piece of writing

After reading the article

“Male Trouble: Are Men Victims of Sexism?”Links to an external site.

by Digby (2003), critically reflect on the author’s arguments and evidence presented in the article. In your piece of writing, address the following points:

• Summarize the main arguments presented by Digby in the article regarding whether men are victims of sexism.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of the author’s arguments and evidence. Did the author provide sufficient evidence to support their claims? Were there any gaps or weaknesses in the views?
• Reflect on your perspective and beliefs regarding sexism and its impact on men. Did reading this article challenge or reinforce your current views? Explain why.
• Consider the broader implications of discussing male victimhood in the context of sexism. How does this discussion contribute to understanding gender issues and equality?
• Discuss any potential counterarguments or alternative perspectives to the author’s claims. How might other scholars or researchers approach the topic differently?
• Share your insights and reactions to the article. Did it raise any new questions or areas of interest for further exploration?
• Conclude your piece of writing by reflecting on the significance of examining men’s experiences concerning sexism. What are the potential implications for society, gender relations, and social justice?

Please ensure your piece of writing engages thoughtfully with the article, incorporates critical thinking, and supports your arguments with relevant examples or evidence from the course content.

Male Trouble; Are Men Victims of Sexism?

It would appear that men are in trouble. The alert has been sounded in
movies during the past decade, from Falling Down (1993), about a white
male whose dissatisfactions with his life precipitate a rampage, to Fight
Club (1999), aboiit basically the same thing. It’s been on television, too,
v/ith two Donahue episodes in December 2002, one on “Angry White
Men” and another called “Are Women Getting a Free Ride?” Those epi-
sodes were so popular that the show had an “Angry White Men” week in
January. There is an emerging pattem of male confusion and anxiety in
the face of a rapidly changing gender landscape. In boys it can take the
fomi of otherwise inexplicable behavior, such as watching with gleeful
awe as Steve-O (star of Jackass., MTV” s highest rated show) emasculates
himself by performing silly but dangerous stunts wearing women’s linge-
rie. In extreme cases, boys have exploded with a level of anger more ex-
pected from men, even going so far as systematically shooting and kill-
ing classmates at school.’

At the adult level, it is not uncommon for men to manifest their
anxieties about the gender ferment of the past few decades in complaints
that men are being unfairly disadvantaged, or that women are being un-
fairly advantaged. Thus, antifeminism is a common theme in angry man
discourse: fendnism has “gone far enough,” women have already
achieved equality, now it’s men who are suffering from inequahty, so it’s
time to tilt the balance back toward men a little.

That appears to be the approximate vantage point of one author, who
has determined that men are the victims of what he unabashedly calls
“the second sexism.”‘ His antifeminism is not overt, although he ap-
provingly cites a particularly notorious antifeminist who has accused

‘What’s really inexplicable is how few commentators and journalists have even no-
ticed the gender factor in these phenomena. For example, a recent USA Today article by
Greg Toppo, “Schoo! Violence Hits Lower Grades,” (htip://www.usatoday.corr!/news/
riatior>/2003-0i-12-schooi-violence-usat_x.htm), although 1525 words long, does not use
the words “boy” or “boys” even once.

-David Benatar, “The Second Sexism,” Social Theoiy and Practice 29 (2003): 177-
210. Page numbers in parentheses in the text refer to this paper,

© Copyright 2003 by Social Theory and Practice, Vol. 29, No. 2 (April 2003)

247

248 Tom Dighy

(purportedly) man-hating feminists of a “war against boys.”^ He also de-
votes most of his critical attention to feminist theorists, in one instance
chiding Cynthia Enloe for addressing military sexism but ignoring “the
much greater disadvantage suffered by vast numbers of men who are
forced into combat against their wills” (199). While that’s a curious ob-
jection to Enloe’s work, it points to what makes the “second sexism”
claim intriguing. Instead of focusing on how men’s lives have been
changed in recent decades by feminism, the author emphasizes ways men
are purportedly victimized by sexism that actually have been around for
millennia, for example, being sent off to war. It’s about time we paid
attention to long-standing pattems of sexism faced by men, he seems to
be saying, and stop giving women all the attention. He expects that this
campaign to address sexism against men will be opposed by “those
feminists who will regard attention to the second sexism as threatening”
(188) (although the nature of the threat is not specified). More interesting
is the other group from which he expects opposition, namely, “conserva-
tives who endorse traditional gender roles” (188).”

‘Christina Hoff Sommers, “The War Against Boys,” The Atlantic Monthly, May
2000, p. 59; also see Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women (New
York: Simon & Schuster, 1994). For my response to her accusation that feminists hate
men, see Tom Digby, “Do Feminists Hate Men?: Feminism, Antifeminism, and Gender
Oppositionality,” Journal of Social Philosophy 29, no. 2 (1998): 15-31; see also Tom
Digby, “Political Correctness and the Fear of Feminism,” The Humanist 52 (March
1992), pp. 7-9, 34. By the way, the epigraph to Sommers’ article, “The War Against
Boys,” presumably not written by the author, proclaims “it is boys who are the second
sex.” So credit for that nasty inversion of Beauvoir’s expression may actually go to an
anonymous copyeditor at The Atlantic.

”Benatar focuses his critical attention primarily on the writings of feminist theorists,
rather than conservative defenders of traditional sex roles, but his antagonistic sentiments
tov,’ard the latter are clear, as can be seen in the following quotes: (1) “Why, for instance,
should female recruits not be subject to the same de-individualizing crew-cuts as male
recruits? There is nothing outside of traditional gender roles that suggests such allow-
ances” (179); (2) “Tnese special privileges [allowing female army recruits longer hair]
simply reinforce traditional gender roles” (179); (3) “Obvious sex-role stereotypes ex-
plain at least some of the difference [in corporal punishment of boys and girls]” (180);
(4) “Any natural differences in aggression that might exist, could give rise to, but would
also be greatly exaggerated by, sex-role expectations and conventions. This is one reason
why conservatism is not a fitting response to current inequalities even if one thinks that
natural differences account for some of the inequality” (194); (5) “But there are obvious
social and gender role explanations that can account for why men become soldiers”
(194); (6) “Indeed, such reasons have been used regularly by the conservative defenders
of tradifional gender roles, including those who have sought to exclude from combat
those women who do want such roles” (196); (7) “This argument presupposes that the
position of women is worse than that of men. I do not deny this, if it is a global claim that
is being made. In most places, women are generally worse off than men. This is because
the traditional gender roles for women are much more restrictive than those for men, and
most of the world’s human population continues to live in societies that are characterized
by traditional gender roles. But what about contemporary liberal democracies, from

Male Troubles Are Men Victims of Sexism? 249

1, The Decline of Men?

The reader Vv’ho hasn’t followed the decline of male status as portrayed in
movies and television shows may be surprised to hear of it. It is easy to
miss, given the continued ubiquity of signs of male power. Martha Burk,
v/ho started the recent effort to integrate v/omen into the Augusta Na-
tional Golf Club, home of the Masters Golf Toumament, said of her ef-
fort, “It’s such a big deal because it’s got sex, it’s got money, it’s got
sports, it’s got all the guy things that guys care about. And whether we
like it or not, guys are still nmning this world.”^ More systematically,
Katha Pollitt scouts the gender terrain and concludes:

It takes a real talent for overlooking the obvious to argue that women have achieved
equality in contemporary America. After all, … virtually every important political, social.
Cultural, and economic institution is still dominated by men: legislatures, courts, corpora-
tions, labor unions, the news and entertainment media, education, science, medicine,
religion. Study after study shows that women make less money than men even when they
do the same or similar work, which they have a hard time getting; that they shoulder the
bulk of child-rearing and housework, even in families where both husband and wife work
fuU-time; that they are on the receiving end of a great deal of rape, domestic violence,
abuse, and harassment.*

That quick survey of ongoing sexism (against women) is complemented
by legal scholar Deborah Rhode’s recent book, Speaking of Sex,’ which
exhaustively and compellingly surveys the depth and range of gender
inequality that continues to disadvantage women.

Yet many men have difficulty seeing inequality, Rhode says:

“Pale males eat it again,” announces a character in Michael Crichton’s popular film Dis-
closure. This perspective is widely shared. According to recent polls, close to half of all
men think that they are subject to unfeir penalties for advantages others had in the past.
Two-thirds of men and three-quarters of male business leaders do not believe that women
encounter significant discriniination for top positions in business, professions, and gov-
ernment.*

whose ranks most feminists are drawn and to which substantial (but not exclusive) femi-
nist attention is devoted?” (196); (8) “Why are women not complicit in and partly culpa-
bie for the perpetuation of gender role stereotypes that lead to male disadvantage?” (206);
(9) “Affirmative action conscription policies that aimed at enlisting equal numbers of
males and females and insisted on sending equal numbers of men and women into battle
would not only enforce the desired proportionality, it would aiso have an immense impact
on the prejudicial views about gender roles” (207).

