Both females and males have, historically, had privileges and disadvantages. Being a male, for example, gave

one the advantages of being thought of as more (or perhaps less) than a baby producing piece of property. Being a female offered the privilege of not being forced to put oneself in life threatening situations to protect the community (particularly the women and children).





One of the most effective critiques of the modern female is the fact that women want to move past the strict confines of the female role of times past without losing many of the privileges that came with that role. An example of this would be women being granted suffrage while keeping male only draft registration. Meanwhile, while men have made some strides towards breaking out of their old role, they have made much less progress than women. The decline of the draft, for instance, seems to have more to do with an overall decline in violence than with any changes in how we view the male role.





You may not be surprised to hear that feminism has played a role in this dynamic. In theory, feminists are against male only draft registration and other chivalric practices that privileged females. I'll even grant feminists that, given their focus on women, I don't blame them for putting very little effort forward to end these practices.





But, indirectly, a larger feminist narrative has contributed greatly to the neglect of male problems. This narrative, of course, is that of 'male privilege'. But it is even worse than that, there is a feminist tendency to claim that sexism against men or 'misandry' don't even exist. The reasoning behind this is that, in order to be sexist, there has to be both prejudice and institutional or systematic discrimination. According to many feminists, prejudice against men can exist, but since institutions don't discriminate against men, sexism against men isn't real.





The problem with this claim is that it is inaccurate. I couldn't imagine a more egregious example of systematic oppression than the mandatory draft. Of course, the draft is no longer as widely used as it once was. But, still we have examples of males being at a disadvantage. Back in December, I had a post that offered some examples of ways that men are disadvantaged: