Men are more vulnerable to military conscription, more likely to be victims of violence but to receive less sympathy for such victimization, less likely to receive parental visitation or alimony than women even when circumstances are otherwise equal, more likely to be subjected to corporal punishment, commonly victims of sexual assault but subjected to lack of concern or even mockery of the experience (with many definitions of rape excluding "being forced to penetrate"), less represented in higher education, more likely to hold dangerous and undesirable jobs, and more likely to receive harsh criminal sentences for equivalent crime.

There has been very little scholarly attention to male disadvantage, and many people claim that it doesn't exist.

I fully admit that my previous identity as feminist, with a focus on patriarchical male dominance, blinded me to male disadvantage. I didn't even realize it existed until very recently. In my mind, it was a binary choice - either women are disadvantaged, or men are disadvantaged, but not both. I guess this is another reason to move away from gendered "isms," away from forced gender constructs, and towards the notion of "equality and liberty for all," on an individual basis.

I realize that a desire for actual equality, rather than remedial inequality, is an act of rebellion these days. As Thomas Sowell has noted, my views would have made me a radical 90 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago, and make me a conservative (or libertine) today.

Maybe it's far-fetched, maybe it's naive, but I have a dream. I have a dream that someday, people will be judged by the content of their character, not by what is in their pants. I refuse to believe that the actions I take to reduce all types of gender inequality under the umbrella of this beautiful dream could ever propagate discrimination. I believe we are capable of reducing all types of unequal treatment simultaneously, without internal conflict, and without engaging in the very same practice we claim to loathe. Wherever people are struggling to achieve truly equal rights under the law, I'm on THAT side.