhaps then the “exploitation” would be in the opposite direction. I use the scare quotes because it is really not clear that any of the transfers mentioned here amount to exploitation.

Next consider powerlessness. Is it really the case that women in developed countries constitute a group “over whom power is exercised without their exercising it”?52 I do not think so. Women exercise power through their votes, their opinions and their professional roles, for example. Nor would it be fair to say that women, as a group, “have little or no work autonomy, exercise little creativity or judgement in their work.” There certainly are many women of whom this true, but there are also very many men of whom this true. Perhaps it will be suggested that insofar it is true of men, this is not because they are men but rather because they are members of some other oppressed group. However, the very same thing may be said about those women who have little or no work autonomy and exercise little creativity or judgment in their work. Women who are not members of poorer classes and oppressed ethnic, racial or religious groups seem to enjoy levels of work autonomy and creativity that rival those of comparable men. Indeed there are very many women in the professions who have the authority, status and sense of self that Professor Young says the powerless lack.

Feminists in developed countries have made great strides in countering the cultural imperialism under which women previously suffered. They have exposed many of the hidden assumptions that disadvantage women. There may well be residues of this, but the extent of these is comparable to those suffered by males. For instance, Professor Young says that members of oppressed groups are “marked out by stereotypes” which “confine them to a nature which is often attached in some way to their bodies, and which thus cannot easily be denied. These stereotypes so permeate the society that they are not noticed as contestable.”53 Yet, as we have seen, there are many powerful stereotypes about males — such as their toughness — that mark them out for discrimination. Moreover, these stereotypes are less noticed than the contrasting ones about women now are in the developed world. It is thus false that white “males… escape group marking.”54

Consider, finally, the violent face of oppression. As we have seen, it is males rather than females who constitute the overwhelming majority of victims of violence. While females are more vulnerable than males to sexual violence, males are far more vulnerable to almost every other form of violence. It is true that in some situations it is males of a particular social class or ethnic, religious or racial group who are most vulnerable to violence. However, then the oppressions are intersecting. Their maleness is clearly playing a role — they are experiencing violence in part because they are males — as evidenced by the fact that females in the same social class or ethnic, religious or racial groups are not subjected to similar levels of violence. The social context, as we have seen, makes violence against males much more acceptable and much more tolerated than violence against females.

Given the above, it is by no means obvious that women in developed countries are oppressed or, on the stated criteria of oppression, that men are not oppressed. I am not recommending that we do accept these criteria, but even if one does accept them, it does not follow that women are and men are not oppressed.

The claim that women are worse off than men is a more modest claim than the claim that they, but not men, are oppressed. It is accordingly harder to evaluate. Obviously the more equally discrimination against males and females is distributed, the more difficult it will be to determine who is worse off.

What evidence might be provided for the claim that women are worse off? One recent opinion article in the Washington Post offers the following evidence for the United States: “women are being shot dead in the streets,” “more than 1000 women were killed by their partners in 2005,” women continue to be the victims of sexual assault, women “hold 17 percent of the seats in Congress,” while abortion is legal “more than 85% of counties in the United States have no provider,” “women… make about 76 cents to the man’s dollar and make up the majority of Americans living in poverty” and that Hillary “Clinton and Sarah Palin were the targets of sexism during the 2008 campaign.”55

This justification is typical of arguments for the claim that women do not yet enjoy equality, and indeed overlaps with the arguments that women remain oppressed. Yet the argument is highly selective, engages in what I have called inversion and makes mistaken inferences.

Women are indeed shot dead in the streets and are killed by their partners, but it is males, as we have seen, who constitute the overwhelming majority of victims of violence in the United States and elsewhere. If such violence is indicative of sex discrimination, then this speaks to discrimination against males rather than females.

Women do constitute the majority of victims of sexual assault. Although the margin by which they are the majority is, as we saw in Chapter 2, not as large as is generally thought, the net disadvantage is to females. But this must be balanced against the greater violence against males.

Women do constitute a minority of members of Congress. They also earn less than men. However, we saw that such differentials are not necessarily evidence of discrimination. And insofar as they are, the fact that women are the minority of those incarcerated and executed should similarly be seen as evidence of discrimination against males. These two kinds of discrimination would then need to be weighed against one another. Such comparisons, as I indicated above, are very difficult to make. Those who boldly assert that the net effect favors men and discriminates more against women are overly confident.

