We are getting a head start on International Falsely Accused day on Sept 9th!

How many false allegations of sexual abuse are there? We are often told they are extremely rare—perhaps only one to three percent. But those numbers depend on an extraordinarily narrow definition of what qualifies as a false allegation. They usually count only allegations proven to have been deliberately fabricated. Mistaken identity, contaminated memories, misunderstandings, suggestive interviewing, unsupported accusations and even recanted allegations may not be included.

In this conversation, Janice Fiamengo and I speak with Dr. Felicity Goodyear-Smith, a physician, forensic medical examiner and professor at the University of Auckland who has studied wrongful allegations for more than three decades. Felicity explains the many different ways an innocent person can be accused, separating deliberate fabrications from allegations that are sincerely believed but untrue.

We also examine how “believe the victim” has affected police investigations, forensic medicine and the courts. When the accuser is called a victim and the accused a perpetrator before the evidence has even been heard, has the presumption of innocence already begun to disappear?

This is not an argument that sexual abuse does not occur. It does, and both male and female victims deserve compassion and justice. But the accused deserve fairness as well. An allegation is a claim to be investigated—not a verdict.

Prof Felicity Goodyear-Smith’s University of Auckland website https://profiles.auckland.ac.nz/f-goodyear-smith

Prof Felicity Goodyear-Smith’s personal website
https://goodyearsmith.com/

Felicity (and husband, John Potter)
Masculinist Evolution New Zealand - - promoting a clearer understanding of men's experience - https://menz.org.nz/

COSA Newsletters and publications - Casualties Of Sexual Allegations 1994 – 2000 Archive https://menz.org.nz/cosa/newsletters/

Janice
​Janices new book The Goddess that Failed is now available on Amazon. It is the first book I have seen that chronicles and explains the feminist takeover in a way that is both instructive and simple to understand. Consider buying a copy for someone who is on the fence! They will be moved by it.

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All we hear about these days is a dangerous manosphere that is threatening our young men. Actually the manosphere is a fairly small and widely varied group of male-oriented communities that has been billed as a huge threat. All the while there is something much larger and much more dangerous that is surrounding both the manosphere and our culture. It is embedded in all that we do, I call it the Femosphere. This huge complex contains, academia, education, advocacy organizations, legislatures, government agencies, entertainment, the courts and of course, the media all working together to create and maintain a gynocentric narrative that impacts everyone.

This is the mammoth sphere through which feminist and gynocentric ideas are created, validated, circulated and converted into public policy. It is the invisible system that makes feminist claims seem unquestionably true. This goes on day in and day out and is a huge and destructive machine that no one sees. No one identifies it as ideological or biased in any way. It masquerades as the status quo. If there is a sphere that is dangerous, it is surely the femosphere.

Here’s how it works. A new slogan or concept is created in academia or feminist advocacy and then reinforced by both. The feminist advocates promote it. Journalists print it. The public reads it. Educators teach it. The public learns it. Before you know it, government agencies are incorporating it into trainings and reports. Then the legislators push it into policy and law and the courts follow along using the same ideas that prompted the policies and laws. Unprecedented teamwork, and no one sees it.

Take coercive control as a​n example. The term was first used by domestic violence advocates who described abuse as an ongoing pattern of control rather than a series of isolated violent acts. Evan Stark pulled these ideas together into a formal theory of coercive control in his book “Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life (2007)“. (The title states clearly that this was not a gender-neutral theory: men were the oppressors and women were their victims.) Then the feminist advocates promoted it, journalists spread the word, educators and government agencies taught it, and police and courts were trained to use it. Eventually the legislators turned it into law. Hey Presto! The idea of male dominance and men’s violence becomes the default,

There are plenty of other examples like hegemonic masculinity or intersectionality. These all have different paths through the femosphere pipeline but the end product is the same. The specific ideas about male dominance travel from idea to law or common knowledge. The process is similar, an idea about power and male dominance begins in academia or advocacy, moves through the institutions, and eventually gains real social, political and sometimes legal power.

Here’s the tricky part. Each of these groups starts to quote the other groups as proof to the veracity of the original idea. Journalists cite the academics and advocates cite the journalists. Politicians cite both. Then the researchers come along and “study” the reality that has just been created out of thin air and prove it. Then the public hears from these many sources and voila, what started as a theory becomes an accepted reality. Advocacy becomes fact. The public nods unknowingly in agreement.

The manosphere is open season for criticism, targeting, restrictions, and containment. The femosphere is protected by a gynocentric ban on any criticism or even a negative idea in their direction. To expose who has the power just look for who cannot be criticized. That would clearly be the femosphere, women and feminism. In fact, the manosphere is the first public criticism of the femosphere and the response is predictable: Shame it, blame it, and call it pure misogyny. Don’t argue the ideas, attack personally.

This is what we have had for the last 50 years. A slow gynocentric building of a new reality. And what has been the result? Women have been inflated and men have been equally deflated. Ask just about any woman about the last 50 years and she will tell you it is progress. But has it truly been progress—or has it been a one-way transfer of concern, opportunity, and power to women, without any corresponding transfer of responsibility?

And now it is basically impossible to see.

The next time you hear someone complain about the manosphere, ask them when they will be complaining about the real problem, the femosphere.

Men Are Good.

Newsroom Logic?

Men Are Good.

I recently came across an article with a rather alarming headline:

“Nearly One in Five Australian Men Say Violence Against Feminism Is Legitimate, Study Finds.”

That certainly got my attention. Nearly 20 percent of Australian men think violence against feminism is legitimate? That’s a lot of men. So I decided to look at the study. I’m glad I did.

The research comes from the University of Melbourne and was published in 2024. The researchers surveyed 1,020 Australians about misogyny, racism, and violent extremism. The 19.4 percent figure is real. But when you look at the question that produced it, things start getting interesting.

The men weren’t asked:

“Do you believe violence against feminists is legitimate?”

They weren’t asked:

“Is it acceptable to physically attack feminists?”

They were given this statement:

“Feminism is damaging to our society and should be resisted by force if necessary.”

That is what produced the 19.4 percent. Do you see the problem? There are several things going on in that one sentence. First, it says feminism is damaging to society. That’s one question all by itself. Then it says feminism should be resisted “by force.” What does force mean? Physical violence? Political force? Legal force? Economic force? Civil disobedience? We don’t know. And then come the two little words that really caught my attention:

“if necessary.”

What does that mean? Those words ask the respondent to imagine circumstances in which force might become necessary. Most people believe there are circumstances in which force is justified. Self-defense is an obvious example. Protecting another person is another. Resisting tyranny might be another. But none of that is explored. Instead, agreement with this rather strange question eventually becomes:

“Nearly One in Five Australian Men Say Violence Against Feminism Is Legitimate.”

That’s quite a journey.

​Here’s a screenshot of the questions they used to determine if violent extremism existed and to what degree. Can you find the question(s) that did not have the word violence in any form in them? Can you find the question(s) that concluded by saying “if necessary?” They abbreviate violent extremism with “VE.” Here’s a clue….look at the last question very carefully and then compare.

