A Man's World

It was International Women's Day yesterday, a day dedicated to raising awareness of gender inequality and congratulating women on the success of their struggle to distinguish themselves from domestic farm animals in the eyes of men everywhere. I'm sure there is a political way to look at it, but I like to assume it's just a patronizing and perverse scheme dreamt up by an insane torturer who congratulates his victims on freeing themselves from his hellish nightmare prison that they wouldn't have been in if it wasn't for him. Kind of like Saw.

International Women's Day also has other meanings, interpretations and rationals, but I won't go into them because feminism has never been my strong point and I don't want to screw up so badly that I end up insulting half of the human race.

The law of unintended consequence being as stringent and unkind as usual, International Women's Day has caused furore on the internet between people who actually know stuff about gender politics, and people who think everything is fine or are wilfully misogynistic neanderthals.

A commonly employed discourse I have seen is the lack of an International Man's Day. This has been championed by disenfranchised men everywhere, who are surprisingly keen on gender inequality when it affects them personally. After all, International Man's Day - which has been held as a daily event since the dawn of time when Adam said to God 'She did it!' - could provide them with yet another day dedicated to being slovenly, eating steak and abusing women the world over.

Well worry no longer, men, because there is an International Man's Day. It was started in 1999 to address the gender inequality of women having their own day and takes place on the 18th of November. Which you could have found out about with a bit of research and assuming self-righteous indignation  had not become the default setting for most people. I digress. Let the beer drinking, meat eating and lewd comments fly.

LOOK UPON MY WORKS YE MIGHTY AND DESPAIR

Reasons to Celebrate Being a Man*

1. My odds of being hired for a job, when competing against female applicants, are probably skewed in my favor. The more prestigious the job, the larger the odds are skewed.

2. If I fail in my job or career, I can feel sure this won’t be seen as a black mark against my entire sex’s capabilities.

3. I am far less likely to face sexual harassment at work than my female co-workers are.

4. If I do the same task as a woman, and if the measurement is at all subjective, chances are people will think I did a better job.

5. If I choose not to have children, my masculinity will not be called into question.

6. If I have children and a career, no one will think I’m selfish for not staying at home.

7. My elected representatives are mostly people of my own sex. The more prestigious and powerful the elected position, the more this is true.

8. When I ask to see "the person in charge," odds are I will face a person of my own sex. The higher-up in the organization the person is, the surer I can be.

9. As a child, chances are I was encouraged to be more active and outgoing than my sisters.

10. As a child, chances are I got more teacher attention than girls who raised their hands just as often.

11. If I’m careless with my financial affairs it won’t be attributed to my sex.

12. If I’m careless with my driving it won’t be attributed to my sex.

13. Even if I sleep with a lot of women, there is no chance that I will be seriously labeled a "slut," nor is there any male counterpart to "slut-bashing."

14. I do not have to worry about the message my wardrobe sends about my sexual availability or my gender conformity.

15. My clothing is typically less expensive and better-constructed than women’s clothing for the same social status. While I have fewer options, my clothes will probably fit better than a woman’s without tailoring.

16. The grooming regimen expected of me is relatively cheap and consumes little time.

17. If I’m not conventionally attractive, the disadvantages are relatively small and easy to ignore.

18. I can be loud with no fear of being called a shrew. I can be aggressive with no fear of being called a bitch.

19. I can be confident that the ordinary language of day-to-day existence will always include my sex. "All men are created equal," mailman, chairman, freshman, etc.

20. My ability to make important decisions and my capability in general will never be questioned depending on what time of the month it is.

21. I will never be expected to change my name upon marriage or questioned if I don’t change my name.

22. The decision to hire me will never be based on assumptions about whether or not I might choose to have a family sometime soon.

23. If I have a wife or live-in girlfriend, chances are we’ll divide up household chores so that she does most of the labor, and in particular the most repetitive and unrewarding tasks.

24. If I have children with a wife or girlfriend, chances are she’ll do most of the childrearing, and in particular the most dirty, repetitive and unrewarding parts of childrearing.

25. If I have children with a wife or girlfriend, and it turns out that one of us needs to make career sacrifices to raise the kids, chances are we’ll both assume the career sacrificed should be hers.

26. Magazines, billboards, television, movies, pornography, and virtually all of media are filled with images of scantily-clad women intended to appeal to me sexually. Such images of men exist, but are rarer.

28. On average, I am not interrupted by women as often as women are interrupted by men.

Doesn't that just make you proud of all we've accomplished?

*This was based on Peggy McIntosh's article on white privilege and taken as a PDF from MIT here. I was originally going to use statistics but given I'd found them on Facebook I couldn't verify them. So I started looking into male privilege, gender inequality and patriarchy and the amount of raw data from certifiable sources is so much that I wouldn't know which aspect to possibly begin with. Everything from box office gross for female made films right through to domestic violence, education and sexual abuse. So I settled for the above.

If any male readers are feeling pretty bad right now, don't panic. The first four articles I found by googling 'feminism statistics about men' came up with 'Feminism Exposed' ,'Feminist Myths', 'The Feminist Fantasy of Male Privilege' and 'The Problem with Feminism'. So I wouldn't worry, there are counter-arguments out there. Doubtlessly penned by someone so intelligent they've resorted to dragging their man-knuckles on the floor because defying the inexorable embrace of gravity is like spitting in the face of god.