An open letter to liberal feminists: girls don’t have it any worse than boys

Dear Liberal Feminists,

A couple of days ago I wrote about a new feminist campaign called “Ban Bossy.” I won’t rehash the topic, but if you somehow missed out on the latest Outrage Du Jour, allow me to sum it up thusly: some female celebrities and feminist business moguls have come together to invent another petty reason to feel offended and persecuted. This time, they’ve decided that the word “bossy” is sexist.

I dedicated about 1,700 words to picking this silliness apart, which is probably about 1,700 words too many. I think, at this point, an exaggerated eye-roll and a loud yawn is all this sort of unbearable politically-correct sophistry deserves.

Yet, from this concocted controversy, a real and urgent issue has revealed itself.

You see, my Ban Bossy post was met with a myriad of comments from feminist women who claimed that, starting from a young age, girls are discouraged from being assertive and opinionated, while boys are lauded and praised for displaying those characteristics.

As the ladies behind Ban Bossy wrote:

“We expect boys to be assertive and confident, while we expect girls to be kind and nurturing. We encourage boys to lead and reward them when they do. When girls lead, however, we disapprove—and our language communicates that disapproval clearly.”

Here we arrive at the encapsulation of nearly everything that is wrong with your movement, liberal feminists:

First, the ugly insinuation that there’s something wrong with expecting girls to be “kind” and “nurturing.” A thousand pages could be written — and probably have been written — on that chilling aspect alone.

Second, there’s what has quickly become the absolute worst thing about liberal feminism (next to your unquenchable enthusiasm for infanticide): the complete dismissal and denial of the unique struggles of modern boys and men.

You intentionally steer the conversation away from the trials and tribulations of the other gender, in order to exaggerate, or entirely fabricate, misogyny and sexism. You nail yourselves to a cross that you’ve carved and built yourselves, and demand that all the attention be given to your own perceived persecutions.

Concentrating for the moment on children, there is no doubt that girls face profound obstacles. Unfortunately, you aren’t apparently interested in attacking the institutions that do the greatest damage to these innocent girls.

If you sincerely intended to be warriors for femininity and champions of female empowerment, you’d dedicate almost all of your considerable resources to attacking our culture’s Unholy Trinity of Misogyny and Exploitation: pornography, Hollywood, and the abortion industry.

If you had the courage of your own convictions, you’d wage your feminist crusade against these institutions. Instead, you throw a party and make them your honored guests.

Meanwhile, as you regurgitate useless “War on Women” rhetoric for the billionth time, boys continue to languish and deteriorate in silence. Their distress is ignored because you simply can’t figure out how to work it into your “male privilege” narrative.

Inconvenient though it might be, liberal feminists, I’d like to discuss the reality.

Here it is:

Boys — particularly boys in public school — are most assuredly NOT encouraged to be opinionated, assertive, loud, boisterous, or confident. Do you know what happens to boys like that?

We punish them.

We label them.

We medicate them.

Their opinions and their personalities aren’t just discouraged — they’re chemically obliterated.

According to the CDC, more than 20 percent of 14-year-old boys have been diagnosed with ADHD at some point in their lifetime. Twenty percent.

Boys are 125 percent more likely to be stuck with the ADHD label than girls, and 127 percent more likely to be medicated for it.

I suppose we can chalk this up to a mental disorder that mysteriously discriminates based on sex, or we could contemplate the possibility that we have turned boyhood into a disease. Overall, young males are almost twice as likely to be deemed “learning disabled.” Could boys really be this inherently flawed, or is the system itself flawed?

Whether or not a boy manages to exhibit the “correct” personality traits and narrowly avoid a psychiatric diagnosis, he has a much greater chance of being expelled or suspended from school. In fact, boys make up about 70 percent of the suspensions from grades K – 12. They’re also five times more likely to be expelled from pre-school.

And it’s not just that young males tend to “misbehave” more; it’s that we’ve defined “misbehavior” in a way that unfairly targets them. The news is rife with stories of kids suspended or expelled or arrested for making a pretend gun with their fingers, or a Poptart, or a keychain, or a pencil.

These are healthy and normal games of imagination and fantasy — games that boys, not girls, usually play — and we’ve literally made a criminal matter out of it.