‘On the ABC television show, UpClose, 2 January 2003; Bui± is Chairwoman of the
National Council of Women’s Organizations.

“Katha Pollitt, “Feminism’s Unfinished Business,” The Atlantic Monthly, November
1997, p. 160; also at http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/97nov/polHtt.htm.

‘Deborah Rhode, Speaking of Sex: The Denial of Cender Inequality (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997).

^Rhode, Speaking of Sex, p. 3.

250 Tom Dighy

Why do men have such difficulty seeing gender inequality? First, for the
same reason whites have so much difficulty seeing racism: because they
don’t have to, it’s not something they need to notice in their everyday
lives. Michael Kimmel recounts how he learned about this aspect of gen-
der and race privilege. In a feminist theory seminar, a white woman told
a black woman that they shared a bond as women. Disagreeing, the black
woman responded:

“When you wake up in the morning and look in the mirror, what do you see?” she asked.
“I see a woman,” replied the white woman.
“That’s precisely the problem,” responded the black woman. “I see a black woman. To
me, race is visible every day, because race is how I am not privileged in our culture. Race
is invisible to you, because it’s how you are privileged. It’s a luxury, a privilege, not to
see race all the time …”
As I [Kimmel] witnessed this exchange, I was startled, and groaned … Someone asked
what my response meant.
“Well,” I said, “when I look in the mirror, I see a human being.”‘

It’s only when race and gender are a source of victimization, of harm,
that they get noticed. When they bring nothing to your life but privilege,
when they don’t disturb your life, you don’t notice them—and you also
don’t notice how they affect the lives of others.'”

Another factor that may contribute to some men’s inability to see
women’s inequality is knowing that they, too, can be victims of gender-
related bias, abuse, and harassment. What’s missing is a sense of how
their victimization compares with what women face. As the proponent of
the “second sexism” idea acknowledges (some would say understates),
“In most [geographical] places, women are generally worse off than
men” (196). Those are, however, not places to which he directs his con-
cem.” As for the other places, specified as “contemporary liberal de-

‘Michael S. Kimmel, Manhood in America (New York; Free Press, 1996), pp, 3-4.
‘•”Men’s vision is also obstructed when they see women’s inequality as deriving from

women’s own choices, which are presumed to be detached from any causal context, un-
less it’s a pseudo-biological one.

”Benatar draws a distinction between “liberal democracies” and the rest of the world
that is quite problematic in my view. This is way too vast a topic to address here, and it is
not essential to the topics I do want to address, but I’ll give just three examples of why
making this distinction, especially in the context of trj’ing to compare gender-specific
disadvantaging of women and men. (1) Some pattems of sexism against women are
transnational, involving both “liberal democracies” and other countries. For example,
according to the World Health Organization, “Forced prostitution, trafficking for sex and
sex tourism appear to be growing. Existing data and statistical sources on trafficking of
women and children estimated 500,000 women entering the European Union in 1995”
(http;,// www.who.int/inf-fs/en/fact239.html). Most of these women come from poorer,
often nondemocratic, countries, (2) There is a growing number of women (primarily im-
migrants) who are subjected to female genital mutilation in Europe, Australia, Canada,
and the U.S. (World Health Organization at http;//www.who.int/inf-fs/en/fact241.html).

Male Trouble: Are Men Victims of Sexism? 251

mocracies” (196), he expresses uncertainty about whether “women [are]
worse off than men” (197), speculating that “the extent of discrinrdnation
against men is probably seriously underestimated” (197), making it diffi-
cult to compare the victimization of women and men. So he’s “not con-
vinced” that “men in our society enjoy overall advantage” (205).’^ That
doesn’t matter, anyway, he says: “Fortunately, I think that the question of
which sex suffers the greater discrimination is simply irrelevant to the
question of whether attention should be given to the second sexism”
(197).

He comes no closer than that to offering an overall appraisal of the
seriousness or urgency of the plight of men and boys, but it’s possible to
gauge it, approximately, with the specific examples he gives of “second
sexism”: men and boys are more likely than women and girls to be sub-
jected to the following: pressure to engage in military combat, demean-
ing cre¥/-cuts (and other unspecified demeaning acts) in military training,
victimization by aggression and violence, expendability in disasters
(“w’omen and children first”), corporal punishment, sexual assault cases
being taken less seriously, loss of custody of their children as a result of
a divorce, less affection from divorced mothers, and discrimination if
they are homosexual.'” There are still other possible cases of discrimina-

(3) Eritrea is in a transitional phase, supposedly on its way to becoming a democracy, and
partly there already, even though the parliamentary elections scheduled for December
2001 were postponed indefinitely. (See The World Factbook 2002 at http://v/ww.cia.
gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/eri-tml.) Regarding the status of women in Eritrea,
while their (transitional) parliament is composed of 21% women (http://www. afdcaac-
tion.org/actioa’ipu.htm), the prevalence of female genital mutilation in Eritrea is 95%
(World Health Organization, http:/7www.who.int/frh-whd/FGM,’EGM%20prev%20up
date.html). Attempts to compare (a) nations on the basis of how democratic they are (af-
ter all, in recent years there have been plenty of compelling critiques raising doubts about
how democratic the U.S. is, considering the overwhelming influence large corporations
have through campaign contributions), and (b) women and men as to their relative gen-
der-specific disadvantaging, are immensely problematic. In any case, what’s the point?
Surely it’s not necessary or even helpfiil to make such comparisons in order make the
case for improving democracy everywhere, so is it necessary to make such comparisons
in order to diminish or eliminate gender-specific disadvantaging?

”On the other hand, Benatar says near the end of his paper: “I have not sought to
claim that men are worse off than women” (209).

“Benatar misinterprets the silence regarding lesbians in legal discourse as tolerance;
it is actually part of a. broader historical, cultural pattem that negates the existence, and
often even the possibilitj’, of lesbian relationships. So the “discrimination” at work here
cuts both ways. In any case, the claim that this is an example of sexism or discrimination
against men is quite problematic. It ss discrimination, if you like, against homosexuals (or
homosexual behavicrs, prior to the nineteenth centurji) that is rooted in historic, possibly
even evolationary, concems with maximizing procreation. That’s why, as a general pat-
tem, historically and across cultures, homophobia tends to rise and fall in correlation with
pressures to procreate (e.g., the famous passages at Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 ofi:en cited
by conteiaporary homophobics, like the widely overlooked anti-masturbation passage at

252 Tom Dighy

tion, he says, for which the evidence is “equivocal” (183).
I’m not so sure that it is “simply irrelevant” to compare those exam-

ples, and any larger pattem discemible from them, with the vast, perva-
sive, systematic, and often horrifically cmel disadvantaging of women
throughout the world, for which an immense amount of evidence has
been amassed over the past few decades. Nonetheless, his examples
leave no doubt that there is some quite substantial disadvantaging of men
going on, and that deserves attention.

But does the disadvantaging faced by men constitute, or derive from,
sexism or discrimination? I don’t think so. I think that’s the wrong diag-
nosis, one that diverts attention from a more adequate account that is
necessary for the disadvantaging of men to be effectively addressed. I
shall discuss three interwoven reservations that I have about the claim
that men are victims of sexism: it fails to identify perpetrators who do the
discriminating, it decontextualizes and dehistoricizes, and it relies on a
politically anemic notion of discrimination.”^ I’ll conclude with a discus-
sion of strategies for ameliorating male disadvantage, as well as exam-
ples of gender flux in popular culture that may serve as optimistic signs.

2. Who’s Doing These Things to Men?

Who are the perpetrators of male disadvantaging?’^ Is it necessary to
point out the obvious? It is primarily men who disadvantage men. It is
almost entirely men, historically and in the present, who design and im-
plement policies that are likely to lead to war, who decide that it will be
men who will fight the war, who subject soldiers to demeaning hazing

Genesis 38:9-10, originated at a time when the Hebrews stood to benefit from efficient
procreation; also, there was a general pattem among Native American tribes, prior to the
twentieth century, of less homophobia among peaceful, agrarian tribes, and more homo-
phobia among more militaristic, nomadic tribes [see Walter L. Williams, The Spirit and
the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986)]).
Basically, men are more pressured to have sex with women, instead of with men (in-
cluding themselves), when sociefies need to maximize production of offspring. To call
this discrimination or sexism is surely a real stretch, to say the least. Contemporary pat-
tems of discrimination against gays and lesbians in North America, Europe, and many
other countries, situated where such needs are absent, and persisting because of cultural
inertia, need to be addressed, but the differential homophobia directed at gay men and
lesbians, placed in evolutionary/historical context, is not sexism.

