Many systems in the world are, for the most part, binary. Off/On. Positive/Negative. Yes/No. Day/Night. Right/Left. Alive/Dead. Black/White. Guilty/Not Guilty. Win/Lose. Quantum/Classical. Offense/Defense. Credit/Debit. Convex/Concave. Hard Cover/Paperback. CW/CCW. Yin/Yang. Belt/Suspenders. Deciduous/Evergreen. Aloha/Aloha. Paper/Plastic. Schrader/Presta. Smooth/Crunchy. Pica/Elite. Digital/Analog. Bikini. Inny/Outy. Stalactite/Stalagmite. Male/Female.
Victimhood is also binary. Women can be victims. Men can’t.
In reality, men are victims just as much as women, if not more. But, the rules of society do not allow for this reality. If you will forgive a little exaggeration, men are not allowed to be victims or to be seen as victims. (For the sake of clarity and conciseness, I will exaggerate, but I believe my exaggerations are close to the truth—concise, but not quite precise.) Women are encouraged to be victims and to be considered as victims. Women are encouraged to complain. More than this, victimhood for women is well-nigh demanded.
I believe these characteristics were imposed on us by sexual selection. Women have always looked for mates who were strong, productive, generous, and protective—men who could help women raise children. This has encouraged men to be chivalrous, clever enough to solve any problem, and able to provide food, shelter, and protection.
Men who could not provide these things, or were weak, or were victims, or had too many problems of their own were avoided by women. These men could not provide for and protect women and their children. This has led men to feel that they must be alpha-males, and they are not allowed to be or appear to be victims. And men aren’t allowed to complain.
Conversely, women’s victimhood can be quite embellished. Women are allowed to complain, and they do constantly. By being or appearing to be victims they can more easily identify the men who are able and willing to help them. Women can also quickly identify and ignore the men who won’t or can’t help them. Women continue their victimhood and complaints even after having chosen mates to keep men’s help coming. Complaining has become such a habit for some women that they aren’t always looking for a man to help them—-they just like to vent.
One can easily see these characteristics in the media. It seems the media are constantly looking for female victims. Women receive more sympathy than men, and this leads to higher ratings, more clicks, and more money for the media. It seems like there is always a weekly damsel-in-distress in the news, usually a pretty, white woman attracting much attention.
The media will always give more attention to female than male victims. For example, the terrorist group, Boko Haram, captured a school in Nigeria. The girls were sent home before the boys were burned alive in the school building. This received very little media attention. However, the media exploded with concern and attention when Boko Haram kidnapped several girls a few weeks later.
I am amazed at how the media can always find women to heighten a news story’s human interest value, even when most victims are men. For example, in a scandal associated with the mismanagement of 200 graves at Arlington National Cemetery a few years ago, one of the graves involved was for an Air Force nurse. I am guessing that the rest of the involved graves were for men. But guess who was highlighted in all of the news stories. In the four reports that I saw on this, three mentioned the nurse by name and the fourth discussed her situation. No men were discussed or named. What are the odds of this occurring by chance?
Even if a tragic news story only involves male victims, reporters will focus on the victims’ wives, mothers, or sisters to create sympathy. Men cannot be victims.
While highlighting female victims, the media will also hide male victims by hiding their sex/gender. Male victims are referred to with genderless terms like “people,” “miners,” “workers,” or “citizens.” The sex/gender of female victims is always explicitly noted. I suppose the media hide the sex/gender of male victims hoping that we might assume that the victims are female.
For example twelve men were killed by terrorists at the Charlie Hebdo newspaper, while women were spared. The media referred to the men as “journalists,” thereby hiding their sex/gender. But when a policewoman was killed the next day, her sex/gender was explicitly highlighted. Then four men were killed in a Jewish deli, and the media referred to them as “shoppers,” again hiding their sex/gender.
Another example of this phenomenon was 43 “students” murdered in Mexico—all were men, but it wasn’t obvious from the news coverage. One really had to dig to discover this.
Another example was a Taliban attack on a school in Peshawar, Pakistan, with over 130 killed. I read several news reports about the attack which mentioned that female teachers were among the dead. But the news reports did not mention that it was a boys’ school and that almost all of the dead were boys.
(Of course, this phenomenon reverses when referring to “perpetrators”—then men’s sex/gender is explicitly noted, and female perpetrators’ sex/gender is often hidden. Women are victims.)
I believe that not allowing men to be victims contributes to some serious consequences for men. For example, because a man cannot admit to being a victim, he, therefore, is not allowed to ask for or receive help for his problems. This must be very frustrating. I suspect that this frustration often leads to many of the problems usually associated with men—alcohol and drug abuse, crime, suicide, and violence.
As well as individually, men as a group cannot ask for help. Since women, as a group, can be victims, women, as a group, can ask for help. As well as from their husbands, women can demand aid from the government, charities, and other agencies. As a result there are countless governmental agencies, bureaus, and laws to help women. There are also countless social organizations, charities, NGOs, and much research dedicated to helping women. But there is very little of this kind of help for men.
Feminism is the organized structure that pleads for aid for women as a group. It is everywhere, helping women. But feminism does not, as it claims, strive for equality between men and women. It is a large oak tree with its branches and roots extending into government, social science, journalism, medicine, science, and every discipline. The men’s rights movement, by comparison, is half of an acorn, sickly, ineffective, and scorned. Men, as a group, receive little attention and help.
Because women are considered victims and men aren’t, these attitudes can easily lead into “men are perpetrators.” From this we have gotten unfounded theories such as the “patriarchy,” “toxic masculinity,” and “male dominance” victimizing and holding women down.
