The U.S. Open Tennis Tournament is over. I watched a number of matches; the virtuosity on display was amazing.
But no television production seems to be free of woke notions and the Open was no exception. To the right of the court, throughout every match, was emblazoned a virtual message “50 Years Equal Pay,” meaning that, since 1973, female players have received the same prize money as male players. Equality’s a good thing, right?
Well, in this case, it depends on how you define the word. There was once a time when “equal pay for equal work” meant equality in the workplace, but not at the U.S. Open or indeed any of the major tennis tournaments. That’s because female players do less work than the males but get paid the same. To win a match, female players need only win two sets while the men must win three. That means the women play about 60% of the games the men play, but receive the same pay. Try that at your place of work. Tell your boss you want to be paid for five hours of work what other employees work eight hours to earn. Then defend your demand as “equality.”
Not a single commentator mentioned the obvious, but the tournament wasn’t content with just a single message superimposed on the court. No, in lengthy PSAs between games, the Open lauded “equality” thus: “Equality means your seat at the table is a throne.”
See? Everyone else “at the table” has a regular chair, but you’re perched high above the others on a throne, thick velvet seat, jewel-encrusted arms and back; the works. You call it “equal,” but no one is fooled. Everyone understands that, in our Orwellian world, Inequality = Equality, as long as the “right” group benefits.
Which brings us to a truly fine article in the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal magazine by John Tierney. Entitled “The Misogyny Myth,” it does an admirable job of detailing both the imaginary misogyny and the very real misandry we’ve seen for so long in Western societies. The examples of those in everyday life are far too numerous to be completely described in a single article, but Tierney covers a lot and well.
Here’s a partial list of the gender outrages he notes:
· Studies of “implicit bias” that were intended to find misogyny actually found misandry;
· Those studies were buried in the academic literature for failing to draw the “correct” conclusions;
· Many studies over the years have found that both sexes prefer women over men;
· The criminal justice system punishes men more severely than women for the same crimes;
· Men underperform women in education from pre-first grade through graduate school;
· The previous fact goes almost completely unnoticed;
· For the World Economic Forum, inequalities that disfavor girls and women are important and worth reporting, while those that disfavor men and boys are not. In fact, inequalities that disfavor men are coded by the WEF as gender equality. (So, as at the U.S. Open, inequality = equality as long as the inequality disfavors men.)
· Women live longer than men, workplace deaths and suicides are overwhelmingly male, but no government addresses the problem;
· Generally, society considers men’s lives expendable;
· Women receive the bulk of Social Security payments, but pay far less in taxes than do men;
· The overwhelming majority of primary or sole child custody post-divorce goes to mothers;
· Men are expected to sacrifice their lives and physical wellbeing to protect women;
· Ukrainian men, but not women, are conscripted into the armed services and essentially no one remarks the misandry;
· The Misogyny Myth is intellectually dishonest.
· Reporting by academia and the media on sexism and supposed sexism is routinely dishonest. Results that agree with the myth are inflated or simply misrepresented and those that don’t are buried and data are lost. Studies using weak methodology are lauded if they get the “right” results; scrupulously-done studies that fail to do so are mostly ignored;
· Hiring in academia and for skilled and unskilled jobs is biased in favor of female applicants;
· The above is true in STEM fields, but the accepted narrative claims that women are discriminated against;
· There is a United Nations Agency for Women, but none for men;
· Women tend to be hypergamous, but men do not;
· Women bear few, if any, consequences for falsely claiming abuse by men.
· Society has become so misandric that men now fear even attempting to initiate relationships with women.
That’s far from a complete list in Tierney’s piece, and he necessarily leaves out countless other examples of anti-male/pro-female bias. The requirement that men, but not women, register with the Selective Service System is one example and that, in 44 states, their right to vote is conditioned on their doing so is another. That 97% of alimony recipients are women is another. That popular culture is virulently anti-male and the problem is getting worse not better is another (although the image that illustrates Tierney’s piece is of Homer Simpson, so it can’t be said that the article ignores the issue entirely). That academia and the workplace often punish men for behavior for which women are given a pass is another. That attacks on due process of law often have the goal of further empowering women at the expense of men is still another. That women dominate child custody despite the fact that, according to the DHHS’s Administration for Children and Families, if a child is killed or abused, the offense is about twice as likely to have been committed by a woman as a man is yet another. That economist Mark Perry has documented hundreds of pro-female programs on college campuses that violate Title IX is another. And on and on.
Tierney’s main points are three. First is the frank dishonesty of public discourse and the Misogyny Myth that results. He clearly believes that public policy based on dishonesty isn’t likely to serve us well. What a concept. He also believes that we should treat everyone fairly, that a society that’s biased against half its members is a society courting, at best failure, at worst disaster. And he apparently thinks that poisoning relationships between men and women is a bad idea. Men and women have always sought each other out for family formation and the care of children, and the more we sow distrust between the sexes, the worse for societal wellbeing.
Everyone should read Tierney’s article. But one problem I have with it is that he calls his culprit, i.e., the perpetrator of the Misogyny Myth, the “diversity industry,” when it would be more accurate to call it radical feminism, the only kind that survives. After all, the special pleading on behalf of women and the virulent hatred and fear of men and masculinity he describes have been, since roughly the beginning of feminism, among its core tenets.
Yes, there was a time when a few leading feminists could lay claim to a genuine belief in gender equality. The Karen DeCrows of the movement understood, for example, that, if women were to achieve equality in the workplace, they had to surrender their power over children and the home. And in the early 80s, when men challenged the Selective Service System’s requirement that only men register, NOW filed an amicus curiae brief on behalf of the plaintiffs.
But that nod toward equality was brief and, if there are any such feminists today, they’re silent. Meanwhile, every bias, every injustice, every instance of misandry that Tierney so adeptly describes had its origin and long-term nurture in the vineyards of feminism. They thought that nonsense up and we should never forget it nor call it by another name.
That aside, Tierney’s is a must-read piece. It’ll help readers maintain sanity in a world in which inequality = equality.
This originally appeared at The Word of Damocles.