Boys are frequently kicked out of school and sent hurtling on a path towards delinquency and failure, even for minor instances of physical aggression. Does it make sense to treat a kid like a dangerous psychopath just because he got into a minor shoving match or — horror of horrors — a fist fight? This is how boys often express their aggression. Girls express it in more damaging and traumatizing ways. They spread gossip and rumors, they shun and ostracize other girls, and these acts can reverberate through a child’s life much further and deeper than getting pushed into a locker or punched in the nose.

But typical male aggression leads to expulsion, while typical female aggression usually leads to, at most, a stern lecture from the guidance counselor. To make matters worse, we’ve banned and outlawed the healthier outlets for a boy’s energy and rambunctiousness. Schools have increasingly prohibited tag, and kickball, and dodgeball , and football.

Of course, the plight of the American male is far more serious and tragic than a ruined recess.

Feeling abandoned, angry, hateful, and confused, guys are about 4 times more likely to kill themselves than girls. It’s true that females attempt suicide at a higher rate, but males are at an exponentially greater risk of completing the horrible deed.

And the story doesn’t end there. While (if) these boys grow into men, it is much more probable that they will become alcoholics and drug addicts.

Everyone knows that men are infinitely more likely to go to prison, but did you know they even receive longer sentences for the same crimes? Indeed, women convicted on the same charges are twice as likely to avoid incarceration altogether.

Is this what you call “male privilege”?

Privileged to be drugged as a child, expelled from school as a teenager, and incarcerated as an adult? Privileged to bad grades, a psychiatric diagnosis, and an early death?

Sure, you can argue your case by throwing around the same old misleading statistics. How much money does a woman make for every dollar a man makes? Is it 77 now? 81? It doesn’t matter. Better question: how did you arrive at that figure.

Wait, do you even know how you arrived at that figure?

Here, I’ll help. You came up with that number by taking all men who work over 35 hours a week in any industry, at any experience level, in any region of the country, with any skillset, and you’ve compared them to all women who work over 35 hours a week in any industry, at any experience level, in any region of the country, with any skillset. For instance, you’ve matched the income of a hairstylist at Great Clips in Nebraska against the salary of a brain surgeon at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.

In other words, you’ve come up with a statistic that means nothing.

You can tell me about the scarcity of female CEOs, but I wonder: have you even asked other women if they want to be CEOs? Pew has, and they found that a majority of females have chosen — emphasis on CHOSEN — family over business aspirations.

Women also tend to choose — again with the CHOOSE — careers that pay less and have fewer opportunities for “upward mobility.”

Women still face incredible challenges, but the worst of it comes from a culture that mocks virtue, attacks the institution of the family, and encourages materialism and hedonism at the expense of faith and chastity.

Liberal feminists, you are not fighting this culture. You are fostering it.

And, as we speak, this same society victimizes boys in the most insidious ways, all while you distract us from their plight by focusing the discussion on some frivolous, fabricated slight against you.

These boys — told for years that they are troublemakers and nuisances, broken, disordered and diseased — will eventually become young men; young men, emasculated and confused by a culture that preys upon their weaknesses and makes them feel ashamed of their strengths.

One day, they will wish to marry. They’ll seek a kind and nurturing woman, a woman who values children and family, and in you’ll swoop with the fury of a thousand Gloria Steinems. You’ll tell them that they are evil for wanting a woman like that, just as you scold and condemn the women who are like that.

You’ll tell both parties to reject what is natural and healthy, and instead pursue your unattainable, dystopian, conflicted, ever-changing ideal.

And, as the divorce rate climbs, as more babies are killed in the clinics, more boys drugged in our schools, more girls exploited and objectified by the media, you’ll take responsibility for none of it.

It’s all the fault of the system, you’ll say.

And you’ll be right.

Except for one thing: you’re part of the system now.

You’re part of the problem.

And you have been for a long time.

Here’s the good news: if you want equality under the law, you have it. You’re done. You can legally do everything a man can do. Welcome to modernity, thanks for coming.

The bad news is that we still do not live in a perfect society, and we never will. There are still people who need helping, flags that need hoisting, and battles that need fighting. Unfortunately, you’re often on the wrong side of these efforts.

But there’s still time to change.

I hope you do.

We could use your help.

 

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