My answer to my earlier post would be that I think generally people value men's lives less than women's. It's easy to see in the old 'women and children first' phrase, and generally, when war casualty statistics are announced it's the women and children that get reported. At school I was told never to hit a girl - though I'd never have hit anyone. Whatever the conviction rate people are more outraged by a sexual assault on a women than a knife attack on a man.
Traditionally men always did the most dangerous back-breaking work - mining, ship-ping, heavy industry, building, and of course, going to war. Even though mechanisation and health and safety regulations have reduced the injuries and deaths, men (or more precisely, working class men) are still expected to do the heavy jobs, and workplace deaths and injuries are still far higher among men.
In movies and TV, our screens are filled with men being shot, beaten up and tortured - every action movie and crime drama is awash with dead men - and it's fun - it's part of the game, but if you want to make a disturbing film, make it about a killer who targets women. Then it's serious. Watching a woman get hurt is shocking and dark.
A friend of mine on here, when I was beginning to question the feminist paradigm a few years back told me "Yes but men don't get killed BECAUSE they're men". Me being me, I went away and did some reading. I discovered to my genuine amazement that men (in the UK at least) are twice as likely to be murdered as women (ONS). I’ve mention this to a lot to people and mostly they just don't respond. Some simply don't believe it. Many laugh at it. I think a lot of people (me included until recently) just can't get their heads around the idea that some things really are so much worse for men. It just sort of slides off them. It's laughable. Unthinkable. It has to be their own fault somehow surely? I also discovered that men are more likely to die young than women by every means except childbirth (ONS again). And of course we have a lower life expectancy generally.
This seems pretty serious. If these stats applied to women it would be a major plank of the feminist cause but because it's men it sort of doesn't matter. It's hard to explain this discrepancy if men are not being killed more BECAUSE they are men. The reason I think for the discrepancy is old-fashioned gender roles - being put in danger is what men are for. It's about the way the world is run - it's systemic. In general, men are expected to prove themselves as men by taking risks, to do the dangerous jobs, and then, when things go wrong, not to talk about it or show their feelings or ask for help. It's a truly lethal mix. Many more men die from crime, addiction, living rough or suicide.
Now of course I’m not saying women don’t suffer – of course they do – but if you’re interested in equality you need to know if one side suffers more than the other, and I don’t think there’s much in it anymore. It no longer makes sense to insist that only women suffer and men are always to blame.
As I keep on saying – it’s not about men vs. women anymore - it’s about those few old white men at the top versus everyone else. You know who they are. Pick your battles.
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