Some say “It’s a man’s world.” How good do men have it?

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From the beginning:

Infancy

The law forbids cutting a baby girl’s genitals, but. . .

  • Doctors amputate nerve-filled tissue from a million baby boys’ genitals every year. 1
  • They usually do not use an anesthetic.
  • Scientific research shows that circumcision is extremely painful and traumatic. 2
  • No conclusive research has ever shown a medical benefit of circumcision.
  • The foreskin contains 10,000 nerve endings and 240 feet of nerves.
  • Circumcision permanently reduces the amount of pleasure that a man can feel during sex, and can cause a variety of sexual dysfunctions in adulthood. 3
  • Over 200 baby boys die from circumcision and related causes each year. 4

Childhood

  • Infant boys are more likely than infant girls to be killed by abusers. 5
  • Those who abuse boys are much less likely to be put in prison than those who abuse girls. 6
  • When mothers hit their sons, they are more than twice as likely to cause injury as when they hit their daughters. 7
  • Girls do slightly worse than boys in science and math. 8
  • Much is being done to help girls in these subjects.
  • Boys do much worse than girls in reading and writing. 9
  • Little is being done to help boys in these subjects.
  • Boys are constantly told that they must never hit a girl.
  • A girl is permitted to hit a boy if she feels upset by something he said.
  • Boys are less likely than girls to finish high school. 10
  • A juvenile male who commits a sex offense is 46 times as likely to be arrested and charged with a crime as a juvenile female who commits the same offense. 11
  • Teenage boys are four times as likely as teenage girls to commit suicide. 12

Early Adulthood

Higher Education

  • Men are less likely than women to go to college. 13
  • Men constitute 51% of the college-age population, but only 43% of university and college undergraduates are men. 14
  • Many universities and colleges continue efforts to increase female enrollment.
  • There are 65 women’s colleges and universities in the United States. 15
  • There are 5 men’s colleges and universities. 16

Dating

A man is expected to…

  • Risk rejection and ask for the date.
  • Plan the date.
  • Pick her up for the date.
  • Pay for the date.
  • Entertain her during the date.
  • Determine what level of physical intimacy she wants on the date.
  • Initiate that level of intimacy on the date.
  • Take her home after the date.
  • Call her after the date.

A woman is expected to…

  • Show up for the date.
  • If the man initiates physical intimacy too slowly for the woman, she is likely to consider him a wimp and reject him.
  • If he initiates awkwardly, she is likely to consider him a jerk and reject him.
  • If he initiates too quickly, she may charge him with date rape.
  • She is very unlikely to initiate physical intimacy herself.
  • Too slowly for one woman can be too quickly for another woman, and the man has to guess.
  • When he guesses wrong, he can face rejection, or rejection plus a criminal charge.

Military Service Obligations

  • All young men must register with Selective Service for a possible military draft. 17
  • Even physically or mentally handicapped young men must register.
  • Penalties for failing to register include five years imprisonment, a $250,000 fine, and permanent ineligibility for government benefits.
  • In some states, a man cannot renew his driver license if he has not registered.
  • 1.2 million American men have died in war.
  • No law compels a woman to do anything solely because of her gender.
  • Women are exempt from registration for a military draft.
  • Even women who are Olympic athletes are exempt from registration, simply because they are women.
  • Women who choose to serve in the military are exempt from combat.
  • Women who choose to serve in combat may take only the safest combat roles.
  • Women can attend U.S. military academies, and many become officers in command of men, but women still have no obligation to share with men the risk of being drafted in a future war.