Where’s Waldo?

Can you see how they have sculpted things? Which got the highest scores? The one without the word violence and justified by saying “when necessary.” Then you make claims, even in your own paper, the same one that relied on that questionable question that​:

Now they call it anti-feminist violent extremism! No need to ask the question with the word violence in it? Nope.

Then I Looked at the Other Questions

This is where things became even more interesting. The study includes a table with the heading:“Frequency of Respondents Agreeing with Permissibility of Violence Against Women.”

Okay. If we are going to measure whether people think violence against women is permissible, what should we ask? Fortunately, the researchers give us a couple of good examples. One question says:

“A male partner would be entitled to use physical force (pushing, slapping, punching, kicking, choking) if his female partner argues with him, or refuses to obey him.”

That’s pretty clear. No ambiguity there. Do you think a man is entitled to push, slap, punch, kick, or choke his female partner because she argues with him or refuses to obey him? 5.5 percent of the men agreed. Another question asks whether a father or brother is entitled to use physical force or violence against a daughter or sister for bringing dishonor on the family. Again, very clear. 4.5 percent of the men agreed. Those are troubling numbers. I would prefer they were zero. But notice what happens when the researchers ask clear questions about whether violence against women is actually permissible. We get 5.5 percent. We get 4.5 percent. Now look at some of the questions that produced the big numbers.

Is This Really a Question About Violence?

Here’s one:

“Women often make sexual assault accusations as a way of getting back at men.”

48.6 percent of the men agreed. Nearly half! But wait a minute. What does that question have to do with whether violence against women is permissible? A man could believe that false sexual assault accusations are common and at the same time believe that violence against women is absolutely wrong. Whether his belief about false accusations is correct is another question. We can investigate that. But believing something about false accusations does not mean you approve of violence. Here’s another:

“Women going through custody battles often make up or exaggerate claims of domestic violence in order to improve their case.”

51.2 percent of the men agreed. There’s the biggest number on the page. But again, where is the approval of violence? This is a question about whether women sometimes make false or exaggerated claims during custody disputes. You can think that belief is right. You can think it’s wrong. But it still isn’t a question about whether hitting women is okay. Yet there it sits under the heading:

“Permissibility of Violence Against Women.”

How did we get there?

Another Curious Question

Then there is this one:“Sometimes a woman can make a man so angry that he hits her when he didn’t mean to.”

33.5 percent of men agreed. But what exactly are they agreeing with? That hitting her is justified? The question doesn’t say that. It asks whether someone can become so angry that he does something he hadn’t intended to do. Surely there is a difference between explaining how something happened and saying that it was acceptable. Interestingly, 21.7 percent of women agreed with this statement too. Are those women endorsing violence against women? Maybe. But the question doesn’t tell us. That’s the problem.

Look at the Pattern

This is what really struck me. The questions that explicitly ask whether men are entitled to physically assault women produce relatively low numbers: 5.5 percent. 4.5 percent. But questions about false accusations, custody battles, anger, and responsibility produce numbers of: 33 percent. 37 percent. 49 percent. 51 percent. And which numbers do you suppose make the story look more frightening? This is where I started thinking about the phrase sculpting the narrative. You begin with the raw material—the answers people actually gave. Then you decide what those answers mean. A belief that women sometimes make retaliatory sexual assault accusations becomes an attitude about violence against women. A belief that domestic violence allegations may be exaggerated during custody battles becomes an attitude about violence against women. Agreement that feminism should be resisted “by force if necessary” becomes support for violent anti-feminist extremism. And eventually a newspaper headline tells us: Nearly one in five Australian men says violence against feminism is legitimate. But that isn’t what the men were asked.

Why Does This Matter?

Violence against women is a serious subject. That’s exactly why the research needs to be good. If you want to know whether men approve of violence against women, ask them. The researchers clearly knew how to do this. Their own questionnaire proves it. Ask: Is a man entitled to hit a woman under these circumstances? They did. And they got 5.5 percent. Ask: Is a father or brother entitled to use violence against a daughter or sister under these circumstances? They did. And they got 4.5 percent. Those are legitimate findings. But if you ask men whether women make false accusations and then treat their answers as evidence of the permissibility of violence against women, you are measuring something else. And shouldn’t PhD researchers know the difference?

​I am aware that this is tough to believe so here is a screen shot from the research that shows the questions and the responses. Note that their highest responses were the ones that had little to do with violence against women.

​
From Survey Answer to Extremism

There is another step in all of this that bothers me. The study doesn’t stop with attitudes toward women. It connects these attitudes with violent extremism. The researchers report that anti-feminist violent extremism was the most prevalent form of violent extremism they measured. That sounds frightening. But remember the question that helped establish it:

“Feminism is damaging to our society and should be resisted by force if necessary.”

That’s it. Imagine changing the subject: “Racism is damaging to our society and should be resisted by force if necessary.” How many people would agree? Probably quite a few. Would we then conclude that those people support violent extremism? What about: “Nazism is damaging to our society and should be resisted by force if necessary.” Would agreement make you a violent extremist? Suddenly the problem becomes easier to see. The wording matters.

And Then the Media Gets Hold of It

By the time the research reached the media article I first read about this, most of these qualifications had disappeared. “Force if necessary” became violence. Agreement with a complicated hypothetical statement became believing violence is legitimate. An association between attitudes became a radicalization pathway.

​The researcher’s own university offered this headline:

​

​or this one from the Australian

​with pictures like this:

​Imagine being a new reader of this article. People tend to put their trust in the media and even more trust in “research.” How could they come away from this article with anything but the sense that a surprisingly large number of men are dangerous to women and to feminism? And yet when you go back and look at the actual questions, that isn’t what the research established. That’s how a narrative gets sculpted.​
​​
​The​ original story expanded to teenage boys, Andrew Tate, rape, women being killed, terrorism, and national security. That’s quite a sculpture. And somewhere underneath all of it are the actual survey questions. I don’t know the motives of these researchers, and I don’t need to. I’m interested in something much simpler. Did the questions measure what the researchers say they measured? When I look at this study, I have serious doubts. And perhaps the most revealing evidence comes from the researchers themselves. When they asked men directly whether a male partner was entitled to push, slap, punch, kick or choke a woman because she argued with him or refused to obey him, 94.5 percent did not agree. That seems like an important finding. Funny how that didn’t make the headline.

Men are good.​

Here’s a quick synopsis of Gender Studies Research in 2026.

A while back, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Gabby Wolfe, a therapist who specializes in male psychology. After our conversation, she read the second edition of The Way Men Heal and recently sent me this video.

I was blown away.

What makes this video so powerful is that Gabby doesn’t simply tell us how men grieve and heal. She tells us a story.

And it’s a remarkable story—one that draws you in, takes a turn you probably won’t see coming, and, before you quite realize what’s happening, gets under your skin.

Through the life of one man, Gabby shows us grief expressed not primarily through words, but through action. She shows us healing through challenge and purpose, and the extraordinary power of something very simple: men standing shoulder-to-shoulder with other men.