Abortion facilities are in short supply, but this too does not demonstrate a net disadvantage to being female. After all, males die younger and thus however healthcare resources are being distributed, males are faring worse.

While female candidates may well have experienced sexism in the 2008 campaign, it is quite common for males to experience sexism in American presidential campaigns. This often takes the form of questioning their military record. Former draft dodgers, for example, are frowned upon (even if they are eventually elected), but draft dodging is not a problem any female candidate faces. Of course, she might face sexist preconceptions about whether she could be a suitable Commander-in-Chief, but that is the very sort of question that is asked about male draft-dodging candidates.

It is very easy to point to ongoing discrimination against women. It obviously exists and it may even be systemic. But one cannot, in determining whether the sexes are equal, ignore all the discrimination against males, which may be as systemic. Because most people are not aware of the second sexism they could not make an informed judgment about which sex is the greater victim of discrimination. Even those who are sensitive to the phenomenon of the second sexism may be unaware of its full extent, given how little research has been undertaken on the subject.

It is true that women occupy fewer of the highest and most powerful positions, but this also does not show that women are in general worse off. To make the claim that women are worse off, one must compare all women with all men, rather than only the most successful women with the most successful men. Otherwise, one could as easily compare the least successful men with the least successful women and one would then find that men are worse off. This is because more boys drop out of school, fewer men earn degrees, more men die younger, more are incarcerated, and so forth. Indeed, insofar as one should give priority to improving the position of the worst off, attention would need to be focused primarily on males.

In defense of the claim that women are worse off than men it has been noted that “women bent on escape from the female sphere do not usually run into hordes of oppressed men swarming in the opposite direction, trying to change places with their wives and secretaries”56 and that this is evidence for “where the real advantage lies.”57

This is not a strong argument. The observation that men (generally58) do not want to change places with women should not be invested with too much significance. If people’s satisfaction or dissatisfaction with their socially mandated roles were determinative (or even suggestive) of whether such roles were advantageous to their bearers, then a few conclusions which are unfortunate for feminists would follow.

First, many women forced into traditional female roles could not be viewed as being the victims of sexism, so long as those roles were internalized by those women and found by them to be satisfying. Just such an attitude characterized most women until the dawn of the women’s movement, and it is an attitude that is still widespread among women in more traditional societies, if not with respect to every feature of their position then at least to many of its features.

Second, the women most dissatisfied with their condition are to be found in disproportionately large numbers amongst women who are subject to the least sexist discrimination and restrictions. For instance, female feminist professors in western societies are arguably among the most liberated women in the world — the women least restricted or disadvantaged by sexism. Yet they are also more concerned about the disadvantages they do face than are many less fortunate women.59 If the level of one’s satisfaction with one’s role is what determines the severity of the discrimination to which one is subjected, then the sexism experienced by contemporary western feminists really is worse than that endured by those women in more traditional societies, past or present, who are satisfied with their position. Whether one takes that to be absurd will depend, at least in part, on what view one takes about such matters as adaptive preferences and false consciousness.

It would be unwise to attempt to settle these issues here. All I wish to observe is that if men’s apparent contentment with their position is taken to be evidence that they are not the victims of discrimination, then from that follow some conclusions that should be unsettling to most feminists. If, by contrast, it is thought that somebody might be the victim of discrimination without realizing it, then the way is opened to recognizing that men may be worse off than women even if they do not realize it.

Thus it is far from clear that women today are worse off than men in those countries were feminism has had the greatest successes. It is thus disturbing not only how commonly it is claimed that women are worse off or even oppressed, but also how little public resistance there is to such comments.

To deny that women are clearly worse off than men is not to claim that it is men who are worse off. Perhaps men do fare less well and perhaps they do not. It really is very hard to say. What we can conclude, however, is that those arguments that rely on the claim that women are substantially worse off must fail in many places today. Those who think it is a precondition of sexism that one sex predominates over the other will find that at least some societies are already post-sexist. Because that will be, as it should be, an unpalatable conclusion, they would be advised to rethink their conception of sexism to eliminate that feature.

