Why do men have reputation for being unkind and selfish?

I am writing a book about gender issues. The book would be a combination of short articles. I am interested in feedback of those who agree and those who disagree with me.

 

How can men correct their reputation for unkindness?

A recent (October 2017) study by a University of Zurich team involving 56 men and women supposedly found that men’s brain rewards selfish behavior, while women’s brains reward sharing. The results widely circulated by the media seem to have reaffirmed that men are ethically inferior to women. Many headlines like “Women are kinder and more generous then men" by The Independent seem to agree. These articles reaffirmed commonly held beliefs – according to “The State of The Union on Gender Equality, Sexism, and Women’s Rights" (2017), 52% of women and 41% of men believe that women are more ethical then men.

In my opinion, the study proves once again that the men’s primary flaw is neither selfishness nor unkindness. Given that Social Sciences are quite flexible, different tests yield different conclusions. And yet, this and similar studies did reaffirm two facts. First, researchers and journalists have no fear of claiming that men are unkind. Second, researchers and journalists have enormous fear of claiming that women are unkind.

Making negative generalization about women brings dreadful consequences, while making negative generalizations about men brings almost no consequences. Any journalist who says or writes anything even slightly offensive about women is blacklisted quickly. On most jobs, anyone who says anything offensive about women is fired immediately. On most major forums of English Internet, any poster who regularly offends women is subject to an extremely vicious campaign of personal insults and likely a ban. I myself am careful with my words, but even speaking about discrimination faced by men may provoke ire and abuse from SJWs. Internet stars who have written offensive satires about women received thousands of death and castration threats on open platforms like Twitter and news comment sections.

The absence of social consequences for negative generalizations about men make such generalizations acceptable and common. Men came to be viewed as privileged oppressors and villains. The reputation of men as a class fell to the point when 41% of American men consider themselves ethically inferior humans. Vilification leads to discrimination – men are discriminated in divorce, get much longer sentences for the same offense, and male victims of Domestic Violence get almost no help.

Even though men have reputation for selfishness and unkindness, History has many examples to the contrary. In a 1770 letter, Voltaire wrote “I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write". During the time when insulting the monarch in any European Nation was an offense, George Washington signed the First Amendment into Law. Valerie Solanas who advocated genocide of men faced little backlash. Sally Miller Gearhart who advocated reducing male population to 10% did not lose her job as a university professor in 1980s. Many other public figures who advocated similar ideas suffered no repercussions.

The sad reality is that men’s kindness to those who slander and insult them may be the greatest weakness men as a class have. This very kindness leads to excessive amount of negative stereotypes about men. This very kindness eventually leads to the perception of men as vicious monsters. On individual level, a man who is kind to a slanderer may gain reputation points, but on societal level such kindness is a disaster.

Bleak as the situation is, there is a possibility for menprovement. With access to Internet, more men and women then ever before realize that men are facing undeserved stereotyping, hatred, and discrimination. In 2010s many male bashers did face unprecedented backlash. That backlash is much weaker then the one faced by those who insult women, but it is still far beyond anything male bashers faced in 1980s, 1990s, or even 2000s. Hopefully by 2050, after over three more decades of electronic activism, we will have a generation of men and some women aware of the issues facing men. Hopefully, we will have a generation of men and some women willing to stand up against misandrists at least as strongly as modern women stand against misogyny. Hopefully, the men of 2050 would proudly declare that they are incapable of kindness toward those who declare them inferior humans. Hopefully, by that time no one will dare to publish slanderous generalizations about men.

 

Don't agree.

I find men generally no less selfless than women. I point to their willingness to work hard to support families, their willingness to take physical risk on behalf of families/friends, and their general tendency to take care of practicalities before indulging in self-gratification.

 

Why is there a general perception of men being selfish villains?

 

And when men's rights activists and men get together to talk about men's issues women and their similar peers think we are evil and out to stomp on women and we aren't including women enough although many do support us. We don't fight back since it aids our rivals in making us out to be evil.

I would state though is our one great flaw is purely a biological evolutionary one we are wired as men to protect children and women, and society in many ways built around this, true in primitive ways it was we protect our women and children and not other tribes or peoples women and children, but it was there men protect their turf this included women and children. I would say the best thing we can do is get over this and treat women as equals and this means as we would other men if a woman is a decent person to us we respond but you don't and become a threat then act as we would as men to a threat.

 

I dunno. Ask the bitter single women?

 

A few years ago sociologists discovered and reluctantly admitted that upwards of 90 percent of all sociological studies -- many of them very famous and used as foundation studies -- cannot in point of fact be reliably duplicated with similar results using strict scientific processes. After that I have no use for these studies. That said I will point out that until one has been a 'fly on the wall' near women when they are having a little get together nobody has encountered REAL unkindness towards either men or . . . women. As a matter of course, they are vicious.

 

Because until the Twentieth Century men ran pretty much exclusively ran things from wars to the Spanish Inquisition and as a result there was the typical and unfounded assertion that women would make kinder and gentler Queens and Presidents, the people making that assumption obviously never having studied many of history's successful female leaders because NONE of them were particularly noteworthy for being tenderhearted in regards to politics or policies. Then also Hillary Clinton does come to mind. She IS NOT a . . . nice . . . person.

 

Definitely. There are many people of both genders who have a desire to scapegoat others. But scapegoating any race or the female gender brings severe social consequences. Thus men remain as a universal scapegoat in modern Western society.

 

Definitely -- most great leaders of either gender were very harsh.

Also rules written by women -- like College Speech Codes and Codes of Conduct impose strict penalties on anyone who criticizes them. Some laws written by male presidents since George Washington gave people the right to criticize them.

