A Scary Time for Boys?

Recently NowThis Politics posted a song by Lynzy Lab which notes the many reasons it’s scary for women and then mocks “It’s a scary time for boys” in chorus before flipping the script and repeating “It’s not such a scary time for boys.” This viral sarcastic song hurts both men and women.

Psychological Safety

While at first seeming to be cute, funny, and poignant, on a second listen, the song reveals female chauvinism and misandry. Chauvinism is typically attributed to men's prejudice against women, but is defined as “any excessive or prejudiced support for one's own cause or group,” even a preference for women over men. We are likewise familiar with misogyny, the “dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women,” but not its counterpart, misandry, the “dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against men.”

Lynzy does have a valid point about women. According to evolutionary psychologists, women evolved a predisposition towards withdrawal and agreeableness because there are a lot of dangerous men (and, in the past, beasts, difficult when pregnant). However, her message about men damages and dismisses real male trauma, and damages the probability of men speaking up about their own abuse stories. This silencing hurts the safety and promotion of women by alienating men who are also brave, who also speak up, who oppose groups that support exploitative men. In psychology, psychological safety is the number one predictor of team success. It’s the ability of a guy to talk about the ongoing rejection and fear he encounters from people mistreating him – men and women – and supports the same right of a female colleague to share her mistreatment. With psychological safety, the genders can empathize and form a united front to create a positive culture. Without it, the damage between the two escalates.

Divinity, Groups, & Data

The “divinity of the individual” is one of the most important positions for success in modern life. “My situation is worse than your situation” creates in-group out-group dynamics that silence empathy and endanger both men and women. Its rejection leads to extremist thinking, easily studied in terrorist recruiting or seen in American divisions. Partisan thinking is what got us here – it won’t get us out.

Most importantly, Lynzy’s message about men not significantly suffering is false – demonstrably false. First, it is widely discussed that women experience systemic suppression and victimhood. Lynzy is right about women. The data show rape at 1/10 and sexual harassment at 1/3 for women. Given the prevalence of this data, let’s look at male stats, as an exercise balancing our viewpoint, not a counter-narrative – all suffering is real and important.

Male suffering is not widely discussed, which makes Lab’s mockery all the worse. In psychology, these stats are referred to as a silent mental health crisis among men. Another way of thinking about this is that women are not at the top of the wage gap or the hierarchy, but the bottom is predominantly men. These points are conceptually well known in the professional sphere, so assume a margin of error and assume USA stats within the last 10 years of 2018. The goal is to balance the narrative.

• 93% of on-the-job deaths are men.

• Men die by suicide 353% more often than women (that’s 3.5x, 35,100 annually).

• Men receive 63% more jail time for the same crimes as women (10 vs 16.3 years).

• 53.4% of 2014’s domestic abuse victims were men (average for the last 10 years is just below 50%). (US Census data)

• 50-75% of male US babies are sexually mutilated in the culturally-acceptable male practice of circumcision, despite studies demonstrating the physical and psychological harm it causes.

Wages

As Camille Paglia notes, millennial women have overtaken millennial men in starting and middle wages in cities, and the gap is growing – men are also dropping out of college at alarming rates. Male college enrollment now lags farther behind female enrollment (16%) than before collegiate discrimination was banned by Title IX (14% gap). While women make 70 cents on the dollar to males, remember that statistic inappropriately includes women privileged enough to be homemakers and billionaires, who are much more likely to be male. Generally, women earn less in comparative jobs because they focus on kids, not their career, but once they focus back on work, they catch up to within a few percentage points. National unemployment is 3.7% but among men, it is nearly 3x that, at 11.2%, nearly 18.5 million men, and that data excludes men who have stopped looking for work, usually 3x that again. They do earn less in older generations, but job for job, degree for degree, it’s only a few percentage points. Conceptualize this as a pyramid – there are only a few slots at the top for high-earning men, then moving down the middle are women, and the base of low-wage earners is predominantly men. Stats also emphasize the worst yet tiny percentage of men who are hostile to female at work and ignore the greater and perhaps more pervasively abusive practices of female on female competition. Both are deplorable.

A Scary Time to be Disempowered

The goal of this article was to provide legitimate evidence that men are undergoing significant suffering – it is a scary time to be a man – and assert that gender equality has needs on both sides. The men who are doing well are doing spectacularly well, but only a micro-percentage of men ever reach that enviable status. Their success does not justify denigrating men. Joking “it’s a tough time to be a man” or falsely asserting “it’s not such a scary time to be a man” alienates 49% of potential allies who also experience systemic oppression, which operates by dismissing their real personal pain. Many men, traditionally fed to the war machines of history, are now fathers, brothers, and sons, suffering greatly. (Watch The Red Pill, if you prefer a documentary analysis of men’s issues by a woman.) Continuation of mocking this population could very well result in a broader backlash between the sexes at the polls.

The genders ought to ally against oppressive cultural dictums – not compare each other’s level of suffering. According to psychological and consulting research data, honoring the individual, recognizing suffering, and empathizing with others is the most effective way to move forward in a productive manner. Mocking a different group, be it race, gender, sexuality, intelligence, etc., creates divisions, war, distractions, sickness, and worse. We can do better. Our peers and organizations will benefit.