Society is full of examples of female victims receiving help while male victims are ignored or punished:
• Even though women batter men about as much as men batter women, most people believe that partner abuse is almost always men battering women. Again, this is because men are not allowed to be victims, so they must be perpetrators, and therefore men should receive no help. This results in about 2000 domestic violence shelters for women and none for men. It also results in men being arrested even when they are the victims.
• Men being considered perpetrators can then lead into “men don’t deserve due process.” As a result, many men have been unfairly suspended from colleges for sexual violations without any due process. Lack of due process has also resulted in the loss of employment for Garrison Keillor, Al Franken, Tom Ashbrook, Tavis Smiley, and many others in an overreaction by the #metoo movement.
• Even though there is much research showing that men are imprisoned more than women and are given much longer prison sentences for the same crimes, many states have formed Gender Bias Commissions to make sure that the courts focus on the legal needs and wants of women—-because women are victims.
• Because women are victims, prostitutes receive aid while johns receive jail, fines, and seizure of property.
• Most all male sexuality is now potentially illegal or ridiculed. Complimenting a woman, telling a sexual joke, touching a woman, dating a woman from work, asking a woman out, and making any sexual move without explicit permission are all very risky for men—-because all men are seen as perpetrators. Yet, most all female sexuality is perfectly acceptable. Exposed breasts, sexual makeup, tight clothing, short skirts, implants, wonderbras, tight yoga pants, hair removal, Spanx, and high heels are all acceptable, because if we discourage women’s sexual dress, it is “blaming the victim.” Women can be sexual. Men can’t.
• One cannot give consent for sex while intoxicated. But if a man and a woman are equally drunk during sex, she is the victim, and he is the perpetrator of sexual assault. Only women are victims. And women are allowed to drink as much as they want, because telling women not to drink with men is “blaming the victim.”
• An NPR Morning Edition report [1] only focused on and complained of the increase in the suicide rate of teenage girls from 0.5 to 1.7 per 100,000. The report did NOT mention that the rate for boys, aged 15 to 24, is 29.0 per 100,000 [2] and that the increase was even higher for boys than it was for girls. [3] Adding insult to injury, it appears that suicide prevention programs help women and girls more than they help men and boys. [4]
• Men die much more often than women from accidents, drugs, crime, suicide, employment, disease, and war, but it seems only women can be “survivors.” It seems only female victims of sexual assault, sexual harassment, domestic violence, and breast cancer can call themselves “survivors.” This shows how exaggerated women’s victimhood can get.
• Women constantly complain about how much they are harassed online. But studies indicate that men are harassed just as much, if not more.
• Female genital mutilation is considered horrific and banned everywhere. Male genital mutilation (circumcision) is not only allowed, but encouraged.
• Jokes about rape are not allowed and are never funny. But when men are the ones being raped, then rape jokes are allowed and are funny, and occur frequently on late night talk shows. Ditto for sexual mutilation jokes—because men can’t be victims.
• The age-adjusted death rate ratio for men to women for cancer is 1.4. This means men die more often and at a younger age than women die from cancer. But breast cancer receives all of the attention and funding.
• Charities seem to focus on helping women. I examined the partners of the United Way of Greater Los Angeles and found 35 that primarily or only helped women and only one that primarily helped men. Even worse, most charities and large social organizations have subgroups just for women, but there are no special subgroups just for men. Because men aren’t seen as victims, they don’t deserve charity.
• Women complain about the male domination in STEM education and jobs. Oddly, they are silent about the female domination of psychology, library science, nursing, bookkeeping, and human resources. Because only women can be victims.
• There are hundreds of women’s studies programs in our colleges that study women’s problems and demand solutions. There are few men’s studies programs, and most of these are run by women’s studies departments, and therefore, are really just women’s studies for men. Only women are victims.
• Title IX, which is supposed to stop sexism in education, actually enforces sexism against men. For example, women make up most participants in all extracurricular activities in colleges except one—athletics. And athletics is the one activity in which Title IX has imposed quotas. It has damaged men’s athletics. This is due to women’s victim mentality. Also, using Title IX to punish men for sexual harassment and assault has been a disaster.
• Other examples of the exaggerated victimization of women on college campuses include trigger warnings, speech codes, microaggressions, and safe rooms.
There are countless other examples of the binary nature of victimhood, but I’ll stop here.
Because women are seen as victims, and men are seen as perpetrators, only men are held responsible for their mistakes. Women get a pass.
Because of women’s attachment to victimhood, they will not admit that they rule the world. They own politics and the government because most voters are women. They own the economy because one gets power from spending money, not making money. (Women spend 80 cents of every consumer dollar.) Because of this, women own the media since advertisers must aim their ads at women who determine which brand to buy, and as a result, the content of the media is biased toward women. Women own all sexual power. Women own the future since most child caregivers and teachers are women. Women own all charity and social services. And women own all victim power. With all of this power and control, women will still point to the “patriarchy” and claim they are victims.
We need to fix these binary victimhood problems.
There is something to be said for the strength of men, their independence, their self-sufficiency, their lack of complaining, and their ability to solve their own problems. But no man can solve everything. Men must learn where to draw the line, where they can’t do it themselves, and where they must ask for help. And we must allow it. We must encourage it. Otherwise, men are likely to fall into the destructive behaviors of drugs and alcohol, crime, violence, and suicide.
Women, media, governments, colleges, medicine, charities, and society in general must stop exaggerating the victimhood of women.
Women complain too much. Men complain too little. Both must find a happy medium.
As a man, I am asking for help in finding solutions for these victimhood problems.
[2] http://www.suicide.org/suicide-statistics.html#2005
[4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4377906/pdf/ijerph-12-02359.pdf
James Jackson writes the “Self-Indulgent and Delusional” blog at
https://hydrarch15.wixsite.com/selfindulgence
