“The Labor Department reports that nearly 5,000 American workers die from workplace accidents each year. Ninety percent, more than 4,400, are male. We are often reminded that only 24 women are CEOs of the Fortune 500. But what about the Unfortunate 4,400?” -Christina Hoff Sommers in a 2016 Time magazine article.

Have those 4,400 men every been brought to your attention? No probably not.

This is because that’s how you were set up to see it, that men have always been privileged and women are always getting the short end of the stick. But I’d say the men doing the backbreaking, and very dangerous jobs including roofers, loggers, and coal miners are probably wondering where all of their privilege is.

This is just one example of how we’ve all been mislead by some feminists and their “facts”. In this article I will be covering a few more of these myths that will change the way you view feminism and the way feminists have displayed men.

First, the big one, the wage gap.

The Wage Gap

We’ve all heard it, “Women only make 77 cents to every man’s 1 dollar” and to be honest it’s a pretty startling statistic. To think that women make 77% of what men make, that’s pretty bad.

BUT although this statistic is true, it does not account for differences in occupations, positions, education,  job tenure or hours worked per week. The wage gap is only the difference in full time workers pay, and it has nothing to do with the job they are getting payed for. So, because most women often choose different occupations, they earn different 

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wages. Researchers have a name for this, it is called gender occupational segregation, examples of the most common occupations for women according to the United States Department of Labor are elementary and middle school teachers and registered nurses. While the most common jobs for men are managers and truck drivers. According to Indeed added together the averages of the men’s 2 most common jobs is $151,156 and the women’s 2 most common jobs is $117,356. These amounts of annual pay have nothing to do with gender and are completely based on occupations that men and women pick.

The 1 in 5 Statistic

Another largely misleading myth that feminists repeatedly use is that 1 in 5 women in college are raped (by men). But what is disturbing about this figure is not just the rate of occurrence, but also the widespread misunderstanding about where the actual numbers come from. The estimated 19% (about 1 in 5) sexual assault rate among college women is based on a survey at two large four-year universities, which does not accurately reflect our nation’s colleges overall.

Some feminists and women also frequently group all men into one general category, especially when talking about rape. In a 2016 video by Boldly, also known as BuzzfeedYellow, a group of women ask 36 questions to men. One of these questions being, “Why do you feel like it’s okay to harass women or make offensive comments?”. Another question was, “Why is it your first instinct to doubt women who have been sexually violated or raped?”. These questions are deceiving and only apply to a small part of the male population. Most men support women that are sexually assaulted and violated, and men that harass women aren’t easy to come by. Additionally the saying is, and always will be, “innocent until proven guilty” so, assuming the woman is telling the truth without evidence, is not the right thing to do.

Although the 1 in 5 statistic is not true for all colleges it is still an awful fact. Change is needed immediately and the amount of occurrences of rape and sexual assault in these large universities isn’t acceptable. I am not attempting to play down rape at all, it is a traumatic event for a person to go through, I am only exposing where the 1/5 statistic comes from and how feminists have made you perceive it.

As of recently it has been proven how prevalent the problem of rape and sexual misconduct are in the world, especially in Hollywood. One example of this is Harvey Weinstein, a producer who has been exposed to many allegations of sexual assault. He used his power as a famous movie producer to take advantage of many actresses. These women have finally taken a stand showing the world their strength and courage, and proving they have a voice.

Manspreading

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The definition of manspreading is “the practice where a man adopts a sitting position with his legs wide apart, in such a way as to encroach on an adjacent seat”. The reason feminists often say men “manspread” is because these men want to establish superiority and have egos so large they can’t give women a seat on the bus or train. But two writers, Ash Bennington and Mark Skinner calculated that the average man’s shoulders are “28 percent wider than his hips, and the average woman’s shoulders are 3 percent wider than her hips, and men and women have, on average, similar sized hips”, meaning men have larger shoulders. So a man’s knees function like a cat’s whiskers, testing the width of his seat’s area to see if there’s enough room for his comparatively wider shoulders to fit. Another logical reason for manspreading is that men, obviously, have different genitalia than women. And a scrunched up position is rather uncomfortable.

Although this is all true, most men would have the decency to be a little squished for a bus or train ride. Those who are unwilling, are just selfish. And if you find a man who is manspreading, ask him politely to change his position, and most would comply and apologize.

Conclusion

Feminism is a movement that is based on the idea of improving the living standards and social strength of women, But some individual feminists and groups have changed what feminism is and what it means to be a feminist by creating untrue and false facts. In addition to these skewed and wrong facts some feminists believe that in order to gain a better life they need to try and put men to a lower level instead of raising their own selves to a higher one. So please to the feminists reading this, before you comment angrily, reflect on the type of feminist you are. Analyze if you are improving yourself to be the best person you can be, instead of attempting to try and make men out to be the enemy.

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