Today, July 11th, is Gender Empathy Gap Day.

In short, the gender empathy gap is the empirically supported claim (and new research continues to emerge) that our perception of pain and suffering differs between the sexes, and that we perceive a man or boy going through the same situation as a woman or girl as suffering less, even when real-world data indicates that the former is suffering more. It also means that we are more willing to sacrifice a man's life than a woman's, as evidenced by numerous examples, such as the striking differences in survival rates between men and women on the Titanic, the Boko Haram situation, the way the UN gave priority to women in the Ebola outbreak or how the UN let hundreds of thousands of men starve to death due to negligence, the inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women excluding men despite the fact that the majority of missing and murdered indigenous people are men, the Srebrenica massacre where the UN rescued women and young children from its protection zone in Srebrenica and handed over 8000 Muslim boys and men to their murderers and many more. Related to the empathy gap is the fact that we tend to stereotype men as perpetrators and women as victims, and it can be extremely difficult for us not to think this way, even when the objective data suggests otherwise.

The origins of this day are MANNdat, a German association founded in 2004 and based in Stuttgart which sees itself as an independent, non-partisan interest group for male citizens with the goal of eliminating legal disadvantages and public discrimination against men. This (English version at the bottom of the page) is their most recent article on the Gender Empathy Gap.

I had originally intended to write a long post for this day, but circumstances that are not under my control didn't let me. Instead, I'll refer to the posts I wrote a while ago (On the Gender Empathy Gap and its correlates: a comprehensive collection of resources and 60 things YOU can do about the gender empathy gap — A call to action!), the former of which MANNdat was kind enough to publish on their website genderempathygap.de.

Let's make this day an international holiday for both men and women to stand up against this great injustice, talk about it with our family and friends, donate money and time, and think about what it means for our male loved ones! Thus, I call on all members of this subreddit to discuss how the gender empathy gap has affected them personally and the boys and men in their lives.