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The New Double Standard
Organizations such as the National Organization for
Women have helped women enormously. So much so that
many men, including me, feel that men are now
subjected to a double standard that results in
their being treated unfairly.
For example, when few women are in a lucrative
profession, for instance, computer science or
engineering, most universities and large employers
install reverse discrimination policies to avoid
organizations such as NOW tarring them with the
dreaded epithet, “sexist!” Yet, where is
NOW’s and the media’s outrage when women
are overrepresented in a desirable career such as
pharmacist? Where’s the outrage over the fact
that only men must register for the draft, the
obligation to risk getting one’s head blown
off?
Another example of the New Double Standard:
Leading women’s advocates have, with little
substantiation, made statements about men that
never would be tolerated if said about women:
“As far as I'm concerned, men are the
product of a damaged gene.” (Germaine Greer,
in in an invited address at the Alert!
Conference.)
"All men are rapists and that's all they are."
(Marilyn French, author of the feminist classic,
The Women’s Room, in a People magazine
interview.)
"I believe that women have a capacity for
understanding and compassion which a man
structurally does not have, does not have it
because he cannot have it. He's just incapable of
it." (Former congresswoman Barbara Jordan)
None of those leaders suffered significant
reprisals. In contrast, consider what happened when
Harvard president, Lawrence Summers, in an internal
brainstorming meeting, in response to a request to
be provocative, merely hypothesized, with multiple
qualifications, that innate differences might
partly explain why more men are in science. That
statement, especially when opined in a private
meeting, is not only less devastating to women than
the above statements are to men, substantial
research supports Summers’ hypothesis. Yet, a
national firestorm led by NOW ensued demanding
Summers’ firing, and Harvard’s 762-member
Faculty of Arts and Sciences issued an
unprecedented and career-devastating vote of lack
of confidence in Summers.
This establishes a new double standard: you can,
without reprisal, viciously denigrate men without
substantiation but dare you make a milder statement
about women, your career is eviscerated. That
double standard will make academics, leaders, and
the media think 10 times before saying something
negative about a woman, but not about a man. That
will immeasurably hurt how men are treated today,
and in future generations.
Here’s an example even more devastating to
men. When women were underserved in the health
arena, a decade-long media-supported hue and cry
ensued that continues unabated, resulting in
enormous research and treatment attention to, for
example, breast cancer. Yet, even though men die
5.3 years younger than women, and die earlier of
each of the 10 leading killers, led by sudden heart
attack, when was the last time you heard of a
Sudden Heart Attack fundraiser or corporate
initiative, let alone a postage stamp with the
profits going to research, which is the case with
the unprecedented breast cancer stamp?
Similarly, women’s organizations promulgate
the broad and long-false statement that most
medical research is conducted on men. Academia and
the media promulgate such assertions without the
normal vetting, ignoring definitive contradictory
evidence. For example, PubMed, which indexes the
3,000 leading medical journals, from the 1950s to
present, contains 42 articles on women’s
health for every one(!) on men’s health.
Where’s the outrage about that injustice?
Where’s the outrage that women needn’t
register for the draft, and if they volunteer, will
never be placed in direct combat? Perhaps Warren
Farrell is right: “Men are the disposable
sex.”
To fight against this New Double Standard,
Warren Farrell, along with your author, has just
founded the National Organization for Men to
provide a bit of balance to the National
Organization for Women. We are a shoestring
operation that simply emails press releases to the
media in response to unfairnesses to men.
Even though Warren and I must work full-time on
other matters to support ourselves, we believe our
Lilliputian National Organization for Men can make
a difference. I invite you to consider what you
might do, within your busy life, to ensure the fair
treatment of men and women.
© 2007, Marty
Nemko
* * *
Marty
Nemko holds a PhD from the University of
California, Berkeley, and subsequently taught in
Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education. He is
the worklife columnist in the Sunday San Francisco
Chronicle and is the producer and host of Work With
Marty Nemko, heard Sundays at 11 on 91.7 FM in
(NPR, San Francisco), and worldwide on
www.martynemko.com
 .
400+ of his published writings are available free
on that website and is a co-editor of
Cool
Careers for Dummies.
and author of The All-in-One College Guide.
E-Mail.
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