^”Benatar’s definition of discrimination as “the unfair disadvantaging of somebody on
the basis of some morally irrelevant feature such as a person’s sex” (177) is indeed un-
conventional. I shall discuss this later in this article.

‘”Here is the best hint Benatar gives regarding a perpetrator: “There are powerful
social forces that shape the expectations or preferences of men and women so that sig-
nificantly disproportionate numbers of men and women aspire to particular positions.
Here indirect or subtle discrimination is operative” (177).

Male Trotiblej Are Men Victims of Sexism? 253

(including those crewcuts), and who send men off to do battle. It is pri-
marily men who get aggressive and violent with men, and when men get
violent with men, it is more likely to result in serious injury or death than
when women are violent with men. It is primarily men who insist on
saving the women and children first. Most judges who give custody of
children to women are men (although one study shows that when fathers
actually trj’ to get custody, they win three times as often as mothers).’^ It
is overwhelmingly men who not only discrincinate against other men
who are gay, but also intimidate, assault, and kill them. Corporal pun-
ishment is a bit more complicated, primarily by the fact that women gen-
erally spend way more time than men engaged in childcare, but in the
U.S. there is a substantial pattern of men bearing a special responsibility
for corporal punishment of their sons.

There are manifold other v/ays in which men behave badly toward
ether men that could be added to those “second sexism” examples. Most
men v/ho are raped are the victims of other men. In the overwhelming
majority of anti-rriale sexuai harassment cases brought to the U.S. Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission, the perpetrators are male (and
nominally heterosexual).” Most victims of injuries and deaths resulting
from hazing, inckiding coerced drinking, are men, and they are hazed by
ovher men. It is the callousness of primarily male executives that results
in workplace hazards that cause injury, disease, and death to workers,
irictading many cases where tbe victims are all or mostly male.

So the perpetrators of male disadvantage are most likely to be male
themselves. But the “perpetrator” notion must be used cautiously here; I
do not mean for it to connote blameworthiness, for in this case blame
would require the same decontextualization and dehistoricization that is
required by the broader assertion of a “second sexism.”‘^ Thus, when
male disadvantage and male intrasex conflict are placed into a broader
context, doubts are raised not only about the clsam of a “second sexism,”
but also about the usefulness of the concept of blame in this case. Con-
textualization may also point the way toward the amelioration of the
rriost substantial forms of male disadvantage, to which I shall now turn.

‘°A study by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court reported in Stephanie Kraft,
“Why Doss He Do That,” The Valley Advocate, 6 Febmary 2003, p. 15.

”Reed Abelson, “Men Are Claiming Harassment by Men,” A’ew York Times, 10 June
2CC*L For more on this subject, see Margaret Talbot, “Men Behaving Badly,” New York
Times, 13 October 2002, sect. 6, p. 52, col. 1.

”’My previous critique of guilt largely applies to blam.e: Tom Digby, “No One Is
Guilty: Crime, Patriarchy, and Individualism.” Journal of Social Philosophy 25, no. 1
(199^): 180-205.

254 Tom Dighy

3. What Is the Worst Thing Ahout Being a Man?

I am going to focus primarily on what I consider, after more than a
quarter century of reflection on the subject, to be the greatest disadvan-
tage men suffer as a gender, especially because it is the root of most
other male disadvantages, namely, cultural ideals of manhood that are
deeply informed by the role of warrior. For men who literally take on
that role, this means risking not only bodily injury or death, but also
emotional disability.’^ The disadvantage for those men is obvious, but for
all men there is a range of not-so-apparent disadvantages suffered as a
consequence of their gender role being imbued with the traits expected of
a warrior. Foremost among these traits is the ability to selectively focus,
and sometimes suspend altogether, the capacity to care about potential
harm to oneself and others. The warrior must be able to kill another man
without consideration of the excmciating emotional pain that will result
for the persons who loved and depended upon that man. The warrior
must be able to maim and mutilate other men without concem for the
pain and continuing disability those men will endure. And the warrior
must also be able to repress anxiety that he himself may come to feel
such pain, endure such injury, or have his own life taken away, leaving
behind his loved ones to moum.

Actual warriors are needed only in certain situations, typically when
one group is threatened in some way by another group, or when one
group has something another group really wants; in either case, one or
both groups decide they will have to fight it out. It’s only in such specific
circumstances that the men are needed to get fierce, suspending the ca-
pacity to care about the interests, pain, and suffering of the persons in the
other group and about their own potential injury or death, so that they
can triumph over the other group, in the interest of their own. The need,
then, is not for people who are uncaring altogether, but rather people who
can delimit and suspend their caring. Even though men’s fierceness may
be needed only occasionally, they must always be prepared for combat,
and so most societies utilize various athletic activities, often specifically
combat-themed, to keep the men fit and ready for battle.””” This battle-
readiness includes not just physical fitness, but emotional readiness.
Alas, like physical strength and agility, human emotions do not have on-
off switches. In order for men to manage their emotions, particularly

” A S Benatar notes (178). See also Terrence Real, / Don’t Want to Talk About It:
Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression (New York; Fireside, 1997); William
Pollack, Real Boys (New York; Random House, 1998).

^”See Michael B. Poliakoff, Combat Sports in the Ancient World (New Haven; Yale
University Press, 1987), and David D. Gilmore, Manhood in the Making (New Haven;
Yale University Press, 1991).

Male Trouble; Are Men Victims of Sexism? 255

their capacity to care about others or themselves, their training for com-
bat-readiness must begin in childhood. So boys who let their fear show,
or v/ho manifest feelings of concem for others, are commonly admon-
ished with imperatives like “Boys don’t cry,” “Suck it up,” “Tough it
up,” “Play through the pain,” “No pain, no gain,” “C’mon, be a man,”
and so on. These injunctions toward manliness direct boys precisely not
to show any emotional \’ulnerability, fear, or empathy for the suffering of
others. Neither physical nor emotional fitness for combat can be simply
tumed on or off. Neither is obtainable at a moment’s notice, but rather
requires training from childhood on. You can’t just tell boys they should
act like men if they happen to be in combat. Hence, in societies that rely
on militarism to achieve their ends, emotional preparedness for conflict
h.as to be a defining element of manhood.

The capacity to suspend caring imposes a heavy emotional cost on
boys and rnen, as it runs counter to primal human urges and needs. To
love and fae loved, to care for others and have them care for you, and of
course, to continue living in good health and fitness could hardly be
more cracial to human happiness and flourishing. How have we managed
to get so many persons to take on this role, which, in its very essence,
requires such impoverishment of their emotional lives, such detriment to
their psychological health? Given that the warrior role requires extraor-
dinarj’ sacrifice, regardless of whether one actually engages in combat,
how is it possible to get men not only to take it on, but to do so with the
deep intemalization and enthusiasm that the role also requires?”‘ There is
surely a clue in the fact that it is precisely men who are almost univer-
sally given this role. The belief is instilled in them that otherwise they
simp’ly cannot be men, along with all the quite obvious privileges and
pov.’er being men potentially entails.

4, Why Men?

But why men? We could, after all, select the biggest and most fit indi-
vichials fcr combat. That would mean that we would have some mixture
of men and women playing the role of warrior. That’s not what’s done,
however. Almost universally, combat service is reserved not for persons
who would be the most effective warriors, but for males only. WTiy sin-
gle out the males for this role that is so detrimental to the individual’s
interest? Why haven’t human societies—or more of them, anyway—im-
posed this onerous role on women, bribing them with the same privileges

“Tor the soldier even to be concemed about his psychological health can be a prob-
lem; see Andrew Goldstein, “Even Soldiers Hurt,” Time.. 1 October 2001, available on
the web at cime.com.

256 Tom Dighy

and power offered to men for taking it on? Perhaps it is not altogether
irrelevant that males on average are bigger than females, but there are
always exceptions—small men and large women—so why not just select
the biggest babies at birth, on the assumption that they will be big and
strong as adults, and socialize them to be warriors? There’s nothing
about being female that incapacitates one for fighting wars, and indeed,
there are some historical cases where women have been quite successful
at it.’^ Clearly, there is another factor at work here: individual female
lives are more cmcial for procreative efficiency than are individual male
lives. If we send the women off to war and some get killed, it has a far
greater impact on our ability to produce more babies than if the same
number of men had been killed. Thus, societies that have faced circum-
stances requiring them to insure efficient reproduction, and that would
include war, have deemed men the disposable sex, comparatively, so
they get assigned to combat, having been socialized into combat-
readiness since birth.””

Nowadays, most men in North America, Europe, and many other
countries are not likely to go off to war, and for the U.S., at least, warfare
has changed so dramatically in the past twenty years, relying so much
more heavily on technology instead of face-to-face combat,’̂ ‘* that most
people who go into military service do not become, and are not asked to
become, warriors. Hence, when boys today play the warrior role, they are
most likely literally playing it in the context of a videogame. But then,
playing soldier has always been an important part of boyhood. In that
way and countless others, including sports,”^ boys are still being trained,
as before, to have the qualities of a warrior, that is, to “be a man.”

