The Unseen Truth About the “Patriarchy”

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By SHIYING XU and ALEXA GALITSKY

“Topple the patriarchy!” “Kill all men!” You must have heard phrases like these from social media or some over-the-top radical feminist rally. But here’s the thing that people don’t really think about: Is there still a “patriarchy” in the modern day? While feminists might shout about how men “have it so easy,” that is simply no longer true. 

Men and boys of America’s more recent generations are actually falling behind in comparison to their female counterparts. Men only make up 40.5 percent of college students, for example. For every 100 girls or women, only 65 men earn a master’s degree, 75 men are enrolled in college, and 145 boys repeat kindergarten, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Aside from the educational decline, men also have it worse than women in terms of physical and mental health. It’s common knowledge that on average women have longer life spans, helped by differences in their chromosomes and hormones. However, there is another, much more grim, reason than biology: We are seeing more men die from suicide.

For every 100 women or girls, 293 men age 15-19 commit suicide. Men are also more likely to suffer from substance abuse compared to women. For every 100 women, 227 men die from opioid overdose, according to the CDC. For men, seeking recovery for mental health issues is sometimes seen as “weak.” As Andrew Yang writes in “The Data Are Clear: The Boys Are Not All Right,” “As a society, we don’t provide many avenues for healthy recovery.”

Another fact that is often overlooked by the masses is that men take up more dangerous jobs than women. They are more likely to choose high-risk careers like mining, fishing, farming, fire-fighting, construction, military service, and policing. This is not just an American thing. Between 1993-2005, men made up over 97 percent of workplace fatalities in Canada. In Australia, they make up 96 percent of workplace fatalities. And in 2012, they made up 92 percent of workplace fatalities in the United States, according to the National Institute of Health.

So let’s talk about one of the most debated – and also one of the most debunked – myths out there: the gender wage gap. For those who don’t know, this is the idea that for every dollar a man makes, a woman earns 77 cents.

To start with, this idea is taken extremely out of context when comparing the average earnings between the male and female populations. It does not take into account differences in jobs, positions, education, job tenure, or how long men and women work in a week. When all of these factors are taken into consideration, the wage gap narrows to a vanishing point, as explained in the article “Six Feminist Myths That Will Not Die” by Christina Hoff Summers in Time.

What about “toxic masculinity”? That brings us to another feminist myth that we would also like to debunk: the idea of “rape culture” and the statistic that “1 out of 5 college women will be sexually assaulted.” Sexual assault is indeed a problem in our society for both men and women, and it needs to be addressed more. However, this study, commissioned by the National Institute of Justice from 2005 to 2007, is incredibly misleading. 

Northeastern University’s James Alan Fox and Mount Holyoke College’s Richard Moran, two prominent criminologists, explained the study’s weakness. Not only was the study done in only two universities, a bad representation of our nation’s colleges overall, but the survey had a large non-response rate, resulting in an inflated figure. It also used an extremely broad definition of “sexual assault” that includes unwanted kissing, for example. This study, which is still being used as a relevant statistic today, is extremely harmful.

Men and boys are failing more and more in the modern day, and it’s society’s fault. The promotion of “toxic masculinity,” described as the negative aspects of exaggerated masculine traits, is bringing them down and making them think that it’s a problem to be masculine. Meanwhile, we continue to fight the problems of a male-dominated past that is now long gone. Society, start promoting positive masculinity and help our men out.