She also weaves some of my work into the story, including an excerpt from our interview and the metaphor from Swallowed by a Snake.

I think she did a remarkable job. But more importantly, she helps us see something about men that is very easy to miss when we look for grief only in tears and words.

This one stayed with me. I think it may stay with you, too.

I hope you’ll take the time to watch it.

Looking Back

Hierarchy is important in a man's life. It starts early. I remember when I was a boy and we would have 15-20 boys ready to play baseball in a vacant field. the two boys who were the most athletic were the ones to choose sides. Everyone knew they were the best and were therefore at the top of the hierarchy. Those two boys took turns choosing who they wanted on their team. This process made the hierarchy real. We already knew who the best was but now we saw how other boys viewed us. One by one we would be chosen, or not chosen. I can remember praying I would not be chosen last. The middle was fine but not last. I am sure other boys felt similarly. But this process was not kind or considerate. In some ways it was a brutal experience. Nothing nice or politically correct about it. It gave all the boys a clear idea of how they were seen by the other boys and where they stood in the hierarchy. I can remember some boys who were chosen near the end would slowly drift away and not show up, while other boys would find ways to make themselves more useful. No one liked to play catcher and a boy chosen near the end could let others know he would play catcher. Even at an early age the boys found ways to adjust to the hierarchy.

I used to joke about this in my workshops. My daughter never had to choose sides to play house. Nobody lined up while two girls decided who was good enough to be the mother, the father, or the baby. But when boys wanted to play baseball, the hierarchy appeared almost immediately.

As difficult as this process might have been, it also had benefits. The boys were learning about competence and where they stood in relation to other boys. It was something they would encounter again and again as they grew older.

Read more

My friend Fred Hayward wrote to me and asked if I had a list of misandrist books. He had seen one and wondered what I might know about it. I told him I didn’t have a list and couldn’t remember ever seeing one.

But I took Fred’s idea and went to ChatGPT and asked it to give me a list of misandrist books. It came back with numerous books and some ideas about the best way to present the material. It suggested using four categories, beginning with the most explicit and extreme anti-male material and moving toward books where the case for misandry was less clear.

It came up with 23 books and I asked it to write up its findings. This post is basically that write-up, followed by a conclusion I asked it to write. I didn’t tell it what conclusion to reach or how I wanted the books characterized. I did some editing along the way, and I gathered the book covers and made the main image.

I am familiar with many of the books it mentioned, but not all of them. I will be curious to hear from anyone who has read these books about how accurate the descriptions are. The books I am familiar with are portrayed accurately.

Here’s what GPT said:

Category 1 — Explicit Hatred, Elimination, Population Reduction, or Violence

These are the hardest examples to explain away as simply “criticism of patriarchy.” Here the hostility is not something we need to read between the lines to find. Men themselves—or the continued existence of men in anything approaching their present numbers—become the target.

SCUM Manifesto — Valerie Solanas (1967). This is probably the clearest example in the entire collection. Solanas doesn’t simply criticize male behavior or male-dominated institutions. She portrays the male himself as a biological mistake: an incomplete and defective female. From there, the manifesto launches into a sweeping indictment of men as emotionally crippled, egocentric, incapable of genuine empathy, and responsible for many of society’s evils.

And Solanas takes the argument much further than contempt. SCUM Manifesto envisions eliminating the male sex itself. That makes this qualitatively different from a book arguing that men possess unfair advantages or behave badly. Imagine a widely published manifesto describing women as biologically defective creatures and envisioning a future in which the female sex was eliminated. Would anyone hesitate to describe that as misogyny?

“The Future—If There Is One—Is Female” — Sally Miller Gearhart (1981/1982). Gearhart’s piece is an essay rather than a standalone book and was subsequently published in the anthology Reweaving the Web of Life: Feminism and Nonviolence. But it belongs in this collection because of the extraordinary nature of its proposal.

Gearhart argued that the proportion of males in the human population should be reduced to approximately 10 percent. This was not simply a prediction that technological change might eventually produce such a population. It was presented as part of a feminist vision for the future.

Think for a moment about what that means. Men currently constitute roughly half of humanity. If the female population remained roughly constant, reducing males to just 10 percent of humanity would mean a reduction of nearly 90 percent in the male population. If a male writer proposed that women should constitute only 10 percent of humanity, would we regard that merely as an eccentric political theory? Or would we recognize something profoundly disturbing in the willingness to imagine an entire sex reduced to a tiny reproductive minority?

I Hate Men — Pauline Harmange (2020). The title sounds as though it might simply be designed to provoke. But hatred of men is actually part of Harmange’s argument. She explicitly discusses misandry and attempts to rehabilitate it as a legitimate response to women’s experiences with men.

That distinction matters. This isn’t merely a book called I Hate Men whose contents turn out to be a nuanced argument against sexism. Harmange asks readers to consider whether women might actually benefit from disliking men and distancing themselves from them. Publishers Weekly summarized the book as arguing that misandry can be “healthy and joyful.”

Again, reverse the sexes. Imagine a contemporary book titled I Hate Women explaining why misogyny might be healthy, liberating, and joyful for men. Would a major publisher touch it? Would reviewers treat hatred of women as an interesting intellectual position?

The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls — Mona Eltahawy (2019). Eltahawy is a more complicated case and should be represented carefully. Her book advocates seven qualities she believes women and girls need in resisting patriarchy, and one of those qualities is violence.

Most strikingly, Eltahawy imagines a scenario in which women begin systematically killing men until men are forced to negotiate with them. She presents this as a thought experiment rather than a literal program for exterminating men. That distinction matters, and we should make it.

But the thought experiment itself also matters. An author can use fantasy, satire, or hypothetical scenarios and still reveal something about which forms of rhetoric our culture is prepared to tolerate. Imagine a male author inviting readers to contemplate men systematically killing women until feminists agreed to negotiate. Calling it a “thought experiment” would hardly end the discussion.

For that reason, I would describe this as violent anti-male rhetoric rather than a literal proposal to kill men. That is both stronger and more accurate than exaggerating what Eltahawy actually claims.

Going Too Far: The Personal Chronicle of a Feminist — Robin Morgan (1977). Morgan is particularly significant because she was not an obscure writer operating at the fringes of feminism. She was an important figure in the second-wave women’s movement and later became an editor of Ms. magazine.

The book chronicles Morgan’s development as a feminist activist and contains rhetoric about men and “man-hating” that deserves examination in its historical context. What makes material like this significant isn’t simply that an angry individual woman expressed hostility toward men. People of both sexes say ugly things. The more interesting question is how openly hostile ideas about men could exist within an influential political and intellectual movement without carrying the stigma that comparable statements about women would carry.

That question will recur throughout this collection.

Category 2 — Female Superiority / Male Inferiority

These works don’t necessarily advocate harming men, but they make arguments that would almost certainly be described as sexist if the sexes were reversed.

1The Natural Superiority of Women — Ashley Montagu (1953). Explicitly argues for women’s natural superiority. A publisher’s description of an earlier edition summarized its thesis as showing that “the superiority of women is a biological fact.”