5. Why Do Men Hurt Each Other?

Regardless of whether social groups are engaged in conflict with other
groups at any given time, when most of their male members are social-
ized to have the emotional traits of a warrior, there tends to be a lot of

“^For examples, see chapter 2 of Joshua S. Goldstein, War and Gender: How Gender
Shapes the War System and Vice Versa (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

^^For more on the need for binary gender differenfiation that precedes the selectabil-
ity of either gender for particular roles, see

Digby, “Do Feminists Hate Men?”

^”The U.S. war in Iraq occurred just as this article was going to press, leaving no
opportunity to adequately consider the im.plications of this new militarism for the themes
I have explored herein. Some of those implications are addressed very insightfully in
Richard Goldstein’s article, “Neo-Macho Man,” TJxe Nation, 24 March 2003, available at
http:.//www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030324&s=goidstein.

“̂ “On the historical role of sports in maintaining combat-readiness, see Michael B.
Poliakoff, Combat Sports in the Ancient World (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1987).

Male Trouble: Are Men Victims of Sexism? 257

intragroup male-on-maie aggression and violence.^” The presence of
those traits in most of the men is obviously a causal factor, along with
the greater gender segregation that is common in militaristic societies,
which makes male victims more available. But there may be another sig-
nificant factor in men’s victimization of each other. As a matter of both
evolution and history, maxry men have often had to compete with each
other for sexual access to women, without which their genes would not
be passed on. (For many evolutionary psychologists, evolution occurs in
both culture and biology, often with a complex interplay between bio-
logically and culmrally inherited propensities;^^ that is the understanding
of evolution used in this essay. Further, I do not assume that a pattern or
strategy that has evolved is thereby justified.) Sometimes men have
competed for women by fighting, but typically it’s more complicated
than that.

Men’s strategies for competing with other men for sexual access to
women have evolved in parallel with, and in intersection with, women’s
preferences for certain kinds of male mates .”̂ The largest study ever on
men’s and women’s mate preferences (10,047 subjects representing 37
cultures from around the globe) concluded that women “universally”
emphasize actual and potential resource control by potential mates more
tha:n do men.’^ Over the millennia, men who could control, and therefore
provide., resources have been advantaged in women’s mate selection (all
the more so if they could also keep control of resources out of the hands
of womeri), and hence, there has often been intense pressure on men to
compete with each other on that basis. Hence, in varying degrees, a com-
petitive spirit and outlook often becomes a component in cultural ideals
of manhood, particuiarly where the obtaining of resources requires risk
or stmggle.

When intensified by an economic system like capitalism, this com-
petitive spirit can reach the level of /njpercompetitiveness, with real men

•'”Goldstein, V/ar and Gender. See also the results of the National Crime Victimiza-
tion Survey at http://www.oip.usdqj.gov/bjs/abstract/cvusst.htm. The pattern of male
victimization by violence is one of the features of “second sexism” noted by Benatar:
“Men are much more likely to be the targets of aggression and violence” (179).

”See, for example, David M. Buss and Neil M. Malamuth (eds.). Sex, Power, Con-
flier: Evolutionary and Feminist Perspectives (New York: Oxford University Press.
1996).

“”David M. Buss, “Sex Differences in Human Mate Preferences: Evolutionary Hy-
potheses Tested in 37 Cultures,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 12 (1989): 1-49; David
M. Buss, The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating (New York: Basic Books.
1994).

‘ Bass, “Sex Differences in Human Mate Preferences”; there is a briefer discussion
of the study in David M, Buss, “Sexuai Conflict: Evolutionary Insights Into B;minism
and the ‘Battle of the Sexes’.” in Buss and Malamuth (eds.). Sex, Power. Conflict, pp.
296-315.

258 Tom Dighy

expected to base their lives and their relationships on the presumption
that people (especially men) are divided into winners, who are to be val-
orized, and losers, who are to be vilified. To the extent that such a per-
spective on life is successfully inculcated in men, it can problematize
their relational lives, inclining them to view other people, even friends
and family, with varying degrees of fear and suspiciousness, and with
vigilance for opportunities to benefit themselves or their social group at
the expense of others.^” When it intersects with the warrior role discussed
above, the result is a widespread pattem of male-on-male violence.

That is the larger evolutionary and historical context for male disad-
vantage.^’ Men have needed to compete with, and sometimes fight, each
other for control of resources with which to attract women and make
them dependent, and women, needing those resources for themselves and
their offspring, have been attracted to mates with potential or actual suc-
cess in that male competition. It is this co-evolution, intersecting with the
assignment of men to the warrior role (deriving from their specific role in
reproduction), that has led ultimately to so many men being targeted by
the aggression and violence of other men. Men have generally been ad-
vantaged relative to other men by being able to suspend their concem for
the feelings, health, and lives of those men, but the consequence has been
^//sadvantage for men as a group. The inherited male legacy is a greater
proclivity for risking injury, death, and emotional invalidism. Paradoxi-
cally, most men are quite proud of such proclivities, which prove that
they are real men.

6. Is What’s Being Done to Men Sexism, or Discrimination?

Given this larger picture, we can now consider whether male disadvan-
taging can be traced to sexism or discrimination. The definition of sex-
ism, or sexist discrimination, relied upon in the “second sexism” theory
is “the unfair disadvantaging of somebody on the basis of some morally
irrelevant feature such as a person’s sex” (177).^” Unfairness is, of

‘°On the detrimental effect of competitiveness on romantic relationships, see Richard
M. Ryckman, Bill Thomton, Joel A. Gold, and Michelle A. Burckle, “Romantic Rela-
tionships of Hypercompetitive Individuals,” Joumal of Social and Clinical Psychology
21 (2002); 517-30.

^’See Buss, “Sex Differences.” The theory I present here draws on, but is different
from, the theory articulated by Buss in this chapter.

‘̂ Cf. George W. Bush’s objection to the University of Michigan affirmative action
program, on the basis that it “unfairly rewards or penalizes perspective (sic) students,
based solely on their race” (available at http;//www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/
2003/01/20030115-7.html), Notice how the Bush-Benatar approach to defining sexism
and racism works rhetorically. It makes the category of discrimination so broad that the
class of persons that includes the perpetrators of sexism and racism, without which there

Male Troubles Are Men Victims of Sexism? 259

course, quite a nebulous concept, but consider this example: In a conver-
sation in the midst of a dental examination, it is not unfair that I am dis-
advantaged by the difficulty of speaking with dental tools in my mouth,
for it happens in a context where I derive benefit.

Does the context of men’s disadvantaging by being assigned the war-
rior role and all that follows from it, including emotional disability and
the increased likelihood of being targeted with aggression or violence,
offer any benefit to men? It may be hard to find any if one views men
discretely, in opposition to women. It is by looking at the larger context
of the male warrior role, including the historical perspective provided by
its evolutionary origins,^” that one can see that the overall pattem of men
being assigned to combat was advantageous to most societies, in many
cases even cracial to their survival, so m,en (not only women) did derive
benefit from it, so it hardly seeros unfair.

More reasons for doubting that the most significant disadvantaging of
men results from sexist discrimination come to light when male disad-
vantage is viewed from the perspective of a more adequate account of
discrimination. Adrian Piper has distinguished between two kinds of dis-
crimination, cognitive and political. Cognitive discrimination means “to
distinguish veddically betv/een one property and another, and to respond
appropriately to each.” ‘*’* This kind of discrimination is generally viev/ed
as laudatory, as Vv’hen it is said that someone has discriminating taste in
wine or clothing. The discrimination that results in the male disadvantage
related to the warrior role seems to be of the cognitive sort, in that it ap-
propriately responds to the different properties that most men and most
women have that determine their contributions to reproduction. The con-
tribution of each individual man to the society’s overall reproductive
project is such that they are more expendable, so it is appropriate that
men be assigned to risk-taking activities like war.

However, discrimination regarding gender has a political context in
%’ays that discrimination regarding wine or clothing does not necessarily
have, for the former has significant implications for power relations, in-
cluding distribution of benefits. This larger political context, however, is

would have been no concepts of sexism arsd racism to begin with, gets brought under its
umbrella This rhetorically ramifies into themes like; (1) The perpetrators are just as
much victims of racism and sexism as anyone else, so no particular attention needs to be
given to the sexism and racism of those whose victimization gave rise to the very con-
cepts; (2) Tne perpetrators aren’t even perpetrators—they couldn’t be, because they are
victims, etc.

”Let me emphasize that I’m talking about evolution in culture, not biology, as is
often the case in this essay. Human evolution takes place in culture as well as biology,
and often the same principles are operative in both.

