"Male Power Fantasy"
- The term is often misused, for starters: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PowerFantasy
- http://www.reddit.com/r/masculism/comments/1j9vy4/objectification_and_the_male_power_fantasy/
- http://www.explosion.com/32223/why-the-male-power-fantasy-has-an-important-role-in-gaming/#arvlbdata
- http://secondaryfire.wordpress.com/2013/04/23/feminism-gaming-and-the-myth-of-sexualization/ (objectification vs sexualization vs power fantasy)
- http://themalesofgames.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/my-struggles-with-sexualised-males.html
- How does the alleged "male power fantasy" body make its way into products women enjoy? (1) (2)
- What Do Women Want? Adventures in the Science of Female Desire by Daniel Bergner (an excerpt here)
- Sex sells
Body Image Issues
- Having the “ideal” body type for a man can literally be impossible, being partly based on height and bone structure (much like the "thigh gap" thing for women), making the male ideal an unhealthy image.
- The Adonis Complex: The Secret Crisis of Male Body Obsession by Arnold Andersen, M.D.
- http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/building-a-bigger-action-hero-20140418
- http://time.com/2865172/bigorexia-and-the-male-quest-for-more-muscle/
- http://www.today.com/health/six-pack-stress-men-worry-more-about-their-appearance-their-2D12117283
- http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/jan/06/body-image-concerns-men-more-than-women
- http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/diet-and-fitness/boys-want-to-look-fit-to-be-happy-20130810-2ror9.html
- http://aboutwhitewomen.tumblr.com/post/65641618520/
- http://hagakura.tumblr.com/post/65510432079
Eating Disorders and Steroid Usage
- http://time.com/19908/300-rise-of-an-empire-has-men-feeling-body-image-pressure/
- http://www.news-medical.net/news/20120425/Rise-of-eating-disorders-among-men-and-boys.aspx (20% of people with an eating disorder in Britain are male)
- http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1766495 (almost 20% of boys are "very" concerned about their weight and physique. 15% of boys are worried about thinness, about 50% are concerned with gaining more muscle, and an additional 33% are concerned with both muscle gain and thinness.)
- http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/sites/default/files/silentepidemic.png (43% of men report dissatisfaction with their bodies)
- http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/males-and-eating-disorders and http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/research-males-and-eating-disorders
- Anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder (Arcelus, Mitchell, Wales, & Nielsen, 2011). Of 30 million people with eating disorders, at least 10 million are men. (source)
- 35-57% of teenage girls and 33% of teenage boys use unhealthy weight control behaviors such as skipping meals, fasting, smoking cigarettes, vomiting, and taking laxatives (Neumark-Sztainer, 2005).
Objectification
- The Jensen Ackles Ass Equation
- http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/hunkvertising-objectification-men-advertising-152925
- http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2008/aug/03/gender.healthandwellbeing
- http://emperorirene.tumblr.com/post/71351755421/
- http://lolgifs.net/post/86813662462
- http://just-smith.tumblr.com/post/65989338410/ and http://just-smith.tumblr.com/post/52991271199/
- http://womynism.tumblr.com/post/58437020528/
- http://dontneedfeminism.tumblr.com/post/86866459375/
Circumcision
- Circumcision can be fatal (in some areas around the world, as many as 80% of boys die from it)
- Circumcision may cause psychological trauma
- Circumcision decreases sexual pleasure
- Circumcision policy is influenced by psychosocial factors rather than alleged health benefits
- Circumcision linked to pain, trauma, and psychosexual sequelae
- Circumcision may lead to abnormal brain development and subsequent deviations in behavior
- Circumcision decreases penile sensitivity
- Circumcision associated with sexual difficulties
- The exaggeration of the benefits of circumcision in regards to HIV/AIDS transmission
- Circumcision/HIV claims are based on insufficient evidence
- There is no case for the widespread implementation of circumcision as a preventative measure to stop transmission of AIDS/HIV
- For more information, click here.
Education
- Prior to college, schools use teaching methods that advantage girls more than boys and as a result, boys are academically left behind. It's been theorized that the fact most teachers are women (about 75-80%) is a factor in this.
- Women currently outnumber men on college campuses by a significant amount, and more women have degrees. The number of women graduating college is skyrocketing, while the numbers for men are stagnating.
- Boys get worse grades despite better test results.
- Women receive more athletic scholarships than men.
- Boys do worse in every facet of education including college enrollment.
- Female only programs.
- Boys are more likely to flunk and drop out of school.
- Elementary schools are biased against boys.
In 2007, a survey of child welfare workers (75% of whom were women) showed that 80% of workers had encountered a case where mothers coached children to falsely report that sexual abuse had happened. Over 25% of workers had seen 20+ of these instances. (source) From 2001 to 2006, 71% of child abuse/murder cases were perpetrated by women and 60% of the victims were male. (source)
Prostate cancer kills nearly as many men as breast cancer does women, with significantly less attention and care. Breast cancer receives so many awareness campaigns and research funding because it’s the most common cancer type diagnosed in women and is also earlier diagnosed and more fatal for women. Research on prostate cancer is not receiving close to the same amount of funding, despite having similar fatality and incidence rates as breast cancer is probably due to another factor. Possibly because prostate cancer tends to affect men later in life, when people are more likely to be considered burdens on society, and therefore is likely a combination of male dispensability and age-based discrimination. This may also be part of the reason why male suicide is so high.
Actually having parental and reproductive rights? Inequalities in child support and custody. Men can be denied their children because the mother remarried. Women can put a child up for adoption without the fathers consent. Male rape victims force to pay their rapists child support. (x,x) Mothers get custody 84% of the time. Arrested for paying too much child support. Mothers can steal sperm and sue for child support. Paternity fraud is rampant. In as many as 30% of cases, fathers are being forced to pay child support for children who are not theirs.
A short list of issues which drastically affect men in the USA (for a longer list you can click here), and can potentially be construed as evidence against male privilege:
- Men are 77% of murder victims. (2)
- Men are 93% of workplace deaths and accidents (2) and tend to hold more dangerous jobs than women.
- Men globally commit suicide far more often than women (over 3 times more). More statistics are available at suicide.org but regardless of the source it's really easy to see that there's a catastrophically high suicide rate for men.
- Men are the majority of victims for just about every crime, particularly black men. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, men are 61% of assault victims, 80% of robbery victims, and 63% of victims for all "crimes of violence."
- The World Health Organization has a whole page on violence against women, but not a page for violence against men. If you go digging through their website, it turns out violence against men is worse. TWICE as worse, actually. Men outnumber women in everything as victims of injury or violence, except when it comes to fire-related death or injury.
- 51.3% of the homeless population is just adult men. 24.7% are adult females and 24% are families/children with people of both genders. Worldwide, the homeless male population is estimated to be 75-80%.
- The prison population is 93% male, and most prisoners did not commit a violent crime. The prison system is sexist and racist (see the "prison" section below).
- 1/3rd of all prison exonerations have been men that were wrongfully convicted of sexual assault.
- Male circumcision provides no medical benefits in most cases and has multiple drawbacks (one being potential death) but is completely legal and there are many myths about it.