The First Sex — Elizabeth Gould Davis (1971). Directly asks whether women are superior to men and argues toward precisely that conclusion. The publisher describes women being “the first sex” as the book’s “inescapable conclusion.”

Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism — Mary Daly (1978). Develops an extraordinarily sweeping critique of male-created culture, religion, medicine, and language. Daly’s vocabulary includes concepts such as “phallocracy” and male-centered systems as destructive forces against women.

Pure Lust: Elemental Feminist Philosophy — Mary Daly (1984). Continues Daly’s framework, contrasting female liberation with what she calls “Cockocracy,” the “Phallic State,” and a male “sadosociety.” That terminology comes even from the bibliographic description of the book.

Beyond God the Father — Mary Daly (1973). Presents male-centered religion and the male conception of God as expressions of patriarchal domination. This one is considerably less explicitly anti-male than Pure Lust or Gyn/Ecology, so I would place it lower on the severity scale.

Mary Daly may deserve a section of her own in a serious treatment of this subject. Her work doesn’t merely criticize particular male institutions; she develops an entire vocabulary in which male civilization is repeatedly associated with domination, pathology, and violence.

Category 3 — Men Collectively Portrayed as an Oppressor or Threat Class

Here I would stop using the uncomplicated label “hate literature.” These books are important because of their collective attribution of guilt, danger, or domination to males, rather than because they literally tell readers to hate men.

Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape — Susan Brownmiller (1975). Famously characterized rape as a process through which “all men keep all women” in fear. Whatever one’s view of the rest of this enormously influential book, that is an extraordinarily sweeping attribution to an entire sex.

Sexual Politics — Kate Millett (1970). One of second-wave feminism’s foundational texts. It interprets sex relations through a political structure in which men constitute the dominant class and women the subordinated class.

Pornography: Men Possessing Women — Andrea Dworkin (1981). Dworkin treats pornography as an expression of a much wider system of male domination, linking male sexual power with ownership, terror, and the subordination of women.

Intercourse — Andrea Dworkin (1987). Presents heterosexual intercourse within a structure of profound sexual inequality and domination. Importantly, though, the common assertion that Dworkin literally wrote “all sex is rape” is false; Dworkin herself explicitly denied saying that.

Woman Hating — Andrea Dworkin (1974). Describes male dominance as the fundamental political and cultural reality that must be abolished. Her introduction explicitly calls ending male dominance a revolutionary commitment.

The War Against Women — Marilyn French (1992). Perhaps one of the strongest examples in this category. The publisher describes French’s thesis as a male-dominated global society with an underlying aim of “destroying, subjugating, or mutilating women.”

The Dialectic of Sex — Shulamith Firestone (1970). Treats the biological sex distinction and reproductive family as the foundation of a sex-class system. Firestone proposes eliminating sex-class distinctions through radical changes including artificial reproduction. That is revolutionary gender theory, though not an argument for killing men, an important distinction.

The Demon Lover: On the Sexuality of Terrorism — Robin Morgan (1989). Links militarism, terrorism, patriarchy, and masculine systems of domination. I would include it as an example of the broader tendency to interpret large forms of human violence through masculinity.

Category 4 — Men as Privileged, Entitled, Dangerous, Defective, or Socially Problematic

These are substantially weaker candidates for the word misandrist, but they illustrate how negative generalizations about men became normalized in more mainstream literature.

Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women — Kate Manne (2020). Makes “male entitlement” a broad explanatory framework for phenomena ranging from interpersonal behavior to mass shootings and politics. Manne describes it as a pervasive social problem rather than merely the behavior of a few men.

Boys Will Be Boys: Power, Patriarchy and Toxic Masculinity — Clementine Ford (2018). Begins with boys themselves and treats their socialization through the framework of patriarchy and toxic masculinity. The publisher frames its central question as how to raise a son “to respect women.”

Men Explain Things to Me — Rebecca Solnit (2014). Helped inspire the concept of “mansplaining” and uses interactions with men to examine assumptions of male authority and women’s silencing. I would not call this a book advocating hatred of men, however; even Solnit has distanced herself from the term mansplaining.

Are Men Necessary? When Sexes Collide — Maureen Dowd (2005). The title plays deliberately with male dispensability, but the actual work is humorous social commentary about gender relations rather than a serious argument that men should disappear.

The End of Men: And the Rise of Women — Hanna Rosin (2012). Uses male decline and female advancement as its organizing conceit. But this really should not be represented as a hatred-of-men book; the book is socioeconomic reportage, and Rosin’s argument was about the decline of traditional male economic dominance.

Conclusion

What Would We Call These Books If the Sexes Were Reversed?

Looking at these books together leaves me with a very simple question: What would we call them if the sexes were reversed?

Imagine books titled I Hate Women, The Natural Superiority of Men, Are Women Necessary?, or The End of Women. Imagine a male writer proposing that women should make up only 10 percent of the population. Imagine another imagining women being killed until they agreed to negotiate. Imagine an entire body of literature describing women collectively as dangerous, defective, oppressive, entitled, or responsible for the world’s violence.

Would we have trouble finding a word for it?

I don’t think we would.

Now, these books are not all the same. That is important. SCUM Manifesto is vastly more extreme than Men Explain Things to Me. Some openly express hostility toward men. Others portray men collectively as an oppressor class. Still others simply use male privilege, entitlement, toxicity, or dominance as the lens through which they interpret relations between the sexes.

But when you stand back and look at them together, a pattern emerges.

Men can be described in ways that would immediately set off alarm bells if directed toward almost any other group. Male biology can be disparaged. Male sexuality can be treated as threatening. Men can be described collectively as oppressors. Hatred of men can even be defended as healthy or liberating. And proposals that would sound horrifying with the sexes reversed can sometimes be treated as provocative feminist thought.

Perhaps the most interesting question isn’t whether every book on this list deserves the label misandrist. Clearly they don’t.

The more interesting question is this: Why are we so reluctant to use that word at all?

We have become extremely sensitive to language that demeans women. I think that is a good thing. Hatred and dehumanization shouldn’t be encouraged.

But shouldn’t men receive the same consideration?

The book covers shown here are real. The words are real. The authors are real. And many of these works came not from obscure corners of the internet but from established writers, publishers, academics, and political movements.

Maybe the lesson isn’t that we should become less concerned about misogyny.

Maybe the lesson is that we should become equally concerned about misandry.

What If Schools Are Missing the Brightest Boys?

We are starting to hear more these days about boys who struggle in school, boys who can’t sit still, or fall behind in reading. This is bringing to light that all too often schools are not built for boys.

But recently I started thinking about the other end of the spectrum. What if schools aren’t just failing some of the boys who struggle? What if they’re also missing some of the brightest boys?

The Variability Hypothesis

Researchers have pointed out for years what they call the greater male variability hypothesis. What this means is that on average, men and women score about the same on measures of intelligence. But males tend to show greater variability and outnumber women at both the low and high ends. This means you will find more boys with significantly low IQ’s but also more boys with very high IQ’s. This tells us that based on this variability hypothesis, boys are likely to outnumber the girls in the upper regions of IQ.

