Modern culture has a definite tendency to separate people into groups based on outward characteristics, with some groups receiving more legal rights than others. In fact, women today often enjoy a preferential legal status that men do not enjoy. But the Bible teaches that all human lives, both male and female, are equally valuable and therefore to be equally protected:
There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)
Do we not all have one Father? Did not one God create us? (Malachi 2:10)
God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. (1 Samuel 16:7)
Modern feminism often does not seek this equality but instead demands that men be demeaned, degraded, and punished. The common narrative is that men are part of a nefarious patriarchy designed to keep women down—that they practice “toxic masculinity” and “misogyny” (which means an ingrained prejudice against women). Yet, those most active in pushing this narrative may themselves be guilty of “misandry,” which is defined by Oxford Dictionaries as “Dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against men (i.e. the male sex).”[1]
Nowhere is this more readily visible than in the Manifesto by S.C.U.M. (Society for Cutting Up Men), in which this gem appears: “To call a man an animal is to flatter him, he is a machine.”[2] This certainly would appear to be the epitome of dehumanization.
Current efforts to discriminate against men have reached such levels that feminists such as Miranda Larbi are actually speaking up against this part of their movement, saying: “Mocking and berating men isn’t the way to show that feminism is about equality and intelligent debate.”[3]
Interestingly, while sexual assault is generally considered to be a crime largely committed by men against women, feminist researcher Lara Stemple recently analyzed several national surveys on sexual violence and found that when using forced sex as the standard, “the rates of nonconsensual sexual contact between men and women were basically equal.”[4] Nonetheless, modern feminists ignore those facts that contradict their one-sided narrative.
Legally speaking, white males are probably the only group in American politics today with no special legal standing. The problem created by our identity-conscious culture was explained by a father in a recent blog post:
“My middle son is about to make his college choice. He’s got some great schools that have accepted him. He has some great ones that did not. His dream school was Duke. He also really liked Northwestern, Dartmouth, and UCLA. He has a 4.05 GPA on a 4.0 scale (honors classes give you an additional GPA) and a 31 on his ACT (97th percentile of all kids taking this test). He had the grades and test scores to get into all of those schools. What he didn’t have was something else…Basically, he falls into this no-man’s land of what colleges and universities don’t want these days. Male and White.”[5]
As Christians, we should embrace the Bible’s teachings of equality and therefore teach our daughters to be respectful of men just as much as we teach our sons to be respectful of women.
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[1] “Misandry,” Oxford Dictionaries (n.d.), https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/misandry
[2] Valerie Solanas, “The Scum Manifesto,” Northeastern University (1968), https://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/shivers/rants/scum.html
[3] Miranda Larbi, “In 2018, we need to make more of an effort to keep misandry out of feminism,” Metro (December 17, 2017), https://metro.co.uk/2017/12/17/2018-need-make-effort-keep-misandry-feminism-7166537/
[4] Steven Blum, “The Hidden Epidemic of Men Who Are Raped by Women.” Vice (November 29, 2016), https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/kze8qn/the-hidden-epidemic-of-men-who-are-raped-by-women
[5] “Don’t Apply To College If You’re White, Middle Class And Male,” The Tim Sackett Project HR (May 5, 2019), https://timsackett.com/2016/05/05/dont-apply-to-college-if-youre-white-middle-class-and-male/