Taking the Second Sexism Seriously

The first step to taking the second sexism seriously is to acknowledge its very existence. If it is not acknowledged it cannot be confronted. This may seem like a small step. However, given how many people are in denial about the existence of the second sexism, it is a much bigger step than one would hope. Indeed, I have devoted this book to arguing that there is a second sexism.

The sort of recognition of the second sexism that is required to take it seriously is not the implicit or begrudging sort. For example, in response to the observation that almost everywhere it has been only men who have been conscripted and sent into combat, many feminists respond that they do not want anybody, male or female, forced into combat. Yet they will not explicitly acknowledge that males have been and continue to be unfairly discriminated against by being the only ones conscripted. Nor do they appear really interested in ending this form of discrimination.

I also do not wish to see anybody forced into combat, and I have noted that both conscription and war are justified much less often than they are practiced. Nevertheless to leave the matter there is to ignore two scenarios. The first, and more common, scenario is one in which conscription is unjustified but men (and only men) are being conscripted. If conscription cannot be ended in such cases, should women be exempt?60 The second scenario, much less common, is when war and conscription are justified. Some people may want to deny either that war or that conscription is ever permissible.61 I find such views implausible, but I shall not argue for that conclusion here. Instead, I shall focus on those who recognize that war and conscription are sometimes justified. There needs to be a clear recognition that males have unfairly borne the brunt of the combat burden in the past and that women should not be exempt when war and conscription next become morally justifiable.

It is also common for feminists to complain about harsh treatment to which women entering historically male professions are subjected, without acknowledging that males in these positions have been enduring that treatment, and worse, since time immemorial. For example, the harsh treatment of recruits elicited no criticism until the recruits were female, and then the harsh treatment of the female recruits was sometimes construed as the sole problem. The environment, we are told, is hostile to women, instead of recognizing that the environment is hostile to everybody.62 The conditions for women are then sometimes alleviated, without any similar relief for males.63

A full recognition of the second sexism will also require much more research into discrimination against men. Given how little research there has been into the second sexism relative to the first sexism, we have every reason to think that the full extent of discrimination against males has not been revealed. If it has taken all the research it has to show the many facets of discrimination against women and girls, it surely will take as much to show the many ways in which men and boys suffer disadvantage.

The current paucity of such research both results from and further entrenches the neglect of the second sexism. That is to say, it is at least partly because such discrimination is not taken seriously that so little research time and money are devoted to it. But because it is not in vogue to examine such discrimination, much less is known about it, and this perpetuates the impression that is not worthy of detailed consideration. The lopsided information we have about sexism creates a climate in which the research bias is preserved and reinforced. This is dangerous. We have every reason to think that academic neglect of a problem is not an indication of its absence. For example, it was not long ago that sexual abuse of children was thought to be a rare phenomenon. That issue has since become a popular academic and social cause, with the result that we now know much more about it and it is now widely recognized to be more common than was previously thought. Thus one important way of responding to the second sexism is to enable more research, or at least not discourage it. The relevant research might be focused on the second sexism or it might examine questions of sexism more generally but without limiting the focus only to the first sexism.

Once the second sexism is explicitly recognized, the fitting response is to oppose it in the same way that we oppose those sexist attitudes and practices of which women are the primary victims.

This applies even in those societies were women are still worse off. One reason for this is that while it is sometimes permissible to prioritize the worst injustice for attention, we can often oppose both greater and lesser injustices simultaneously. When we can do so, there is no reason to ignore the lesser injustice merely because there is a still worse injustice.

The case for addressing multiple injustices simultaneously becomes strengthened when it is the case that they are intertwined and thus confronting one is best done also by confronting another. I noted in Chapter 5 that the first and second sexisms are intertwined — even if contingently rather than necessarily. That is to say, although it would be logically possible to eliminate all discrimination against women without eliminating any discrimination against men, it is actually the case that the two are connected (even if the connection is not linear). For example, the very same attitude that leads to women being excluded from combat also leads to their being exempted.

Moreover, confronting only the first sexism, while ignoring the second sexism arguably has the effect of unnecessarily alienating potential allies. Those concerned about the second sexism might be more supportive of efforts to counter the first sexism if they saw that opponents of the first second sexism applied their arguments consistently and were also opposed to the second sexism.

