A Counterpoint to the Pervasive Notion of “Male Privilege”
Before any attempt to explain some men’s abhorrent behavior, it is imperative to first understand in the first place what social and psychological factors might’ve caused transgressions like sexual assault or rape. We can all agree that men who are not properly socialized are prone to act inappropriately, and any failure to socialize our male youth — whether it be in school or in the home — is a catastrophic mistake by our society to be rectified immediately. I will argue that the failure to socialize our young boys— and not a vast societal privileging of men and their masculine aggression — is the heart of the problem
Let us begin by addressing a few common claims:
1. It is the aggressive nature of men, their biology, and society’s persistent encouragement of this phenome that motivates men’s atrocious, libidinal behaviors.
This claim, that there is a vast societal acceptance of such inexcusable acts as sexual assault and rape. We turn a blind eye to the small actions day to day that eventually amass to something far worse.
First and foremost, there are plenty of men who have not and will never sexually assault or pervert women in any way. Of the men who do, we cannot hold accountable the many for the misdeeds of the few. However, I believe that there are more quite a few men who are, for one reason or another beyond just their biology, are poorly socialized, and that the problem of poor socialization has began to escalate. Let’s take a sample of a 100 men, and look at how many of them might be affected by factors beyond their biology, and beyond an endemic male privileging.
It all begins in the home. According to the Census Bureau, 27% of children grew up in single-parent households. Assuming an even gender split, that statistic divides as follows: 23% of men grew up without fathers in the home and 4% grew up without mothers ( there is a 4% outlier of children growing up with neither. Count them in as well). What is the significance of this fact? Any kid growing up without a father in the home is liable to severe mis-socialization. The absence of fathers is important, as Obama noted in a 2008 speech in Chicago, because,”children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to dropout of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison.” Considering that out of this sample size of 100 men, 27% would’ve been raised without fathers, one must understand that most misconduct from this subset of men is not indicative of a perverse male aggressiveness or privileging, but rather an underprivileging. These men were devoid of a crucial figure in their youths, which lended to a higher susceptibility to crime and misbehavior. Had they been influenced by a father in their lives, it is not unrealistic to think that these men would be socialized properly.
Perhaps the most prevalent cause of poor socialization in the world today is bullying, which our children experience at alarming rates in and out of school . According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, more than one out of every five (20.8%) students report being bullied (2016). That number can go as high as 28% (2015), according to the U.S. Department of Education. Neither of these studies account for cyberbullying, however; a 2014 meta-analysis of 80 studies analyzing bullying involvement rates (for both bullying others and being bullied) for 12–18 year old students and reported a mean prevalence rate of 35% for traditional bullying involvement and an additional 15% for cyberbullying involvement (Modecki, Minchin, Harbaugh, Guerra, & Runions, 2014). From these numbers, and from general scientific consensus we can reasonably estimate that about 33 out of these 100 men were bullied in their youth. A 2005 study in the Oxford Academic journal Children & Schools former Kansas U professor Paul Smokowski and his wife, Kelly, demonstrated,Children and adolescents who are bullies are at increased risk for substance use, academic problems, and violence to others later in life .” (NIH) Bullying undoubtedly contributes to the blatant, sexual misbehavior of some men.
Now let’s address economic status. Of these 100 men, 29 would be in the lower class, and 14.5 below the poverty line (Pew). Let’s call that 14 below the poverty line and 15 more in the lower class. Interestingly enough, poverty is on it’s way down, yet crime rates are increasing. According to the 2016 FBI Uniform Crime report, for all U.S. cities, killings rose 8.8% from 2015. Cities with populations over one million saw an even sharper spike: 20%. Concurrently, the Census Bureau published that the official poverty rate was 12.7 percent, down 0.8 percentage points from 13.5 percent in 2015. The results mark a second consecutive annual decline in poverty: since 2014, the poverty rate has fallen 2.1 percentage points from 14.8 percent. By now. Most criminologists know that poverty and crime are not directly proportional. It is in fact, the great income disparity that spurs greater crime. The same Pew study mentioned earlier noted the “shrinking middle class” and the increasing distance between upper and lower class incomes. A prescient 1998 study published in Social Science & Medicine found that the “effect of the growing gap between the rich and poor is mediated through an undermining of social cohesion, or social capital, and that decreased social capital is in turn associated with increased firearm homicide and violent crime”. In America’s present economy, as the middle class increasingly shrinks, any of the 14 to 29 is more likely to commit crimes like murder, robbery, and sexual assault. To counteract this negative societal influence, these boys must be properly socialized in good schools or in the home; however, given their lower-class status, that is often not the case, as lower-class men are more likely to be fatherless and receive less/no education.
