Are men seen as expendable?

So I was watching a Karen Straughan video the other day about the nature of the “disposable man”. I didn’t really identify with this part of TRP ideology until she started pointing some things out. I was wondering if anyone can shed some light, and if men and women have had similar experiences.

If you aren’t aware, the “disposable man” hypothesis is the notion that society as a whole by the large, inherently places more value on female life then on male life.

The reason for this, according to KS, is that, women (or I guess I should say females) are the limiting factor in the reproduction in our species. In fact, females are the limiting factor in reproduction in MOST sexually dimorphic species.

She goes on to say that , for the overwhelming majority of the timeline of our species, one very happy man can do the reproductive work of 100 men, and the population will still be relatively stable. Which is why a country can have an entire generation of young men decimated in war, but fully recover within a single generation.

This evolutionary construct inherently gives females value over men, and has caused their agency and freedom to be historically oppressed. Women become seen as a resource, and a valuable resource at that. Historically, when one tribe conquers another, they don’t kill the women, but kidnap them, rape them, and make them bear the children of their captors. They kill the boys, and men however.

She says that, while this oppression of freedom has effected women, it has also protected them. To the point where men are seen as inherently disposable, and that’s prevalent even today. And now in today’s society (in the secular west) women no longer have their agency and freedoms restricted as they did in the past, but men are still seen as disposable, and their lives as having less value.

She brought up an example of Boko Haram attacks in Nigeria.

Now if you aren’t aware, Boko Haram is a violent extremist, militant Islamic sect that operates in central Africa. They are basically the African version of ISIS.

In 2016, Michelle and Barack Obama started a hashtag called #BringBackOurGirls. This was a response to a Boko Haram kidnapping of 297 Nigerian girls getting an education at a Christian school.

We were led to believe that this was militant patriarchy suppressing women (which it was) and that Boko Haram despised the thought of women being educated so much that they kidnapped them.

While this was partially true, it doesn’t fully encapsulate the entire story.

This was actually one in a long string of attacks on the region by Boko Haram. They weren’t against just women having an education, they were against ANYONE having a western, secular education.

What WASNT mentioned by Barack and Michelle, is the manner in which Boko Haram had attacked previously.

On multiple occasions Boko Haram had attacked the region, and they treated the girls and boys... quite differently.

The girls, they told them to leave their sinful ways, find a Muslim husband, serve him, serve god, etc etc and let them go.

The boys... and remember these boys were aged 8-16... well they tied them up... doused them in kerosine, and burned them alive.

This had happened MULTIPLE times and from the west... crickets. No #BringBackOurBoys (although there is nothing to bring back because they’re dead). No news reports, no main stream coverage, Almost nothing entirely. Barack and Michelle definitely didn’t cover it.

And the very few news segments that did cover it, referred to them not as boys, but as “villagers” or as “people”. These gender neutral terms that dehumanize them. So Boko Haram kidnapped the girls because THAT is what would grab our attention and, lo and behold, it did! Our entire country was up in arms and infuriated that women were being oppressed this way. It was the #1 trending hashtag on Twitter, celebrities talking about it, mainstream media coverage, it got attention and people cared.

Compare this to male centred hashtags on Twitter like #KillAllMen and #CancelFathersDay. Which also have become widely popular hashtags in their respective times, but for opposite reasons. It seems that the narrative of “fuck men, they can fend for themselves” is insanely prevalent. I cannot imagine a universe where #KillAllWomen would be accepted and popularized, even as satire.

She also mentioned male circumcision, and the fact that it’s so widespread and acceptable in the west, whereas female circumcision was outlawed pretty much the day we heard it existed, as evidence for “male disposability” in our culture. Mutilating infant boys, and removing their bodily autonomy is ok because they are expected to bear that pain. The cultural narrative that a mutilated penis is “normal”, “attractive” and what a penis is supposed to look like, which is perpetuated by women, compounds this. As if to say “you need to undergo pain and mutilation to have sexual value.”

She also mentioned how normalized violence against men is in our day to day media. On television shows, movies, and music.

Has there been a movie EVER that depicts women on the receiving end of the same level of violence in the first 20 minutes ofSaving Private Ryan? Which, by the way, was a main stream theatrical release?

Maybe some gritty underground horror movies, but those are by definition supposed to horrify you, and we find women being mutilated, tortured and murdered more horrific than men, because we as a culture (men AND women partake in it equally) value women’s physical safety more than men’s.

When women are depicted as recieving violence in our movies and television, it’s also often done off screen, so we don’t actually have to be confronted with it. Why? BecUsei t makes us much more uncomfortable.

Another great example of this is Game of Thrones. There are two characters on there, Theon Greyjoy, andCersei Lannister.

Theon Greyjoy spent an entire season being brutally physically, and psychologically tortured. Close up shots of him being skinned, mutilated, and viscerally tortured, and the public backlash to that was non-existent.

