Male expendability

Male expendability or male disposability is the idea that society can better cope with the loss of a typical man than with the loss of a typical woman.

Concept

Øystein Gullvåg Holter argues that the male-led Russian government's belief in male expendability contributed to their delay in seeking international help during the Kursk submarine disaster, in which an all-male crew was lost. He states, "If 118 women had been killed, alarm bells regarding discrimination against women would probably have gone off around the world." He states that able-bodied males were viewed as a more legitimate target during wars in Bosnia, Kosovo, Timor, Rwanda, and Chechnya.[1]

Ivana Milojević notes that while patriarchy assigns the role of sex object to women, it assigns to men the role of violence-object, with male expendability being corollary to the sexual objectification of girls.[2] Films such as They Were Expendable or The Expendables often are about all-male combat teams. Michael D. Clark notes that Adolf Hitler considered gay men expendable by means of Nazi concentration camps and Nazi medical experiments.[3]

Manosphere critics of feminism have argued that poor and working-class men "are cannon fodder abroad and expendable labor at home, trapped beneath a glass floor in jobs nobody really wants—farm workers, roofers, garbage men—and injured at far higher rates than women".[4] Walter Block argues in The Case for Discrimination that male expendability is the result of women's being the bottleneck of reproductive capacity in a population. This theme was echoed in Warren Farrell's The Myth of Male Power.

See also

• Misandry
• Missing white woman syndrome
• Women and children first aka Birkenhead drill
• Androcide
• Violence against men
• Reverse sexism

References

1. Holter, Øystein Gullvåg (March 2002). "A theory of gendercide". Journal of Genocide Research. 4 (1): 11–38. doi:10.1080/14623520120113883.
2. Ivana Milojević (June 2012). "Why the Creation of a Better World is Premised on Achieving Gender Equity and on Celebrating Multiple Gender Diversities". Journal of Futures Studies. 16 (4): 51–66.
3. Clark, J. Michael (May 1993). "From Gay Men's Lives: Toward a More Inclusive, Ecological Vision". The Journal of Men's Studies. 1 (4): 347–358. doi:10.3149/jms.0104.347.
4. Jeff Sharlet (February 3, 2014). "What Kind of Man Joins the Men's Rights Movement?". GQ. Retrieved 2017-08-03.

External links

• Warren Farrell (1993). The Myth of Male Power: Why Men Are the Disposable Sex. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0671793494.
• Roy Baumeister (2010). Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195374100.