I find it important to briefly note that about 4 out of these 100 men would be homosexuals, and though this doesn’t correlate to better or worse behavior, these are certainly not the men responsible for sexual assault of women, nor are the men others are referring to when they address problems of masculinity.
Let us now add up the men from this sample size whose (possible) misbehavior has been accounted for with reasons other than “hypermasculinity” or “male privilege”: 29+27+29+4= 79. Through no fault of their own (no fathers, poor economic situation, bullying at school), 79 out of this sample of 100 are more likely to not be properly socialized. These are the men society has left behind.
Though there may be some overlap between these categories, it is safe to say that over half of all men in America today are in some way or another more likely to be less socialized — prone to psychotic/neurotic behavior, aggression, and general misbehavior. Is it fair to blame all of manhood- that cursed designator of all things aggressive and evil in this world- as the sole contributor to sexual assault and misbehavior? Or does the issue go deeper? Is there something brewing beneath the surface which is the true cause of much of this male misconduct? As I’ve shown, there is, and assigning collective blame to the entire category of “men” for crimes clearly fueled by more than just their sex is far too simplistic.
To be clear: I do not condone sexual assault. I want to rid of it from our society as quickly and certainly as possible. But in order to do that, we must identify the sources of our problems accurately, and work to solve them quickly. The source of the sexual assault problem is not the men themselves: it is the situations society has placed them in. Let’s tackle the next popular argument.
2. Society encourages boys to be hyper-aggressive and hyper-masculine, which in turn fosters violent, salacious, and inappropriate behavior.
In purporting such a view — that the uninterrupted, natural process of maturity in boys results in dire social consequences — one must also believe (though indirectly) that girls’ behavior is naturally superior to boys. As psychologist Dr. Michael Thompson, author of Raising Cain, observed,
“Girls’ behavior is the gold standard in schools… boys are treated like defective girls.”
On a spectrum of gendered behavior, the underlying objective of the claim above is that boys’ behavior needs to be “feminized”. To such a claim, I ask, how can one be so sure of this, and can the proposals to solve such a “problem” really work?
Though the problem may exist (more on that later), the solutions we’re currently enacting aren’t working. Of the boys blessed with access to good schooling, home life, and supporting social circles, there are still many today who are still being slighted in one crucial area: their schooling. Feminist and notorious boy-activist Christina Hoff Sommers wrote incisively on the subject of boys and education in her best-seller The War Against Boys. In it, she makes note of boys’ negative trends in school. Using findings from various institutions, including the Department of Education and the High Education Research Institute, she lays out the following trends. Girls:
- “Outnumbered boys in student government, honor societies, and school newspapers” (p. 14 Hoff Sommers).
- “Received higher grades, do more homework, take more honors courses, read more books, eclipse males on tests of artistic and musical ability” (14).
- Receive fewer suspensions and are held back and drop out less (14).
- Are substantially ahead of boys in writing achievements: “male 11th graders scoring at about the same level as female 8th graders in 1996” (13).
- Have a higher average GPA by .2 points — 3.1 to 2.9. (12)
- “Earn 57% of bachelor’s degrees and 60% of master’s degrees” (16)
- Earning far more degrees in fields once dominated by men. As of 2006, women in the UC system “were earning 57% of degrees in law, 62% in dentistry, 73% in optometry, 77% in pharmacy, and 825 in veterinary medicine” (19).
