The Misogyny Myth

City Journal contributing editor and former New York Times columnist John Tierney has written a terrific piece debunking what he calls the misogyny myth, namely, the claim that contemporary western societies are riddled with prejudice and discrimination against women. On the contrary, John argues, it is men that get the short end of the stick.

Here’s how John summarises his article

Contrary to what you see in the press (or Barbie), misogyny is not rampant in modern societies. There is no evil patriarchy oppressing women. Quite the reverse: Both men and women are guilty of misandry, a bias against men. My City Journal article reviews the overwhelming evidence (ignored or suppressed by misandrist journalists and scholars) of bias against men, from the ‘women are wonderful’ effect reported by psychologists to the discrimination against men in the legal system, government, schools, corporations, and academia.

This misandrist bias is probably innate, and it’s being exploited by a diversity industry that falsely blames sexism for any gender gap not favouring women. Yes, women are ‘underrepresented’ in some fields, especially at the top, but it’s not because of discrimination. It’s because of factors like the ‘gender productivity gap’ and the ‘competition gap’ (which explains why scientists in the 99th percentile of productivity are disproportionately male, and why 95 of the top 100 Scrabble players are men). The misogyny myth serves the interests of the diversity industry, but it’s enormously damaging to the rest of society — women as well as men — because it poisons relations between the sexes and undermines the system that has provided unprecedented opportunities and prosperity to everyone: meritocracy.

And here’s an extract:

‘Toxic masculinity’ and ‘testosterone poisoning’ are widely blamed for many problems, but you don’t hear much about ‘toxic femininity’ or ‘estrogen poisoning’. Who criticises ‘femsplaining’ or pretends to ‘believe all men’? If the patriarchy really did rule our society, the stock father character in television sitcoms would not be a ‘doofus dad’ like Homer Simpson, and commercials wouldn’t keep showing wives outsmarting their husbands. (When’s the last time you saw a TV husband get something right?) Smug misandry has been box-office gold for Barbie, which delights in writing off men as hapless romantic partners, leering jerks, violent buffoons, and dimwitted tyrants who ought to let women run the world.

Numerous studies have shown that both sexes care more about harms to women than to men. Men get punished more severely than women for the same crime, and crimes against women are punished more severely than crimes against men. Institutions openly discriminate against men in hiring and promotion policies – and a majority of men as well as women favour affirmative-action programs for women.

The education establishment has obsessed for decades about the shortage of women in some science and tech disciplines, but few worry about males badly trailing by just about every other academic measure from kindergarten through graduate school. By the time boys finish high school (if they do), they’re so far behind that many colleges lower admissions standards for males – a rare instance of pro-male discrimination, though it’s not motivated by a desire to help men. Admissions directors do it because many women are loath to attend a college if the gender ratio is too skewed.

Gender disparities generally matter only if they work against women. In computing its Global Gender Gap, the much-quoted annual report, the World Economic Forum has explicitly ignored male disadvantages: if men fare worse on a particular dimension, a country still gets a perfect score for equality on that measure. Prodded by the federal Title IX law banning sexual discrimination in schools, educators have concentrated on eliminating disparities in athletics but not in other extracurricular programs, which mostly skew female. The fact that there are now three female college students for every two males is of no concern to the White House Gender Policy Council. Its National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality doesn’t even mention boys’ struggles in school, instead focusing exclusively on new ways to help female students get further ahead.

Of course, females in the past did suffer from outright discrimination, but most American institutions eliminated those barriers at least 40 years ago. Women have been a majority of college graduates since 1982 and dominate by many other key measures. They not only live longer than men but also benefit from a higher share of federal funding for medical research. They’re much less likely to be fatally injured on the job or commit suicide. They receive the lion’s share of Social Security and other entitlement payments (while men pay the lion’s share of taxes). They decide how to spend most of the family income. Women initiate most divorces and are much likelier to win custody of the children. While men are ahead in some ways – politicians love to denounce the ‘gender pay gap’ and the ‘glass ceiling’ supposedly limiting women – these disparities have been shown to be largely, if not entirely, due to personal preferences and choices, not discrimination.

Yet most people still believe in the “myth of pervasive misogyny”, as the social psychologists Cory Clark and Bo Winegard concluded in Quillette after surveying the research literature on gender bias. Noting that a Google Scholar search for “misogyny” yielded 114,000 results, while a search for “misandry” yielded only 2,340, they write: “We suspect this difference in interest in misogyny over misandry reflects not the relative prevalence of each type of prejudice, but rather greater concern for the well-being of women than men. All of the arguments, anecdotes, and data forwarded to support the narrative that we live in an implacably misogynistic society, in fact, may be evidence of precisely the opposite.”

Yes, the misogyny myth persists because both sexes want to believe it. Our greater concern for women’s well-being is presumably an innate bias that evolved because it helped the species multiply. From a reproductive standpoint, individual males are ‘expendable’, but females are not. Men are expected to sacrifice their lives defending women in every culture, from hunter-gatherer bands to modern nations like Ukraine, which allowed millions of women to flee the Russian invasion and required all men under 60 to stay and fight.

This instinct to protect women has been essential for societies to survive, but it has also made us easy prey for a modern industry of academics, journalists, activists, lobbyists, and bureaucrats who falsely blame sexism for any gender gap that doesn’t favour women. The misogyny myth has served the interests of this diversity industry, but it is enormously damaging to the rest of society – women as well as men.