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This graphic is the top (unstickied) post on the Men’s Rights subreddit at the moment. Like that Warren Farrell quote I wrote about last week, it’s yet another example of a familiar claim made by misogynistic Men’s Righsers — that men are world’s true heroes, sacrificing themselves for the good of women too lazy or cowardly or whatever to stand up for themselves.
At first glance, the graphic seems to have a certain logic to it: Far more men than women did die on the titanic; that’s a fact. All of the firefighters who died on 9/11 were men; that is also, as far as I can tell, a fact.
Does this justify the graphic maker’s conclusion that “men simply are caring people.” Well, no. You can’t actually draw conclusions about all 3.5 billion men and boys on planet earth from two examples.
But there’s a lot more wrong with the graphic-maker’s argument than that, as a closer look at these two examples can show.
Let’s start with the 9/11 firefighters, because it’s a bit more straightforward. First, I want to point out a little bit of hanky panky the graphic maker is playing with the numbers. Yes, it is true that all of the firefighters who died in and around the towers that day were male. But they weren’t the only first responders to die; if you also include police officers, you will find at least one woman’s name in the list.
That said, yes, virtually all of the first responders who died were men, including every single firefighter who died. And they died heroes, there’s no question about that.
But this isn’t because there were hundreds of female firefighters standing back eating bon bons and letting the men do the dirty and dangerous work for them. Firefighting is a heavily male-dominated profession, and like a lot of male-dominated professions it has not exactly been welcoming to women, who have faced discrimination and harassment (sexual and otherwise) when they’ve tried to enter the “boys club.”
But there’s an even bigger elephant in the room: while virtually all of the first-responders who died on 9/11 were men, all of the terrorists who hijacked the planes that day were also men.
So if you’re going to use this incident to claim that “men simply are caring people,” wouldn’t you also have to conclude that “men simply are terrorists?”
Or perhaps you might want to reconsider using an incident like this to draw conclusions about an entire gender.
When MRAs — taking their cue from Warren Farrell — complain about men being forced or pressured into the “protecter role,” most of the time they are protecting women from the actions of other men.
Yep, men are more likely to run into burning buildings to save women than women are to save men. But men are far more likely to murder their intimate partners (or their exes) than women are.
Even the Titanic, perhaps the MRAs favorite example of “male disposability,” is in fact yet another case in which some men sacrificed themselves to save women from the actions of other men.
First of all, let me point out another little bit of trickery that the graphic-maker is playing with the numbers here. While it is true that a much higher percentage of women on board the Titanic survived than men, looking at the raw numbers is misleading, because there were also several times as many men as women on the ship in the first place. And that class made an enormous difference in terms of survival as well, though their were certainly many upper-class men who went down with the ship. (Like, for example, my great-grandfather Jacques Futrelle, the mystery writer.)
And it’s also worth pointing out that the “women and children first” policy that seems to have been followed, to a degree, on the Titanic wasn’t actually typical, as I’ve pointed out before; indeed, one study of 15,000 victims of major maritime disasters found that more women and children died than men.
But the plain fact is that chivalry didn’t kill the men on the Titanic. This was a preventable disaster, one that was, quite literally, man-made.
The White Star Line chose to equip their ship with an inadequate number of lifeboats. The captain of the ship chose to plow ahead in conditions of virtually no visibility through a section of the North Atlantic that he knew from reports that day was filled with icebergs.
And of course the captain, and the decision makers at the White Star line were all men.
So if you want men as a group to get credit for kindness because some men willingly gave up their seats on the lifeboats for women, it would seem only fair to have to give all men blame for the recklessness and hubris of the ship captain and those White Star line executives who decided that the ship didn’t really need lifeboats enough for everyone on board.
Human beings, whatever their gender, are fascinating and varied creatures, who respond differently to challenges in different settings. There are countless examples of men — and women — rising to the challenges that history has put before them and finding reserves of heroism that they didn’t even know they had. And there are countless examples of men — and women — acting in craven and awful and evil ways.
No gender has a monopoly on kindness or cruelty.
Also, fuck the captain of the Titanic. What an asshole.
I will never understand these guys who think that if one man does something amazing, all men everywhere get to claim dibs on it, like they are the same as the hero by virtue of having somewhat similar junk in the pants. Meanwhile most of these guys have never done an esteemable thing in their sad little lives, which makes the boastfulness even more hilarious.
David, you made a typo my friend:
“Far more women than men did die on the titanic; that’s a fact.!
It feels like MRAs are trying to be bigger jerks since the pledge drive started.
…
I don’t think there’s a coincidence, though.
If men are so caring as a 3.5 billion-member monolithic collective, why do they work so hard at shutting women out? Could it be that they care more about keeping the pie all to themselves than they do about…WOMEN?
These arguments are incredibly stupid on so many levels, not the least of which is that women, even in the year 2001, do not make up a large percentage of the NYPD mainly because of men’s discrimination against women and mistreatment on the job (the few women I ever knew on the NYPD were the daughters of cops – it’s still not easy for women to break into, despite laws to the contrary… as with every other type of job, there are anti-discrimination laws and then there is reality) – the NYPD is a *fraternal* order. Fraternal means “bros” – for any MRAs who might read this.
