First, a question. Did you somehow think I’d just blurted out a post without thinking about it? Did you think I posted this without having any idea what I was talking about? That I would not do any research before I took a bold stance like this? Just because my message is not what you expect to hear doesn’t mean that I made it up just to amuse myself.

I’ll bet you live in one of these pink nations where women are the majority. For example, in the United States men make up 49.2% of the general population and women make up 50.8%, but those percentages slew even harder if you’re only counting the citizens above the age of 18. The fact that men die younger, and are more likely to have felony convictions, are the reason that men are only 47% of the voting population and women are 53%. But that’s only the eligible voters, women are more likely to be registered, likely because they are more likely to get time off work than men are.

As for having more rights: The United Nations outlawed infant genital mutilation in 1993. But only for women. Men do not have rights to genital integrity. Women in our culture have the right to not be beaten by their spouse. But men do not. One of your own posts on your blog yesterday pointed out that men have no rights to not be raped. Heck, in many areas the law uses “he” to refer to rapists and “she” for rape victims, and does not allow men to report rape victimization at all, despite being the majority of all victims. Men don’t have the right to a fair trial, since they get sentenced to more time than women are for the same crimes. Or, strictly speaking, the right to vote. You only have a right to vote if it is free and uncoerced, right? That’s why the current drama and strife over the rollback of the Voter Rights Act. Men in America only have the right to vote if they sign paperwork allowing the government to turn them into disposable weapons at need. Women don’t have to risk being killed in someone else’s war just to vote. The right to an equal education? Nope. Reproductive rights? None. Politicians call it a war on women if someone tries to restrict a woman’s access to reproductive controls, but men have none at all. Not restricted, not difficult, not incomplete: none. Voting, education, rape, violence, fair treatment, and control over your own future sound like important rights to me, and men in the West don’t have those rights. Women do.