Should men help women, or should women help men?

A reply.

The following is the response to an interesting essay (“#MeToo or #MenToo? How men can talk about abuse”) by Guardian journalist Ally Fogg, in which he argues that men should support women, because doing so benefits them.

Ally — thoughtful piece — thank you. “Helping anyone helps everyone. Men — support women, because it benefits you”. It’s crisp and memorable.

Of course, by the principle of parsimony, you could have stopped at “Helping anyone helps everyone”. This is a variation of the Golden Rule, which has guided the regulation of human conduct for centuries. There’s is no a priori reason to qualify it with gender.

And, by the internal logic of your argument, you could also have written: “Women — support men, because it benefits you” and arrived at the same outcome. Right?

Well, not really. It’s not completely arbitrary. At the end of the day, one group is benefiting directly from help, the other indirectly. The fact that there is indirect benefit does not alter the fact that it is less than direct benefit. It’s a compensation. But not a substitute.

So why your particular formulation? Why “Men, support women”?

One reason could be that, while both groups are affected, one group is more affected than the other. Then giving direct benefit to the group most affected would be the quickest way to ensure the greatest amount of happiness for the most number of people in the least amount of time.

Grievance olympics – one of feminism’s many sad contributions to gender conflict – is a fool’s errand. But it’s not unreasonable to suppose that, however bad abuse, assault, and exploitation are, they aren’t as bad as violent, painful death.

So if one group suffered violent, painful death significantly more frequently than the other, it might be reasonable to invite the other group to support it.

As it turns out, one group does. 70% of the victims of violent, painful death are men. So “Women — support men” ought to be the preferred formulation of your gendered version of the Golden Rule, all other things being equal.

Now you might argue that, while there are many innocent boys and men dying violent painful deaths, they are largely being killed by other men and, therefore, that their deaths can reasonably be discounted. And, indeed, this argument is often advanced in one form or another by feminists. But if one makes that argument then, to co-opt the earthy language of your essay, one is “probably a shitty hypocrite who doesn’t actually care about male victims at all”.

But you also might more reasonably say: “Well, there may be a lot of men killed. But there are even more women who experience assault, harassment, and abuse — look at the statistics. Achieving the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people in the least amount of time obliges men to help women. And this appears to be your view.

Anecdotes and #MeToo stories — so often the precursor of cynical moral panics such as the McMartin satanic abuse trials, the child abuse scandals, and the ‘recovered incest memory’ witch hunts in the 1990s — are interesting. But shouldn’t we rely instead on analysis of statistics, particularly if the State intends to discriminate between men and women over violent, painful death and lesser forms of violence when deciding whom to preferentially protect? And shouldn’t those statistics be the product of careful study, carried out impartially (i.e. by the State, rather than political lobby and advocacy groups), using professional methodology, and subjected to the most rigorous audits for coherence, robustness, and falsifiability?

Where better to test this idea than with one of the most extensive, widely disseminated, and frequently cited studies of rape. It’s the Ms. Magazine Campus Project on Sexual Assault, directed by Mary Koss. It’s also a primary reference in almost all academic research informing public social policy in many countries.

It claims, alarmingly, that one in every two women will be the victim of rape or attempted rape an average of twice in her life. If this is true, then it would be perfectly reasonable to instruct men to help women and overlook instructing women to help men, as you do.

It’s such a large number that many people have checked it – “Gilbert, N. (1992). Realities and Mythologies of Rape. Society” is a good example. And when asked directly, 73% of the women Koss categorised as rape victims didn’t agree they’d been raped. 50% classified the event as ‘miscommunication’. 42% had sex with their supposed attacker after the study.

How did such a huge disparity arise? For many reasons. One reason was because the researchers broadened the definition of rape beyond most recognised operational definitions of it. For example, rape was determined to have occurred whenever sex took place after alcohol had been consumed – implying that rape occurs after any boozey dinner.

And when competent academic researchers subject feminist research papers to rigorous audits for coherence, robustness, and falsifiability, they often find evidence of systematic distortion, misrepresentation, and even fabrication of this sort.

So. It could be that assault, harassment, and abuse of women is, indeed, widespread. But until feminist research methodology reaches minimum standards of academic professionalism, we just don’t know with sufficient certainty to justify discriminating against an entire class of humans. And until we do, any policy based on such meaningless research is, at best, suspect.

Even then, you might argue: “Well, look at all these stories from women. There’s no smoke without fire. Of course it’s true that women are disproportionately the victims of assault, harassment, and abuse. Men should help women”.

But there is one last question we perhaps should ask before discriminating against men: how prevalent is assault, harassment, and abuse of men? If men and women were even approximately equally affected, we would not have a clear basis to choose whom to favour, and would probably want to revert to considerations based on painful, violent death. After all, something is driving boys and young men to commit 77% of all suicides. And one of the claims made by feminists is that much assault, harassment, and abuse of women is hidden. So we’d want to find out, right? Not assume – actually study it.

But we don’t. Annually and globally, we spend hundreds of millions of dollars on understanding women’s problems. We spend almost nothing on understanding men’s. Our assumption that women disproportionately are victims of assault, harassment, and abuse is not based on analysis. It’s based on a mixture of faulty pseudo-research methods, cultivated anecdotes, ignorance of the experience of 50% of the population, and sheer politically motivated assertion.

I enjoyed you essay. I admire your acknowledgement that men’s suffering is real, and demands society’s full support. I especially respect your effort to find a solution that replaces the current stale “war between the sexes” — a legacy from Pankhurst’s odious “Suffragette” playbook — with an approach that engages both genders.

But “helping anyone helps everyone — people, help each other” — the Golden Rule — has always been the classic form of this advice. It remains so now.

So my answer to the question “Should men help women, or should women help men?” is: neither. It’s a false dichotomy. Men and women are people, and people should help people. When we attempt to view the problems of people from the vested interest of only half of them – which is to say, subscribe to feminism’s gynocentric world view – we degrade our understanding of those problems, and the relations between us.

Best wishes, etc.