A School Built for the Average Child

That realization led me to another thought. If boys are naturally more variable, then a school system designed for the average child will fail boys at both ends of the spectrum. Think about it. The struggling boy needs something different from the average classroom. So does the exceptionally gifted boy. Yet schools often become increasingly standardized and focused on bringing everyone toward the middle. The children who are furthest from average—whether below or above—are often the ones who receive less. The boys predominate at both ends.

Why Might Boys Gifts be Overlooked?

People who are gifted often do things that may encourage ordinary teachers to overlook them. Things like:

• become bored with repetitive work

• finish assignments quickly and then appear inattentive

• question teachers

• refuse busywork

• focus intensely on a narrow interest while neglecting other subjects

Some of these behaviors may not look like giftedness. They may look like inattentiveness, defiance, laziness, or simply a ​s​tudent who isn’t doing what he is supposed to do.

That got me wondering. If some gifted boys are being overlooked because they don’t necessarily look like the ideal gifted student, would we see any sign of that in who actually makes it into gifted programs?

But What about the numbers?

The next thing I did was check current enrollment in gifted programs. To my surprise, recent national data from the NCES show that girls now slightly outnumber boys in gifted and talented programs in the US. That was a bit of a surprise. Not because girls aren’t gifted. I am sure some are. But if there are more boys with high IQ’s, shouldn’t we expect more boys than girls among the exceptionally gifted? Equal numbers would already raise an interesting question. A female majority raises an even bigger one.

What are the actual differences?

One source I read said that an IQ of 130+ was the point that many gifted programs consider starting. But what is the sex ratio of boys and girls at the 130+ level? Since we find that more girls are in the gifted programs than boys we would expect more girls, right?

Here’s what I found:

One estimate is that boys outnumber girls at the 130+ IQ level at a ratio of 15:10. This means that for every 100 students who have a 130 IQ or higher you will likely have about 60 boys and 40 girls. As you go higher in IQ it leans farther towards boys. When you reach the 170+ range there are nearly 6 times as many males as females. Here’s a chart that shows these estimates: (the estimates are from AI and I chose a very conservative estimate from chatgpt to include here. I will include Grok and Google below)

You can see that boys predominate at the highest genius levels of IQ. Boys and girls are actually quite similar in the normal ranges of IQ, but the boys predominate at both the highest levels and the lowest while the girls cluster more in the middle. But how many boys and girls are likely to have scores above 130?

If we assume the mean to be 100 and a standard deviation of 15 we would expect that about 2.3% of people will have an IQ of 130 or above. Given that estimate at a typical high school that had 1100 students you would likely find about 25 students with 130+ IQ’s. Given our previous estimate of 15:10 we would expect that group to be 15 boys and 10 girls. Clearly more boys than girls.

It is certainly true that there are more factors in choosing students to participate in gifted programs other than iQ, but IQ is a very solid factor and that factor tells us more boys should be included. It does make us wonder about girls outnumbering boys in today’s gifted programs.

Why fewer boys?

Many gifted programs now consider: classroom grades, teacher recommendations, organization, homework completion, classroom participation, work habits, portfolios, and other indicators of academic success. Those are worthwhile qualities but it seems to me that they are indicators of how adjusted someone is to the school and the schoolwork. This is not necessarily the same thing as exceptional cognitive ability. A brilliant boy who is disorganized, restless, bored, inconsistent, or socially awkward may not look gifted inside a modern classroom. Imagine a teacher seeing these sorts of traits, would the teacher see him as gifted? He may simply look difficult. Or distracted. Or immature. His intelligence can easily become hidden behind his behavior. He will likely appear as a problem, not as a candidate for special treatment.

The Question Worth Asking

I do think there is an important question here. Are gifted and talented programs simply not recognizing gifted boys? Are there gifted boys who never get the opportunity offered by these programs? My experience says yes. I remember watching my own children and their friends when in high school. There were numerous special programs for girls including, camps, trips to the NIH, girl only events, and much more, but nothing even close to that for the boys. I watched and saw highly gifted boys who were overlooked for any such treatment. It seems in our attempts to give girls special treatment the boys have suffered.

Perhaps We’ve Been Looking in the Wrong Direction

For years we’ve focused on boys who struggle. We should continue to do that. But perhaps we’ve overlooked another group of boys who also need our attention. The exceptionally gifted. The unconventional thinkers. The boys whose intelligence doesn’t always arrive wrapped in neat handwriting, completed homework, and model classroom behavior. If greater male variability is real—and decades of research say it is—then boys don’t simply present more problems. They also present more extraordinary potential. The challenge for education is not to make every child average. It is to recognize exceptional need wherever it appears. And that includes the children at the very top.

Perhaps the question isn’t whether boys are underrepresented in gifted programs. Perhaps the better question is this: Are today’s schools identifying giftedness—or simply identifying the students who fit school best?

Men are good.

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1. Grok

Safe, conservative approximate male:female ratios (drawing primarily from greater male variance with equal or near-equal means, plus notes on the effect of a small mean difference) are in these ranges:

• Above 140: roughly 1.5–2.3 : 1 (central/safe figure often cited around 2 : 1)

• Above 150: roughly 1.7–3.1 : 1 (central around 2.5–3 : 1)

• Above 160: roughly 2.2–4.5 : 1 (central around 3–4 : 1)

• Above 170: roughly 3–7+ : 1 (central around 4–6 : 1, with high uncertainty)
  
  

  1. Google

     1. IQ 130: Approximately 1.5 : 1 to 2 : 1

     1. IQ 140: Approximately 3 : 1 to 4 : 1

     1. IQ 150: Approximately 5 : 1 to 8 : 1

     1. IQ 160: Approximately 10 : 1 to 15 : 1

     1. IQ 170: Approximately 20 : 1 to 30 : 1 [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

In the early 1970s, I worked as a psychiatric technician in a mental hospital. I was fresh out of undergrad and I learned an enormous amount simply by watching people and listening to their stories.

One of the lessons that stayed with me was about fathers and the importance men can place on being a provider.

A man was admitted to our unit after losing millions of dollars in a business failure. As I remember it, he had largely been caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Circumstances had turned against him, and through relatively little fault of his own, he had lost an enormous amount of money.

He was devastated.

He blamed himself and was deeply depressed. Most of us on the staff felt a great deal of sympathy for him.

Then came the family meeting.

What happened in that room shocked me, and I have never forgotten it.

His family consisted of his wife and two teenage daughters. It quickly became clear that they blamed him for what had happened. And they didn’t hide it.

When members of the staff tried to soften things a little—pointing out how difficult the circumstances had been and suggesting that perhaps much of what happened had been beyond his control—the family pushed back. No. He could have done this. He could have done that.

What struck me most was where their attention seemed to be.

Here was their husband and father, hospitalized with depression after watching his business collapse. But their concern seemed focused much more on what his financial failure meant for them: the money that was gone and the changes in lifestyle they were now facing.

I remember being stunned.

I was in my early twenties, and I don’t think I had ever really considered what the expectation to provide could mean to a man.