Cancer

  • Between the ages of 15 and 40, more men die from testicular cancer than women die from breast cancer. 18

Adulthood

Unequal Justice

  • Men receive more severe sentences than women for the same crimes. 19
  • Male felons lose their rights as parents.
  • Female felons may go to special prisons and visit with their children overnight.
  • Male-on-male prison rape is considered humorous. 20

Reproductive Rights and “Choice”

  • 1.5 million American women legally walk away from parental responsibilities every year through adoption, abortion, or abandoning babies.
  • The government goes to great lengths to protect women’s right to choice.
  • Men cannot legally walk away from parental responsibilities (child support).
  • The government goes to great lengths to hold men to those responsibilities.
  • Many men who have proven that they did not father the children that they support are still forced to pay child support.
  • How a woman got pregnant is irrelevant to the man’s child-support obligation. 21
  • A married man is legally responsible for any child born to his wife, even if he is not the biological father. 22
  • Some women who have had sex with underage boys and then gotten pregnant have been awarded child support but were not charged with statutory rape.
  • These women have been rewarded for having sex with minors.
  • Meanwhile, their victims are forced to pay the women who raped them. 23

Work and Financial Obligations

  • A husband is expected to work unless his wife chooses to financially support him.
  • A wife may choose to work or not; she is never expected to financially support her husband.
  • Men work more hours than women. 24
  • Husbands commute farther to work than wives. 25
  • Mothers have more free time than fathers. 26
  • The workplace rules over a working father.
  • A stay-at-home mother rules over the home.
  • All of the most dangerous occupations are predominantly male. 27
  • All of the most physically demanding and violent occupations are predominantly male. 28
  • Garbage men face a 70% risk of severe injury or death in a year’s time. 29
  • 5,000 men die on the job each year, more than 95% of all occupational deaths. 30
  • There are 6 times as many fish and wildlife inspectors as job safety inspectors. 31
  • Laws and regulations protect women from merely overhearing dirty jokes at work.

Marriage, Divorce, and Family Life

  • While the media claim that men are “afraid of commitment” and claim that many married men are abandoning their families, in fact women initiate two-thirds of divorces. 32
  • Women initiate even more of the divorces among couples with children. 33
  • The most common reason given by these women is “feeling unappreciated”. 34
  • Men paying alimony have no right to receive anything in return — another name for this is indentured servitude.
  • In disputes, courts grant child custody to women four times as often as to men. 35
  • Women are more likely to abuse, neglect, or murder their children. 36
  • The state enforces child-support obligations vigorously.
  • The state does little or nothing to enforce visitation rights. 37
  • Men paying child support have no right to receive anything in return — another name for this is indentured servitude. 38
  • Women are equally likely or more likely than men to abuse their partners. 39
  • Women are more likely to abuse their partners severely. 40
  • Women’s use of weapons and surprise attacks makes up for their lesser strength and size. 41
  • Services and awareness campaigns help female victims of domestic abuse.
  • There are very few services and no awareness campaigns to help male victims of domestic abuse.
  • Some states require arresting an allegedly abusive man, even if his partner objects. 42
  • A woman abusing a man is considered humorous.
  • A woman may legally murder her husband if she claims that she was battered. 43
  • A proof of being battered is having placed a restraining order against him.
  • The requirement for a restraining order is fear of a possible assault.
  • For every 100 men who kill their wives, 75 women kill their husbands. 44
  • Men are arrested for this crime 6 times as frequently as women.
  • The average prison sentence for a husband killing his wife is 17.5 years.
  • The average prison sentence for a wife killing her husband is 6.2 years. 45
  • 58% of child abusers are women. 46
  • 97% of those put in prison for crimes against children are men. 47
  • The majority of child abusers reported to social service agencies are women. 48
  • 73% of the abusers that these agencies choose to report to police are men.
  • A man convicted of inappropriately fondling a child is 25 times more likely to be put in prison than a woman convicted of killing or maiming a child. 49
  • A woman may legally murder her children if she is depressed. 50
  • In some states, a woman can charge a man with rape simply because she was drunk when she had sex with him – she is not held responsible for her actions because she was drunk.But even if the man was also drunk at the time, he is still held responsible for his actions – and for hers.
  • A woman may anonymously accuse a man of rape. 51
  • The news media may freely report the man’s name and the charge against him, even if the charge is later proved false.
  • In many states, jurors in rape trials are specifically instructed that a rape conviction can be based on the accuser’s testimony alone, without any evidence.
  • Falsely accusing a man of rape, harassment, or paternity carries no punishment.
  • A substantial number of rape accusations are false. 52
  • A substantial number of harassment accusations are false.
  • A substantial number of paternity claims are false. 53
  • Men pay most of the income taxes. Women receive most of the benefits.
  • Over their lifetimes, men pay twice what women pay into Social Security. 54
  • Over their lifetimes, women receive 50% more than men in payments. 55
  • 69% of homeless adults in the U.S. are men. 56
  • There are more men without health insurance than women without it. 57
  • There are several federal offices for women’s health.
  • There is no federal office for men’s health.
  • For every woman who is a victim of violent crime there are three men who are victims of violent crime.