Many of the remedies for the second sexism are implicit in my explanations of the ways in which males are the victims of discrimination. However, these remedies can now be made explicit, at least in outline.

The most difficult part is changing attitudes. How does one get people to value male life as much as they value female life, to abhor violence against males as much as they do violence against females, to take as seriously the fact that men can be victims of sexual assault and to recognize that fathers can make good custodial parents in the event of a divorce? It is certainly not easy, but presumably one tries many of the techniques that have been used to change people’s attitudes about females. For example, one rears new generations of children in relevant ways that differ from the past. One does not force males and females into particular gender roles. Thus, one would desist from telling boys that “big boys don’t cry”64 or to take adversity “like a man.”65 Nor are the needed changes only in how we speak to children. Thus the media and others should desist from the pervasive practice of singling out female casualties for special mention. Instead of referring to the number of dead and adding that they include a specified number of women, one might simply refer to the total number of dead. Even the practice of referring to the victims as “men, women and children” puts an undue emphasis on the sex of the adults, which is irrelevant. The children, after all, are referred to in a gender-neutral way, rather than as “boys and girls.” Similarly, campaigns to “end violence against women and children” should be broadened to “end violence.”66 The endless repetition of untruths — for example, that girls and women are the main victims of violence — must end. They are uttered so often that people are genuinely surprised to hear that they are false. And truths that are often suppressed — such as the fact that men are often targeted for violence — should be brought to the fore.

Less difficult than changing attitudes, at least where there is a will to make changes, is the end to de jure wrongful discrimination. For example, there should be an end to male-only conscription and to male-only draft registration. Nor should women be exempted (or excluded) from combat. Suitable anesthesia should be used when circumcision is performed on infant boys. When corporal punishment is morally unacceptable, it should no longer be inflicted on males. Insofar as it is justified, it should not be restricted to males or inflicted more frequently or severely on them than on girls, controlling for the relevant wrongdoing. Laws governing corporal punishment should not discriminate between males and females. Similarly, equal regard should be given to male and female bodily privacy. Thus male prisoners should enjoy the greater bodily privacy currently enjoyed by female prisoners. (The alternative is that female prisoners should not enjoy the privileges they currently do, but the burden of proof lies with those who wish to make the lesser protection the norm for all.) Another legal change required to address the second sexism is to ensure that rape legislation and other sexual offenses legislation is gender-neutral. Males can be raped, and they can be raped by women. The law should recognize this and stipulate the same punishments as are inflicted on those males who rape girls and women.

Finally, there are practical interventions that although not as straightforward as the foregoing are also not as difficult as changing attitudes. For example, special attention should be given to those students who are most at risk of failure. Although such attention should be regardless of their sex, the actual rates of failure among boys and girls will mean that this will benefit boys more than girls. Shorter male life expectancy also merits special attention. This involves investigating its causes and undertaking public health and other interventions to address the problem. The question of judicial prejudice in child-custody and penal decisions should also be examined very carefully. There should also be more attention to rehabilitating prisoners. Feminists, in arguing for more women in senior corporate positions, often argue that this is not only good for women but also good for business,67 and detailed recommendations are provided about how to achieve this.68 Rehabilitating male prisoners would similarly be good not only for the men who are incarcerated but would also do immense good for society. Prisons, as they currently operate, are notoriously poor at rehabilitation. Indeed, they often reinforce criminality.

These are but a few examples of the many things that could and should be done. Given my arguments in Chapter 6, I have not recommended any remedies that involve preference affirmative action for males. That is to say, I do not propose that males be granted any kind of preference on the grounds of being male. However, this does mean that affirmative action policies and practices that give preference to females should also be terminated. None of this precludes what I called equal opportunity affirmative action — for men and women. This might include specific attempts to counter implicit bias. For example, Victor L. Streib has suggested that juries could be instructed that they must not consider the sex of the defendant or, put another way, that a jury “must not recommend a sentence of death unless it has concluded that it would recommend a sentence of death for the crime in question no matter what the… sex of the defendant… may be.”69 Such instructions, of course, are no guarantee of success, but they are one measure, among others, that might help.70