•̂ ^Adrian Piper, ‘Two Kinds cf Discrimination,” The Yale Joumal of Criticism 6
(1993); 25-74, p. 25.

260 Tom Digby

one that counterbalances male disadvantage with some quite substantial
advantages: first, the power that has accrued to men by virtue of their
ability to manifest the qualities of the warrior has given men control over
important institutions like govemment and religion, and control over re-
sources in general; second, manhood as a cultural model or ideal has
been valorized far more than womanhood—indeed, it is rare to find a
case where “honor” is not either equated with masculinity or strongly
associated with it (e.g., the dishonoring of a woman is a harm to a male
relative).

These advantages that accrue to men as a result of the discrimination
they face explain partly why, despite its political dimensions, discrimi-
nation regarding men is not of the kind involved in sexism or racism,
which Piper calls political discrimination. Piper describes political dis-
crimination as “what we ordinarily understand by the term ‘discrimina-
tion’ in political contexts: a manifest attitude in which a particular prop-
erty of a person which is irrelevant to judgments of that person’s intrinsic
value or competence, for example his race, gender, class, sexual orienta-
tion, or religious or ethnic affiliation, is seen as a source of disvalue or
incompetence; in general, as a source of inferiority.””*^ Piper adds that
political discrimination depends on a failure of cognitive discrimination,
that is, “failing to distinguish finely enough between properties [a per-
son] has and those he does not have.””** I would add to her characteriza-
tion of political discrimination that it has the effect of disempowering
persons who fall within the targeted group, and empowering the group
perpetrating the discrimination. The classic expression of how this works
in the case of sexism comes from Aristotle: “Again, the male is by nature
superior, and the female inferior; and the one mles, and the other is
ruled; this principle, of necessity, extends to all mankind.”^’

In short, sexism and racism are forms of discrimination, rooted in er-
ror, that stigmatize, and then devalue and disempower on the basis of that
stigmatization.”** If blacks and members of other racial groups had not
historically been subjected to a sweeping pattern of stigmatization and
consequent disempowerment, there would never have arisen a concept of
racism, for there would have been no need for it. And if women had not
historically been subjected to a sweeping pattern of stigmatization and

“Ibid.
^«Ibid.
“Aristotle, Politics 1254b2 (Jowett translation).
‘*On the role of stigma in political discrimination, see David Wasserman, “Stigma

Without Impairment: Broadening the Scope of Disability Discrimination Law,” Report
from the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy (University of Maryland), vol. 19
(Fall 1999), available at http://www.puaf.umd.edu/IPPP/fall 1999/stigma_woJmpair-
ment.htm.

Male Trouble: Are Men Victims of Sexism? 261

consequent disempov/erment, there would never have been a concept of
sexism, for there would have been no need for it.

It should be added that sexism and racism, like other forms of politi-
cal discrimination, are not possible without perpetrators. Racism would
not be an issue, and it is unlikely that “racism” would even be in our vo-
cabulary, had there not been a significant pattem of white perpetrators of
the kinds of deeds and attitudes that exemplify v/hat we have come to
mean by the term. Likewise, had there not been a significant pattem of
male perpetrators of the kinds of deeds and attitudes that exemplify v/hat
we have come to mean by “sexism,” that term would not be likely to ex-
ist.” The harms to racial groups and to women to which they were sub-
jected by whites and men in those historical contexts gave rise to the
concepts of racism and sexism, which became simple ways to refer to
those harms and the mechanisms for producing them.

Underlying group stigmatization is another feature missing from
“second sexism” that is common to both sexism and racism; in the con-
text of the latter, J.L.A, Garcia calls it “the heart of racism.””” He uses
this term to refer to what he calls volitional, but what I would call affec-
tive, dimensions of racism. There is a pattem of affectivity within racism,
such that each case of it includes one or more from a family of senti-
ments, ranging from outright and conscious malevolence, through conde-
scension, disregard, and degiadation, to callousness, heartlessness, and
coldness, often with various of those sentiments interlocking and rein-
forcing each other. Sexism, too, has quite similar affective elements, with
the more extreme among them falling into the category of misogyny.
Misogyny is likely present in most cases of willful discrimination against
women, serving to implicitly justify sexist discrimination by portraying
women as appropriate victims, as in the quote from Aristotle’s Politics
above. Misogynistic comments are a pervasive and enduring phenome-
non in the history of westem culture. The earliest example with which I
am familiar comes from over 2700 years ago, in Hesiod’s Theogeny:

‘\a me emphasize that I do not mean to suggest that only whites can be perpetrators
of racism or that only males can be perpetrators of sexism. There are some blacks (and
members cf other groups subjected to racism) who intemalize enough white racism to
become racist toward other blacks, and there are many women who intemalize enough
sexism to become sexist toward other women, and in either case, the racism or sexism
can even be tumed on oneself. I’m just saving that there are historical pattems of the sort
I described, without which the concepts of racism and sexism, would not have developed.

*°J.L.A. Garcia, “The Heari; of Racism,” Journal of Social Philosophy 27, no. 1
(1996); 5-46; repr. in Bemard Boxill (ed.). Race and Racism (New York; Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2001), pp. 257-96. My discussion of this topic starts and borrows virom Gar-
cia’s insights, but it’s not meant 😮 be an exposition of them.

262 Tom Digby

From her [Pandora, the first woman] comes all the race of womankind.
The deadly female race and tribe of wives
Who live with mortal men and bring them harm.
No help to them in dreadful poverty
But ready enough to share with them in wealth.””

While there are isolated examples of anti-male sentiments expressed by
women, they typically express resentment toward the sexism and misog-
yny of men. Perhaps the most common example occurs when a group of
heterosexual women are discussing the sexist insensitivity of their boy-
friends and someone says something like “Men are such pigs.” There is
no widespread pattem in literature or popular culture of anti-male ex-
pressions that comes even close to the brutal misogyny of many gangsta
rap lyrics, rugby songs, and “dirty jokes.” The latter, most of which are
misogynistic, are probably the largest genre of humor in the U.S. Gro-
tesquely misogynistic comedians, like Howard Stem and Andrew Dice
Clay, have been wildly successful. Expressions of misogyny don’t just
v/idely occur in popular culture, they are widely acceptable.

7. What Is It Like to Be a Victim of Sexism?

I think Garcia’s “heart of racism” insight needs to be taken a step further.
No picture of racism and sexism is complete without an understanding of
how ill-will in the hearts of perpetrators affects the hearts of their vic-
tims. In the case of sexism, consider how job discrimination often lowers
women’s self-esteem, even when they know it’s the result of sexism.
Consider how sexual harassment instills in women fear of assault and
apprehension about losing their jobs, and sometimes even makes it im-
possible for a woman to do her job.

Consider also that the threat of rape, which is perhaps the ultimate
expression of misogyny, terrorizes virtually every woman in the U.S.
Few men, and not all women, are aware of the pervasive effect of the
threat of rape in women’s lives. Tim Beneke made the effort to talk to
women about this, and came away transformed. He learned that the
threat of rape alters the meaning of the night, makes women dependent
on men for security, inhibits their ability to enjoy solitude in nature, re-
quires them to spend more on rent to live in safe places and more on cars
to insure safe transportation, constrains their public expressions and the
freedom of their eyes, and inflects with fear their experience of male

“”‘Thanks to Tom Wartenberg for calling this passage to my attention; he quotes it in
his “Teaching Women Philosophy (as a Feminist Man),” in Tom Digby (ed.). Men Doing
Feminism (New York; Routledge, 1998), pp. 133-34.

Male Trouble; Are Men Victims of Sexism? 263

company—-even the company of friends.’^’ I’ve found consistently that in
a class with twenty or more female students, it is possible for every
woman in the class to name a strategy she uses on a daily basis to avoid
sexual assault, without a single repeat. At the end, many women say that
they routinely take ali of the ireasures that have been named. Not only
does this open the eyes of the men, women themselves are surprised, for
typically they have not given conscious attention to the omnipresence of
the threat of rape for the same reason a fish doesn’t notice the water.

Rape terrorism (directed at women) is even worse in some other coun-
tries. Such is the case, for example, in South Africa, according to the BBC:

Rape is endemic in South Afiica.

On this lhe police, politicians, sociologists, and rape survivors all agree. There is a silent
war going on, a war against women and children.

It is a fact that a woman bom in South Africa has a greater chance of being raped, than
learning how to read.

One in four girls faces the prospect of being raped before the age of 16 according to the
child support group, Childiine.

