Sexism and Men's Issues

I remember in high school wanting to interview veterns for my Vietnam paper. I was told I was too young. Well, can't use that excuse anymore.

I know a bit of the WWII German hospitals from teaching a seminar on Medical Programs of the Holocaust.

Sociology is just the love child of History and Psychology. So it'll be a fun to-do. There are tons of archieves under the Smithsonian. And maybe the Tate will let me back in theirs!

Egads! No Gabrael! Finish this degree then go play in all the pretty papers!

OK... don't forget to mop up the drool, too.

The Huffington Post just repeated the stupid demand mentioned earlier in the thread that the UK government should stop using prison sentences for women.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/vincent-mcaviney/prison-reform-women-in-jail_b_2003571.html

I think the first comment dealt with it fairly well:

"Crikey, hard to know where to start with this one. Essentially, I'd like Vincent to explain why his argument doesn't equally apply to men, and in fact, given that men are overwhelmingly the majority of prisoners, why it shouldn't apply to them even more so. Fully 70% of men in prison are also there because they committed a non-violent offence.

Perhaps Vincent could also explain which women he would like to see out and about, and not serving a prison sentence? Maybe it is the 211 women serving sentences for murder; maybe it is the 135 women in prison for manslaughter or attempted homicide; maybe it is the 352 women convicted of wounding; maybe it is the 142 women convicted of serious assault or other violence against the person; maybe it is the 58 women imprisoned for cruelty to children; it could be the 83 women who are in for rape, gross indecency? Who, exactly, would he let loose on the streets?

On the other hand, if Vincent is suggesting that the 5,442 women who are sent to prison each year for up to six months - for presumably 'minor' offences - should not be in prison, presumably he must also be saying that the 51,588 males who are sent to prison each year for less than six months also should not be in prison?"

Absolutely disgraceful. I wonder what the response would be if someone proposed ending prison sentences for white people? Think that would go over well?

The thing is that men usually get harsher sentences anyway so there might be an even higher number of men with prison sentences longer than 6 months who haven't done anything worse than those women with lesser sentences. Though the difference is not that notable with small crimes.

edit: The comparison isn't actually that far off. Black people serve much longer prison sentences than white people and the same is true for men. So the situation for a black man is basically the same whether they would base something like that on race or gender.

edited 23rd Oct '12 8:28:26 AM by Besserwisser

Grrrr...

I tell you if they ever bring back the death penalty, it is going to be one of the few times I would support the use of gender quotas.

edited 24th Oct '12 9:05:13 AM by joeyjojo

Wait, what?

Global Gender Gap Report 2012

Iceland is first, followed by Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Ireland. The Philippines is eighth, the highest-ranked Asian country. Switzerland is 10th, the Netherlands came 11th, Germany came 13th, the UK 18th, Canada 21st, the US 22nd, and Australia 25th. Slovenia is 38th while China came 69th, Malta is 88th, Japan is 101st, India is 105th, and South Korea 108th.

It's a good study on women's empowerment but it's useless at it's stated purpose of measuring gender gaps because it counts men being disadvantaged as perfect equality.

From page 4, under the subtitle "Gender equality vs. women’s empowerment":

"the Index rewards countries that reach the point where outcomes for women equal those for men, but it neither rewards nor penalizes cases in which women are outperforming men in particular variables."

As a result it's useful as a way to look at ways in which the state of women can be improved it contributes nothing to a discussion about men's issues like this thread. Even if you were to look at the raw data to get around that it focuses only on areas where women have traditionally been disadvantaged.

I've of the opinion that women get off with a lighter sentence than males regardless if the servetly of the crimes committed.

Right, but death penalty quotas? I mean, I'm not big on the notion of the death penalty to begin with, but the idea of having to meet gender-based (or really, any kind of) quotas on state-sanctioned killings is really goddamned disturbing. The death penalty shouldn't be a 'fry two men, get one woman free' deal.

edited 24th Oct '12 3:00:36 PM by Iaculus

Actually, it gets worse the more severe a crime is. Punishments for theft are still fairly equal, but it's hard to get a woman in prison for murder.

I don't want any quotas based on any genders preferably. And I hope he didn't mean it all that seriously.

edited 24th Oct '12 3:01:53 PM by Besserwisser

/Ummm sorry I was being facetious. I thought that that would go with out saying but thinking about it now I'm sure somebody has seriously suggested a lot worst.

@Gabrael, please! Do research for me! I would love to cite a troper as a source! :P

@Entropy, thanks! That's a really awesome study! I wish I could say I wasn't surprised over India and Japan, but kudos to your country!

@Women getting lesser sentences:

This is a little misleading. Women are the majority of mental illness sufferers. Women are also primary caregivers to children. Women are also more likely to be the victim of a violent crime than the perp.

So there are normally a lot of different facets that go into the punishment of women than in men.

That being said, I do think our justice system is skewed against African Americans and Latinos. They are the groups more likely to commit what us shrinks call "Crimes of Poverty" like drugs and property violations with mainly their violent crimes being connected to such conditions like drugs and property crimes in general. Therefore they are easier targets for a commercial clamp down.

Caucasian males on the other hand, well, in the whole when they go they go all out. They're the majority of white collar crime like fraud and embezzelment. They're also the majority of serial killers. White men also lead in DU Is and crimes while under the influence. Now with the recession, we are actually seeing white men bump up in property, drug, and drinking related offences.

Women are more likely to plea out, so that is another reason why they normally get lesser sentances. They roll easier then men.