Death

  • 78% of murder victims in the U.S. are men. 58
  • Men are 11 times more likely than women to be killed on the job. 59
  • 14 men are killed on the job every day.
  • Men have higher death rates than women for 12 of the leading 15 causes of death. 60
  • 80% of suicide victims in the U.S. are men. 61
  • Widowers are 10 times more likely than widows to commit suicide. 62
  • Every 20 months, suicide and homicide kill as many men as the Vietnam War. 63
  • Men are 20% more likely to die from prostate cancer than women from breast cancer. 64
  • Federal funding for breast cancer research is 4 times the funding for prostate cancer research. 65
  • Men die 5 years younger than women. 66

How good do men have it?

Footnotes

  1. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Center for Health Statistics, “Births: Final Data for 2000”, National Vital Statistics Reports Vol. 50, No. 5, and “Trends in Circumcisions Among Newborns, 2000”.
  2. H. Stang, M.R. Gunnar, L. Snellman, L. M. Condon, and R. Kestenbaum, “Local Anesthesia for Neonatal Circumcision: Effects on Distress and Cortisol Response”, Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 259, No. 10, March 1998.
  3. According to men who had standard circumcision (not “botched” circumcision) as adults.
    www.notjustskin.org/downloads/InfoandQuotes.pdf
  4. Dan Bollinger, Normal versus Circumcised: U.S. Neonatal Male Genital Ratio, February 12, 2004, Circumcision Reference Library, www.cirp.org/library/statistics/bollinger2004/
  5. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Child Maltreatment 2003, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2005.
    www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/pubs/cm03/chapterfour.htm#age
  6. Lawrence A. Greenfield, Child Victimizers: Violent Offenders and Their Victims, NCJ-153238, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, 1996, p. 1.
  7. Suzanne K. Steinmetz, The Cycle of Family Violence: Assertive, Aggressive, and Abusive Family Interaction. New York City: Praeger, 1977.
  8. U.S. Department of Education, “Trends in Educational Equity of Girls and Women”, Washington, D.C., June 2000.
  9. Ibid.
  10. Christina Hoff Sommers, The War Against Boys. New York City: Simon & Schuster, 2000.
  11. J.A. Ray and D.J. English, “Comparison of female and male children with sexual behavior problems”, Journal of Youth and Adolescence 24(4): 439-451, 1995.
  12. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Center for Health Statistics, Health, United States, 2005, Trend Table 46. www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus05.pdf
  13. Tamar Lewin, “American Colleges Begin to Ask, Where Have All the Men Gone?”, New York Times, December 6, 1998.
  14. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics, 2004, Chapter 3, Table 169.
    nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d04/tables/dt04_169.asp
  15. www.univsource.com/womens.htm
  16. www.univsource.com/mens.htm
  17. www.sss.gov/MUST.HTM
  18. National Men’s Resource Center, Testicular Cancer Awareness Week. www.tcaw.org
  19. U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Sentencing Outcomes in 28 Felony Courts: 1985”, July 1987.
  20. Rape victimizes about 105,000 women and 175,000 imprisoned men annually. U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Crime in the United States: Uniform Crime Reports 1993, 1994; and Vincent Schiraldi and Mariam M. Bell, “Prison Rape is No Joke”, Washington Post, June 13, 2002.
  21. As in State ex rel. Hermesmann v. Seyer, 252 Kan. 646, 847 P.2d 1273, 1279 (1993), when a judge ordered a teenage boy, who was molested by a babysitter, to pay child support to her.
  22. Tradition dating to Roman times and codified in English Common Law, adopted by most states in the U.S.
  23. Michigan Court of Appeals ruling reported by Dawson Bell, “Child support just, court says: Man ordered to pay for boy he fathered at 14 with older woman”, Detroit Free Press, February 21, 2004.
  24. F. Thomas Juster and Frank P. Stafford, “The Allocation of Time: Empirical Finding, Behavioral Models, and Problem of Measurement ,” Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 29, No. 2, June 1991.
  25. John Robinson, “Americans on the Road”, American Demographics, September 1989.
  26. John Robinson, “Up Close and Personal”, American Demographics, November 1989.
