Over the past few weeks this has caught my attention as the COVID vaccine has been rolled out in more and more countries. Truth be told, I can't say it's something I didn't see coming but to actually see it play out just as I predicted is a little surreal.

First, a little background. As a young and healthy individual, I am in no rush at this point to get the vaccine--if anything, I am somewhat reluctant. If I were an older nursing home resident, I would likely be more willing, but even then it wouldn't matter to me if I were the first person in my country, or even the first person in the home, to be vaccinated so long as I could receive the vaccine as soon as possible if that were my intent.

However, as I alluded earlier, since the beginning of December, the vaccine has been introduced in more and more countries, states, provinces, etc. The media always make a big deal of showing the first person to obtain the vaccine--and that person is always a woman. Granted, the high-risk populations being prioritized for vaccine are predominantly female--most nurses are women, and far fewer men than women survive into their 90s and 100s, but even so if the participants had been truly selected randomly, you would at least expect a minority of men as the first participants, but instead you only see women. Why is that? I think we all know the answer, and that answer is incredibly relevant to understanding our current cultural zeitgeist.

In short, health authorities and governments are deliberately ensuring that the first shot is administered to a woman to avoid ensuing the anger of feminists and their powerful allies. They know that if a woman receives the first vaccine, nobody will protest, but if the first shot were to be administered to a man, this would lead to widespread anger and condemnation from feminists who would accuse the governments of being sexist or misogynistic, and are trying to avoid this label. I can't really blame them either, given the powerful allies that the radical feminist movement has that gives it a disproportionately large platform to express its displeasure, despite constituting a fringe view and comprising a small percentage of the population. First, there's the legacy media, still highly influential even in the Internet age, 90% of which are completely devoted to radical identity politics and feminist causes, and where the left-wing media outlets are constantly racing to out-virtue signal each other as being the most "progressive" (i.e. feminist) media organisation. Many corporations and large businesses have turned to championing feminist causes as well, and in the general atmosphere of political correctness present in the West today, simply questioning the validity of the feminist cause can be detrimental to one's professional prospects.

I should also add that in light of the reasoning being used to determine who is vaccinated first, there is actually a very strong argument why a man should be selected to receive the first dose. The death rate from COVID-19 across every age group has been shown to be roughly 2x higher for men as compared to women. Therefore, if an average 80-year-old woman has a 5% chance of dying upon COVID infection, the risk to a man the same age would be 10%. Given that the old and frail are among the first groups to be vaccinated precisely because of the elevated risk to their life and health, and the first person to be vaccinated should naturally be among the most at-risk people who can be safely vaccinated, it would make sense that much of the time, a man should be selected. And while we are on the topic of differential death rates, can you imagine the fervor and outrage feminists would generate if the death rates were reversed, such that women were twice as likely to die as men? The moment cases got out of control, or a government were alleged to have made a mistake by not bringing in enough lockdown measures or not implementing them quickly enough, they would almost instantly accuse that government of being either intentionally or unconsciously sexist, and claim that the pandemic was not being taken seriously because more women were dying. And of course, sharing their ideology, the mainstream media would instantly jump to their support and rubber-stamp their claims as unquestionable truth.

The last thing I wanted to add is that I think this is part of a larger trend toward promoting women at all costs and marginalising men. For example, in 20 years from now, we might actually see the first manned Mars mission. It's likely that the crew will be diverse and co-ed (which I have nothing against, I should add, so long as the astronauts are selected based on merits rather than membership to a particular gender or ethnic group), and when the moment comes to decide who gets to take the first step on the Martian surface, I think it's not difficult to predict what the astronaut's gender will be, regardless of the others' credentials. To do otherwise, after all, would be to legitimize the patriarchy, seemingly eliminated, yet still relevant. And in more down-to-earth (pardon the pun) matters that may affect the average man much more acutely, companies are increasingly being pressured to enforce quotas, not only in employment as a whole, but in the upper managerial echelons of an organisation, to ensure gender equality at all costs, to shatter the pervasive "glass ceiling". Naturally, this will come at huge cost to men who will have to try even harder to get the position, lest they be passed over for a woman of potentially lower qualifications, but will be seen as demonstrating the company's commitment to diversity and equality and fulfilling its internal quota. All this despite the fact that study after study has shown that men are actually falling behind women with respect to post-secondary education, and that this gap is widening. Still, this doesn't fit the feminist narrative portraying women as the oppressed and men as the oppressors, so it is largely ignored. And all this is happening while working-class jobs that don't require post-secondary education are precisely the ones being automated and off-shored, leaving many men chronically unemployed with few career prospects. In other words, I don't want to state the obvious, but it's clear that it's certainly a bleak time to be a man right now.