Essay:Yes, men can also be victims of sexism

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I feel that I need to preface this essay by saying that I am not in any way "drinking the kool-aid" of MRA's, anti-feminists, or any other similar group. I hope this should be sufficiently obvious by the content, but in my experience not everyone actually reads articles like this, and judges on title and/or a quick skimming. My views may not be correct, but they are my own.

This is a response to 6 Reasons Men Can Literally Never Be Victims Of Sexism — And Those Who Think They Can Need To Learn What "Sexism" Is, which I found vexing and wrong enough to motivate me to write this. This is not the first time I've seen the existence of sexism against men being denied (both on the internet and in "real life"), but never so blatantly and erroneously.

To very briefly summarize the above article—but I recommend you read it yourself—it claims that men can never experience sexism; it defines sexism as institutionalized discrimination based on gender. It doesn't dismiss any discrimination based on the male gender, but that this is merely "discrimination, bullying or even disparagement of their gender", but not institutionalized (and therefore not sexism).

I'm not quite sure if I agree with this definition (that's a different discussion); but we'll go by it. Merriam-Webster one, which is "an established organization" or "a custom, practice, or law that is accepted and used by many people".

A few examples of institutionalized sexism against men

Note that this is not a complete list. I decided to list only the three best examples I could think of, as I didn't want to make this too long (and risk doing a Gish gallop). The prime reason of these examples is to demonstrate that sexism against men exists in the first place, and is common enough to warrant some attention.

The traditional family

The "traditional" family where the woman takes care of the home and children while the man goes out and earns a living is one of the better known examples of the feminist cause—and rightfully so.

However, this arrangement is hardly fair for anyone, women and men alike. The woman's grievances in this are real and serious; but at the same time it's also an unfair arrangement for men. Do you think men want to spend time away from their growing children? Or feel the stress and burden of being the only person who has to "take care" of the family? I suspect this is one of the reasons why suicide rates in men are so much higher than in woman. The article talks about "privileged majority", well, here woman are the "privileged majority" depending on how you look at it: I love children, and spending time with children is one of the better things in life, but had I been "stuck" in a traditional relationship, I would have spent 5 or 6 days working, and see fairly little of my children, while my wife would have the "privilege" of spending a lot of time with the children...

Compulsory army service

Typically only men are subject to compulsory army service. There are some exceptions to this, but not a great many—so far only North-Korea, Mozambique, Eritrea, and Bolivia have implemented a fully gender-neutral draft. Countries with partly implemented a gender-neutral draft are Chad (females serve one year, men serve three), Israel (only women can be excepted for "religious reasons", and about a third of women choose to do so)., and China (not employed in combat roles).

Traditionally, only men have been expected to go off and die patriotically in a heroic manner for their country or religion. Even in many countries which accept women in the military if they choose so, often limit the roles for them (often excluding combat roles or certain ranks). This is certainly sexist against the women, but also for the men; imagine that only black people would be considered eligible for combat roles, the cries of racism would (rightfully) be loud.

Working with children

The fact that the question "Do men make good child care providers?" needs an answer in the first place is a good indication that something is wrong.

Men in day care centres are rare, in the US it's about 5.5% of child care workers and 3.3% of preschool and kindergarten teachers are men. This is not a US-specific situation; in many countries the figures are roughly similar—for example in the Netherlands about 2% of all child care workers are male. Some countries to recognize the problem and try to fix it and the EU has set a directive of 20% by 2020. When men do get hired, fear of being accused as a sexual predator is common and in some cases had to face angry parents suffering from paedophile-phobia (Is that a word? It is now) is likely to happen.

Some people might respond with "but men are more likely to sexually abuse children!" This is certainly true, but that's no reason to judge every individual man just as it's wrong to judge every individual black male because statistically he's more likely to commit a crime. Statistics about a group says very little about an individual person.

In addition, if we look at the numbers, we see that child abuse in day care centres is rather rare; only 0.4% occurred in a day care centre. The vast majority of the cases of abuse are conducted either by a parent, a partner of the parent, or other family member

Some responses to why men can't be subject to sexism

In addition to the examples listed above, here are some responses to points that are put forward as to why sexism against males can't possibly exist:

“”1. Because men have the power

Many points in this section are reasonable enough. Yes, it would be great if there were more female executives, a female president is long overdue (although Hillary is not a very good choice, IMHO), the pay gap should be fixed, and rape does affect woman more than men.

But ... none of this means that sexism against men can't exist. It states that these are "just several examples of how men have power and women do not in society today." This almost seems to imply that men form this special club with a secret handshake and that simply being a man guarantees you get power and wealth and an automatic advantage over any woman.

This is, of course, not the case. Some men have a lot of power. Most don't. Some females also have power, but most don't. You have power and be privileged and in one area, but systematically discriminated against in another (as examples above).

In short, this is something of a tu quoque.

“”2. Because of historical context

So? What happened 100 years ago happened 100 years ago. It's interesting and worth knowing, but not relevant as to the question whether sexism against men exists.

“”3. Because of the way established institutions operate with gender bias

Indeed, some do. This doesn't mean that sexist against men can't exist at all. This is another tu quoque.

“”4. Because “opportunity” for a man is never hampered by gender

Not true, as detailed in the examples above.

“”5. Because "discrimination" is not "sexism"

This is a repeat of "Because of historical context", but now claims (in all caps) that "THERE IS NO HISTORY OR INSTITUTIONAL BIAS AGAINST MEN ON THE BASIS OF GENDER. It does not exist." Well, I refer once more to the examples above.

“”6. Because straight, white, middle class men are the most enfranchised group of people in the world

Because all males are white, straight, and middle class...? Other than that, this is a repeat of "Because men have the power".

Afterword

Some people might say "but women have been subject to more sexism!". I would say this is probably true, but it's also unimportant. Sexism should be addressed on account of being sexism—the target (female, male) as such seems unimportant to me. In the last 100 or so years great strides have been made in reducing sexism for both men and women, but there are still many hurdles to go; I am confident that things will work out fine, but not if people start go into denial that sexism exists in the first place. This is not helpful, and will likely only make matters worse, rather than better.