Shirt spells out truth of gender double standard
Females are the future and that’s unfair, says David Millard Haskell.
An Ontario Grade 12 student, Erica Brown, made the news recently when she wore a T-shirt to her high school with the slogan “The Future is Female.”
A female teacher suggested Brown’s message might make some boys at the school feel uncomfortable and asked if she thought it would be appropriate for a male student to wear a T-shirt with the slogan “The Future is Male.”
She was not told to remove the shirt, but to simply “think about” it.
Brown thought about it and decided the teacher’s comments were out of line. The CBC reported that at first Brown was “too upset to reply. Later, she talked to her parents about it, then wrote an open letter to the teacher, gave it to her and posted it on Facebook.”
The Facebook post went viral. In the end, Brown received official support from her school’s principal.
While the media coverage doesn’t provide Brown’s answer to whether she thought a male student should wear a T-shirt saying “The Future is Male,” events in other educational settings suggest that kind of pro-male action would not have been warmly received.
In 2012, when some students at Simon Fraser University asked their institution to consider a “men’s centre” similar to the “women’s centre” already on campus, leaders at the women’s centre objected to the creation of a space “to celebrate hegemonic masculinity.”
That same year, the Ryerson Student Union denied certification to a men’s club on campus. In 2015, when a new group of Ryerson students tried to start a men’s issues group, it was shut down by the student union over concerns about “systemic privilege” and the contravention of “core equity values.”
In 2014, a Men’s Issues Awareness Society (MIAS) at Queen’s University was targeted for decertification before it had run an event. Among other complaints, opponents said the club would “publicly undermine feminism.”
Whether it’s university campuses or high school halls, the truth is there is a terrible double standard at play.
Simply put, men who advocate for their rights are unlikely to find support for their positions and are very likely to be accused of promoting misogyny or the “patriarchy.” As such, many men think it is better to stay quiet.
Sadly, we’re beginning to see the dire effects of this coerced silence.
Males are three times more likely to commit suicide than females. However, a review of existing suicide prevention programs conducted by American psychologists Emma Hamilton and Bonnie Klimes-Dougan found current methods are more suited to women.
They conclude “in almost all cases, females seem to be more likely than males to benefit from existing prevention programming.” Where are the public calls for changes?
When it comes to education, males now only comprise 40 per cent of university students. StatCan says males are about 40 per cent more likely to drop out of high school than females. In Canada, few school boards have initiatives focused on assisting males while most have specific programs dedicated to helping girls succeed academically, especially in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields.
For young men considering a career in the STEM fields, there’s more bad news. A 2015 study by Cornell University researchers Wendy Williams and Stephen Ceci, published by the National Academy of Sciences, showed there is now a significant hiring bias against men applying for university jobs in sciences.
In experiments with professors from 371 colleges and universities across the United States they found “science and engineering faculty preferred women 2-1 over identically qualified male candidates.”
While Erica Brown’s T-shirt may, as her teacher suggested, make some of the boys in her high school uncomfortable, the fact of the matter is the shirt is telling the truth.
If you have sons, you should let them know the future really is female and, if current trends persist, it won’t be fair.