Men do show stronger test scores, but Hoff Sommers is quick to point out that those trends are more reflective of an imbalance in economic status, not gender. More women take the SAT than men (54%), but far more of these women are in the “at risk” category. Coming from lower-income homes or having parents without high school or college diplomas are, in the words of the College Board, “characteristics associated with lower than average SAT scores” (15).
It is clear that no matter where you look throughout the education (except some, emphasis on some STEM classes), women are outperforming men handily. Yet there remains the idea throughout much of the media that men are systemically privileged in our schools. The AAUW consistently publishes reports on gender equity, and works hand in hand with the DOE in the publication of the DOE’s yearly report. Democrats remain convinced that there is far more work to do in gender equity in education in favor women. But no one discusses one crucial point: what is happening to our boys?
In her video for PragerU, The War on Boys, Hoff Sommers outlines several key criteria.
- Boys have lost 50% of recess time. That time for kids to engage in some good ol’ rough and tumble play, across species, is the most critical socializer for men. Through play, outlined in renowned child psychologist Jean Piaget’s “Theory of Play”, boys learn to integrate new knowledge of the world into their existing interpretations of societal norms and expectations. The models children use in interacting with the world are called schema. In Piaget’s view, as children mature, the new information acquired from experiences (for young children, often play) modify, add to, or change previously existing schema. With more and more play time being phased out in favor of reading or music circles, boys lose their most most important teacher: play.
- Zero tolerance policies. Her book is filled with stories like these: “Zachary Christie,six…. excited to be a new Cub Scout, packed his camping utensil in his lunch box. The gadget, which can be used as a knife, fork, or spoon, prompted school officials to charge him with possession of a weapon. Zachary faced 45 days in the district’s reform school but was granted a reprieve… and suspended for five days” (46). Zero tolerance, a consequence of post-superpredator hysteria in the 90's, has nearly doubled the K-12 total suspension rate from 1.7 million in 1974, to 3.3 million in 2007. 70% of these suspensions are administered to boys ( DOE, 2009). Here’s the deal about superpredators though: they don’t exist. The theory’s author, Wilson DiIulio, hypothesized in 1995 that a wave of serious and frequent crime from a small group of deleterious delinquents would inundate the country. He cited — which he conducted himself — that showed that 6% of boys within a sample of 100,000, committed half of all the juvenile crime within the sample. The media took notice of this claim, and soon arose the the craze around superpredators. Here’s the thing about that coming crime wave though. DiIulio was wrong. He said to so himself :
“So far, it clearly hasn’t happened. That is a good indication of what little all of us know about criminology.”
At the end of the day, these Zero Tolerance policies hurt the boys more than they may help. Many of us know this intuitively: harsh punishment is rarely the answer. Instead, we should work on preventative measures to socialize our nation’s boys into good-natured and well-behaved men. To do that, we need to allow them an environment where they can play with one another and make mistakes without the looming fear of suspension or serious, disproportional punishment. Loosening the reigns on boys may be exactly what they need. To quote sociologist and NYU professor Jonathan Haidt:
“The loss of unsupervised play time should be thought of as a health crisis, and perhaps a democracy crisis.”
To summarize, there is far more beneath the surface when it comes to assessing and diagnosing atrocious male behavior. Horrible, savage men like Harvey Weinstein and Russell Simmons should be publicly shamed, locked up, and held up as pariahs for all boys and all humans in general. But when it comes to men as a whole across our great country, there is far more that meets the eye than just a y- chromosome. The concept of “male privilege”, like all identity politics simplifies a vastly complex problem into a single causal factor. That is cause for suspicion, because, as I’ve demonstrated, there is far more affecting our boy’s behavior than their phallus.
We face a problem in our country today. Men in positions of power are engaging in grotesque abuses of their status. Campus-wide, anti-men sentiment is permeating, and frankly understandably so. How will we raise the next generation of boys, knowing that the men they look up to have been exposed as vile, vile beings? We must remember this: we cannot condemn the many for the actions of the few. Focus on each boy individually. Parents raise your boys to be men of character. Let them play, let them make mistakes. Let them offend someone physically and emotional, and make them apologize afterwards. Socialize our boys, and they will be men.