 

I agree 100%. I believe that in many ways modern society holds men to much higher moral standards then women.

 

Yes, and so the entire premise that men are more vicious or cruel -- or whatever -- than women is false WITH the stipulation that simply because men have been dominant for 99% of the known history of humanity far, far more is known and documented regarding the bad attitudes and conduct of males, and so it is perfectly understandable why many people think that men are worse in general nature.

 

I was thrown off by the first sentence:

Is it a political or scientific book?

Testes produce the lions share of testosterone and ovaries estrogen. I'd say psychology tempered with neurology in analyzing how these hormones affect the brain would be a starting point.

But maybe I'm way out in left field here.

 

Short answer: Because men aren't women.

Longer answer: Males are altered females whose developed is altered in the womb (IIRC) about six weeks into gestation. When the Y chromosome kicks in, it ramps up aggression and actually destroys parts of the brain dealing with communication.

The 2006 book by the American neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine "The Female Brain" goes into detail about these differences as does the 2010 book "The Male Brain".

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/books/chapters/0910-1st-briz.html
Common sense tells us that boys and girls behave differently. We see it every day at home, on the playground, and in classrooms. But what the culture hasn't told us is that the brain dictates these divergent behaviors. The impulses of children are so innate that they kick in even if we adults try to nudge them in another direction. One of my patients gave her three-and-a-half-year-old daughter many unisex toys, including a bright red fire truck instead of a doll. She walked into her daughter's room one afternoon to find her cuddling the truck in a baby blanket, rocking it back and forth saying, "Don't worry, little truckie, everything will be all right."

This isn't socialization. This little girl didn't cuddle her "truckie" because her environment molded her unisex brain. There is no unisex brain. She was born with a female brain, which came complete with its own impulses. Girls arrive already wired as girls, and boys arrive already wired as boys. Their brains are different by the time they're born, and their brains are what drive their impulses, values, and their very reality.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/books/review/Bazelon-t.html?pagewanted=all
In “The Male Brain,” Brizendine devotes a chapter to a “classic complaint: Men accuse women of being too emotional, and women accuse men of not being emotional enough.”

 

One of the differences I've noticed between my wife and I is what happens when one would ask the other "What'cha thinking about?"

Say we're camping. It's night, the fire is going and we're toasting marshmallows. I ask her and she'll respond with whatever is currently going through her head. Plans for the future, the fact that we need to get a new tent, what we're going to go see tomorrow, wondering what her grandchildren are doing, planning our next game demos, ideas on how to promote our game demos...any number of things are going through her head.

Yet if she were to ask me...I've got nothing because I'm pretty much running my mind in screensaver mode. If there's nothing going on that needs my mind to be focused on anything more important than "Don't burn yourself", there's flying toasters in my brain.

If there's nothing going on, I can pretty much shut down my brain and simply enjoy the quiet moment. Listen to what's around me and just passively soak it in. I can literally think of nothing. Or if I'm not idling, I will let my mind wander and let it pick apart any weird bits of information floating around in my brain. I have pondered "Do penguins have knees?" (a popular meme regarding going to sleep) and I have mentally gone over x-rays and anatomical diagrams of penguins to confirm that yes they do indeed have knees (the upper legs are covered in the body feathers so they're not seen).

So when she asks "What'cha thinking?" my response is either "Nothing" (which is likely true), or [some random bit of trivia] (also likely true).

So I wonder if the perception of selfishness (or at least a part of it) comes from a perceived unwillingness to share our thoughts. That they think that because we have nothing to share or are too embarrassed to share the internal "was that a frog or a toad that hopped across the road?" debate waging in our heads (because the trivial crap is nowhere nearly as important as what she has in her head)...we're selfishly not sharing our innermost thoughts and feelings.

Wonder if some of it could come from that.

 

It is not a scientific book. Mostly a collection of short articles and short-to-medium fictional stories.

 

The other issue is that men as a class are much more tolerant toward just and unjust criticism. Thus, MSM increases the perception of men being unfair.

 

I have written many articles on sexism and run workshops. If you need ideas let me know.

There isn’t.. men aren’t considered selfish, they’re ambitious. Men aren’t considered bitchy, they’re donsidered assertive etc
men who show softness are considered weak.
For a man to be masculine he has to be as unlike a woman as possible. That’s the sexism. ,,and that was said from an eighth grade student of mine

 

Like trump?

 

Honestly, I've only heard that from bitter divorced women. I don't think it's a common perception at all. Why do you think it is?

 

There is socialization from birth! Starts with pink and blue. Starts with giving girls dolls and boys trucks. Starts with girls being allowed to cry and boys being told that he is acting like a girl if he cries. I can go on on and but socialization is a huge part. Those hormones don’t kick in til later

 

Poor men, lacking power in this universe. Gimme a break! Yes women being raped and sexually assaulted always brought severe consequences (sarcasm alert)
men hardly had any consequences..Like the dads who left the family and didn’t pay child support.

 

Correct. However, your correctness about socialization doesn’t negate the genetic differences. It’s both. How much weight each carries is subject to debate, but clearly men are more aggressive than women due to genetics, not just “socialization” as some are trying to claim.

 

I agree..testosterone and socialization. But by the time male puberty kicks in, they have been socialized to believe women are weak and not to be emulated . Men are not as free as women....we can be athletic or a ballet dancer. We can be a neurosurgeon or a nursery school teacher. We can dress fluffy or tee shirts etc.men are seen as less if hey opt to be homemakers Women have become more liberated and now I wish men could.