But I began to understand.

For many men, providing isn’t simply about earning money. It can become deeply connected to their sense of responsibility, their usefulness, and even their worth to the people they love.

And perhaps there is another side to it that we don’t talk about very often.

What happens to a man when he can no longer provide?

That family meeting gave me an early glimpse of the answer.

It also helped me understand something I would see repeatedly in the decades that followed: many men carry a powerful fear of failing the people who depend upon them. Their determination to work, succeed, and provide isn’t necessarily about money or status.

Sometimes it is about love.

Sometimes it is about responsibility.

And sometimes it is about the fear of what might happen if they fail.

Read more

A tip of the hat to two subscribers for contributing to the fun. Mike N. coined OvaryActing, and Jim gave us HerPocrisy. Well done, gentlemen! Both are terrific additions to the list.

Maybe It’s Time We Invented a Few Words Too

It is truly remarkable how feminism has been able to create words that bolster their ideology and simultaneously demean men. Some of these have been accepted by the general culture and have even become household terms.

Over the years we‘ve seen mansplaining, manterrupting, bropropriating, himpathy, misogynoir, kyriarchy, toxic masculinity, gender washing, leg hair harassment, and ​many others.

​These words have a double punch. They not only describe a behaviour, they also imply a motivation. For example, mansplaining describes a man who is explaining a phenomenom but it also carries the idea that he is doing this out of sexism, arrogance, or a desire to assert male superiority.

​So these phrases don’t merely describe a beahviour, they shape it.​ And underneath it lies the reality that these phrases are actually relational aggression in a more hidden form. Hurtful words that are easy to deny.

Once a behavior has a ​c​atch phrase ​attached, people begin to notice it everywhere. ​And sometimes it encourages people to agree with the feminist lens of its creator.

So I started wondering...Why ​not create a counterpoint? Perhaps it’s time the rest of us invented a few words of our own. Not because we need more labels​ and not because we revel in using relational aggression. But because satire often reveals something ordinary argument cannot.

Here are a few candidates.

Feministsplaining

the act of a ​f​eminist explaining something to a man in a condescending, overconfident, and often inaccurate or oversimplified manner, without regard to h​is own expertise.

EmpathyGapping

​The act of offering compassion and empathy to everyone...except when it comes to men.

OvaryActing

Finding patriarchy in places where normal people would just call it a bad day.

NarrativeProofing

When all the data, even contradictory evidence proves the narrative is sound.

Herpocrisy

The remarkable ability to spot bad behavior in men while somehow missing the identical behavior in women.

TheoryWashing

When inconvenient facts show up, cover them with enough theory until nobody notices.

Patriarchoscope

A precision instrument used to locate patriarchy in any situation. Batteries never included. Confirmation bias always is.

Examples:

• Boys failing in school? Patriarchy.

• Men dying younger? Patriarchy.

• Men committing suicide? Patriarchy.

• Men working dangerous jobs? Patriarchy.

• Men drafted into war? Believe it or not... patriarchy.

Of course, these definitions are satirical.

​Well, maybe....

The interesting thing about satire is that it exaggerates just enough to expose a pattern.

If you ​h​ad a chuckle while reading these, ask yourself why. Is it because the​y are ridiculous? Or because they ​are plausible? That may be the larger point.

The words we invent ​are not simply descriptive—they encourage us to interpret reality in particular ways. Maybe that​ is why creating new ​words has become such a powerful part of modern political and academic movements​?

So here’s my challenge. Can you invent a new satirical term?

Leave it in the comments.

Who knows?

If enough people use it, maybe one day some graduate student will cite it in a journal article.

Men Are Good

Last week I shared the opening chapter of Seeing Men Clearly. This chapter introduces the central concept on which the rest of the book is built. My hope is not to assign blame, but to better understand the hidden forces that shape how we think about boys and men. As always, I welcome your thoughts.

What Is Gynocentrism?

The pattern described in the previous chapter has a name: gynocentrism.

The term is unfamiliar to many readers. It is sometimes misunderstood and often assumed to be accusatory.

Properly understood, however, it is neither an accusation nor a criticism.

As used in this book, gynocentrism refers to a cultural tendency to treat female vulnerability as morally primary. It does not mean hatred of men. It does not mean women are favored in all domains. It does not mean women never suffer injustice.

Rather, it describes a reflex—a hierarchy of concern that operates quietly beneath policy debates, media narratives, and social assumptions. When harm occurs, we instinctively ask: “How does this affect women and children?” We are often slower to ask: “How does this affect men?”

That asymmetry is not always conscious. In fact, it rarely is.

Not a Conspiracy—A Reflex

Gynocentrism is not a coordinated plot. It is not an organized agenda. It is not a secret doctrine taught in classrooms. It is a moral reflex that predates modern politics.

Its origins are open to debate. Some argue it reflects evolutionary pressures in which societies that protected reproductive capacity were more likely to survive. Others point to historical realities in which women were more physically vulnerable in violent environments. Still others emphasize psychological empathy biases that lead human beings to respond more strongly to those perceived as vulnerable.

These debates are worth having. But they are not central to this book. The central question is not origin. It is operation. What happens when a reflex becomes institutional default?

From Instinct to Structure

When a bias is widely shared, it begins shaping decisions without requiring coordination. It influences headlines, research questions, funding priorities, policy language, and perceptions of moral urgency. Over time, the reflex becomes structure. And structure often feels neutral. It rarely is.

If female vulnerability is treated as axiomatic, institutions will naturally become skilled at detecting and remedying harms affecting women. Male vulnerability, by contrast, will often require additional explanation before receiving equivalent attention. This does not require malice. It requires only default settings.

The Hierarchy of Urgency

Consider public reactions to harm. When women are victims of violence, the response is often swift and collective. Advocacy groups mobilize. Media attention intensifies. Funding initiatives follow.

When men are victims—even in substantial numbers—the reaction is often more muted. The suffering may be acknowledged, but it is less likely to be framed as a systemic moral emergency. The difference lies not in the worth of individual lives. It lies in the hierarchy of urgency.

Gynocentrism is the cultural gravity that helps create that hierarchy.

Why It Is Difficult to See

The hardest biases to recognize are often those that align with our moral self-image. Most people see themselves as compassionate. We celebrate protection. We admire sacrifice. We view concern for the vulnerable as a virtue.

When a bias appears in the form of kindness, it does not feel like bias. This is one reason gynocentrism often goes unnamed. To question it can feel like questioning compassion itself. But examining a reflex is not the same thing as rejecting it. It is simply asking whether the reflex should remain invisible.

The Question This Book Asks

The purpose of this book is not to argue that women should be protected less. It is to ask what happens when the protection of one group becomes the default moral frame through which all gender issues are viewed.

When that frame becomes embedded within institutions, predictable patterns begin to emerge. Educational practices may assume a single developmental model. Policies may allocate resources asymmetrically. Research may frame male suffering as secondary. Cultural narratives may normalize male disposability. These patterns are not random. They follow from the reflex.

Gynocentrism is not the enemy. Unexamined bias is the problem.