Cersei Lannister, who is considered one of the main antagonists of the series, had one sex scene which was seen as “not entirely consensual” , and the public backlash was immediate and Apparent. “How dare HBO show something so distasteful and sexually violent? Dont they know that can be triggering for their female audience who has undergone sexual assault?”

Another example brought up is “The View”. A daytime talk show with Sharon Osborne as the host. She interviews other women and they talk about female centered topics. They were discussing a news story of a man who asked his wife for divorce, and she drugged him, chopped his penis off(so brutally mutilating him, taking away all his sexual pleasure for ever) and threw it down the garbage disposal. Sharon said “I don’t know why he is asking her for divorce, however.... I do think it’s quite fabulous.” And the women in the audience CHEERED. And laughed! And this was on DAY TIME TELEVISION. Can you imagine the reverse ever happening? Can you imagine any show where a bunch of men sit around and cackle at a a man saying “well she asked me for a divorce, so I drugged her and cut her tits and her clit off.” And then having the audience e cheer and laugh about it? That show would never even air, the men would be cancelled so fast, and all of America would be calling for their heads on spikes.

Rape against men? It’s funny and made comical in our media (Get him to the Greek, deliverance).

This inherent need to protect the delicate sensibilities of women in society, yet turning a complete blind eye to the male struggle, because after all he is expected to bear the brunt of pain, and fear with no complaint.

So Karen brings up the point that, both women and men have historically been objectified and oppressed by society, but women’s oppression has been out of the value society holds them too, whereas men’s oppression has been out of their disposability. She says “would you rather be someone’s treasured object, or someone’s sex object? Or would you rather be someone’s tool to be cast aside and destroyed at whim in persuit of their goals, with no regard for your life? I would rather be the former”.

She goes on to point out that this violence and disposability of men is so deeply ingrained in our society we don’t even think about it.

If a man and a woman are in a burning building, and you can only choose one? It’s expected to choose the woman every time, and any discussion as to whether or not he may deserve to live more, is shouted down.

Who is negotiated first on a hostage situation? Women and children. Who gets first seat on the life boats? Women and children. We condition men and boys to internalize this from a young age, because we are mentally preparing them for the day where he may have to stand on a porch with a rifle, or charge a line of machine guns on a battlefield. And we condition young women to internalize this so that, she can be comfortable with taking that seat in the lifeboat, even though it may mean watching the man she loves die, because for almost 200 thousand years, the survival of our species was contingent on this mentality.

Edit: a poster mentioned titanic statistics to demonstrate this, and I think I’ll put it in.

“The sinking of the Titanic was a disaster of enormous proportions. Only 32% survived, with the highest percent of fatalities among the crew (76%). Females were more likely to survive than males (73% compared to 21%), and children were more likely to survive than adults (52% compared to 31%). “

We are conditioning young men to not only accept that their lives are less valuable, but to be grateful for the opportunity to lay down their lives.

The greatest glory a man can achieve in life, is to sacrifice his own life for women and children.

She goes on to say that, a man is only seen to have any value in society when he either provides security and safety for women and children, or when he lays down his life in the service of women and children, and that men have never, and will never have this reciprocated.

She points out that, the disparity in criminal sentencing among genders (women on average receive 40% of the sentence for the exact same crime) is a byproduct of this as well. She points out that, 99.8% of death row inmates are men, even though many women commit crimes that would be worthy of a death penalty (in states that still have capital punishment), they are over 100x less likely to be sentenced to death, and this disparity increases even further if you cross examine race as well.

For example, a young black man who murders several people in a shooting is infinitely more likely to get the death penalty then a mother who murders her three children.

This willingness to absolve women of their crimes, and go easy on them, is a symptom of male disposability.

Another interesting thing to think about is the male vs female representation in the work force. Women make up 48% of the workforce, yet men make up 96% of workplace fatalities. But what gap is prevalent in popular media, that everyone talks about? The gender pay gap. Not the workplace death gap. Which is interesting since both are explainable by the choices individual men and women make. Dangerous careers tend to pay more, yet al we talk about is how women are underpaid, not how men are over... dead.

I personally never felt this way until I had it pointed out, and now that I have had it pointed out, I can’t stop noticing it.

My anecdotal experience here but, most men I know have been in at least one, if not several physical confrontations in their lives, whereas most women haven’t. Men are far far more likely to be physically bullied at a young age, from their parents and their peers.

I had an experience where a woman I was with yelled at a car full of guys, and they pulled over, and threatened her that they would beat the shit out of ME, if she didn’t shut up. I hadn’t said anything, but these guys were willing to assault a strange man over a woman who was antagonizing them.

And therein is the problem as well. Men AND women perpetuate this , in equal degrees. Women are the primary benefactors, but men partake in upholding this construct just as much.

What has been your experience with “male disposability”? Do you agree? Do you disagree? Do any of the males have a story of them feeling inherently “disposable”? Where their physical safety and well being was seen as a non issue? Do any females experience the opposite, where your physical safety was seen as paramount?

What about the opposite? Feel free to comment, and question.

Try to keep it clean guys :)