  27. Les Krantz, The Jobs Rated Almanac, New York City: Ballantine Books, 1989, and U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Employment and Earnings, 1988 Annual Averages”, January 1989.
  28. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment and Earnings, January 1991.
  29. H.G. Reza, “Hidden Dangers Are a Daily Part of Job for Trash Collectors”, Los Angeles Times, April 3, 1989.
  30. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Safe Workplace Institute and Occupational Safety and Health Administration, “Basic Information on Workplace Safety and Health in the U.S. “, July 1992.
  31. Ibid.
  32. Margaret Brinig and Douglas Allen, “These Boots Are Made For Walking: Why Most Divorce Filers Are Women”, American Law and Economics Review 2-1, 2000.
  33. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Center for Health Statistics, “Advance Report of Final Divorce Statistics, 1987”, Monthly Vital Statistics Report Vol. 38, No. 12, Supplement 2, 1990.
  34. Lynn Gigy & Joan Kelly, “Reasons for Divorce: Perspectives of Divorcing Men and Women”, Journal of Divorce and Remarriage, Vol. 18, 1992.
  35. Ibid.
  36. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration on Children, Youth, and Families, Child Maltreatment 1997: Reports from the States to the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1999.
    www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/pubs/ncands97/s7.htm
  37. The government spends $340 on enforcing child-support obligations for every $1 it spends on enforcing visitation rights (actual figures, $3.4 billion on child-support, $10 million on visitation). Figures from “Child Support Enforcement Is Working Better than We Think” by Elain Sorensen and Ariel Halpern, The Urban Institute, Series A, No. 31-A, March 1999, page 4, and from U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “93.597 Grants to States for Access and Visitation Programs”.
  38. Fathers have a much better record of paying court-ordered child support than mothers do. John Siegmund, “Preliminary Analysis of the Database of the D.C. Office of Paternity and Child-Support Enforcement” compiled for the National Council for Children’s Rights, November 9, 1999. Thus, a mother is more likely to be a “deadbeat mom” than a father is to be a “deadbeat dad”.
    • Professor Martin Fiebert, “References Examining Assaults by Women on Their Spouses or Male Partners: An Annotated Bibliography”, Sexuality and Culture, 1997, 1.
      www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm
    • Professor Linda Kelly, “Disabusing the Definition of Domestic Abuse: How Women Batter Men, and the Role of the Feminist State”, Florida State University Law Review, Vol. 30, 791-855, 2003.
      www.law.fsu.edu/journals/lawreview/downloads/304/kelly.pdf
    • DVstats.org – Search engine tracking over four decades of academic research on domestic violence against males.
  40. Murray Straus and Glenda Kaufman Kantor, “Change in Spousal Assault Rates from 1975 to 1992: A Comparison of Three National Surveys in the United States”, paper presented at the thirteenth World Congress of Sociology, 1994.
  41. U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Violence by Intimates, March 1998, NCJ-167237.
  42. Mandatory-arrest laws.
  43. The “learned helplessness” or “battered woman” legal defense.
  44. M.I. Wilson and M. Daley, Criminology, 30, 189-215, 1992.
  45. U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Domestic Violence: Violence Between Intimates, Washington, D.C., 1994.
  46. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Child Maltreatment 2003, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2005.
    www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/pubs/cm03/chapterfive.htm#character
  47. Lawrence A. Greenfield, Child Victimizers: Violent Offenders and Their Victims, NCJ-153238, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, 1996, p.5.
  48. David Finkelhor and Richard Ormrod, Child Abuse Reported to the Police, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2001, p. 4.
  49. Lawrence A. Greenfield, Child Victimizers, p. 1.
  50. Postpartum depression, another woman-only legal defense for murder. For example, Tom Gorman, “Woman Who Killed Child Remains Free”, Los Angeles Times, April 26, 1989.
