[I]t is becoming imperative that we address the same issues of discrimination and exclusion for boys and men as we once did for women.

This article is both encouraging and infuriating (Daily Mail, 11/26/09).  Writer Jenni Muarry's heart is in the right place.  She recognizes that men, in today's society, are not the all-powerful creatures so many feminists insist us to be.  She sees that sex roles have changed radically over the past 40 years or so and that that's left at least some men wondering how to be men.  If breadwinner isn't the alpha and omega of masculinity, then what else is included?

Murray reports on a couple of new campus organizations in the U.K., one at Oxford called the Man Collective and one at Manchester University called MENS Society, which stands for Masculinity Exploring Network and Support.  Interestingly, I reported on a similar organization at the University of Chicago a few months ago.  So maybe men on college campuses are starting to respond to the widespread misandry in our culture and educational systems.  That these young men, having lived their entire lives exposed to the anti-male constructs of that culture, are trying to come to grips with the realities of society, masculinity and misandric culture, is encouraging.

And Murray is encouraged.  She knows it's a movement that is needed.  Good for her.

But Murray, like the organizations she reports on, seems to think that all these young men need to do is figure out a way to understand masculinity and all their problems with being male will be solved.  Just sort out the roles of breadwinner and father, tough guy and sensitive soul, and you've pretty much solved the problems of men in the English-speaking, post-industrial 21st-century world.  Or so her theory seems to hold.

Needless to say, there's a bit more to it than that.  Murray touches briefly on the educational system in which girls are now outstripping boys, but doesn't inquire about why that might be.  Could it be that, as many researchers and commentators have observed, that the way we teach now is itself anti-male?  What about the fact that children's books and early pedagogy are repleat with misandry?  How surprised can we be, after decades of calling men stupid, that boys don't learn very well?

Are men having difficulty sorting out their role as parents?  Murray sees that they are.  But how much of that has to do with men's individual uncertainties and how much has to do with laws and public policies that frankly discriminate against fathers.  How does a paternal custody rate of about 10% post-divorce encourage men to be fathers?  How about a radically-unequal system of parental leave?  How about a popular culture that routinely portrays fathers as uninterested in - and dangerous to - children?

Murray tells us that young men now can expect the women in their lives to have "grown up with the assumption of equality."  Really?  They believe in equally shared parenting?  How about being drafted equally into the military?  How about equalizing all the family laws that so radically discriminate against fathers?  How about equalizing education?  How about correcting popular culture?  Do we hear a single peep out of feminist organizations about those important issues?

My guess is that Murray, if she were asked those questions, would give some good answers.  She's anything but anti-male.  But she seems to think that women revolutionized gender roles all by themselves.  They didn't.  They had (and have) the enthusiastic assistance of countless men, particularly those in state and national legislatures who passed countless laws benefiting women.

So now that we're starting to notice the manifold inequalities visited on men Murray informs us that,

It's up to them (men) now to try to sort it out.

No, actually it's up to everyone.  If we want a fair, just and equal society, we'll all have to admit that the problems of masculinity require more than an adjustment of attitudes.  Laws and public policies need to be changed as well.  And that'll never happen without women giving men the same enthusiastic support men have given women over the years.  Fortunately, many women are doing just that.  Murray is one of them, but she's got a ways to go before she really "gets it."

This entry was posted on Friday, November 27th, 2009 at 1:45 pm and is filed under Fathers' Rights/Noncustodial parents' rights, Boys/Boy Crisis in Education/Schools, Men and the Media, Divorce/Separation/Child Custody, Education, Gender Issues (Misc.). You can trackback from your own site.