Is Alex Manley stupid, or just a sociopath?

Alex Manley is the writer at Concordia University in Montreal who, in a stunning display of callous contempt for men as human beings, published an article at thelinknewspaper.ca telling men that prostate cancer is a hallmark of privilege. Several days after my first reading of Manley’s words, this still shocks me. In possible fairness to this writer, I must admit the possibility that he is demonstrating mastery of a particularly sadistic flavour of satire. However, even if this is the case (unlikely) Manley’s brand of callous cruelty towards men who die, or whose fathers, brothers, and friends die of a male-specific form of cancer is well off the mark.

People dying of cancer are not a suitable target of mockery, Alex, and I’m being as kind as possible presenting the possibility that you’re kidding.

On the other hand, It might be that our young sociopath, Mr Manley is entirely serious.

Of course, our young Alex doesn’t limit himself to mockery, he makes several reasoned arguments against donating or raising money and public awareness to combat prostate cancer. So rather than merely pointing out the ignorant, callous cruelty of Manley’s position, I’ll address a few of his arguments, all of which are [spoiler-alert] wrong [/spoiler-alert].

Manley’s first point is that men, the people who get prostate cancer – are privileged. Therefore, in the pseudo-intellectual world of male feminist self abasement, this means they should be untreated, unregarded, and left to die. That second part isn’t explicitly stated by Manley. Obviously, because it’s openly sociopathic, however, it’s left as an implication where hopefully, a feminist indoctrinated readership will fail to examine and reject it.

The second point, wrapped up in the first is the endlessly repeated claim of male privilege. What privilege are you talking about, young sociopath? Name or otherwise identify this supposed male privilege for us, please. I don’t really expect an answer to that, I’ve never had one before.

It this point, some might object to my repeated references to Manley as a sociopath. I’m not a clinician or a trained psychologist – so this is merely my layman’s opinion, and in young Alex’s defence, he states early in his piece: “Let me be clear—I don’t want anyone to get cancer.”

Once more however, theres an unstated implication. If anyone is going to get cancer, it should be men, and not women. Men, you see, don’t matter as much. They’re disposable. This is obvious a few lines further along where he states “Unfortunately, that’s $176 million taken away from more pressing issues in the world than prostate cancer.”

We are lucky have young Alex to instruct us who to help, and who to abandon in his calculus of mortality. Let’s also not forget: “Furthermore, it’s worth mentioning that, as far as cancers go, prostate cancer is not much of a cancer. It’s slow acting, and it has relatively low death rates. “

According to the American Cancer Society, in 2011 about 240,890 new cases of prostate cancer will be diagnosed and about 33,720 men will die of it.

This works out to a 14% fatality rate.

According to PLoS ONE; a peer-reviewed, online publication reporting on primary research in all scientific disciplines.

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“It is noteworthy that the largest absolute decreases in death rates (per 100,000) that occurred between 1990/91 and 2006 were observed for lung cancer in men (23.2) and breast cancer in women (9.3). These accounted for 37% of the total decrease in all-cancer death rates in men and women during this time period. The decrease in prostate cancer death rates accounted for 24% of the total decrease in men”

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Would anybody like to guess why the decrease in prostate cancer mortality is 24% of the total decrease in male cancer deaths? Here’s my guess : public awareness, fundraising and research. You know, the things Alex Manley is instructing us we should not do.

Young sociopath’s second argument against prostate cancer activism and fundraising is that it’s a first world problem. According to Alex: “Men in Detroit get prostate cancer at about 100 times the rate of men in Hanoi.”

At this point I’m going to admit that I’m quite stupid, so I’m going to carefully parse what I’m being told by the individual whose last name signals that he’s the man we should listen to.

If you live in Detroit, or anywhere in the first world, you’re 100 times more likely to get prostate cancer than a man in Hanoi. Therefore – um – lets see, If you get prostate cancer – uh – you should – move to Hanoi!

By Jove! That’s much better planning than funding research to lower cancer rates and improve treatment. Good thinking Alex.

And after all, as our manly young writer tells us, efforts to address prostate cancer research isn’t a real issue. It’s a cute little initiative, but not worth supporting, like a child with a lemonade stand – and a fatal disease.

Also, let’s not forget that “Men, by and large, are doing okay for themselves.” In fact, according to Manley “They’re still out-earning women by significant amounts.”

Study: Young Single Childless Women Out-Earn Men[3]

Women ages 22 to 30 with no husband and no kids earn a median $27,000 a year, 8% more than comparable men in the top 366 metropolitan areas, according to 2008 U.S. Census Bureau data[4]

NYC’s young women out-earning the men[5]

Opps, wrong again Alex.

Alex next re-iterates his claim on male privilege, again failing to substantiate the myth, and moves on to get it wrong about rates of violent criminal victimization too.

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“There are a lot of people in the world who would trade your slight risk of prostate cancer for their serious risk of being raped, being killed”

And remember : Prostate cancer is a hallmark of privilege. Deal with it.

Alex, you disgust me.

[1] http://thelinknewspaper.ca/article/2139

[2] http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0009584

[3] http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274,00.html

[4] http://www.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2010-09-01-single-women_N.htm

[5] http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/date_works_hard_for_the_money_and_rW7bKzX7mR5zMDvNRk8fOJ

[6] http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/glance/tables/vsxtab.cfm