  51. The news media have a widespread practice of withholding the names of rape accusers, even when accusations are later proved false. The news media do not withhold the names of men accused of rape.
  52. For example, 30% were false in Prince George’s County, Maryland, and 40% in Fairfax, Virginia (Stephen Buckley, “Unfounded Rape Reports Baffle Investigators”, Washington Post, June 27, 1992). In the Air Force, 60% were false (Charles P. McDowell, Ph.D., M.P.A., M.S., “False Allegations”, Forensic Science Digest, Vol. 11, No. 4, December 1985). Half of DNA tests show the convicted rapist to be innocent (Brooke A. Masters, “DNA Testing Confirms Man’s Guilt in Virginia Rape”, Washington Post, May 16, 2002). According to a nine-year study conducted by former Purdue sociologist Eugene J. Kanin, in over 40% of the cases reviewed, the complainants eventually admitted that no rape had occurred (Archives of Sexual Behavior, Vol. 23 No. 1, 1994). Kanin also studied rape allegations in two large Midwestern universities and found that 50% of the allegations were recanted by the accuser. Kanin found that most of the false accusers were motivated by a need for an alibi or a desire for revenge.
  53. Among 280,510 cases of disputed parentage, DNA testing excluded 28.2% of alleged fathers in 1999. American Association of Blood Banks Parentage Testing Standards Program Unit, Annual Report Summary for 1999, Bethesda, Maryland, 2001.
  54. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Social Security Administration, Office of Research and Statistics, “Earnings and Employment Data for Wage and Salary Workers Covered Under Social Security by State and County, 1985”, Publication No. 13-11784, 1988.
  55. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Social Security Administration, Social Security Bulletin Annual Statistical Supplement, 1991.
  56. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 1996 National Survey of Homeless Assistance Providers and Clients.
  57. U.S. Bureau of the Census, “Health Insurance Coverage: 2000”, Publication P60-215.
  58. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Center for Health Statistics, National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 54, No. 13, April 19, 2006, p. 43, Table 12.
    www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr54/nvsr54_13.pdf
  59. U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries, 2003”. www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/cftb0193.pdf
  60. National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 54, No. 13, p. 5, Table C.
  61. National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 54, No. 13, p. 42, Table 12.
  62. Jack Smith, James Mercy, and Judith Conn, “Marital Status and the Risk of Suicide”, American Journal of Public Health, Vol. 78, No. 1, 1988.
  63. National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 54, No. 13, p. 43, Table 12. 58,000 American men died in the Vietnam War. There are about 25,000 male deaths by suicide and 13,000 by homicide annually. Only 8 American women died in the Vietnam War.
  64. Associated Press, “Rate of Leading Types of Cancer”, April 20, 1999, AOL News.
  65. National Institutes of Health 1998 data reported by Warren Farrell, Women Can’t Hear What Men Don’t Say. New York City: Penguin Putnam, 1999.
  66. National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 54, No. 13, p. 26, Table 8.

This information was compiled by the Washington D.C. Chapter and the Twin Cities Chapter of the National Coalition For Men.

The National Coalition For Men (NCFM) is a nonprofit educational organization that raises awareness of human-rights issues that affect men and boys, specifically in areas where men and boys are discriminated against because they are male, or where they are denied the same protection of the law given to women and girls. NCFM is committed to equality of rights and equality of responsibilities between the sexes. Membership is open to both men and women.

The Twin Cities Chapter of NCFM participates in or sponsors various events around the Twin Cities and Minnesota to raise awareness of these issues.

For more information, or to find out how you can help improve conditions for men and boys, contact:

National Coalition For Men, Twin Cities Chapter
E-mail: ncfm-tc-info@yahoogroups.com
Web: tc.ncfm.org
Phone: 1-888-223-1280 extension 122
Postal: P.O. Box 582023
Minneapolis, MN 55458-2023

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