In 1912 there were even fewer women in the work force and fewer women with means, therefore, most of the passengers – something like 75% – of the Titanic were men. Men ran the whole show – men ran the ship too fast, men ran it into an iceberg. Men…
I’d, also, like to point out that regardless of what country the people who destroyed the towers in NYC might have come from, we know one thing beyond the shadow of a doubt – the perpetrators were MEN.
So, this is a little like men going around setting fires, so they can put them out and be the big hero.
I know these things are all obvious to any sane person, but for some reason, I felt like pointing them out.
Thanks for the great blog, by the way. I read it almost every day, but this is my 1st time posting a comment.
Feels like they are trying to be bigger jerks since lunchtime.
Great, David, now I have that song stuck in my head. It’s better than the fish head song, I guess.
Yeah, okay, I’ll believe that you MRAs are “caring people” when you stop telling women it’s their fault when they get raped, or that we evolved differently and therefore we should strive to keep within those biological boundaries. Nope. There are genuinely caring PEOPLE, not just men or women as a whole. Sorry, you lose.
To correct an error: I see that was NYFD, not NYPD (a bunch of cops and emergency workers died, too) – but the same thing applies. It’s a fraternal order with a *recent* history of discrimination against minorities. It is not reasonable for a dominant group of people to actively exclude another group of people through discrimination and harassment, and then complain because *not enough* of that group died in a tragedy.
I think it’s “We care SO much, we’ll walk over our own corpses just to snipe at women!”
Ah, using the memory of dead heroes to swipe at feminism, so noble! No doubt men can be caring, and culturally encouraging men to view it as a part of manhood would be awesome if only their whole slimy point wasn’t that women are selfish and awful for not dying enough. Too bad they don’t actually care about trying to change male gender roles and tomorrow they’ll be back onto He Man Woman Hater Alpha Malezzz garbage.
If MRAs are kind and caring, then I’m President of Middle-Earth.
Y’know, the firefighters who died on 9/11? Those men were heroes.
And now they’re just used as ideological fodder. Sickening, isn’t it?
The men of the Imperial Japanese army were exclusively responsible for the Rape of Nanking. I guess men simply are uncaring and vicious.
Whenever I hear some guy talk about “male disposability”, I notice a couple things:
1) Their lives are not in any danger
2) They aren’t suffering some horrible existence
3) There’s no hardship they are going through at the moment
4) They’re annoyed at having a female boss
5) They’re annoyed a female associate is more financially successful than they are
The fact they use these examples as “proof” of “male disposability” and apply it to themselves – I can’t help but think the notion of putting the toilet seat down is akin to fucking Ragnarok to them…
If you do not count EMTs, port authority officers, or police officers, then you can prove that all the fireMEN who died on 9/11 were indeed all men and only men.
I don’t supposed these shiteaters would ever acknowledge women like Ida Strauss – she wouldn’t go into the lifeboat when her husband wasn’t allowed to. When it was suggested that they would gladly make room for him, an elderly man, he refused; better save a young person. The Strausses were last seen sitting holding hands on deck.
saintnick – add “they’re not getting to fuck the supermodels they’re entitled to”. Because that’s the worst oppression evah!
You have to have a real lack of perspective and/or critical thinking to buy this graphic, I think. Which MRAs have in spades, so it doesn’t surprise me that this is hot with them, but still.
Also, this is pretty cool (note: video in article has naked boobies, so it isn’t work safe): http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/01/27/gender-swap-is-a-fascinating-use-of-oculus-rift-nsfw/
True, there’s always that.
‘Cause, as we all know, the refusal to have one get their “dick wet” is like racism – perhaps worse!
Wait. Isn’t this valorizing male disposablity and chivalry? Aren’t those misandry?
It’s a tad inconsistent to be all “expecting men to die for the sake of women is unfair” one minute and “it’s awesome how Real Men are willing to die for the sake of women!” the next.
The saddest part of this is that they use those arguments like “the majority of the firefighters are men” not to show that men are caring people but as an argument to justify women’s opression and their own entitlement.
Oh, it’s much worse than racism, ‘cos sometimes a woman might be interested in ::gasp:: a black guy, and as Fartiste has reminded us, that’s just worse than the worst!
Actually reading about the lifeboats is fascinating, unsurprisingly you find heroes and scoundrels of all genders. It appears the women and children decision was a crew policy formed on the spot, and cooperation depended on the person.
I think the argument that male vulnerability is always ignored (a central assumption of the male disposability theory), apart from being demonstrably false, also misses the fact that the stigma on expressions of male vulnerability depends on the context. Some research on gender roles (for which I currently don’t have the citation, sadly) indicates that men are not ridiculed or shamed for expressing vulnerability when such expression is included in the discourse of masculinity.
For example, crying, which is coded as feminine, can be re-coded as masculine for the sake of benefiting men. I’m not even talking about “acceptable” forms of crying by men, whose existence is undisputed. I’m talking about men actually attempting to “appropriate”* the act of crying for themselves. Because of male privilege, a man is actually capable of justifying his crying by coding it as masculine. They can avoid calling it “crying”, “weeping”, etc. and instead use a pro-masculine euphemism such as “manly tears.” This form of “appropriation” often works even when the crying in question would otherwise be considered “weak” and “bitchy.”
*in scare quotes because obviously crying doesn’t really belong to any gender – it’s just that, in patriarchal discourse, crying is coded as something that only women do and hence exclusive to women.