I keep seeing the sentiment on this subreddit that "women are taught they have inherent value, men are taught they must earn their value." This is bullshit.

I have no idea where this idea comes from, but it's nonsense. Women aren't taught that we're special snowflakes who inherently deserve things any more than men are.

Personally, as a young girl, I was taught that nothing in life is free, and you have to be smart and work your ass off in order to get anywhere. I learned that the only people who owe you anything at all are your family, and no one else can be expected to help you. I internalized that your academic and financial success are measurements of your value, and to the extent that I was better than anyone else or deserved anything in particular, it was only because I was smart and did well in school. I'm still unlearning that bullshit well into adulthood.

But even if you discount my experience, there's other evidence that women are not treated as though we have inherent value. How often do you see female victims referred to as "someone's daughter" or "a mother of three," as though our worth comes from our relationship to others? And if women were perceived as being inherently valuable, surely there wouldn't have been such a catastrophic increase in denial of abortions to women with risky pregnancies after Roe was overturned.

It's true that men are often expected to be willing to sacrifice themselves for women in dangerous situations, but this is due to the patriarchal notion that women are weak and unable to protect themselves, not a societal devaluing of men. If we lived in a society where men were seen as less worthy, we would see that reflected in the gender ratio among politicians, CEOs, and other powerful people. Instead we see the opposite.