It should be clear, though, that my view is not conservative about gender roles. While there may well be average differences in some psychological traits between the sexes37 I do not think that these justify all the differential treatment of the sexes that gender-role conservatives endorse. Because I think that the second sexism ought to be opposed along with the more widely recognized sexism, I am advocating change — doing things differently from the way they have been done historically. Moreover, the change I am recommending is quite radical. That is by no means conservative.
In defending the view that there is a second sexism, I shall respond to criticisms both from partisan feminists and from gender-role conservatives. However, my arguments will be directed more commonly against the former. This is not because I am more opposed to their position, but rather because it is the more common one in the academy.38
It cannot be emphasized enough, though, that I am not criticizing all feminists. I have found that this fact is often forgotten (or, on a less charitable reading, ignored) even when one states it clearly. Unfortunately, partisanship and other ideological excesses of feminism are rampant and I shall devote lots of attention to demonstrating the problems with such views. In doing so, however, I should not be construed as rejecting feminism in its purer egalitarian form.
Forestalling Some Fallacies
Given the prevailing orthodoxy in the academy and the sensitivity of the issues I shall be discussing, the views I defend in this book will be deemed threatening by many.39 I am thus under no illusions. My position, no matter how clearly stated, is likely to be misunderstood. Where it is not merely dismissed (sometimes vituperatively, as inconsistent with received opinion), it is likely to be subject to numerous (sometimes overly confident) mistaken objections. Indeed, overly confident objections are very common among those defending orthodoxies.40 One reason for this is that the responses to those objections by those defending heterodox views is so much harder for the orthodox to imagine, given either the rarity of unconventional views or the rarity of their being openly expressed. Orthodoxies are repeated endlessly and usually go unchallenged. The result is that they acquire a life of their own and become self-reinforcing. Thus those who hold orthodox positions have no felt need to justify their positions, which become entrenched by being shared by so many others around them.
It is obviously not possible to anticipate every objection that will be advanced. Indeed, some objections that have been leveled against earlier work on this topic are so outlandish that even in retrospect it is hard to imagine how they came to be raised. For example, one respondent to an earlier paper about the second sexism said that virtually every point in that paper had “been argued for in the men’s rights movement in the late 1970s.”41 If he meant “virtually every point” literally, then he is mistaken. If, however, he meant virtually every example of male disadvantage then, indeed, I would be surprised if nobody had ever mentioned these before.42 But what difference does it make if these examples have been mentioned before? The instances of female disadvantage are recited and repeated in thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of articles and books. Just as (many of) those works approach and probe them in different ways, shed different light on them and advance different arguments about them, so discussions of the second sexism can offer novel insights and arguments even if the phenomenon of discrimination against males has been mentioned before. It is certainly more novel to write about the second sexism than about the first sexism. Thus if the highest standards of novelty are required, critics should object first (or instead) to traditional feminist discussions of discrimination against women.
Unlike this objection another response to the claim that there is a second sexism is easy to predict. Perhaps the most common response to all disliked opinions is the ad hominem fallacy, in which one attacks the person who is offering the argument (instead of attacking the argument itself). Indeed, I have already been accused of being an “angry man” and an antifeminist.43 This is a fallacy because even if I were an “angry man” and an “antifeminist,” this would be irrelevant to determining whether my arguments are sound. Angry men and antifeminists can utter true statements and make valid inferences from them. And thus even if the charges stuck, they would tell us nothing about whether my conclusions ought to be accepted.
There is a second problem, however. Accusing males of being angry men and antifeminists is both regrettable and unfair for the very same reasons that leveling accusations of “man-hater” at all (female) feminists44 is regrettable and unfair.45 In other words the ad hominem argument is as unfair as the ad feminam argument. It does not facilitate an open-minded consideration of others’ views, and it ignores the fact that while some feminists are man-haters and some men who are concerned about male disadvantage are “angry” antifeminists (if not outright misogynists), not all are.
The labeling is worrying for a third reason. Given the prevailing views, at least in the academy, the charges of “angry man” and “antifeminist,” like the charge “conservative,” can be anticipated to have the “chilling effect” that is antithetical to the kind of discussion that should go on in academia.46
Structure and Method of the Book
One way to have written this book would have been to devote a separate chapter to each of the disadvantages that males experience, arguing that it constitutes unfair discrimination and then responding to objections to those arguments. That is not the way I have written this book. Taking that route would have required unnecessary repetition of ideas and arguments. Thus I have opted for an alternative approach.
In Chapter 2, the chapter immediately following this introductory one, I present a range of disadvantages of being male. I do more than mention them. I also describe them in some detail in order to give a richer account, to convey the nature and seriousness of the disadvantages. I do this because some people have been inclined to dismiss the disadvantages as minor. They need to see why they are wrong. In some cases, the disadvantages are clearly the product of discrimination and sometimes de jure discrimination, but even in those cases further argument is required to show that the discrimination is wrongful. That further argument is delayed until Chapter 4.
38
Indeed, when I first published an article on the second sexism, all four of the responses, invited by the journal editors, were feminist responses. Conservatives were not even invited to comment. This, I think, is very likely indicative of the current tendencies in social philosophy and of academia more generally.
39
Tom Digby (“Male trouble,” p. 248) complains that I leave the nature of the threat unspecified. This is because its nature will depend on the particularities of any given reader’s view.
41
Kenneth Clatterbaugh, “Benatar’s alleged second sexism,”
42
I have since discovered that many of them were mentioned well before the 1970s. See Ernest Belfort Bax, “The Legal Subjection of Men” (1908). Available at: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Legal_Subjection_of_Men (accessed July 1, 2010). Since this work claims that it is men
43
See, for example, Tom Digby, “Male trouble,” p. 247. He says “antifeminism is a common theme in angry man discourse.” He then says that this is my “approximate vantage point.”
44
We should also reject, as an
45
It is ironic, indeed, that Professor Digby, who accuses others of being angry men, has previously objected to making the allegation that feminists hate men. See his “Do feminists hate men? Feminism, antifeminism and gender oppositionality,”
46
Tom Digby tries a similar move when he taints, by association with racists and people who are insensitive to racism, those who disapprove of affirmative action (Tom Digby, “Male trouble,” p. 258). I agree that those who oppose affirmative action (for blacks) include racists and those insensitive to racism, but there is another strand of opposition to affirmative action that is based on liberal, anti-racist premises.