If we are serious about fairness, equality, and moral consistency, we must be willing to examine the hierarchies we have inherited—especially those that feel virtuous. The chapters that follow explore how this reflex operates in modern institutions. Not to inflame. But to illuminate.

We've seen how a hidden moral hierarchy can shape the way we respond to suffering. But how does that hierarchy become embedded in schools, research, laws, and public policy? In the next chapter, we'll explore how a cultural reflex gradually becomes an institutional reality.

Mansplaining. Manterrupting. Himpathy. Bropropriating.

These words don’t simply describe behavior.

Many also suggest why the behavior occurred.

That’s a powerful way to shape perception.

So I wondered...

Could we invent a few of our own?

I recently read an article in the journal Men and Masculinities about a Kenyan health care worker and masculinity writer who goes by the name Amerix on X. The paper described him as an influencer with more than two million followers and expressed deep concern about what it saw as his misogyny and harmful influence on men.

I had never heard of Amerix. So before reading any further, I decided to spend some time reading his posts on X for myself. Here are a few:

1. Amerix
It is easy to blame your:
• Childhood
• Parents
• Tribe
• Government
It is much harder to accept responsibility for your own decisions.

The day a man stops looking for someone else to blame is the day he begins taking control of his life.

2. Amerix
Men,
A man who can:
- Cook
- Wash his clothes
- Clean his environment
- Organize his closet
- Mend & sew his clothes
- Budget his money

Cannot be manipulated by women.

Be this man!

3. Amerix

Men,
How to be a loser in life:
- Download TikTok,
- Start scrolling mindlessly,
- Ogle at naked women, laugh at shit videos & dumb jokes.

If you consume shit, you will become shit.

After reading dozens of posts like these, I found myself wondering if I had somehow landed on the wrong account.

What I found surprised me. I expected to find someone whose main focus was attacking women. Instead, I found someone consumed with challenging men.

• Get healthy.

• Stop making excuses.

• Save your money.

• Read books.

• Learn a skill.

• Exercise.

• Build friendships with other men.

• Take responsibility.

• Become the kind of man others can depend upon.

What I found was a man who thought highly of masculinity and cared deeply about men who were struggling to find their place in a world that openly criticizes men as being toxic. He challenged them to stop making excuses, take responsibility, and work on themselves as men. I can’t remember hearing a comparable message from feminist writers directed toward women. Their emphasis has generally been on the obstacles women face, the ways society has failed them, and their claims of victimhood. Amerix’s message was very different. He held men accountable and urged them to become stronger, healthier, more disciplined, and more capable.

Why would millions of men and boys be drawn to someone like Amerix?

I don’t think it’s much of a mystery.

His message is remarkably simple: You matter as a man. Now get to work.

He challenges men to improve themselves while offering practical guidance on how to avoid the traps that derail so many lives. Beneath that challenge is another message—one many men have rarely heard—that they have value simply because they are men.

In a culture that casually speaks of toxic masculinity while rarely celebrating the positive possibilities of manhood, that message is powerful. Amerix tells men they have value, but he doesn’t stop there. He also tells them they have a responsibility to live up to that value.

Does Amerix talk about women? Absolutely. He has some strong opinions about women and repeatedly urges men to be cautious in their relationships. He encourages men to value themselves, maintain their own purpose, and not lose themselves in trying to satisfy every desire of a partner. I can understand why many feminists would object to some of his views. He is often blunt and sometimes makes sweeping statements about women. But after reading a number of his posts, I simply can’t say that women are the center of his work. They aren’t. Men are. His central project is encouraging men to become stronger, healthier, more disciplined, and more responsible.

Here’s one of his tweets about women:

Men, You are the driver of your bus. The bus is your life and the route is your purpose. A woman is a passenger in your bus. If you are a careless driver, she will alight. Don’t follow her. Improve your skill & keep going. Another passenger will board.

The paper concludes that Amerix’s message is ultimately dangerous. Here’s how the authors summarize their concern:

Amerix’s ideology thereby not only reproduces the experience of pressure, failure, depression and stress caused by the expectation to fulfil the role of the breadwinner (cf Schmidt 2024), but also fosters a sense of masculine entitlement among Kenyan men (cf Kimmel 2019) that, in case of ongoing lack of success, might produce feelings of rage and aggression. What presents itself as a form of self-scaling (Schmidt and Kibuye ) masculine repair might thus rather be a vicious cycle of destroying oneself, other men, society, and women.

I paused when I read that.

This is not merely a criticism of some of Amerix’s ideas about women or relationships. It is a much broader claim. The authors argue that his overall message of masculine self-improvement ultimately becomes “a vicious cycle” that destroys the man himself, other men, society, and women.

That is an extraordinary conclusion.

Extraordinary conclusions deserve equally strong evidence.

What surprised me was how little attention was given to the positive themes that dominate so much of his work—discipline, health, responsibility, purpose, and accountability. Those themes receive relatively little discussion, while the paper concludes that his overall message leads toward entitlement, aggression, and ultimately the destruction of oneself, other men, society, and women.

Then, a few pages later, the paper makes another striking claim: (emphasis mine)

Amerix’s suggested practices of masculine self-repair thus have three important
characteristics differentiating them from other forms of social repair. They are, firstly, not outward-oriented but practices of caring for one’s masculine self. They are, secondly, prone to paranoia because changing their masculine self will cause a change in how men see the world, namely as interlaced with feminist ideology and micro-practices that need to be uncovered and corrected. Lastly, masculine self-repair is considered self-scaling, that is small acts of (re)masculinizing are believed to cause changes in men’s relations to other people as well as cause the world to run according to its masculine nature again. According to Amerix, masculine self-repair therefore leads to a revelation of the fact that men live in a perverted world that can, however, be tilted back onto its masculine trajectory if enough men decide to repair their masculine selves.

Wait a minute.

The authors argue that Amerix’s message makes men “prone to paranoia” because they begin to see feminist ideology woven throughout modern society.

Really?

But that immediately raised another question in my mind.

If encouraging men to see feminist influence throughout society is said to foster paranoia, shouldn’t we also ask whether encouraging women to see patriarchy throughout society might produce a similar effect?

The point is not that either movement is necessarily paranoid.

The point is that the same psychological standard should be applied consistently.

If one worldview is examined for its tendency to heighten suspicion, then competing worldviews deserve the same scrutiny.

That seems reasonable to me.

This also brngs up a related issue. The authors seem upset that Amerix would make sweeping negative generalizations about women, Okay. But if they are going to take that route shouldn’t they also hold the same judgment against all of the sweeping generalizations about men that are made on a daily basis? Men are toxic, men are privileged, etc. I have never heard a feminist or feminist researcher hold themselves accountable in that manner. Have you?

I finished reading Amerix with a more positive impression than I expected.

I finished reading the paper with a more negative impression than I expected. Not because it criticized Amerix. But because I don’t think it gave an accurate representation of him.

Before we criticize anyone, we have an obligation to understand what they are actually trying to accomplish.

