An Inversion of Categories

Via Instapundit, a 'sociological law' (subject to the same limitation as all such 'laws,' which is that they are not laws if they do not apply).

I had a crack at coming up with my own sociological ‘law’ and my first effort went as follows: “The more progressive a country is when it comes to sex and gender, the more authoritarian it is when it comes to speech and language.” I was thinking of Ireland which, having legalised abortion in 2018, is about to impose the most draconian speech restrictions in Europe. I now propose a second law: “^Any group described as privileged is in fact marginalised; and any group described as marginalised is in fact privileged.’

A case in point is white men – and in particular cisgendered, heterosexual, able-bodied, middle-class white men – who are now at the bottom of the intersectional hierarchy of oppression in most professions. But to add to their misery, these poor, benighted souls have to pretend they’re at the top of that self-same pyramid if they’re to retain their jobs, apologising for their ‘privilege’ in front of their more powerful black, female, non-binary, gay and disabled colleagues.

The author is apparently British; he goes on to provide some data backing up that claim.  

Some will think I’m being deliberately provocative, so I’ll reel off some facts and figures to illustrate this point with respect to just two groups: men and women. Their relative status is the exact opposite of how it’s usually described, making it the perfect illustration of Young’s Second Law. Some of the stats about just how underprivileged men are probably won’t come as a surprise. We all know boys fare worse than girls at school, one reason 35,000 fewer 18-year-old boys will go to university this month than 18-year-old girls. We also know that men are more likely to be addicted to drugs and alcohol, account for three-quarters of all suicides and almost 90 per cent of the homeless. But did you know men make up 96.2 per cent of Britain’s prison population and are 23 times more likely to die at work than women? Research carried out by the Future Men charity found that 29 per cent of young men feel ignored, which perhaps isn’t surprising given that we have a minister for women and equalities and a women’s health ambassador, but no minister for men.

The figures are similar in the United States, where men are on the order of 90% of the (much larger) prison population, and the majority of suicides; we hear a great deal in our media about the problem of teenage girls' suicidal ideation (which is clearly undesirable) and not much about the fact that teenage males actually kill themselves more. Men are the victims of all forms of violent crime at higher rates, including rape once you include the ubiquitous rape culture of our detestable prison system and it's 90+% male population.

What strikes me often, though, is the cultural blindness attendant to all of this. I got an ad somewhere advising me to read an article about a young singer named Olivia Rodrigo -- perhaps all of you but me know who that is -- who has a new album expressing female rage against the unfair 'expectations' of her society. "The singer-songwriter says “All-American Bitch” is “sort of about that,” and is a song she’s 'very proud of.'"

It's presumptively impolite to suggest that someone's feelings aren't valid, and she has doubtless felt such things at times. Yet it should be striking that such an expression receives not disapproval, but elevation including not only an article in People magazine but purchased internet ads distributing it so far as to have it on my desk, who must be as far from the demographic who listens to her music as is possible to get within America's context. Nor is she a rare exception to a generalized hostility to 'female rage'; the Barbie movie the sociological piece begins with is a billion dollar project; the most famous singer in the world right now, I gather, is one Taylor Swift who, I also gather having not listened to her music, made her name with a series of angry songs about men generalized to men in general. Nor is this in any way new; a generation ago (when I was more likely to hear such music) Alanis Morissette also sang about how "I'm a bitch" and made millions doing it; Tori Amos, who really was a fantastic musician capable of crafting songs of great beauty, sang about almost nothing else than her rage. 

What strikes me, again, is the blindness: for decades I've been hearing this talk, and the people who are culturally aligned with it really can't see that it's not true. The world oppresses women, they repeat every  year, and it won't allow women to express rage or their true feelings. Yet every year they do so to wild acclaim and success, while living in a society in which they are practically better off by all these demonstrable metrics. 

Another one: we always hear about men being paid more per hour than women, and arguments about whether or to what degree that is true; we almost never hear about the fact that, since metrics were kept, women control about 85% of spending decisions. Whoever earns the money, women mostly decide how to spend it, and for that reason they have intense cultural and economic power. Every shopping mall in America has a store or three devoted to more-or-less exclusively female interests like boutiques or pedicure places; you have to go a long way to find a store that's about mostly or exclusively male interests. 

Women may still be full of rage, even though they now have a vast amount of power and a significant set of advantages. I suppose they must be if they keep, generation after generation, being willing to shell out such coin to celebrate expressions of their rage. I wonder, though, how much that rage could be addressed if it were possible to have a clear-eyed recognition of their privileged position in much of American and British society; or if, indeed, there is any set of facts that would resolve the rage that arises in the female experience. It may not entirely be a product of the physical facts of the situation; there may be some core of it that is permanent and eternal.