1. Perspective
The standard view of gender equality is that it’s mostly or entirely about women and their issues. For example, see “An Act to establish Gender Equality Week” (only women’s issues mentioned) or the Globe and Mail article “Have we achieved gender equality? Nine Canadian women respond”. Academic feminism often uses particularly dramatic, one-sided language when talking about gender inequality—domination, oppression, and exploitation (for women) and entitlement, privilege, and power (for men).
Basic point #1 of this blog is that there are plenty of important areas where men are doing worse than women. These include suicide, homelessness, incarceration, life expectancy, educational achievement, murder victimization (including police killings), hate crime victimization (based on e.g., sexual orientation or religion), stranger assault in general, separation from children after divorce, and addiction to various substances (including alcohol and opioids). Men also face various double standards (e.g., expressing sexual desire is creepy or dehumanizing but only when men do it), prejudices (e.g., gender profiling that usually happens beside racial profiling), and biases (e.g., lack of recognition of men as victims of domestic violence and sexual assault).
Basic point #2 of this blog is that we have inherited from gender traditionalism (and perhaps biology) a strong protective attitude towards women, and that is a major reason why we’re conscious of and attentive to women’s issues but not men’s. Feminism is seen as a rejection of gender roles and in many ways it is, but the elevation of women’s safety and well-being to an almost sacred status within feminism (e.g., “we must end violence against women” as if violence matters less when it happens to men) fits in well with traditionalist attitudes of “women are precious and we must protect them”.
If you set aside the received wisdom that “it’s a man’s world” and seriously consider the facts, I think you’ll find that there’s a whole other side to gender equality—disparities, discrimination, double standards, biases, unrealistic expectations, and more—that largely goes unexamined. This blog is my small contribution to changing that.
2. Posts
Write-Ups on Gender and Gender Issues:
- Conscription: A Gender-Based Injustice Around the World
- The Mythology Surrounding “Women’s Unpaid Labour”
- Women Politicians and Male Politicians: A More “Human” Adjective for Women but Not for Men
- Seeing Women’s Safety as Sacred Is Not New or Progressive
- Male Disposability and Canada’s Public Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW)
- Controversy Over Dress Codes for Women, Even When Men’s Dress Codes Are Equally or More Restrictive
- Men’s Issues Reading List (Book Recommendations)
- Critique of the Most Widely-Used Male Privilege Checklist
- A White Privilege List Applied to Gender
- Be Careful Equating Unwanted Sexual Advances with Harassment
- Comprehensive Research on Discrimination Against Men in Finland
- Problems with the Standard Tool for Measuring Sexism
- Men Live 79% as Many Years in Retirement as Women
- Trickle-Down Equality and Framing Men’s Issues as Really Being About Women
- The Women-Are-Wonderful Effect (We Don’t Live in a “Culture of Misogyny”)
- Gender Differences in Employment Priorities and Interests
- “The Future is Female”: The Bleak Outlook for Male Employment and Education
- Sexual Double Standards for Men? Player, Virgin, Creep, Objectifier
- Institutional Sexism Against Men in the Justice System
- Men’s Lives Matter Less? “Among the Dead Were Women and Children”
- Paternity Fraud as a Violation of Men’s Reproductive Rights?
- Title IX and Low Standards of Evidence for Campus Sexual Assault
- “Yes, Dear”: Henpecked Husbands and One-Sided Relationship Dynamics
- Spotlight on: Men’s Suicide Rates
- Defining, Demonstrating, and Understanding Male Disposability
- The Legal Paternal Surrender FAQ
- Methods for Downplaying or Side-Stepping Violence Against Men
Write-Ups on Gender Movements and Ideologies:
- Best Practices for Debating Feminists
- Radical Feminism Is Not Fringe Feminism
- Horseshoe Theory: Social Justice Left on Men, Alt-Right on Jews and Blacks
- “Sexist! Racist! Homophobe!” Political Correctness and Illegitimate Speech
- A Look at One Feminist’s Critique of Wikipedia, Verifiability, and Objectivity
- Why I Reject the Term “Patriarchy”
- Social Justice’s Punching Bags: Men, White People, Straight People
- The Oppressor/Oppressed Dichotomy in Gender and Beyond
- “Homophobia: The Fear That Another Man Will Treat You Like You Treat Women”
- A Non-Feminist FAQ
Survey Studies:
- Are Men Perceived as Having Less “Value” in Dating and Relationships?
- Reporting on the Race vs. Gender of a Suspect
- Charging Men More for Car Insurance vs. Women More for Health Insurance
- Measuring Feminist and Non-Feminist Sentiment Towards Men and Fathers
- Do People Give More Money to Female Panhandlers?
- Attitudes on Profiling Men vs. Profiling Minorities
3. Questions
Where does the name “Because it’s 2015” come from? It’s a tongue-in-cheek reference to a one-liner from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a vocal feminist.
Is this an anti-feminist blog? I prefer “non-feminist”. My hope is to challenge feminism and establish the legitimacy of alternatives to it, not to see it disappear.
Why talk about feminism at all? Why not just talk about men’s issues? Certain aspects of feminism are themselves issues for men. Given feminism’s dominance in the modern discourse on gender issues, this is really hard to ignore.
Is this a men’s rights blog? I don’t use that term personally. Most issues facing men (and women, for that matter) aren’t actually about legal rights, so I think it’s misleading.
Is this an alt-right blog? No. The alt-right is a white nationalist movement, not a catch-all term for people who criticize feminism or the “social justice” movement.
If you see advertisements on this blog, they were put there by WordPress, not me.
Because it's 2015 