I suspect some of it may be for similar reasons to the (documented) tendency for men to go for more violent, over-the-top methods of suicide and domestic abuse. Extreme violence is more culturally-acceptable for men, which hurts them too (as evidenced by their higher success rate at suicide, among many other things).

"culturally acceptable" is a euphemistic way of looking at it. "Culturally expected" is a more accurate description. Why are people less sympathetic to male abuse victims? "He should be able to defend himself" i.e. use violence. If a boy is bullied he has to "learn to defend himself" i.e. use violence. A good man is defined as a protector, by definition capable of doing violence.

If a wage gap caused by women's choices is a systematic issue that needs systematic responses to make up for it because women's choices are restrained by society why is the same not true for the sentencing gap?

That doesn't really explain why men are harsher sentenced though. When we are expected to behave violently you would expect men to be sentenced less because people would be less appalled by their crimes and women would face harsher sentences because their violence would considered to be more serious due to the fact that women should be more peaceful. I still think the main issue here is how men are expected to be responsible for their crimes and therefore ought to be punished harder while her environment is supposed to be the deciding factor if a woman broke the law. Men Act, Women Are at its logical conclusion.

Even if women are more suspectible to psychologic diseases, those defenses are overused. Men can have a lot of those too but they are rarely brought up when they are considered to be exclusive to women. Every excuse to reduce the responsibility of a female criminale will be used in front of a court.

I think the issue is that men tend to use more extreme violence in their crimes, which, naturally, results in harsher sentences. That's not the only reason for the higher sentences, of course, but it's one of them.

That sounds a lot more agreeable. One would have to put some research into how violent crimes are in regards to sex. For instance, I recall how women are more likely to kill with poison. I can see how that can lead to less serious sentences than say chopping someone into pieces with an axe.

The wage gap is an institutional bias built on absolutely nothing.

Prison sentancing is totally different.

Allow me to explain, I don't think there is a cultural acceptance for men to resort to extreme violence. Serial killers, abusers, rapists are often demonized as monsters and sometimes, even us in the mental health community don't mind that label because it fits. School systems have been cracking down on aggressive sports and play like tag.

Men are more aggressive as a gender. That's as biologically sound as how African American men are more prone to diabetes. That in itself is not a bad thing because it's just genetics. It's how they're wired. What is bad is what we as a culture do with that, such as restricting healthy food services in low income black neighborhoods. There has been a lot of research done in the attempts to settle boys down since the 80's. Most of the ridalin scare of the 90's was geared towards boys.

Now, that is a factor with how men commit crimes. They are just more aggressive in general, then you add on the stressors that lead to the crime and someone's natural tendacy can become expressed in all the wrong ways and they are violent. This is negative aggression

Consider the aggression of a sports player. Most of the time this is positive aggression. And it's okay to be aggressive when trained to use it well. In both the athlete and the criminal, the areas of the brain that harness aggression and violence are active. The difference is the athlete's brain will also have higher levels of dopomine as well. They are in control of their aggression, so it becomes a natural energy boost. The criminal? Well. Not so much.

Now men commit suicide at more violent ways like guns simply because men are more concerned with effectiveness. It's nothing more than that. Women for the most part who fail in suicide attempts cite pain and aesthetics as why they go for bloodletting and drugs. That's why most women go to the bathtub, it's easier to clean up. Men aren't as concerned about that. Both genders are likely to be successful jumpers.

Now this is indicitive of what kind of mental illnesses the genders are prone to. 1 in 4 women experience some form of abuse to a level that mental health professionals would call trauma. 1 in 6 women worldwide have been the victims of rape. Women, being more likely to have a mental disorder as a result of this abuse, will develop PTSD, disassociative and personality disorders, and severe depression.

Most female criminals have a history of such abuse and resulting mental illness. Victim history and mental illness is a mandatory consideration in sentencing. Because women suffer from this more accutely and in just higher numbers than men, it gets factored in their cases more. Women are also ordered to rehab and community health programs more but again, this is mainly because those arrested have a stronger tendancy for this. The only male demographic that has numbers even remotely close to women are vets. And vets are normally given the same treatments.

Men don't suffer from mental illnesses like depression as bad. They are more likely to suffer from hallucinative disorders or obsessive disorders. Men are also more likely to never seek treatment for their problems. Men are also more likely to be what we call "false functional", where they can hide their problems better.

So this is part of the reason there is a sentencing gap and it's a justified one really. By law the courts have to take mental and emotional stability as well as victim history into account. They have to take children's welfare into account. Single dads get lighter punishments than their nonpaternal counterparts.

There is more problems with the minority male sentencing. That is an epidemic.

"The wage gap is an institutional bias built on absolutely nothing."

A large part of the wage gap is explained by women making choices like taking time of to care for children that negatively impact their earnings.

"Men are more aggressive as a gender. That's as biologically sound as how African American men are more prone to diabetes."

How do you know? Even if they're more aggressive how can you say that at least some aggression is not the result of socialization.

A large part of the wage gap is explained by women making choices like taking time of to care for children that negatively impact their earnings.

Though far from all of it, and the fact that it's primarily women who are expected to sacrifice their careers for their children is evidence of discrimination too, no?

Exactly my point. If the effects of the choices women are pushed into by society are a structural problem, and I think it is. Why would we not consider the effects of the choices men are pushed into by society a structural problem as well?

I wouldn't say hard. But harder than some people make it out to be, but men are definitely privileged in the realm of earning. You can however argue about how much individual income matters in households with a shared economy, which accounts for very large part of the adult population.