Hello, Lovely Soul Drop!!
How are you doing?
Today, I’m talking about the forgotten sex again, and I want to express my distaste for the Us Vs Them narrative the media, social media, and activists keep pushing.
I would love to become a mother one day, and I’d love for my kids to have the same rights and opportunities as their peers regardless of their sex, skin tone, sexuality, and other physical attributes they can’t control. I want a world where everyone has the same opportunities to succeed and it depends more on your personal choice than the systems holding you back. That’s something reasonable, isn’t it? Well, that also includes white males succeeding if they work hard to do so.
Whenever I tell others I’m worried about men’s rights, about male victims of domestic violence or sexual violence, and about boys and men in general…I’m told I hate women and girls. Why? The future shouldn’t be female, it should be for everyone. My father was my best friend, but he died when I was only 10 years old so my family were my mother and grandmother. Both strong independent women I deeply admire! I was raised in a Catholic school only for girls, and I love the history of our school because it was filled with amazing female role models. I overcame sexist ideas I also grew up around, and very quickly prided myself in showing misogynists I’m as smart, strong, wonderful, magical, and worthy as a man. Femininity isn’t weak at all, it’s gorgeous and needed for the world’s balance. That said…I’m still worried about the male population.
Men need women, and women need men. We need each other to create wonderful and strong societies! Biologically we’re different, but we shouldn’t label people with gender stereotypes. I want to know YOU and regardless of your sex, you will be unique. As I already said, studying with only girls didn’t make me feel more understood because I wasn’t following the gender stereotypes we were expected to follow by society. That, and that I was a very strange kid with almost 0 social skills. The point is…I wasn’t the same as all the other girls and neither were they! Each one of us was unique.
So, are men struggling? They are. Here’s a bit of data I recovered doing research!
Let’s start with boys in education.
Girls are about a year ahead of boys in terms of reading ability in OECD nations, in contrast to a wafer-thin and shrinking advantage for boys in maths. Boys are 50 percent more likely than girls to fail at all three key school subjects: maths, reading, and science,” Richard Reeves, a senior fellow in Economic Studies and the Director of the Future of the Middle Class Initiative, wrote in his recent book Why the Modern Male is Struggling (Big Think, page 1)
So, boys in the US are lagging behind girls. If the roles were reversed people would be worried and activists wouldn’t shut up about it, but I had no idea this was a thing until I researched it. “As evidenced by declining college enrollment in the U.S., a drop for which men account for 71%, the gender disparity is continuing to worsen.” (Big Think, p. 1) this should be worrying everyone. Less educated boys grow up into less successful men.
Here are a few facts about boys in England:
● 62,000 fewer boys/men go to university every year than girls/women
● By the age of 16, girls are over 20% more likely to achieve five GCSEs including English and Maths at Grade C or better
● In 2015, in England 52.5% of boys achieved 5 A*- C GCSEs including English and Maths in comparison to 61.8% of girls
● In England 26.2% of teachers are male, 15.2% of primary school teachers are male as are 37.6% of secondary school teachers
● 8.5% of teaching assistants and 18% of support staff are male. Overall, 19.9% of all school staff are male
● Boys are around three times more likely to receive a permanent or fixed period exclusion than girls
and if that wasn’t enough, here’s a bit more.
What are institutions doing to solve this? “Despite the fact that there are clear issues with the education of boys, the fact that the Department for Education does not currently fund any initiatives that focus on addressing boys’ underachievement is astounding.” (p.1) and furthermore “Health is another area where men and boys are falling behind women and girls. For instance, in the UK, men's life expectancy is 4 years lower than women's and men die at higher rates from all top 10 causes of death, especially heart disease and stroke. In 2017 the numbers of suicides in the UK were three times higher for men compared to women.” So men and boys in the UK are also struggling.
The Guardian (2019):
“It was acceptable sexism, because it was directed at a man not a woman,” says Pinkett. “And it made me realise that, though girls and women undoubtedly come off worse as a result of sexist assumptions, boys and men are damaged by them, too.” (page 1)
As I kept reading, I realized people didn’t think sexism hurt both sexes was a logical thing to think. I also heard from Richard Reeves and read in general that boys are getting medicalized by things that were normal behavior in young boys due to their slower development of the prefrontal cortex. Remember when women were unjustly diagnosed by doctors with hysteria or insanity when it was just normal human emotions? Well, this isn’t helping males either in 2023.
Now, let’s talk about female perpetrators:
Friedersdorf (2016):
For years, the FBI definition of rape was gendered, requiring “carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.” But a recent redefinition focused instead on forced penetration with no mention of gender. Meanwhile, other data-gatherers had started to track a new category of sexual violence that the Centers for Disease Control call “being forced to penetrate.” And still others were keeping better track of sexual violence in prisons.
This means that men weren’t supposed to be seen as victims. Here are a few facts that I gathered. I will leave all the links below so you can read the whole documents and come to your own conclusions. This is just to open up the conversation!
Female perpetrators were reported in 34.7 percent of incidents with male victims and 4.2 percent of incidents with female victims.