Sexual violence pervades society, with one of the highest reported rates of rape in the

Understanding the misogyny inherent in the ubiquitous threat of rape
may make it easier for men to see the larger pattern of continuing gender
ineqiialities, and how deeply embedded they are in culture. According to
Dr. Rachel Je\vkes, a senior scientist with the South African Medical Re-
search Council, “In South Africa you have a culture where men believe
that they are sexually entitled to women. You don’t get rape in a situation
where you don’t have massive gender inequalities.””*^

Another cortHnon expression of the misogyny lying at the heart of
sexism is domestic violence. Any full picture of this problem must in-
clude the substantial number of cases in which women initiate or partici-
pate in violence, and sometimes even brutally injure men. However,
women are at least seven times as likely as men to be seriously injured or
killed by husbands, boyfriends, and would-be boyfriends.”^ That’s why it

**’Tim Beneke, “Men on Rape,” in Michael S. Kimmel and Michael A. Messner,
(eds.). Men’s Lives, 5th ed. (Needham Heights, Mass.: Allyn & Bacon, 2001), pp. 384-89
(it aiso appears in earlier editions).

“‘Carolyn Dempster, “Rape—Silent War Against S.A. Women,” 9 April 2002, at
http://news.bbc.co.Uk/2/hi/amca/1909220.stm. See also: http://www.rapecrisis.org.za/
stetisdcs.htm; Vera Haller, “South Africa Cry for Justice in Rape Crisis,” USA Today, 29
November 1999, p. Aig; Sarah Ramsey, “Breaking the Silence Surrounding Rape,” The
Lancet 354 (11 December 1999), p. 2018.

**Dempster, “Rape—Silent War Against S.A. Women.”
^Michael R. Rand, Violence-Related Injuries Treated in Hospital Emergency De-

264 Tom Digby

is hard to imagine a “second sexism” version of the South African politi-
cal cartoon by Jonathan Shapiro titled “Psychometric Tests for Relation-
ships”: it shows two men facing a large screen with images of a woman
and a punching bag, with one of them saying, “Wait, it’s coming to me
…” and the other saying, “For a moment, I thought I had it …” One re-
searcher standing nearby says to another: “As we suspected! The average
S.A. male struggles to distinguish between a woman and a punchbag!””**
The point is not that women are incapable of being violent, nor that they
don’t target men with their violence, nor that men are biologically des-
tined to be violent toward women (or men). The point is that many so-
cieties, including the U.S. and South Africa, institutionally and culturally
make men’s violence against women a viable strategy for many men. Ty
Shroyer, a man who was arrested for domestic violence in Duluth, Min-
nesota, but later became a counselor in the Domestic Abuse Intervention
Project, says about men who are violent toward women: “It’s not about
getting in touch with their anger. It’s more identity, it’s more about who
they are as men, you know, and what their beliefs are about women. It’s
about a society that models inequality between men and women.”*^ Toys
say a lot: in a recent bit of guerilla theater, members of the Barbie Lib-
eration Organization switched the voice boxes on hundreds of Barbie and
G.I. Joe dolls; the result was “a mutant colony of Barbies that roared,
‘Vengeance is mine’, and a battalion of G.I. Joes that twittered, ‘Will we
ever have enough clothes?'”‘*’* How could there not be a pattem of wide-
spread, serious violence against women in a society where militarism and
sexism are integrally related to each other?

Although male victims of rape and domestic violence do get inade-
quate attention, there’s no pattem of misandrist brutalization of men by
women that even begins to compare with the everyday threat of rape and
other violence faced by women. Indeed, there’s hardly even been a need
for the word “misandry,” which originated (in the early twentieth cen-
tury) as a reference to the presumed man-hating oi feminists, not women
in general, and has continued to be used primarily in that context.”*^

partments. Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report (Washington, D.C.; U.S. Depart-
ment of Justice, 1997); Lawrence A. Greenfield et al.. Violence by Intimates: Analysis of
Data on Crimes by Current or Former Spouses, Boyfriends, and Girlfriends (Washing-
ton, D.C.; U.S. Department of Justice, 1998).

‘ ‘ ^ e cartoon is available at http.//www.rapecrisis.org.za/statistics.htm.
”̂ In the film, A Woman’s Place: Law and Justice; for information, see http;//zaza.

com/awomansplace/index.html.
*^Deborah Rhode, Speaking of Sex, p. 19; originally reported in Avid Firestone,

“While Barbie Talks Tough, G.I. Joe Goes Shopping,” New York Times, 31 December
1993, p. A12.

‘^’^Oxford English Dictionary, New Edition, at http;//dictionary.oed.com. On the claim
that feminists hate men, and Christina Hoff Sommers’ use of the term “misandry,” see

Male Trouble: Are Men Victims of Sexism? 265

When I ask the earlier question of my male students, what strategies do
you use on a regular basis to protect yourself from rape, they laugh. Only
one male student in over ten years has ever reported having taken any
measure at all to protect himself from rape: he was a football player who
locked the door to his dormitory room every night because he was afraid
of being raped by another member of the team. The exceptional cases of
men being raped (always, or almost always, by men) “prove the mle”:
rape terrorism is a form of sexist discrimination against women.

8, Why Not Open the “Sexism” Umbrella Enough for the Guys?

The problems with broadening the concepts of sexism to include male
disadvantaging (or racism to include purported white disadvantaging) are
twofold: first of all, it erases a history of one group exercising control
over another group. Throughout the “second sexism” essay, the concem
seems to be that sexist disadvantaging of women has been given all or
most of the attention, and it is now time to give men some attention. ‘The
author says “there has been an asymmetrical assault on sexism” (205).
His assumption is that the gender-related disadvantaging of men and
women are fungible. The pattem of control of v/omen by men that per-
vades history, and that continues today unintermpted (despite some ame-
lioration), makes the two cases of gender-related disadvantaging not fun-
gible. They are not fungible also because the persons who have control
of the very institutions (the mass media, government, religion, etc.) that
could alter male disadvantaging by implementing public policies and
effecting cultural change are themselves overwhelmingly men. How can
one say that the gender-related disadvantaging of men is sexism, when it
is pdrnarily men who have control of the forces that could most effec-
tively address their disadvantaging?

The second problem with broadening the concept of sexism to include
male disadvaiitaging is that doing so drains the concept of its political
potency for diminishing or eliminating the historical control of women
by mers. Let me draw an analogy from racism. Over many years of
teaching about race and racism, I have observ’ed that the students who
raise the charge of “reverse racism” or “reverse discrimination” against
programs that are designed to address racism are consistently the same
ones who also say that racism is not a problem, or that blacks (or other
minorities) are inferior (less intelligent, more likely to engage in crime,
etc.), or that behaviors that are commonly deemed racist are often justi-
fied. Often they express a palpable hostility toward blacks (or other
groups), sometimes prefaced with “I’m not a racist, but…” The effect of

Digby, “Do Feminists Hate Men?”

266 Tom Digby

“reverse discrimination” claims is not just to make people more comfort-
able with their own discriminatory attitudes. When you say that whites
are victims of racism, too, or men are victims of sexism, too, the rhetori-
cal impact is to create the impression that everyone is a victim of racism
or sexism, so it must be an unavoidable aspect of the human condition,
so little or nothing can be done about racism or sexism. The upshot is
that by tuming a blind eye to history, you conserve and perpetuate his-
torical pattems of whites controlling blacks and men controlling
women.^°

9. Is There Any Hope?

To the extent that evolution of the male gender role has taken place on a
biological level, the odds that male disadvantage can be ameliorated are
greatly reduced (although it becomes all the more clear that the disad-
vantage is not unfair). But, fortunately, there are signs that gender roles
have evolved in culture as much as in biology, and further that culture
can be a powerful force countering biological propensities. Consider that
there are some groups in which gender differences range from nonexist-
ent to minimal: the Vanatinai Islanders, the Semai of Malaysia, the
Siriono of Bolivia, the Mbuti of central Africa, the !Kung of southem
Africa, the Copper Eskimo of Canada, and the Tahitians of the South
Pacific.^’

Consider also that there are groups in which gender roles are largely
reversed from those found in most parts of the world, for example, the
Mosuo of the Yunnan province in China, where women are the heads of
households, controlling most of the family property. Women administer
all resources, even money eamed by men in long-distance trade using
horse caravans. Women plan work and assign tasks. In other respects, the
roles are not so much reversed as redrawn altogether. For example, mar-
riage is replaced by a practice called sisi (literally, walking back and
forth). Each night the men, who live, work, and eat with their mothers
and sisters, pack up a little bag and head for the home of a lover to spend
the night, retuming home in the moming. Relationships are about friend-
ship as much as sex, and they last as long as they need to: when a woman

‘”in that regard, it is interesting that while Benatar proposes several possible remedial
strategies, e.g., affirmative action conscription of women by the military and affirmative
action for men in nursing (which is already being done in the U.S.), he carefully declines
to endorse any of them.

^’Goldstein, War and Gender, chap. 1; also available at http;//www.warandgender.
com/wgchl.htm; Maria Lepowsky, Fruit of the Motherland: Gender in an Egalitarian
Society (New York; Columbia University Press, 1994); Gilmore, Manhood in the Mak-
ing, chap. 9.