After reading both, I came away believing the paper understood Amerix’s most controversial statements. I’m not convinced it understood Amerix himself.

Men Are Good.

Amerix X account

My father died in 1994. He had spent his career as a NASA scientist, but far more important to me was the kind of man he was. He was a wonderful father, and after he died I found myself wondering how I might honor his life.

By then I had been immersed in cross-cultural grief research for several years. Again and again, I had seen examples of men honoring those they loved through meaningful action. I knew I wanted to do something rather than simply remember.

Then it came to me.

Build a website for grieving people.

I smiled as soon as the idea arrived because I knew my father would have loved it.

During his final years at NASA, he worked in a program called Technology Transfer, whose mission was to find practical ways to apply NASA’s scientific advances to everyday life. He believed technology should improve people’s lives.

Creating a website for grieving people felt like a continuation of that spirit. It would use a new technology to help people in pain.

In 1995, Web Healing was born. It became one of the earliest grief websites on the Internet and, much to my surprise, it grew rapidly. Over the years it has helped countless grieving people around the world. Social media eventually reduced its traffic, but it continues to serve people to this day.

Here’s the interesting part.

Almost no one knew that I built it in honor of my father.

Even though I dedicated the site to him, most visitors never saw the dedication. They simply saw a grief website.

The action was visible.

The grief behind it was not.

Read more

A Note Before You Begin

This is the opening chapter of a book I have been writing called Seeing Men Clearly.

The book grew out of a simple question: Why are some forms of male suffering so difficult for us to recognize, even when the evidence is directly in front of us?

From the beginning, I made a conscious decision to avoid writing a book that assigns blame. Rather than searching for villains, I have tried to understand the deeper historical, psychological, and cultural forces that have shaped how we think about boys and men. My hope is that if we can better understand these underlying dynamics, many of today’s conflicts and misunderstandings will begin to make more sense.

In recent years, more people have begun to recognize that boys and men face challenges that have too often gone unnoticed. Yet conversations about these issues can quickly become polarized, causing people to stop listening before the discussion has truly begun. I wanted to write a book that invites readers to look carefully at the evidence, consider a different perspective, and decide for themselves.

I am sharing this chapter now because I believe its central idea is too important to remain confined to a book or a website. If it resonates with you, I hope you’ll consider sharing it with others who may benefit from seeing these patterns more clearly.

As always, I welcome your thoughts and feedback.

Chapter One

Women and Children First

When the Titanic struck the iceberg on April 14, 1912, and the magnitude of the disaster became clear, a command emerged that would echo through history:

“Women and children first.”

The phrase has since become shorthand for moral decency. It evokes images of courage, sacrifice, and order in chaos. It is taught in classrooms, praised in films, and woven into our understanding of what it means to be honorable. The men who stepped aside that night are remembered as noble. The expectation that they should do so is rarely questioned.

And yet, very few people pause to consider what that command reveals.

The Titanic was not an isolated moment. Maritime tradition had long held that in emergencies, women and children were to be prioritized for survival. The principle was considered civilized. It distinguished order from barbarism.

But beneath the nobility lies a moral asymmetry so familiar we rarely examine it. In moments of mortal danger, women’s lives are prioritized while men’s lives are expected to be risked. This expectation is not controversial. It is not debated. It is instinctively accepted.

The question is not whether the instinct is understandable. It clearly is.

The question is why it feels so natural.

Imagine that the command aboard the Titanic had been:

“Men and children first.”

Most people would recoil instinctively. The order would feel grotesque, unjust, and almost unthinkable. We would immediately ask why women’s lives had been placed below men’s and how any civilized society could accept such a rule.

Yet “women and children first” produces almost no comparable discomfort. It feels honorable. Natural. Even morally necessary.

The facts have changed. Our moral intuition has not. The same moral asymmetry appears in modern institutions.

More than a century later, only men in the United States are required to register for Selective Service. Failure to do so can carry legal consequences. Women are exempt. The justification often rests on combat roles, tradition, or biological difference. But beneath those explanations lies a deeper assumption: in times of national danger, the lives of men are treated as more expendable than the lives of women.

Imagine reversing the arrangement. Imagine requiring only women to register for potential military conscription while exempting men. The reaction would be immediate and fierce. It would be called discriminatory, unjust, and oppressive.

Yet the current arrangement provokes little sustained moral outrage.

Why?

The instinct to protect women and children is often described as chivalry. It is framed as virtue. And in many ways, it is. Throughout human history, men have risked and sacrificed their lives to defend families, communities, and nations. War memorials stand in nearly every town, bearing overwhelmingly male names. The expectation of male sacrifice in defense of others has been normalized for generations.

It is not cruel. It is not consciously malicious. It is simply assumed. And assumptions, when shared collectively, become invisible

The pattern extends far beyond disasters and military service. In public emergencies, evacuation protocols routinely prioritize women and children. In humanitarian crises, aid campaigns frequently emphasize the vulnerability of women and girls. In media coverage of tragedy, particular attention is often drawn to female victims, even when male casualties are numerically greater.

The emphasis feels compassionate. It feels humane. But it also reveals a hierarchy of concern. When women suffer, it feels urgent. When men suffer, it feels unfortunate. That difference is rarely articulated.

It is simply felt.

None of this requires resentment to observe. It does not require hostility toward women. It requires only the willingness to notice a pattern.

The pattern is this: our culture instinctively treats female vulnerability as morally primary. Male vulnerability, by contrast, is often conditional. It must be demonstrated, justified, or placed into context before it receives the same degree of concern.

The phrase “women and children first” is not a policy manual. It is a moral symbol. It tells us something about who we instinctively protect and who we expect to endure. The instinct itself may be rooted in evolutionary pressures, reproductive strategy, social stability, or simple empathy toward those perceived as physically smaller or less capable of defense. Explanations vary.

What matters for our purposes is not origin but operation.

Whatever its origins, this instinct became deeply embedded in our moral thinking. Over time it came to feel less like a preference and more like common sense. As we will see later, blind spots often begin as useful adaptations. The question for this book is not how the instinct originated, but how it continues to shape our perceptions today.

When a moral reflex becomes a cultural default, it begins shaping institutions. Education. Research. Public policy. Funding priorities. Media narratives. Legal frameworks. Over time, what began as an adaptive instinct gradually becomes social structure. And once a structure has existed long enough, it no longer appears to be a structure at all.

It simply feels normal.

If we are to examine modern debates about gender honestly, we must begin here—not with ideology, political movements, or competing grievances—but with the underlying moral gravity that quietly tilts our collective responses.

We admire the men who stepped aside on the Titanic.

We require men to register for war.

We instinctively organize compassion around women and children.

None of these reactions feel unusual. That is precisely the point.

The question is not whether the instinct to protect women is wrong. The question is what happens when an instinct becomes so familiar that we no longer recognize it as an instinct.

Before we can discuss policy, research, or political movements, we must first name the moral pattern that makes those policies and reactions feel so natural.

There is a word for that pattern. In the next chapter, we'll give it a name and begin exploring how it quietly shapes our understanding of boys and men.

Male Vulnerability?