...while it is often assumed that inmate-on-inmate sexual assault comprises men victimizing men, the survey found that women state prisoners were more than three times as likely to experience sexual victimization perpetrated by women inmates (13.7 percent) than were men to be victimized by other male inmates (4.2 percent) (Beck et al., 2013).
And according to the paper, when female abusers are reported, they are less likely to be investigated, arrested, or punished compared to male perpetrators, who are regarded as more harmful.
There is increasing evidence to suggest that women commit as much or more IPV as men (Archer, 2000; Melton & Belknap, 2003). Among adolescents, research consistently shows that females perpetrate more acts of violence in intimate relationships than males (Arriaga & Foshee, 2004; Foshee et al., 1996; Hickman, Jaycox, & Aronoff, 2004; Lichter & McCloskey, 2004; Munoz-Rivas, Grana, O'Leary, & Gonzalez, 2007; Schwartz, O'Leary, & Kendziora, 1997; Spencer & Bryant, 2000; Wolfe et al., 2001)
An extensive issue that surrounds domestic abuse is that female perpetrated violence has always received less attention, despite evidence that rates of violence are fairly consistent across both genders (Hamberger 2008; Dutton and Nicholls, 2005; Grady, 2002; Towson and Zanna 1982 as cited in White and Kowalski 1994).
And there’s this last fact: White males accounted for 69.68% of suicide deaths in 2020. American Indians males and Native Alaskans males are the only population that suicide more than the rest (included both sexes).
Why am I writing about all of this? As I keep hearing activists, people online, and the media call white straight males as the devil himself…I start to wonder what effect this is having on people (and that population). If racism and sexism made it so women and black people had to fight stereotypes, break barriers, and prove their worth to society…then why do we think treating white straight males (and boys) as the enemy is a good thing? What effect will that have on the future? I saw people online who started identifying as non binary or other things not to be a straight white male, and I was told directly they felt guilty because they were born male, white, and straight. Three things they can’t control.
Men need help as much as women do. Why aren’t we trying to get equality in dangerous jobs? In female oriented jobs? Why is gender equality or equality in general focused only on one side? Why aren’t people worried about males as much as they are about females? If it’s because in the past men used to have more power, guess what…turning the tables and turning into the evil you swore to destroy isn’t the best solution ever. I want a world where people aren’t blamed or punished by things they can’t control, and I want a world where everyone can get kindness, compassion, and justice. Worrying about men, white people, straight people, or religious people doesn't mean I don’t worry about people who don’t fit that category. Didn’t you say black lives matter didn’t mean you didn’t care about white people? Then why me saying I care about men is because I hate myself, my mom, my friends, and all the wonderful women in this world? It makes no sense.
Boys are struggling at school, men are getting abused, men are taking their own lives, they are seeking less medical treatment, and are living less in general. Fatherlessness, mental health, male breast cancer, and so much more!! Just a short blog post is not enough to speak about how much men need our help.
I’m doing a series of double standards I hate on Instagram (@bellemoon99findmiddleground) and I will continue to write, speak, and create content on finding a middle ground using Empathy and Critical Thinking.
Newsletter: https://open.substack.com/pub/bellemoon99/p/were-together-in-this?r=1oq7q4&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/bellemoon99/episodes/Lets-Connect-Monday-125--We-need-fiction-e23ni68
Sources for this blog post:
American foundation for suicide prevention (n.d.) Suicide statistics. Retrieved from: https://afsp.org/suicide-statistics/
Awolaja, J. & Mohebbi, D. (2019) The gender gap: Why are boys doing worse than girls in school? Retrieved from: http://www.ighgc.org/blog-posts/the-gender-gap-why-are-boysdoing-worse-than-girls-in-school
Friedersdorf, C. (2016) The Understudied Female Sexual Predator. Retrieved from: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/11/the-understudied-female-sexual-predator/503492/
Guo, J. (2016) The serious reason boys do worse than girls. Retrieved from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/28/the-serious-reason-boys-do-worse-than-girls/
Harris, A. (2013) The gender gap: why do boys do worse than girls at school? Retrieved from: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/the-gender-gap-why-do-boys-do-worse-than-girls-at-school-1.1591232
Moorhead, J. (2019) Boys will be boys? How schools can be guilty of gender bias. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/apr/23/school-guilty-bias-against-boys-gender-gap-education
NCHS (2015) Racial and Gender Disparities in Suicide Among Young Adults Aged 18–24: United States, 2009–2013. Retrieved from: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/suicide/racial_and_gender_2009_2013.htm#:~:text=The%20suicide%20rate%20was%20highest,and%20racial%20and%20ethnic%20subgroups.
NCHS (2019) Suicide Rates for Females and Males by Race and Ethnicity: United States, 1999 and 2017. Retrieved from: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/suicide/rates_1999_2017.htm
Pomeroy, R. (2023) Boys are graded more harshly than girls. Why? Education has a global bias against boys. Retrieved from: https://bigthink.com/thinking/boys-graded-more-harshly-in-school/
Stemple, L. (2017) Sexual Victimization by Women Is More Common Than Previously Known. Retrieved from: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sexual-victimization-by-women-is-more-common-than-previously-known/
Shmerling, R. (2020) Why men often die earlier than women. Retrieved from: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/why-men-often-die-earlier-than-women-201602199137