Male Trouble; Are Men Victims of Sexism? 267

feels it’s time for a change, she just doesn’t open the door (although typi-
cally, the attitude is mutual). Money issues don’t factor into relationships
at .all, so they are based entirely on love. Lovers’ quarrels are raje, and
rape is not a problem.^”

Not only do sex roles vary significantly among cultures, their imple-
mentation varies enormously within cultures. Some cultures have more
room for diversity than, others, but when you look at men and women in
the U.S., despite the enormous pressure to conform to society’s gender
expectations, it is hard not to be strack by the uneven implementation of
both male and female roles. Consider this self-characterization by one of
my female students:

I do not wear frilly lace or pink clothes or shoes vv’ith heels. I do not wear make-up. I
wear jeans and tee shirts. I am on the track team here at Springfield. I throw shot put,
discus, hammer, and the twenty pound weight. I pov/er lift. I can leg press nine hundred
pounds. I am not ashamed to sweat when I exercise. I like to watch sports, my favorite is
footb.alL How many girls enjoy wrestling with their best friend? I mean serious Vi/restling,
black and blues, but no bloodshed …As you can tell, I am neither dainty nor fragile.

Tlie media and traditions of our culture brainwash people to believe that the world
should consist of delicate and petite women … That is just not m.e. Neither will it ever

While she may think of herself as unusual, it actually would not be hard
to find a host of examples of other women who resist being confined by
femininity in a variety of ways. Likewise, it would not be hard to find
just as many examples of men who refuse the demands of masculinity.

Indeed, those refusals point us toward another source of evidence for
a relatively weak role of biology in the determination of gender. If man-
hood were biologically determined, why would most societies need to
pet enormous pressure on boys to become men, and even continue that
pressure well into adulthood? Anthropologist David Gilmore provides
niimerous examples of societies scattered throughout the world that view
“manhood as an artificial state, … a prize to be won by fierce struggle.”^”*
The Sambum boys of East .Africa must endure bloody circumcision ritu-
als without flinching, blinking, or moving rheir heads. In Ethiopia, Am-
hara boys must engage in whipping contests where “faces are lacerated,
ears tom open, and red and bleeding welts appear.”‘” On the Greek Ae-

-̂Lu Yuan and Sam Mitchell, “Land of the Walking Marriage (Mosuo People of
China),” Natural History 109, no. 9 (2000); 58-60; Heide Gottaer-Abendro::h, “The
Strucmre of Matriarchal Societies,” ReVision 21, no. 3 (1999): 1-6. For another example
of matriarchy, see Peggy Reeves Sanday, Woman at the Center: Life in a Modem Matri-
archy (Ithaca, N.Y.; Cornell University Press, 2002).

‘”Amanda Alpert, Final Exam for Philosophy 180; Existentialism, 17 December 2002
(quoted with permission of the aithor).

Gilmore, Manhood in the Making, p. 17; see also p. 11.
“ibid., p. 13.

268 Tom Digby

gean island of Kalymnos, men dive into deep water, scoming the use of
diving equipment, and some of them wind up crippled by the bends for
life. “Young divers who take precautions,” Gilmore says, “are [consid-
ered] effeminate, scomed and ridiculed by their fellows.”^* Boys
throughout the world are pushed, prodded, and coerced into engaging
into undertaking the struggle and risk that define, and therefore prove,
manhood. Real men are made, not bom.

10. What Can Be Done for Men? What Can Men Do for
Themselves?

If you want to ameliorate male disadvantage, these cultural ideals of
manhood, which rarely diverge very far from cultural ideals of the war-
rior, are the place to start. Here is where boys are taught that manhood,
while dangerous to life and limb, is their ultimate goal in life. Here is
where they are also taught that men are not women. Such instruction for
Sambia boys includes flogging and thmsting sharp grasses up their noses
to cause copious nosebleeding; formerly, sharpened canes forced down
their esophaguses caused them to vomit blood. The purpose in all three
cases is to purge “the mother’s blood and milk and other ‘polluting’ in-
fluences from the boy’s body, because these matemal influences inhibit
masculinization.”^^ While less extreme, the high school football coach
who calls his underperforming players ladies, girls, or various pejorative
terms for women, is engaged (perhaps unwittingly) in a similar project,
namely the inculcation of the oppositionality of men and women. Under-
standing this gender oppositionality is crucial for addressing male disad-
vantage.

The oppositionality of men and women is not just a relationship of
two concepts; rather, it is about the material interlocking of gender roles,
and the consequent gender-related disadvantage faced by both men and
women. This can be seen quite clearly in relations between Sambian men
and women, as described by Joshua Goldstein:

The Sambia are among the most warlike cultures ever studied, and also among the most
sexist. Women are not only disenfranchised and subject to abuse, but villages are laid out
with different paths for men and women. Male Sambia warriors are taken from their
mothers at 7 to 10 years old to be trained and raised in a rigid all-male environment.
Younger boys sexually “service” older ones, eventually reversing roles as they grow into
warriors. Tliis homosexual phase is supposed to build masculinity in the warrior. After
marrying, these young men adopt heterose.xuality but treat their wives very harshly. Sam-
bia society is marked by extreme male dominance and the suppression of the feminine in
the male’s worid. Not surprisingly, warfare among the Sambia is strictly a male occupa-

^*Ibid., p. 12.
“Ibid., pp. 158-59.

Male Trouble: Are Men Victims of Sexism? 269

tion. Nor are the Sambia exceptional in this regard. Of the most warlike societies known,
none requires women to participate in combat, and in all of them cultural concepts of
masculinity motivate men to fight.’*

The extremes of Sambia culture, especially when placed in contrast to
the Mosuo people, throw into relief the causal interrelationships of the
gender-specific disadvantaging of men and women in sexist cultures.
I’ve already explored the disadvantaging of men, mostly at the htinds of
men, at length. The disadvantaging of women, also mostly by men, in-
volves a confluence of factors sourced within the traditional male sex
role: the wajrrior’s ability to suspend the capacity to care about the suf-
fering or flourishing of others, the warrior’s reliance on aggressive tac-
tics in interpersonal relations, the unceasing pressure to demonstrate
one’s manliness, men’s felt need to defend against impugnment of their
honor/mascBlinity,”^ pressure to keep control of resources exclusively in
male hands in order to insure that women will grant sexual access and
care for one’s offspring in exchange for resources, an ideology of male
superiority that says risking one’s own injury or death is desirable, an
ideology of misogyny that says to men that anything is better than being
a woman, and so on. If our concem is pragmatic, aimed at reducing male
disadvantaging, this material interlocking of traditional male and female
roles is where we must begin.

Suppose we imagine a society where the symbolic and ideological
content of manhood begins to shrink, where over time the dimensions of
manhood listed in the previous paragraph become gradually attenuated.
If that were to happen, if the grip of traditional, militaristic, sexist man-
hood on men v/ere to become gradually loosened, men would be less
likely to devalue and abuse women, so the disadvantaging of women
would diminish. Because it is largely the same masculine traits that lead
men to disadvantage themselves and each other, simultaneously the dis-
advantaging of men would diminish. In both cases, the diminution of
gender-related disadvantaging wouid result primarily from attenuation of
the traits that comprise traditional manhood.

For now, the path to such a diminution of gender-specific disadvan-
taging of men is partially obstmcted by the fact that most men don’t see
themseives as being disadvantaged by manhood. They haven’t assessed
Ihe damage caused by ari unending pursuit of masculinity. In particular,
they do not understand that for men to be singled out for the warrior role,
with the emotiooal armaments it requires, is a dubious honor. That’s not
for lack of trying on the part of feminist theorists in recent decades, both

‘^Goldstein, War and Gender, chap. 1.
‘•In some societies killing a woman to protect one’s masculinity is admired as an

“honor killing.”

270 Tom Dighy

60male and female. But most men haven’t gotten the message that risking
injury and death is not inherently advantageous to an individual man, and
that the male gender became singled out for the “honor” of military
service not because men were valued more, but because their individual
lives were valued less for the continuation of the species or the social
group. The honor given to fallen soldiers is a consolation prize.