Some men favor the establishment of men’s groups to focus on and find solutions to men’s problems. I have the same view towards these as I do towards women’s groups. Under certain limited conditions they might do some good. Focused advocacy groups, for example, can effectively promote the cause of their members. However, some men’s groups, like some women’s groups, also run certain risks. They can, for example, become fora for self-pity and for venting hyperbolic views that are not checked or moderated by alternative opinions.71

That people are prone to partiality in their thinking about such matters provides one reason why it is helpful, in thinking about remedies to sexism, to consider the first and second sexism together. Any biases in thinking about what constitutes unfair sex discrimination are more likely to be corrected if we are simultaneously thinking about comparable disadvantages of the other sex. Thus, I have suggested that thinking about male disadvantage can help block the common feminist inference from the existence of female disadvantage to the existence of anti-female discrimination. Similarly, any biases in thinking about how to correct sex discrimination are more likely to be exposed if we think about adopting the same correctives for the unfair discrimination against the other sex. I suggested, for example, that reflection on preference affirmative action for men might help some feminists to see why similar preference policies for females may be more problematic than they previously thought. These comparative perspectives are a helpful remedy for ideology and political correctness.

What would a society devoid of sexism (of both the first and the second kinds) look like? The short answer is that I do not know — and neither does anybody else, even if they think they do. This is partly because we do not know the precise extent to which disparities between the sexes are a consequence of sexism, and the precise extent to which they are a consequence of differences (in tendencies) between the sexes. It is also because we do not know exactly how we should respond to whatever differences there may be. For example, to what extent should we reduce those differences if we can do so, and to what extent should we compensate for them if we cannot or should not reduce them?

The inability to say precisely what a society would look like once it had shed the last vestiges of sexism is not such bad news. It need not stop us from acting to end very clear instances of sexism that now exist. Moreover, as we make progress, the bounds of the possible and the appropriate will become clearer. The extent to which the first sexism has been eroded in some contemporary societies would have been unimaginable to most people a century or two ago. It is thus possible that things unimaginable now might yet occur. While changes often occur slowly, they accumulate and can open new vistas. That said, it is extremely unlikely that a society devoid of all sexism will ever exist, for the simple reason that it is extremely unlikely that any utopian ideal will be attained. Rather than focusing on an unattainable utopia, we should direct our attention to the changes that clearly can and should be made.

Conclusion

What I have written cannot be the last word on this topic. There are thousands of articles and books about discrimination against women. Even if this book were a much longer one it could not be comprehensive. Each one of the forms of disadvantage could by itself be the subject of a separate volume, and there may very well be additional disadvantages I have not discussed. My goal has not been to be exhaustive, but rather to provide a relatively wide-ranging discussion of the issues in order to demonstrate that males are also the victims of wrongful sex discrimination and to show that this is overdue for further attention. Uncovering and discussing the full details of the second sexism will require the labors of many more people.

The same is true of responses to my inevitable critics. The claim that there is a second sexism should not be controversial, but it is. Criticism abounds. However, because there are all too few people responding to those criticisms, the criticisms are thought, by those who advance them, to be stronger than they really are. Until now, very few philosophers have raised their heads above the parapets to respond to the academy’s orthodoxies on these questions. It would be good to see more of them speaking out.

I have demonstrated that males suffer considerable disadvantage and that much of this is a consequence of discrimination. It is extremely unlikely that all of this discrimination is fair but that no discrimination against females is fair. Yet this is just what some deniers of the second sexism would have us believe. We should be extremely skeptical of such an unlikely scenario. Others will concede that some discrimination against males is unfair, but deny that this is sufficient to constitute sexism. To merit the latter title, they say, the unfair or wrongful discrimination must be against a sex that is subordinated or oppressed. We have seen that there are serious flaws in that argument. Even if we concede that definition of sexism, wrongful discrimination against males should nonetheless be opposed precisely because it is wrong. But conceding to the definition precludes designating as sexism much of what we would ordinarily call sexism. If, as I have argued, women are no longer dominated or oppressed by men in some societies, then on the plausible assumption that women do not now dominate or oppress men, there is no such thing as sexism in such societies, which might be designated as post-sexist. Yet it seems highly implausible to think that sexism ceases to exist once one sex does not dominate or oppress another. This suggests, I have argued, that alternative definitions of sexism ought to be abandoned in favor of the one I proposed in the introduction. Once one does that, the last remaining obstacle to recognizing the second sexism is removed.