A factor contributing to men’s inattentiveness to male disadvantaging
may be the evolutionary imperative in most versions of manhood (the
Mosuo being a notable exception) that impels men to strive for control of
resources and women as a way of insuring sexual access to the latter.
That project has deflected attention away from their broader, including
emotional, flourishing. This would explain, for example, why many men
are, compared to women, rather inattentive to the emotional dimensions
of erotic relationships. To the extent that a man’s imperative is direct or
indirect control of and access to women, he denies himself access to the
pinnacle of romantic love—mutually shared joy and pleasure. As Shu-
lamith Firestone says, it is “the political context of love between the
sexes” that blocks access to a love in which “the lover ‘opens up’ to the
other,” which allows a “fusion of egos, in which each sees and cares
about the other as a new self.”*’ Some men will read Firestone’s descrip-
tion of love and wonder what the fuss is about. All too often the grip of
manhood on men’s lives results in their not knowing what they’re miss-
ing, and thinking they are getting more out of manhood than they are.*^

That’s why promoting a critical, evolutionary understanding of man-
hood among men is one strategy for reducing male disadvantage, but
there’s another approach to loosening the grip of militaristic manhood on
men’s lives. Because manhood and womanhood are defined opposition-
ally, v/hen the symbolic content of v/omanhood changes, so does the
symbolic content of manhood. And the symbolic content of womanhood

literature is vast, but here are some good starting points; Tom Digby (ed.). Men
Doing Feminism; Stisan Bordo, The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and in
Private (New York; Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999); Kimmel, Manlwod in America,
Kimmel and Messner (eds.). Men’s Lives\ R.W. Connell, The Men and the Boys (Ber-
keley; University of Califomia Press, 2000); and several books by bell hooks, including
the recent Feminism Is for Everybody (Cambridge, Mass.; South End Press, 2000).

‘^’Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex (New York; William Morrow, 1970), p.
126.

‘^Part of the evolutionary picture that often gets overlooked gives a basis for opti-
mism that this can be done. Evolutionary theorists often underestimate the role in sexual
selection played by indicators in males of an interest in being ongoing caregivers to a
mate and offspring, which contributes to the survival of the offspring, increasing the
likelihood of both partners’ genes being passed on. Caring in men, when not thwarted by
socialization that emphasizes the capacity to suspend it, may have an evolutionary ad-
vantage, which would contribute to explaining why there are so many caring men in the
world.

Male Trouble: Are Men Victims of Sexism? 271

is indeed changing. To some extent, this is because of feminists’ efforts
to loosen the grip of disempowering femininity on women’s lives.̂ ^ But
one of the most powerful sources of change in the symbolic content of
Vv’omanhood in the U.S. has come from the enforcement of Title K , a
law passed in 1972 that required gender equity in education funding, in-
cluding funding for sports. Less than 4% of high school girls competed
in sports prior to Title DC, 40% do so today.

The impact of that dramatic increase in the number of girl athletes
goes way beyond athletics. Title IX is ramifying throughout U.S. culture,
transforming what it means to be a woman in the U.S. Consider the im-
pact on the portrayal of women in popular culture. It has reached the
point on TV where, if someone is getting his or her ass kicked, it’s
probably being kicked by a woman. Shows with female action heroes are
all over the TV schedule: Alias, Bujfy the Vampire Slayer, Birds of Prey,
She Spies, Dark Angel, Fastlane, Witchblade, and of course, Xena the
Warrior Princess. Women have been moving into a lot of traditionally
male slots in movies, too. Girlfight and Knockout are about female box-
ers, and Love and. Basketball is about a female basketball player. Movies
with female action heroes include Charlie’s Angels and Lara Croft:
Tomb Raider, the latter based on a popular video game. To some, the
connection between Title DC and these momentous changes in popular
Culture are obvious. Referring to the spate of female action heroes, Laeta
Kalogridis, writer of Lara Croft, says, “These are the girls of Title DC.”*’*

Of course, women are increasingly occupying positions of strength
and power not jost in sports and popular culture, but also in business,
politics, art, and the intellectual world. As women move into so many of
the positions that were previously reserved for men, not only does the
image of what it means to be a woman get transformed, the image of
what it means to be a man gets transformed, too. And the implications go
way beyond symbolism; as more and more control of resources shifts
into the hands of women, there are vast implications for the ways men
relate to women. Given the traditional oppositional link between mian-
hood and womanhood, it could not be otherwise.

If women are simply joining men in the ranks of quasi-warriors and
resource hoarders, the consequence might be an increase in disadvan-
taging for both men and women. But there are signs that is not the case.
For example, the violence meted out by female action heroes on TV is

*’See Sandra Bartky, “Suffering to Be Beautiful,” in her book. Sympathy and Soli-
darity and Other Essays (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002); also, Sandra
Bartky, Femininity and Dcniination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression (New
York: Routledge, 1991).

*^Quoted in Gloria Goodale, “From Title IX to TV Heroes,” Christian Science
Monitor, 16 August 2002, available at www.csmonitcr.com/2002/0816/pl3s02-altv.html.

272 Tom Digby

typically of the comic book variety, with almost never any of the brutal-
ity and gore commonly found in, say, misogynistic “slasher” movies.
The point seems to be to display physical power, with no one really get-
ting hurt. Even when a villain gets shot by Billie’s big gun on Fastlane,
the only result is that a red dot appears on his chest and he falls down.

Men and masculinity are getting the cartoon treatment, too. Consider
just two examples. First, as Alan Spencer says about one of the most
popular forms of entertainment for boys and young men on TV, “Wres-
tling uses more choreography than the Joffrey Ballet, with those he-men
resembling the cast of IM Cage awe Folles on steroids.”^^ While some
boys take the wrestling and soap opera narratives of the WWE** seri-
ously, most of them consider it to be a form of humor. There is a similar
divide among the fans of the previously mentioned Jackass show on
MTV, which features a group of young men risking, and sometimes ex-
periencing, injury in outlandish stunts. Some of the more fervid fans
have experienced serious injury in their attempts to replicate Jackass
stunts, but the show is meant to be funny, and most boys laugh at it. Both
of these forms of entertainment, whose fan base consists overwhelmingly
of young males, poke fun at traditionally masculine behavior. As men-
tioned earlier, one of the stars of Jackass, Steve-O, even brings an emas-
culatory dimension to his antics, risking life and limb wearing women’s
lingerie. On his hugely popular DVD, he does two stunts in which the
emasculating symbolism is quite hard to miss. In one, he staples his
scrotum to his thigh with a staple gun, and in the other he pulls his pants
down so a comrade can shoot him in the buttocks with a roman candle.

The moralizing commentators who prattle on endlessly about the dan-
gerous influence on boys of Jackass and TV wrestling, and the intellec-
tuals who disdainfully dismiss these phenomena, are missing something
important. Both of these forms of entertainment make boys and men
laugh at traditionally manly behaviors. The implicit lesson they convey,
especially placed alongside the female action hero TV shows, is that tra-
ditional warrior-oriented masculinity is something that today is funny,
even ridiculous, and it is a role that that can be played, and played with,
by either women or men. Hence, they potentially contribute, however
unwittingly, to the attenuation of the power of the symbolic content of
manhood, and to loosening the grip of manhood on boys’ and men’s lives.

Spencer, “Role Reversal; How Tough Guys Became Girls and Vice Versa,”
Razor Magazine, February 2003, p. 73.

*^or ld Wrestling Entertainment, Inc.; formerly known as World Wrestling Federa-
tion.

Male Trouble; Are Men Victims of Sexism? 273

11. Ending the Battle of the Sexes?

Those examples of gender flux in popular culture are part of a broader
pattem of change in the lives of women and men, brought on by feminist
efforts to break down the barriers preventing women from becoming
athletes, lav/yers, carpenters, philosophers, physicians, executives,
plumbers, politicians, accountants, physicists, dentists, electricians,
prissts, rabbis, ministers, college administrators—to cut a long story
short, from becoming what previously only men could become. The
feminist effort to give wom.en the opportunities previously reserved for
rnen and to wrest exclusive control of resources out of the hands of men
has resulted in women demonstrating that there’s really not that mtich
that only men can do. The result has been that the symbolic content of
manhood has shrank and the masculine imperative has weakened, and
this reduces both male and female disadvantage. If that’s the goal, femi-
nism is the most effective way to attain it. As the traits, qualities, capa-
bilities, and dispositions that were deemed peculiarly male or peculiarly
female gradually lose their masculine or feminine inflections, both men
and women become liberated, leaving the oppositionaiity of the sexes
behind. Then, and only then, can intersexual relations in general be char-
acterized in ‘ihe way that Siroone de Beauvoir describes “genuine love”:

Genuine love ought to be founded on the mutual recognition of two liberties; the lovers
would then experience themselves both as self and as other: neither would give up tran-
scendence, neither would be mutilated;, together they would manifest values and aims in
the wodd. For the one and the other, love would be revelation of self by the gift of self
and enrichment of the world,*”‘ **

Tom Digby
Philosophy Program
Springfield College
tdigby @ spfldcol.edu

”’Simone de Beauvoir. The Se.cond Sex. trans, and ed. H.M. Parshley (New York:
Knopf, 1952), p. 667,

**1 am grateful to Luna Najera, Sandra Bartky, Richard Schmitt, Margaret Lloyd,
Cressida Heyes, Joe Berger, Harry Brod, and David Kahajie for invaluable comments on
previous drafts of this essay.